Bella says, “Please,” to no one in particular.
“Am I out of line wanting to know, Auntie?”
Bella replies, “No, you’re not.” And to Salif she pleads, “Let it be.”
The dream of last night has suddenly come back to her, and she feels despondent. She remembers now too that BIH is shorthand for a lesbian bar called Bar in Heaven and that Ulrika is a German active in the gay community in Nairobi. She has read all this online — the recent raid of the bar has been all over the news. She considers whether to call Padmini and ask if all is okay, but she thinks better of it and, opting for inaction on that front, turns her mind to matters closer to her heart.
She glances up and sees that Salif is looking as disturbed as she feels. His shoulders are hunched and he is clutching a knife in his right hand while his glassy eyes stare at a bit of uneaten omelet attached to the end of his fork. There is something blank about his gaze that puts Bella in mind of a mirror that has lost its quicksilver backing. He doesn’t have much self-restraint: You annoy him and he will come after you until he unsettles you. Maybe he is the sort of person who believes that when you are bad, as bad as Valerie, say, you deserve to get your comeuppance. Like Salif, Bella finds Dahaba’s occasional unpleasantness tiring, and often she doesn’t know what to do about it. But Salif needs to learn that he doesn’t have to show his ugly side so quickly and that he doesn’t need to zero in on other people’s weaknesses, as if he were a dog chasing the fear in those who are afraid of him.
Just before Bella goes out the door to meet Gunilla, Dahaba comes back downstairs, holding her phone. The girl is shouting, “Mummy, where are you?” An instant later, Dahaba passes the phone to Bella, saying, “Auntie, it’s Mum, she wants a word.”
What follows is so bizarre and happens so quickly that Bella will be confused about it for a long time to come.
Bella’s first words are “You were in my thoughts. In fact, I nearly called you half an hour ago to ask how you both were.”
“Cut the crap,” Valerie says. “I want you to go upstairs and close the door to your room. I have questions to ask you and I want true answers. I don’t wish the children to hear what I am saying.”
Bella is in suspense to learn whether all this is provoked by the payment she made yesterday when she settled the bill at the hotel. Or could it have something to do with the raid on BIH and the resulting arrests? Is Valerie in deep trouble and in dire need of help again? She remains silent until she is in her room and then she says, “What is this about, Valerie?”
“Do you know — have you ever known — a Ugandan woman called Helene Nsembemba, with legal chambers in Kampala? And have you ever wired funds to her in your capacity as the Good Samaritan, working miracles and setting free two women in a Kampala lockup?”
“I’ve never met this Helene you speak of.”
“I know you know Gunilla the Swede and that you’ve met with her a couple of times, so don’t tell me you don’t know her. Tell me what role the Swedish woman played in all this.”
“I suggest we talk about this another time.”
“Here you are fobbing me off again. Tell me truly, did you pay to have us released?”
“I’ve no idea what you are talking about.”
Valerie says, “I’m told you paid the bond, wired the funds to pay off the Ugandan police and paid for our ticket, all through your lackey Gunilla. Is that true?”
“You are imagining things, Valerie.”
“I have it from reliable sources that you are involved in much deeper muck than you are prepared to accept,” says Valerie.
“Who is this reliable source?”
“A gentleman in the Ugandan legal fraternity.”
“I insist I have no idea what he is on about.”
There is a pause.
“Padmini and I are coming over to see the children. And I never want them to know about this terrible thing you’ve done, paid secretly and maliciously a bill you did not incur,” Valerie screams into the phone.
There is a knock on the door. Dahaba says, “Is everything all right? I hear some shouting, are you shouting?”
“Dahaba, darling, I didn’t mean to shout. Okay?”
Valerie asks, “What is happening?”
“Dahaba is at the door to my room, wondering why I am shouting and asking if everything is all right,” Bella says.
“I want you to listen to me carefully, very carefully. Not a word to Dahaba and Salif about this. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Not to a living soul, you hear?”
“I said I hear you.”
“No shouting, because you are still shouting.”
Bella chokes on her words of self-explanation, thinking that one can never win when one is at war with Valerie. She is adept at turning the tables and making you sound silly and forcing you to apologize even though you have no idea why you are apologizing or why you got yourself into tangles and your tongue into knots.
“I’ll see you soon enough,” says Valerie, and she hangs up.
With the phone now dead in her hands, Bella opens the door to her room and finds she is face-to-face with Dahaba. Bella has no idea what to do or what to say. Dahaba is too young to understand all this. So Bella only says, “Thanks, here. Your mum called to tell us she and Auntie Padmini are coming over in a bit,” and holds out the phone. But Dahaba notices and so does Bella that her outstretched hand is trembling and that she is shaking all over. Bella returns to her room and washes her face and hands, but she is still shaking.
When she comes out, Dahaba is still waiting for her. Bella embraces her and then says, “Let us go downstairs and see how the darkroom is doing.”
Dahaba says, “Wait. Tell me what’s happened.”
“There has been a misunderstanding, that’s all.”
And Bella leads Dahaba by the hand, virtually pulling her, and doesn’t stop until they are in the darkroom, where it is still night.
“May I turn on the lights, Auntie?” says Dahaba.
“Of course, my darling.”
Bella moves around, taking note of what else needs to be done to make the darkroom operational. But everything will have to wait until she gets back from her appointment with Gunilla.
Bella, still a little shaken, is unhappy being alone with Dahaba. The girl has a way of unsettling her with her questions, and Bella needs time to think of what and how to answer. She calls out to Salif several times. More and more she realizes how comforting she finds his presence. It’s not just that he is not antsy like Dahaba, who is demanding and unsure, but somehow being around him neutralizes things, balances them out. He makes problems bearable and often comes up with solutions to them, just like Aar.
Now he says, “Is it ready for use, Auntie?”
In his calming presence, Bella regains her composure. With her arms around Dahaba, whose small body is trembling against her, she says, “Between the items I purchased from the camera store and a handful of others I brought with me from Italy, the darkroom will be functional today. Later today, after I get back.”
Salif smiles. “Must be an important meeting. Because you are in your power outfit.”
“Wish me luck,” Bella says, hugging Dahaba a bit tighter.
“When will you be back?”
“I’ll return as soon as I am done. Your mum should be here by then.”
Then Bella heads out of the front door, gets into the car, and drives off, reminding herself that she will not allow Valerie or anyone else to deter herself from the tasks awaiting her.
19
Bella arrives at the UN offices in Gigiri almost half an hour late, and then, of course, she has to go through the series of checkpoints and scannings and screenings. She recalls Aar’s comments about the corrupt Ugandan security forces at Somalia’s international airport, but on reflection, she thinks that the blame lies squarely with the Somalis and especially with the current president and his regime. After arriving on a tide of great enthusiasm, he quickly proved incapable of steering the ship of state through disaster. He has been accused of unconscionable favoritism, of massive inefficiency, of unparalleled personal dishonesty. In the more than a year he has been in power, he has accrued more enemies than friends, both locally and among the international community. There is no one, it seems, he has not disappointed. UN investigators have uncovered corruption of immense proportions, reaching all the way up to his office and beyond. Two governors of the Central Bank later — one was sacked for impropriety, the other (with impeccable credentials) resigned — there is still no mechanism in place that can guarantee that the government kitty is safe from the pilfering of the president’s associates and clansmen. A member of parliament, a former premier, has accused the president of enjoying an unhealthy rapport with “terrorists,” and deny this as he might, the allegation keeps echoing in the media, especially on Somali-language websites.