“Why did you leave without any explanation?”
Faahiye replied, “I was irreconcilably hurt by Shanta’s flippant remarks, spoken first in jest and in private, then in anger, in total seriousness, and in public. I had felt since Bile’s arrival that she was a changed woman. Occasionally, she behaved as though her brother’s presence turned her on sexually. And when I called him a murderer and we exchanged rude words, she took his side, saying how she hated having to deal with two children, one of whom was a grown adult — meaning me — and the second — meaning Raasta — a baby at her breast. I was reduced to an outsider in my own home, made into an ogre in front of my friends, and treated like an embarrassment in the presence of acquaintances. I withdrew in shame. I was of use only when they needed a fourth at the card table. Then they would ask me to join them.”
“Did you at any point suspect that Bile had it in for you, because the two of you belonged to different clans?” Jeebleh asked.
“That never crossed my mind.”
“Did you talk to Bile?”
“According to him, there was no basis for what he referred to as my self-exclusion. And the fact that he turned things around and made me feel that I was excluding myself didn’t help matters at all. I quoted to him a proverb: ‘A cow got while on a looting spree doesn’t produce a calf that’s legally yours.’ And I forbade my daughter to be fed on the powdered milk that he had bought. The battle lines were drawn. We were engaged in a war of wills over what was right and what was wrong!”
Jeebleh had heard enough about Raasta, and so he asked: “Where’s Raasta?”
“I haven’t any idea.”
Faahiye struck Jeebleh as straightforward.
“How about Makka?”
“No idea either.”
“When did you last see them?”
“I saw them before I left for Mombasa.”
“At Bile’s or at Shanta’s?”
“At one or the other’s. I can’t be certain.”
“Where are you staying now?”
“I am not at liberty to disclose this detail.”
“With Caloosha? With Af-Laawe?”
“I am not at liberty to disclose this,” Faahiye repeated.
There was another long silence.
Jeebleh wondered if the cartel — and there was clearly a cartel, he told himself, organ-stealers or not — had flown Faahiye in from Mombasa, promising that he would see his daughter and Makka on the condition that he kept certain secrets to himself. He asked, “Will you call me if they will let me meet with Raasta and Makka after you’re allowed to see the two girls yourself?”
Faahiye’s eyes became evasive. He looked around, as if searching for someone tailing him or eavesdropping on his conversation. And then, with a knowing smile covering much of his face, maybe out of relief that Jeebleh had worked out the mystery for himself, he replied quietly but urgently, “I’ll see what I can do!”
Then, without much ado, both got up to leave.
ONCE OUTSIDE THE TEAHOUSE, JEEBLEH USED THE MOBILE TO PHONE DAJAAL and ask that he pick him up. Dajaal questioned him about where he was, and set a spot to meet him.
Before the two men bid each other farewell, Faahiye told Jeebleh a folktale.
“It happened a long, long, long time ago,” he said. “A son, reaching the age of twenty-something, marries. Blessed with children and a loving wife, the son takes his blind, now senile father to a tree very far from the family dwelling, gives the old man some water in a gourd and some milk in a pitcher, and leaves the helpless old man there. He promises he’ll return for him shortly, only he knows he has no intention of doing so. The old man dies from exposure to the elements. But before dying, the old man curses his son.
“The years come and go, and the son grows to become an old man, his sight weak, his hearing gone, almost an invalid, a burden to his family. One day, his own son takes him for a walk, away from the hamlet to a desolate place. He puts two gourds, heavy with milk and water, close to him, and vows that he’ll return for him before nightfall.
“The old man remembers what he, as a young, strong man, had done to his ailing, blind father. So he calls back his son and says, ‘My father cursed me for doing to him what you’re doing to me now, because I left him, a senile old man, to die alone. I lied to him, he cursed me, and so from then on, misfortunes called on me frequently. I’ll pray for my father’s pardon, and I’ll pray that God blesses your every wish with His approval. May good fortune smile on you and your family, my son!’
“The son takes his father back to the hamlet, and the chains of curses, guilt, and more sorrows are thus broken.”
Then Faahiye was gone!
25
AFTER DAJAAL PICKED HIM UP OUTSIDE THE RESTAURANT, JEEBLEH judiciously related some of what had transpired since he left Bile’s apartment. He withheld the part about his visit to the cemetery with Af-Laawe, his musclemen, and the supposed housekeeper. Then he asked Dajaal’s interpretation of the folktale.
“I would assume that he is now prepared to return to the fold of the family.” Dajaal clutched the machine gun lying in his lap. After a silence, he added, “I doubt that it’ll be a let-bygones-be-bygones return, though. He’ll lay down his conditions, that’s for sure.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I have the feeling that he is being blackmailed. But however you look at it, it’s definitely a relief that he is ready to break the cycle of curses and to reconcile himself to his new situation.”
Jeebleh said, “He’s from the old world, all right!”
Dajaal drove without talking, visibly hampered by the gun on his lap, which slipped whenever he took a bend. They were headed back to Bile’s, and were less than a kilometer away when Jeebleh asked if Dajaal could do him a favor.
Dajaal slowed the car. “Y-e-s!”
“Could you take me to the cemetery, please?”
“Why?”
“I wish to visit my mother’s grave, to pay my belated respects to her, to say a brief prayer in peace there. I’ll be in your debt forever if you get me there and back.”
“How do we find the grave?”
Jeebleh explained that Shanta had given him directions, and that he knew what to look for.
“We’ll have to let Bile know.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Jeebleh said.
Dajaal gave this a moment’s thought, and then deferred to Jeebleh’s decision. Even so, he fidgeted as he drove. The gun kept slipping off his lap, and he kept grabbing it with his left hand just before it dropped to the floor.
“Since I am playing truant today, I might as well hold the gun,” Jeebleh offered. “At least that’ll make your driving easier.”
Dajaal had yet to come up with an answer when Jeebleh took hold of the weapon, turning it this way and that. Admiring it. He surprised even himself when he said, “This is a beauty, isn’t it?”
“It’s well put together, I agree.” Then a rider: “Mind you, go gentle, okay?” Dajaal might have been warning a toddler about the dangers of fire.
This was the first time in his life that Jeebleh had held a firearm. What worried him was his spellbound, facile adoration of the gun. The muscleman had injected him with a potion that had altered his nature and personality, and soon he might no longer challenge a statement like the one spoken by Af-Laawe on the day of his arrivaclass="underline" that guns lack the body of human truths! As he fondled the gun, he realized that he was a changed man, different from the one who had left a loving wife and two daughters back home, promising to be cautious, and to bring back the life, his, of which he was a mere custodian.