Silence. No questions from Askar, nothing. His back straight, appearing in great discomfort, his Adam’s apple moving up and down, gulping, sending down his throat the taste of blood, the saliva of his guilt. “Are you all right?” from Hilaal.
“I am,” he said.
But he was, and also seemed, very upset.
“What’s wrong, Askar?” and Salaado touched him gently on the knee. A gesture of supplication? Why?
He said, “Do you remember what verse of the Koran, what chapter was read by the Sheikh who presided over the rituals of Misra’s funeral?” addressing it this time to Hilaal.
“What verse, did you say?” he said, half-looking at Salaado as well, with eyes which turned on the axis of the repeated query. “Verse, did you ask, Askar?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Do you remember the verses the priest supervising over Misra’s janaaza read over her corpse?”
“No.”
“Could we ask him?”
“We don’t know … er … didn’t know who the priest was. Someone suggested him. He came, he did his thing and left. We didn’t spend any thought on that aspect of the janaaza, we’re sorry” said Salaado.
“What’s all this, Askar?”
He reflected for a moment. Then, “Because I might have suggested a couple of verses. If you had come and shaken me out of my fever.”
Almost indifferent, Hilaal asked, “Like what?”
“Verses fourteen, fifteen and sixteen of Sura Luqmaan.”
No one was in any mood to speak for a while. Salaado and Hilaal apologized to him profusely All three joined hands and they hugged, wrapped in one another’s bodies and clothes, half-struggling, like a crowd upon whom a tarpaulin had collapsed.
IV
He was back — in his room, at home. He was back to the warm space between his thoughts — warm as the space between the sheets covering him. He was back to his unread books, back to his unstudied maps on the wall in his room — at home. He was back to his mirrors, also on the walls, mirrors reflecting only the present, but not good enough to travel to a past beyond the tin amalgam plating their backs. He was back to the unplanned future — a future without a Misra; back also to the unfilled, unsubmitted forms from the Western Somalia Liberation Front and that of the National University of Somalia. The empty space of the twenty-one-odd questions stared back at him, preventing his brain from dealing with them, scattering his memory, like dust in a whirlwind, to the seven horizons of the cosmos — a world without a Misra!
He was standing before a mirror. He saw an unhappy face — his. It “wore” like a mask. He thought there was something absurd about a sadness confined only to the face, a sadness which wouldn’t spread to the rest of his body; something absurd about a face whose features had become as overwhelming as a spider’s abdomen, a spider with virtually no visible shanks and whose large belly spins webs — and fables with morals. So, he asked, who was Misra? A woman, or more than just a woman? Did she exist as I remember her? Or have I rolled into a great many other persons, spun from the thread leading back to my own beginnings, incorporating with those taking one back to other beginnings, other lives? Misra? Masra? Misrat? Massar? Now with a “t”, now without!
He now studied the map as reflected faithfully in the mirror before him. So many hundred kilometers to Kallafo, so many to Jigjiga; so many from Jigjiga to Hargeisa; and from Hargeisa to Mogadiscio; so many from Mogadiscio to Marsabet in the Somali-speaking part of Kenya. Maps. Truth. A mind travels across the graded map, and the eye allots the appropriate colours to the different continents. The body takes longer to make the same journey. Decimal grids, according to Arno Peters, are vastly different from Mercator’s map, in existence since the middle of the sixteenth century. And there is a big, painful difference, thought Askar, between the Somali situation today and that of the early 1940s when all the Somali-speaking territories, save Djebouti, were under one administration. And so it was again, for a brief period in 1977-8, when the Ogaden was in Somali hands. But the Somalis, government and people, were busy fighting a war on the ground and in the corridors of diplomatic power and no one released an authorized map of the reconquered territory. Truth. Maps.
He heard footsteps approaching but didn’t turn to see who it was. Two faces entered the mirror’s background — Salaado in Hilaal’s jellaba, he in her caftan. They had been having their afternoon siesta but hadn’t been away for long.
“Would you like to come with us?” asked Salaado.
“Where are you going?”
Hilaal said, “We’ll buy a goat.”
“What for?”
Salaado said, “As an expression of thanks to the gods that protect us. We, too, like all the Mogadiscians, have decided to slaughter a goat as sacrifice.”
Hilaal added, “There are other reasons. For example,”
“Like?”
Salaado said, “Sac-ri-fice. It does cover a large area — the notion of sacrifice, I mean. Hilaal and I have talked it over and he, too, thinks so.”
There was no doubt about it, she had become religious.
He repeated the word to himself, like a blind man touching the items surrounding him, a man familiarizing the senses of his body with what his mind already knows. And he saw. He saw Misra divine, he saw her stare at the freshly slaughtered goat’s meat, and he saw her tell a future when the meat quivered. The scene changed. Now he saw her open a chicken, he saw her give him an egg which she had salvaged from the dead fowl’s inside and he saw her talk of a future of travels, departures and arrivals. Again the scene changed. And he saw a horse drop its rider, he saw a girl kidnapped, he saw the girl grow into a woman ripe as corn, he saw the hand that had watered the corn pluck it, then eat it — he saw the man of the-watering-hand murdered. Sac-ri-fice! For Misra — a mastectomy; Hilaal — a vasectomy; Salaado — removal of the ovaries; Qorrax — exaction of blood, so many ounces a-bleeding; Karin — a life of sacrifices; Aria and Cali-Xamari — his parents — their lives; the Somali people — their sons, their daughters and the country’s economy. In short, life as sacrifice. In short, life is blood, and the shedding of one’s blood for a cause and for one’s country; in short, life is the drinking of enemy blood and vengeance. Life is love too. Salaado and Hilaal are love. Aria — the earth; Qorrax — the sun in its masculine manifestations; Hilaal — the moon; Salaado — solemnity, prayers, etc.; Misra? — foundation of the earth; Karin — a hill in the east, humps on backs; Cali-Xamari — a return to a beginning; and Riyo — dreams dreaming dreams!
Now he saw faces, now he didn’t see them; now he saw shades — like larvae under a microscope, these moved in the mirror. He started. When he calmed again, he took an unperturbed look. Hilaal and Salaado were in the doorway. They had changed into decent clothes to go out in. “Are you coming with us or aren’t you?” Hilaal asked.