Chapter 5
Nimco was not a profligate, not in her own mind anyway. In her own mind she was simply someone who preferred to prepare for a full spectrum of eventualities. It could be that the people who came to her house liked what she had to offer and wanted to take more. She had to be ready for that even if she could have calculated an average or even modulated her guest's expectations to match her offerings and its boundaries. But she decided to be a generous host. She got everything of everything and in increasing excess so that everything would be covered regardless. Above all else, she had to make people comfortable and entice them to come to her house and visit her. She would give them what they wanted and let them do as they pleased. She didn't want to be alone, not for long periods anyway.
When she returned to her marital house, it was to accept her husband family's apology and to play her role as a matron, even if in unusual circumstances, as she had to fulfil her societal destiny. But living alone with her daughter could be lonely and boring; so she schemed to get more company, using her money as a means to do so and the result were these soirées filled with music and food, two things which are known to attract people. So far it was a success.
Nimco had just returned home with her hands laden with trinkets, mainly dips such as hummus and jam for the bread. Her mother had been watching her baby for her, and now watched the daughter she had given birth to, from her bags to her body, resting on two spots that arrested her attention.
'Why are your nipples hard, naya?' she barked at her daughter.
Nimco stopped to look at her mother who was sitting in the corridor with her drooling daughter in front of her crawling towards her. She reflexively looked down at her breasts.
'They're not hard, mother, please.' She grabbed her breast after setting down her bag and exposed the outline of her brassiere more clearly. Her heavy mother made a forward movement, wrinkling her brow like that would make her daughter's dress disappear to expose the undergarment.
'What is that ? What are you wearing, to, to make it seem like you have hard nipples?'
'How do my nipples look hard?'
Her nipples didn't look hard. In fact the whole of her breasts looked hard, but her mother had trouble expressing the sentiment, so she stuck to the idea of hard nipples which she was familiar with.
'Why are you wearing that? For what?'
'It's just part of... motherhood.'
'Says who? Whose motherhood? What are you talking about, naya!'
'My breasts are dropping, isn't that part of motherhood? This is just to address it.'
'So this is to create the illusion that your breasts are hard?'
'High.'
'That's like the things you put on your face but for your body.'
'I suppose so.'
'For who? Whose eyes?'
'Anyone who looks at me!'
'This is to do with that small eyed man, I know it. I forbid this class from happening.'
There was a knock on the door.
'Too late. It's already happening,' trilled the happy Nimco as she picked up her daughter and ran to the door.
Zhao, the Chinese violinist, stood in front of her. It was only when she looked at him, by himself, with his long and straight black hair and completely foreign look, that she felt the anxiety of cultural barriers, the primary being the one of language. Abdullah had left the village, but Nimco had pressed upon Zhao to come without him and extend his musical school from the house of Blaad, to her own house, with a greater number of students. But she forgot that she didn't speak his language. In the split second while they looked at one another, just before he greeted her, she felt a dreadful hopelessness that she had rarely felt in her life, not since her husband's divorce, which was the one and only time before.
'Salaam,' Zhao said. 'How are you?' he added in Somali.
Those few words so empty in essence, commonplace in design, were intensely powerful in effect, releasing tension and relief within Nimco. She remembered now that he spoke some Somali.
'Fine, brother. Come inside,' she answered, smiling, noticing that he in fact wasn't alone. Blaad's young teenage daughter, Zhao's first student, was with him.
He thanked her with a head nod, and stopped in the corridor in front of Nimco's mother who was looking at something she hadn't seen before in her life, and let out an invocation while her hand was moving to her lips. Zhao had tied his hair into a ponytail and her eyes darted from it to his face, so different from hers. He greeted her in the Islamic greeting.
'This is my mother,' Nimco said, Zhao nodded to the mother again, 'she's going to watch too. I don't know, maybe she's not. Are you going to watch us, mother?' Her mother didn't answer and continued to stare at Zhao. She was a lady beyond middle age who hadn't seen much of the world. 'I'd say yes, she is going to watch. The others should be here soon. I think there's five today. I'm not learning anything though. I'm just supervising.'
She noticed that Zhao had an expression on his face, something that she didn't immediately recognise and continued smiling in high spirits.
'Hey, what songs - ' she stopped short as she realised that he didn't understand all that she had said and dread entered her again. A knock on the door shook it up a little bit with distraction.
'That's one now,' Nimco said anxiously.
She opened the door to find Paul with the bread that she had told him to bring.
'Ah friend,' Nimco said, 'I thank you. Bring them inside. That's good timing.'
Paul did as he was told and brought it inside but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Zhao who looked curiously from Paul's face to his hands carrying bags laden with bread. Paul simply looked at his face and by habit, because he had seen Chinese people before in his days working on the ships, he said 'Good morning' in English. Zhao and Nimco both perked up.
'Good morning to you too…'
'Paul,' he replied back quickly, 'they call me Paul.'
Zhao smiled.
'Didn't think I would find a Paul in this country.'
'I didn't think I'd find a…'
'Zhao'
'...a Zhao in this country.'
They both stood smiling at each other. One holding his violin case, the other with his bags of bread.
'You speak English, friend?' Nimco asked Paul, relieved beyond belief.
Paul said that he did.
'Thank God. Drop the bags in the kitchen,' Nimco ordered, ushering him to the kitchen. 'You will stay here with us,' she said in a voice slightly above a whisper. 'God sent you to me. You'll stay here for this music lesson and interpret when necessary. God sent you to me,' she said again her relief palpable.
Paul looked from Nimco to Zhao to his violin case. He muttered an obedient 'very well,' even after he was already doing what he was asked to do and laughed the laugh of an old man indulging the whims of a child.
*
'I dare you to put that damn veil down,' Safia hissed at Howa while holding the phone in her hand.
They were in the corridor with Howa fully dressed.
'Yes, brother,' Safia said loudly, almost shouting.
Howa cheesed a grin, put the veil down, hitched her dress up, and tiptoed towards the backdoor in mock escape. Safia had her brother, Awad, on the line, and could do no more than watch her daughter disobey her. This was the first time they had spoken for a month because Safia didn't have her brother's phone number nor did her brother wish to speak to her unless he initiated it. This was because in his mind talks with people who lived in Somalia always descended into them asking him for money. But this time he had special reasons for avoiding talking with Safia. One of them was because of Mayloun, whose secrets he thought his sister didn't know. The other part was a father's vexation, angry that his sister's daughter had given his son a disease. When they spoke they had an air of mutual secrecy and concealment. Safia herself did not know that her brother knew of their children's relationship.
'Yes, she got married, brother. And is pregnant even.'
'Yah! Masha Allah. Haha! Even my own new marriage doesn't make me happier.'
Safia let out a soft sound that obese people make when they try to suppress their surprise and agitation.
'Did you get married again? To who, brother?' she half shouted, as the connection crackled.
They spoke loudly, with sharp short phrases, commonplaces, because of the poor connection, and through Safia's habit of speaking loudly to people who lived in foreign countries. Their focus was to make themselves understood, forcing intimacy to be a victim to communication.
'To the daughter of Mohamed. Some woman who lives in Holland. She will be here with me soon.'
'I never knew you were thinking of marriage again? But this is good and I have told you! You're still young and a man can't die without a wife outliving him.'
'Who has Mayloun married, sister?' Even through the bad connection, his curiosity was evident. 'A young or old man?'
'Neither young nor old. A man close to or at middle age.' Safia didn't know the man's age just like the man himself didn't know his own age. 'Son of Abdi Karim, Moussa.'
'Oh! Him is it? A good, disciplined man, who keeps to himself,' Awad said, regurgitating what he had heard about Moussa because he had no idea what he was like as an adult, though he knew him a little as a child. 'Did you say she was pregnant?' he asked sharply.
'Yes. She just got pregnant, not long ago.' Maybe if her brother was there in front of her he would see that she was lying through her teeth. 'A virile man he must be.'
'Or fertile ground he has found.'
'And children they have produced. How are yours?'
'Good, as God wills. Xemi has found a new place of his own and is moving there.'
'What did you say? He's moved out to a house of his own?'
'Yes, sister. He's got a job and a place not too far from here. Going to school, working and making his way,' Awad said with the marvelling voice of a proud father.
'Ah, yes. That's how they do it there.' She thought of Xemi's big eyes, and their clear whites of youth; the slim lithe body with no trace of the weight of age; his glowing, enrapturing baby-face and his big smile that only a child could have. 'Of course, that's how they do it there; there he is a man now. And the girl? She's still with that jereer?'
'Who knows what that girl is doing,' Awad snapped acidly. 'Let her live her life how she wants. She made her choice. She never listened so I myself had no choice but to kick her out. My involvement with her stopped then.'
Safia traced the spiral length of the phone's chord with her fingers until she had wrapped her hand around it to express her desire to choke something. Her voice was still loud when she spoke, but from anger this time rather than trying to make herself understood.
'Freedom and choice-'
The signal crackled and got disconnected. She put the phone down muttering, 'devil take your freedom and choice. Letting children choose, waraya!' She muttered for a couple moments longer until she looked into the black hole that was the entrance to her own daughter's room, remembering Howa who had just done what she wanted, running to Nimco, and then Mayloun, wayward and irrepressible for years, running away and then returned until she got what she wanted. She thought of Mahmoud whom she didn't know where he was half the time, and let out an incredulous laugh. 'One thing is for sure,' she said to herself, 'I'll kill them before I kick them out, yah!' She got up to look for Howa, making it as far as her slippers but then decided to stay and wait. The phone call didn't end as it should have and her brother might call again. She wanted to ask him if Xemi still had his braces.
*
'I should get some more violins,' said Nimco. 'More instruments so that this could be done better.'
'It's expensive,' said Paul as interpreter. 'This one is three hundred dollars.'
'It's okay. I have lines of credit everywhere. I don't need to pay it all at once. Maybe I'll get some fans too.'
There were six girls in the music class, all of them wearing burkas like they were doing something they shouldn't be doing; alongside two guys, Paul and Zhao, as well as Nimco's mother, occupying herself with her granddaughter. The amount of people, the exertion, and the weather itself created a cauldron for the people in the room but it wasn't really evident that they were suffering. The novelty of the undertaking made them almost forget about the heat even as the sweat changed the colour of their clothes.
Zhao had broken one of his rules and was smoking a cigarette. Though he was a music teacher by trade, it wasn't for some time that he had taught a class, or multiple people at the same time and he definitely never taught so many people with only one violin available. He started lightly by showing how each string produced a different sound, and how you could manipulate the sound via the angle you struck the chord with. Some girls had never heard or seen it before, and wonder and excitement displayed itself in their eyes. He passed the violin to one girl at a time, telling them how to hold it, balancing it on their shoulders, every one of them giggling as they tried it, the violin slipping as they tried to hold it, and Zhao telling them to hold it tighter, but ordering them to stroke the strings gently. The cigarette and the shy delicacy with which they held the violin calmed him, as he had been worried that they would snap it by striking it too hard. He was particularly worried about Howa, remembering how she had banged the tabla, but hers was the most delicate of touches, and the gentlest of strokes. Evidently she knew what could take a hit and what couldn't. She nearly yelped when the chord she had struck vibrated through her arm and the rest of her body.
'What demon is this!' she said excitedly, after she struck the first chord. Howa then immediately struck the second chord and then the third, moving her fingers that held the neck of the violin as she struck the chord in imitation of Zhao. It looked comical and almost like mockery, the sounds produced like frolicking foxes, but her energy infected and surprised the rest of classmates, observers, and supervisors. They laughed and encouraged her, egging her on, until Zhao told her to slow down with a smile.
'The first step to advancement is daring,' Zhao said to Howa. 'And yours is like a lake with rings enlarging from disturbances.' He actually said 'You got a good touch. Try again,' but Paul was trying to impress those around him with his education. Nimco's mother had a continuous scowl on her when looking at Paul, disapproving of his mere existence.
'Is that what he actually said, waraya, or are you messing around?' she barked at him, putting the nails of her hand in front of her mouth and then pushed her fingers forward as if to fling a wordless curse.
Paul swore that it was, and who could say differently? He was the only one there who could understand Zhao.
Noticing the particular attention Zhao paid to Howa, moving her fingers here and there, seeing Zhao smile at her and the girlish submissiveness of Howa, Nimco decided to ditch her supervisory role for a second.
'Let me try,' she said. 'I want to see what it feels like.'
Zhao passed her the violin, leaving a flushed Howa, waving her sleeping arms around because she had gripped the violin as lightly as possible, trying to put life in her limbs again.
'Ah! This is so heavy,' Nimco said, awkwardly trying to hold the stick and balance the violin on her shoulder at the same time. She heaved a deep breath to steady herself, her bra clearly showing now, and pointed the stick at her watching daughter. She was in the arms of her mother, but Nimco had spotted something as she took up the violin. Her mother's intuition told her her daughter was about to perform a certain bodily function. 'Mother,' she cried shrilly. 'Take her outside, quick.' Her mother understood and got up like a heavy woman gets up - with lots of attitude and vexation. Nimco stroked the violin to distract the child, but when she looked at the child, she remembered the way the fingers of her child played on her arm and struck the chords in its imitation. A high, rising sound was heard and then trembled like it tried but couldn't maintain its peak and descended into haunting mournfulness. Nimco instantly forgot that she even had a child, sensing the vibration go through her. 'Wow!' she marvelled. 'This really is like a demon.'
When she looked up at Zhao, she was startled for a moment. His face had something strange about it, a mixture of intrigue and greed,
'I wonder if you can play that melody again?' Zhao asked softly, trying hard to control his emotion.
'I don't even know what I did,' Nimco said hesitantly, as she lifted the stick and straightened the violin. This new pressure and nervousness made her second stroke a dismal failure. She could not even glide the violin stick over the strings for her shaking limbs were a substantial resistance force and for the sake of the violin itself Zhao put his hands up to stop her. And she did, feeling sorry for herself.
'I'm better at supervising than doing things anyway,' Nimco said, annoyed now at her embarrassment. 'I don't know why I even did that,' thrusting the instruments at the next girl, with her head down.
Even if she couldn't reproduce it, Zhao still had the feeling of elation, discovery, enchantment.
'Beautiful,' Zhao said, fixing his deep into Nimco's darkened eyes, smaller than usual, small like a Chinese woman's.
'Lies,' she cried to Paul. 'He never said that,' she reiterated looking from one to the other. But Zhao had such a look on his face, a look of bewitchment, that the truth was evident. She started giggling. 'What did I play?' Joy lit up her face. 'I don't even know what I did. I tried to slice the strings and that's it!'
'I swear I can play that melody,' Howa said. 'And better even!'
'I believe you,' Zhao answered. 'Let the supervisor supervise then, and the players play. If each of you can give me a melody like hers, I'd bow to you all.'
The lesson continued, his last words causing more giggles for it had the air of indecency, and their eyes searched for Paul to see if he hadn't embellished the words to make the Chinese man bow to the Somali woman. But he swore innocence in a dignified manner and told them to find the melody and see for themselves if he would bow or not. So they did, and tried to find the melody that would make the Chinese man bow to the Somali woman.
Chapter 6
There is a particular sense of liberation that one gets when freed from sexual disease. Only the end of a period of grief or mourning can rival its release and it therefore becomes a formative moment in one's life - especially if you live in a small Somali village. The question is posed. What next ? Starting on his way back to the village, hitching a ride on one of his father's trucks, Aaden asked himself that same question. What next?
This was early morning the day after he had his injection, and he felt better than he ever had, even if he hadn't completely healed - a psychological trick for it wasn't the best that he had ever felt but he thought he did because he had felt so bad before. He was crossing his legs as he habitually did, with no discomfort or discharge, looking out of the window. There were five people in the truck. One was driving, two in the front seat, including Aaden, and three in the back sitting on top of bags of charcoal.
Staring out the window as the truck slowly made its way on the eroded ochre ground, he noticed a couple of young guys walking heavily on their canes. He smiled to himself and asked if this world was on fire, if they too had been burned, wondering if this was where Mayloun had gotten her disease. But then his smile disappeared and he thought of how he himself got burned. What should he do, he asked himself. Now that he was cleared of symptoms he could accuse Mayloun with confidence and tell his father that this woman had defiled their marriage. Or he could tell Mayloun herself, as the doctor had told him to, and carry on as before, leaving his father to fend for himself. He was conflicted but the anguish of conflict did not possess him. He experienced no other feeling but the most pleasant of convalescences and fell to musing.
'This feeling of release from the pain of the disease makes carrying the virus worthwhile,' Aaden said inwardly. 'Thinking that I would never be freed from it, and then be freed from it, is what makes the feeling so delectable. So precious.'
His heart started racing the same way the latent drug addict thinks of the peak of their narcotic high.
'But what if I get it again and heal afterwards? Will the feeling truly not come back? Is this the last time?'
Aaden didn't believe it, frightened that this would not be felt again. He would not allow it without a fight; paying any price; suffering any consequence, worrying that Mayloun might miraculously be cured now, depriving his future of this sweet feeling. But could that be? He dismissed it, still remembering the potency of the antibiotics he had received. She was sick still, and he was sure of it, just like he was sure that he would catch it again. He would get diseased over and over to try and get this feeling of convalescence once more. He would search for it until he found it even if it was just for one more time.
The truck drove on, passing a chaotic free for all with token traffic lights made out of discarded cardboard, or maybe made for that purpose; carts of goats could be seen, as well as camels in the distance where the houses lost their density and the desert encompassed all visible sight. This skyline with its view cleared of all buildings made him see Mayloun, cleared of all sexual disease, and him cleared of his nascent convalescence. He started to panic.
'Uncle, please. Hurry! I have something to catch!' Aaden yelled to the driver. And then laughed and added, 'Something dear to me.'
'Oh! What do you have to catch?' the man on his left asked him, infected by Aaden's joviality.
'A feeling,' Aaden said enigmatically. 'A delightful feeling.'
'And what is that feeling?' the man asked, smiling, just like the driver was smiling, because they were speaking to the son of their boss, speaking to a handsome boy, speaking to someone in a moment of happiness.
'Have you ever been so sick, that you were on the threshold of death, and then recovered? There is a disease good to get and good to recover from.'
'A disease good to get, and good to recover from?' repeated the bemused man turning from Aaden to the scenery in front of them, all the colour of dying bluebells, thinking of the possibilities.
'And it is the same reason that some guys carry canes to walk with.'
'But who uses canes to walk?' the driver asked. 'A cane is sartorial like a shirt or a sarong - part of the attire, the national dress. Only if you've broken a leg or something of that kind do you really use a cane to walk. Even the old guys don't use the cane to walk.'
'But a broken leg is not a disease,' the man next to Aaden said, musing. 'What is it?'
'That is a riddle for you to find out,' Aaden said ecstatically. He never had posed a riddle before and now he had one of his making. If he didn't know any better, he would have said that this was the happiest day of his life.
Chapter 7
This same morning when Aaden was charming all those around him, giving them riddles to play with, Mayloun and Moussa were waking up in the same bed. They woke up in a half illumined room where the only light came from the open door of their bedroom.
They in fact hadn't woken up at the same time. Moussa had another restless night leaking discharge that made him flinch and cringe but found himself asleep towards daybreak. He woke up not long after with a hard-on from deep sleep and sudden awakening. As soon as he saw and felt his dick hard, he thought that his affliction had ended and that he had overcome it through his stoicism, even if the erection was tighter than usual. With a smile at restored health and masculinity he woke Mayloun up. She woke up with a jerk, her face puffy from sleep.
'What is it?' she mumbled, looking at her smiling husband.
Moussa unfolded the blanket and then his sarong, to show his fading erection.
'Hurry, God has healed me,' he said weakly, sensing doom already approaching as his erection softened.
Mayloun looked at his dick which was still oozing discharge.
'Hurry, Mayloun,' Moussa said desperately. 'Take your clothes off and -'
Mayloun reached for his dick, wrapped her hand around it curiously, slowly and then squeezed it, making Moussa whimper. The discharge tripled in volume. At this point Moussa realised this was a false dawn and that he hadn't been healed at all. He felt the familiar mixture of pleasure and pain when Mayloun squeezed the discharge out of him and dreaded the humiliation that would come next, the emasculation, the shame. He was frantically thinking of a way to get out of it when Mayloun suddenly bent towards the flaccid, discharging dick and put her mouth on it. She made a loud sound of suction. After a few seconds she stopped, looked in the distance to appraise the taste, and turned to Moussa, releasing his penis from her grip.
'What is wrong with you? What is this ooze that keeps coming out? It tastes... different.'
Moussa stared at her with a stupid look.
'You must be sick, but you've been sick for a long time. What did you wake me up for if you can't do anything?'
Moussa's face distorted until it expressed fury.
'Fragment of the devil,' he growled, choking with rage, lifting himself upright. 'What the fuck did you just do, naya? Motherfucking animal!' he roared at Mayloun, whipping himself into a greater frenzy. 'How dare you bring such behaviour into my bedroom!' He struck her in the mouth. 'You dare defile me?' He struck her again, hoisting his sarong up, tying it up like he meant business, and Mayloun watched him, taking it as such. 'Can a woman be so foul? Naya!'
'What did I do?' Mayloun protested, holding her hands up to fend him off. 'You woke -'
'Quiet!' Moussa screamed, while striking at her again. 'Did I wake you to put my dick into your mouth?' He shivered. 'Filthy fragment of the devil.'
'How can I know what you want from me,' she said tearfully. 'You woke me up, showed me your dick, and -'
'Quiet, deviant!'
'If you want nothing from me, don't expose yourself and let me sleep.'
'Sickening devil,' he hissed, trembling with rage. 'Let me see you put my dick in your mouth again, miscreant, and I'll break your skull. You heard me? That's the end of your life.'
'Very well,' Mayloun said, deferentially, head bowed and getting up heavily like the pregnant woman that she was. She left the bedroom to go to the kitchen.
Moussa took his time putting his clothes on, changing the soiled sarong for a clean one. He had bought another dozen as some of them had stains that would not be eradicated. Yet he was pleased. Pleased that his humiliation had been turned into an exhibition of fury, as anger in his mind was one of the most potent forms of masculinity there was and being able to find a justifiable target also helped. Moussa felt that in that situation, it couldn't have gone any better than it did, having saved his face and dignity with his exhibition, and he went out of the bedroom, happier than he might have expected to have been. Both father and son thought the day started rather well for them, with Mayloun to thank for it.
Mayloun and Moussa had long been awake when the rest of the household had woken. She didn't know if it was out of delicacy or if they were heavy sleepers. The event itself with Moussa she chalked up as part of marriage, and forgot about it as quick as it took for the water on her face to dry and the water she had put in the kettle to boil. But when she brought the tea to Moussa, who thanked her with dignity, asserted dignity, that is, without looking at her. The same thought was crossing both of their minds. That his ailment was permanent, that he was finished as a man and she finished as a wife. She returned to the kitchen to muse on the significance.
'So soon...who could have thought a man like that could be like this so soon,' she lamented. And just as the lamentation had begun, disgust rose to take its place. 'They should declare family diseases before marriage,' she said, cursing bitterly. 'What am I to do for the next twenty years?'
She started cooking breakfast with these thoughts in her head when she heard Fadumo's voice.
'Get up, naya. Get ready for school,' Fadumo said to her daughter, loudly, and unnaturally.
The daughter flitted out of their room, glanced at her father, and advanced towards the back of the house to wash up. Fadumo came out after her.
'Good morning, brother,' she said to her husband. 'How can it be so chilly in the morning and so hot at night?' She laughed, almost embarrassedly, affectedly.
All ugly people have something about them that makes them special, something that allows them to attract a lover despite their ugliness. With Fadumo it was her stories that tickled Moussa.
'I could only fall asleep late at night but when I finally fell asleep it was so deep that I had trouble waking in the morning.'
'Yes, I had trouble sleeping too,' Moussa said, a little drily. 'The mosquitoes, the heat, various things were plaguing me.'
'Yes,' she said enthusiastically, sitting down not far from him. 'You're right brother. They gave me the craziest dreams.'
'Oh?' he said with a smile, knowing that she would invent some outlandish story nothing to do with the dreams of night, but more to do with the dreams of day. He liked these stories of hers and waited for her to tell it.
'I don't know how else I get these dreams if not from those insects. It's always when they drone about me that some fever comes upon me. I dreamt that I was taking water from the well but then some force pushed me in.'
'The wind?'
'Some inner force that I couldn't resist.'
'You mean desire?'
'Why would I desire to fall in a well?' she laughed. 'I fell in the well but this was during a drought so the water was only knee high. I looked up at the opening, and couldn't see because the sun was directly above the opening. The chamber was so cool and lovely that I stayed there looking, my breathing making a strange metallic sound. Whoever heard of your breathing making a metal sound?'
Moussa snorted.
'I pulled the rope to see how sturdy it was.'
'If I hear you say that you pulled yourself up I will get up and hear no more!' he laughed rambunctiously. 'Mayloun hear this,' he added watching Mayloun bring a plate of pancakes and farxaal, the water bowl used to clean fingers. 'Hear this, Mayloun. She will pull herself up from inside a well. Haha!' His first wife's stories had an amazing effect on him, like children when they hear about something fantastic. It put him in raptures.
'Haha. I didn't pull myself up. I couldn't do it because the sun was blinding me and it is impossible to direct oneself somewhere without sight. And it's a devil's trek to climb towards the sun. So I stood there, pulling at the rope, hearing the metal chamber echo my breathing when the rope pulled back and a screeching sound resounded like someone scratched all the metal around me at the same time.'
Everyone trembled at the thought.
'And then I turned to the rope, saw it flash before my eyes, disintegrating into fire. A moment after, rain began to pour from the metal ceiling, hard, freezing rain, even the sides seeped out liquid like it was bleeding water. It pummeled me from above, but didn't submerge me, until I moved underneath the hole where the sun shone for respite. The water started to rise and I rose with it, carried towards the sun. The rain fell and fell, I could see the ice vapours exuding from each drop, circling all around me like a spring mist, but only my feet felt the coldness of the water. Once I reached close enough to touch the edge of the well, I reached for it, lifted myself up, looking down at my legs, my feet the only thing wet, and saw the water had disappeared. Then I looked up and saw that I hadn't grabbed the edge, but the sun itself. I let go, saw the sun reach down to grab me again...then I woke up.'
'So the sun reached to grab you? Why ? To see how your hand felt?'
Though he mocked her story, he was enamoured by it, and his voice betrayed a fondness as did his shining eyes.
'That's the devil reaching for you like he reached in your mind to plant these fantasies,' he added.
Fadumo perfumed the room with her laugh.
'I tell you, these mosquitoes do something to me.'
She looked at Mayloun.
'It's only when these mosquitoes are around that a wildness comes upon me. The devil's winged creatures. There is something evil about them.'
'Only demons disturb sleep,' Mayloun said, seeing which way the wind was blowing.
Moussa had nothing to say about that, but a nod of the head. What she said made a lot of sense. He would have done something about the mosquitoes, or at least tried, if he hadn't liked Fadumo's stories, which at one time, was the only thing that made her tolerable to him.
Chapter 5
Nimco was not a profligate, not in her mind anyway. She simply was someone who prepared for a full spectrum of eventualities. It could be that the people who came to her house liked what was on offer and wanted to take more. Or she could calculate an average. But she decided to play it safe. She would get everything in excess so that everything would be covered regardless. Above all else, she had to make people comfortable and entice them to come to her house, and visit her. She would give them what they wanted, and let them do as they pleased.
When she returned to her marital house, it was to accept her husband's family's apology and to play her role as a matron, even if in unusual circumstances, as she had to fulfil her societal destiny. But living alone with her daughter could be lonely and boring, and so she schemed to get more company, using her money as a means to do so, and the result were these soirées.
Nimco returned home with her hands laden with trinkets, mainly dips such as hummus and jam for the bread. Her mother had been watching her baby for her, and now watched the daughter she had given birth to, from her bags to her body, resting on two spots that arrested her attention.
'Why are your nipples hard, naya?' she barked at her daughter.
Nimco stopped to look at her mother who was sitting in the corridor with her drooling daughter in front of her crawling towards her. She reflexively looked down at her breasts.
'They're not hard, mother, please.' She grabbed her breast after setting down her bag and exposed the outline of her brassiere more clearly. Her heavy mother made a forward movement, wrinkling her brow like that would make her daughter's dress disappear to expose the undergarment.
'What is that ? What are you wearing, to simulate hard nipples?'
'How do my nipples look hard?'
Her nipples didn't look hard. In fact the whole of her breasts looked hard, but her mother had trouble expressing the sentiment, so she stuck to the idea of hard nipples which she was familiar with.
'Why are you wearing that? For what?'
'It's just part of... motherhood.'
'Says who? Whose motherhood? What are you talking about, naya!'
'My breasts are dropping, isn't that part of motherhood? This is just to address it.'
'So this is to create the illusion that your breasts are hard?'
'High.'
'Physical makeup.'
'I suppose so.'
'For who? Whose eyes?'
'Anyone who looks at me!'
'This is to do with that small eyed man, I know it. I forbid this class from happening.'
There was a knock on the door.
'Too late. It's already happening,' trilled the happy Nimco.
She picked up her daughter who had crawled to her feet and opened the door. Zhao, the Chinese violinist, stood in front of her. It was only when she looked at him, by himself, with his long and straight black hair and completely foreign look, that she felt the anxiety of cultural barriers, the primary being the one of language. Abdullah had left the village, but Nimco had pressed upon Zhao to come and extend his musical school from the house of Blaad, to her own house, with a greater number of students. But she forgot that she didn't speak his language. In the split second while they looked at one another, just before he greeted her, she felt a dreadful hopelessness that she had rarely felt in her life, not since her husband's divorce.
'Salaam,' Zhao said. 'How are you?' he added in Somali.
Those few words so empty in essence, commonplace in design, were intensely powerful in effect, releasing tension and relief within Nimco. She remembered now that he spoke some Somali.
'Fine, brother. Come inside,' she answered, smiling, noticing that he in fact wasn't alone. Blaad's young teenage daughter, Zhao's first student, was with him.
He thanked her with a head nod, and stopped in the corridor in front of Nimco's mother who was looking at something she hadn't seen before in her life, and let out an invocation while her hand was moving to her lips. Zhao had tied his hair into a ponytail and her eyes darted from it to his face, so different from hers. He greeted her in the Islamic greeting.
'This is my mother,' Nimco said, Zhao nodded to the mother again, 'she's going to watch too. I don't know, maybe she's not. Are you going to watch us, mother?' Her mother didn't answer and continued to stare at Zhao. She was a lady beyond middle age who hadn't seen much of the world. 'I'd say yes, she is going to watch. The others should be here soon. I think there's five today. I'm not learning anything though. I'm just supervising.'
She noticed Zhao had an expression on his face which said that he didn't understand all that she had said and dread entered her again. A knock on the door shook it up a little bit with distraction.
'That's one now,' Nimco said anxiously.
She opened the door to find Paul with the bread.
'Ah friend,' Nimco said, 'I thank you. Bring them inside. That's good timing.'
Paul did as he was told and brought it inside but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Zhao. Zhao looked curiously from Paul's face to his hands carrying bags laden with bread. Paul simply looked at his face and by habit, because he had seen Chinese people before in his days working on the ships, he said 'Good morning' in English. Zhao and Nimco both perked up.
'Good morning to you too…'
'Paul, they call me Paul.'
Zhao smiled.
'Didn't think I would find a Paul in this country.'
'I didn't think I'd find a…'
'Zhao'
'...a Zhao in this country.'
They both stood smiling at each other. One with his violin case, the other with his bags of bread.
'You speak English, friend?' Nimco asked Paul, relieved beyond belief.
Paul said that he did.
'Thank God. Drop the bags in the kitchen,' Nimco ordered, ushering him to the kitchen and continued, 'You will stay here with us, for this music lesson and interpret when necessary. God sent you to me.'
Paul looked from Nimco, who was ushering him, to Zhao and his violin case who was smiling at him. He muttered an obedient 'very well,' even after he was already doing what he was asked to do and laughed the laugh of an old man indulging the whims of a child. He could do little else.
'I dare you to put that damn veil down,' Safia hissed at Howa while holding the phone in her hand.
They were in the corridor, Howa fully dressed.
'Yes, brother,' Safia said loudly, almost shouting.
Howa cheesed a grin, put the veil down, hitched her dress up, and tiptoed towards the backdoor in mock escape. All Safia could do was watch. She had her brother, Awad, on the line, and could do no more than that. This was the first time they had spoken for a month, because Safia didn't have her brother's phone number, nor did her brother wish to speak to her unless he initiated it. This was because in his mind, talks with people who lived in Somalia always descended into them asking him for money. But this time he had special reasons for avoiding talking with Safia, and this was because of Mayloun, whom Xemi had said was the one who had given him a sexual disease. Part of him was annoyed that he was too cowardly to say anything, to help and at least stem the tide of infection. The other part was vexed that his sister's daughter had given his son a disease. A father's vexation. When they spoke they had an air of mutual secrecy and concealment. Safia herself did not know that her brother knew of their children's relationship.
'Yes, she got married, brother. And is pregnant even.'
'Yah! Masha Allah. Haha! Even my own new marriage doesn't make me happier.'
Safia let out a soft sound that obese people make when they try to suppress their surprise and agitation.
'Did you get married again? To who, brother?' she half shouted, as the connection crackled.
They spoke loudly, with sharp short phrases, commonplaces, because due to the poor connection, and through Safia's habit of speaking loudly to people who lived in foreign countries. Their focus was to make themselves understood, forcing intimacy to be a victim to communication.
'To the daughter of Mohamed. Some woman who lives in Holland. She will be here with me soon.'
'I never knew you were thinking of marriage again? But this is good and I have told you! You're still young and a man can't die without a wife outliving him.'
'Who has Mayloun married, sister?' Even through the bad connection, his curiosity was evident. 'A young or old man?'
'Neither young nor old. A man close to or at middle age.' Safia didn't know the man's age just like the man himself didn't know his own age. 'Son of Abdi Karim, Moussa.'
'Oh! Him is it? A good, disciplined man, who keeps to himself,' Awad said, regurgitating what he had heard about Moussa because he had no idea what he was like as an adult, though he knew him a little as a child. 'Did you say she was pregnant?' he asked sharply.
'Yes. She just got pregnant, not long ago.' Maybe if her brother was there in front of her, he could see that she was lying through her teeth. 'A virile man he must be.'
'Or fertile ground he has found.'
'And children they have produced. How are yours?'
'Good, as God wills. Xemi has found a new place of his own and is moving there.'
'What did you say? He's moved out to a house of his own?'
'Yes, sister. He's got a job and a place not too far from here. Going to school, working and making his way,' Awad said with the marvelling voice of a proud father.
'Ah, yes. That's how they do it there.' She thought of Xemi's big eyes, and their clear whites of youth; the slim lithe body with no trace of the weight of age; his glowing, enrapturing baby-face and his big smile that only a child could have. 'Of course, that's how they do it there; there he is a man now. And the girl? She's still with that jereer?'
'Who knows what that girl is doing,' Awad answered acidly. 'Let her live her life how she wants. She made her choice. She never listened so I myself had no choice but to kick her out. My involvement with her stopped then.'
Safia followed the spiral length of the phone's chord with her fingers until she had wrapped her hand around it to express her desire to choke something. Her voice was still loud when she spoke, but from anger this time rather than trying to make herself understood.
'Ah, yes. Freedom and choice-'
The signal crackled and got disconnected. She put the phone down muttering, 'devil take your freedom and choice. Letting children choose, waraya!' She then looked into the black hole that was the entrance to her own daughter's room, remembering Howa who had just done what she wanted, running to Nimco, and then Mayloun, wayward and irrepressible for years, running away and then returned until she got what she wanted. She thought of Mahmoud whom she didn't know where he was half the time, and let out an incredulous laugh. 'One thing is for sure,' she said to herself, 'I'll kill them before I kick them out.' She got up to look for Howa, making it as far as her slippers but then decided to stay and wait. The phone call didn't end as it should have and her brother might call again. She wanted to ask him if Xemi still had his braces.
'I should get some more violins,' said Nimco. 'More instruments so that this could be done better.'
'It's expensive,' said Paul as interpreter. 'This one is three hundred dollars.'
'It's okay. I have lines of credit everywhere. I don't need to pay it all at once but can get things at once,' answered Nimco. 'And maybe get some fans.'
The music class was in full swing. There were six girls in this room, all of them wearing burkas like they were doing something they shouldn't be doing; two guys, Paul and Zhao, as well as Nimco's mother, occupying herself with her granddaughter. The amount of people, the exertion, and the weather itself created a cauldron for the people in the room but it wasn't really evident that they were suffering. The novelty of the undertaking made them almost forget about the heat while they were sweating.
Zhao had broken one of his rules and was smoking a cigarette. Though he was a music teacher by trade, it wasn't for some time that he had taught a class, or multiple people at the same time. He definitely never taught people with only one violin available. He started lightly by showing how each string produced a different sound, and how you could manipulate the sound via the angle you struck the chord with. Some girls had never heard or seen it before, and wonder and excitement displayed itself in their eyes. He passed the violin one girl at a time, telling them how to hold it, balancing it on their shoulders, every one of them giggling as they tried it, the violin slipping as they tried to hold it, and Zhao telling them to hold it tighter, but stroke the strings gently. The cigarette and the shy delicacy with which they held the violin calmed him, as he had been worried that they would snap it by striking it too hard. He was particularly worried about Howa, remembering how she had banged the tabla, but hers was the most delicate of touches, and the gentlest of strokes. Evidently she knew what could take a hit and what couldn't. Zhao had looked at her with interest. She nearly yelped when the chord she had struck vibrated through her arm and the rest of her body.
'What demon is this!' she said excitedly, after she struck the first chord. Howa then immediately struck the second chord and then the third, moving her fingers that held the neck of the violin as she struck the chord in imitation of Zhao. It looked comical and almost like mockery, the sounds produced like frolicking foxes, but her energy infected and surprised the rest of classmates, observers, and supervisors. They laughed and encouraged her, egging her on, until Zhao told her to slow down with a smile.
'The first step to advancement is daring,' Zhao said to Howa. 'And yours is like a lake with rings enlarging from disturbances.' He actually said 'You got a good touch. Try again,' but Paul was trying to impress those around him with his education. Nimco's mother had a continuous scowl on her when looking at Paul, disapproving of his mere existence.
'Is that what he actually said, waraya, or are you messing around?' she barked at him, putting the nails of her hand in front of her mouth and then pushed her fingers forward as if to fling a wordless curse.
Paul swore that it was, and who could say differently? He was the only one there who could understand Zhao.
Noticing the particular attention Zhao paid to Howa, moving her fingers here and there, seeing Zhao smile at her and the girlish submissiveness of Howa, Nimco decided to ditch her supervisory role for a second.
'Let me try,' she said. 'I want to see what it feels like.'
Zhao passed her the violin, leaving a flushed Howa, waving her sleeping arms around because she had gripped the violin as lightly as possible, trying to put life in her limbs again.
'Ah! This is so heavy,' Nimco said, awkwardly trying to hold the stick and balance the violin on her shoulder at the same time. She heaved a deep breath to steady herself, her bra clearly showing now, and pointed the stick at her watching daughter. She was in the arms of her mother, but Nimco had spotted something as she took up the violin. Her mother's intuition told her her daughter was about to perform a certain bodily function. 'Mother,' she cried shrilly. 'Take her outside, quick.' Her mother understood and got up like a heavy woman gets up - with lots of attitude and vexation. Nimco stroked the violin to distract the child, but when she looked at the child, she remembered the way the fingers of her child played on her arm and struck the chords in its imitation. A high, rising sound was heard and then trembled like it tried but couldn't maintain its peak and descended into haunting mournfulness. Nimco instantly forgot that she even had a child, sensing the vibration go through her. 'Wow!' she marvelled. 'This really is a demon.'
When she looked up at Zhao, she was startled for a moment. Zhao's face expressed the ravenous greed of a musician caught by a new melody.
'I wonder if you can play that melody again?' Zhao asked softly, trying hard to control his emotion.
'I don't even know what I did,' Nimco said hesitantly, as she lifted the stick and straightened the violin. This new pressure and nervousness made her stroke a dismal failure. She could not even glide the violin stick over the strings for her shaking limbs were a substantial resistance force and for the sake of the violin itself Zhao put his hands up to stop her. And she did, feeling sorry for herself.
'I'm better at supervising than endeavouring anyway,' Nimco said, annoyed now at her embarrassment. 'I don't know why I even did that,' thrusting the instruments at the next girl, with her head down.
Even if she couldn't reproduce it, Zhao still had the feeling of elation, discovery, enchantment.
'Beautiful,' Zhao said, fixing his deep into Nimco's darkened eyes, smaller than usual, small like a Chinese woman's.
'Lies,' she cried to Paul. 'He never said that,' she reiterated looking from one to the other. But Zhao had such a look on his face, a look of bewitchment, that the truth was evident. She started giggling. 'What did I play?' Joy lit up her face. 'I don't even know what I did. I tried to slice the strings and that's it!'
'I swear I can play that melody,' Howa said. 'And better even!'
'I believe you,' Zhao answered. 'Let the supervisor supervise then, and the players play. If each of you can give me a melody like hers, I'd bow to you all.'
The lesson continued, his last words causing more giggles for it had the air of indecency, and eyes searched for Paul to see if he hadn't embellished the words to make the Chinese man bow to the Somali woman. But he swore innocence in a dignified manner and told them to find the melody and see for themselves if he would bow or not. So they did, and tried to find the melody that would make the Chinese man bow to the Somali woman.
Chapter 6
There is a particular sense of liberation that one gets, when freed from the vise of sexual disease. Only the end of a period of grief or mourning can rival its release and it therefore becomes a formative moment in one's life especially if you live in a small Somali village. The question is posed. What next ? Starting on his way back to the village, hitching a ride on one of his father's trucks, Aaden asked himself that same question. What next?
This was early morning the day after he had his injection, and he felt better than he ever had, even if he hadn't completely healed - a psychological trick for it wasn't the best he ever felt but he thought he did because he had felt so bad before. He was crossing his legs as he habitually did, with no discomfort or discharge, looking out of the window. There were five people in the truck. One was driving, two in the front seat, including Aaden, and three in the back sitting on top of bags of charcoal.
Staring out the window as the truck slowly made its way on the eroded ochre ground, he noticed a couple of young guys walking heavily on their canes. He smiled to himself and asked if this world was on fire, if they too had been burned, wondering if this was where Mayloun had gotten her disease. But then his smile disappeared and he thought of how he himself got burned. What should he do, he asked himself. Now that he was cleared of symptoms he could accuse Mayloun with confidence and tell his father that this woman had defiled their marriage. Or he could tell Mayloun herself, as the doctor had told him to, and carry on as before, leaving his father to fend for himself. He was conflicted but the anguish of conflict did not possess him. He experienced no other feeling but the most pleasant of convalescences and fell to musing. 'This feeling of release from the pain of the disease makes carrying the virus worthwhile,' Aaden said inwardly. 'Thinking that I would never be freed from it, and then be freed from it, is what makes the feeling so delectable. So precious.' His heart started racing the same way the latent drug addict thinks of the peak of their narcotic high. 'But what if I get it again and heal afterwards? Will the feeling truly not come back? Is this the last time?' Aaden didn't believe it, frightened that this would not be felt again. He would not allow it without a fight; paying any price; suffering any consequence, worrying that Mayloun might miraculously be cured now, depriving his future of this sweet feeling. But could that be? He dismissed it, still remembering the potency of the antibiotics he had received. She was sick still, and he was sure of it, just like he was sure he would catch it again. He would get diseased over and over to try and get this feeling of convalescence once more. He would search for it, until he found it, even if it was just for one more time.
The truck drove on, passing a chaotic free for all with token traffic lights made out of cardboard; carts of goats could be seen, as well as camels in the distance where the houses lost their density and the desert encompassed all visible sight. This skyline with its view cleared of all buildings made him see Mayloun, cleared of all sexual disease, and him cleared of his nascent convalescence. He started to panic.
'Uncle, please. Hurry! I have something to catch!' Aaden yelled to the driver. And then laughed and added, 'Something dear to me.'
'Oh! What do you have to catch?' the man on his left asked him, infected by Aaden's joviality.
'A feeling,' Aaden said enigmatically. 'A delightful feeling.'
'And what is that feeling?' the man asked, smiling, just like the driver was smiling, because they were speaking to the son of their boss, speaking to a handsome boy, speaking to someone in a moment of happiness.
'Have you ever been so sick, that you were on the threshold of death, and then recovered? There is a disease whose process of attainment is pleasurable but not as pleasurable as the subsequent convalescence.'
'A disease good to get, and good to recover from?' repeated the bemused man turning from Aaden to the scenery in front of them, all the colour of dying bluebells, thinking of the possibilities.
'And it is the same reason that some guys carry canes to walk with.'
'But who uses canes to walk?' the driver asked. 'A cane is sartorial like a shirt or a sarong - part of the attire, the national dress. Only if you've broken a leg or something of that kind do you really use a cane to walk. Even the old guys don't use the cane to walk.'
'But a broken leg is not a disease,' the man next to Aaden said, musing. 'What is it?'
'That is a riddle for you to find out,' Aaden said ecstatically. He never had posed a riddle before and now he had one of his making. If he didn't know any better, he would have said that this was the happiest day of his life.
Chapter 7
This same morning when Aaden was charming all those around him, giving them riddles to play with, Mayloun and Moussa were waking up. They woke up in a half illumined room where the only light came from the open door of their bedroom.
They in fact hadn't woken up at the same time. Moussa had another restless night leaking discharge but found himself asleep towards daybreak. He woke up not long after with a hard-on, from deep sleep and sudden awakening. As soon as he saw and felt his dick hard, he thought that his affliction had ended and that he had overcome it through his stoicism, even if the erection was tighter than usual. With a smile at restored health and masculinity he woke Mayloun up. She woke up with a jerk, her face puffy from sleep.
'What is it?' she mumbled, looking at her smiling husband.
Moussa unfolded the blanket and then his sarong, to show his fading erection.
'Hurry, God has healed me,' he said weakly, sensing soon already approaching as his erection softened.
Mayloun looked at his dick which was still oozing discharge.
'Hurry, Mayloun,' Moussa said desperately. 'Take your clothes off and -'
Mayloun reached for his dick, wrapped her hand around it curiously, slowly and then squeezed it, making Moussa whimper. The discharge tripled in volume. At this point Moussa realised this was a false dawn and that he hadn't been healed at all. He felt the familiar mixture of pleasure and pain when Mayloun squeezed the discharge out of him and dreaded the humiliation that would come next, the emasculation, the shame. He was frantically thinking of a way to get out of it when Mayloun suddenly bent towards the flaccid, discharging dick and put her mouth on it. She made a loud sound of suction. After a few seconds she stopped, looked in the distance to appraise the taste, and turned to Moussa, releasing his penis from her grip.
'What is wrong with you? What is this ooze that keeps coming out? It tastes... different.'
Moussa stared at her with a stupid look.
'You must be sick, but you've been sick for a long time. What did you wake me up for if you can't do anything?'
Moussa's face distorted until it expressed fury.
'Fragment of the devil,' he growled, choking with rage, lifting himself upright. 'What the fuck did you just do, naya? Motherfucking animal!' he roared at Mayloun, whipping himself into a greater frenzy. 'How dare you bring such behaviour into my bedroom!' He struck her in the mouth. 'You dare defile me?' He struck her again, hoisting his sarong up, tying it up like he meant business, and Mayloun watched him, taking it as such. 'Can a woman be so foul? Naya!'
'What did I do?' Mayloun protested, holding her hands up to fend him off. 'You woke -'
'Quiet!' Moussa screamed, while striking at her again. 'Did I wake you to put my dick into your mouth?' He shivered. 'Filthy fragment of the devil.'
'How can I know what you want from me,' she said tearfully. 'You woke me up, showed me your dick, and -'
'Quiet, deviant!'
'If you want nothing from me, don't expose yourself and let me sleep.'
'Sickening devil,' he hissed, trembling with rage. 'Let me see you put my dick in your mouth again, miscreant, and I'll break your skull. You heard me? That's the end of your life.'
'Very well,' Mayloun said, deferentially, head bowed and getting up heavily like the pregnant woman that she was. She left the bedroom to go to the kitchen.
Moussa took his time putting his clothes on, changing the soiled sarong for a clean one. He had bought another dozen, as some of them had stains that would not be eradicated. Yet he was pleased. Pleased that his humiliation had been turned into an exhibition of fury, as anger in his mind was one of the most potent forms of masculinity there was, and being able to find a justifiable target also helped. Moussa felt that in that situation, it couldn't have gone any better than it did, having saved his face and dignity with his exhibition, and he went out of the bedroom, happier than he might have expected to have been. Both father and son thought the day started rather well for them, with Mayloun to thank for it.
Mayloun and Moussa had long been awake when the rest of the household had woken. She didn't know if it was out of delicacy or if they were heavy sleepers. The event itself with Moussa she chalked up as part of marriage, and forgot about it as quick as it took for the water she washed her face with to dry, and the water she put in the kettle to boil. But when she brought the tea to Moussa, who thanked her with dignity, magnanimity, asserted dignity, that is, without looking at her, the same thought crossed both their minds. That his ailment was permanent, that he was finished as a man and she finished as a wife. She returned to the kitchen to muse on the significance.
'So soon...who could have thought a man like that could be like this so soon,' she lamented. And just as the lamentation had begun, disgust rose to take its place. 'They should declare family diseases before marriage,' she said, cursing bitterly. 'What am I to do for the next twenty years?'
She started cooking breakfast with these thoughts in her head when she heard Fadumo's voice.
'Get up, naya. Get ready for school,' Fadumo said to her daughter, loudly, and unnaturally.
The daughter flitted out of their room, glanced at her father, and advanced towards the back of the house to wash up. Fadumo came out after her.
'Good morning, brother,' she said to her husband. 'How can it be so chilly in the morning and so hot at night?' She laughed, almost embarrassedly, affectedly.
All ugly people have something about them that makes them special, something that allows them to attract a lover despite their ugliness. With Fadumo it was her stories that tickled Moussa.
'I could only fall asleep late at night but when I finally fell asleep it was so deep that I had trouble waking in the morning.'
'Yes, I had trouble sleeping too,' Moussa said, a little drily. 'The mosquitoes, the heat, various things were plaguing me.'
'Yes,' she said enthusiastically, sitting down not far from him. 'You're right brother. They gave me the craziest dreams.'
'Oh?' he said with a smile, knowing that she would invent some outlandish story nothing to do with the dreams of night, but more to do with the dreams of day. He liked these stories of hers and waited for her to tell it.
'I don't know how else I get these dreams if not from those insects. It's always when they drone about me that some fever comes upon me. I dreamt that I was taking water from the well but then some force pushed me in.'
'The wind?'
'Some inner force that I couldn't resist.'
'You mean desire?'
'Why would I desire to fall in a well?' she laughed. 'I fell in the well, but this was during a drought so the water was only knee high. I looked up at the opening, and couldn't see because the sun was directly above the opening. The chamber was so cool and lovely that I stayed there looking, my breathing making a strange metallic sound. Whoever heard of your breathing making a metal sound?'
Moussa snorted.
'I pulled the rope to see how sturdy it was.'
'If I hear you say that you pulled yourself up, I will get up and hear no more!' he laughed rambunctiously. 'Mayloun hear this,' he added watching Mayloun bring a plate of pancakes and farhaal, the water bowl used to clean fingers. 'Hear this, Mayloun. She will pull herself up from inside a well. Haha!' His first wife's stories had an amazing effect on him, like children when they hear about something fantastic. It put him in raptures.
'Haha. I didn't pull myself up. I couldn't do it because the sun was blinding me and it is impossible to direct oneself somewhere without sight. And it's a devil' trek to climb towards the sun. So I stood there, pulling at the rope, hearing the metal chamber echo my breathing, when the rope pulled back, and a screeching sound like someone scratched all the metal around me at the same time.'
Everyone trembled at the thought.
'And then I turned to the rope, saw it flash before my eyes, disintegrating into fire. A moment after, rain began to pour from the metal ceiling, hard, freezing rain, even the sides seeped out liquid like it was bleeding water. It pummeled me from above, but didn't submerge me, until I moved underneath the hole where the sun shone for respite. The water started to rise and I rose with it, carried towards the sun. The rain fell and fell, I could see the ice vapours exuding from each drop, circling all around me like a spring mist, but only my feet felt the coldness of the water. Once I reached close enough to touch the edge of the well, I reached for it, lifted myself up, looking down at my legs, my feet the only thing wet, and saw the water had disappeared. Then I looked up and saw that I hadn't grabbed the edge, but the sun itself. I let go, saw the sun reach down to grab me again...then I woke up.'
'So the sun reached to grab you? Why ? To see how your hand felt?'
Though he mocked her story, he was enamoured by it, and his voice betrayed a fondness as did his shining eyes.
'That's the devil reaching for you like he reached in your mind to plant these fantasies,' he added.
Fadumo perfumed the room with her laugh.
'I tell you, these mosquitoes do something to me.'
She looked at Mayloun.
'It's only when these mosquitoes are around that a wildness comes upon me. The devil's winged creatures. There is something evil about them.'
'Only demons disturb sleep,' Mayloun said, seeing which way the wind was blowing.
Moussa had nothing to say about that, but a nod of the head. What she said made a lot of sense. He would have done something about the mosquitoes, or at least tried, if he hadn't liked Fadumo's stories, which at one time, was the only thing that made her tolerable to him.
