Maps (7 page)

Flabbergasted, she could only stare at me. And I continued: “I was ready to be born but it appears my mother was ready to die. Maybe I would have died if she hadn't. And I suspect it wouldn't be I telling this story, I suspect, as a matter of fact, the story wouldn't be the same, not the subject matter. My death wouldn't have earned me an obituary and my life wouldn't have engaged anybody's time and energy. You see, death ends all talk. From then on, death rules. Or, if you please, God.”

Again, she stared at me in disbelief. She asked after the appropriate pause: “How old are you, Askar?”

I replied, “I am seven.”

“I might as well ask myself if Satan is older,” she said.

“I am sorry?”

“Oh, never mind,” she said.

Before long, she was herself again, mothering me, requesting that I bow down and subject my clothes for inspection, reminding me at one and the same time that I was very young, capable of “accidents”, unforeseen things, and that put her in control of the situation again and she was saying that I should change my clothes, etc., etc., etc. But: woe to me if she were in season. Then—well, that's another story.

V

The sight of blood didn't repel or frighten me. That of water, however small or large its body, attracted me. Water comforted me and I fell silent when in it, as though in reverence to its god. I splashed in it so that its crystals, clear as silver and just as lovely, flew up in the air, winged, like my imagination, until these balls of magic beauty were recalled back to the body from whence they had sprung. I could never determine my relationship with water. Not until I met my mother's brother, who told me that water had the same sort of satanic fascination for my mother, Aria. She had endangered her own life so many times that in the end, he decided to teach her to swim. She was the only woman who knew how to swim, it being uncommon in Somalia for women to learn. Water, she had explained to him, gave her the mobility and space her fantasies required, and she used to begrudge the water in the ocean its moods of calm or rage, the water in the river the determination to return “home” in vaporous form or end in the bigger ocean,

I asked myself often if this is what I remember of my foetal existence—water. It was total bliss, I said to Uncle Hilaal one day He was happy to hear that. He said—and I am not certain if he was quoting from something he read—that the first water is indubitably the best, it is heavenly bliss. There is no other expression for such a feeling.

So, in depthless water, my beginning. It was water ushered me into where I am, water that made me the human that I am, water that gave me foetal warmth—and a great deal more. Water was my mirror and I watched my reflections in it, reflections at which I smiled and which grew waves—waves dark as shadows—when I dipped my hand in. I was fond of drinking from the very spot across which my shadow fell. The water never tasted as good, in my cupped hands, from any other place.

In depthless water, too, it was I saw my future. I had it read by Misra who was exceptionally gifted in this sort of line — reading one's future in the waves of water or in the quiver of meat or in a pool of blood. Water in a container or blood in another, the blood of a slaughtered beast, lying untouched where it had fallen and remaining there until it was empty of running, i.e. living, blood. But was it for religious or health sentiments that this was done? Misra didn't know. Anyway, she knew how to read the future in the quiver of meat. The intestines, the fats, the entrails — every piece or slice of meat was, to her, like a palm to a fortune-teller and she read it. I was certain no other child had as much fun as I. Definitely not any of Uncle Qorrax's children. They were beaten in the morning, in the afternoon or in the evenings by their tyrannical father, by Aw-Adan who was their (and later became my) teacher, or their mothers or a visiting relation. Not I. I was Misra's property.

And Misra would bathe me. She oiled my body with care. I crouched in the
baafi
my eyes half-closed, in concentration and anxiety, waiting for the water to descend from a great height. I would shake, I would shiver, as though the cold water was hot and had burnt me—my arms moving in all directions as though they might take off in flight. A second and a third scooping of the water would ensure that my body was sufficiently wet for her to soap it. At times, when standing, I held on to her shoulders, lest I fell forward. My eyes remained closed, however, until I heard her say that I could open them. It was she who determined when this was to occur. As part of the ritual, she insisted that I blow my nose. For this purpose she would place her open left palm directly under my chin and with her right hand's index finger and thumb squeezing the nose as I exhaled. Now where was I given these baths? Right inside our mud hut; or in the yard, if it was day, under the tree planted the very day I was born. That she had hers in the privacy of a closed door and all by herself was something I associated with her being an adult. Children had no
cawra,
 whether boys or girls, they could walk about naked, displaying their
uff
until they became grown up. Anyway, after the bath, another joy.

She would oil my body a second time—tickling me as she did so, touching my friend squeezing it. She made me laugh, made me happy. Then she prepared a meal for the two of us to eat, and when I was good, as a treat, she boiled milk and sugared it for me and I drank it warm. Playfully, I refused to lick away my moustache of milk and she would tease me and we would have great fun, laughing, chasing each other under the bed or behind it. Suddenly, her voice changed. No more drinking of water lest I wet the bed which she and I shared. “What have you in your bladder?” and she would tickle me. “Why does it leak?” And the nipping, as she pinched my
uff
, would make me laugh.

Water: I associate with joy; blood: not so much with pain as with lost tempers and beatings. But I associate something else with blood—future as read by Misra. Once I even made a pun—my future is in my blood. The funny thing was Uncle Qorrax misunderstood it as meaning that my destiny was the destiny of the family of which he was head. Well, I didn't correct him. We had a laugh, Misra and I. The poor man did not know that she had read my future in blood.

As for water. Have you ever watched a storm of rain? Imagine this: every drop of rain is escorted by an angel who keeps it company until it touches the earth, the angels who make certain that seasons change for the better when it rains, that people prosper, the dry brown grass turns green, dust into mud—and human beings pray in thankful offerings, slaughtering beasts for their carnivorous tables—and Misra is thus enabled to tell a future—which is past.

For Misra, and therefore for me too, everything had a past, a present, and a future. The earth had its history, the sun its life, the moon its pattern of behaviour. Blood. Sand. Dry leaves, dry twigs. Papers, yellow with age and roaming the open spaces, riding the dust and the wind — everything told of a future. One had to know to read it. Or so said Misra.

And stones had faces, spiders souls, serpents ideas, lizards intelligence. Human beings are not the only living and thinking beings. Rivers have memories, she said. They remember where they've come from, they have allegiance to the people in whose country they rise. The wind recalls whom it has met in its journeys across the vast deserts, it exchanges greetings with some, turning an unhearing ear to the salutations reaching it from others. A reed possesses a mind of its own and holds steadfastly to this, even if, at times, the wind makes it go dizzy, lose its head and balance as it somersaults over rocks, sandbanks, etc. The earth draws strength from the sky, the sky from the earth — and the living from the dead. The history of the earth can be read in its eclipses, that of the sun from its being partially or completely obscured by the shadow of another body — the earth or the moon.

I continue, since I have heard her recite the “Ode to Nature” so many times: a child is to its mother what the sun is to the moon; what the heavens are to earth. Yes, Fm quoting her. The mother is what the moon is to the sun; what the earth to the heavens. A mother receiving little, giving a great deal. It makes a mother take delight in the giving and the child (or man) in the receiving. The shock is greater when one learns one must give—not always receive. A shock so great, it is like falling suddenly and unexpectedly from a great height, onto the lap of death. Amen! The living draw strength from the dead, don't they? And those who are asleep receive sustenance from those who are awake. Amen! And remember—the Prophet has said that men are asleep. It's only at their death that they are awoken. Amen!

VI

She looked like a corpse when asleep — motionless, with her hands folded together across her chest, her eyes closed and hardly a snort, or even a sound, issuing from her nostrils. But I told myself she needn't have worried, when all others die, she won't, I would say to myself. So long as I lived, she would too. Either in me, or she would live a life independent from mine. And I would watch her stir, then rise, as though from the dead, every morning, after I had been awake for hours. She would dust her dress and walk away — as if she had woken from the dead, from her own grave. Every morning, the same thing. At times, she would take a nap in the afternoon. And Aw-Adan would come and he would pull up a chair by her head, and sitting quietly, would read a selection of suras from the Koran, as though she were dead and he were reading a devotion or two over her. If she didn't look like a corpse, I would turn her into one, I said to her one day

“But why?” she asked, disturbed.

“Or I would kill you. So you would be a corpse like my mother.”

“Kill me? Why? But what have I done?”

I found it extremely difficult to explain myself. Of course, I wasn't going to “kill her” because I had hated her, far from it, far from it. What I meant was, that only in death could she and I be united—only in death, her death, could she and I be related, only then would I somehow feel as though we were a mother and her son. And then, and only then, would I find myself, alone and existing and real—yes, an individual with needs of his own—no longer an extension of a maternal hand whose touch quietened the childish cry in one.

And then I asked, “Is it possible that death took me for my mother, is it, Misra? Please answer me honestly. For this is something I ask myself often and I don't know what to think or say.”

She shook her head and said she didn't think death would mistake one person for another. It was all to do with whether one's time in this world was up and in any case, she went on, it is only under exceptional circumstances that a person's lifetime in this world is extended. And she told me the story of the man to whom an angel appeared and said that he, the man, was to die in a year to the day, having had his time which had been extended in view of the good things he had been doing. Although grateful, the man admitted that one year wasn't probably enough for him to finish all the things he had begun and besides, what is a year but three-hundred-and-sixty-five days and what is life but these incalculable mysteries, mysteries that remain unrevealed to one, mysteries that descend on one like grains of sand from the sky I would've preferred it, said the man to the angel, had you not come to tell me when death would call on me—whether in an hour, a day, say, or even a year. The angel said he had been given instructions to do so and he left the man saying no more. For three-hundred-and-sixty-five days and nights, the man spent every second of his life in this world praying and he spent every cent he had on some charitable cause or other and he did not sin either in thought or deed. A year later to the day, the angel, robed all in white, appeared before the man, and all he said was, “You've been dead for a year. If one were to extend your life in this world by another year, one wonders if you will live. Why pray day and night? Why spend every cent you have on charities for the needy? Do you think God created you only to pray? Live. Live, we recommend. Live like a human.” And the angel left the man in similar agony. The man
lived
for a year. He overate, he gave not a cent to godly causes, but prayed enough so as to placate his own conscience. When next the angel called on him, the man was prepared to receive the news of his death for he was still in pain, burdened with the knowledge that he would die in less than a year. The angel, it came to pass, turned up two years later and his only comment was that the man had the making of a human who sinned and knew he had. That man, or so the stories tell us, lived to be a hundred-and-fifteen years before another angel knocked on his door.