The Orchard of Lost Souls

By the same author:

Black Mamba Boy

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Nadifa Mohamed 2013

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

The right of Nadifa Mohamed to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

HB ISBN: 978-1-47111-528-8
TPB ISBN: 978-1-47111-529-5
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47111-531-8

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

To Hooyo, Aabbo and Abtiyo Kildi

PART ONE

PART TWO

DEQO

KAWSAR

FILSAN

PART THREE

Five a.m. Too early to eat. There is hardly any light, perhaps just enough to distinguish a dark thread from white, but Kawsar washes her face in the basin inside her bathroom,
runs a
caday
over her teeth and slips into the day’s costume without wasting any paraffin. She feels her way into her underskirt and red shift dress, squeezes thick amber bangles
over each elbow and smoothes a heavy silver necklace over her sagging chest, then arranges the sheets neatly over her single bed. She finishes the glass of water on her bedside table and shakes out
her leather sandals in case spiders or scorpions have sought shelter in them overnight, before finally locking the door leading from the bedroom to the kitchen. She knows that the day will be long
and that she should force a little breakfast inside her, but her stomach is a closed fist. With the sandals on her feet and a long shawl over her shoulders, Kawsar opens the exterior door to find
her neighbours, Maryam English, Fadumo, Zahra and Dahabo, mingling in her courtyard.

‘What took you so long,
saamaleyl
?’ Dahabo swishes the flask in her hand at Kawsar.

‘I was oiling my knees,’ Kawsar replies with a smile, linking arms with her childhood friend.

The men and women of the
Guddi,
the neighbourhood watch of the regime, have spent the night shouting orders through megaphones of what to wear and where to meet. The women have all
dressed in the same traditional outfit and Zahra has torn down branches from a
miri-miri
tree, which she hands out to the women to wave at the stadium – another instruction from the
megaphones. The narrow, sandy street ahead is filled with women in similar dress, and behind them even more follow languidly. They pass Umar Farey’s eighteen-room hotel, each window blind and
shuttered as if the building itself is sleeping; no Hindi songs or Kung-fu sounds come from Zahra’s video hall; and Raage’s corner shop is just a corrugated tin shack rather than its
usual Aladdin’s cave.

‘See how early they drag us out of bed. Nothing is too much for them, the swines.’ Maryam English tightens the strap holding her baby to her back; she has had to leave the two older
children locked in at home.

Kawsar rubs the sleeping baby’s back and wishes it was Hodan’s instead, her child returned as an infant with the chance of a second life ahead of her.

‘Look at us, we are the same woman over the ages,’ laughs Fadumo, her cane weaving in front of her.

It is true: they are identical except that Maryam English is in her late twenties, Zahra in her forties, Dahabo and Kawsar circling their late-fifties and poor Fadumo a hunched-over
seventy-something. They look like illustrations in a school textbook, everybody equal in the same garments and just a few lines on the face or a stooped back delineating age. That is the way the
government seems to want them – simple, smiling cartoons with no demands or needs of their own. Now those cartoons have come to life – not tilling, weaving or working in a factory like
on the shilling notes, but trudging to a celebration that they are forced to attend.

They walk through the backstreets, the sky above slowly getting paler and paler, until they reach the sports stadium. The
Guddi
activists in armbands are asking what neighbourhood they
belong to and counting them as they enter the gate.

‘There’s Oodweyne watching over us,’ yells Dahabo, pointing up.

‘Shush!’ whispers Maryam. ‘They’ll hear you.’

Kawsar turns back to the
Guddi
to check, but they are preoccupied by the throngs of people pushing through the gate. The mothers of the revolution have been called from their kitchens,
from their chores, to show foreign dignitaries how loved the regime is, how grateful they are for the milk and peace it has brought them. It needs women to make it seem human.

Beyond Dahabo’s pointed finger is a mammoth painting of the dictator, hanging over the stadium like a new sun, rays emerging from around his head. The painters have tried to soften that
merciless, hangdog face but have succeeded only in throwing it off balance – the chin too long, the nose too bulbous, the eyes asymmetrical. The only accurate part is the short, clipped
moustache modelled on that German leader.

Workmen hurriedly hang other paintings, slightly smaller, of his acolytes, the interchangeable ministers of defence, finance and internal security, their positions so insecure that by the end of
the day new paintings might be commissioned. Fadumo leads the way to the stands and the rest follow, knowing that they will not be comfortable anywhere; there will be no shade, no rest, no
sustenance for the next seven hours. Eighty-seven has been a year of drought and the morning sky settles yet again into an unrelenting, cloudless blue.

Filsan hasn’t slept for the last three days. She has had charge of three
Guddi
units and they have created problem after problem for her; she could not have
imagined a more cantankerous, ineffectual, gossipy group in her nightmares. In the end she sent one of the units back to Saba’ad refugee camp to train a group of children in traditional
dance, but she doubts that they can even do that right. One unit is now stationed at the stadium’s north gate while the other rounds up stragglers and clears rough-sleepers and debris from
the route of the parade. The VIPs are not expected for another hour but the stadium still looks bare, disorganised; most of the participants are yet to arrive and when they do, God knows if they
will be in shape.

This is Filsan’s first October Twenty-first in Hargeisa and it seems ramshackle compared to what she knew in Mogadishu. It is now eighteen years exactly since the President’s rise to
power after a military coup, and the celebrations in Mogadishu show the system at its best, everyone working together to create something beautiful. The Military-Governor of the North Western
region, General Haaruun, will be the President’s avatar in Hargeisa and has arranged the military parade with a flyover to start and finish the day. The civilian part of the ceremony has been
patched together by the
Guddi,
who are using it as an excuse to exhibit their amateur singing, dancing and oratory.

Filsan strums the teeth of the plastic comb in her trouser pocket and chews her lip; she looks at the empty dais where General Haaruun will sit with the dignitaries and imagines herself placed
in the centre, not as his companion but as his successor, waving down to her subjects. Her boots are polished beautifully, her khaki uniform clean and sharply pressed, and the black beret on her
head brushed and angled just so. She has lined her eyes discreetly with kohl and pressed colour onto her lips with her fingers. She looks herself but a little better, a touch more feminine; she has
resisted playing these games until now, but if the other female soldiers get noticed this way, maybe she can too.

She shoves the comb deep into her pocket and straightens her tunic over her rear. As she rushes past the south gate, two civilian policemen salute her, looking to each other with smiles in their
eyes. Filsan’s face pinches with annoyance, knowing that they will stare at her behind as soon as they can. Beyond the south gate the military convoys are queuing up: tanks, jeeps, armoured
vehicles, trucks carrying every type of rocket and missile, soldiers in metal green helmets waiting patiently inside and beside the vehicles. Filsan feels proud looking at them. She is part of the
third largest army in Africa, a force that would have conquered all of Ethiopia, not just the Ogaden, in 1978 if the Russians and Cubans hadn’t switched sides.

Filsan walks down the convoy, and here the soldiers don’t stare at her or smile like the barely trained police; they show her the respect due another soldier. Her life has always revolved
around these men, from her father down to her political science teachers at Halane College; it is their judgement that carries weight with her and she still feels small in their estimation. Filsan
has volunteered to come north, hoping to show that although a woman, she has more commitment to the revolution than any of her male peers. This is the coalface of internal security, where real work
can be done defeating National Freedom Movement bandits who persist in nipping at the government’s tail. As she looks around her, she realises it is not inconceivable that members of the
banned group are here now, filtering anonymously through the gates between the mothers in robes and uniformed schoolchildren. It is impossible to tell enemy from friend.

It was a hard way to earn a new pair of shoes but for Deqo it was worth it. A month of dance lessons has taught her the
Hilgo, Belwo, Dudi
and the overly complicated
Halawalaq.
She isn’t a bad dancer but is better at improvisation than following the steps, and even now she turns left instead of right or jumps forward instead of back. They still
haven’t seen the shoes but that’s all Toothless Milgo has talked about during the lessons. They have earned those shoes with sweat and tears and Deqo intends to wear them like a soldier
wears his medals.

Think of the shoes. Don’t you want the shoes? Do you want to be barefoot forever? Concentrate then!’ A sharp swipe over their feet with an acacia twig.

They have learnt to dance to the beat of Milgo’s rough palm against the bottom of a plastic basin, but at the parade there will be real drums, trumpets, guitars, everything. They will be
dancing in front of thousands, even the governor of the whole region will be watching, so they have to
practise, practise, practise.

Now the day of the parade has finally arrived. Before dawn the troupe of five girls and five boys, all from the orphanage, are herded into the yard behind the camp’s clinic and scrubbed
half to death. Deqo’s eyes are tinged red from the strong-smelling soap and she keeps rubbing them to ease the itch. A truck waits by the dispensary tent and they are dressed in traditional
macaweis
and
guntiino
and then loaded into the back. The truck starts up, a plume of brown smoke bursting from its exhaust, and Deqo grabs hold of the side as they pick up speed.
It is her first time in a vehicle and she is surprised to feel such a strong breeze on her face, the edges of her hair whipped about as if on a stormy day. When the truck slows, the breeze
disappears again and Deqo squints against the rising grit and clamps her lips together.