Maps (41 page)

He fell for the trap. He said, “But you can. People in industrialized societies have begun making such demands on science.”

“You mean, replace the limb you don't like any more with its plastic equivalent?” I asked, egging him on.

“You can have the extra fat in your body reduced, your pot-belly removed, your nose altered, you can have lots of things done. You can change most parts.”

“And the cost?”

“Well, you know!”

“Why, it costs more to replace a part than what one has paid for the whole. A part more expensive than the whole?” I argued.

He laughed. “How much did you pay for your body?”

The whole? The part? Uncle then found the tunnel in whose dark corners he had earlier discovered the pathways leading to my subconscious—and the tunnel led us finally to Misra. Had I not said that a part of me had died when I learnt that Misra had betrayed our trust? At last, we hailed a taxi whose driver recognized Uncle. He gave us a lift home.

Salaado asked, “Where's the car?”

I told her what happened.

“Useless men,” she said and hopped into the same taxi to bring the car home. “The carburettor is flooded, can you imagine?” she was saying to the taxi driver, “and they just lock it up and walk away Useless men.”

Vapour and dust and smoking piston-rings of the taxi.

V

When Salaado returned, I was in my room, busy drawing (how did she put it) spaee-in-space-out-of-space, but was, at that point in time, in a mood to be interrupted—which she did. She looked me over. I wondered why and learnt, to my pleasant surprise, that Riyo and Salaado had met and that she had brought greetings from her. “And where did you meet?”

“She was going out of our house when I saw her.”

I said, “But why didn't you ask her to wait?”

“Maybe she didn't want to disturb you.”

There was a set pattern—I visited her and she came to see me only once. Had she heard about Misra's disappearance and come to hear what news we had of her? “We talked a little,” volunteered Salaado. “Naturally, about you.”

“Yes?”

“She said, for instance, that she finds something elegant, something … er … how did she put it … gallant about your gaze—gentle, formal, sweet, but gallant.”

I said, “It's very kind of her.”

She said, “I told her about Misra.”

“What do you mean? Do you know any more than we do?”

She shook her head. “No, I meant how she menstruated the first moment she met your stare when you were God knows how many hours old. And I agreed with her that you make women lose their hold on themselves, you disarm them with your look,” she said, and then stopped suddenly like one who wasn't sure whether to continue or not.

“Riyo says she feels a small girl making passes at a boy not at all interested in her.”

Quick as a flash, I had to think of something that would make her change the subject, or at least go off it. I said, mimicking Hilaal's voice, “Sex, sooner or later.”

After a pause, she was apologetic. “I am sorry to disturb you,” she said.

Much in the same way a polite guest might insinuate the idea that if no one else is having the portion of meat still left in the serving dish …, I said something polite, “No, you're not.”

She opened the door as if to go out and the odour of the garlic in the
champignon provençale
entered the room. The scent of the meal was so powerful, we both went and joined him in the kitchen.

At table, Salaado told the story of a schoolmate of hers who once said, in the presence of at least a dozen of his classmates, that he was going to commit suicide. He gave the precise day, date and minute when he would. The boy was in love with a girl, but she wasn't in love with him. He said goodbye to each and every one of them and begged that they pray for his soul. “A month and a day later guess what happened?”

“The girl committed suicide?”

Salaado shook her head, no.

“He returned home alive?”

“Precisely.”

Hilaal remained silent. So I said, “A coward.”

“You must hear why he returned home alive.”

Hilaal's only contribution, “Why?”

“The boy said, touching his body all over, that what we saw when we looked at him was 'just body'”. His body was here with us, he said, but not his soul. We used to fall silent whenever he joined our groups. Little by little, however, it became apparent that there was something in what he had said—the boy had undergone very noticeable changes. Not only did he appear pale, bloodless, a man with no spine, a man with no fight in him, but there was external bodily evidence that he had changed. In the end, he wore away like the garments he had on. He wore away from underuse of brain and body as well. He's still alive, all right. In fact, I saw him today, driving back from the hospital. Do you know what he was doing? He was walking the streets of his madness.”

I moistened my lips and felt anxious. Why did she tell us this story? There must be a reason, I thought, remembering the conversation Hilaal and I had had earlier on in the day Then, just in time, I saw my fork dripping with red juice—the beetroot's. Salaado took in all that and then said, “You are wondering why I've told you this horror of a story?”

I nodded my head; Hilaal, his.

She said, “Expressing regret, Misra told me (I don't know why she chose to confide in me and not Askar or you, Hilaal, but there we are—perhaps because I am a woman and you're not—who knows!) anyway …”

Hilaal said, “What did she tell you?” and he was anxious.

“She told me that she had lived with a man, in Kallafo, an ‘Ethiopian', please do not forget the inverted commas. He was a lieu-tenant, handsome, as Karin had accurately described him. Also, he came from the village that Misra was bom in. The two of them had shared a similar beginning—he was the ‘boy' the Amhara nobleman had been searching for, the issue of a
damoz
union between the nobleman and the boy's mother. As happens, generally in Indian films, they didn't know of their beginnings until after they had fallen in love and lived together for nearly two years. Misra explained that she had withheld from him her origins and had given him the name of a different village right from the start. He was younger than her by a few years, was an Addis city boy, one who had attended the cosmopolitan city's best schools—which was why, naturally, he was interested in his starting point. The story is much more complicated…” and she took a break from talking and looked from one to the other.

“Naturally. Incest is complicated and complex,” said Hilaal.

“You see, a number of things began to occur to her following your departure, Askar. One positive thing was that her periods were no longer escorted by excruciating pains as before. Nobody could tell her why. Another was, she had plenty of time, suddenly, and didn't know what to do with it. That was when she met this young man.”

“The Romeo of Juliet, a dashing, handsome young man,” said Hilaal.

“He was seen entering or leaving her compound. She was seen with him in public. He was known to be a cruel man, insisting that they raze to the ground villages harbouring pro-Somali saboteurs. Defeat had already created disharmony among the Kallafo townspeople. And so, when the massacre took place, Misra said, she became the primary suspect. People said she had led him and his men to the hiding-place of the martyred WSLF warriors. But she swore on Askar's life that she didn't.”

Suddenly, the beetroot in my mouth tasted bitter. Not only was its colour red, but it tasted of blood, too. I was worried I might bring it up if I opened my mouth or tried to say something.

Hilaal asked, “Is her version different from Karin's?”

“Not different in substance but different in their conclusions.'.

Hilaal continued, “She says she wasn't there when the massacre took place and wasn't the one who had led her Romeo to the hiding-place of the Liberation Front fighters?”

“Obviously,” said Salaado.

“We won't know, will we?”

“I am afraid, no.”

There was a long silence. I rushed into the nearest toilet and found a basin. I was sick, but not for long. I lay in bed, flanked by Hilaal and Salaado. He was telling the story of man's beginning-point—incest.

“If you believe in the Adam-Eve story in the Koran or the Bible, well, then there's an aspect of it.” And his face darkened in wrinkled concentration. “I don't know if it is Islamic or Somali, but there is the myth that Eve gave birth only to twins, a boy and a girl in quick succession, in order to populate the earth. Now the twins bom together, it is said, swapped the boys and girls with the sets immediately after them. But the day came when one of the twins, namely Cain, fell in love with his co-twin, whose stars had predicted was to become Abel's wife. Cain didn't want to swap. To marry her, he killed, committing the first murder, but not the first incest.”

“And that's where we all began?” asked Salaado.

“Yes. If you consider Adam ‘giving birth' to Eve, in a manner of speaking. After all, she was created from his rib, flesh and blood—in him, her beginning. Adam's beginnings are in the command (i.e. the Word): Be! And he
became
. He
was.”

I yawned. They left the room.

VI

I couldn't help thinking that Salaado was inwardly happy that Misra had disappeared, although she hoped nothing bad would happen to her. To me, she was indulgently sweet, making no comments or references to my intended departure and no allusions to my romance with Riyo. As a matter of fact, it was Salaado who had the foresight to suggest that we leave our doors open. And she literally meant that—keep all doors wide open, just in case Misra returned when we were asleep. Misra pervaded our thoughts. This reminded me of my infant days—then I was deeply attached to her; then, our doors were left open. Nothing else meant anything: Maps; the Ogaden itself was reduced to a past so far away it occupied no space in my mind. Only Misra! All because she disappeared and because we didn't know what had happened to her.

It transpired that we didn't have her particulars. To the bewilderment of Hilaal and Salaado, it became obvious I didn't know her father's name. I knew the name of the Jigjigaawi man who raised her, then married her and who, in the end, she murdered. Surely, she couldn't have used his name as her father's! Then someone remembered that she had entered the country in disguise, under another name. What name was that? The one I knew her by, spelt as Misra or variations of it? Or the one Karin gave me? Even if we wanted, we had no name to report to the police as a “Missing Person”, nor did we have one to release to the press. Misra? Massar? Masrat? Massarat? What name can we find you under and where?

Sadly, I concluded I didn't know Misra. I said so.

“No, wait,” Uncle said. But his voice had undergone a frightening change—it was like a person cut in two halves—you would want to look for the missing half. He added, “Let us not despair. Let us think.”

We were clumsy in the views we offered, we were helpless and misguided in our predictions. Salaado, at one time, set the dinner-table for four while Hilaal prepared the meal. We sat and waited, our eyes downcast as though we were saying grace. The wind spoke to us; the wind knocked on our doors which were not even shut, the wind made us go to the windows behind which we stood, our eyes, this time, scouring the space ahead of us, our minds attentive to any changing shadows, expectantly waiting for Misra to turn up and say, “I am sorry, I meant to tell you that I was going to call on a friend.” Each of us prophesied what would happen, but in each, she was alive and was well; in each she complained of a small irritant pain in the legs or the area surrounding the removed breast or her groin. Never did any of us suggest that she had died, or tell a story predicting that she might have been killed.

Suddenly, with a fury I had never associated with her, Salaado said, “We cannot be sitting here and speculating about the poor woman. We must do something.”