Chapter 1
Xemi and his father had just come from an evening visit to a relative, this time somewhere in London where they had moved to a couple weeks earlier. These family visits were a regular occurrence, no matter what country they lived in; and it involved relations of various kinds, all of them, during and after these visits, would only ever be a pixelated blur to Xemi. He would never pay any attention to anything going on during these family visits; never knowing what his relatives and his father spoke about as he sat on the sofa waiting for hospitality to run its finite course. His only engagement would be that eventually the host would speak to him, as naturally happens, and Xemi would answer with the same amazement and out of place confusion that every Somali host received when they addressed him. His father would swoop in.
'The boy speaks no Somali,' he would say, laughing loudly while giving his son an excoriating look.
Instantly and smoothly his father takes the conversation away from his son, as he exempted him from the main responsibility and duty of a guest, that of polite intercourse and Xemi would be addressed no longer...
Sometimes there would be other kids or young people around his own age there asking him about his strange name, for what kind of name is Xemi for a Somali and a Muslim?
'Who told you I was Muslim,' he would reply. 'And really, as far as me being Somali...'
Their shocked faces would make things more entertaining and made them steer clear of him which was what he wanted.
He only felt hints of embarrassment for his sullenness while he cursed his lot. Dragged from country to country, house to house, like an exhibition, he had the forceful sensation that he was being used as part of his father's schemes; like beggars use dogs to incite pity, and it was fast becoming intolerable. Soon will come the time to cut loose the leash strangling him he would say to himself.
Father and son walked in the falling blossom petals numerous in London, fading peach blossoms who lost their perfect whiteness by the dirty yellow sheen of false light. Not even their beauty, nor the fact that it was a herald of Spring could lighten his mood. He had decided to bite the bullet.
At sixteen he was old enough to work and Xemi informed his father that he wanted to get a job. His father turned to him with his big bubble eyes that he had passed to both of his children and stood still. A sharp and high pitched voice filled the evening as Xemi's father beseeched:
'No! Why, what for? No, Xemi, no, this is not the time! Why do you want to get a job?' he cried in the Somali language, while putting his hand on his startled son's shoulder and turning him to make Xemi face him. 'Study and no more. What, you want money? Take this. I'll give you money.'
Logorrhea to Xemi, he had never liked the language, could not speak it, barely understood it, but he enjoyed the rhythm in which his father spoke. His father put his hands in his pockets and fished out some currency after digging deep, fiddling with what was inside, like he enjoyed the dramatism of giving and taking. Xemi was thrilled that his father could sense his seriousness. He took the money but didn't count it.
'Money in itself is not what I'm looking for,' he replied impressively, calculating what he could do with the money. At first glance it looked like a hundred pounds.
His father, wordless, looked ahead. Xemi had tugged on the leash and found that it had become looser. Now he would shake it off.
Chapter 2
It was another beguiling April day in London, a day that had the chill of autumn. Those out and about walked with their hands in their pockets resenting a sun that did not live up to its promise. Xemi felt and did the same but it had nothing to do with the weather.
He had just passed a crowded bus stop where people were staring at him. He was with his aunt and her toddler son. His aunt was wearing a hijab and whenever he was with an ostentatious Somali woman, he felt awkward and embarrassed. Xemi's eyes sharpened, showing the obvious flickers of annoyance.
'I have never seen a low key Somali woman,' he raged to himself.
He walked a little faster to create the illusion that he was walking alone. His little cousin saw Xemi putting his hands in his pockets and quickly put his own hands in his pockets too like it was a game they were playing. Seconds later there was the distinctive noise of bone cracking concrete. All earthly sound was sucked into the boy's mouth until the storm broke and he gave back what he took. His mother snatched him up while berating him:
'Look! How many times have I told you? Don't walk with your hands in your pockets! Now look!'
She then pressed her finger on the spot which had just butted the pavement. Xemi suppressed an incredulous giggle. She carried the wailing boy like a roll of carpet, telling him menacingly:
'Just you wait. Wait till we get home. You'll see!' threatening the boy for his squirming and screaming.
She looked furious at the scene the wailing child was causing. The thought crossed Xemi's mind that the boy was screaming so loud to shame his mother. 'Now wouldn't that be funny if that was true...'
At the house, the mother continued berating her son who was throwing a strop on the sofa, angrily telling his mother something unintelligible and crossing his arms in surly insolence. His mother responded by pressing the swollen bump on his forehead. Once again he howled, flailing his arms on the sofa, while Xemi looked on, confused and silent.
He thought of the passage in Childhood, where a young Gorky took a knife to protect his mother from his father. Would this child do the same? Xemi concocted a fantasy where the boy saw his father beating his mother and joined in, berating her in baby talk, while pressing the bruises that his small hands weren't big enough to fully cover. For some reason the fantasy made him smile.
Xemi was travelling through London with its quaint, endearing, mixture of old and new when he approached a building in an ordinary residential area with semi detached houses. He knocked on the door 'one hundred and seven', looking at a piece of paper to double check.
'Coming,' a voice called out.
The door opened and a girl allowed entry.
Xemi walked into a pristine white hall with a white carpet you could run your toes through. The girl herself had hidden behind the door for some reason and told Xemi to go to the bedroom straight ahead. Xemi followed instructions and then turned around to look at the girl. He found himself disappointed.
She was dressed in a beige dressing gown which matched the whiteness of her surroundings. The bedroom light showed her to be exotic, the colour of dark honey but slim and wraith like. She was smaller than he had anticipated and he felt like leaving. She was smiling and he tried to x-ray her gown to see if she had what he was looking for.
'How long do you want to stay?' she asked him in a playful voice with the fluid accent of a Spanish speaker that makes one word blend with the other.
He hesitated. Should he leave? He decided to stay since he was there already and finding another girl might be a hassle. He took the money out of his pocket which was all the money his father had given him and asked the girl standing:
'What's the service?'
'Everything,' she replied smiling. She had such big lips that her smile didn't show a single tooth.
'Perfect answer,' Xemi thought to himself and couldn't help but match her smile. His smile showed the metal of braces.
'Can I use this condom?' he asked, as he fished out a Japanese condom. It was expensive but he liked it because it was thin. This was the only condom he ever used.
She took it from his hands and examined the make with a slight frown. It was in a white plastic container with the thickness in numerical millimetres and other Japanese writings on it. She mouthed the numbers with her lips that were so large they were surprising. Nonplussed, she shrugged her shoulders and trilled 'ok'.
She suddenly laughed and asked: 'What does that L mean?'
'That's large in Japan but regular everywhere else, baby, don't worry.'
'Haha. Okay.'
He passed her the money and she went out to put it somewhere. He looked around the room. It looked clean as only the room of a foreign escort can be. The type that rents a room for a week and then moves to the next place. He threw his coat off and saw a basket next to the bed. It was filled with used condoms.
'Busy,' Xemi said aloud. 'Busy, busy, busy,' he laughed in pure delight as she walked in.
'What's so funny?' she asked him.
'Nothing. Can I play some music?'
He went to her music system, put a CD in and played something vibrant.
'Can you dance?' she asked him.
'Haha, maybe.'
She took her gown off. Visible joy and surprise spread on his face as he saw that this girl had unusually enrapturing proportions. A beautiful, perfect woman who was slim in the right places, fat in the right places; and looking down her body, just as you would expect it to continue in a straight and narrow line, a slight curve bended the vision. Nature's carving gave you teardrop titties and an inexplicably high ass.
Xemi quickly took his own shirt off, his mind already submerged with waves of dark honey.
'Wow,' she said, genuinely impressed by his physique. 'Do you go to the gym?'
'Maybe,' he replied, smiling, as she came up to touch his booming chest…
Back home, Xemi was musing on a way to see this girl again, replaying her jiggle, the waves of honey, a memory now, and every second asking for more distance. Xemi saw his aunt come into the room with her house phone and its long cumbersome cord that all house phones had in the early 2000s. His father was on the line.
Since they had only been in London for a few weeks, things were up in the air, and they were not living in the same house. Xemi was living with a distant relative, a cousin of his father's in this one bedroom flat. His father and sister were living with other relatives in order to spread the burden of family evenly while his father was trying to get his act together and find some home for the three of them.
'Salam Aleikum,' his father said.
'Hey,' Xemi replied.
'You said what?'
Pause.
'Waleikum Salam.'
'Are you praying?' his father asked him directly. Xemi hesitated.
His mind cast back to a day during his early teens, when he came across a book on a shelf. A little novella whose small size caught his attention. His attention deepened when he saw the cover and recognised a Somali name.
He frowned. Who could this be? Does his father know this person? Strange and unusual to see a Somali author, and this was a woman besides.
The book was so short that he finished it within an hour. It spoke of the trial the author underwent as she had her clitoris mutilated for tradition. At twelve, Xemi didn't know what to believe.
After weighing things up, he checked the back of the small book and it said 'based on a true story'. There was a picture of the author on the back. She was clearly Somali with her frazzled hair out and a dark strip above her lip.
'Why is she smiling?' he asked himself.
Xemi decided that he disliked her and the book. He was only vaguely aware of this sense that he had, a reflex rather, an instinct, possibly, of her being a traitor for exposing things about Somali culture, things he didn't even know existed. He also decided that he believed her and thought of the trip to the dentist his younger sister had taken just a few weeks prior. A similar age as the girl in the book and she came out wincing as she walked out, holding their father's hand…
Xemi himself wasn't traditional or religious but this book made him downright hostile to anything associated with Somalia. The aversion it caused went well with his desire to be like the kids around him and no one was Somali or Muslim in that little Flemish town they used to live in. He had no choice but to be Somali. To be Muslim however was a different matter. He asked himself why he should be. He determined that there was no reason why he should be.
A new theatre was born but now, the pretence was becoming tiresome, the play was over, and so, to his father who was waiting on the other side of the line, he replied:
'No'.
'Ah. Good, good. Very good. Okay. Xemi, tell me, will you ever pray?' his father asked in a tone of ill disguised menace.
'No,' Xemi replied with equal hostility.
The directness of this interrogation surprised him but he was in no mood to play along. His dad hung up without saying goodbye. Xemi pursed his lips and immediately thought that he had made a mistake.
His aunt looked at him with a gaze that spelled curiosity but she didn't speak English and Xemi only understood a little Somali, therefore no communication was possible. His hands shook as he contemplated what he should do if he was suddenly forced to take care of himself.
The next few days were spent in languorous indolence, mesmerized by his baby cousin's remarkably protruding forehead, or watching television or roaming the streets looking for ads of employment. Then came another phone call from his father.
'We're going on a trip, back to America, yah? Haha. But before that, we have to make a detour to pick up my sister, your aunt, you remember you talked to her before?'
Xemi did remember. This was the aunt who looked exactly like his father. The same thin gaunt face, high cheekbones and big eyes that look like marbles perpetually coming out of their sockets. Bad enough for a man, but also shared by this woman. But she lived in Kenya.
'Doesn't she live in Kenya? We're going to Kenya?' he asked his father.
'For a couple of days, yes, to arrange things, and then we go back to America. Yah? You wanted that, didn't you?'
Xemi did want to go back to America. He didn't want to leave to begin with. He agreed and things went fast. The next week he was at the airport ready to fly out.
Chapter 3
The airport was huge and bright. The whiteness exhilarated one walking on the clear smooth stone. Even stationary in an airport you get a sensation of displacement and you feel the direction is somewhere positive. Xemi decided that this would be the last time that he travelled with his father who evidently was restless beyond imagination. This would be the fifth time that they moved in the last three years, three of them involving multiple continents.
His eyes were sweeping the airport halls, until suddenly he felt that something wasn't right. The profile of people was changing perceptibly. Next thing he knew the ethnic makeup became complete. Xemi was surrounded by Somalis. 'That's curious,' he thought. He wasn't used to being surrounded by his supposed countrymen. The reason for this novelty came to him when he looked up above the kiosk where a queue had formed.
'Why are we taking a Somali airline to travel to Kenya?' he asked sharply.
Panic made him look for a clear path, just in case.
'To support Somali business,' his father replied in an easy manner. Xemi calmed down a little because there was sense in the answer. Why wouldn't a Somali support Somali people?
The plane ride was unbearable as usual for Xemi. The pressure on the drums of his ears was torturing him. After flying over a mini island surrounded by turquoise waters, it landed in Djibouti for transit and they changed the bigger plane for a smaller one. It was a white rickety plane rich people play with and crash with, holding a maximum of thirty people. He embarked first, leaving his dad outside to talk with someone.
It had just rained outside and the humidity was something unimaginable. It hit him like a wave submerging him in what felt like volcanic heat, enveloping, then overwhelming him, sucking the air out of his lungs. Unused to this climate, first contact took Xemi's breath away and he was determined to stay inside at every opportunity.
No sooner had he closed his eyes, after finding his seat, than he was woken by a hysterical woman.
'What idiot left this boy by himself like this? Pilot! Stop the pilot, this is an abandonment.'
'Who are you with?' asked a man sitting diagonally from him, clearly bemused at the woman's hysteria.
Xemi was tense and gripped the arm rests as everyone stared at him waiting for a reply that he didn't know how to give. Embarrassed by his diabolical less than pigeon Somali he just stammered 'Abo', which means father in Somali, and pointed outside. Tripping over one syllable words was the limit of his spoken Somali.
Waters calmed further as his father came in and sat next to him. The hysterical woman told him she thought the boy lost. His father smiled and poured charisma all around him.
'He looks scared and alone ? He can't help it !' he exclaimed and laughed his booming laugh, showing his marvellous teeth.
Xemi's permanently half closed eyes threw daggers at his father.
'Where are you coming from, brother?' the hysterical woman asked Xemi's father and continued without waiting for an answer:
'I simply could not breathe there.'
Everything about their travelling companion was exaggerated. Extravagant make-up, her apparel was offensively red, her hijab, her dress and her shoes were all red. Her heady perfume reeked of overspray.
'Yes, it was humid -'
'No, not that place. That was beautiful weather. I'm talking about the country where I resided. It was positively unnatural ! How I managed ten years without flight only God knows.'
This was met by a smile of indulgence and no further comment. There were around thirty people on this small plane and the joy of homecoming was irrepressible. Xemi however felt dread building. Something horrible would befall him there, he was sure.
They disembarked into another cauldron, torrid instead of humid this time. A painful, monstrous sun was high and the oily phenomena you see in extreme heat was dancing in the atmosphere.
It was wasteland for miles and only a little landing strip, a small plane and some cars gave the impression that mankind existed. The plane must have enough fuel for two trips Xemi guessed. This was the first time he had stepped foot on African soil.
They hopped into an SUV and saw nothing but the same landscape for hours. Light brown land, light blue sky until they stopped in front of a little eaterie in the middle of nowhere that had three wooden tables in front. His disgust at being there stymied his hunger. Growing up he was bullied sometimes for being African and all he heard were jokes, and all he saw were negative imagery concerning Africa, so at sixteen he retained an aversion for Africa, no matter the country. He wanted very little to do with any of it.
They sat outside in the heat and ordered spaghetti, the Somali national dish which Xemi didn't know at this point. The server first brought a little bowl of water for the guests who then dipped their fingers into the same bowl one after the other, ostensibly, to wash them.
The food was brought in one big plate. Taking turns, they wrapped the long strings of spaghetti over their palms and squished it to make it small enough to put in their waiting mouths.
'My God,' Xemi thought. 'They 'cleaned' their fingers with a bowl of water, the same one the others used at that, but they used their entire right hand to eat.' He looked at his father who was nonchalant as usual.
In his mind Xemi was calculating how many days he could go without food. Maybe it was the cultural practise itself rather than the cleanliness aspect that repulsed him but he looked at his long nails and the scum and dead skin under it.
'No way that bowl of water would be enough. Moreover, multiple people had used the same bowl.' He looked at the dirty water, with specks of filth swirling through the discoloured liquid. 'Imagine if you had to be the last to use it and then ate with the same fingers ? Sickening !'
They finished; Xemi only had a bottle of water, and they set out again. As they drove on, the windows down, there was a distinct odour wafting in. This odour was a vague realisation, at first, of a strong smell, far enough not to bother you. They were approaching the source, rapidly, as the unpleasant smell became foul enough to disturb you.
A city then appeared, rising in the distance: a white city resplendent under the sun's rays. Every building distinguishable was white and the stench grew as they approached this marble city.
'Maybe this is where the sister is and we can get out soon,' Xemi hoped.
The smell was becoming unbearable now and he started breathing through his mouth. He could not figure out what that smell was.
They stopped in front of a white building with no roof, and a rickety white wooden door, with the paint coming off, that looked only fit for a children's clubhouse. It was a toilet. Xemi's father wanted to use the toilet. As his father was still unpractised, in a hurry, whatever it was, he ended up not closing the door properly. Luckily for him the wind only opened the door when he had already finished. In the car, Xemi could see him frowning, buckling his belt, after leaving a stool clearly visible in an opening on the ground.
'Godforsaken. Lamentable. Am I delirious to see this ?' Xemi asked himself, shocked.
He didn't want to look at his father anymore as he ambled back to the car.
'You sure you don't want to use the toilet, Xemi?' he asked his son, frowning still.
'Yes, I'm sure, thank you!' Xemi replied, pressing his father to hurry up so they could get out of there.
He realised why this city smelled like that. It was a city with a sewage system that was not beneath the ground but right in front of you. The smell became even more putrid now that Xemi knew the reason for its existence.
The road became more uneven as they passed the first buildings into the city. There were jolts every two seconds as the driver navigated through the roads. The roads themselves had no asphalt, no cement. Not a single traffic light stopped them. The buildings were all different heights like everyone built their own buildings with no state control.
The only commonality was the colour: every building was stark white as if set down by law. Light colours reflect the sun and no-one was silly enough to challenge that rule. Xemi realised that he should have worn a light coloured top. Instead, he had on a dark sleeveless vest and dark shorts that caught some curious looks. The vest felt like it was absorbing heat and he wanted to take it off badly.
They stopped in front of seemingly the only building with multiple floors. Four windows could be seen with no glass. Not a single building around had glass windows. They had shutters to close them with. They went inside a neat lobby with basic emerald coloured sofas.
Xemi rejoiced at the coolness of this lobby and felt better, the heat having soiled his mood. This turned out to be a hotel run by his father's uncle. There was however no sign anywhere besides its multiple stories to indicate that this was indeed a hotel.
His father's uncle was a man of short stature with good humour but reserved in his expressiveness. His handshake was weak wristed. Xemi had the odd impression that the old man wanted to laugh at him but he wasn't sure as he was so tired that things had become unclear to him.
He was bidden to sit on the sofa in the reception area and as soon as he sat he began to doze off. The next thing he knew he was following someone upstairs to one of the hotel rooms. Once in the room he didn't even look around and went straight for the bed. He fell asleep at once.
Chapter 4
He was woken by the same young man who brought him to the room, a gaunt, cadaverous faced figure who beamed the most reverential smile. He looked Xemi in the face but Xemi felt like he looked down at the same time, like he was trying to look at the sun but knew he couldn't hold his gaze for long. It appeared almost a sideways glance, with one shoulder above the other. Xemi just raised an eyebrow.
'What am I to him?' he wondered, sleep still infusing his senses. He had only slept for two hours but felt much fresher. 'Why is he acting like that?'
They went down the stairs and soon after Xemi and his father took leave of the hotel. There was so much dust and red sand around that it discoloured the air and gave it a shade of sunset when it was closer to noon.
Walking down the road they were approached by a little girl with pigtails. She was in the region of five and made a beeline for Xemi. Her appearance was one of raggedness with sand all over her hair and tiger dress. She squinted at Xemi who had the sun behind him as she asked him:
'Please, brother, you have any money for me ?' in a practised sing song voice one acquires when one is bored of the same script. Her upper lip was cutely curled as she awaited an answer.
'Get! Get out of here, fuck your mother,' their new driver told her as he kicked the dust on the ground in front of her. He kicked again seeing as she was still standing there and hit her leg. Good impressions must be made to your new employers after all.
The girl pouted and her eyes watered. She walked to a tall, bucktoothed woman in the distance who must have told her Xemi was a sure shot.
Xemi's father gave the appearance of someone attempting to find an older mold of himself to use again. He had this prior form, because he had seen all this before, reverted back to it, so even scenes like child beggars bounced off him, but Xemi did not have the luxury of making use of an old form of himself.
His immediate urge was to tell his father to empty his pockets but before he could say anything, his father shook his head, sensing Xemi's feelings. 'The sooner I am out of here, the better,' he told himself. He followed his father around like a zombie and tried to steer clear of all unnecessary contact like he feared reality.
They stepped into a cavernous building that contained a man behind a desk. This is where their driver procured a vehicle. Before they went in, Xemi's father settled money matters and gave him several hundred dollars.
'Hmm, for simply driving?' Xemi asked himself incredulously. 'Three hundred dollars? What kind of ride is this going to be?'
The town and the roads were flush with various people so they were driving slower. All of a sudden the car was mobbed with men banging on it, letting out cries with no meaning. One man, mutilated from the elbow down, banged his stump on the car.
'Should I give them money?' Xemi's frightened father asked the driver, reaching in his shirt pocket.
'No, uncle. Don't give them anything! These are scum and we are no hostages,' the confident driver told him. Sure enough, the crowd parted as he drove on, a couple of them smiling at their little prank.
Though these people were monstrous looking, Xemi didn't feel the fear that monsters would inspire, because judging by the mob's faces they weren't serious. Xemi was more frightened by the ugliness of the people than the ugliness of the act and the fact that these people, and everyone else there seemed to be Somali.
'Why is everyone here Somali?' he asked himself nervously. 'Can Kenya have such a huge Somali population?'
He decided that it did or at least tried to convince himself that it did, that they were all diaspora Somalis coming together to support Somali business in Kenya. The alternative was too horrible to imagine.
They drove out of the city with the foulness of its smell lingering for miles after leaving its boundaries on a road that ended up being a curious one. It was made of two tire tracks hemmed in by white rocks of varying sizes. Whoever drove on it first must have had spikes around their tires. All the rocks were jagged, white, stretched as far as the eye could see and it made one wonder where these rocks came from and why they were there.
For miles the rocks continued and the tires of the car fitted perfectly in the grooves between the white rocks. That would mean a big truck wouldn't be able to make this journey without engaging itself in road works and breaking more rocks.
There were no deviations, forks in the road and no traffic lights. No opposing traffic even. There was just one car able to go only one way for a long time. The car had no facility to even turn because the rocks on the side were too big to surmount.
Xemi wondered where this curiously sinuous road was taking them, and why indeed it was sinuous, because these were the bends of a spiral that avoided nothing. Maybe the useless turns existed to relieve the traveller' boredom with change of pace and direction. Nothing broke the endless vista of rocks, arid earth and its bled out wounds of fissures.
It was getting dark now. All one heard was the engine of the car and the conversation between Xemi's father and the driver. Xemi's grasp of Somali was bad but he could understand much more than he could speak.
At one point the driver exclaimed 'he doesn't know?' in a squeal of surprise, turning sharply from one passenger to the other.
'No. He thinks we are in Kenya.'
'But everyone here is Somali. How can that be believable?'
'We have seen some non Somalis. But I didn't tell him. He would never come if he knew this was Somalia.'
Xemi noted all this with an increased heart rate, his tiredness wiped out in an instant. Duped! He knew something was going on. No wonder everyone there was Somali. No wonder!
'Damn this father,' Xemi thought, his lips trembling with fury and fright. 'Why did chance give me this family ?'
His hands were shaking as self delusion gave way to wild hope.
'So what if we're in Somalia and not Kenya? So what? One country is the same as the next. It doesn't matter where we are so long as we don't stay here long,' he told himself, as more white buildings fading into cream colour came into view. 'Yes, we won't be here long. He said three days and one day had passed. That means there's only two days left. And two days might not be that bad where we are going. They might not use water bowls to clean the fingers they use to eat with here. They might have some knives to eat with and I swear if I'm still here by night four, I'll use it to kill someone.'
