Chapter 24
Xemi was eating a freshly baked bread roll and was halfway through when he noticed a piece of it was tougher than it should have been. He kept chewing the piece and chewing the piece but it wouldn't disintegrate. He frowned and opened his mouth. He fingered it until he found the offending piece and extracted the remains of a cigarette butt. Tears formed in his eyes as the outrage nearly killed him.
Hoden was sitting next to him and exclaimed 'what is that !' her face distorted in disgust. Xemi could now taste the cigarette flavours. There were brown paper coverings nearby in which the food was brought to him and he spit everything on top of them.
He washed the rest of his mouth out with soda and spat out the liquid on the rocks outside. He came back to his room and eyed Mahmoud who was sitting on his own bed. He asked him where he got this from.
'The same place I swear,' he said in an outburst of indignation. He crossed his legs when he sat. 'Never again.'
Xemi was more upset that he couldn't eat those bread rolls again rather than having chewed, tasted, someone's thrown away cigarette.
'So this guy had smoked his cigarette and threw it in his oven with the bread, did he? Who makes these?' Xemi asked Mahmoud.
'Some jereer,' he said.
Only one baker there and he banned himself from it. He should demand compensation but for that he would have to go out in the sun and he didn't want to.
For weeks he had enjoyed engorging gluttony. Several times a day he sent Mahmoud to get food from a restaurant for him. If the family ate something basic he would eat gourmet, which basically meant something with meat in it, and he loved it. He had never eaten as much meat as during this period.
He asked no questions. If it tasted good and looked good he would eat it. So long as it wasn't camel milk related. He tried camel meat also and found it too coarse to eat pleasurably. But what he spent the most money on was khat.
In his youth he became familiar with this through his father. Sometimes when he had guests they would chew khat and Xemi would see stems everywhere. He was always curious as to what it tasted like. With his mother's money he had the funds to find out.
One time he told Abdullah to get some for him. He duly obliged just like everyone else who wasn't over fifty. He brought a bunch that looked half eaten by locusts. Xemi protested at the lack of quality but Abdullah assured him that was how it was supposed to be. Xemi looked closer at it. They were long stemmed with leaves at the top, darkening at the edges. The stems were green and the leaves were of a lighter variety. Some of the leaves looked almost withered. He smelled them.
They smelt of fresh grass, of plant life, the likes of which he hadn't smelled for a long time. There was barely a tree in the village and not a blade of grass in miles around. He thought the khat smelled so good only for it smelling like something different, foreign, exotic even for there was nothing verdant around. Then he 'chewed' it, for one chews khat. The way to chew it he knew was to not swallow the leaves but to keep grinding the leaves until the juices within it were repleted. Its juices give you what you look for.
Xemi felt nothing but a little buzz the first time. He enjoyed the somnolent act of chewing more than any of the narcotic effects it was supposed to have. He mused if that was the real reason people chewed it, like how people use stress balls for psychic balance. The subsequent times he chewed it, the buzz got greater as his chewing method refined and he found himself staring into the distance motionless as a relaxing feeling coursed through him.
That was one of the effects. Another was that he slept less and chewed even at the base of the gaslamp, with its irregular ticks, when the electricity had cut off, as the plant's amphetamine inducing nature sharpened his concentration. He fancied that he could force his heart to beat in the same rhythm as the ticks of the gaslamp, and smirked at his achievement, which he knew was a delusion.
The heightened concentration was what he was told was most likely to happen. Under one of those influences he got a hold of a UN exercise book that Mahmoud received from school. He found that he could read Somali. He didn't know that the language was written with the Latin script. Its approach was phonetic so that if you knew the spoken word you would know the written word. He found that he could read better than Mahmoud which delighted him. All levels of education had to be paid for in this village and it was wasted on Mahmoud.
At night, under the influence of khat the mice bothered him less, the mosquitoes likewise, the madman who he thought was a donkey, was more comical than anything fearful. He found that he preferred the feeling of motionlessness that the khat gave him over the heightened senses. In those moments, he would get up and find himself walking on clouds. The sensation enthralled him and he sought for it time and again.
He found there were different strains of the plant. One was of a higher quality much more green in hue and much more expensive in price and much more potent in effect. That was the strain which first made him walk on clouds. But it was difficult to find. Khat was produced in different places.
Everyday people would deliver a batch and the stronger strain would go the quickest. Xemi would find himself eating the cheaper one more than often. He discovered that Safia's husband had a farm of his own on which he grew different things. One of the things he grew was khat. He himself rarely ate it. Xemi recalled one time when his uncle partook in some social dabbling in the plant and came home late.
The front door happened to be locked. He banged on the door with his cane for a good five minutes until Safia opened. The savagery with which he banged on the door made Xemi think that no-one wanted to open the door too quick. You never know how a man addled by drugs might react. He however was surprisingly calm when the door was opened and there was an apologetic tone when he explained that no-one answered and that that was the reason he banged the door so hard.
On his farm, his uncle had a worker who looked like a Rastafari who also liked to chew. After introduction he found him a useful foil to get more khat from. He would come to the house to speak to his uncle and bring some khat with him. Safia disapproved of his new habit and resented the man for bringing it to Xemi, calling it a foolish drug and baser habit. He merely dismissed her.
'Why don't you say that to your husband?' Xemi said to her, in front of the bemused Somali Rastafari. 'Why don't you call him a drug dealer and an addict ? Only thing I ask is that you do it while I'm there so I can see what happens next.'
No one who partook in the custom considered it a drug as it was as natural as drinking tea; indeed, all the tea houses were ostensibly tea houses but the khat chewers were the main source of business. They brought their batches with them to the tea houses, drinking cup after cup, as it was generally done together. These tea houses were the Somali equivalent of a gentleman's club. Xemi never went to these places as he never liked to talk when he chewed, and he would chew for hours at a time. He started doing it regularly using his mother's money and those who he sent to procure it for him commented on it becoming more frequent. An event made him slow down however.
He was chewing and wanted to go to the toilet. Whenever he went to the toilet he knew the high was near completion and he dragged it out as long as possible. Finally he got up and at the first foot he laid on the floor he found himself deaf. He was petrified. In a microsecond he went from full hearing to hearing nothing. He spoke and could not hear his words. He snapped his fingers, but could not hear its sound. There was nothing but deathly hush.
Mahmoud was grinning in front of him and thought the panic and the dumb look on Xemi's face was funny. He didn't know what to do. The plant had made him deaf. He didn't know that this could be one of the side effects. He decided on doing what he got up for and that was bodily secretion. At the second step he took, the world of noise rushed back to life. He froze again.
'What on earth is going on?' he asked himself, feeling relief and confusion in equal measure. He thought maybe he chewed for too long and the act of grinding his teeth on the leaves to extract the juice was having an effect on his ears or his sanity. Mahmoud was still grinning at him. Xemi thought that he must look like a panto drug addict. He pissed in the manhole and came back. And threw the khat out. He would take a break. But his loss of hearing was not the most extraordinary thing that happened that day.
Not too long after there was a commotion. Howa was running around like she was a sprite of excitement.
'Mother, mother look at this, look at the small eyes!' she cried and then ran back outside to the front of the house. She didn't even put her hijab on, that's how excited she was. Her excitement was a virus and she passed it onto Xemi who bolted out of his bed to see what was going on. As he went out through the first door he could see a crowd of people looking at something. Everyone on the street must have been out of their house. Some of them were in the middle of the street just to look at this one man.
Xemi was also amazed to see him. It was a Chinese man walking down the road of a Somali village. He couldn't believe it. What would he be doing here? The man was so young and casual and smoked a cigarette while strolling to wherever he was going. He noticed the crowd watching him and with an air of bored, tiresome fame ignored them all and kept walking till he was out of view. He seemed to have come from the direction of the house where Xemi used to go to watch TV. He could sense this was a monumental occasion for these people watching the Chinese man. When Howa was walking back into the house Xemi asked her:
'You never seen someone like that before?'
She replied with a breathless voice, 'No, never!' and walked inside with the most girlish giggle and every tooth in her mouth visible. 'She is in love,' Xemi said to himself. He called her back.
'What do you think your kids would look?'
'Whose kids?'
'Yours and the 'little eyes'.'
She was on the verge of laughter again, and then stopped herself.
'Don't speak to me like that, how dare you say that to me?'
Then, unable to keep up her proud and insulted woman act, descended into giggles.
'Let me find the man and tell him you're curious. Maybe he's curious too. You know what?' Xemi started beaming. 'Something tells me that he is the adventurous type.'
Chapter 25
Xemi watched the lady count money. She sat in front of her store directly opposite Xemi's house. He jumped off his ledge and went to the outer wall and asked if she wanted to share. She laughed and continued to count her money but now with flamboyance.
'Why are all the women here who have kids obese?' he asked himself when he heard a loud bang coming from the back. He walked inside to see what was going on and saw that the back door was open. As he walked closer he heard before he realised that a rock was fizzing by. 'Wow!' he thought. 'Someone is not playing.' There was a rock fight outside.
Howa and Mayloun were throwing rocks at two other girls; one was slim and dark and the other chubby and lighter. He recognised them as his maternal cousins. Both sides threw these projectiles with murderous intent. In particular the slim dark girl on his mother's side threw rocks with a wicked technique. She flicked her wrist as she threw, suspended in mid air as she jumped when she threw, her rocks sliced through the air in rapid velocity.
'If one of them hits someone, that's instant coma at best,' he marvelled. Both sets were irrepressible.
He stood watching at the door threshold as rock followed rock. Howa was bouncing around, in constant motion. Coming forward for vantage, moving back to get more ammo.
She gaped with a mouth opened in shock when she saw one come within millimetres of her; sneered in loathing, disdain, and then tore more rocks from the ground with greater ferocity. Her main opponent was the slim girl on the other side who never showed the slightest emotion on her face, the slightest hesitation in intent.
Her tongue was sticking out as some people do when they want to put the thread in the needle. Mayloun was slightly further forward, to Howa's right, legs static, bending all the time for more rocks to throw. She did so mechanically, like a windmill, preferring volume over force or accuracy. Both sets made a perfect parallelogram.
There was a crowd forming and all were watching the spectacle with smiles on their faces. This rock fight continued unabated until some lads rushed in and ended it. One of them was the guy who ran the TV place. Another was his brother. They both looked like their mother who had a strong jawline. They came into the fray with canes and curses beating the girls and demanded they go inside.
Xemi thought he should do something too and pulled Mayloun inside with her arm though he would have preferred the rock fight to continue a little longer. His adrenaline had ratcheted up. After a little struggle everyone was inside. The two brothers greeted Xemi and left with the glow of masculinity.
His paternal cousins had been screaming that the other side started it. Howa was fixing her headwrap which had come off, a snarl on her face. Mayloun went into the kitchen. He considered how strong his blood relationship was with his maternal cousins and the fact they never came to his paternal relatives house which seemed open to all and sundry. Was his parents's relationship some kind of Romeo and Juliet love story ? These families definitely didn't like each other.
He turned towards the seething Howa.
'Why are you so violent?' he asked her mischievously.
'Go fuck your prophet, get away from me,' she snapped.
'Fuck my prophet?' Xemi said, 'What did you say?' He hadn't heard a curse like that before. 'I thought we had the same prophet.'
Luckily for these girls, another event usurped their spectacle. Yasser's father, who was an askari, had been arrested. It transpired that money had been stolen from the askari's coffers. Ten thousand dollars. He was picked up and after initial denials he admitted to doing it. Safia had said it took one slap to make him confess. Xemi wondered where the man's father was to administer justice.
There was a council of elders and they met at Safia's house. It was headed by someone named Blaad who came in with a look like he was disturbed at something and would like very much to go back to what he was doing. Interesting name Xemi thought: 'Blaad'. It sounded nice and it even felt nice to say. He wondered if that was his birth name or whether it was given to him as a title.
Xemi was eavesdropping in Safia's bedroom along with Safia herself. There were seven elders and he knew several of them. His father's brother was the first to speak.
'This family does nothing but vex. First the son, now the father. Don't we have our own troubles?'
Several elders shifted uneasily as they had heard he had some trouble with his daughter. She had a little part-time job in a restaurant and after a quarrel abused her father in public, questioning his ability to provide for his family and his sexual capacity. In other words a total assault upon his manhood. Such behaviour in a respectable family was unheard of. Blaad, with accustomed diplomacy, replied:
'Yes, but nothing can be done about that. Gentlemen, none of us here can raise the money to free this deplorable.'
'Deplorable, deplorable!' several voices rang in agreement.
'So let's agree who from abroad to press.'
The rugs on the floor became very interesting now. So did the ceiling, the walls, the threads coming out the pillows on the sofa. You press one of your close relatives once, you can't do it again for a good while after. Crises, disasters are always at a man's heels and one's closest family comes first.
'What about this boy's father, Awad? Let's get this matter sorted, gentlemen!' Blaad looked for a quick resolution.
'A fruitless orchard. His pockets are always empty according to him. What's he abroad for, can someone tell me?' Xemi's uncle murmured bitterly, sinking deeper into the floor sofa. Blaad was getting annoyed by his cousin's negativity which could only prolong the meeting.
'Omar? Let's call him. Objections, gentlemen? Let's ascertain before we dismiss. Where's the phone, and the number?'
Xemi knew this uncle, another brother to his father, as he had lived with his family for a number of years. He was a maintenance man whose main job was operating a lift. Xemi would be surprised if he had the ransom. But he did and several consultations later agreed to pay the money. Xemi, if he was in his uncle's ear, would have told him never to pay. Especially for someone who was guilty! The man was released, broken, and Xemi thought of Yasser, and then mused on the politics of this situation. One man committed a crime and instead of justice bearing on the criminal his family was invited to make restitution. When the money was paid the criminal was released. Confession was all it took to make someone guilty and the one who paid was his family. What if he didn't confess, what if he wasn't guilty and what if the family didn't pay? The more Xemi thought about it the more it had the reek of extortion to him. But he had another question and knew who to ask.
Mahmoud was like a mouse who knew every hole and every cranny from which to glean information from. But when he came in the first thing Xemi said was 'wow!' Mahmoud's entire body was red. It took Xemi a moment to realise why. There was a sandstorm outside. Xemi hadn't noticed and it must have erupted quickly. He looked outside and the whole, dusky world was crimson. Xemi was so delighted he completely forgot his question.
He looked at swirling red winds that were like mini tornados for a while, obscuring everything beyond a metre away. But he remembered his question quickly when the novelty of the storm wore out. Once Mahmoud dusted the red sand off himself and sat on his own bed Xemi asked him if there had been any wars in this village. Yes he said there had been not too long ago.
It stemmed from a murder which led to another and then another until it boiled over into fuel scale inter tribal warfare. The two tribes were his own Sharmarke and another which was called Aden Saïd. This conflict lasted for years until a ceasefire was reached. Mahmoud said his father used to sit on the roof with a handgun watching out for enemies. 'Aden Saïd,' he mused. He recalled someone telling him that his mother was half Aden Saïd. He thought back to the rock fight. Maybe that cat fight had deeper roots than he thought.
The house had become quiet since Hoden and her son left. He visited them in their new house. Her husband was a short guy. She kept winking at Xemi as if her husband was a god of some kind. He giggled when he remembered the son and his physical endowment. When he returned home he found unexpected drama.
Mayloun had run away from home.
Chapter 26
The last time Xemi had seen Mayloun she was clearing water bowls used to wash one's fingers with, before and after meals. He saw her take a used bowl, put it to her lips and drink from it. Xemi moved back a little like a monster was in front of him and demanded to know why she just did that. But she didn't answer and ignored him. Could it be thirst or was it a psychological kink she quenched? Xemi was in no doubt as to which it was.
She had run away with the songstress, who was a receptacle for notorious behaviour. The monotony of her life had finally broken her and she sought release. Nevertheless Xemi was shaking with excitement at her audacity. If she could break free, a prisoner with heavier chains than his, he could do it too, Xemi thought full of hope.
Mayloun's tasks were taken up by Xowa, when she was not in school, and Safia, who Xemi had not seen clean since his illness, and who was muttering to herself more than usual. Whenever Mayloun's marital status was brought up Safia said to leave her to her. In Xemi's mind it would have been better to marry her off as she had passed the age of betrothal long ago and now the fallout was catastrophic. This adventure had less of the innocent holiday than of bacchanalia if you asked Xemi. Mayloun was the most repressed sensualist he had ever met. He wondered why Safia was holding onto her like this since the strongest curb for any adventurous soul was commitment and responsibility.
Mayloun's father had a younger brother, who was a dwarf in his sixties. He had married a girl who was Mayloun's age a few years earlier, his fourth marriage. She had given birth to a child soon afterwards. But the dwarf soon had enough of married life and divorced her. The girl was told to go back to her parents house.
She was livid when told through an intermediary and destroyed as much of the house as she could before she left. Her ex husband claimed she irritated him too much. Perhaps illness had influence on his erratic behaviour because soon after the divorce he passed away from a disease unknown but the damage was done already. A new marriage with a respectable man would now be more difficult if not impossible. To divorce a woman soon after he married her spoke of flaws of character or virtue in question.
Xemi thought Safia might be trying to spare Mayloun the ignominy of a similar situation, so waited until an exceptional match could be found. Or maybe she knew something about her daughter the rest didn't. It was ironic when Xemi was invited to a wedding soon after.
The man whose house on the hill Xemi used to frequent to watch TV had a friend who was getting married. While Xemi was on his ledge, he came up to him and implored him to come. Xemi didn't even know the man who was getting married and didn't want to go. However, he felt like he owed Ahmed something for the times he went to his house to watch TV and so he agreed. He had never been to a wedding and thus was a little curious. He was told that on the day someone would come get him. In fact it was Mahmoud who dropped him off. He himself wasn't invited.
It was a regular house not too far from where he slept. Nothing was very far from where he slept. This was the second stage of the wedding celebrations. The first was a banquet that Xemi didn't go to which was for the closer relatives. The third would be the actual ceremony. When he entered he could feel exhilaration through the strings and the horns of the music and the loud voices in its accompaniment.
Xemi was dressed in a pale, perforated dress shirt with some dark jeans and had left his big coat at home this time feeling the increasingly pleasant sun on his skin. Ahmed from the house on the hill greeted him. He was guided to a room where all the men sat on beach chairs with an empty area in the middle of the room. The women were in the next room. Some of them popped in from time to time to drop something off. One of them Ahmed pointed to and said:
'That's my wife. Ain't she something? But she got…' he made a curving motion over his belly. She was pregnant. At this motion, his wife who saw this cried:
'God, what are you saying!' and walked out.
'Oh, we are not supposed to talk about it,' Xemi remarked aloud. It couldn't have been a secret. She was at least six months pregnant and bursting at the seams. The wife was dark skinned, a ravishing beauty. Xemi congratulated him as he made a good choice.
Xemi was introduced to the groom. As suspected, he had never seen him before. He told Ahmed who spoke English to offer him well wishes on his behalf as he didn't know how to say it in Somali. Drinks were served of some fruity nature, cool and refreshing; and the occasion was recorded through camera. When he first saw the camera, Xemi made a toast to the camera. The music had been playing since he entered but now it was time for a dance.
Xemi wanted to see Ahmed's wife dance, pregnant or not, but he himself was forced to dance. He protested at first saying he didn't know how to dance. But the groom came up and dragged him up. Everyone was dancing in a rectangle, two lines, one man facing another man. He recalled the many times he had seen Somali guys holding hands and thought he had never seen heterosexual men enjoy the company of other men as much as they do here. The music was Somali and he liked it to the extent that he could like it. Xemi was sure he was invited purely for them to see how he danced.
It was awkward to dance in front of men like this and for men like this. He tried not to look anyone in the eyes. Some people twisted up their fingers to make a W symbol and then looked at him. He nodded his head and replicated it in loving memory of Tupac Shakur. He was curious to see what was going on in the women's section.
After the dance, he asked Ahmed if he could watch and with a laugh said no entry for the opposite sex was allowed. His eyes glazed over at the thought of the scene when Mayloun was pretending there was a wedding in the corridor and danced a little.
'Did you know Mayloun ran away?'
Ahmed made an awkward movement.
'Yeah, we all - everybody knows that. But don't worry they'll find her.'
'You think so? How can they find her?' 'No one can run away without being found.' Xemi thought a little and suddenly asked:
'Has she run away before?' Ahmed writhed and answered:
'I've... heard… - yes, yes she has.'
'Oh, that's why she'll be found again. She's restless.'
In the days that followed Mayloun still hadn't shown up. Howa was getting annoyed that she had to do more things than usual. She diverted herself by beating up her big brother as often as she could. They were all together with Abdullah in their room. Abdullah had some sweets that he was eating. All that food he ate was starting to show in his face. His skin had become atrocious with spots and his face was chubby like the son of Harragodhe's. His hair was still glossy and smooth however. Mahmoud was touching the pimples on his forehead. They looked like mossy rocks protruding from a dark lagoon.
'Your prophet - leave me, fuck your mother's prophet.'
'Prophet?' Xemi echoed. 'Don't you have the same prophet'? he asked laughingly.
'Yes,' said Abdullah and laughed as well.
'What a stupid insult. But it sounded and felt good to say,' Xemi agreed in his mind.
'Why don't you leave that boy and sit down quietly, Mahmoud ?' Howa said in her most adult like and condescending voice to her elder brother Mahmoud. Xemi just shook his head.
The dynamics of this family was insane.
'What are you going to do when he grows up and becomes stronger? He'll revenge himself, won't you, Mahmoud? ' Xemi asked of his cousin.
He made a motion to say he definitely would, but scared to death to verbalise it.
'He won't. Will you? Say it !' Howa cried. She flew at him. Abdullah ducked out of the way. 'Say it, demon you!'
'Allah, Howa, but I didn't do anything. What did I do, what did I do!' he kept shouting as she was getting even for the future that might soon be upon her.
'Howa, Howa!' her mother bellowed as she heard the noise. Howa got off her brother.
'I dare you to,' she made a motion of cutting throats. She then walked out. Xemi was sure that Mahmoud had some muscle deficiency. He was so weak.
Suddenly there was a loud crack. Everyone froze. Xemi had heard this sound before but not for a long time. It wasn't until this moment that he realised something so common to him had been missing ever since he had been there, and he never missed it or thought about it. Why didn't he think about it? Another crack, as the heavens tore, rain lashed down upon the earth reminding him that water does fall from the sky.
The whole house sprung into action, led by a call to arms by his uncle. Barrels that were left in the pantry room were rolled out. Pipes at the front and at the back of the house that were connected to the roof were arranged so that the rain from the roof could be collected and stored in the barrels and the well in the front of the house. The roof was designed for this purpose: to catch maximum flow of rainwater. The rain came down so hard that from the inside it looked like the pressure of the rainfall would bring a man to his knees. Everyone was drenched...and then it was over. The sky had cleared in seconds to a complete blue. It lasted maybe five minutes but the rainfall was extraordinary. They managed to fill a large portion of the well and the barrels they had in the back. Xemi looked inside the barrels as the humidity increased exponentially all around them and the roof kept dripping water still. He saw a layer of oil or something that looked like oil on top of the water in the barrels. Some grains of rice were floating in it as well, giving indication of what it was used for before. In the pantry room was a sack of rice and he looked at the bag which said 'UN AID, NOT TO BE SOLD'. Hmm, he was sure they paid for that. He thought about the length of time since it had last rained. He saw as if in an outer body experience the roof layered with all kinds of grime and filth and then saw Howa drinking the water from the barrel, a childish joy illuminating her face. He could see the outline of her body through her sodden clothes sticking on her body and thought she had a marvelous shape. He thought to himself that he would touch her before he would ever touch that water.
