Chapter 9
Xemi felt himself more comfortable and explored his surroundings in more detail. By then the influx of people had stemmed, the torrents of spring giving way to the stupors of summer. There were only a few who came regularly and only because they had a friendship with the girls of the house.
It was Abdullah the handsome dark skinned lad with straight Indian type hair who came the most. He was the nephew of these girls but was older than both of them but of the same generation. His parents had died in a robbery, so he and his siblings were raised by his grandmother who lived not far away.
Xemi was lying in bed while Howa and Abdullah tomfooled in his room. Howa burst into one of her habitual laughing fits and dropped herself on the floor, face down.
'Allah,' Abdullah said, sniggering.
He placed the cane he had under his arm, bent down, grabbed both of her butt cheeks with each of his hand, jiggled them, letting out a comment at how big it was and walked out.
'Demon,' Howa rasped, giggling, and got up to follow him out. Her smile was irrepressible.
Xemi was thunderstruck.
'There are different rules here,' he remarked to himself. 'What just happened there?'
Abdullah was warping Xemi's own conception of what possibilities were open before him. Mayloun looked better and better to him every day. Every time there was a group of people in his room, and if it included Safia especially, he let it be known that he wanted to have Mayloun. More than desire, this declaration seemed to bother his aunt and this made Xemi happy.
He wanted to be inappropriate and contrary. He wanted to let everyone know that he wasn't going to and did not want to be 'part of the family' and did not want to slot in and live there happily ever after. Whatever convention or social propriety there was, he would disobey it.
He stepped into the kitchen even as he was told men weren't supposed to go in and saw it was a diabolical mess. The last corner he had not seen was visible now and he saw a stone pot ablaze with fire.
Flames of blue, red and orange were dancing, licking and lapping up whatever life could be sucked from the black power beneath their orgiastic play. Once one flame stood erect another joined and both laid down on the bed of blue flame, only to uncoil and dance some more.
Standing on the big granite wave of this uneven kitchen floor he had to touch the wall for balance, while his muscles tautened from reflex. Xemi remarked to himself that it had a creator's fidelity to his own creation plastered all over it. Only someone who built it himself could remain faithful to such a catastrophe.
He walked around the house with no shirt on to the heckles of his exasperated aunt. He was tempted to walk around nude to see what the heckles would turn into.
At this point he still hadn't set foot outside the house. He feared the torrid sun and the prints it could leave. It was hot enough already in the house so he could not imagine voluntarily bathing in the rays of this sun for a promenade of some kind. Furthermore, he had developed a complex.
Before he went there, he had never thought about his skin colour. Apart from the fact that his father would comment on how dark his son had gotten after swimming in the glare of the sun, or people thinking he was Arabic, the topic never came to his mind.
But now, in this Somali village, all he heard was how light skinned or 'red' he was. Xemi was as vain as they come and he didn't want to go outside to get darker as that might dispel the adulation he was receiving.
So he spent most of his days catching flies and calculating ways of how to get out there, thinking a word here or look there might have signified someone pressing in his favour to his father who had the keys to this prison.
He had no clue what month, what day, what hour it was. He had nothing to measure time with. He went to bed when he was tired and woke up when he didn't feel tired.
There was no electricity apart from a few hours in the evening and then all was extinguished. After this, people had to use a gas lamp to continue what they had been doing before, but since Xemi didn't fancy the restless shadows that the flickering of the gas lamp would make, nor its eerie, unnerving click at odd intervals, he went to bed when the electricity was turned off, and never used it to stretch his waking hours.
One morning, he arose with noises coming from somewhere. In his dream he had been climbing on his father as he was praying. His father was trying hard to ignore him which only served to increase Xemi's excitement.
His sister copied him and now both were on each shoulder as his father continued to pray. From a kneeling position he got up, gently grabbing both of his children, flipped them in the air, and set them down, all the while whispering the prayers he knew by rote but not its meaning. The fact that he couldn't rebuke them without breaking his prayers made this game so fun.
But the noises continued in reality like his father had continued in his dream, making what he first saw something that was like a half dream. Remnants of the unreal clashing with fragments of the real, he drew the sheets from over his head for reality overthrew dream.
Two mice were frolicking in front of him. His heart suspended in mid beat. He could hear the high pitch sounds they were making as clearly now as thunder above his head. They jumped on and over each other, dancing, on the vinyl sheet floor, and the speed of their play was dazzling.
Suddenly they sensed his awakening, bolted to a corner and disappeared.
'This really is a prison,' Xemi lamented. 'I'm being punished. They want my spirit crushed.'
He had never seen a mouse before and now he was tortured with the sight of two. Reclining and putting his head back down on the pillow, almost in tears, the briskness of early morning entered him. The dread these mice filled him with was cleared a little by how good the refreshing air felt. He breathed deeply.
A breeze had entered the room, wafting around the room, wrapping itself around Xemi, lifting him up and carrying him out. He left behind the noise of scurry and concealment.
The sun was out but it was early. Though it was warm, it wasn't hot enough to affect him. Thinking first, in this manner, of how the sun would scar him, he realised that he would carry the twin demons of vanity and anxiety over skin complexion with him forever now, stalking him as he made his decisions, all because he received a couple compliments. What a ludicrous situation.
He looked around at the illuminated surroundings. The house was in the corner, the last one before a crossroad. He remembered the rocks that he had noticed on the left side of the house when he got out of the car the first night. They were more numerous than what he remembered and scattered almost in a perfect square.
'Who blew up that house?' Xemi mused, guessing that his aunt's house had not always been the last house on this street. The rocks showed faded signs of once being white washed.
The buildings beyond the remains of the destroyed house, on the other side of the road, looked shabbier than the ones on Xemi's side. He could tell the outer walls were crumbling. Evidently they had no funds to renovate and had not been in a pecuniary position to do so for a long time.
'This must be the rich side,' Xemi guessed, looking around him still.
As he was looking and moving he noticed his steps were creating a hollow like noise. He had been so absorbed by the outside world that he hadn't noticed what he was standing on. He stamped his foot to make sure that he wasn't hearing things. He heard it again, louder and metallic.
There was a door sticking out, with an orange plastic container, which looked like it used to contain vegetable oil, sliced in half, next to it. There was an old rope attached to it with fibres coming off. This was a water tank he was standing on.
'It looks like a submarine,' Xemi thought, 'with its top above surface. So this is where they keep their water?'
The well took up a third of the forecourt, another third had a mini garden with rocks instead of grass. The middle third was a pathway. The well wasn't round like the image he had of a well, but in the shape of a rectangular prism, curved at the top, and deep by the sound it gave when one walked on top of it.
Strange that he never considered the idea of a well in a place with no running water. He looked up and saw what looked like large mansions to the right. All white, some with a lurid dash of colour painted at the top and on the doors. The houses had slanting, metallic, roofs with grooves in them.
There was only one person around, and it was someone pushing a cart with big blue tubs in it. The man was some distance away but Xemi saw that he was not Somali. Or at least not ancestrally.
'So people emigrate to Somalia too,' he said to himself with a smile, as he heard a female shout 'biyoole!'
The window to his room had a ledge hewed out of smooth white stone. Xemi used his fingers to stroke the ledge in order to see if the stucco would leave any residue; saw that his fingers were clear, sat on it, and watched the man walk towards the woman who had shouted for him. The man was carrying water.
Xemi grabbed the dark green criss cross bars of the window and tucked his legs in. 'Not too bad,' he observed. 'Perfect even.'
It was getting hot now but his aunt's house spread a shadow over him so the sun never touched him. His demons quiescent, he thought he had found a good spot to watch the people that make up this little town for however long he would be there.
Chapter 10
There was no cumulus of clouds in the sky; no airplane with a dragging white streak on the blue opal; no disfigurement in the heavens under which Xemi was hanging from the bars of the window, leaning forward in an attempt to look closer at the girl walking by the house.
She was dressed in a casual black dress, a dark hijab, the one peculiar to Somalis, which covered everything around the face and hung around the shoulders and arms like a poncho. You didn't have to fix it or tie it back up like the other looser type of hijab because it never came undone.
Xemi always hated this hijab. It served too perfectly to its purpose of desexualisation. The one you had to fix at least sometimes came undone and the flick of the hijab over the shoulder was like the flick of the hair, and he enjoyed it when women did that so sensual of gestures. But you rarely see a Somali woman wear that kind of hijab unless it's some kind of function.
The girl passed by and entered the house next door. It was a little smaller than the one he lived in.
'Who lives there?' he asked Safia, who, when she had nothing to do, was always around him. He had said nothing to her since she had sat on a curb in the garden of rocks but she replied so quickly that Xemi thought that she was especially attentive to him in a morbid way.
'That's your father's house.'
This revelation surprised him. He didn't know his father had a house in Somalia.
'Who is that girl that lives there? His girlfriend?'
'No, quiet with that, you devil. She works for someone who rents it.'
The girl came back out to throw dirty water out on the street. Now she was only wearing a headwrap. She looked much younger than she had first appeared. The thought of his father with a thirteen year old girlfriend amused him.
'Why does he have a house here? He despises this place.'
The dread of an inescapable trap filled him once again. 'Was it for me that he built it?' Xemi wondered.
'He built it when he was abroad...for himself,' she answered, as if she sensed his thoughts.
His Somali improved much during his time here. It must have been dormant and since he understood but couldn't speak, it was quicker to grasp than starting from the bottom. Still he knew he spoke like a foreign child would, with gaps that disturbed his fluency and only using basic vocabulary.
'He built that house when he came to bring your grandmother, my mother, her false teeth. You remember that? Maybe you were too young.'
'How much money do they pay to live there?'
'I don't know.'
'Who keeps the money?'
'Him.'
'You liar. By rights, that money belongs to me. How dare you rob me?'
Xemi behaved barely above caprice and spoke to his aunt however it gave him the most pleasure. She tended to answer disrespect with dismissive silence.
He had not spoken to his father since he left. If he happened to be on the phone from somewhere abroad, the phone would be thrusted upon him but he waived it away like someone was offering him a chance at leprosy.
Whatever was important in the household, he would treat with contempt, and this phone was worshipped by the family. It was the way they got paid.
Night and day they were trying to reach or were waiting for phone calls from relatives abroad. His uncle had children from previous marriages who lived in various countries. He received a monthly payment from one of them and accosted the others when he needed more. The matron received money from her brother, Xemi's father.
Xemi himself was a perceptive young man and gathered his presence here was more important to the family than just for his cultural education.
Years before, during the scarce times Somalia was mentioned between them, there was a vexation that money was always asked of him whenever his father spoke to his relatives on the phone. He never gave them his number expressly for this reason as he hated getting pestered for something that he himself had very little of. It dawned on Xemi that if he wasn't there, the newly swollen river would dry sooner rather than later. He was sure his dad sent a decent amount of money for his son's upkeep.
Safia had gone back inside as the phone had rung. The sun had crept closer to the front of the house. Xemi also went inside. As his mind circled around the idea of fortunes, fragments of Safia talking on the phone and past conversations also came back to him.
'I'm expecting something...'
'Why would they be so implacable in my remaining here, trapped here against my will. What am I to them ?'
The mist perforated around him and things became clearer. He thought he could see now.
Chapter 11
Others came around who spoke some English. One was a sybarite whose dissipation exuded from the distended cheeks of someone on the edge of obesity. He, son of Harragodhe, was never called by his own name meaning his father was a more respectable person than he was. Whenever he spoke, one heard the muffle of excess weight, his small mouth forming into a comical oval no matter what he said. Although he spoke English, it was limited to basic expression: all bluntness and no butter; with the tinge of an Arabic accent. When he wasn't speaking he had the smirk of barely suppressed delinquency. Xemi liked him because no one respected him.
The room contained Xemi, son of Harragodhe, Safia and someone else who was also invited because he spoke English. Xemi was curious as to how this word spread that English speakers were wanted, reeling in this motley of multi-linguists. When he came in, one would hear Howa's voice booming:
'Mother, mother, the jereer is here.'
Her haughty tone was unmistakable.
The first time Xemi's eyes opened a little more than usual to see who it was as he was unused to Howa using that belligerent tone with visitors.
He was a short stocky middle aged man with long arms, a huge nose and no neck whose walk and demeanor was obsequious and deferential. A blue t-shirt, stretched through overuse, was hanging off his body and it appeared damp with sweat. Xemi shook his clammy, callused hand, looking into his visitor's shining, unblinking eyes while he said:
'Good afternoon, Xemi, how do you do? They call me Paul. It's a pleasure...'
Immediately after, he waived his hand in a dismissive manner as if to wave away any questions, objections, appeals.
'They call you Paul?'
Paul had a mischievous smile on his face and Xemi's own smile broke faster than whirlpool rapids.
'Why do they call you Paul?' Xemi asked in a voice shaking with mirth.
'Why do you ask ? That's just my name,' he replied with a shrug, looking down, sitting on the other bed, his mouth still showing traces of a smile.
Xemi doubled back in laughter. 'From what book or news article did he get that name from, because his mother didn't name him that,' Xemi thought to himself with amusement. 'Maybe he had just come up with that just before he came in,' Xemi thought suddenly and laughed again.
Howa walked past and Paul called her over. She had a look of disdain as she approached. Her body language said that him alone could never make her obey.
'Would you like some tea?' Paul asked Xemi.
He had placed heavy emphasis on 'would' to exhibit his grammatical knowledge.
Hilarity was going to his head now and Xemi found it difficult to compose himself.
'Yes, yes I would like some tea,' choking on his words, barely able to get the sentence out.
Howa didn't see what was so funny and walked away. Xemi hadn't met anyone like him before and hadn't come across many people whose interests were to impress him.
'Yes, indeed, you can have anything you want. You know your family is powerful here.'
'No, I don't know that. Are they rich ?'
'Ohh, yes,' purred Paul. 'Fabulously so.'
In his mind everyone who had relatives abroad was loaded.
'Ok, good. I need a woman.'
Paul deflated and leaned back so his head was resting against the wall.
'Forget about that my dear fellow, they are headaches.'
'You have a woman?'
'Yes. A big mistake. All she ever does is insult me.'
Xemi found it difficult to take him seriously. Every word he said for some reason increased the elation he felt. He tried hard to sound like an English aristocrat but the strain of attempting to pronounce it correctly made his voice seem nasal and whiny.
'Why does she insult you?'
'She's always complaining about money. She's a tiresome wench.'
'A wench?'
'Yes, a tiresome wench.'
He said this while swinging his arms a little bit and letting out a sigh of weariness as if casting off the oppression her image laid upon him.
'Haha. Let her leave, Paul, free yourself. Who is she to bother you like that?'
Xemi's voice was still breaking from trying to smother his laughter as an extremely queer sensation ran through him, like he was trying to put a triangle into a circular opening. It felt unnatural to call a Somali man 'Paul'.
This was a couple days earlier and now they were all gathered here. Paul was correcting the son of Harragodhe's English telling him to shape up the grammar. They never spoke English to one another only in Somali.
Playing up for Safia, son of Harraghode in turn grabbed a qitab from the dresser, waved it in front of him and proclaimed the holy book the only instruction he needed in this life. Paul snorted at the cheap melodrama. Noting his aunt's look of approval, Xemi snatched the qitab.
'You know what I think of this?' he asked a captivated public; 'do you want to know?' raising it high like a billowing torch; 'wouldn't you like to know?'; and threw it on the floor. Xemi really wanted to rankle his aunt and to test his limits. 'Six million reasons for death, six million for life. This is just one of them.' He then stamped on the book, a surge of nihilism intoxicating him. There was uproar. Safia rasped 'grab it'. The book was still under his foot. There were noises of shock, but still the son of Harragodhe and Paul had slight smiles on their faces.
'Allah, I beg you let me have that. Give it to me.'
Son of Harragodhe took the book and kissed it.
'Are you crazy, you just kissed my foot.' Xemi laughed.
'He doesn't know. He doesn't know what he's doing.'
Safia kept saying that he didn't know. Paul leaned back and said nothing. Harragodhe just let out a nervous laugh. If Xemi didn't know better he would have said Safia had actually changed colour. But that would have been imagination.
Xemi was in the highest of spirits. He loved the impression that he had made. Safia took the qitab and left, still muttering 'he doesn't know' like a prayer but this was for the mortal witnesses, indirectly imploring, to them who might spread it, that he was ignorant, and that it would be like talking about the actions of a child if they spoke about it in public.
But Xemi wasn't a child and he knew exactly what he was doing. He hoped this excellent show of symbolism would make it plain to them that he had no intention of assimilation. He knew people were hung for that sort of thing in Muslim countries but he couldn't care less. The bigger deal they would make of it the better.
Days later he was in the same room with Harragodhe who was telling him about the Russian hookers he used to patronise in the Emirates.
'You're lying. Are there even any Eastern Europeans over there?' Xemi goaded him.
'Wallah! I did. I say Wallah! I met her. Listen. I saw her in a hotel. I had a room there. I said to her come to my room to fuck. She said she would be happy to. I fucked her. You know what I did? I finished. She asked for money. I said what? Wallah. I say Wallah. I punched her in the face and told her to get out. I say wallah.'
Xemi laughed incredulously.
'Who believes that?'
'I say wallah!'
At this point Yonas entered with more energy than Xemi had ever seen him. He greeted Harragodhe like a good friend. He twisted his nipple.
'Leave me alone or I swear I'll tell auntie,' son of Harragodhe whined.
Safia had a soft spot for him because he kept calling her auntie in a sweet, childish sort of way and that endeared him to her. Yonas just laughed at him. Very quickly Paul also entered. Yonas knew him too and greeted him warmly by tapping his pockets.
'We'll get tea with that,' Paul said, pushing him away.
He smelled like fish that day. 'Maybe he was working hard somewhere,' Xemi speculated. His smell reminded Xemi of something.
'Hey, Yonas. What is 'jereer?''
'What, where did you get from?' Yonas replied, obviously suppressing his urge to laugh.
'I heard someone call Paul that. By the way, they call him Paul.'
Yonas snorted a little.
'Yeah they call him Paul. But no, he's no Jereer. Never,' he said with feeling, in a slow, sensuous way, while looking at Paul who, in turn, was smiling sheepishly.
Yonas then turned back to Xemi who was on the verge of hysterical laughter and started laughing himself.
'Yea, wallahi he's a Jereer! You know with the...' he made a sign with his forefinger and thumb signifying a big nose.
Clueless originally, he realised now what people were talking about. When he was younger he never came across many Somalis and the few he met were family so he didn't see variation. They all looked alike but he thought that was because they were family.
His father always made a distinction between Somalis and other Africans as if there was an especial difference between the two African people. He said that 'they never smile, whereas we do.' Jereer meant black person but in a derogatory way.
Xemi was musing.
'So racial hierarchy exists here too?' He thought of the guy who in the morning carried the water. 'Bet he also was referred to as jereer.'
'If he's a jereer then so is he,' Xemi exclaimed, pointing at Harragodhe.
'No, he's not. He's an Arab ! Haha! He thinks he is anyway, because he lived there for two years. His accent changed; feigning bad Somali to complete the look. Was that... a grammatical error ? Well, I'm persuaded ! He's not Somali anymore, he's an Arab ! Haha! You think they will accept you, brother?'
Yonas was in an ebullient mood. At that point Xemi's uncle came in with his cane and menace. 'What are you guys laughing about?' he asked.
Harragodhe was vexed at the teasing. He didn't like that Xemi laughed with Yonas.
'These guys are all demons. He, God help us, stepped on a qitab!' Harragodhe blurted out red faced, sweating even before he said anything, guilty before he committed the crime.
His uncle stood frozen still. Xemi was sure that Harragodhe was trying to curry favour with the elderly to clean his reputation. Maybe he was in a similar situation to himself and he wanted to go back to dealings with Russians in Abu Dhabi.
Yonas hadn't been there when Xemi stomped on the book and the smile was wiped off his face. His uncle didn't move. Xemi denied ever having done anything of the sort. The tension snapped. An easier target was found.
'Boy, you think that's something to play around with, to joke about, fragment of the devil?'
He, in turn, swore on his life that it was true. Being of ill repute, he was dismissed by his uncle, leaving shortly after haranguing the son of Harragodhe for 'animal-like behaviour'.
Yonas watched him go and turned to Harragodhe.
'Have you lost your mind?' he whispered at him, swinging a scything kick. 'Madman, you don't say things like that you fool!'
'Haha, you want me dead ?' Xemi told him playfully. His mood had returned to indifference. The fear others had for his uncle had infected him but it vanished as soon as he left.
Yonas was furious. He kept kicking Harragodhe saying that even if it was true, it was dangerous to accuse someone of something like that. Son of Harragodhe got up with tears in his eyes, blubbering that he was going to tell 'auntie' he beat him up.
Xemi by this time changed his mind and thought it was good his uncle knew he did that. Xemi was sure his uncle believed the story but pretended not to for fear of the unpredictable. 'I'm not here joking and laughing with people, I'm here trampling Korans. That's what everyone needs to know,' Xemi thought to himself. 'Let them know there is no redemption for me and I need to be released or I disrespect everything. Yes, all this was good and beneficial.'
Both Yonas and Paul left shortly after for their tea. Xemi was left to brood until a car pulled up and someone jumped out peremptorily shouting orders which were unintelligible to Xemi's ears.
This was an unassuming, average built, shaggy, curly haired man with big hands and looked like he could have been Safia's son. He was her nephew. His father had been one of the coterie who had welcomed them the night of arrival.
His cousin had just arrived from a trip and came to look upon his foreign relative. He spoke no English and directly after he came in he sat next to Xemi on his bed.
'Hey cousin. Let's go,' he ordered, pulling his arm to force him up.
Under normal circumstances Xemi would have thrown his arm off for getting too familiar with him but his brashness had a disarming effect on him.
It was late afternoon and the sun was losing its power. The thought of being chaperoned by a stranger in a strange village for some reason didn't enter his mind as something material.
He acquiesced because that was the mood he was in, curious about what this village was made of.
He went to his suitcase, picked up some socks and put his shoes on. He was still the plaything of his twin demons, vanity and anxiety, and needed something to protect him even from a weaker sun. The jacket he put on was big, black, puffy, ostentatious. He pulled the hood over his head.
His bemused cousin, Abdi, smirking, asked 'Are you ready?'
Without waiting for an answer he grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the house.
Chapter 12
'He must think I'll make a break for it,' Xemi said to himself, confused and bemused as his cousin had locked his arm around his own.
They had just left the house through the main entrance, passing the rocks scattered by the front door; and now turned into a passage leading to a cluster of buildings which was the main road of the village.
All the buildings were single story and white. Some had metal doors of the primary colours, blue, red and yellow. The road was hard, of eroded sand, and complimented the natural blandness of the area until the most laughable anachronism caught one's attention.
Walking towards a destination unknown, Xemi looked down and saw a ditch in between two rows of buildings, a ditch of circa twelve by ten dimensions.
This ditch had an array of trash piled up on top of each other. It was about one fifth full with modern waste: plastic bottles, cardboard materials, discarded apparel, even shards of glass were seen in it. Once people flaunted their coca cola bottles, they then wished to add to their coolness by throwing it in the ditch in a sign of nonchalance and satisfied worldliness.
Xemi wondered whether that ditch was dug for that purpose and what they would do once the ditch was full. In fact, it was a river which had dried and now used in the most flippant way.
Mulling over it for a second he did question what one was to do with trash when there were no bin bags and no one to collect them if they even had them. No waste was ever collected at the house, Xemi definitely knew that.
'These people have skipped a whole era to come to this,' he remarked to himself.
Xemi was aghast to be associated with people who lived in this manner and told himself that he was just an observer and no kin to them. He certainly looked like an out of towner with his jacket and hoodie up and big baggy jeans in style at the time but not there.
He looked around and at first glance all the people he saw looked alike. Every single person could be related to one another and probably were.
Everyone wore a long sleeve dress shirt of some light hue, but nothing bright. Most wore light blue or brown. Some wore khaki trousers, but most wore sarongs with flip flops or open toe sandals.
Peculiarly, there was a large proportion of people who had canes or walking sticks. Because of the proportion and the way they were swinging the canes, one concluded that it was a trend to have a cane in this village.
Needless to say that everyone in view was a man. There was absolutely not a single woman to be seen on this main road. Men walked close to each other locking arms like his cousin had locked his arm around his.
'So that's why?' Xemi realised. 'A trend?' He made a gentle motion indicating that he wanted to put his hand in his pocket. His cousin took the hint and let him go.
A couple of the buildings had open doors and looking inside he saw they had wares to sell. The same ones found in the ditch. People clustered in front of these shops, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting in plastic beach chairs. More than one turned their eyes to the aberration with his thick black jacket and hoodie up walking in the still warm daylight.
They came upon a dwelling and Abdi gestured to follow inside. It was a metal shed with a black cloth for a door. The cloth was pushed aside to reveal men sitting around drinking tea and chewing khat. One was Ali Jakaf.
He greeted him with a waraya! and asked if he wanted tea. Space was made for the two cousins to sit. They duly sat.
A pretty girl brought the tea. She was light skinned, cute and stood on the side, leaning against the wall after she put the tea down. She was smiling, looking at Xemi. He seemed to be very attractive in this country.
Xemi smiled in return. She had a yellow streak on her teeth. He had wires of shimmering metal.
'You like her ? She'll let you piss in her pussy if you want,' Ali Jakaf said seriously.
Xemi burst out in laughter.
'I'm not into that, but she's cute. Why does she have that yellow streak on her teeth?'
Xemi had seen that before and wondered where it came from.
'She chews this,' Ali replied, holding up a stem of khat. 'You want some?'
Xemi declined while continuing to look at the girl.
'I can't be with a girl who had her clit cut. I don't even know how men can stand it. It's supposed to signify a present to the husband but the ribbons are like the scales of a snake to me. I don't want to touch it; and its sight, like looking at a gypsy who had her nose chopped off, a victim of torture. All I would feel is pity or revulsion. This girl got cut too?'
'No. She'll let you see if you want.'
Speaking in English she could not understand what was said and the event was rare enough for her to remain standing in a room full of men, breaking convention. He whispered to her that Xemi wanted to see her pussy. All she did was giggle, look down and back at Xemi. Xemi was surprised she was still an unmolested woman.
'She's a hooker? I thought everyone here was cut.'
Ali replied in the negative but that she was down for whatever.
There was a commotion in front of the den. Ali jumped with surprising quickness to see what was happening, shouting: 'What did he say?' ready for whatever. Abdi told Xemi to make their exit.
They left through the back. As Xemi got up he noticed a guy sitting in the army fatigues of the Askari. Next to the door was an automatic rifle, far from the owner.
Xemi was stunned. Either this guy was extremely stupid or really confident that no one would grab that rifle and use it for the purpose it was created. The rifle was leaning close to the entrance which didn't even have a door. Anyone could have reached in and grabbed it.
'This village must be close-nit with everyone knowing everyone for there to be so much trust, or else this was frightful, criminal negligence.'
His mind went back to the girl. He was simply gagging for a lay, but he didn't know what to do about it.
He noticed more rocks around the dwellings, businesses and some which lay under acacia trees on which people sat, smoking cigarettes or talking to others. These trees were the only vegetation that he saw. In fact he hadn't seen a single thing resembling the exoticness he was expecting from Africa.
They went off the main road and it was getting dark, the sun having set. The lights of heaven's palace were invisible and the lights of man's earth didn't exist. And what's more the back lane had more rocks.
'Why on earth are there so many rocks everywhere?' he asked himself.
He was wary that he might trip over one or cut open his shoes on another. Abdi manoeuvred like he knew the spot of every rock in this village. It wasn't just the rocks that made Xemi tread carefully.
These natural passages of hard, dry desert weren't flat and at various points had bumps sticking out. When one stepped on this protruding earth, it felt like they would pierce one's shoe and it hurt if you put too much power into your step.
Xemi didn't anticipate that the soil of dry deserts would be so much harder than the stone they paved the roads with back home. He stepped as softly and lightly as possible wondering why he actually came out.
As they walked onwards, a figure hastened towards them. Once he came closer, Xemi recognised him as Paul, his sleeves rolled up, his top buttons hanging loosely.
Xemi greeted him with warm surprise but noticed some frost between his cousin and Paul, moreso from his cousin who looked apprehensive. Paul spoke in Somali.
'What are you up to, you taking him around?'
Abdi replied in the affirmative with a one word answer.
'Oh yeah ? Can I come ?'
Xemi thought this a wonderful idea but Abdi scratched his beard and mumbled in the negative out of the corner of his mouth almost in a growl.
Xemi was shocked and embarrassed by this refusal and Paul slunk back into the darkness after saying goodbye, towards what resembled a shantyville in the background.
'He didn't want to be seen with Paul,' Xemi concluded, frowning, growing angry. 'But he surely wants to be seen with me.'
This whole trip had the feel of someone walking with the head of an animal they shot, flaunting it for public admiration. They finally stopped at a house.
They went inside the house which was similar to the house of his uncle. Abdi growled something which was difficult for Xemi to understand. His Somali had improved immeasurably but some things flew by him. He heard a reply which to him sounded like:
'God. Wait, wait one second !'
Abdi grinned at Xemi and showed him to a bedroom. There were a couple of children inside, young, one was barely out of the womb. There was one bed and a carpet with a divan.
There was a separation which led to another room and it was separated by long navy curtains. It was moving meaning someone must have fled to that room a moment before.
Abdi introduced his children. One looked beautiful and Xemi remarked on its eyes.
'The mother must be good looking considering the baby's father,' he said to himself as he looked into the baby's moist brown eyes.
He wouldn't have a chance to see her as she came in with her face fully covered. Only her beautiful eyelashes and shining, magnetic eyes showed. Xemi could still sense that her face was smiling and she looked upon him with the curiosity everyone else looked at him.
She was introduced as the matron and Xemi waved instead of extending his hand. He figured she wouldn't want to shake his hand since she didn't want to show her face to him.
'What's going on there,' he wondered. 'Maybe it's embarrassment about a bad breakout.'
He had known Muslim girls who wear religious apparel only when they want to hide a physical defect.
'Let me see your face,' Xemi asked her in clumsy but endearing Somali.
He imagined her with fleshy lips and the exoticness missing from the country itself.
'God, no, brother.'
She fended off her laughing husband who tried to pull it off. She made her escape through the separation to the other room. Her gait looked like she was younger than her husband. Xemi asked how many kids his cousin had and he replied with six.
'Wow,' Xemi let out. 'Why do you have so many?'
He replied with a shrug.
'Lets go,' he said abruptly once again and Xemi followed him out. It was pitch black outside and Xemi had to follow close. As soon as they stepped back in Xemi's room, Abdi said farewell and added:
'This is your village. You're going nowhere,' and left to speak to Safia in the forecourt. Xemi was bemused at his cousin's abrupt manner.
Of their promenade he remembered nothing but anachronisms and monochrome. The buildings were all the same and the people likewise. This sudden wanderlust, its nothingness and lack of impression made him listless. Then he remembered the beautiful eyelashes and couldn't help but smile just a little.
*
Paul kept his arms close to his body when he walked so as to make them more circumspect, more natural. He had long arms compared to the rest of his body and had developed this complex since a child when he was teased for his longer than average arms. Sometimes this teasing could become vile, the vilest kind in fact.
If someone were to say something nasty about his small head or large nose he would be pained but brush it off. Barbs about his arms however would squeeze his heart just like it would when he was a child. So he tucked his arms in when he walked and when he noticed them hanging freely he corrected them like people tuck their wayward shirts in.
Approaching the ramshackle of indigo blue metal shacks he went to one he called home and stepped inside. His senses still smarted with the humiliating rebuff he got from Xemi's cousin. The man would not even look him in the eye.
When word first came to him of a boy from abroad who either refused or was unable to speak to those around him but came from an English speaking country he was intrigued.
As a youth he worked on ships where he had learned English through diligence and a perceptive mind geared for language acquisition. When he returned he was destitute but fancied that it was temporary and managed to persuade a woman to share his vision. Paul could speak English after all.
He married and moved to the temporary abode which had started to have the smell of permanence. He worked at a bakery where he simply could not raise the money to move up so to speak, thanking God that he hadn't been burdened with children to sink him further still. He heard of Xemi and thought his knowledge of English could pay off in some way.
Everything was going well until this night where the insolence of one man shattered the pride of another. Certainly he took a leap by asking to accompany them and banking on Xemi's favour but he did not expect the cousin to slap him away like a pest in such a manner.
He stepped into the shack he called a temporary home and met the glare of a harpy. The shack was only big enough for a mattress, two stacks of folded clothing on the side and some cooking paraphernalia. On the mattress sat his wife.
Stocky and never beautiful, she was however once passable and even amiable, that's why Paul married her, but destitution takes its toll on everyone and the ugliness surrounding her became the ugliness within her. In Paul's eyes she was the embodiment of spite and moral collapse.
The door of this shack was such that it had only one hinge at the bottom. Paul had to lift the door of the shack up and then slide it back so he could cover the opening he had just come through.
'What beastly looking arms. Inhuman!' his wife burst out venomously, knowing where the button was and pressed it.
Paul cringed. The habitation was so small that he could reach his wife's face without adjusting his feet.
'They're useful for some things,' he said in English.
'A different tongue, amazing tricks. Maybe you have a trick that can change these walls into something else. Brick maybe; something decent ?' she said scathingly, her hand on her face. 'Rapist. And you can't even do that right, you worthless liar.'
'Thank god you're barren.'
'Wait till my lover gets me pregnant then we'll see who's barren.'
'Prostitute yourself all you want. What's it to me.'
'You're the prostitute, displaying yourself for that family who simply will not have you.'
They were sitting side by side now as the only place in this shack where one could sit was the mattress.
For the last comment Paul had the urge to strike but they were so close together it would have been a hassle to unfold his long arms to smash her in the mouth.
'I keep making mistakes,' he thought. 'I never can make the right decision.'
The anguish of a lost life suffused through him.
'Why don't you release me,' his wife suddenly asked him.
His wife's changed tone warmed him.
'Because like mine, your body is also useful for certain things,' he said while stretching his long arms for some more brutality.
