Chapter 5
Afrah and her brother, the little exhibitionist Mohamed, were walking towards the river in order to get water. They walked along a road that was in truth, a longer route, a more spacious route, for different reasons, some more apparent than others. This road was more frequented by men, and was wider because cars passed there. Normally, a girl of her age, fifteen and sexually mature, would be frowned upon if she used this road, but she was heavily pregnant, recently married, which gave her privileges beyond her age range. Now in the eyes of her village she had the same authority and freedom as a matron.
As she walked on the roads sparse of rocks but of the same hue as the backstreets, a light brown, desert colour, a car appeared. It drove towards the two siblings, approaching from behind. They stopped on the side to watch it rumble and blow up dust. The car was a yellow hummer, flashy and modern, driving faster than most cars they had seen, simply because it had more horsepower and the owner made sure everyone knew it. It slowed down as it came closer to Afrah and Mohamed and then came to a complete stop. They blinked a couple times because of the dust. The driver put the tinted windows down.
'Salaam, uncle,' Afrah greeted, as a man with a benign face smiled down.
The driver turned the engine off, quickly transferred the keys to his other hand, put the keyring through his index finger and casually put his hand where the window had descended into. At all times he would not speak, no matter who it was that was on the other side of the car window, unless he had his bunch of keys hanging off his ring finger.
He greeted Afrah; a heavy-set man with a moustache, with something snivelling about him, but he was a nice man. A wealthy man. He noticed Mohamed was staring at the wheels of his car, mesmerised by the shining rims in which he could see himself. They didn't have a full length mirror at home, and though the reflection distorted his appearance, the little exhibitionist still looked like he was examining his appearance. His grandmother's vanity had started to rub off on him.
The driver extended his arm towards the boy, flicked his bunch of keys in the air, tapped the boy on his shoulder. The boy, lost in self examination, jumped, noted first the bunch of keys which the man flicked once again, and then looked at the man smiling down at him. The man himself was satisfied that the boy noticed not him, but the keys, and retracted the arm back.
'Mohamed, how are you?'
'Good, uncle. As God wills.'
Both the driver and Afrah chucked.
'A man of God, before becoming a man himself. Ha! Precocious.'
The driver, whose name was Hassan, and whose obesity gave him a queer youthfulness, looked around the car, found a candy bar, transferred it to the hand with the keys, and passed it to the boy, who took it excitedly. He flicked his keys in the air again, before placing it, with his hand, on the window sill of the car.
'Let that be a lesson to you. Say the right thing at the right time, you will be rewarded.' After a moment's reflection he added, ' But maybe you know that already,' and laughed behind his white smile, clenching his brilliant teeth, without separating his lower and upper teeth.
Hassan turned to Afrah.
'So? What of the election? Will your brother get it?' he asked pleasantly.
'Hopefully, but I don't know. Will you vote for him?'
'Oh, maybe. I could possibly do so. Your brother would be following in my brother's footsteps if he won,' he said pointedly, saying what he had intended when he stopped to speak with the new matron.
'Yes uncle, I pray he has similar blessings.'
'Things can be done, abroad, that you can't do here,' Hassan continued.
His brother owned a business in America and sent him close to a fortune every month. This remittance made Hassan the wealthiest man in the village, and he did nothing for it. Like royalty he expressed the frantic flamboyance of unworked for wealth in the ways that he could, and did so, not through jewelry, but through his key bunch.
He had put locks everywhere he could: his house, his car, his multiple cabinets, but not out of safety. In a village that didnt even lock their houses, these keys were a more powerful symbol. He, at least, had something you could rob, and a reason to lock everything up, and wanted everyone to know it. He tried to do it subtly, because you need a reason to show your key bunch, and so, drove his car wherever he could, and permanently gripped his car keys as a pretext to flash the metal.
'Yes, maybe I will vote for him. How old is he now?'
'Seventeen.'
Hassan showed momentarily high, excited, enthusiasm which endeared him to many people and with a raised vocal pitch said:
'That's the perfect age. He can pass for fourteen and then catch up in school and make something of himself. But then again Aaden is fourteen, so he can pass as ten, and the younger you are, the greater the network you can create.'
Afrah snorted.
'Aaden is more girl than boy and he'll be scared to come out of the house when he goes there.'
'He'll never be a man!' Mohamed added with vehemence in customary partisanship.
Hassan laughed. It's amusing to see siblings stick up for their brother which is what he wanted to see before he left. And having got what he fished for, he wished them good fortune and left.
Both children watched him go and were unsure if they disliked him or not. He had good nature but sometimes he seemed like he mocked those around him. And the keys, they both thought, what was that about?
'Is Abdullah going to win?' Mohamed asked his sister. 'Is he too old to pass for fourteen?'
'If he doesn't go, we will send you.'
The boy's eyes began to water. His fear of strangers, especially without his Afrah around him, displayed itself once more. The family hadn't told him that she would be leaving the house soon and that he would have a stranger for a maid.
'You like to walk around naked. They like to walk around naked. What's the problem?'
'I won't go!'
Giggling at the boy's emotion, Afrah walked on, while Mohamed closely followed her ambling footsteps. The river wasn't far away.
Chapter 6
There is a trait, a characteristic, that seems to wield an immense restorative and redemptive power, capable of correcting all manner of smirched reputations. When one attains this attribute, no matter what else could be or has been said of that person, public perception will wipe his slate clean and endow him with a worth and value of considerable significance.
Yasser had been aware of this purgative for some time and has been in pursuit of it ever since. The pursuit of respectability. It is this magic cloak of respectability which covers all imperfections, that has been in his keen sights ever since that fiasco of a prank had stained his reputation. Once it happened, the aftermath of it that is, Yasser did what he could to salvage matters. Not in conscience, self respect, or moral examination, but in the eyes of society, as he didn't think he had anything to feel remorse for, morally.
It was a dumb prank, nothing more. His concern was how people perceived him. The first thing that he did was he stopped hanging out with kids of his own age or younger, at least. He avoided being seen with them, and when he was seen with them, he acted like he was doing them a favour by patronising their circles. He had a manner that was perceived as a bully persuasion, but this was in fact an attempt at adult condescension. Things had been going well. He was entering houses that were forbidden to him by using Xemi as foil to gain entry and he could see the folds of respectability wrapping itself around him until it was snatched from his shoulders. His father did this with his deranged exploit, stealing the Askari's money, and Yasser couldn't believe fortune's disfavour. But still, testament to his character, he continued his search for respectability.
He was young, sixteen, but he knew what adults wanted and what that label meant, what it could give you. He started his assault from a basic premise which his instinctive powers of observation had imparted to him in his early teens. Both men and women were only interested in one thing, he observed and noted, to his bemusement. They were interested in someone who could help them wile away their waking hours. They exalted people who could hold a conversation, who could entertain them with social skill, and eloquence. Once you were known as a wonderful talker, you could be assured of that title 'respectable'. This was something Yasser was a master at.
He knew what to do at the right time, when to speak, how to speak and was never flustered or awkward. And he used this to his advantage at every opportunity. Whenever he was let into a home, he was sure to establish a worthwhile relationship with particularly the matrons who had married but not given birth yet, who were bored and did nothing all day, and he did this by simple, pleasant conversation. As such, however consequential the prank was, he had been recovering from it, when his father had all but destroyed his progress. Yasser figured the two stains of his father and his prank would remain on him, indelible, like a birthmark forever now no matter how well he could speak and entertain. This meant that he had no chance of being a respectable citizen of this village. He decided to enter the election so that he could try to attain it elsewhere.
Every ten years an election is held in the village. One teenage boy would be elected at each election to be sent out and live abroad, study and find success. It was paid for by a pool collected from within the extended family of the tribe, which encompassed the whole village, and though every teenage boy automatically entered, only a few truly entered, because only a few had a realistic chance of winning. In this election there were three frontrunners: Yasser, Abdullah and Aaden. Yasser fancied his chances and declared to himself that if this village had a heart he would be the one elected, seeing as everyone should know his irredeemable position in the village.
He made his way home from another house call he had made to a bored matron, delighting her with his liquid stream of small talk. But he didn't go directly home. He decided on a detour towards a spot on the outskirts of the village; an unusual little place that for Yasser had an almost sinful attraction. He had come across it after his wanderings when he was released from prison as punishment for the prank. The first time he saw it, he thought it was a hallucination driven by the shock of release from that torture pit and doubted his senses and challenged reality. From fear he fled but curiosity brought him back, enthrallment made him stay. He saw again what he saw the first time and this second time turned into a regular occurrence that had the air of blasphemous idolatry about it.
This place was thirty minutes from the nearest house in the village if you walked strongly; navigating your way around the rocks that were a feature of the village landscape. The midday sun was in pitiless form but it barely tickled Yasser, who didn't even squint his eyes when he was staring at the light of the equatorial sun. He was used to it, the rocks and the dust that the wind played with as he moved towards his destination. From a distance he could see it, a tree in the middle of the rocks.
A startling tree, triple his height, circa five metres; with a long skeletal appearance as it had a thin trunk and sparse branches, its ends having no leaves. The tree had red berries and these berries attracted what he came to see. It was at this particular time of year, when the red berries came out, that one could find this tree bursting with the sight and song of hundreds of little birds eating those berries. Small yellow and red birds which sang one after the other in the most disturbing and disorienting manner which induced a state akin to narcotic irreality. In a village that only had the odd bird of prey, such a spectacle was something out of a fantasy.
Yasser approached the tree with the crunching sound of his leather sandals distinctly audible, and spit out the dust that was irritating his throat.
'There's too much noise,' he muttered aloud. 'And now my voice,' he added fearfully. 'Too much noise.'
Excitement quickly turned to bitter disappointment. The berries hadn't attracted the birds yet and it left him alone in the desert with the rocks, the tree and its purple berries. He snatched at the lowest branch and brought it down to eye level. The awful sound of violent tearing resounded in the empty desert as Yasser stripped the branch of the fruits that it was perhaps saving for another living creature.
'But what creature is different from another?' Yasser mused to himself, and sat for a while, eating them one by one. They were hard and sour, but these facts gave him pleasure. 'If they wanted it they should have been here before me.'
As he sat, imagining the state the vibrating song of birds would lead him into, drowsy already, he suddenly spotted a curious rock of which he hadn't been aware of before. Crunching the berries in his teeth, he walked and saw in between several other larger rocks an inscription of some kind, in letters that were unfamiliar to him. He was a passable student and could recognise the scripts of various languages, though he could only speak Somali and barely read it. The only language he could truly read was Koranic script, because the teaching of Koran was central to the Somali school system.
These letters were unusual yet had a curious similarity to the Arabic script. He traced the letters made with deep grooves in the white stone and tried to make sense of it, but failed. A momentary flicker of insight told him that this was the language of the people who used to live in this area, the original Somalis. This discovery made him thoughtful. Not because of how it affected him, the way he perceived himself, the past or ancestry. No, not any of those. He thought of ways that he could use the idea of autochthony as an interesting topic of conversation in his house visits, like he always did, judging items on their suitability for interesting discourse rather than the historical or sociological value they intrinsically had. But he had to be delicate and tread carefully. People might think he was hostile to religion if he wasn't careful. Not once did he consider the meaning of what that inscription said or who or what happened to the person who wrote it, but he did consider this a useful piece to help him in this election season. But one had to wait for the right place and the right time before using it.
He sat for half an hour looking at the sky, waiting for the birds, hoping that his excursion would be justified. When they didn't come, he went home.
Chapter 7
'Do you respect me?' Ali whené asked his son while looking at him intently. In front of him were stems of leafless khat. 'Tell me the truth.'
Most of Yasser's social nous had to be used with his father who was becoming more and more unhinged as time progressed. Yasser had a stem in his mouth that his father had discarded. He himself didn't chew as of yet.
'Of course, I respect you father, why wouldn't I?'
'You see I had no choice.'
'I see it clearly.'
Yasser had the platter of sought for answers at hand, and he offered them with languid ease. This particular conversation had been had several times already between father and son but Yasser still managed to convey the attention of a new 'father and son talk', like an actor having to do a scene over and over again, and seamlessly falling into the character the circumstances of the scene required.
'I had to notify them of my existence.'
'And you did, father.'
'Why should I have to work as an Askari when no one else in the family works at all! But I have to be somewhere every day and can only leave at a certain time? What justice is that?
Why only me?'
'What did Blaad say?'
Though they were father and son, and the son was fifteen, their relationship was that of equals.
'All I wanted was recognition and justice. I don't mind working as long as I'm not the only one.'
'What did Blaad say?' Yasser asked again.
'Whatever happened with my former comrades, the years of forced breadwinning was a greater humiliation than any slap I received. It was a challenge to my family right! My right to equitable treatment, to not work if no one else does !'
'I understand you, father.'
Yasser waited for him to answer his question.
'It was never about the money, but about dignity. I told Blaad so and gave him back the money. Now they will be forced to give me a pension, this family of mine, forced to acknowledge my existence.'
'Yes, father. You exist now, through this pension. Precisely through this pension. Only through this pension. But who has granted you this pension? Omar?' Yasser asked calmly, dissimulating the eagerness which was fixing to burst within him. He was curious as to how the relationships work between those who live abroad and the ones who live in Somalia in this complex system of remittances. Soon he might be in similar circumstances.
'I don't care who it is, so long as my status as a member of the family is acknowledged by action.'
'Why didn't they acknowledge you, father?' Yasser asked his father, already knowing the answer. He asked him only because it made his father feel the curious sensations of pride and magnanimity every time he spoke about it. 'Let them speak about themselves and captivate themselves, while I talk less but come out as 'good company' was Yasser's mantra.
'Because I'm undemanding, unobtrusive, understanding,' Ali exclaimed proudly. He considered all these terms synonyms for humility.
'When I married, I didn't ask for any money to start with and accepted what was given, which was a pittance, a gratuity. I accepted this house as a home when it has planks and stakes for ramparts,' (they lived in the same area as Afrah and Abdullah), 'and I took a position with the Askari, quiet and simple, waiting for someone to notice that this doesn't compute. A member of the royal family tribe now a member of the military police, grasping a subsistence salary. Someone surely will notice, and make restitution, I said to myself, but no one did.'
'But now they have. And it's a dignified restitution.'
Ali puffed his chest out at his son's approval.
His son however knew the facts. Whatever pension his father would get would be worse than the subsistence salary he used to receive from the military and so difficult times were to come.
Ali, satisfied that his son respected him, for now, tomorrow he would ask the same question again, turned to his son's business.
'When is that election of yours?'
'On the first day after rainfall.'
'Soon, then, days even, maybe... And?'
'Well, father, we will see, God willing. I have a good feeling, but...things have been complicated.'
Ali flinched at his son's rebuke, a sudden unpleasantness. He started chewing his khat more and neither his anxious chewing nor his feverish self justification could mask it, that all his words were a plea for Yasser not to lose this election. They both noted and acknowledged it with the silence that laid heavy upon them.
