Chapter 11
Xemi woke up with the same feeling that had made it so easy for him to find sleep to begin with. A feeling similar to peacefulness but closer to joy. For the first time in his young life, Xemi had experienced the feeling of being in total control of where and how one lived. What one does and how one does it. Who one sees and how one sees them. One day one can be here, and the next somewhere else, beholden to no one, subject only to one's means and satisfaction. For someone who had lived with a vagabond father all his life this was as near to heaven as one could get.
The morning after his first night in his new house he found himself looking at his belongings, scattered around his room; and as he did so, the disorder warmed him little by little.
'Now why does messiness make me feel more warm and comfortable? Is that because...'
There was only a vague realisation that he had grown up in a household with no stay at home mother that kept things tidy, with his father not being the type to clean the house every day, and that this messiness was something of his childhood which had left its imprint on him. Despite his new heaven there were things of earth that made up the clouds around him.
'Maybe if my mother had been there I wouldn't like this messiness now,' he thought to himself, smiling, feeling a strange contentment that his mother hadn't been there so he could profit from the messiness that he always seemed to find everywhere, a lot of it his own doing.
'Better than being anal about -'
Suddenly a more recent memory came to him, that of Mayloun and Howa's room filled with clutter, more than any room he had ever soon, piles of clothes that they seemed to sleep on, that he himself sometimes dozed on. Instantly the pleasant warmness that Xemi had been feeling, that was only mild in nature, consumed him completely, such a warmness that his lips trembled at the intense and overwhelming warmth, made out of pure emotion, so perfect that it was petrifying. He looked around his room to make reality take the place of memory, and eradicate the perfect warmth suffusing through him as if frightened that he might turn ablaze. But reality kept inducing the flight of memory. As he was trying to compose himself, he heard the sound of mice on the naked floorboards of his new room. Again his mind cast back to his time in Somalia.
'How?' he asked himself in amazement with the images almost clearly in front of his eyes. 'And so fast. How did they materialise so fast? This is...they really did a number on me.'
He laughed aloud. The thought came to him to move again because of the mice but he decided to stick it out. He liked the overall house and the amenities were close by.
He got out of bed, made himself presentable, went shopping, and came back home. His housemate was there, a slim, oval eyed Kazak girl whose name was Emily. She lived in the house along with her boyfriend, a short stocky Kazak man with apelike arms. A tall and masculine Indian woman made up the rest of this household.
Emily was eating a bowl of cereal in the narrow living room which had a small table on which she was sitting. As he was hauling the shopping bags to the kitchen she asked:
'Did you go shopping?'
He replied:
'How did you know?'
After a moment of careful consideration, she smiled; and as she smiled, there was a little white rivulet of milk which started to run from the corner of her mouth down her chin. Since her skin was white, the white stream of milk made it look like her skin was turning into moving liquid. She didn't immediately wipe it off and Xemi stopped to watch its course. It had started dripping from her chin.
'Does she not notice or does she not care?' he wondered.
Xemi was extremely pleased at having enthralled her to that extent. He laughed a little and went to the kitchen to cook. He didn't usually cook but today he was cooking because Hyacinthe was coming over. Emily came over to wash her dishes. Xemi half expected her to have a perpetual trickle of milk dribbling down but she however had wiped it off disappointingly.
'This was like the cockroach crawling on the kid's leg in Somalia,' he thought amusingly, warming over. 'He didn't notice -'
He stopped dead still and frowned.
'Again with the memories?'
Emily saw him at the stove and asked:
'You can cook?'
He burst out in real laughter. Normally he would be embarrassed by someone like this but for some reason her stupid questions endeared her to him. It was the childish nature of it that did it.
'Yes, I have been cooking since I was twelve,' he replied, as he prepared to put the salmon in the oven.
'Twelve?' she repeated. 'But why ? Your parents didn't cook for you?'
She had disarmed him. He looked at her childishly large eyes.
'My father did cook for us. I ate it until he started cooking and bringing Somali food from women who were sorry that his wife had left him. I didn't like this Somalification, so sudden. So I started cooking for myself. Not a single Somali influence was allowed. Not even a spice !'
Emily looked at him now as one does a curiosity.
'I was hostile to the culture.'
'You didn't like it?' she asked him in a soft voice. He could see the appeal this woman had, because it surely wasn't her curveless body.
'I didn't feel like that was my culture, so I raised little rebellions until the last one nearly took me out.'
Xemi surprised himself with his openness.
'Someone wanted to kill you for it?' she asked aghast.
'No, well, it almost ended up like that'. Xemi smiled a wry smile. 'I was sent to Somalia to be forced around the culture. I wasn't allowed out until I conformed to the Somali way.' Xemi stopped to think and then broke the silence he had created: 'Mainly the language and this theatre called religion. I'm in the process of trying to forget the language as fast as possible and I'm making good progress. Really ! I should have been learning how to play violins and not that useless language. Haha, yes violins. What is that language to me?'
'Theatre of religion...so you're not Muslim?'
'Would you like me to be?'
'I am!'
She turned and let out a gasp, pointing to the wall. He saw a mouse climbing the gas pipe to a hole in the ceiling.
'That looks more like a rat than a mouse,' he muttered, his body tensing.
They both went their separate ways. Xemi opened the door to find Hyacinthe in front.
She wore a simple red dress with a slight orange tinge, the colours of a Lucifer Montebretia not yet in full bloom, which opened just after her knees. This suited her light brown skin complexion delightfully. She also had curled her hair which cascaded to her shoulders.
'Just to warn you there's mice here,' Xemi said miserably. 'This place is so messy.'
'Yes, messy,' Hyacinthe said as she put her fingers in his beard, ruffled the not so many hairs there and crossed the door threshold.
'What?' he said confused, and then remembered that he had a beard now.
Xemi had started to grow it out but it only grew on his chin to match his afro and give himself a more mature, exotic appeal. That is, to obscure his origins. He found that he appeared less Somali the more he hid his face, funnily enough, calming his nerves because there was someone looking for him...
The table where Emily had been sitting on was transformed by a dining set.
'You want some wine? White wine.'
Xemi was younger than Hyacinthe by two years and he could tell she was impressed by his undertakings. They sat down and Xemi poured the wine slowly with a steady hand, part of the show. And then he stopped.
'Sorry, you're Pakistani right? I should have asked whether you drink.'
He observed her with a half smile, waiting for an answer, doomed if she declined.
She looked at the half full glass and said:
'I'm not Muslim. I'm Catholic.'
He immediately filled the glass up.
'You're the first Pakistani Catholic I ever met. That's even more unusual than a Somali atheist. Did this country convert you?'
'Atheist? You're an atheist ?'
'I might be. Unless you want me to be Catholic. I can be that too.'
'No, seriously.'
'My story is not as interesting as yours. How come you're a Catholic? I like its mysticism too, I'm not going to lie. The symbolism I mean. One of the two.'
'Mysticism? I was raised as a Catholic. There's not many of us, but we exist.'
'A toast to more!'
He went and served the salmon. Hyacinthe praised his cooking, speaking with excitement and the delight that someone went through the trouble to do this for her.
'Is this a Somali recipe?'
'Haha. I don't think there is any diaspora as chained to their culture as Somalis are. No, this isn't Somali. This is my own personal recipe.' Xemi's voice betrayed contempt. 'Why wouldn't it be? I was there last year and I didn't eat a single fish dish. I think they do tuna for export, however.'
'Just for export?'
'All I know is that I didn't eat fish there.'
Hyacinthe didn't sense his contempt and continued:
'I went to a Somali wedding once,' she announced as she sipped from her second glass. She was becoming loose and inattentive.
'Really ?' he brightened as Mayloun's little jig flashed before him. He looked at Hyacinthe and thought she looked similar to Mayloun with her brown golden skin, though she was not as shapely as his cousin.
'What do they do there?' he asked mischievously.
She shrugged her shoulders.
'Shake their bum,' she said while draining her glass. She poured herself another glass. Xemi liked the direction this was going in.
'They do? How? Can you show me?'
She ignored him and the drunk Hyacinthe wished to go back to the earlier topic. Xemi himself felt tipsy.
'How can you not be religious?' she exclaimed and then continued musingly, 'When you turn your back on your religion you turn your back on your people.'
'Haha. I'm not the plaything of my family or my people. I refuse to submit !'
Xemi almost pounded the table in mock indignation but only lightly tapped it with the bottom of his fist.
'Well, whatever. You're lucky. You can choose between all the countries you have lived in, and then the country of your parents. What's your favourite?'
'My favourite?'
Xemi thought about it for a moment and said:
'I don't have one. I remember...I remember I used to identify as Dutch. Then I moved to America and I remember being on a school bus when someone asked me where I was from. I said Holland. The kid started to look confused and then asked me, 'Is that how they look like, over there? Do they have your skin colour and features?' What am I supposed to say? So I told him no and then just said I was Somali. Now things made sense for him and he said, 'So that's it, you're a Somali Dutchman!' Since then I stopped calling myself Dutch. I always get a weird vibe when I say it, and besides, it's not important to me. It's ridiculous even to wave the flag of one country when your background has so many, and the fact is that other people will choose the flag for you anyway. You yourself are not allowed to do so. Not to mention those trying to make you 'one of their own'. Nowadays when someone asks me what I am, I just say 'I am what I am'. Or I say I'm cosmopolitan. No one ever accepts that answer though, haha. So I list all the countries that I was a part of and tell them to pick their favourite.'
At this point a slinking figure appeared at the threshold to the communal area. 'I could have sworn I forbade her from coming down for two hours,' he told himself with a frown. Emily was wearing pyjamas and approached them. Hyacinthe looked from one to the other. In fact Emily didn't approach them, she approached Hyacinthe, and did so with widening eyes and a strange mixture of timidity and happiness. Xemi quickly introduced them to each other.
'Happy to meet you. Maybe we can be friends.'
She was happy for some reason. Xemi shuddered. Hyacinthe couldn't hold her gaze and looked away after mumbling 'okay'. Emily quickly ran upstairs after leaving her soul as the third wheel. Xemi took measures of exorcism.
'She's so friendly,' he told the flushed Hyacinthe whose drunkenness had acted as a shield from the strangeness of the interruption. But a shield for one thing can be a gateway for another he said to himself as he saw it opening up before him. 'Hey...' he said to her, moving forward a little...
Chapter 12
'The first thing you should have done was put him on a plane to Somalia after this business happened. Now look who he is judged by?' Samia said as they made their way along an aisle in a supermarket not far from their house and the courthouse.
'Things happened too fast. He came home and ten minutes later the police were outside. Besides, how to arrange such a thing?'
'You should have discussed this beforehand just in case it happened to make sure he's on a plane before in a prison.'
Farhia was in the frozen meat aisle looking at the chickens. Both of them felt a freedom, just like Xemi had felt his own freedom, but theirs was a different kind. Theirs was a freedom that belonged to a foreigner in a host country, the freedom to say whatever they wanted with no one batting an eyelid because no one could understand what they were saying. They were speaking in Somali.
'This is exactly why I say you can't raise a Somali family outside Somalia. Was I not proven right?'
'You were proven right,' said Farhia distractedly. The chicken had her attention until her youngest started rocking the shopping cart in which he was sitting. 'Stop it,' she said sternly.
He stopped for a moment and Farhia went back to the chickens, picked one up, and put it in the cart, and then continued looking for another one.
The boy rocked the cart again and said: 'I don't want that one,' in a mixture of English and Somali, with 'I don't want' in Somali and 'that one' in English which was the same way his siblings spoke.
'What did he say?' said Samia, smiling, charmed by her youngest grandson. 'He doesn't want that one? What is this anyway?' she then asked looking closer at the plastic wrapped chicken.
'It's chicken. And I told you to stop rocking that cart and sit quietly, waraya.'
'Mudug only has goats and camels, so I have never seen chicken cooked before. We should get some goat milk. Do they have goat milk here?'
Farhia placed another whole chicken in the cart and went to the milk section, grabbed some goat milk, having had to look for it for a little bit, and continued on with their shopping.
The things inside the cart were getting higher, reaching the child, who saw the tide turning in his favor. With deft fingers he quickly opened the egg carton, picked an egg up, and flung it on the floor, looking at what he had splattered with curiosity.
'Yah!' yelped Samia in shock. 'What did he just do?' she added, looking at the egg on the floor and then to the boy, who was trying to get another egg. Farhia snatched the egg container, and everything else from his reach.
'When we get home, you will see. Fragment of the devil. You will see,' Farhia threatened, eyeing him with menace, and pushed the cart along.
'Are we leaving it like that?' asked Samia, following her daughter. 'Should we not clean it or call someone?'
'They have cameras everywhere in this country,' replied Farhia, going into different aisles like that would give them alibis and innocence. 'Someone will go and clean it. Fragment of devil. I dare you to touch anything again. I dare you too.'
In the Somali language, the sentence 'I dare you to' is expressed with a single word that sounds like a snake's hiss, and it conveyed the same menace, and the kid started to cry a little but this was more from not being able to throw another egg on the floor again than anything else.
'Yes, you have to beat these things out of them,' said Samia with approval, as she picked up the kid to coddle and quieten him. 'Especially in this country where a Somali family shouldn't even be raised. You have to beat these things out of them.'
They reached the queue of the supermarket.
'I'll take the life out of him, watch.'
She started putting things onto the conveyor belt.
'You can't fear God outside Somalia. They have to fear something, otherwise they won't come out right and become destructive.'
'I'll make him fear his mother!'
'You better fear your mother, you hear?' she said to the boy.
'Better he die than not fear God or his mother.'
'Are you fearless, boy?'
Both the cashier, a career cashier, that is, an older English woman who had been doing that same job for thirty years, and Farhia, were bagging up the groceries with the cashier stealing glances at the two women not being able to understand them. Once bagged, the cashier said the total, and Farhia got her card out to pay, and they made their way back home with Farhia carrying the bags and Samia carrying the child.
On the bus, Samia's mind was cast to the trial. She had now seen all her grandchildren, which was what she had come for, and in her memory examined the children, and the parents that had made them.
'They look like their father,' she said musingly aloud, so her daughter could hear.
'Who?' asked Farhia.
'These children. Chubby but pretty little boys. I was at his wedding last week, that's why it came to my mind. Nice wedding, pretty girl too. Young though. I think: eighteen. Not that young I guess. When I was younger we had no ages at all, now everyone has an age. We used to look at the couple to see if they were compatible or not. Now I heard people say they're too far apart in age, when I think that they're close in appearance. They're both nice looking. Reer Carab Salah, a common enough marriage. They're going to Australia, I think, after the girl falls pregnant.'
'Familiar story,' said Farhia rather sarcastically. 'Does she want to go, or was that completely his idea?'
'It's his idea but she wants to go too. That's probably going to be the last wedding I'll see.'
'Only God knows.'
'I told them both that they should raise their children in Somalia until they've had enough instruction to protect from this side of the world. But they, especially the girl, are anxious to live elsewhere. We will see how it will end up.'
'Hopefully their first child is a girl so she can help in the household with the other children. If the first born is a boy like mine she's screwed. Once she gets that baby, and they live in Australia for a couple years, they'll have children in quick succession, because they'll be together for most of the time. And that guy…'
They got off the bus for their stop and walked home, which wasn't far from the bus stop. Samia was walking with a smile, similar to her grandson's when he saw them walk in the courtroom. She remembered her daughter's wedding and how all she was talking about was the excitement at going abroad and how good everything would be. How her life would be so much better for her and her family once they started their life in the advanced world, a world has everything a woman could hope and want for. They had things like fridges with magnets.
Chapter 13
Xemi had difficulty concentrating at work the next day. Idleness was enticing memory to enrapture him and it did so with a being that was changing colour before his eyes, from quiescent dimness to the glow of fire. He hadn't seen something like this before and he thought it was unique to her. Her skin was seething with blood that could be seen with the naked eye and he had stoked the fires underneath for as long as he could. He wanted to cut it open and drink from it to see what it would do.
Dreamily, he walked up to a young East Asian man, muscular, with tattoos on his neck and his hair cut low. He was holding a shoe and Xemi asked mechanically if he wanted to try it on. The man mumbled something in indecision and then he looked at Xemi. He made a movement of startlement and surprise; his whole bearing changed. Indeed, he placed himself in an inferior position; half bowing to Xemi, his wide chest collapsed in meekness. He was about to speak but then saw the shoe in his own hand. He put it back and turned again to face a bemused Xemi.
'Salaam, brother,' he started, in a voice deliberately softened. 'I didn't expect to see you here...wallah. I know I don't look like it,' he added, vexed, turning this way, that way, 'But, I mean, with the tattoos and other - but I'm like you, brother, a muslim!' he said with sudden vehemence, finally looking Xemi straight in the eyes. 'I only wish I came to Islam sooner like you, brother, but I was surrounded by...' he turned around indicating the people around him, '...idolaters. Prison was good for me.'
It took a minute for Xemi to know what he was talking about. Then another minute pondering on the reason. Xemi started to smile, stroked his beard, recalled the word 'idolaters' and smiled even wider, and then, participating in the charade, told the East Asian convert:
'That's good, brother,' using the appellation to make him happy. He had called him 'brother' three times just to hear Xemi say it once. The man almost cried from gratitude.
'You're doing good. You're doing so well! But where's your beard?' Xemi asked sharply. 'That's what really threw me off, the lack of a beard. How can people know you're a Muslim when you lack a beard? You see mine, how close I am to God, where's yours, to show your closeness to God?'
'So true,' he mumbled reverentially but then stammered, 'I tried to grow one -'
'Appearance signals devotion.'
'- but when I tried to grow mine it didn't look -'
'If you had just three hairs on your chin it would already be better than what you have.'
Xemi shook his head in disappointment and crushed the man.
As the hairs on his beard increased in density so did the converts hovering around him in reverence. He outwardly basked in the adulation and inwardly mocked them. But the same spirit that made him insolent in Somalia, possessed him now in similar circumstances and he was finding it hard to control himself.
A few days later a black convert entered the shop because he had spotted Xemi through the glass windows. At first he pretended to be interested in shoes but that disintegrated. The man made a general comment about society and added the word 'mashallah' while looking up hopefully at Xemi. The ridiculousness of people looking up to him became too much and he answered in descant while smiling contemptuously:
'I was thinking to myself the other day, wondering, musing even, about the reason you look up to me. You think I'm an Arab don't you, an original Muslim? Okay then, I accept and welcome you, new Muslim. I hope you'll have a good time at this party, this masquerade, which is not free entry. Paying for religious classes, what do you look for, inspiration? Paying to recite prayers only allowed in that language. What do you want, a little excursion? Enticed by the brochures ? You want to kick back, relax, and throw white rocks at the Devil? Payment first please. Pay! One thousand per rock. Three rocks each, and keep the line moving ! You heard me! Pay! For the proper attire, Arabic fabrics, brown or white, the proper colours, the desert monochrome. Pay! To smell the right way, with the right scents. You know from where. Pay, pay, pay !' Xemi sniggered. 'I dare them to transfer the Kaaba to Tanzania for the love of the Islamic world and then take turns spreading wealth. I dare them to !'
The black convert was confused.
'But, you're not Muslim?'
'No, I am, but I'm just saying...'
Xemi had snapped back into his senses and lost his nerve. That was an idiotic dithyramb in a place where he didn't have the same protections as in the village.
'...it would be good if they shared the wealth.'
This platitude did the trick and the tension lessened as we all agree that wealth should be shared, the only difference being between who.
The man, recently admitted into lower nobility, left quickly not knowing where the conversation might lead to. He liked his new resolutions. Converts are like new slaves who are the last to examine their chains, because they're freshly clasped and clasped by themselves.
Later that day he was at home, sitting in the living room, with one of his housemates whom he had seen but not yet spoken to. She was the big broad shouldered Indian woman more manly than girlish who came to sit with him while she was eating a bowl of pasta.
'Did you just come from work?' she asked him, with a voice that was surprisingly high pitched and feminine.
'Yes.'
'What do you do?'
'I work as a salesman.'
As she was about to put a fork full of pasta in her mouth which, for some reason, had opened long before the pasta had reached her mouth, she said in the rapid patter of someone who quickly wanted to accomplish their mission:
'I'm a lesbian, is that a problem for you?'
He let out a gasp and turned away while stammering:
'Why would I have - it's this beard, am I right?'
Xemi was stunned and thought:
'Without this beard I'm a Somali and with this I'm a Muslim. I can't shake these two identities no matter what I do.'
'No, I'm just wondering. Some people have a problem,' she clarified, while shovelling more food in her mouth. It had the appearance of a child who threw a stone and immediately hid their hand. She used the food to hide her tongue.
'Problems with you ? You mean beside erectile problems ?' he said to himself, studying her ghastly figure. Strapping is the polite way to refer to a person like this. 'I don't think any man has a problem with your lesbianism, you bigot, Muslim or not', and told her with a smile that hid billowing revulsion and indignation:
'Rest assured. Whatever you're thinking it's the opposite.'
The conversation continued with lighter topics while Xemi was brooding. A few hours later he was still brooding, undecided in conflict with himself. 'Muslim or Somali ?' he asked, while looking in the mirror with a razor. 'Has any man been so tormented by the perceptions of others?'
He put the razor to his face.
