Chapter 14
The next few days saw Samia split her time between the courthouse and her daughter's house. There were not many days left in the trial and she wanted to go and see if a praying old woman could sway the judgment of man; and since the courthouse was not far from the house, only having to take one bus for twenty minutes, she started going by herself as Farhia didn't want to go anymore, her anger at her son's actions and the humiliation of having raised a criminal son being too much for her to bear. Thus, after three more trips chaperoned by Farhia, she started going by herself. It wasn't all together a big deal for this foreign woman, a first time tourist in her sixties, to navigate this simple trajectory, because she was armed with her prayer beads and the spell casting words of 'no English' if she had to use them, which she wouldn't ever need to as she didn't have to speak to anyone on her way there and back. This first time she went by herself she was nervous but pretended that she had her daughter with her, taking the same path she knew, and did the same things like a drone, with no problems, and instead of counting the stops, looking at the names, she paid close attention to the scenery which told her when it was time to get off the bus. She reached the courthouse in good time, before the trial had even started.
There was a parking space next to the court. It had a few cars in it and Samia glanced at a couple of them as she walked up towards the steps of the courthouse. One of the cars had two people next to it and despite it being a little far away, Samia could see that one was an older woman and the other was a young man. She slowed but didn't stop when she recognised the Somali witness who had recanted a few days earlier. 'What is he doing here?' she asked herself. 'Is he bearing witness again?' She noticed both the young man and the older woman smiling, while the older woman gave the younger man meaningful looks. The woman's teeth were extraordinarily gray which made Samia marvel for a moment until she dismissed this scene and went inside, going straight to room three. She was glad to see most of the usual suspects there already; that is, the defense and prosecution along with the accused. They smiled warmly at her in welcome. The jury and judge weren't there and she had to wait fifteen minutes before the judge arrived, who apologized for her lateness, and then not long after the jury took their place. The trial resumed and Samia started doing what she had come for. She started to pray. She prayed with her mouth moving silently, her fingers moving the beads in her hand, while looking outwardly with almost glazed eyes, repeating the same prayers over and over again.
'I seek refuge only in your judgement; let no ill befall my family. There is no God but Allah.'
For hours she recited this prayer, a silent hymn, that gave her a peace that made time imperceptible. Even though it was a prayer it was more like a spell cast, but not on others, nor for others, but upon herself, that's how good she felt during and after recitation. For Samia, this boy's trial became close to that of someone who eased into a hot water spring after a long journey but the relief was entirely spiritual. Her feeling wasn't strange to Samia, as she had felt the power of prayer before, but she felt a little guilty as despite her prayers being for other people, she had always felt that she was the one who gained the most from them; especially in this case where the person she was praying for was no doubt going to be found guilty. Yet it was a solace indescribable, one of her true pleasures in life but because her prayers were self indulgent in her eyes, she felt ashamed and didn't do it for very long, staying only for the first half of the proceedings. When it was time to go, around lunchtime, she waved to the accused with the hand that had the beads, who waved back, putting his hand on his heart to show what her prayers meant to him. She almost flushed with embarrassment.
This courtroom was becoming a sanctuary for her, as when she went back home, as soon as the kids came home from school, she found nothing but irreverent chaos. It was as if pandemonium reigned in this house, where pandora's box had nothing but children on a constant sugar rush; and when these children were running about, their mother was like Isaiah castigating the children of Israel; exhorting them to be quiet every five seconds, despite barely being able to hear the children's voices over the music she was addicted to. The choice of decoration also made Samia uncomfortable. The crimson monochrome made the rooms look cramped and this lack of space was starting to bother her.
'Why did you use this colour?' she asked her daughter.
'Yah?'
'Why is this house so red? It's too red everywhere, especially when you have so many people in the house. You need something more light, don't you know that? What's the matter with you?'
Farhia shrugged and said that she may change it, mumbling along to the music.
'And this Samaroon is always playing here,' Samia said of the music in reproach. 'Why not play the Koran sometimes…'
More and more about her daughter's circumstances started to bother her and she started going to the courthouse earlier and earlier. On one of the final days of the trial she walked up towards the courthouse as usual and looked to the parking lot. Again she saw the Somali boy and the older lady. This time he was inside her car. She thought about the last time that she saw him and noted that he didn't give testimony that day. So why was he there? It was only when she was sitting in the gallery and saw that the judge was late again, apologizing with her grey smile, that she recognised her and figured out that it had been the judge with the Somali boy. 'So she was in the car with the Somali boy,' she said to herself in surprise. 'But what are they doing there together? Were they talking about the case?' The trial started and she began her prayers, forgetting everything but the peace that it induced. When she was home again she remembered the judge and the Somali boy and asked her daughter about it.
'The Somali witness and the judge?' Farhia said musingly.
'Yeah I saw them in the car together.'
'I don't know. I don't think they're talking about the case though since he's just a witness and already made his testimony. Maybe they're having an affair.'
'A woman her age? What reason can she have?'
'There are many reasons. What were they doing?'
'Laughing, smiling, looking at each other.'
'I don't know what is going on there. Maybe she's a garoob like me,' Farhia said, in a near hum, to the rhythm of a Cabdi Tahliil Warsame song that was playing. 'A single mother looking for a new partner. Someone for her kids to look up to.'
'There's no such thing as a single mother,' said Samia coolly. 'Only single woman. A mother is not single - never. God forbid a mother thinks she's ever single. And moreover that woman at that age has kids older than that boy! All they'll do is look down at that Somali boy. How do you mean look up, naya? And are you encouraging Somalis to break their somalinimo and to be with non Somalis?'
'Whatever it is. It's good to have a partner in life. Maybe I should get a new one too.'
'Out of the question. It's shameful for a mother to be marrying again.'
'But they do that here. All the time, despite them having kids,' Farhia said fiercely. 'And why not? When I'm with three or more of them, people look at me hostile. But when I'm with just the little one, I get smiles, and I feel I'm still desirable. It's just the number that's costing me.'
Samia was worried and outraged. She did not want to see her daughter, a mother, marry again, because it was simply not done in her eyes. Farhia would be a trendsetter and trendsetters were shameful to have in the family. One would think that for a woman who had six kids to remarry, that it would be only for one thing and that thing would not be progeny but something more lustful. This thought preoccupied her even the next day in the courthouse, where the peace that the beads used to give her was disturbed by her constant and censorious looks at the judge, smiling more of late, and even as she was on the bus home it preoccupied her to the point where she forgot to count the landmarks that were her guide. By the time she realized this she was already lost. It took her by surprise and she looked around her not recognising anything that passed by the windows. She started trembling, making to get up and ask the driver for help, but sat back down as she remembered she was a foreign woman in a country whose language she did not know. No english... A wild hope came to her. She thought that maybe she hadn't missed her stop but that rather, it would come up, that she was witnessing memory's frailty; that these buildings which she couldn't recognise had always been there but she simply forgot about them. The little things. The supermarket was the main thing. She would remember it and it would come now. And if not, she would wait, wait for someone's help, for this was London, a big city, with many Somalis, one of them would come on this bus, and she would ask them, any of them surely would fly to the aid of an elderly Somali woman who needed help. She relaxed a little and started to wait.
Chapter 15
Xemi was the most excited he had ever been. He was so excited, so joyous, that the boots that he was wearing took longer than usual to bother him. Heavy, ugly boots whose long brown necks passed his socks. These boots weren't made for running but he had no other.
'I must ask for another pair,' he said to himself resolutely as he started feeling the inside of the boots chafing the top of his feet. 'A pair that makes it easier to run.' Xemi almost flew when he was barefoot and these boots felt like ropes dragging him back from mischief.
'Is that why I have these and no other?' he wondered. 'Because my dad doesn't want me to run? But nothing can stop me, not ropes, not chains, not death !'
He wanted to run to his friends as fast as possible, the laughter choking in his throat, for they were about to play a trick. This trick had been played many times already on the same person by so many people. Xemi himself had done it before, but only once, the triumph of his life. The thrill of bravery and accomplishment rang through him even as he thought about it. What they used to do was ring the doorbell of an old man and run away. Bravery comes in many guises. Xemi never knew why it was always this house, this old man. In fact, Xemi didn't know if he was old or not. He had never seen him before. As soon as one of them rang the bell, all of them scattered, laughing at what their imagination constructed. For this kind of game is the most fun when you see the reaction of the victim; but since it was too risky to stay and watch, they imagined it, a cursing, fist waving old man stumbling out of his house, with the ambling hurting his bad knees, the wheezy threats hurting his shrivelled chest. Wouldn't it be good if he fell? Yes, fell, and fell, and fell again...into the mud! Haha! Exactly that. Head first into the puddle while he sputtered his curses with a mouthful of mud. Haha! Young Xemi did a pirouette in the air at the image. This time he would watch because something different, something special would happen. Why did he think that? He couldn't remember what it was exactly.
Breathless he arrived at the house which was so close to his own. Looking around, he saw that there was a big crowd on the hill opposite the residential area of picturesque houses to come to look at the game. He was surprised but the crowd made him more excited and giddy.
In the middle of the crowd of people, who were more silhouettes than flesh and bone, Young Xemi noticed a tree with black branches and blood red leaves. He hadn't noticed that tree before and it looked strange amid other trees full of vibrant verdant, with the blue of the sky, and yellow of the sun, flitting through the gaps of their perforated crowns. In fact, black branches and red leaves? He had never seen such a thing before. He thought it was dying until a strong gust of wind tried to blow its leaves off. They remained firm on the dark branches. It looked like it was on fire, with the dancing leaves being the last flames of a charred tree.
'There are all kinds,' he marvelled. 'Even ones that are burning.'
This new oddity gave the day a greater specialness, and Xemi, holding his breath, then turned to the house. He saw a big figure behind the see through glass which distorted the people behind it.
'Who is that ?' he wondered. It looked like he was waiting. The figure was wearing a red shirt. Someone rang the bell and instantly Xemi realised that he was too close to the house. Still, so many people...he won't come for him. The next thing a flash of red raced out the house, so dazzling was its speed that wonder took too long to turn into fright and when it did, he had just enough time to feel someone force him to the ground. The man had grabbed his shirt in his fist and Xemi began in a fearful voice:
'What...but I didn't-'
'You better not do it again, you heard me?'
'I swear I won't!'
And he let go. As the man in the red shirt let go, young Xemi's bladder let go and he wet himself. He felt the ceaseless stream go down his leg, the shame go to his face, the tears to his eyes, and then he woke up. When old Xemi woke up, he realised that time changes only appearance, our beings never transporting, always existing. The stream of then, streamed now, the throbbing of the heart then, was the same throb as now. This wasn't a dream but a memory. He lifted the sheets from him and cursed his father for not buying him running shoes.
'If I had them, I would have been sure to escape,' he rued to himself. 'Them shoes...'
In fact, as he sat on his bed, his underwear wet, with Hyacinthe still asleep, he thought more about the memory.
'How did that guy know we were going to be there? And why were there so many people there ?'
He thought more about the town that he had lived in. A small town where he thought about nothing but a child's amusement.
'I'm sure that if I had stayed there I would know how to play the violin,' he said seriously. The idea came to him as a joke earlier but now he was sure he was deprived of something beautiful.
'Why don't I know how to play violins?' he asked, perfectly awake now, and almost furious. 'Or at least the piano.'
When Hyacinthe would wake he would tell her that her orgasm was responsible for the wetness of the bed. He grumbled while removing his underwear, moaning about violins, wiping off the pee, asking why that guy had chased him and not the one who had actually rang the bell, though he knew that it was because he was the closest and hadn't immediately run away. And the damned clogs !
He felt that his childhood, overall, had been wonderful. This memory happened in a little Flemish town near the Belgian border. He adored that town and when Xemi asked his father why they left he had never received an answer. He wanted to ask again.
He stepped out of the room and saw the lesbian in the living room. She invited Xemi to a basketball match with the landlord. Xemi agreed because he was still relatively new in the house, and things like this had to be done to ingratiate oneself. He woke Hyacinthe and told her the plan and asked if she was coming. She sleepily replied yes while climbing out of the bed. Xemi was anxious as she might not believe his reason for the wet spot. She didn't notice it and he quickly ripped the sheet off with the pretext of cleaning it. Thirty minutes later they all set forth for the court. Emily was with them who would watch with Hyacinthe.
The court was small with one hoop and it had players already when they arrived: an eastern European couple. He was dark, slim and plain while she was blonde, slim and very plain. They were nice and welcomed the newcomers. They all played together, a game with two teams. One had two boys and the other had two girls and a boy. Xemi, on the team of two boys, was still rusty but better than all of them.
'You're on fire,' Rebekah, the lesbian told him, who was on the opposing team. She played like a real player, using her body to shield the ball, thinking that Xemi wouldn't get too close and observe male-female barriers. She was mistaken and said 'hey now' when he stood his ground while she fruitlessly used her back to drive towards the hoop.
Spring zephyrs blew on his freshly shaven face, more sensual now that his lips were not obscured by facial hair. From time to time he glanced at Hyacinthe and Emily on the sidelines. Hyacinthe had the body language of a nice person who indulges someone who is socially embarrassing. They came to watch the others play but Emily never took her eyes off Hyacinthe. Xemi chuckled to himself as he turned away. Emily was probing her, asking questions to firmly establish a connection deeper than acquaintance, closer to ardour.
'What's your last name?' Emily asked a flinching Hyacinthe. 'What's your favourite colour? If you were to have a pet, which would you choose?'
While she was asking these types of questions, Hyacinthe wondering how many questions a person can have, the game concluded. Xemi shook the Eastern European man's hand who was on his team. The girl that was with him leaned over to Xemi for a hug but he didn't notice the body language until it was too late, nodded and extended his hand instead, before realising what type of dance it was going to be. Xemi even flushed a little at his ineptitude and they both smiled awkwardly. It seemed as if he didn't wish for their bodies to touch. This new memory needled him all while he was travelling to his father's house.
He embarked on a bus, a one decker, about three quarters full and went to the seat at the back. Two people were sitting either side of the empty seat. He passed an elderly, ostentatiously Somali woman sitting in the seat closest to the door. Xemi looked straight ahead avoiding all eye contact. He was wearing a hat which obscured this protruding, bulbous forehead, a beacon of his ethnicity, and as he looked at the back of this woman he could tell that she was about to turn and ask him something. She was looking outside the window at the passing of unfamiliar territory and was evidently disconcerted.
Xemi was being swayed by the pleasantness of a moving vehicle and the closeness of other people but the pleasures he was experiencing were soon poisoned. He looked at the disconcerted woman and became anxious. A feeling of anguish so absolute consumed him that it became a presentiment. 'Like death is certain after life she will turn and speak to me. What means of avoidance? Should I get off at the next stop ? Maybe this hat will save me…'
She turned around and said in a loud voice that was impossible to ignore:
'Nephew, is this where the big shop is ? I'm not sure where we are or if we passed it.'
She was looking at Xemi with the most hopeful eyes. He felt everyone in the bus staring at him. He replied in English:
'I don't understand...'
'You don't speak Somali?'
Xemi spread his hands and raised his shoulders in non comprehension when he understood everything, his senses heightened by foreboding. He wanted the scene to last as short as possible and so feigned ignorance.
'I'm not Somali,' Xemi said and then stammered: 'I'm...Zimbabwean. Yes, Zimbabwean. And, and Jamaican!' he added quickly, cursing himself because he didn't look anything like a Zimbabwean, hat or no. 'Why Zimbabwe?' he asked himself furiously. Yet Xemi knew despite this what the woman also knew, that no Somali can hide from another Somali. She stared momentarily at the red-faced and clearly uncomfortable Xemi and turned around with a spasm of frustration, and looked out of the front window then all the windows around her. Her bodily movements became more frantic by the second. Compelled by desperation, she went to the driver to speak to him even as she knew communication between them was impossible. Xemi looked on darkly at a pitiable scene he himself had the greatest hand in making. She was smiling at the driver's unintelligible words, trying and failing to find words of her own. Instead she moved her hands as if the driver would understand the sharp waves they made to be anything other than signs of helplessness. Xemi got off as soon as the doors were opened.
'I can't get any peace in this world,' he lamented to himself, still hot with the heat of embarrassment but not shame, as he walked up to his father's flat. If it had been shame the memory would torment him forever. But because it was simply an embarrassing moment more to do with others than himself, he forgot about it and did so quickly.
Chapter 16
'Ah, it's Xemi,' his father said, to someone else in the room. Xemi greeted him and was curious as to who he was talking to.
'Come, this is Edo Baar,' Awad told his son. 'I've re-married.'
He was so excited to see his son and to introduce him to his new wife, that he forgot to reprimand him for the way he had left when he deserted his mother at his father's place. A surprised Xemi shook the woman's hand who was pleased to make his acquaintance. Baar was a pretty woman, caramel complexion with extra pounds and dark, fleshy lips.
'Where did you get her from? Somalia?'
Awad laughed.
'No, she lived in Holland. A mutual acquaintance asked if I wanted to marry and I said why not. I'm still young. Edo Baar was her sister. We were both free so we decided to marry. It's been a couple weeks now.'
'Quiet ceremony then.'
'Oh, very simple. Just sign some papers and you can go.'
Xemi was slightly offended that he didn't have the chance to refuse the wedding invitation.
Edo Baar then asked Xemi, in Somali, if he lived nearby and if they could visit sometime. A flicker of dread came and went as his attention was taken by a paper on the table. The headline said, 'Sexual positions to increase chances of pregnancy.' Next to it was another sheet of paper depicting abdominal exercises.
'You're trying to have another baby ? Third time lucky, perhaps,' Xemi said laughingly. 'And you want a six pack. I suppose I could see how these two -'
'Speak Somali,' his father's new wife ordered Xemi, who had to smile.
'She doesn't waste time giving orders.'
'What happened to your Somali?'
'I'm not around Somalis. I forgot most of it already.'
'She looks a little like the woman on the bus,' Xemi mused to himself.
'Are you going to enroll your wife in an English class ? ' he asked his father.
'No.'
The anguish from the scene on the bus came back to him. For some reason he felt it more acutely than he did before.
'Why not ?'
The subject of conversation was sitting with a look of the most girlish stroppiness.
His father frowned and said:
'Why? Simple. Because she doesn't need it.'
'There may be times that she might, you never know.'
The embarrassment of the earlier scene was so vivid before his eyes and infused into his senses that his hands shook and he couldn't bear it. He decided to change the topic to get rid of the overflowing emotion. He spoke sharper than he did before.
'Why don't I know how to play the violin?'
'What did you say?'
Stifling laughter in his chest, Xemi said:
'I came to ask you something. You remember we lived in that Flemish place when I was younger ?'
His father's face darkened and while almost glowering at Xemi he said gruffly:
'Yes, what about it ?'
'Why did we leave that place ? I loved it there. I asked you before but you never gave me an answer.'
'Forget about that.'
'I want to know. Will you tell me?'
'No.'
His darkened face was close to displaying outright anger. He thought it unfitting for a son to ask his father to explain himself.
'Why not ?'
'Because I don't want to. It's my choice to say or not to say.'
Baar, tired of exclusion, interjected by asking Xemi if he wanted to eat something. He replied to her in Somali that he didn't and had to go. She tried to press him but he stood firm.
'When will we see you again?' she asked.
'Who knows,' was the casual, dreamy reply.
In Xemi's memory all things exalted and good were concentrated in that Flemish town, just like all things hateful began when they left. He was not unhappy now but for some reason he felt that when they left he lost perfect happiness. His first joyful memories began there before he was shunted from one place to another, and he hadn't experienced such constant joy since. What vexed Xemi the most was that he could not get an explanation, some justification for an action that destroyed the life he had been living. Could he get a lie at least? Something that Xemi could point to and say 'Ah, he sees me as a person, not a thing to be disposed of, placed here, then there, when the mood strikes.' What makes man believe they can do what they please with the people they gave birth to? Does care come with consideration? Does duty demand justice? Xemi pondered these questions as he took his leave, scorning the idea that his father may have had a good reason to do what he did. For if that was true, why not tell him?
His father followed him with a hard look and knew his son was upset. But how could he tell him that heartbreak made him move his family out? That some Russian woman he had met in a Dutch language class had married an ethnic Dutchman instead of him when he had declared himself. That he couldn't stand being in a small town watching the person that had rejected him with someone else. His pride wouldn't allow it. So he let his son go, looking at him and at the same time looking at the beautiful breasts the slim Russian had, always hunched over the desk, trying not to look up, just in case the teacher asked a question in Dutch and she would have to respond in Dutch. The memory possessed him. This Russian woman, now completely before him for a microsecond, was self conscious about her deep voice and her ghoulish accent that was like a seal's bark. But how she looked ! What a chance, missed ! He shook himself out of delectable stupor, his eyes decontracting and shimmering with the water of intoxication. The woman who did take him wouldn't have that complex. He sighed in regret and bitterness. Deep down he wasn't different from his son. He wanted to branch out but was stuck with what he could get: a Somali woman. He sighed again.
Xemi was walking down the road as he took the key of his father's house off his key ring and threw it in a sewer. He felt a strange mixture of sadness, resentment and liberation as he passed the small neighborhood shops, stopping near a crowded bus stop. His feelings coalesced into hate. Ever since he had come back from Somalia he had been looking for a pretext to finish with his father and now he had it. He started to demonise his father. Instead of dubbing him dictator and megalomaniac, unanswerable to anyone, he dubbed him a fickle father. As an adult, one has to be able to trust that our parents made decisions, in our childhoods, for our own good. But Xemi could not shake the idea that his father behaved out of selfishness. He blocked out any positive argument that might be used in his father's favour, which, if Xemi thought about it, would show his own immaturity. Nevertheless, he was starting to feel more agitated by the choice he had made and its finality. He vowed that he would not go back on his decision. 'A child's happiness should supersede the parent's happiness!' he shouted in his head. He smiled at his oration; felt a little better. It made him see how absurd his logic was. Hate is an awful feeling and he was pleased to see it vanishing little by little. A feeling of bemusement that was always below the surface came over him.
One of the passerbyers, riding a bike, approached Xemi and soon he heard the twang of a Somali greeting directed towards him.
'Hey brother, what are you up to?'
'Here we go again,' Xemi thought, laughing almost in incredulity. 'When will these people leave me alone?'
Nevertheless he put on his mask of congeniality.
The boy was younger than Xemi. Dark skinned with a beautiful white smile. The smile obliterated everything else from his handsome face. For a second, Xemi thought that it was Yasser, and caught his breath. But then he looked closer and saw that it was someone else.
'It seems there is no in between,' Xemi said to himself. 'Either Somalis have a beautiful smile or a hideous one.'
'Hi, you okay?' Xemi replied. 'I was heading home.'
'Oh yeah where you live?'
The boy spoke with gravel in his throat.
'Down there. What about you ?'
'Oh, I have been here since I was born. Born there,' he pointed in the distance. 'In that hospital, the same place where my mother left me. My mother didn't want me but I'm still here.'
At this point Xemi wanted to roll his eyes but tried hard to look attentive.
'My mother left me to fend for myself. But look at me now. Look at this.'
He pulled out a thick wad of cash, in tens and twenties.
'I'm just a Somali man. We have to do what we do. See, my mother left me. You can see how she left me.' He was showing emotion in his voice now and giving the impression that this subject had been on his mind recently and he wished to vent. 'But I can make it on my own. A Somali man is what I am and it's all I can be.'
Now he pulled out a bag of crack rocks wrapped up. Xemi looked at the man's shining eyes. The boy had broken one of the ten crack commandments: 'Don't get high on your own supply'. He was reckless. What if the police pulled up right now? Xemi was panicking, cursing, lamenting the fact that he was so visibly Somali, wondering how on earth he could escape. How could he escape? Should he just walk away? The guy might take offense to that and start some scene. So what then? He had to end this quickly or at least make things look more innocent. But how? He wanted to cry but gave a forced smile as he told the man:
'Do me a favour, brother, put those drugs away. It's dangerous. What if the police -'
Before he had finished the mad drug dealer took a blade out, saying he was not scared of anything, still talking about how his mother had left him and how he was a Somali man trying to make his way, daring someone to stop him. Curiously, he didn't say anything about his father who no doubt wasn't there either. Then just as abruptly as he began, he stopped, maybe he had sensed Xemi's lack of empathy, which he may have been expecting from another Somali man as a given. This dealer looked past Xemi now towards some guys in the distance and said that he had to go talk to his 'friends', laughing a little, showing his steady, beautiful smile incongruous with his disturbed nature. Xemi was nonplussed at this man's mood swing and watched him go, sure this would end in a robbery. He went the other way, jumping on the bus that wasn't even the right one to get away, not looking at anyone whom he was sure were looking at him. He was touching his face in a kind of daze and wondered how long it would take for his beard to grow back. It could not be soon enough.
