Chapter 5
'Naya!' exclaimed Samia, after seeing her happy and tearful daughter.
'Hoyo,' replied her daughter, Farhia, 'I was about to call the police.'
'For what?' Samia replied perplexed.
They shared a one armed hug and a kiss: two women; one, younger but with fading beauty because her face was starting to hollow out. The other with a freshness that belied her old age, even if it was only skin deep. The older, Samia, was intensely happy but not because of the fact that she had seen her daughter for the first time in twenty years but because she wasn't alone in the airport anymore, lost no longer, and spoke with the alacrity of relief.
'Why did it take you so long to come out?'
'Only god knows!'
'That's why I told you to wait till someone could chaperone you.'
'Is this - which one is that you're holding? Is this Abdi-Kareem?'
They swapped. Farhia took the luggage and Samia took the baby.
'And who is this,' Samia continued, turning to the child that was holding his mother's hand.
'This is Mohamed,' Farhia said. 'Go hold your grandmother's hand, Mohamed.'
Farhia was now holding the luggage handle with two hands, shuddering as she freed herself from her children. Momentary peace.
Samia struggled a little holding the baby with one arm and then the hand of the five year old with the other.
'Let's swap again,' she said, looking up to her daughter in front of her who stopped in fright. 'Can I swap you?' she then said to the five year old holding her hand. He simply stared at her in a curious way. 'What about you?' she said to the baby who was close to two years old. It took his finger out of his mouth and touched his grandmother's cheek. Farhia returned to walking again, relieved that her mother had been joking.
'Did you have any problems coming here?' Farhia asked as they neared the shuttle at Heathrow airport. 'We're going to take this special train to a train station and then take another train to South London.'
'South London?' Samia repeated, as she came to a halt next to her daughter and various other people standing by the entrance waiting for the shuttle train to arrive.
'No, I didn't even have any problems coming here. Except I forgot my reading glasses.'
'Since when do you wear them?' Farhia asked in surprise.
Samia shook her head smiling.
'Soon. Where are your other kids?'
'They're at home.'
'The three of them, or, how many?'
'Yes, three of them. They're old enough to be alone. Here is the train.'
They entered and found themselves standing for the seats were taken quickly.
'Are there a lot of Somalis where you live?' Samia asked her daughter.
'Yes and no, not really…it's not like how it is in Somalia.'
'I bet it isn't,' said Samia, looking around.
The child started to cry and after a couple futile attempts at silencing the baby, Samia gave it back to Farhia who looked like she was about to cry too when she had to hold her son again. They swapped as the other kid, once seeing his little brother in the arms of their mother, went to his mother too. Samia took hold of the luggage again.
'Aww, what's wrong?' a lady in her fifties with shoulder length said to the baby. 'Why are you crying, huh? You don't want to be on the train?'
'Yes,' smiled Farhia sheepishly, speaking in broken English. 'He like crying. Always.'
'You like to cry huh? A cry baby. Haha.'
Farhia continued smiling but didn't respond. The baby stopped crying now to look at the woman.
'Haha. He doesn't like being called a cry baby. Look, he stopped crying.'
She scratched the boy's cheek and he immediately moved his arm to it, seemingly brushing it with his wrist or like he had been trying to block the lady touching his face but was far, far too slow.
Samia had been looking on with mild shock, and was now staring at the lady like she was a crazy person.
'What did she say to you?' she asked Farhia.
'Nothing,' she responded quickly, clearly not wanting to get into a conversation in Somali at that moment; and to hide a little in her motherhood, Farhia held her son closer and looked at him, trying to avoid everyone else.
Samia continued to stare at the lady with curiosity. The lady saw this and smiled back in good humor, nodding. Samia looked on still, softly saying 'yah' to express her confusion. For twenty seconds until the train stopped, Samia held her gaze on this woman, who had already turned to her companion, her face reddening due to Samia's continuing interest which she was adamant on not acknowledging. Farhia was one thing, but Samia was an immigrant too far.
Samia was thinking about what the lady had said, which she hadn't understood and looked on to see what her next move would be. She was fascinated at the nerve of that woman to insert herself into family affairs such as a crying baby. A woman with blue hair.
'Was she trying to curse the baby for crying or trying to play with it?' she wondered. Samia continued to whisper 'yah' intermittently even as they got off the train.
At Heathrow train station Farhia gave her mother the ticket for entry between the barriers, going in first, showing her how to do it.
'Like this?' Samia asked, standing at the gate, just holding the ticket to the hole rather than push it in.
'Yeah,' replied Farhia, thinking that her mother was pushing it in.
Samia however was just standing with the ticket just away from the hole waiting for the gates to open. A man behind her, getting frustrated, saw what was going on, bent over Samia's shoulder, grabbed her ticket and pushed it in for her. Samia immediately turned around to stare at the man, well over six feet, who gave a quick smile but waved to her to go through while the gates were open. But Samia just kept staring at the man and began to say:
'Did you just -'
The gates closed.
'Aww now look. It's closed,' said the man waving his hand in frustration.
'Come through here,' a station attendant said to Samia as she opened a wider gate for wheelchairs and buggies.
Samia turned to her and then back to the man who now shrugged, knowing a lost cause when he saw one, and went through another gate on his way.
'Hoyo!' said Farhia. 'Go through there,' she ordered, pointing at the open gate.' The attendant still was trying to usher her through as Samia was blocking the path. She finally went through going towards Farhia.
'You see that guy?' Samia began. 'Why is everyone touching everything here?'
'He was trying to help you.'
'He could have said so.'
They walked to the escalator where next to it were a stack of free newspapers. Samia glanced at the picture of the front page, frowned at the Somali man, wondering why he was on the front-page, shirtless, with his hands up. She actually thought that it might have been a Somali paper but turned away instead of perusing through it as she didn't have her reading glasses, smirking to herself.
Chapter 6
Xemi woke up before his father as he had gone to bed earlier. He went to the toilet and flinched in discomfort as he watered the toilet bowl. He felt his underwear and noticed that it was wet. Thinking back, he did have a sensation of leaking through the night which he had put down to constant orgasms, diluted and inviscid, which weren't altogether painful. He did his toilette, found a letter with the address to the flat, and looked for a computer. He didn't need to search for what was going on with him because he already knew. All he was looking for was the address to the nearest sexual health clinic.
'Fuck. That. Bihhh,' Xemi muttered, smiling ruefully.
He found a piece of paper and drew a mini map. His father had given him the key to this flat and just as he was about to leave he was stopped by his father.
'Where are you going ?' he asked him sharply. His eyes had the ovals of suspicion and the red lines of sleep.
'One of these girls in Somalia gave me a disease.'
'What?'
'Yeah, your niece -'
'What did you say!' his father thundered, throwing his blanket off him, grabbing his sarong quickly, but too late…
'Fuck your father. What did you just tell me?' He approached his son with long strides.
'It's not my fault that -' Xemi replied rapidly before he was touched and ran out.
'He will see it my way the more he thinks about it surely,' Xemi said to himself as he walked down the road. 'What did I really do? I am a victim.'
He winced some more. It was difficult to walk so he limped more than anything, trying not to disturb the sensitive parts which were beginning to torment him. The clinic was located in Whitechapel, and was found easy enough. Though the clinic had yet to be opened, a line was developing and he was sixth in line. He looked at the others who all avoided and shunned his bemused gaze, bemused more at his lot than the fact that it was shared by those around him. The person in front of him was a small pretty blonde who looked the most unfriendly. Eastern European, Xemi immediately thought, Russian he hoped, and then wondered what little Liza had. They opened the building doors and as they opened Xemi whispered in her ear:
'You want to share what you have and I'll share what I have?'
A beautiful flush spread to her ears and that was just what Xemi was looking for. She glanced up at the tall smirking figure and walked inside the clinic. Maybe little Liza didn't understand and blushed simply because he whispered to her.
He also went inside and walked up to the counter. There was a chubby South Asian woman with a hijab behind the desk. She looked curiously at Xemi whose ethnic origin was obvious and therefore his religion too, in her eyes. He wasn't sure what to do and so described to the woman the symptoms he had. A drip, burn, tightness. She gave him a form to fill and told him he wasn't guaranteed to be seen that day.
'But I'm dying. I tell you, I'm in a bad way,' he pleaded a little.
She however dismissed it and said 'fill out the form and we'll see what happens', without making eye contact. He was sure she disapproved of him and how he caught the disease.
In any other public sector place a Muslim handling his case would have been beneficial for him as the ummah looks out for those within it. Any other place but this one… The blonde girl who was propositioned sat in the corner, her shrunken body closed and repellent.
The room filled out with an assortment of individuals. From stylishly hirsute gentlemen, with light scarfs for late summer, who looked like they write for low circulation literary magazines; to middle aged Latin prostitutes with an express lane just for themselves, as they dragged their black suitcases behind them, heading straight to North West London. Luckily for Xemi the receptionist was after mental anguish only, and he was seen that day.
He followed a young South Asian man with shoulder length curly hair and a white dress shirt that he had rolled up at the sleeves. After a basic questionnaire he pointed him to a partition behind which was an examining table, and told him to undress. Though Xemi was expecting this, he still was unprepared and was trembling as he pulled his pants down and lay with his genitals exposed. He wished a woman was doing it.
The expert came in, gloved up, glanced at the dribbling penis, his face a still artwork of practised neutrality, and sat down at waist level next to the examining table Xemi was lying on. Xemi didn't want to look but his jewels were being probed and so he watched a man take his penis and jab a cotton swab inside its hole. Xemi used all his powers of will and self control not to flinch or cry out as the man worked his insides, turning in circular motions, to get what he was looking for. The sensation wasn't one of pain or pleasure but of unnaturalness, a feeling whose ghost lingers longer than either pain or pleasure and Xemi couldn't shake it long after he was done.
He took the sample straight to a microscope and told Xemi he had gonorrhea; that a nurse would see him after he had given a urine sample and escorted the shell-shocked Xemi to where he had to go and left him there. All the while he was walking he couldn't help but think that the well built average height, studious looking man with curls and glasses had violated him like noone else had. The doctor himself however had done this before and felt that the best policy is placidness and minimal eye contact, which he duly treated Xemi to even when they crossed paths again as Xemi went to the nurse's office after giving his urine sample.
The nurse was a middle aged African woman with glasses and braids. She asked him who it was that he had sex with. Xemi told her it was his cousin, in Somalia. Her African eyes goggled.
'Oh ! Well then, I guess I won't be able to tell her for you. Inform her that she should get checked to avoid future complications. Lord, is that what goes on over there?' she marveled as she turned back to the computer.
'Yeah, that's what they get up to over there,' Xemi answered and then continued, as a thought had struck him. 'How do they deal with sexual disease in Somalia ?' he asked musingly, as he pulled his pants down. 'That disease will rage there unless someone marries her soon.'
The nurse smiled as her fingers went from the keyboard to a needle and told Xemi to brace himself.
'That's a real small village too. How many people have it now?' he asked himself more than the nurse. 'Imagine: she gets married in the near future. The guy starts dripping. What's his first thought? Something he ate? His clothes? Some kind of family disease? Will he ask his father ?'
She shot him in the side of his left buttocks.
'And what if he realises what it is, then what? He's sure to kill her -'
'Definitely.'
'- for this is a disease of deceit.'
He felt the sudden force of the antibiotics.
'You might want to sit down and drink some water. This thing will cripple you for a while,' she warned Xemi, who disregarded her suggestion but thanked her for the service and went home, passing a chock-full waiting room. 'This city is infested with sexual disease,' Xemi thought, laughing a little.
He shuffled his way through the opening glass doors, suddenly feeling embarrassed and self conscious about his situation, feeling like everyone was looking at him when looking at someone else was the last thing anyone there was likely to do.
The quickness with which the antibiotics began healing Xemi surprised him. The drip disappeared within minutes but he felt the whole side where she had injected him numbing. He dragged his left leg along with him to his father's home, who was waiting for him. One look at him and Xemi knew he had calmed down, though his eyes narrowed when he watched Xemi close the door behind him.
'Xemi, tell me, are you an animal?' he asked his son calmly.
This was the first time since Xemi could remember that his father hadn't greeted him with the typical Islamic greeting. Xemi thought that he was moving further and further away from Somaliness, and those around him sensed it. He felt it was a positive direction.
'Do you think before you act? What if she's pregnant?'
'Then I would be like you, father,' Xemi answered in Somali. 'Aren't you and my mother related?'
'Distant relations are not equal to first cousins.' 'I can't see the difference.'
'She's your sister.'
'But they do that over there; that's what I've been told, was it a lie? I guess if I married her first it wouldn't have been a problem.'
His father stared at him.
'Haha. You wanted me to be like them, but you're not like them yourself. That girl came to me. What do you expect me to do? You should tell her she has gonorrhoea.'
'Who?'
'My sister, your niece and my lover.'
'There is no sexual disease in Somalia!'
'Clearly there is something there along those lines.'
'Which you gave her.'
'Which she gave me. You better tell her before it's too late. She might become infertile. After she has my baby.'
Xemi burst out laughing.
'Why did you do that to her? You know how people see things like that in a country like Somalia.'
'I'm not the only one she could fall pregnant by,' he said, becoming more and more entertained by the blindness of his father.
'This whole thing was a mistake. I never should have…'
'Haha! Now you realise !'
Xemi's father turned his eyes away from his son.
'Maybe they'll find out without us telling them,' Xemi said, detached and unconcerned. 'Maybe they already know.'
His father turned to him again. His decision was made. He would tell them nothing.
'Why did you get mixed up in this? Is that what you were sent there for?'
'I didn't ask to be sent there,' Xemi replied sharply. 'I was sent there to be like them. I'm like them now.' His smile became mocking. 'Now you tell me to be something else. What do you want from me?'
'I can't believe that girl is like this,' Awad mumbled, ignoring Xemi's question. 'Here anything can be expected and nothing prevented, but there?'
Xemi raised an eyebrow. It seemed like Awad was speaking about two different people at the same time. Very quickly, Xemi figured out who his father was alluding to. There was someone missing from this family in this household. His father collected himself.
'How long has she been like this? My sister has secrets, I see. The most important thing is that you have them too, and keep them.'
Xemi snorted.
'Yes, father. They won't hear a word from me.'
Chapter 7
Xemi readjusted to his metropolitan surroundings like water becomes ice. He became used to anonymity and he liked that people had to ask for his name. One of the most unpleasant feelings he could think of was when people knew him when he didn't know them. 'There is a particular pleasure in introducing oneself to a stranger,' he thought to himself. Now, when he met others he felt their wariness instead of familiarity which he also thought was an improvement. He did wonder why people were wary of him as to his mind he still had the babyface, the braces and natural innocence, so it seemed comical to be uneasy around such a person. He had forgotten about what he had read not long before and wasn't someone that kept up to date with the news.
Soon he found himself in a dentist chair discussing his braces. The dentist was a middle aged Mediterranean man, olive skinned, and he examined Xemi.
'It's…okay,' he began. 'We could continue with the treatment, since there is not too much damage, only the wire, which has to be changed every month anyway. I think it will be around six months and seven hundred pounds; that is what it would take to fix it and continue with the treatment.'
He smiled at Xemi, showing his own beautiful teeth, and spoke directly to him but his impatient father cut through with voice and hand motion to say with latent disgust:
'And to take them out?'
The dentist sighed and said:
'Hundred pounds,' speaking as if Xemi was about to be ruined. Xemi himself took it as such.
'So all these years for nothing? No one touches these braces unless it is to finish what was started!' Xemi answered, looking at his father with challenge expressed in his tensed body.
'But I don't have the money,' his father said severely.
Xemi jumped up from the dentist chair and simply said that he would be back with the money once he got it himself. The bemused dentist had looked on while this strange dispute went on, for Xemi spoke in English and his father spoke in Somali. His father stared at Xemi with his huge watery and red streaked eyes and then raised his hands.
'Up to you. It's your problem now.'
Xemi surprisingly found a job soon after. His father had told him not to neglect his studies, enrolling him into a college as the coming school year was a major factor in Xemi returning. His son however felt that the most important thing was to break his dependency on his father. The faster the better. For some reason when he went to college, his anxiety skyrocketed. He thought he spoke with an accent and became tongue tied when he had to speak on the fly for lack of practise. He started cutting class and taking more shifts at his retail job. A point came when he had enough to live on his own and he rejoiced as his father was becoming unbearable. After a month of peace, he started asking Xemi if he prayed. Xemi's answer was always yes for he was not yet ready to rip the leash off him, gritting his teeth when he answered, feeling humiliated each time. The final straw came when he was asked to help with rent.
'For what ? Pay you to tell me what to do? I'm leaving,' he told him calmly, while the outrage billowing within him demanded ever greater, searing outbursts. He had banked on staying a little longer, but his hand was forced and so he went house viewing. He was pressed, impatient and took the first one he came across. The rent left little scope for excess cash but he took it, hesitating only slightly because he hadn't viewed anything else but brushed it off as nervousness.
The flat was in a five story complex located on the third floor. There were four rooms, every single one inhabited by Jamaicans. Two of them were related, mother and daughter. Xemi's room itself was spacious enough mainly because it was furnished in the most desultory of manners. The room had a double bed with a mouldy closet and a foldable table. It was evident that the table was a last minute addition and it made an impression that was offensive. There was dust spreading like cancer growths on the sides of the linoleum floors as it was on the curtainless windows and on top of the small, cheap wardrobe. If Xemi hadn't been so eager to find a place of his own and find it quickly, his sensibility would have been to laugh at the hack job but instead he said he would take it.
He was bristling with excitement. On the bus, the keys to his independence were pressing into his skin and the discomfort was so real it made him happy. This was real ! He was smiling to himself, playing out a dream soon to be reality of himself telling his father he was gone, and throwing the rope that was placed around his neck right in his face, exhorting him to hang himself with it.
He was sitting at the upper level of the double decker bus, looking at the disintegrating clouds above, feeling like every blood claim upon him would vanish in the same manner, leaving the calm blue of free existence before him when he heard the sounds of a quarrel downstairs. A minute later 'warayhe!' thundered on the upper deck, and instantly the clouds before Xemi thickened.
'How long have you been here?'
A Somali woman was coming towards him with an absurd russet brown wig similar to the ones orthodox Jewish women wear. She had the ugly jowls that age bestows on some more than others yet her steps were a return to sprightly youth, walking quickly like Xemi had somewhere to run. In fact, he reflexively looked around like he was about to make a run for it and saw everyone looking at the spectacle. He put his hands up to try and calm her as she was breathing heavily with agitation and her voice, getting louder, made it clear that for her the only two people that existed were the two of them. To Xemi, the miasma of others around them increased to rival her disregard.
'Mother, sit down, and lower your voice.'
'For what?' she shouted in Somali.
'Was that you I heard arguing with the bus driver?' he whispered in English.
'I lost my ticket, why should I pay again?'
'Mother, sit down.'
'Where are you going now, your father's home?' she said in a voice that was close to a shriek.
'Oh my god,' he said, as he put his hand to his right cheek.
'Mother, let's go.'
He got up and baited his mother to follow him by quickly getting off the bus. She grabbed him by the waist. He pulled away. 'Warayahe,' she exclaimed over and over again as her small feet tapped after her son. The bus was too cramped to be with a woman as oblivious and so synced to her own emotions as Xemi's mother. At least in the open air he could get away if he wished to do so. He was grateful that she didn't know where his new place was. Heavens, was he happy their meeting occurred on the bus and not on his new doorstep! Xemi's mother was a sphinx of unpredictability and her son was rapidly conceiving of a plan that would be the least embarrassing and aggravating to get rid of her.
'Warayahe, where are we going? Is this how you treat your mother?'
'Mother, we are going this way. Let's not do this in public.'
'What are these godless people to you?'
Xemi smirked a little and said:
'It's just up here.'
Fortunately, his father's flat was nearby. They went in. He had to laugh at his father's look when he saw his ex wife next to his son. He was dumbstruck.
'Look what I found,' he announced as they entered.
His father was the first to greet his mother in the Islamic manner and she returned it with the most inappropriate haughtiness, like she wasn't a guest but a ruler bestowing a favour by crossing this threshold.
'Let's sit, mother. What an unexpected reunion! Let's make the most of it. How many more will there be?'
Xemi was the only one who spoke in English. His parents spoke in Somali.
'Yes, how did you find each other?' his father wanted to know. His face was a picture of wariness, confusion and unease.
'On the bus. I just came from my new place. By the way, I'm moving out today.'
His mother immediately said:
'Where? I'll get my things and move in with you.'
This was a demand more than a request.
'Don't do like these godless people and throw your mother away after I….'
She wanted to say 'raised you' but checked herself and put her fingers to her lips like they would prevent the lies from coming out.
'...gave birth to you.'
'All in due time,' Xemi said, almost in a panic at the idea.
Xemi knew that sooner or later his mother would show why he didn't want her around him and she duly obliged him. The reminder of lost motherhood unchained her and set her off on non sequiturs.
'You see these Ethiopians in Mogadishu? What business do they have in Somalia ? Tell me what!' she said in ringing indignation, apropos of nothing.
Xemi and his father looked at each other. His father then muttered something in polite agreement, while Xemi, unable to stand being there any longer blurted out:
'I forgot something at my new place. I'll be right back.'
Xemi jumped up and ran out the door before locking it behind him. He heard his mother yelling 'Warayahe !' as he jumped down the flight of stairs.
'Well, father, you created the grief that maddened this woman. You deal with her because this isn't my problem,' he said to himself as he hurriedly made his way down the darkening street far away from any troubles that might take a toll on his own sanity.
*
When Xemi's mother found out her children were lost to her something snapped. She moved out of the family apartment to the cramped one bedroom nurses' accommodation offered to all the nurses in the Middle Eastern country. Immediately, she started talking to herself. First they were in desolate whispers until soon, very soon, they became sharp outbursts. Almost always the bitter laments were centred around one question and one question only, and that was the question of why? Then the misfortune of others became the fortune of hers. She was offered a nursing position in London and her ex husband had financial problems. She would once again be a mother. She couldn't understand the look of disgust her teenage son had when she opened the door to his bedroom, crying, telling him that 'these were the tears she used to shed for him when they were apart', and he responded by ordering her to stop bothering him with melodrama. Should not a mother's love have the magnetism to make her son wipe the tears off her face? She closed the door and let the tears dry by themselves. Nor could she understand when she exposed herself to her son while dressing that he should turn away, aghast, screaming defilement, and she said 'don't you remember when you used to drink from these?' To her, time had stopped when they left but for them it continued just as before. The love for her children never diminished, while the love for their mother never attained permanence. And as she watched her son leave now she again asked why? And this time she asked it in a scream.
Chapter 8
Farhia lived in a semi-detached house in Lambeth, not far from Oval station. Upon this road where Farhia's house was, Samia looked around confused, feeling like how she had felt at the luggage carousel. She asked the same question she had asked then.
'They have numbers,' said Farhia waiting for her son to push the squeaking iron gate that belonged to their house.
'Numbers?' Samia repeated bemusedly, and then noted the big black bin in front of the house with white numbers spray painted on its facade. 'Oh these are the numbers? This is how you find your house?' She marveled at it through a scowl.
'Yes, that's how I find my house,' Farhia answered, listening to the loud sounds of her children's voices; and exhaling deeply, steeling herself, she opened the door to her house. 'Hoyo, hoyo!' a little girl shouted not even a second after the door was opened, running towards Farhia, as the other child Mohamed ran away from her. He tripped her. She didn't fall on the floor but had reached for Farhia's dress and clasped it like a rope.
'He just tripped me! Can we -'
'No. Go back to the room. Your grandmother is here.'
'Did you just see he tripped -'
'Listen to me! Why don't you listen to me! Go inside.'
Farhia brushed the girl off her, set the baby down on the ground and watched the baby run into the room, giddiness all over his features. He started to squeal a little too. The little girl had stepped back, saw the smiling grandmother behind Farhia and ran inside.
'Why are these walls so close together? Haha, yah!' Samia said, touching one of the walls of the corridor for balance as she took her shoes off. 'And…it goes up?' she then noted, looking apprehensively at the stairs further down the opening corridor. 'Ah, but it's larger here. This, the living room?'
Despite herself, Samia was surprised by the outlay of the room. It was decorated in a holistic way, with the crimson monochrome spread all around the room with every piece of furniture either brown or dark red, from the sofa and cushions, to some of the artwork on the wall, the wallpaper itself, and the carpet on the floor. It matched in such a way that it made Samia blink, with her eyes having to adjust to the darkness that the chosen color gave off.
Farhia was already sitting on the sofa with one of her boys next to her. Five of the six kids were there. Farhia told her mother to come sit next to her while she introduced her to her grandchildren, the reason she had come to the country.
The range of the ages of these kids were between two and twelve, with the eldest not there, him being sixteen and on trial for murder. All of them were boys beside one girl who was seven.
'Come and say hello to your grandmother.'
But before she even said that, the eldest boy, Abdi-Fatah, who had been sitting next to her, had already gotten up and approached her, and kissed her on the cheek, a lithe twelve year old boy with twists in his hair.
Samia was thrilled by the kiss but glanced at the boy's hair.
'What -'
'This one is Abdi-Fatah,' Farhia said quickly; and then looked at the other kids who were occupied by the TV screen and the videogame attached.
'Fatah? And the little one?' she asked AbdiFatah.
'Kareem,' he replied, smiling deeper, laughing softly even. 'Abdi-Kareem.'
'So charming,' thought Samia with pleasure, looking at the well kept boy. She touched his shiny skin.
'Oil?' she said.
He didn't reply but continued to smile more.
Farhia meanwhile had snatched one of the kids by the collar. 'What did I tell you?' This was the girl from earlier. 'Didn't I tell you to greet your grandmother.'
The yoked girl dropped the controller, moaning:
'But I been waiting for - nobody touch that controller!'
She faced her grandmother and said hello but didn't kiss her like her brother had and just stood there sullenly; so her grandmother brought her closer and kissed her instead.
'I'm going now, hoyo,' said Abdi-Fatah and made his way to the door. 'Bye, grandmother.'
'Oh you're going? He's going out into the world?' Samia asked.
As she had released the girl, or rather, as the girl had slithered her way out of the embrace; she now went back to the games console and snatched the controller from her little brother, the little five year old who had accompanied his mother to the airport. The boy yelled about not having played all day, having gone to the airport. His mother took his side, snatched the controller from the girl and gave it to him. This was a single player game. The girl was now subsequently hollering about having already waited for her turn for so long.
'Uss, I swear, uss!'
But the girl wouldn't quieten down and Farhia turned to her left where there was an audio system and pressed play. A song now played to drown out the moaning child, who wasn't crying that loud. The music easily drowned her out, a song called Dheesha Dheel, and after shooting an angry, mildly triumphant look at her little girl, Farhia turned back to her mother.
'So that's how it is,' said Samia, looking with curiosity at her daughter.
'There's one more,' Farhia said, attempting to smile, 'and I think we'll see him tomorrow.'
'Hoyo! I want to eat,' one the kids cried out.
'And then what ? Can't you see I'm with your grandmother?'
'I want to eat too,' another added, louder than the first.
'I didn't eat anything all day,' a third one said, louder still.
'Why don't you stop the lies,' Farhia rasped, looking down, for she had gotten up to cook something. 'I can't sit for a second without you making me get up.' She then stood still for a moment and said, with the sad eyes of growing realisation: 'One of these days I'll run out on all of you.' Samia watched her daughter with astonishment as Farhia almost immediately snapped out of that striking mood and tapped the head of her own daughter. 'Go show your grandmother her room. Stop doing nothing forever.'
'But my turn -'
'Up!'
'Yah!' said Samia, getting up heavily, creasing her brow. 'Show me, dear. Show me. Let's go,' she continued, looking down at the child still sitting, looking up at her. She then nodded and got up too.
Walking with direction and energy the little girl outstripped her grandmother, who was lumbering a little behind her.
'Slow down!' she called out. 'Or are you running away from me? You're not running away from me are you?' she asked in a lower, bemused voice. 'It's not hard, that's for sure.' The girl waited half way up the stairs. 'To run away from me.' Seeing her grandmother at the bottom of the stairs she scampered up. Samia took a deep breath, tensed her flagging muscles and climbed the stairs two steps at once. She exhaled once she got to the top; a slow exhale, looking down at the grandchild, not betraying anything of exertion's strain. The grandchild in return looked up at her, a finger to her lips, with a child's curiosity and merciless appraisal that seemed strange after witnessing an old lady fly up the staircase with her luggage full of her belongings. Despite it being a child, Samia was put out by the lack of surprise or admiration.
'If someone stares at me for longer than a second, I must demand that they introduce themselves,' Samia asked with laudable control of her tone. It sounded very even despite her heart thundering at the exertion she had forced it to undergo. 'What is your name, dear?'
'Shukri.'
'Shukri?'
The girl nodded.
'And you?'
'You call me grandmother.' The girl had no words for this. 'And how old are you, Shukri?'
'Seven,' she answered in English.
'Seven? That's…'
'And you?
'Me what?'
'How old are you?'
'Me? Only God knows. No one took the time to mark the time when I was born, you see. Show me around, Shukri, let's see the tour or else you'll have me wandering.'
Shukri then turned and walked down the landing.
'The toilet is down there,' she said in Creolean Somali, which was half English and half Somali, a distortion, a jumble, of either and both, but with queerly anglicized pronunciation.
'Did you start with the toilet as insinuation? I guess I need to wash. It's been a long journey.'
'And this is the room,' Shukri said falteringly, realizing she had been addressed but not knowing what had been said.
This was a children's room with toys of various nature and a bunk bed.
'Is that two beds on top of each other?' she asked, looking at the bunk bed for she had never seen one. 'Yah? Is that for when you feel in the mood to sleep higher some nights and lower on others?'
Amused by its structure she placed the luggage by the wall in front of a doll house and walked over to the bunk bed and grabbed it by one of its bars.
'This used to be my room. And Abdi's,' Shurki said. 'I got the top bed.'
'Not anymore?'
Shurki shook her head.
'Hoyo said that this room is only yours until you leave.'
Samia sat on the lower bunk and felt it bouncing and felt a sudden spell of dizziness.
'Dear, tell your mother that I'll be down later, after I rest for a bit.'
'Okay,' Shurki said, racing away, glad to be rid of her charge as tour guide.
Samia lifted her legs to lie on the bed. She noted the bars above her that belonged to the top bed, Shukri's, and stretched out for one of them and grabbed it, squeezing her fingers between the mattress and the bar. She enjoyed the texture of the bars of this bunk bed and how cool they felt, the structure imparting something of closeness, of safety, which puts one at ease. She fell asleep with her body in this position.
