Knots by Nuruddin Farah Read Free Book Online

complex, prepared to pay for it. Whatever attempts either made to get to know the other or at least to converse bore no positive results: They behaved as if they were a married couple who were under the torment of a recent estrangement and who had no idea how to overcome their mutual antagonism. At some point, she decided that sitting and facing each other in a restaurant when neither was saying much and she was too exhausted was not worth a plugged nickel. She asked for the bill, which she settled, and they left. When they got to the apartment, she retired to her room forthwith, wishing him good night.

    From the following morning on, she relegated every other worry to a back burner, determined to throw herself into her work. She got up early and fresh, poised to activate contact with the coordinator of the Kenyan crew, a young woman who doubled as a cameraperson/driver, who told her to wait for her and her Somali-speaking colleague, who had arranged for the interview appointments, at the main gate.
    Half an hour later, Cambara, dressed in a discreet manner, eager to get started, and holding her notes in folders in an old leather bag in preference to a showy executive case, was at the main entrance. She introduced herself to the two women in the beat-up Toyota. Compared to the one at the wheel—younger, and guessing from her name, Ngai, Kikuyu-speaking—who looked livelier, the Somali-speaking woman sitting in the back of the vehicle was massive and broad as a cupboard. It was she who said something first, speaking to Cambara in halting Somali that sounded as if she had learned the language in an after-work adult education class, unable to get her tongue flexibly around all the gutturals in Somali. Next to her—in fact, within reach of her stretched hand—were the tools of the cameraperson’s trade, including a camcorder and other instruments. It was difficult for Cambara to know where she was from. The huge woman was carrying nothing save a kitschy handbag, pink like her dress and her shoes, the latter also in imitation leather. As soon as she saw her spread in the back of the vehicle, Cambara knew she wouldn’t rely on her for much assistance.
    Ngai was a bouncy, slim, very friendly and talkative woman in her mid-twenties, dressed in jeans and T-shirt, pigeon-breasted, head recently shaved, and with eyes as huge as stray UFOs spotted over a mountain at dawn. She was easygoing and full of life, and she and Cambara hit it off immediately, each returning the compliment to the other. But she was a hairy driver and went into the blind bends rather perilously, often speeding when it was unsafe to do so and jabbering away mostly about the Somalis who, according to her, were everywhere, especially in the center of the city, and seemingly moneyed. It was obvious that Cambara took an instant liking to her.
    â€œI kept telling my countrywoman sitting in the back that I am beginning to think that maybe Somalia is richer than our country, Kenya,” Ngai said, when they were on the road for a few minutes.
    â€œWhy do you say that?”
    â€œAll the five-stars in Nairobi show they are booked for months, no vacancies,” the thin woman said. “We always thought your country was much poorer than Kenya, kind of desert. You don’t have petrol, do you? Like Libya or Saudi?”
    She couldn’t but shockingly admit how little Africans knew about one another’s countries as a result, ironically, of their biased colonial heritage. After all, what did she know about Kenya or neighboring lands? Not as much as she did about Europe or North America. As part of her effort to create a good working relationship, she explained the class nature of the Somalis flying into Nairobi and putting up in five-star hotels and those who were arriving in dhows and overcrowded boats that docked in Mombasa and, because they were poor, were being treated as stateless and therefore as refugees. She placed the two sets