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Links by Nuruddin Farah Read Free Book Online

Book: Links by Nuruddin Farah Read Free Book Online
Authors: Nuruddin Farah
revealed, he had no idea how to find the housekeeper, who was actually in his employ, in that he paid her salary in the form of monthly remittances from America, directly into her account in Mogadiscio. Jeebleh was sure the housekeeper held the key to many secrets, and he was eager to talk with her.
    â€œDon’t you have any blood relations in the city who might know?” the Major asked.
    Although he was tempted, Jeebleh chose not to talk about his motive to visit, or admit that he was hoping he might be able to locate his mother’s story in the context of the bigger national narrative. So he kept it simple: “There are no surviving relations that I know of, or that I’m in touch with. But I have a couple of friends I plan to look up, and I’m pretty sure they’ll help in leading me to where my mother is buried.”
    â€œHow odd!” The Major sounded shocked.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI cannot believe that you have friends in the city, but no surviving blood relations.” He repeated the word “friends,” pronouncing it with a mocking distaste. “This is what America does to you.”
    â€œWhat’s America done to me?”
    â€œIt’s made you forget who you are.”
    â€œNo, it hasn’t.”
    â€œYou’ll see for yourself when you’ve been here for a couple of days that there are no longer ‘friends’ you can trust, anywhere in this country,” the Major asserted. “Here we don’t think of ‘friends’ anymore. We rely on our clansmen, on those sharing our ancestral blood.”
    â€œI find it hard to believe that you don’t have friends,” Jeebleh said.
    â€œOnly a fool not in touch with the realities of this country and our current history would insist on placing ‘friends’ above the station occupied by blood relations.”
    The driver shook his head. “I don’t agree with you, my dear cousin,” he said. “You and I know that even in the worst times of the civil war, many of us have been saved, given shelter, and then helped to safety by our friends.”
    â€œThis is no longer the case, and you know it!” the Major replied. “Let’s not kid ourselves with these and other lies. Nor is it that this fellow doesn’t have any surviving blood relations here—he has plenty of them. Only he chooses to have nothing to do with them, believing they’ll relieve him of his American money, which he doesn’t wish to share with them. He thinks our reliance on blood kinship is backward and primitive. He is saying that he has money, that his family is safe and in America, that he belongs to the twenty-first century, while we belong to the thirteenth. Can’t you see what he’s saying?”
    The driver said, “No, I can’t.”
    â€œHe’s saying that we’re backward fools, because we think of our kinsmen. Listen to him. He’s here not to visit the country or some relations, but to call at his mother’s grave. And on his way to her tomb, he’ll make the time to look up a couple of his old friends. He’s a modern man. We’re primitive, we have our heads in the sand.”
    The militiaman with the cast said, “I think he should go to the south of the city, where they’re all crazy, to look for his mother’s grave. I agree with the Major, there’s something wrong with this man!”
    The driver winced like a parent in whose presence a child has been rude to a guest.
    The Major now launched into a new tirade on how people like Jeebleh were on show-off visits “as false as their teeth.” He devoted a few enraged remarks to their mannerisms, their clothes, their shoulder bags, the Samsonites-on-wheels in which they carried steam irons with which to press their stonewashed jeans. “The man is here to be gawked at,” he said. “You can bet he left America after paying a visit to his dentist,

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