Maps by Nuruddin Farah Read Free Book Online

sense that my cry wasn’t as fierce as it had been. All she had to do was to lay a finger on any part of my body and I fell quiet. But my body remained nervous and there was something agitated in the atmosphere until Uncle Qorrax was out of the room. I began to relax when I could no longer hear his ugly voice.
    That I burst into tears immediately when he walked into the room I had been in— this entered the lore of the traditions told in my uncle’s compound. Obviously, it made him very uneasy. But there was little he could do to me, or about me. His position as a respected member of the community dictated that he treat me with apparent kindness, and that he provide for me, someone else to take my mother’s place. Misra, until then, was not a
bona fide 
member of the compound. It appears she became one, especially, when I chose her — chose her in preference to all the other women who had been tried on me, one after the other, a dozen or so women into whose open arms I was dropped. I cried with vigour whenever Misra wasn’t there. In the end, the community of relations approved of my choice. But not my uncle. Not until a year later.
    To reduce the tension, my uncle decided to earmark a fenced mud hut with its separate entrance for our own use. That way, he wouldn’t encounter us when going into or out of his compound, of which he was the unchallenged master. One could tell if he was or wasn’t there—when he was there, we wouldn’t hear anything except his terrible voice, giving instructions to or shouting at somebody. Often, we would also hear the help-help cry of a wife or a child being beaten. When he wasn’t there, the compound and its residents wore an air of festivity and women and children exchanged gossip and wicked jokes about him, or men like him, and neighbours visited and were entertained. But we were excluded from the joys and sadnesses of the compound. We had our life to lead and a compound which was all our own, Misra and I. We lived the way we saw fit. At least, until nightfall And then Uncle came.
    He came after nightfall and made his claims on Misra. It was one thing to make a political (that is public) statement by being kind to her and myself, it was another to give something for nothing. He didn’t confound issues—he would hire another woman in her place and dispense with her services unless she offered herself to him. I learnt later that she did. She said it was so she would be allowed to be with me. Misra suffered the humiliation of sleeping with him so she could be with me. I don’t know what I might have said if I had known. Things do look different from this height (now I am a grown-up and a man myself!), from this distance; besides, one tends to indulge oneself until the end of one’s days, talking until daylight, about the possible alternatives and compromises of a complicated situation such as this. But were there other avenues, other alternatives, other possible compromises that she could’ve struck with Uncle Qorrax?
    She thought Aw-Adan might have become one healthy alternative—if I had liked him. But I didn’t. Looking back on it now, I think the reasons why I disliked Aw-Adan were different—different in that Misra and he had a world of their own, a language of their own, and so when they lapsed into it or chose to dwell in the secretive universe of its nuances and expressions and gestures, I felt totally excluded. I was afraid they would either take me away from the Somali-speaking world or deny me my Misra, who had been for me the end-all and the cosmos of my affections.
    It is hard to admit it, but I suppose I was a vulnerable child, much more vulnerable than anyone suspected. Aw-Adan nicknamed me “Misra’s nightingale”. I didn’t understand his meaning until years later. For a long time, I took him to mean that I sang Misra’s love-names. He didn’t mean that at all. He meant that