Maps by Nuruddin Farah Read Free Book Online Page B

decay and metal to rust — and we weren’t allowed to talk about death. Whispers. Conspiracies. With the night falling secretly and Uncle Qorrax crawling into bed with us and making love to Misra — the cycle of life and death, the circle ending where it began — the flow of menstruation, of death ascertained — and we weren’t to talk of death. Not even when Misra was helped to abort, not even when a calendar was brought into the compound and when circles in green were neatly drawn round the safe days and nights. An ovum lives for less than thirty-six hours, sperm for about twenty-four. Yes, only one, maximum two days in each cycle. And we weren’t to talk of death.
    Not until I came to Mogadiscio during the 1977 war in the Horn of Africa, not until then was the discretion about death completely disregarded and only then could “death” occur in my vocabulary in the manner it occurs in the thoughts of a spinster who’s been robbed by it. I recall saying to Uncle Hilaal, who helped me loosen up and with whom I could comfortably talk easily that “death” was to me simply a metaphor of “absence”; and God was a “presence”. My uncle’s stare was long but also difficult to interpret. He was silent for a while, then, sighing, he mumbled something which I took to be the syllables of Misra’s name.
    Mis-ra!
    Then I repeated to my uncle the story of how I asked Misra to explain what it is that happens when death visits its victims.
    â€œThe heart stops functioning,’ she said.
    â€œNothing else happens?” I inquired.
    â€œThat is death. The heart’s stopping,” she explained.
    â€œAnd the rest of the body?”
    â€œIt rigidifies as a result.”
    â€œLike … like Aw-Adan’s leg? Wooden like Aw-Adan’s leg, is that what happens? Lifeless and unbending… like Aw-Adan’s leg?”
    I had never seen Misra as angry as she was on that day. She wouldn’t speak for hours. And in the body of my fantasies there took place something interesting: I remembered how fast the third leg (the wooden leg, that is) was dropped and how fast another between his legs came to raise its head, jerkily, slowly and nervously; and how the whole place drowned in the sighing endearments of Misra who called him… yes him of all people … “my man, my man, my man”!
    Then suddenly I remembered something—a question I had meant to put to somebody, any adult, I didn’t care to whom. Misra happened to be angry, yes, but I felt she would answer it if I asked. So I did just that. “And the soul?” I said.
    Most definitely, she had forgotten what we were talking about before she fell silent and into a dudgeon dark with rage. “What about the soul?” she said, lost in the zigzaggy mazes of bewilderment. “What about it?”
    â€œWhat happens to the soul when somebody dies?” I said.
    She was silent for a while—silent in a naked way, if I may put it thus, and she took her time gathering her ideas like an elegant robe around her, her hands busy touching and caressing her face, levelling and smoothing the bumps and the roughness her anger with me had brought about, and a thought crossed my mind (my thoughts as usual began to outrun me): what do monkeys pick when they pick at each others head? Lice? Or something else? Or nothing at all? I thought I would wait for the right moment to question her on this.
    She cleared her throat. I knew she was ready to speak I sat up, waiting. In the meanwhile, I could see her repeating to herself something in mumbles. 1 was sure she was quoting either the Koran or Aw-Adan. She said, “The soul is the stir in one, for one stirs not when dead,”
    I was disappointed. She wondered why. I told her.
    â€œAnd what do you want me to tell you?” she said, unhappy
    I was disappointed her answer was brief and had ended, in a sentence, long before I was