Hiding in Plain Sight (15 page)

“Yes, I would, Auntie.”

Bella say to Salif, “On a topic of housekeeping.”

“Yes, Auntie?”

“Please remember to get in touch with the maid and ask her to come as soon as she can. This house needs serious cleaning.”

“Yes, Auntie. I will do so.”

“And one more thing.”

“Yes, Auntie?”

“Please look after your mum and Auntie Padmini while they are here. Don't forget they are our guests. One honors one's guests always.”

“Of course.”

“Now here is cash for a taxi to wherever you are going and back again,” she says, handing him a wad of cash, which she knows to be far more than they will ever need for a taxi and a meal at a decent restaurant for four persons.

“What about Dahaba?”

“Let her come with you. That way both of you will get to spend time with your mum and Auntie Padmini,” Bella says.

On second thought, she fumbles in her shoulder bag and brings out a credit card. “Call me if there is a problem, any problem.”

She turns to Valerie and Padmini and speedily walks the short distance separating them, and she hugs now one, now the other, and then says to both, “You are welcome here. Please come visit again.”

Valerie says, “Thanks. That is kind of you.”

“You have both my numbers?” she says to Salif.

“You mean your Kenyan and the Italian? Yes.”

“Call me if there is need,” she says, and turns to go, then stops. “Remember to be here when I return,” she says to Salif. “There is only the one set of keys.”

And off she goes to meet Gunilla.

Within a few minutes, Bella finds herself in heavy morning traffic, the GPS notwithstanding. Above all, she does not know the shortcuts to avoid getting rush-hour madness, as local taxis might; nor does she know how to predict Nairobi traffic, where five minutes this way might make a great difference if you know the mood of the place. The traffic is utterly unpredictable though and very untidy, and this would tax anyone's nerves, but it is also, she knows from Aar, a drag on the local economy in both obvious and hidden ways. She remembers that he told her that the city authorities were at long last waking up to the challenge, and a couple of Chinese and Japanese firms have been enlisted to find a solution to the problem, but their efforts plainly have yet to bear fruit. The problem, Aar liked to say, wasn't only the large number of vehicles plying too few roads. It was the obstreperous drivers, each of them thinking themselves smarter than the others and behaving in the most undisciplined way with no fear of penalty. And Nairobi traffic is such a chronic condition that people have grown accustomed to it and in a sense rely on it. You can blame it for your lateness; you can catch up on your phone calls and texts; you can do your shopping from the
peddlers making their way between the slow-moving cars. Incidents of road rage are rare because, while everyone is impatient, the opposite is equally true: Everyone is at the same time tolerant of everyone else's wayward ways.

Bella is annoyed but not anxious. She has left ample time to get to her appointment, and if by some miracle she is early, she has brought along the Kerr novel to read, which she is certain to prefer to the journals or glossy magazines that likely await her.

She dashes into an opening in the traffic, making a quarter of a kilometer gain before she has to brake suddenly behind a truck emitting black smoke that has created another jam. As she inches forward, she thinks about the evening and the morning, and how encouraged she feels by Salif, who has been so steadfast with her. Even Dahaba did not abandon her, divided as her feelings obviously are.

The down side of it is that they seem to have it in for their mother now, to the point of being cruel. Yes, Valerie is irresponsible and insensitive, but the world was not as kind to her in her own tender years as it was to Bella. She knows that Valerie's father, an actor, was often out of work, and the family mostly survived on Wendy's paycheck. Worse, Valerie's father was a drunk who sexually abused his daughter from the age of sixteen. When at long last he began to find steady work in Hollywood, he would often fly Valerie over to join him. That came to an end when a paparazzo took a picture of the two of them in a compromising position and this made it into one of the tabloids. Wendy brought all her wrath down upon his head, demanding an end to the matter on strict terms: Valerie must go to boarding school, and he must pay all the fees. Even that wasn't the end of the liaison, which continued in secret until Valerie met Padmini at school.

Aar knew none of this until Valerie was pregnant with Salif, and he revealed none of it to Bella until Valerie left for India with Padmini.
Perhaps, Bella thinks, this is why nothing Valerie does ever shocks her and why in some sense she cannot forsake her, much as she dislikes her. It is something she learned from Aar: Only those to whom the world is kind are truly able to be kind to the world. This history is not something she can explain to Salif and Dahaba, not yet, at any rate. But she resolves to teach Salif to be fair in his judgments and to encourage Dahaba to be moderate in her efforts to assert herself. And she resolves to make every effort to amicably work out the legal matters that await them without bringing in a scavenging herd of lawyers alien to the cause, whose primary aim will be lining their own pockets.

The traffic is once again at a complete standstill, and the driver of the vehicle in front of her gets out of his car and comes to her window, apparently wanting to speak to her. Visitors to Nairobi are often advised to beware of potential violence, which can strike at any hour of the day or night. Bella looks in her rear mirror to be sure that others are watching and checks that her door is locked before she lowers her window a few inches.

“Eh?” she says.

“I've run out of fuel,” he says.

She shrugs her shoulders, acting the part of the Italian, making exaggerated gestures with her hands like a terrible actor in a B movie.
“Ma non capisco!”
she says.

But the man does not move, and Bella, taking pity on him, lowers her window a little farther so she can lean out far enough to see what sort of shoes he is wearing. Bella is certainly enough of an Italian to be superstitious about footwear. If you are good at heart, she thinks, you tend to have shoes of good quality, or at least ones that are polished and looked after. This man has on an excellent pair of shoes. In fact, they look unquestionably Italian.

“What would you like me to do about it?” Bella says.

“Do you have an empty jerry can in your trunk?” he asks.

Bella says, “I doubt it,” but she pushes the button to open it so he can make sure. They all wait while he pushes his car off the road, then he pockets the keys and sets off, presumably in search of a petrol station.

She calls after him. “Come. Get in.”

He tells her there is a gas station less than a mile away, and he knows how to get there. He tells her his name and offers her his card.

“What about you?” he says. “Where are you from?”

“I have no card to give you,” she tells him.

“But you do have a name?” he teases.

She gives him the absolute minimum, her first name.

“How did you come by an Italian name?” he asks, and despite herself, she volunteers a little more.

“My father is Italian, my mother Somali,” she tells him.

At the gas station, she waits while he borrows a jerry can and pays for fuel to fill it. She brings him back to where his car is parked and waits until he has it running. Once again, he comes to her window. He thanks her and says, “You realize you haven't given me your number.”

She says, “Maybe I've none to give.”

“Or an e-mail address to write to?” he says.

“Maybe I don't wish to.”

“As you like,” he says. “You have already done so much for me.”

“Maybe you can do me a good turn,” she says.

“Anything,” he says, enthralled.

She gives him the address of the UN offices in Gigiri. Does he know a shorter way to get there? she asks. She explains that she has an important appointment for which she cannot afford to be late.

The Kenyan gentleman with the shoes to die for tells her she has been needlessly sitting in traffic—Cawrala, the GPS woman, has sent
her on a most indirect route. He gives her a quicker way, carefully writing out the directions on a pad she gives him while he talks her through it. As a result, she arrives at the UN offices with half an hour to spare.

Which turns out to be a good thing because the security measures at the gate are draconian. It's as if she were waiting to board an El Al flight to Tel Aviv, she thinks. The blue-clad Kenyan guards manning the gates are rude beyond belief, barking instructions. One of them, waving what looks like a wand as if it were a scepter, directs her to turn off her engine, leave the key in the ignition, get out of the vehicle, and take all of her personal effects with her. She approaches the gate on foot, joining one of the two queues. When she gets up to the gate, a man sitting in a cubicle extends his hand through a small window to take her passport; in return, he passes her a long form to fill in.

As she does what she is told, she wonders whether similar measures were in force at the UN office in Mogadiscio where Aar was killed; if they had been, perhaps he would still be alive. The report was that the bomber simply walked into the compound and detonated his device, but this has not been confirmed. She used to hear from Aar how corrupt the Ugandans were. They provided the largest contingent of soldiers for the African Union, otherwise known as AMISOM, a mainly U.S.- and EU-funded force numbering close to twenty thousand. The Ugandans, being the first to arrive in the country and the strongest, were assigned to guard the international airport and several major government buildings, including the presidential villa and the National Parliament. Rumors circulating among the Somalis that were picked up and published in the foreign press say that some of the Ugandan top brass serving under AMISOM were making lucrative deals selling weapons to the Shabaab terrorists. On Aar's penultimate trip out of Mogadiscio, he told Bella, he had gotten through all the checkpoints
and into the VIP lounge without anyone so much as opening his suitcase or even putting it through a scanning machine because he was in the company of a young man whose family owned one of the biggest and most expensive hotels near the airport. All the guards knew him and greeted him by name; the young fellow was so brazen that he mentioned the name of the bar in the city where he would meet them later that evening.

Bella finishes filling out the form then watches while a couple of men place some sort of device in the shape of a huge shovel—a metal detector, she presumes—under the belly of Aar's car and another one gets into the car with a gadget that looks like a small vacuum cleaner to check the interior for explosive devices.

Then she loses sight of the car as she passes to yet another cubicle, where yet another blue-clad officer asks for her name and then slides her document out of a pile. He checks that her passport photograph matches her face. Bella is aware that she seldom looks like her official photograph, which tends, like everyone else's, to look like a mug shot. But she seems to pass muster, and he gestures for the form. Now a young woman asks her to look into a lens, and then she is fingerprinted.

“There is one more hurdle,” the blue-clad man standing outside the second gate tells her. He directs her to walk through a body scanner after putting her shoes, her belt, jewelry, and mobile phone in a bin, just like at an airport. And just like at an airport, she is admonished to take out any laptops and liquids and put them on the conveyor belt as well.

Bella is relieved to see that Aar's car has made it through as well. “Triumph!” she says to herself. After the scanner, a woman administers a thorough body frisk, pointing out to Bella that she must open her fists. “You are an adult,” she chides Bella, “not a baby. What are you holding?”

Bella is about to say, “Nothing,” when to her great surprise, she discovers that she is, in fact, holding something—the card given to her by the stranger with the exquisite shoes. “Kenneth Kiplagat,” she makes out, the card still in the tight grasp of her hand, as if she is loath to let go of it. Then she relinquishes the card and the female guard, who puts it through the scanner, says, “Just in case,” before she completes her pat down.

Bella retrieves the card and puts it in her wallet. Then she gets back in her car and drives the hundred and fifty meters or so to the visitors' lot. She waits there until it is time for her appointment, preparing herself mentally as best she can. Then she steps out of the car, pulls herself together the same way she has seen gymnasts and other Olympic athletes do just before they compete—puffing out their chests, pumping the air, and mouthing silent encouragement to themselves.
“Coraggio,”
she says to herself. Then she walks into the building.

The receptionist says immediately, “Our commiserations, Bella. We all loved your brother, and we will be missing him. He was a gentle soul, genuinely friendly and good at heart.”

Bella feels the tears beginning again; it is only natural, she thinks. But she is grateful when a second woman says to her in a businesslike way, “Gunilla is waiting. Immaculata will come down to escort you to her office shortly. Please take a seat and wait for her here.”

Bella does as she is told, wondering whether the receptionists have been rehearsing these speeches the entire time she has been standing in the queue. Immaculata, she muses, what a name.

—

Bella follows Immaculata, high heels clicking, tight miniskirt hugging her knees and high bum, into the elevator and down the hall. She
remembers wearing and loving miniskirts as a long-legged young girl in the Somalia of her day, but alas no longer. Not only because a woman her age isn't expected to show off her wares, but also because Somalia has fallen victim to the terrorizing dictates of religionist renegades, and her beloved Mogadiscio is no longer a cosmopolitan city. Lately, “secularist,” once a term of approbation, has become a dirty word. Somali society has taken a giant step backward, not only as a consequence of the long-running civil war but also because it lags far behind most other countries in education and the other parameters that measure social progress.

“Are you a good Catholic girl?” Bella asks Immaculata.

“I never miss Sunday mass,” the younger woman answers, but something about her expression encourages Bella to say, “I suppose you are regular about your weekly confessions as well?”

“Are you Catholic?” Immaculata asks. Now that they are walking side by side, Bella can see that Immaculata is heavier than she thought and that her skin is not very good. Her hair has been lengthened with extensions, which don't seem to agree with the dryness of the air-conditioning.

“I was brought up a Muslim,” Bella says.

“I wouldn't have thought so, looking at you. You're not wearing body armor.”

Bella thinks that such exchanges are getting boring, and she is tired of explaining. But Immaculata persists.

“Where were you born and brought up, really?” she asks.

“Mogadiscio, Somalia,” Bella says.

“You are teasing me.”

“I am not.”

Immaculata says, “We have Somalis everywhere in our country,
millions of them in refugee camps, and they've also taken over parts of our country. Have you been to Eastleigh? You don't look like them—you have beautiful skin, too light for a Somali. Nor do you carry yourself like them, walk like them, or behave like them.”