Hiding in Plain Sight (3 page)

But before she can telephone her nephew and niece, she needs to stop Marcella from yammering away. She asks the old lady to go to her own apartment and call the airlines to buy Bella a business-class ticket to Nairobi on the next flight available. “Use my credit card,” she says, offering it.

“Business class at short notice?”

“What's wrong with that?”

“It will be prohibitively expensive.”

Bella says, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. Or at least I hope so.”

With Marcella gone at last, Bella picks up the telephone to dial her nephew. It has barely begun to ring when her weeping and wailing starts anew. This is no good, she thinks, as the phone rings and rings. She hangs up without waiting for voice mail to kick in. To fortify her resolve, she pours herself a strong drink, which she downs in a single gulp. Thus hardened, she calls Wendy, Valerie's mother. The two women are fond of each other. What is more, Wendy got on very well with Aar and looked upon him with great approval, not only because she saw how devoted a father he was, but also because he gave her as much access to her grandchildren as she wished. For their part, Dahaba and Salif loved their grandmother and looked forward to spending a month a year with her in Leicester when the schools in Kenya closed for the summer.

As soon as she has recognized Bella's voice, Wendy lets out a long whimper and then stammers weepily, “I've been in a state since hearing of it. You know, I loved Aar more than I've cared for my own daughter.”

“Where is she?” asks Bella. “Any idea?”

“She is currently in Uganda, with that woman.”

Bella knows that there is no love lost between Wendy and Padmini, whom she blames for Valerie's decision to walk out on her marriage. But when Wendy offers to call and break the news of Aar's death to her daughter, Bella is all too glad to accept the offer.

They talk some more, and when Wendy speaks of being overwhelmed by the barbarity of the killings, Bella silently remembers something Hurdo once said after their country collapsed into anarchy and they fled Mogadiscio: “Death in Somalia seldom bothers to announce its arrival. In fact, death calls with the arrogance of a guest confident of receiving a warm welcome at any time, no questions asked.”

The church bells in Trastevere chime, as if in tribute to Aar. Bella pictures death riding a tide of undulant waves of unheralded emotion—and she weeps again, unable to stop shaking, the hour as dark as a cave.

“And what do they say down in Somalia?” Wendy is asking.

Bella, despite herself, recounts some of the gorier details from one of the Somali websites, which reported without giving any evidence that one of the terrorists who entered the UN building after the suicide bombing held a knife to Aar's throat and then stood by, waiting and watching, until his blood drained like a goat being made halal.

“Shame on the lot of them,” Wendy curses.

Bella knows that these terrorists aren't true Muslims. Yes, she is a secularist, no more than culturally Muslim. But with a mother born and raised a Muslim and a father born in Italy to Catholic parents and brought up a Christian, she believed she had the undisputed authority
to choose her faith. In her youth, growing up in a Muslim country, she embraced her mother's faith. But she no longer thinks of herself as a true Muslim.

Wendy is saying, “Death is a given, isn't it?”

“We have no idea of the time of our dying.”

“Nor of the manner of our dying.”

Bella says, “It is only that Aar's death adds terror to the idea of death, the idea of dying, because he was unprepared for death and did not deserve to die in that infernal manner.”

“He was a good man,” Wendy affirms.

And they say their good-byes.

—

Unable to reach her niece and nephew on their mobile phones, Bella rings the home of their hosts, the principal of the school and his wife. Surely the attack has been headline news in Kenya as well. Finally, Catherine Kariuki, the wife of the principal, answers the phone. Bella asks if the children have heard the news. Catherine confirms that they have and that they are taking it very badly indeed.

“How do you mean?” asks Bella.

Catherine says that they seem to be traumatized and uncertain how to act. One minute they're a little weepy, the next minute one or the other of them says, “This was bound to happen, given where Dad was,” and the other one commiserates.

“I would like to talk to them, please.”

Catherine goes to call the children to the phone but soon comes back to say that not only won't they open the door to Dahaba's bedroom, where they've sequestered themselves, they also won't even acknowledge her knocking or her calls to them.

So Bella simply tells Catherine that she will be on a flight to Nairobi
on the morrow, and the two of them burst into tears and weep and weep and weep until one or the other of them drops the line, and the next thing Bella knows, she is holding a dead phone in her hand and listening to approaching footsteps. Looking up, she realizes that Marcella has come back with the boarding pass for the plane ticket she has booked.

Bella puts the boarding pass in the external pouch of her shoulder bag and immediately sets about packing. She decides to take along with her a couple of camera cases in addition to the ones she has brought back from Bahia—who knows how long she'll need to stay in Nairobi; perhaps she'll even set up a studio there. She asks Marcella to bring up a couple more from the basement of the building, where Bella stores them. Bella packs her flash leads, hot-shoe-equipped units, and several other essential items. Often, Bella entrusts this job to a young half-Eritrean woman who serves as her assistant, but there isn't time for that. So, as Bella does not like surprises, she packs for all eventualities, such as whether the sun will bless her with its presence or fail to show, like a hurt lover. Bella knows of an Italian photographer who lost much of his work—a month's worth—because he hadn't prepared for the sudden dust storm that swept in after a gorgeous day in Omdurman, Sudan.

Marcella, bless her soul, keeps bringing sandwiches and drinks and asking questions. She expresses surprise at how much equipment and clothing Bella is packing. “Are you staying away for a long time?” she asks.

“What would you have me do instead?” Bella asks.

“Fetch the kids here.”

“And then what?”

“Let them go to school here or in England with their grandmother, who would be more than willing to have them stay with her,” Marcella says.

“Things seem a lot more complicated than that,” Bella says, “what with a dead father and a delinquent mother who may turn up in hopes of having a say in what happens to them. Not to mention that there is the children's opinion to consider. Maybe they are happy where they are.”

“So are you relocating back to Africa for good?” Marcella asks. “Is that what you are intending to do,
carissima
?”

“Aar's death changes all plans,” Bella replies.

“Including where you'll live?”

“Everything,” Bella affirms.

“And the apartment, what will you do about it?”

“Aar's death has changed everything,” Bella says again.

“But you are so young and unfulfilled!” Marcella cries, once again unable to keep from speaking her mind.

Disturbed, Bella sits on the edge of the bed, where the camera cases are still open, and puts her head in her hands. She knows there is no simple way she can explain to Marcella or anyone else what it feels like to lose Aar. And now that death has deprived her of him, how she feels she is answering a call to serve, almost a religious calling. As a young woman, she saw herself as his appendage, breathing the very oxygen he breathed. She has never married, never committed herself loyally and fully to another person, man or woman, always and forever waiting for the summons, duty-bound, steadfast in her dedication to her beloved brother, like a hound to its master. She has never forgotten the assistance and love he provided to her when she was a young girl growing up. Now it is her turn to give him and his children all the devotion they require, setting aside her own needs and desires.

“Forgive me for being selfish,” Marcella says.

Bella asks, “What are you talking about?”

“I was hoping you would be here when I go.”

“Go where? Where will you go?”

“I meant when I die,” Marcella says.

Bella is at a loss for words. After a pause, she says, “At the moment, Dahaba and Salif are my priority. You will always be there in my mind and my heart; and of course, I will rush to return if there is urgent need.”

The truth is, Bella hasn't thought further than the next blind corner in a life marked by labyrinthine turns, as full of surprises as the paths that lead into and out of a casbah. The idea of travel, insofar as Bella is concerned, is bound up with the loading of cameras—the genesis of renewal via self-expression in everlasting images. But she feels in no condition to share all her inner tumult of worries and half-formed plans with Marcella.

“To me, you are the daughter I never had,” says Marcella.

“You've told me that several times.”

“I had a soft spot for Aar too.”

“I've always been aware of that.”

“I am bad at gaining control of my emotions.”

“Don't give that a thought.”

“And because Aar's death has shaken me to the marrow of my bones, I'm even more inept than usual.”

Weeping once more, they hug.

Through her tears, Bella looks down at her bare feet. She must trim her toenails before she goes to catch her flight, she thinks, soak them in very hot salt water and trim the ugly lot, as hard as a young calf's hooves and just as dangerous, with their jagged edges. In Rio, where she visited her Brazilian lover, she hadn't the proper scissors with which to cut them, the airline having confiscated her last pair.

“What about Valerie?” Marcella asks.

“What about her?”

“Why can't she be with her children?”

How can Bella tell this bumbling, adorable fool that there is a right time and a wrong time and place to bring Valerie into the conversation. But Bella, though miffed, won't say boo to Marcella or speak ill of Valerie to her.

Marcella continues. “Remember, she is their mother and no one can prevent her from making a legal claim to the children as the only surviving parent.”

Bella doesn't tell her the plan that is beginning to take shape in her head if such a thing threatens: fight all the way to the courts to stop it from happening. She instead speaks with long-winded caution, saying, “We haven't communicated, Valerie and I, for a very long time, and I have no idea what her plans will be when she hears of Aar's death.”

“She is unbearably self-centered.”

Bella wishes she had a quiet moment in which to plumb the depth of her grief alone, to give herself over to an instant of full-blown mourning before she gets a little rest and goes to catch her flight. Then she recalls how Marcella handled the loss of her husband of nearly sixty years: She slept. Bella has never known anyone who slept off her grief, but Marcella fell into a massive depression and slept and slept—not once leaving her bedroom for a whole month, during which time she remained utterly mute. At the end of what a mutual friend would later describe as Marcella's “mourning hibernation,” the woman reemerged, and she seemed to think that the world around her was good again. And if you mentioned her husband's name, Marcella would speak of him as though he were out for a brief walk and would be back shortly.

Bella has no such luxury; she doesn't have a whole month in which to mourn. She has a nephew and niece to look after.

With the aircraft doors closed and the plane ready to depart, Bella half listens to the flight attendant giving instructions she must have heard a million times over the years as she crossed oceans, changed continents, exchanged one time zone for another. It starts to dawn on her now that her body time is nowhere near the one her wristwatch is telling her, nor will it match the time it will be when the plane lands in Nairobi tomorrow. She is in her own time zone, much more jet-lagged than she has ever been, her brain little better equipped for thinking than a cabbage in the process of becoming sauerkraut.

Of course, Aar's death has been traumatizing, but it also comes on top of months of nearly nonstop travel. She has been putting together a book meant to document the outward migration of Somalis in pictures and words—nearly three million people in the space of a decade making a move from one of the least developed countries in the world to some of the most advanced. To that end, she has been traveling from Rome to several European countries where Somali refugee populations abound, and then to North America, including the cities of Toronto, Ottawa, Minneapolis, Columbus, and San Diego. From there, she was
off to Australia and New Zealand, after which she took the Brazil trip for work and to visit with her lover there.

A life of quality
merde
mixed with quite a bit of weltschmerz.

Although she and Aar were not refugees, they were among the penultimate wave to leave Somalia, the last before the hemorrhage of a million and a half persons of all ages, classes, and educational backgrounds who quit the country and then the continent, and ended up anywhere that would take them. Two decades after the start of this stampede, some clarity is emerging as to which of these expatriate communities is thriving and which have stayed at the lowest rung of development. It has been Bella's intention to document the successes and the failures alike. Initially, she wanted to go to Somalia, maybe even visit Aar in Mogadiscio. But now Bella thinks she may shelve the entire project or at least postpone it until Dahaba and Salif are both out of school, their lives settled and their futures on an even keel. A pity, because Bella had been funding the project herself from her meager earnings, against the advice of several friends, who suggested that she seek funding from one of the European foundations or even from the UN's International Labour Organization.

As the plane levels at thirty thousand feet and the flight attendants come around to offer drinks and snacks, Bella reminds herself that Marcella forgot to give back her credit card. She discovered this while waiting in the passenger lounge at the airport, but she realized it was too late to do anything about it. Lucky she has plenty of cash from the unused pile she returned with from Brazil and a couple of other credit cards she always carries with her when she travels, in the event of an emergency.

Instead of worrying needlessly about her credit card, Bella used her time in the lounge to check her messages. Which is how she discovered a strange text informing her that Valerie and Padmini, her
Asian-British partner, have spent a night in a lockup in Kampala, Uganda, having been accused of engaging in illicit sex. The sender signed off only as “G,” which Bella suspected stood for Gunilla Johansson, the colleague of her brother's in Nairobi who left her the message telling her of his death.

Following her hunch, she tried Gunilla's number and reached her. At the sound of her voice and the mention of Aar's name, the tears were back, this time with Gunilla's accompaniment. The two of them were so hopelessly emotional that Bella forgot to ask about Valerie and the mysterious text, and Gunilla did not manage to give her any information worth remembering. Then just before she boarded the flight, Bella telephoned Mahdi and Fatima, who were among Aar's closest friends in Nairobi and whose children were Dahaba and Salif's schoolmates. When Mahdi offers to meet her flight, Bella thanks him but declines, worried that she may be in an even worse state when she lands.

The business-class flight attendant gives Bella an elaborate menu printed in several languages; Bella takes it with both hands but doesn't bother to open or look at it. The idea of ordering food so soon after Aar's death appalls her. She declines the offer of the meal and closes her eyes, out of a combination of fatigue and the effort to fight the primal urge building up within her to take revenge against those who murdered her brother. When she opens her eyes, she says to the stewardess, her voice faltering, “Actually, I wouldn't mind having a coffee with some Baileys.” The stewardess hesitates, looking embarrassed, as if deciding whether or not to tell Bella to wait until after the meals have been served. Then she disappears into the galley and returns with the creamy Irish stuff, as if she were serving at a Dublin wake.

Meanwhile, Bella engages her neighbor, a young Alemannic-speaking woman sporting an ostentatious coiffure, which must have
cost her quite a bit, dyed in the colors of exotic birds and arranged in terraces. Her dress, by contrast, is scanty, her tank top bursting at the seams under the pressure of a well-developed chest. The shirt bears a slogan across the front promoting love in all forms, in German and English. Bella hopes that the woman is not on her way to Somalia or any other Muslim land, where she would surely be stoned on sight.

“Where are you headed?” Bella asks the woman.

“Nairobi,” the woman replies.

“As a tourist?”

“I am going to marry my lover, who lives there.”

Bella is tempted to know the gender of the young woman's betrothed—she can't help thinking of Valerie evidently languishing in Uganda—but then Kenya, next door, is the capital of gay culture in East Africa, an altogether different proposition. At any rate, she knows this is not her business and so choreographs the conversation in another direction.

“And this,” Bella ventures, indicating the elaborate coiffure, “this is for the occasion?” She thinks of all the sacred texts—of Islam, of Judaism, of Sikhism—in which the growing or covering of hair plays an important part, welcoming this distraction from thinking about Aar's death.

“More or less.”

“And where are you getting married?”

“In a church in the center of Nairobi.”

She will go this far and no further. But when the plane hits a pocket of turbulence and the young woman, looking frightened, opens and closes her mouth without issuing a word, Bella leans forward and says, “It is all right. I am here, we are here.” And then, surprising herself, she takes the woman's hand in hers, and they settle effortlessly into a place of mutual comfort, each deriving solace from the contact. Bella drops
into a well of exhaustion, thinking ahead to her reunion with Dahaba and Salif, and imagining the hard times ahead for which she must prepare. But by the time the flight attendant comes to collect her cup, she is dead to the world, still holding the hand of the scantily dressed, heavy-chested woman with the fantastic hair with the tenderness of a lover. It isn't until her seatmate reclaims her hand, with the aim of going to the bathroom, that Bella wakes with a start. For a sleepy moment, she doesn't remember where she is and what on earth she is doing, and then she stays awake for the next few hours, wary and worried.

As much as she dislikes Valerie, Bella can't help wondering about the circumstances of her alleged arrest. You can't be cautious enough in a country that legally forbids same-sex lovemaking; you are bound to lay yourself open to blackmail and arrest if you engage in “inappropriate behavior,” which has recently become synonymous with illegal behavior in a growing roster of places. In Dubai, a British heterosexual couple smooching in the lobby of their five-star hotel had been jailed for a year, for example.

In Bella's mind, freedoms are a package, so the freedoms denied daily to millions of citizens in Africa or the Middle East are bound up with the lack of democracy in these parts of the world. The choices individuals make in their private lives are just as important as the choices they make at the ballot box. Public displays of affection, whether between a man and a woman or two men or two women, are but expressions of democratic behavior. No one, not even the president of a country, should have the power and the authority to define love—including whom to love. So while Bella hasn't a kind word to say about Valerie, she is nonetheless sad to learn that she has been a victim of such repression. True, she and Padmini—particularly Padmini, being Uganda-born—should have known better than to visit a country where they might easily fall afoul of the law. The cynic in Bella wonders if
unconsciously Valerie was trying to steal Aar's thunder by any means possible. He has been dead less than a week, after all.

And then she thinks, enough of Valerie, at least until she learns more about her situation from Gunilla. It is time she thought about other topics of greater personal relevance. Her niece and nephew are far more important than a foolish woman who gets herself locked up in a Ugandan jail.

At last she lowers her seat into a narrow bed and, turning and tossing in the confined space, wills herself to sleep.

—

She wakes when the service trolley rolls over the blanket that has been half covering her feet. She opens her eyes and stares at the flight attendant, waiting for the woman to apologize.

But the stewardess only says, “Breakfast?”

“How much more time until we land?” asks Bella.

“Two hours and a bit.”

Bella orders water, juice, and coffee. When she gets back from the bathroom, she notices that the woman across the aisle is filling in the form for immigration into Kenya. She presses the call button above her seat and asks for a form for herself.

Bella has always found Kenya's entry form to be ill designed and clumsy. It never gives the traveler the needed space to write the answers. In addition, Kenya has lately been a problem country for Somalis, who are harassed from the moment they present their papers to the immigration officials and are asked relentlessly embarrassing questions. She fills in the form with trepidation, holding her pencil in midair as she frets over the best answers to give for “reason for visit” and “length of stay.” She can't afford to be in a nervous state when she presents her documents and is questioned about them. She hopes that her
Italian passport, which boasts multiple entries into and exits out of numerous countries, will help allay anyone's worries that she may overstay her welcome in Kenya. Even so, her best option is to state that she is a photographer in the country as a tourist. Then the officer is bound to say, “Welcome, madam,” and stamp her in.

The pilot announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have begun our descent,” and all of a sudden the sky, which has been clear, turns leaden and gray, and clouds envelop the plane like curtains being drawn. It begins to rain heavily, each drop, which are as big as one of Bella's tears, splattering against the windows. What feels like a tropical storm is raging around them, as though the very heavens were angry. Outside the windows, lightning flashes as the plane careens down through the storm. The darkness becomes more intense and there is a loud banging, as if the wings were coming off the plane, and Bella can see nothing except the occasional flash of lightning and the endless gray clouds until suddenly the plane veers left, as if avoiding an oncoming object, then descends again with a lurch, and suddenly the clouds part and the ground is visible below them, very close.

The pilot lands safely despite the weather and taxis to a stop far from the terminal. He counsels calm, urging the passengers to remain seated, but he allows them to use their mobile phones as they wait for assistance.

—

There is nothing like sharing a near-death experience to bring people closer, even briefly. And later, when they've all gone their separate ways, they'll tell the same stories about it—the story of how the woman with the varicolored hair went berserk, or how another passenger threw off her seatbelt and bounced up and down like a dervish, madly reciting all the while what Bella took to be a Hindu prayer, or how a third was
scared so witless that his eyes grew to the size of golf balls, the pupils dilated, and his Adam's apple went up and down as if he might be choking on his tongue. Amid the adrenalized frenzy, Bella kept calm, even managing to lend a hand to her fellow passengers. Somehow she was certain that this time death would spare her so that she could go care for her nephew and niece.

Now that they are safely on the ground, a general feeling of euphoria sets in, and soon the air is abuzz with the chatter of mobile-phone conversations. Bella can hear some of the passengers repeating the more vivid details of what occurred, and a couple of them are already embellishing the account in preparation for the moment when they will appear on the news.

After a very long wait, airport emergency services show up, and the cabin doors are finally opened. There is terrific chaos when the doors open and the passengers who are closest to the exit collide with the men and women who have been sent to deliver assistance to those in need. With several people shouting for attention at the same time, the mayhem seems likely to sabotage every good effort to provide help until the pilot enters the fray, once more advising restraint. He requests that all passengers not injured in the bumpy descent please sit and remain seated until those who need help receive it. A passenger in business class, accustomed to what he refers to as “the priority for which I paid,” insists that he be the first to exit. It takes the shaming of several fellow passengers and the venomous reprimand of one of the male flight attendants to get him to settle down, but once he does, the mood of the other passengers takes a positive turn. With calmness prevailing, they collaborate in filing out of the aircraft and into the waiting buses in an orderly manner.

Bella, waiting her turn to disembark, negotiates her shoulder bag, heavy with her computer, with a big hard camera case made of shiny
metal in her right hand, and a smaller matching case in her left. She is remembering previous, more pleasant visits to these parts, visits that she always looked forward to. Aar used to take her and his children to out-of-town restaurants such as the one in Naivasha, her favorite, which boasted gorgeous vistas, the blueness of the lake complementing a clear sky that extended in every direction. This visit, weighed down by death, will be very different.