Hiding in Plain Sight (9 page)

They wait for Salif to disarm the alarm. When he has done that, he comes out to help to bring in the bags, one at a time, leaving them on the ground floor for the moment.

“I'll take them all up later,” he says.

Dahaba, now fully awake, is in her element; she says, “Just because we are women, it doesn't mean we can't carry our own bags upstairs ourselves.”

Salif refrains from answering back, and Bella is impressed. Maybe their little talk has made an impression. Salif makes himself busy opening the downstairs windows then turning on the taps until the water runs clear. Not that it is drinkable unless it is boiled, Bella reminds herself.

With Dahaba trailing her every step, Bella gives herself time to take it all in: a big house with two floors and, from what she can so far see, boasting a sizeable kitchen, a lavatory, and plenty of secure windows with mosquito netting fastened between the outer safety glass and the inner blast-proof safety panes. There is a large living room boasting a big flat-screen TV of Japanese manufacture, and Dahaba is pleased to explain the complicated processes of how to turn it on, play video games, and go back to watching TV.

Bella is thinking of other practical considerations. She says to Salif, “Do you still have a maid in your employ?”

“We do,” Salif says hesitantly.

“Dad didn't think well of her,” Dahaba says.

“Why is that?”

“He used to say she had butterfingers.”

Bella says, “Dropping things, breaking them?”

“We are still paying her though,” Salif says.

Bella is so encouraged by the progress Salif has made in such a brief time that she wonders if she can train the children to help run the house without the services of a maid. For when she looks through the cupboards, she observes other signs of sloppiness or laziness: The forks don't match; the plates belong to different eras of the household, some going back to the day when Aar and the children lived in England and some from when they were residing in Vienna.

“Let's not call anyone yet,” Bella suggests. She decides to talk to them about this later.

“Let's enjoy one another's company,” Dahaba says.

“All right by me,” Salif says.

Salif and Dahaba are in their element now that they are in their own home. They are more at ease, as if they feel unbound, unchained. Bella knows that their father's death will hit one or the other of them hard and knock them around. It is one of the challenges awaiting her, the revisiting of sorrows, the emptiness. But just now, they are cheerful.

Bella follows Salif up the stairs, helping with the luggage. As she remembers, there are four bedrooms, three of them en suite, one for each of them, plus a spare room, which served as Aar's study, the only one that was often locked in Aar's day.

They stop in the children's rooms first. Dahaba's door is painted dark purple and adorned with a couple of photographs of women singers, including Celine Dion. Dahaba says, “Meet my room,” as if she were introducing her aunt to an entire world. Inside, the room is adorned with more posters of female singers. There is a messy unmade bed, and the floor is littered with dirty socks. But there are also books everywhere, and Bella thinks that this is a girl for whom reading will be the best defense against depression.

“Where do you borrow books from,” she asks, “the school library or the public library? Or is there one in Nairobi?”

“She likes her books bought new,” Salif says.

Bella says, “We'll have to talk about that.”

“The biggest bookshop is in the Yaya Center.”

“Prices are exorbitant, aren't they?”

“Quite often five times more expensive than a book costs anywhere in the UK or the U.S.,” he says. “When you think of it, there is no way most people can afford to buy books at all here. Nor does Nairobi have any good secondhand bookshops. So many secondhand clothes stores, a number of which are run by the church, but no good secondhand bookstore.”

Dahaba says, “For someone who seldom reads, Salif is making strange comments about the price of books, Auntie.”

Salif still does not allow her comments to upset him. In his room, indeed, the bookcases are almost bare. In fact, there is hardly any clutter in the room at all. Everything seems to be in its right place except for the sports shoes that are arrayed on the lowest shelf of the bookcase. He does not seem eager for any of them to enter any farther. He closes the door to his room and says, “Auntie, let us show you to your room.”

“Who has a key?” she asks.

“We both do,” Dahaba says.

“He was a good dad,” Dahaba says. She begins to weep again, but when Bella and Salif each reach out a hand to comfort her, she regains her composure, and they enter the room.

Dahaba says, “Our dad had no secrets from us.”

“Except when it came to work,” Salif says. Then they retreat to their respective rooms, Bella wanting to shower, Salif turning his computer on, and Dahaba starting to read a much dog-eared sci-fi novel.

Just as Bella is undressing, she receives a text message from Valerie, who has checked into the hotel and wants to know where Bella is and how soon she can visit her children. Before Bella can even think how to respond, Salif calls from his room, saying that he too has received a text message. And then Dahaba receives a message as well.

They meet in the kitchen and read the text messages they've received from Valerie, and Salif dictates a message, on which all three agree and which Dahaba is assigned to forward to their mum. “Just got back to Nairobi and we are too knackered to see you. But please come for dinner tomorrow evening at seven p.m., Mum.” And she provides her mother with detailed directions on how to get there and tells her to call if there is need.

“Does that mean we'll have to cook tonight?” asks Dahaba.

“No, it doesn't,” says Bella. “You can eat a takeaway of your choice here or I can take you to eat out and then I will drive you back home.”

“What is your plan?”

Bella says to Salif, “Your dad's car keys first?”

Salif runs up and comes back with the car keys.

“We won't eat in tonight,” she says.

Salif says, “Cool.”

“I want McDonald's,” says Dahaba.

“I want sushi,” says Salif.

“Do you know the addresses of the restaurants?”

Dahaba says, “We sure do.”

“Here is the condition,” states Bella.

Dahaba is quick to say, “We won't fight, promise.”

“Just wait. Do let Auntie tell us the condition.”

“What is the condition?” asks Dahaba.

“Since I need to get back to my hotel to get my remaining suitcases, I will bring you home; drive away; do an errand or two, including
perhaps meeting your mum for a drink; and then come home,” says Bella.

Dahaba says, “I want to meet Mum too.”

Salif is of a different opinion. He says, “I think it is best that Auntie meets her alone first. We haven't seen Mum for a very, very long time and waiting to see her for one more night won't kill either of us since we've invited her for dinner.” Then he says to Dahaba, “What do you think, my little sister?”

“Okay, we'll meet her tomorrow,” agrees Dahaba. Then she adds, “But I want a Big Mac, one huge tub of ice cream, and a Diet Coke. And I want us to go right away. And let there be no argument.”

—

Bella goes to the car to get herself reacquainted with it. Dahaba sits in the front by her side, knowing that Salif is unlikely to make a fuss now because he sat by the driver earlier and because Dahaba acceded to Salif's demand that Auntie Bella meet their mother outside their presence so they could talk about matters of adult concern.

Bella turns the engine on while waiting for Salif to set the alarm. She lets it idle as she gets accustomed to where everything is. She engages the gears, pretending she is changing them, and then lets up on the clutch gently and moves forward half a meter—this startles Dahaba, who seems frightened by the suddenness of the move.

Bella says, “Sorry.”

“It's okay, I know what you are doing,” says Dahaba.

“I am trying to get a grip on how it works.”

“Please don't mind about me. Do what you must do.”

“I won't give you a fright, I promise,” says Bella.

“I won't take fright now I know what you are doing.”

Then Bella works the brakes, relieved that Dahaba has stopped
yattering and promising she won't take fright. If you asked Bella how she feels right this instant or if she is scared driving back at night from her Nairobi hotel, she will admit that she is a little fearful. The car is new to her, this is the first time she has been behind the wheel here, and the city streets are unfamiliar to her, and from her previous memory, drivers in Nairobi are in the habit of using their full-beam lights and are very likely to blind the drivers in the oncoming vehicles. And you have to look out for pedestrians crossing the roads at any time and there are deadly obstructions on the sides of these narrow roads. You would be mad not to be cautious, very cautious.

Salif joins them in the car, and without the slightest fuss, he sits in the back and presciently says aloud, “Everything is under control,” perhaps meaning that he has set the alarm and all is well. Bella, however, feels it is time she had a paper map and also wonders if either of them knows how to set up the GPS in the car. Salif says, “Do you need to set up a GPS on top of Cawrala?”

“Who is Cawrala?” Bella asks.

Dahaba explains that it is the nickname Somalis have given to the female voice of the GPS, which is beginning to gain currency here, just as it has in North America. And she shows Bella how to use it.

When Bella asks for the address of their favorite McDonald's drive-thru, Dahaba has no idea because she is bad with addresses and doesn't know the names of any of the city's streets, and Salif is about to start teasing her about this.

“Salif, dear, not a word more from you,” says Bella, displaying a moment's irritability. “Just give me the address of the drive-thru.” And he does so.

“Let us get your food,” says Bella, moving.

And voilà, the GPS makes contact with the satellite, which is now ready to guide her and Cawrala, the woman whose voice she is familiar
with, as she has heard it in a variety of cities, in different languages, and in different continents. The voice has a temper of such meanness that it reminds Bella of her first-grade teacher, who was often cross with her. Cawrala tells Bella to turn left and she does so, and then after a couple of hundred meters, Cawrala tells her to turn right. Because Bella is intent on testing Cawrala's patience, she takes a left turn, contrary to the woman's instructions. The woman's bad temper is back, albeit still in control, as she recalculates before coming back with renewed advice on how to set matters right so they can get to the mall where the drive-thru is located. Salif, irritated at Dahaba's yattering about things to do with GPSs and satellites, offers to lead Bella to their favorite McDonald's if only Auntie would silence Cawrala and tell Dahaba to “shut her gob too.”

Bella pulls off the road, stops the car, turns to Salif in the back, and says, “I'll remind you again, my dear, of the promise you made to me earlier today that you would show patience, which you and I know would stand you in better stead in good and bad times.”

“My apologies, Auntie,” says Salif.

Dahaba says, “It's okay, Auntie, he can't help it.”

Despite not liking what Dahaba is doing, always speaking in protective defense of Salif whenever she tells him off, Bella makes no comment and gets back on the road, with Cawrala taking a few moments to come back on. A left turn, followed by a right turn and a long silence, leads her to think about her upcoming encounter with Valerie in an hour or so. And Bella discovers that she cannot dislodge a worry about whether she will tell Valerie that she is driving Aar's car and then give her and Padmini a lift to the restaurant. Bella decides that it is unwise to complicate an uncomplicated situation; she won't say much about the children at this first encounter, nor will she offer to drive them to the restaurant; let the damn women get to the rendezvous their own way.
Bella decides she should be worrying about how she is going to make this thing get her to the hotel and back to where the children are. Having guided them to the drive-thru, Cawrala says, “We've arrived at your destination, to your right.”

The service is fast and Salif and Dahaba are happy with their respective orders. On the way back to their home, Bella, with Dahaba's tutoring and Salif's insistent encouragement, masters how to make the GPS function, including feeding in the street name of the hotel and Aar's home address.

When they get back to the house, Bella goes upstairs, and having no other dress to change into, she brushes her hair, borrowing Dahaba's comb, which she has to clean on account of the girl's hair that is there from previous use. And before leaving for the hotel, Bella touches base with Dahaba and Salif, who are having their takeaway meal in the kitchen.

“Please remember to call me at the slightest worry.”

“We will, Auntie.”

Dahaba says, “We'll set the alarm if there is need.”

“We can take care of ourselves,” Salif assures her.

Bella remembers how too much unnecessary fretting takes one to an early grave and how anxious Hurdo always was about her children's well-being to the extent that she couldn't sleep when one of them was out of the house. She spoke constantly of her worries, which provided her with the partner she often lacked, what with the doubts about Aar's father's companionability and Bella's dad living far away in Italy. Bella mustn't be like that.

Then she leaves, saying, “Back in a couple of hours.”

Now that she has made it out of the gate alone for the first time since reuniting with her niece and nephew, Bella is overwhelmed by the sorrow she has given no release to in front of them. Her eyes overflow with tears, her chest heaving, her entire body trembling; she weeps loudly. She realizes, as if for the first time, that the loss is permanent. It isn't easy to fall back on her Somali hardiness—hardiness being practically the definition of Somaliness, Somalis being a practical people with sufficient backbone to pull through anything. While Bella admits there is no shame in being distraught or even suffering a total breakdown after the death of a loved one, she is aware that it is wiser to adopt a quiet dignity to ennoble Aar's memory and mourn his death with solemnity. Only then would he feel adequately honored and only then will he be proud of her.

Being back in Aar's house has reduced the children's anxiety, she could see instantly. She left them holed up in their respective rooms, Salif playing solitaire, Dahaba reading yet another novel. What follows, however, will not be easy, Bella knows. And she knows too that when she gets back to her hotel, there will be several messages from
Valerie already waiting for her under the door, where the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign still hangs.

Bella gets back on the road, driving with renewed confidence. She takes a few moments to think about what information about the children she is willing to share with Valerie, at least until she figures out what Valerie's aims are. She is not in the habit of lying, but she knows that there is nothing to gain by telling Valerie the full truth. If possible, she decides, she will be evasive, buying time until she figures out where Valerie's devious mind is headed.

She knows that she could do with all the help she can get from Gunilla, who knows the legal side of things, and, of course, from Mahdi and Fatima; the former affording Bella a guide through the troubled waters of UN bureaucracy; the latter directly and through their children providing her and the children with the support they require.

Finally, Bella parks the car in a public open-air lot after going through a boom gate and picking up a ticket. Once at the reception desk to inquire if there are messages, she asks the concierge to send a valet to take the car and park it in the section reserved for hotel clients. Then she goes up to her room and, using the hotel phone, calls Valerie's room.

A woman answers, but she doesn't sound like how Bella remembers Valerie, so she takes the safe option of asking to speak to Valerie. The voice says, “A moment, please.”

Valerie comes on the line, and the voice is overwhelmingly, unpleasantly familiar and abrasive. “Where are you? Where have you been? I've been calling and calling. And where are the children?”

Bella will not be rushed. When answering Valerie's questions, she takes her time thinking about what to say. One needs to compose and recompose oneself when one is dealing with Valerie. What's more, Bella wants to prove to herself and her sister-in-law that Valerie cannot
exercise power over her. When Aar was alive, he was the focus of Valerie's maneuvering; now, Bella thinks, it is her and the children's turn to be the victims of Valerie's blackmailing ploys. Bella is no pushover; it is time Valerie came to accept this as fact and get accustomed to it.

“Come on, Valerie. You haven't even said hello or offered condolences.” She asks where Valerie is staying, which turns out to be in one of the upmarket chalet-style accommodations the hotel offers nearby, and Bella ascertains that Padmini is with her. She gives Valerie her room number and floor and warns her to come alone. Then she hangs up.

Not fifteen minutes later, she hears a knocking at the door, but she does not answer immediately. When she judges that she has made Valerie wait long enough, she goes to the door and looks through the peephole. Standing there is a woman she no longer recognizes. Valerie is wearing a cotton hip sari, but her body has spread with the unforgiving weight gain of middle age. Nevertheless, her bulging midriff boasts a jeweled belly button, and her nose rings are further evidence of a taste that has been acquired since they last met.

When Bella opens the door, Valerie smiles up at her, but Bella simply meets her eyes, neither overtly friendly nor openly hostile. She doesn't immediately show Valerie into the room, but instead looks her up and down, as if measuring her for a coffin. As if Bella's stare literally undoes her, Valerie's sari starts to come undone, and in her attempt to pull herself together, she drops her handbag, which spills its contents on the floor—tampons, a packet of condoms, toothpicks, a hairbrush. Bella doesn't look away; she simply waits, saying nothing, as Valerie gathers her things. Then at long last Bella motions for Valerie to enter and closes the door behind her.

“How was your flight?”

Valerie pulls a face, as if unready to answer the question. Then after
a very long pause, she says, “Not too bad, actually, considering it could've been a lot worse.”

“I hear you were in Uganda,” Bella says.

Valerie says, “Word travels fast.”

Bella asks, “What's the story about Uganda?”

“It's a beautiful country.”

“And they eat
mattock
every day, don't they?”

“Mashed plantain with peanut stew.”

“Anything happen there?”

“They said you'd be mean to me,” Valerie says.

Bella does not rise to the bait, does not even stop to wonder who “they” are. But she does wonder yet again what a man as gentle, loving, and generous as Aar found in such a woman and what held them together for so long. She remembers once asking Aar this directly. As he was prone to do, he took refuge in a piece of Somali wisdom, this one a caution against outsiders placing themselves between “the penis and the vagina of a couple.”

Bella pressed him. “Not a good enough answer.”

“Maybe sex holds us together,” Aar said.

And at that, Bella had fallen silent, defeated.

Now Bella tries another tack. “Who gave you the sad news?” she asks.

“My mother did,” says Valerie. She still does not offer her condolences, even when Bella says, by way of apology, “I had no way of reaching you.” Yet Bella knows that she herself has been equally rude—she hasn't greeted her sister-in-law with any real warmth or grace, nor has she so much as offered her something to drink. Her words sound stilted to her ears. The English phrase that one closes a letter with, “Yours sincerely,” comes to mind—a phrase that is not always meant to represent sincerity.

She watches with annoyance as Valerie looks askance at her, as if she wouldn't want to be seen in such company. And rather than feel sad at how their mutual hatred has blossomed over the years, Bella gives in to the impulse to be nasty.

“Why were you in Uganda?” she asks.

“What a question to ask!”

Bella is relieved to discover that neither Helene nor Gunilla seems to have shared Bella's involvement in paying Valerie's legal fees. “Did you mistake Uganda for Kenya,” she asks, “and go there by mistake?” Valerie's ignorance of geography is legendary.

“I know better than that,” Valerie says.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” says Valerie. “It happens that Padmini was born there.”

“Still, that doesn't explain why you were there.”

“I went with her—to recover some family property in Nakasero, the center of the city,” Valerie says. “Her family was among the Asians expelled by Idi Amin. Remember those Dukawallahs?”

Bella does. The Dukawallahs were small-business men and shopkeepers hailing principally from the Indian subcontinent. Many had originally come to work on the Ugandan railway. Often they set up general stores in hard-to-reach localities in the African countries where they settled—just as the Somalis in South Africa are doing these days—but as they thrived, they moved to the bigger cities. Idi Amin ejected them from Uganda in 1972, but in Kenya, they still account for ten percent of the population.

“And why are you here?” asks Bella at last, turning to the matter that must be on both of their minds.

But Valerie is evasive. “Here, as in Nairobi here?”

She seems to be stalling, and as Bella waits for an answer, unpleasant memories of their previous encounters surge up in her, crowding
out her few pleasant memories of Valerie. Of course, she has little impulse to dwell on pleasant memories anyway, at a time when she is at peace neither with herself nor with the world at large.

“Yes,” she says. “What brings you to Nairobi?”

“My husband's death,” Valerie says.

“Aar's death has brought you here?”

“That's right.”

“But he didn't die here.”

“And my children, of course.”

Bella waits, and Valerie continues. “And if I am honest with you, it's also about the guilt I've felt over these years, even though I pushed it back and did not attend to it; this brings me here too. I hope you understand where I am coming from.”

Bella disregards this last—her sister-in-law, she believes, has no understanding of the concept of guilt and its ramifications and attendant responsibilities—and goes for the jugular: “How do you mean, you're here for your children? You haven't seen or communicated with them all these many years.”

“I am their only living parent,” Valerie says.

And before Bella knows it, she has lost it despite all her resolve. “Parent, you call yourself a parent? Not to these children you aren't, and you haven't been for many years.”

But Valerie isn't backing down. “Now that their father has been killed and I am still among the living, it falls to me, as their mother, to have them come to me so I can look after them.”

The woman is clearly insane, Bella thinks. Look at her, dressed as though she were on her way to a Bollywood party. Beware of the middle-aged woman who doesn't behave or think like one! It isn't going to be easy to do battle with Valerie, Bella thinks.

“When was the last time you spoke to them?” she asks. “The last
time you sent them a birthday present or penned a letter or sent an e-mail to congratulate them on their excellent achievements in sports or school. When?”

Valerie pauses. “Still, they are my children from my own blood.”

“Have you been in touch with them since you arrived?” Bella says. She does not divulge the fact that the children are in fact at home, where she left them.

“Mum has given me their numbers,” Valerie says.

“You tried to speak to them, did you?”

“I did speak with them,” says Valerie, not offering more.

Bella lets the half-truth stand. What kind of reception did Valerie expect when her own children haven't heard from her or set eyes on her for years? This madwoman does not seem to remember that just as infants look like one parent one day and then seemingly overnight change their features, as though at will, so that they look like the other, children aren't consistent when it comes to which of their parents they love more. And thanks to Valerie's absence from their lives, Salif and Dahaba have little reason to revert to their earlier intimacy with her. What chance does she have to win back their hearts—not in the courts, surely, having deserted her family, even if she is still technically Aar's wife—or, rather, his widow? But Bella is no legal expert, and she doesn't know what a judge in a Kenyan court would make of Valerie's situation.

“I'll do the best I can,” Valerie says.

Bella stares at her in disbelief. “And what if they don't wish to see you?”

“I'll take my chances.”

The two lock eyes, and for the first time since they began to talk, Bella really looks at her, taking in the face spotted with pimples—or are those mosquito bites?—and what seems to be an atypical paleness.
Has she had malaria? Bella wonders. Perhaps it's not that her skin is pale but that her eyes seem jaundiced.

“How long do you plan to stay in Nairobi?” she asks.

“It depends,” says Valerie.

“On what?”

Valerie looks around, as though others might overhear her, and when she speaks, it is almost in a whisper. “On how things pan out.”

“What things?”

This time Bella doesn't get an answer. Instead, Valerie asks a question of her own. “Do they know that you are here?”

“They do,” says Bella.

With a touch of sarcasm, Valerie responds, “Lucky you!”

And Bella can't resist adding, “But then, I've invested in them and you haven't. I never lost touch.” Bella doesn't like to hear herself speaking vengefully, rubbing more salt in Valerie's open sore. And so she adds, a little more softly, “Not that anyone can guarantee it will be smooth sailing with teenagers.”

But her sympathy evaporates when Valerie responds, “I can't wait to see them, my treasures!”

Bella doesn't tell her what the children have said to her about their mother. She spares her this, not out of kindness, but because there is no point in getting into a scuffle.

Bella gets up, ready to show Valerie out, but just then the phone rings. It is Mahdi. She asks him to wait, then she says to Valerie, “Please see yourself out, if you don't mind. I must take this call.”

At that, Valerie exits, slamming the door behind her.

After speaking briefly with Mahdi, Bella calls the hotel reception desk to ask that they prepare her bill since she will be checking out of the hotel in an hour or so. One less worry, she thinks, as she goes through the room, making sure she leaves nothing of hers behind.
Then she rings the concierge, requesting to please have her car brought to the front and a bellboy sent up to her room to take her luggage to the vehicle.

—

Valerie walks out of the room and turns left past a fire door. She takes a lift to the ground floor and slips out a side entrance. In the gathering dusk, she makes her way along a tree-lined path until she comes to a low-built two-room chalet. She knocks three times on the door, then, without waiting for an answer, inserts the key and enters.