Maps (15 page)

Her body (or should I speak of her bodies: one of knowledge, another of immortality; one I knew and touched and felt, the other for others such as Aw-Adan and Uncle Qorrax) anticipated my body's needs (because I was a child, I had only one body, with hardly a shadow to speak of, this shadow being the size of a bird's dropping whenever I looked for and found it) only to satisfy them. If I couldn't pluck a fruit off a tree, Misra's hand reached out and got it for me, and when I couldn't soap the small of my back, her palm was there to scrub it. Likewise, when I couldn't move my obstinate bowels, it was her applying massaging or kneading techniques which helped me do so.

Then I remembered the first painful separation: when I was sent to the Koranic School run by Aw-Adan. I was very, very unhappy For some inexplicable reason, it felt as if, between my feet and the rest of my body, there existed an unfillable space. It was only much, much later that I rationalized that perhaps this was the unused space (previously Misra's) which had surrounded me for years but wasn't there any more. My body had gone numb, my hands disobedient and unable to hold the reed with which I was supposed to trace the
alif, ba
and
ta
of God's words in the flesh of His wisdom. And I was beaten by Aw-Adan, the teacher who ran the Koranic School, beaten until I made a pool of pee in which I sat, something which allowed the other children to make fun of me. Wet and miserable, I returned home to a Misra who didn't show as much sympathy as I had looked forward to. Nevertheless, she scrubbed me clean, fed me and insisted that I learn to copy the emaciated Aleph which she wrote on my slate; that I leam to do properly the under-weighed Ba and the Ta as well But I couldn't make the letters take shape—my Ba appeared sagged, my Aleph short and squat and very much unlike what either Aw-Adan or Misra had written; whereas my Ta was inundated with the messiness of the two dots above it, each big as the tears I shed. However, the sounds I made as I chanted were so beautiful, Misra admitted she sensed their charm pierce through her flesh. Each sound came out marvellously pronounced, shapely, smooth, with all the outer roughnesses removed, all the redundancies discarded. And together we moved forward. I repeated the letters after her, trembling with joy, shaking with delight, as I said what had been, to me, the joyful names of God. Deliberately, I would mispronounce a letter so she would correct me. With Misra, God became fun. To me, He was the letters I couldn't draw, He was Misra's thigh which I hit playfully as I chanted the alphabets of rejoice. In a week, I knew how to write my name, Misra's as well as God's. And when, three months later, I could recite the
Faatixa
, my uncle was invited to hear me perform. As I recited, each word was hot as a brand impressing upon my listeners the intensity of my feelings.

But I hated Aw-Adan, my Koranic teacher. I hated him more when he caned me, because I thought that each stroke struck a blow, rending a hole in the wall of my being. When with him, when at his school that is, I uttered every sound so it was inlaid with the contemptuous flames meant for him. Which was why I shouted loudest, hoping he would burn in the noises—ablaze with hate. In any case, once I got home, Misra studied my body as I did the slate upon which I had scrawled verses of the Koran, she studied it for sores and cuts as I re-read the suras to her.

One day, when taking the
Juzz Camma
examination, Aw-Adan interrupted me, and he beat me too. I didn't see the reason why. I hadn't done anything wrong and so I said what I always thought of him, speaking in the full presence of a crowd of youngsters who hadn't known or heard what I had to say. And he caned me again and again. The haemorrhage of hate had run profusely to my head first, and then to the rest of my body: this meant that by the time I regained consciousness, I came to, shouting: “I am going to kill Aw-Adan; I am going to kill Aw-Adan; I am going to kill Aw-Adan.” I had a temperature the following day. Misra and I stayed in bed. Together, we recited Koranic verses; together, we re-created our bond of bodies, hers and mine. Then I repeated with the premeditated sanity of a murderer determined to kill an opponent, “Do you know I am going to kill Aw-Adan?”

After a long pause. “Tell me. Why are you so vindictive?”

“I vindictive?” I asked.

“To avenge, you're the kind that would drink his enemy's blood.”

I remembered the pain on her face when the metallic rod was inserted, along with abortifacient herbs and root concoctions, into her vagina; I remembered the agonies he had caused her; I remembered her inability to avenge herself—was I really vindictive? I thought she was unfair to me. I could enumerate for her the terrible things he had done to me and to her.

“To begin with,” I said. “This calendar … !”

She was shaking her head, recalling a previous argument we had had the night before.

“What's in a calendar?” she said. “Yes, my Askar, my man, what's in a calendar?”

II

What is in a calendar? What is in a table giving you the days of the week, the months and the year, be it a Year-of-a-Monday, a Year-of-a-Tuesday or one beginning with another day of the week, a year belonging to signs of the zodiac which are based neither on the Gregorian system nor on the Julian but whose calendary makes overt reference to the cyclical and menstrual ordeals of a woman—Misra! She had apparently aborted a child. That was what the metallic rod with the bandaged head appeared to have done—it killed a foetus. And Misra bled a lot. Had she become pregnant because she had miscounted? Here was a calendar that would help her count properly, “provided”, I overheard him say, she put a red circle round the unsafe days with green circles for the good ones.

On the “green” days, the room smelt of musk and other
cuudis
of such sweetness I recall commenting on how much I hated these perfumes and any who wore them. Whenever I was in a bad mood, she went out herself, out, I think, to meet Aw-Adan or Uncle Qorrax, I couldn't tell. She tiptoed out of the room once I was deep in sleep. Sometimes, she returned before daybreak.

She woke me on one such day, before dawn. The
baaf
was ready, the water lukewarm and I was to shower, she said. From her voice I sensed that a decision had been taken about me when I was asleep. Neither did the fact that she was in the same dress as the night before escape my vigilant eyes. She didn't smell of sweet perfumes and freshly prepared
cuuds
. She smelt, if anything, of dried sweat, and her skin, when I touched it, was ugly, I thought.

“Where are we going?” I asked, when bathed.

She said, “You just wait.”

And so we did—together. She unburied the live coals she had preserved in the brazier, by pushing to the sides the top layer of the ashes, using the handle of a fan. Then she drove gentle air upon the exposed coals with the strawed end of the same implement. Although I was dying to comment on the suspicions circulating like the fan's agitated air inside my head, I am afraid I didn't dare question if Misra didn't think she had lapsed from virtue—the virtue of being “my mother”; the virtue of my knowing what was to happen to me. But the idea of discussing questions of moral virtues disgusted me.

We had our breakfast in silence. We had difficulty choosing a pair of shorts which wasn't either too tight for my waist or too short. This gave me the opportunity to make sarcastic remarks about adults who never stopped keeping under lock and key clothes for a growing boy. I said, “Blessed is the intelligence of adults.”

She didn't open her mouth to say anything. But I was dressed now and it took me quite a while before I was sufficiently aware of anything or anyone outside of me. And she was rummaging among her clothes for something for herself, something decent for her to get out in, “Where are we going?” I said.

“You'll know in a moment,” she promised.

“But why won't you tell me?” I demanded.

She was dressed to kill, I thought. I wondered if it was Aw-Adan she had spent the night with, or was she with Uncle Qorrax? But did this matter to me? I heard Misra say, “Let's go.”

Before long, I knew where we were going: to Uncle Qorrax's compound. As always, the compound was feverish with activity. Today, it appeared more so than ever. There were at least a dozen camels, many heads of cattle, twenty or so goats and naturally the nomads that owned these. As was expected, there were some of Uncle Qorrax's children and their chatter, which I thought of as their other selves. Misra and I walked into the compound looking a little frightened by all the noise. She gave me her hand the very moment I offered mine for her to take. Having made contact, we sat in what served as Uncle Qorrax's anteroom—waiting. Half-shouting, perhaps because I was nervous, I said, “Do you know if Uncle is in?”

As though to answer my question, I saw the body of a woman push through a curtain to Uncle's door. And there she was—a woman I hadn't known he married. I thought of him as a magician, making one of his wives disappear between dusk and dawn, only for another to replace the vanished concubine. I cannot tell how many he married and divorced in the short period I began to take note of these cruel happenings. In fact, many of his children, for purposes of identification, carried not only his name but that of the maternal
-bah
line to which they belonged. “He's coming,” the woman said to us and walked past us, out of the ante-room in which we had been.

Tall, handsomely dressed, his shoes elegant and shiningly polished and towering above Misra and myself— Uncle Qorrax. I was frightened of him, afraid I might earn his rage, worried that he might knock my ears deaf and my head insane. Especially now that he was staring angrily at me, I thought. Poor me, what have I done? I must say I was relieved to learn he was mortally offended with Misra. He said, “Where on earth were you returning from early this morning, Misra?”

Unperturbed, she mumbled something, as wives do when their husbands put indiscreet questions to them in public. Perhaps she suggested they postpone their argument until later. Anyway, he didn't pursue the matter. Addressing me, because he wanted to change the subject to something less personal, he asked me how I was. The lump of fear in my throat allowed little beyond a grumble. It was just as well, I thought, for I might have spoken long-windedly and mentioned that Misra had been with Aw-Adan until daybreak. He said, “Let's go.”

In awe, I looked from one to the other. Misra unclasped my hand from hers and, so to speak, pushed me towards Uncle Qorrax. I didn't know where I was being taken to and was worried I was to go alone with Uncle. He said, “You and I will go together.”

I said Misra's name and hung it on a peg for both of them to see.

“No. Alone. You and I,” he said, and took my hand.

Like a bewildered African nation posing questions to its inefficient leadership, I kept asking, “Where are we going? Where are you taking me to?” My thoughts crossed my mind. The most pressing one was addressed to myself: will I be able to cope with this separation from Misra?

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my memory here. Possibly I've invented one or two things, perhaps I have intentionally deviated from the true course of events. Although I tend to think that I am remembering in precise detail how things happened and what was said. I admit the abrupt removal from Misra's reassuring presence was similar to being weaned—despite the fact that I don't know what “weaning” means (I was bottle-fed or “cup-fed”. However, there was something formal, something ritualistic about the encounter which took place between Uncle Qorrax and Aw-Adan, an encounter which occurred on the periphery of the latter's kingdom.

I was tense. I stood away from them, timid-looking, avoiding any eye-contact with Uncle Qorrax's children, one of whom was putting out his tongue (at me) in a gesture of derision. The pupils fell silent directly they saw us. The two assistant teachers held their canes in their tight grips but grinned noddingly at Uncle Qorrax. Aw-Adan came forward. He and Uncle exchanged greetings. They both then looked at me and then at themselves. Then I was no longer afraid, because I knew that I knew something about both of them—things that neither knew about the other. This fresh sense of elation gripped me unawares and my imagination flew away with me, which is why I cannot remember if Uncle Qorrax said the following to Aw-Adan as he formally handed me over as the latter's newest pupil at the Koranic School of which he, Aw-Adan, was head:

“I bring to you, this blessed morning, this here my brother's only son, whose name is Askar. The young man is ready to be introduced, by no less than yourself, to the Word of God as dictated by Him to Archangel Jibriil, and finally as heard by Prophet Mohammed in the trueness of the version; the Archangel was authorized by His Almighty Young Askar is nearly five years and, although he is younger than most of your other pupils, I bring him to you nevertheless. For there is no man in the compound in which he lives and one must take boys away from the bad influence of women. Will you accept him as a pupil of yours—in this and in any other life? he said, giving him my wrist in the way a seller at an abattoir offers to a buyer the front leg of a goat that's been paid for.