The Orchard of Lost Souls (19 page)

Ever since the Italians and British had gone, the country had seemed besieged by difficulties, whether natural, economic or political. The Europeans must have left a bone-deep curse as they were
departing, raising long-dead
jinns
like Oodweyne in their wake to turn everything to sand and waste. Kawsar remembers meeting him briefly in Mogadishu while he was still a junior officer
and Farah was deputy district commissioner of Baidoa, and he had been completely ordinary no sense of promise or even malice about him, balding at a young age – that was the only thing she
noticed about him. How time plays its jokes. It raises dwarves and hobbles giants – how else could Farah be in the ground and Oodweyne on a throne? He had slipped into power almost unseen
following the assassination of the last elected president and his voice when it appeared on the radio was always ominous to her; it took her back to those five days in sixty-nine after the
President had been shot dead by his bodyguard and Radio Hargeisa broadcasted Qu’ranic recitations non-stop, the schools and offices closed in mourning while she recovered in bed from one of
her miscarriages.

The surprise she had felt on the sixth day when at nine a.m. a jaunty announcement declared a military coup and a new name for the country, the Somali Democratic Republic, had never left her but
lay at the bottom of all the other bewildering events that succeeded it: the imprisonment of the Prime Minister, the abolishment of both parliament and constitution, the takeover of the country by
the Supreme Revolutionary Council with Oodweyne as its chairman. Farah had been one of the few to voice his opposition; he called the new leaders ‘cuckoos’ and cut off contact with
friends who said they preferred military rule to the chaos of democracy. Kawsar, a typical woman in Farah’s eyes, just wanted peace and for the situation to be as stable as possible.

The junta introduced a Somali alphabet, organised volunteers to build schools, hospitals, roads, repair the stadium in Hargeisa, told people to forget their clan names and call each other
comrade. Then they lost the war and revealed their true nature. She wishes she could speak to Farah and tell him, ‘You were right, I admit it, they’re intolerable,’ but that would
mean him seeing how everything had fallen apart in his absence: Hodan gone, his wife old and crippled, the house dirty and decayed, his old friends either dead, in jail or lost to
qat
and
alcohol. The resistance that he had called for was now led by children, and in the lapsed time the regime had grown such deep roots, like the weeds in the ditch, that she feared everything would
have to be torn up to remove it.

The signal from Radio NFM is suddenly stronger, the voices crisp in the night air; no longer are they ghosts speaking from a world beyond, their snappy Hargeisa accents clear
and confident. Kawsar turns down the volume until they are barely audible. Nurto is dressed in one of Kawsar’s old floral nightgowns, a chaste long-sleeved thing that becomes completely
transparent when the light is behind it; Farah had bought it for Kawsar and she imagines his eyes consuming her body the way hers now consume Nurto’s.

There is a different atmosphere at night now; they are like roommates rather than mistress and servant. Comfortable in each other’s smells and habits, they don’t turn their backs on
one another anymore. They foray into small intimacies, nibbling away at the distance that yawns between their ages and circumstances. What Kawsar really wants to know is if Nurto has any plans to
marry soon. The girl seems ready, has the small pimples that teenage girls get when their bodies are ripe for love, her sighs at night heavy with lonesomeness.

‘Did you hear any more from your American friend?’ Kawsar asks after the radio programme has slipped into static, empty air.

‘No, he is at Saba’ad taking pictures of the refugees. I haven’t seen him in weeks.’

‘Are you interested in him?’

Nurto turns her face away. ‘I don’t think he is serious.’

‘He will return to his own country, you shouldn’t let him get under your skin, you are better off with someone of your own culture and language.’

‘What was your husband like?’

‘Clever, tall, stubborn, honest, always trying to learn something . . .’

Nurto cuts her off. ‘Was he rich?’

‘He worked hard and became rich, those wardrobes are full of the clothes he bought me.’

‘Hmm. That’s the kind of life I want.’

‘It’s certainly good for a while, but shopping is not enough to build a life on.’

‘Those women in the
suuq
with maids behind them carrying their bags seem happy to me.’

‘Of course, you expect them to tell you about their jealousy of a second wife or their worry that they will never deliver a son for their husbands.’

‘That can all happen if you’re as poor as mud. I’d rather have worries like that with cash in my pocket than have ten sons and nothing to give them but black tea.’

‘Be careful what you say, God is always listening and he will test you.’

‘Let him test me with money, that’s a test I will happily take.’

‘Did you only have black tea at home?’

‘Sometimes, when Mother was sick. It got better when we were pulled out of school and each had jobs.’

Kawsar has never known that kind of life. The only hunger pangs she felt were self-inflicted, when her mind turned away from food to focus on other concerns; she enjoyed the pleasurable
light-headedness she found in an empty stomach, but maybe half of that pleasure was knowing that a fully stocked kitchen was only a few steps away. From childhood onwards her meals appeared each
day at the same time to demand her attention and she fought stubbornly against their tyranny. She ate what she wanted and only when she wanted it. When street boys begged at her mother’s
door, she would thrust her plate out and offer them the contents as if
she
could live on air alone.

‘How did
Aabbo
die?’ she asks Nurto.

‘How does anyone die? He became sick and a few weeks later died in his bed.’

‘And that was when you stopped going to school?’

‘No, we went for a little longer but then
Hooyo
couldn’t cope anymore.’

An idea came to Kawsar as if a cloud had cleared. ‘Nurto, if you want to go to school, I can help.’

‘Oh no . . .’

‘Or you could have someone come here and teach you. You have too much free time in the day and you should use it.’

‘Me and school are finished. I can read as much as I need to; the only school I would like to attend is beauty school.’

‘What would you learn there? How to put kohl on someone?’

‘You learn everything – make-up, hairdressing, henna-painting, hair removal.’

‘How would that help you?’

Nurto gave her look as if she was blind. ‘I could open my own business!’

‘Are people really willing to pay for someone to put lipstick on their own face.’

‘For weddings and things, of course, you go to an expert.’

‘Times have certainly changed.’

‘They have,’ Nurto replies firmly.

‘And you could make a living doing that?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘So you want to go to this beauty school?’

‘If it was possible . . .’

‘You should sign up then, I will pay the fees.’

‘Wallahi?’

‘Yes.’

Nurto rushes to her feet and kisses Kawsar’s forehead. ‘God brought me to you.’

Kawsar closes her eyes in embarrassment, the kisses making her skin sing.

The moon is full and bright outside, shining like a searchlight over the neighbourhood, the wind rustling through the trees. Kawsar is open-eyed, awoken by her own laughter;
the sensations she has in her dreams are so real, but when she tries to remember their substance she can’t. The images have the watery, unreal quality of the old films screened outside by
Radio Hargeisa on long-gone summer evenings. They are washed out and rippling, the voices uneven as if spoken by men drowning in air.

The room glitters. A girl similar in height and appearance to Nurto but with the speed of a sand devil has swept through, a cloth in each of her eight hands, leaving not even
one mote of dust or stray hair behind. The sheets are laundered properly and piled tidily on the chair, all the dirty cups and glasses collected, the grime that gathered in every crevice has been
gouged out, windowsills swept clear of dead flies and mosquitoes, the floor washed with Dertol, the light bulb above polished until the glass gleams. Every surface chimes with forgotten
cleanliness. The air in Kawsar’s nostrils is sharp and new, the small space around her expanded tenfold.

Two donkey drivers rush past the window behind her, speaking their secret language to their animals, whips flicking as their charges attempt a gallop but struggle with heavy loads of raw goat
and mutton. A buzzing cloud of flies chases after them, as do the curses of the old man from New York who lives half the year in a bungalow next to the hotel.

‘Take your filth somewhere else! Find another street to cut through with that tripe,’ he yells.

‘
Whodead
!
Whodead
!’ they reply, spirting the nickname they have given him back in his face.

Nurto gently pushes open the door and pokes her head through, a bright smile radiating from her face. ‘Can I make you a cup of tea? Would you like coffee? I bought fresh beans today,
they’re already roasting.’

This is the first time she has offered Kawsar coffee. ‘Yes, but what has come over you?’

‘Everything is going to change, Kawsar, how can I not be excited? I enrolled at beauty school today. Should I bake a cake? It will be nice with coffee.’

‘As you wish.’ Kawsar smiles softly. It will take the poor girl hours to bake a cake on the charcoal stove but it wouldn’t hurt her to try.

‘Are you comfortable? Warm enough?’

Kawsar raises her hand in satisfaction. ‘Did you buy the painkillers this morning?’

Nurto disappears into the kitchen for a moment and then returns with a brown paper bag. ‘Here they are. I bought you two packets so you don’t run out so quickly.’ She places
them gently on the bedside table.

‘Good girl.’

‘Do you mind if I go over to the video hall later?’

‘No, what are they showing?’

‘A Hindi film, an old one called
Pakeezah.
I’ve seen it ten times before.’

‘I know it, the one with the dancing girl who meets a man on the train. I thought it would be too old-fashioned for you.’

‘There isn’t a Hindi film that I haven’t seen, fifties, sixties, seventies, all of them. My father, God rest his soul, worked in the cinema before it closed down and he would
let me sit in the projection room with him.’

‘You would make a good actress; your face is never still.’

Nurto smiles. ‘I think I would be a great actress. I just need to get out of here and then I can do whatever I please.’

The clock prods time onwards in the silence, the weight of Nurto’s yearning sagging the mattress when she rises.

A scent tickles Kawsar’s nose and excites a sneeze.

‘Allah!’ Nurto races barefoot to the kitchen as the smell of burnt coffee beans grows stronger.

By four p.m. the curfew is firmly in place and, as if the sun is also under its tyranny, the sky darkens prematurely, menacing clouds hiding the moon and stars that have rushed
into position. The blacked-out town seems nothing more than a stage set for the soldiers to swagger about in, the bungalow a cave beyond which there are bears and monsters and mysterious shrieks,
and Kawsar and Nurto huddle like children from fear of what the darkness might bring. Nurto returned punctually from the video hall, dragged her mattress near and sits with her back against the
bedframe, her hair only a few inches from Kawsar’s fingers, the curls at the nape of her neck fine and red in the paraffin light.

The radio is on at the lowest volume, and the government station speaks of attempts to stop desertification around the Banaadir area, genteel visits by the President to foreign potentates, the
tidy, clockwork mechanisms of a state at peace; the rebel channel, Radio NFM, reports the events in a different country, one in which water reservoirs are destroyed, foreign weapons used on unarmed
nomads and prisons attacked to release the innocent. It is hard to imagine either place; from her bed all Kawsar can believe is that there is a dark, empty street outside, a few bungalows and a
world that has aged, decayed and will soon end.

Kawsar wakes the next morning with a start as the door shakes in its frame, bang bang bang, a pause, then another bang bang bang, Nurto shoots up from her mattress and stands
in the middle of the room, dazed, waiting for instruction. The heavy knocks on the door continue.

Trembling a little, Kawsar tightens her head cloth and gestures for Nurto to open it.

Hiding behind the door, Nurto turns all the locks and pulls it open slowly.

Dahabo pushes it fully open and enters.

‘What are you trying to do? Scare us to death? We thought you were the back breakers,’ Kawsar shouts.

‘Well, if you won’t open the door to me, I have to do what I can.’ She strides over to Kawsar and pulls the blankets roughly off her. ‘You’re coming with me. There
is a car waiting outside to take us to Mogadishu, from there we will fly to Jeddah.’

Kawsar flings the blankets back over her legs. ‘You must be crazy!’

Dahabo pulls the blankets down again. ‘I have delayed everyone’s departure trying to get an exit visa for you, Kawsar. Don’t make a fool of me.’

Kawsar leaves the blankets at her feet and folds her arms tightly like a little girl being chastised. ‘Who gave you my passport?’

‘Who do you think?’ She nods her head towards Nurto who is hiding in the corner. ‘Believe me when I tell you it is time to leave. If you could get up and walk you would see all
the soldiers outside, the half-empty market. Bring what we can’t replace later and let’s go.’ She takes Kawsar’s hand and gently tugs her forward.

Kawsar wriggles her fingers out of her grip and folds her arms again. ‘No one is keeping you behind, Dahabo. Go if you want.’ Her heart is racing but her mind feels numb, unable to
cogitate at all; her warm bed seems the only safe place to cling to.