The Orchard of Lost Souls (2 page)

While the other children practise the songs they will sing at the parade, Deqo’s attention is drawn back towards the refugee camp, the semi-circular wooden
aqals
suddenly nothing
more than speckles on the surface of the earth. The grain warehouse and various clinics constantly surrounded by milling refugees are invisible from here; the arguments, the bitterness, the sadness
far away. The road snakes down towards Hargeisa, the landscape bare apart from the occasional aloe bush, animal bone and plastic shoe, the only difference from the camp being the freshness of the
air. The horizon is all blue sky with just a streak of yellow leading them forward, and it is difficult to imagine anything of substance ahead. Deqo half-expects the truck to reach that yellow
streak and then tumble over the edge of the earth, but instead it carries on the badly tarred road until it reaches the first military checkpoint outside the city.

Kawsar and her neighbours squeeze into the second stand; the stadium was made for three thousand spectators but today it is crammed with more than ten thousand. Corpulent women
push along the narrow walkway, busy with their own conversations, stepping on Kawsar’s toes and using her arm for support without so much as a glance in her direction. The temperature is
still cool but will rise steadily until they feel like hides drying in the sun. Her knees are swollen and already she begins to shift her weight from one foot to the other every few minutes.

The October Twenty-first festivals are poor imitations of the Independence Day celebrations, Kawsar thinks – like a bad husband reminding his unhappy wife of the good times they once
shared while knowing that they would never return. When the British had left on 26 June 1960, everyone had poured out of their homes in their Eid clothes and gathered at the municipal
khayriyo
between the national bank and prison. It was as if they were drunk, wild; girls got pregnant that night and when asked who the father of their child was, they would reply:
‘Ask the flag.’ That night, crushed within a mixed crowd as the Somali flag was raised for the first time, Kawsar had lost a long, gold earring that was part of her dowry, but Farah
hadn’t cared – he’d said it was a gift to the new nation. The party had moved to Freedom Park and lasted into the next morning, the sleepy town transformed into a playground, the
youth of the country believing that they had achieved what their elders hadn’t. People always half-joked afterwards that that day changed the women of Hargeisa; that they never returned to
the modest, quiet lives they had known after that bacchanalian display, that the taste of one kind of freedom led to an insatiable desire for every kind.

A flutter in her womb distracts Kawsar from the marching band tuning up near her. It is a sensation that comes regularly now, like fingernails brushing the inside of her skin, a heartbeat
pulsing deep in the sea of her. Maryam’s daughter is fussing already her chubby hands pulling at her mother’s hair as she attempts to wriggle out of the sling. Maryam slaps the
child’s thigh to make her settle but it just infuriates her more. What an easy stage that was: when a child’s only want was to walk around a little before collapsing back into your
arms. Hodan had slept nestled against Kawsar’s shoulder on days like this, when the people had still been gullible enough to celebrate the regime with real emotion, when the shine of
independence had made everything magical – our first Somali textbooks, our first airline, everything a wonder. It was the star that caused all the grief: that five-pointed star on the flag,
with each point signifying a part of the Somali motherland, had led the country into war with Kenya and then Ethiopia, had fed a ruinous desire to reclaim territory that was long gone. The last
defeat changed everything. After seventy-nine the guns that were turned outward reversed position and became trained on Somalis instead, the fury of humiliated men blowing back over the Haud
Desert.

Filsan hates the squatness of Hargeisa. In Mogadishu the buildings soar and blind the eye with their whiteness; here everything clings to the earth, cowering and subservient,
the cheap mud brick bungalows often left unpainted as if the town is inhabited by giant termites that cobble their dwellings together with dirt and spit. In Mogadishu the oldest residences are made
of coral and have delicate wooden latticework and vaulted ceilings that give people a sense of wonder. In the centre of the city where the alleys narrow at points to the width of a man’s
shoulder blades, you can walk as if in a dream, never certain of what might appear after the next bend: a bare-chested man with a silver swordfish slung over his thin black back, a shoal of
children reciting Qu’ran from their wooden slates, a girl milking a white, lyre-horned cow. The place has enchantment, mystery, it moves backward and forward in time with every turn of the
feet; it is fitting that it lies beside an ocean over which its soul can breathe, rather than being hemmed in by mountains like a
jinn
in a bottle.

The
Guddi
marching band in indigo tunics and white caps stand beside her, old men tuning their old instruments. What they lack in ability they make up for in their willingness to
please; they will squawk and stomp until they are told to stop. The musicians in Hargeisa are amateurs; those who couldn’t make it in Mogadishu ply their trade here, in the solitary theatre
or in the daytime weddings that take place in bungalows. It needs a real city to pound new rhythms out of life – the tick of the town hall clock, the scrape of a shovel, the whistle of a
traffic policeman – it needs all of this for new, pulse-quickening styles to germinate and flower.

The foreign dignitaries step out from their motorcade on schedule, and Filsan recognises a couple from photographs printed in the
October Star,
the national paper. The US economic
attaché leads the group, followed by the Egyptian ambassador and a man in flowing white robes and
keffiyah.
Maybe a dozen other officials line up along the blue and white dais to
await the General.

The honk of car horns announces his arrival. A soldier clumsily spreads a threadbare red carpet from the gate to the dais, and then General Haaruun steps out of a black Mercedes. It is as if an
electric current passes through the stands as he walks to his seat surrounded by bodyguards, the atmosphere tense, every sound magnified by the sudden, jagged stillness. Filsan turns quickly to
monitor the situation behind her: the locals do not shout or throw missiles but their eyes are fixed on the tall, gaunt man in military dress. They crane forward in their seats and appear like an
avalanche of bodies ready to fall onto her and bury the stadium beneath them.

At the sight of General Haaruun, Kawsar’s heart pounds in her chest. He is like a hyena – sparse, menacing, his very presence seeming to herald death. She blames
him not just for Hodan’s passing but for her arrest, her disappearance and her decline into a huddled, diminished figure. Despite the crowd, Kawsar feels a wall of black grief descending on
her, leaving her blind and deaf and voiceless as if she is at the bottom of a well, only ever able to climb halfway up before losing her grip yet again.

‘Stay with us.’ Dahabo pats Kawsar’s hand and through her numb skin she feels her warmth.

‘When is this accursed thing going to start?’ Kawsar pretends to return to events around her but her mind is still in that well.

‘Now! Look!’

Three MIG aircraft in arrow formation buzz overhead, as grey and long-necked as vultures, swooping over as if racing to a corpse somewhere, the six streaks of smoke behind them fattening out and
then tearing apart. The dignitaries stand to attention; they are vultures of a different level, more like marabous in their finery, roosting with full stomachs for the moment, the eyes behind the
dark glasses are always alert and watchful.

It is only Dahabo who touches Kawsar now. Every month or so they meet in Kawsar’s house for tea and lamentation, and Dahabo makes a point of resting a hand on Kawsar’s thigh as she
speaks, as if she knows how chilling it is to live alone without any human sound or touch. Dahabo squeezes, kneads, pats according to the topic of conversation, but her hand is never far away; it
is a hard, calloused hand with nails bitten down low, but it comforts, transfuses more than just heat. That is another thing about getting old, the constant need for heat. Kawsar’s bones ache
for sunlight, and she has taken to sitting out for an hour most days just after the worst of the midday sun and basking in her orchard like a lizard. But her sense of distance and loneliness is not
shifting today, despite the warmth of the sun scaling up the sky and the proximity of so many bodies all around her.

The large speakers garble announcements, but it’s not necessary because the sequence of the parade is well established already. Soldiers come first, their legs snicking like scissors, then
the heavy, older policemen and women in their blue uniforms, then civilians in their work clothes – teachers, civil servants, students. The only enjoyable thing for Kawsar is sporting her
neighbours and their children amongst the marchers, their blind eyes and lunatic grins as they strain to search out family members from the identical figures in the stands. The
Guddi
come
last, waving branches and carrying images of Lenin, Kim Il Jung and Mao, the communists who once provided inspiration to the dictatorship but whose pictures have faded, carted out just once a year
like church relics. The regime now seeks out friends of any description, be they Arab, American or Albanian.

On the way into the stadium Deqo has seen tatty-looking girls her own age gathered in the market, sweeping with short brooms made from dried grasses. Even as poor as they are,
each has a pair of plastic jelly sandals on her feet.

Now she watches from behind Milgo’s legs as the soldiers begin their parade. They march as one, a tribe of insects with green shells on their heads, their thousand feet scuttling across
the dirt, their thousand eyes pointing in the same direction. She has never seen so many men in one place; the camp is mostly women and children, all squabbling and fighting with each other. The
soldiers are young, powerful and unified. They seem to belong to each other while she belongs to no one. Milgo ululates as the men pass beside them and Deqo tries to emulate her, swinging her
tongue in her mouth and yodelling. She decides, as she looks at the soldiers, at the crowd, at the aeroplanes above, that this is the best day of her life, the day when everything in the world is
laid out for her to see and enjoy. No more of the camp and its dust and flies. She feels her stomach fluttering with excitement; soon she will be out there to take her place at the centre of the
earth.

In the stand opposite Kawsar there is a sudden shifting, an exhalation from thousands of lungs as the spectators bend down and arise with placards in their hands. At the
instruction of
Guddi
activists in traditional dress these placards are turned over and held up. Within a few seconds the stand has disappeared and a shimmering portrait of Oodweyne faces
Kawsar. A few rebels refuse to hold up their placards, making tiny little holes in his face, but the message is clear: the President is a giant, a god who watches over them, who can dissolve into
pieces and hear and see all that they do. The young nomadic boy who knew how to hobble a camel and ease a tick out of a sheep’s flesh has become a deity. A blasphemer, thinks Kawsar as his
face floats up at her, both he and his servant Haaruun. Before she remembers where she is, she spits violently at the sight, drawing a gasp from the spectators around her.

‘What are you doing?’ Dahabo exclaims, squeezing Kawsar’s upper arm tightly.

Kawsar doesn’t know, she isn’t really there; she just saw a face that disgusted her and reacted. The expressions in the aisle below reflect shock and fear that she has drawn
attention to them, but Kawsar cannot comprehend that fear anymore, it seems so paltry and pointless in comparison to what she has lived through. What more can they hold to ransom when they have
taken away her only child? It is fear that makes the soldiers brave, that emboldens the policemen to loot, that gives life to that old man in Mogadishu. She does not care enough about her life or
possessions to keep abasing herself.

‘Now! Let’s go, let’s go!’ shouts Milgo.

The children stream out onto the ground, Deqo third in line. Sound explodes from every corner: drums, shouts, roars. Deqo can’t hear her own voice as she sings. Already, the whole routine
has left her mind. She follows Safiya’s movements but her limbs are heavy, her mind swimming. She knew these dances, was better at them than Safiya, but now she is lost. Crushed by the
expectation to not make a mistake, she now longs for the invisibility she had in the camp but cannot avoid the eyes watching and judging her. She is suffocated by the dust beaten up by the
shield-and-spear dancers which still hangs in the air, and the discordant band music unsettles her even further. This wasn’t how it was meant to be.

Milgo comes running towards her, her hand held up ready to smack.

Deqo continues to dance, but her eyes are fixed on Milgo’s enraged face. Other women come behind her, just as angry. A thin, dark stream of urine trickles onto her feet.

Grabbing Deqo’s arm, Milgo drags her away so fast that when she opens her eyes she is in the dark recess between two stands.

The blows come as soon as she is out of sight of the crowd, hands and feet attacking from all sides and words stinging her ears. Milgo shouts one insult after the other, the music still blaring
loudly behind them.

At the heart of the swirling mass of dancers Kawsar notices a still point, an emptiness that seems to reflect how she feels. Within the circle is a forlorn girl in red staring
at her feet, unconscious of where she is. The sight touches Kawsar, a moment of truth within this fiction. The serene moment lasts a second before the
Guddi
descend on her and Kawsar
watches as the little girl is pulled away by the arm, four or five women crowding around her; she can tell by their expressions what they are going to do and rises before they take her away. Kawsar
feels something has broken loose inside her, something that has been dammed up – love, rage, a sense of justice even; she doesn’t know what, but it heats her blood.