The Orchard of Lost Souls (20 page)

‘In the name of God!’ screams Dahabo. ‘When will you change? When will you lose your damned pride and vanity and stubbornness? Am I supposed to beg you to save your own life?
When are you going to change? When are you going to change? Look at you! Look at how you’re living! You want to be left behind like this? Because she won’t save you.’

‘I don’t expect her to. Nurto, go and put the kettle on.’

Nurto scuttles to the kitchen.

Dahabo twirls around the room looking for things to pack on Kawsar’s behalf. She opens the wardrobe and throws things out randomly. ‘Where do you keep your photographs? What about
your wedding gold?’

A car horn beeps from outside.

‘They are waiting, Kawsar! This isn’t the time to play your games.’

‘Leave it alone, you are making a mess, Dahabo. I’m not going with you. Listen, turn around. Listen to me!’

Dahabo finally turns around and reveals her watery, bloodshot eyes. ‘You are the one deserting me, Kawsar, not the other way around. I will carry you out on my back if you let
me.’

‘I know you will, but I don’t want you to.’

‘So you’re just going to die here?’

‘I will live out my life in my own home, Dahabo. There is no tragedy in that.’

Dahabo begins to sob for the first time in front of her – terrible, awkward cries that catch in her throat.

Kawsar unwraps her arms and holds them out.

Dahabo walks unsteadily to her and then wraps her arms around Kawsar’s neck.

‘I am sorry for how I have treated you in the last few weeks. I didn’t want to lose you. Go with your children, Dahabo, and put your feet up and don’t think about anyone else
anymore, you deserve every good thing.’

Dahabo’s tears seep through Kawsar’s scarf and onto her skin.

‘Remember when your mother brought you over to my house for the first time and we hid her cloth and her mop and her detergents on the roof and she spent the whole afternoon either looking
for them or chasing us. I thought I had met my own spirit in another body.’

‘Stop it, stop it.’ Dahabo pulls away, allergic to outpourings of emotion. ‘So you will not come with me?’

The car horn sounds again, this time longer and more irritably.

‘No.’

Dahabo nods. ‘I accept your decision but I will never stop thinking about you.’

‘And me you.’ Kawsar holds Dahabo’s head and kisses her hard on each cheek and then her forehead. ‘
Nabadgelyo
, witch.’

‘
Nabaddiino
, hag.’

The day passes in a blur. Kawsar feels drugged, numb, as if she has just had surgery, an amputation. She can still smell Dahabo’s scent on her clothes, can feel her
presence nearby, but she is already on the road, on the one decent tarmac strip that leads to Mogadishu. She doesn’t cry but just stares at the door, wondering if some strange event might
bring her back, and in the evening takes enough painkillers to force sleep.

Deep in the night Kawsar opens her eyes. Something isn’t right. The stray dogs are quiet; usually they bay and yowl while tearing apart the rubbish dumped along the
roadside. She can’t even hear the rumble of water tankers driving along Airport Road. The soldiers are not banging on any doors.

She looks over at Nurto on her mattress, her legs stretched out over the cement floor, her head hidden under the blankets. Kawsar opens her mouth to call her name and ask that she look out of
the window but resists the urge. She will stay awake herself and keep an eye on the window above her bed.

Pressing a hand to the regular bouncing beat in her ribs, she remembers how her father, mother and husband all succumbed to their weak hearts. Farah took his last breath in this very bed, his
skin clammy, his mouth agape, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. Deep within the pillow was his sweat, that from his life and from his dying, commingling with hers. Her own organs appear to be
at war with her now; her urine when it dribbles out into the bedpan is as dark as tea and the solid waste is sheathed in mucus and blood. Only her heart seems distant from this skirmishing, its
beating muted but insistent; it has suffered so many shocks that its exterior has thickened, padding it like gauze from further hurt. When the end comes her heart will be the strongest part of her,
trying to drag the rest along like a mule with its load. She wishes she could give it a sugar cube and say, ‘Well done, you have served me well, but it’s time to retire now.’

Drifting between wakefulness and sleep, Kawsar sees herself pulling the bolt of the wooden door leading from her austere kitchen into the walled orchard. The screws in the upper door hinge have
worked themselves loose and Kawsar has to lift the door by the handle for it to swing open. She hears a sigh, whether it is her own or the orchard’s she cannot tell. Beyond the kitchen door
awaits her Eden: the trees, plants and fruits of her labour, a small patch of earth that she has ruled benevolently. Branches stretch from one end of the crumbling mud wall to the other, creating a
net of leaves sifting sunshine and moonlight.

She takes a deep breath and sucks in the scent that exudes from these children of hers: the tamarind, guava, pomegranate, bougainvillea and jasmine that she’s dreamed into life. If her
neighbourhood with its old bungalows and wide streets made of fine, gold sand seems unlike anywhere else in Hargeisa, she doubts there is anywhere like her orchard in the world. It is a place in
which time moves differently; it whooshes backwards to her youth rather than plods forward to her end. Within these four walls there is nothing to tell her she isn’t a young girl biding time
in the fresh air until her laden mother returns to drop the day’s shopping onto the kitchen floor. Here, her joints are supple, her spine straight, her thoughts as clear and wide as the
horizon. She will leave arrangements to be buried under this mica-flecked soil, where she’s certain she will still be able to feel the rain on her bones, as warm and slick as blood. Her mind
stumbles forward, scouting for the spot for her grave. Somewhere quiet and unobtrusive that won’t spoil the view over the orchard.

She creeps over to the far left corner where the tamarind tree stands like a woman shaking her hair in the breeze, weaver-bird nests dangling from the top branches; it provides both shade and
birdsong. Beneath the tree is a scrappy patch of wild grass, dry and yellow, and she tears at it, not wanting something so untidy on her grave. She stretches out between tamarind and back wall and,
as if preordained, the length is perfect, like a good shoe with a little room beyond the toes. The earth is busy beneath, seething with insect life, whole cities, whole tribes reproducing,
breathing, dying in a timeless panic. What will they think of her when she falls into their world? A heavy, dumb, dark intrusion? Or manna thrown down by anonymous benevolence? More likely there
will be no thought, just the desire to get to the eyes, the tongue and the other succulents before something else does. Kawsar’s skin prickles at the idea of tiny mouths sucking and nibbling
at her, her ancient remains nursing strange bodies.

‘Let it come. Let it all come,’ she murmurs.

Waking while the sky is pink and still bejewelled, she prays that Dahabo has reached the capital safely and that she is not afraid when she boards the plane to Jeddah. Neither
of them has ever flown before and it seems incongruous, ridiculous to fling themselves into the sky at this age. Kawsar lies back on her pillow and notices the bed gently vibrating underneath her;
she enjoys the sensation at first, thinking it is a figment of her imagination, but then the shaking becomes more violent, grinding her bones against the bedframe. The walls of the bungalow seem to
moan before they too start to shake, clanking the tin roof above and sending the framed textiles to the floor.

‘What’s happening, Nurto? Is it an earthquake?’

Nurto tries to spring out from her mattress but her legs become entangled in the sheets; she rips the blankets off and throws them to the floor. She is at the front window in seconds.

‘Tanks. The street is full of tanks and soldiers.’

‘Allah, it’s started. They are going to wipe us out.’

The turrets on the tanks adjust into position, whirring like giant cicadas, before clicking into place. Then they hear the first distant gunshots of the war, a feeble ping like that of popcorn
jumping off the pan, but followed by screams and wailing.

Nurto ducks her head below the window. ‘They have gone into Maryam’s house.’

Kawsar takes a deep breath, tries to think of something to say to calm Nurto, but her mind is blank. Terror burns her thoughts as they form.

Nurto inches her head back up to the corner of the window. ‘They have dragged her out into the street.’

Kawsar watches her as the minutes drag by: Nurto seems transfixed, perfectly still apart from the fine strands of her hair stirring in the breeze.

A burst of automatic fire clatters out and Nurto turns around and crumples onto the floor, her knees pressed against her chest, her head in her arms. The soldiers shout to each other in a rapid
dialect that Kawsar barely understands. They sound confused, overwhelmed by the magnitude of what they are doing. Kawsar picks out a few phrases: ‘When is the PM gun going to arrive?’;
‘Hassan, which house next?’

‘She’s dead. I have to go see if
Hooyo
and the children are safe.’ Nurto stands up, avoiding Kawsar’s eyes, slowly straightening her bed sheets and folding
blankets.

‘Please bring me a jug of water, a cup, painkillers, the leftover
canjeero
and the radio,’ Kawsar replies, suddenly swept by a wave of calm.

Nurto shoves the table closer to Kawsar’s bed and neatly organises the items on top. She has filled the plastic jug till it is nearly brimming over and balances it delicately as she
carries it from the kitchen.

‘Poor Maryam.’

Nurto shakes her head but doesn’t reply.

Take this.’ Kawsar removes a roll of notes from under her pillow.

Nurto kisses the back of Kawsar’s hand as she takes the money. No tears come to their eyes. She wedges a chair under the handle of the front door, picks up her canvas bag full of clothes
and toiletries, and leaves through the back door in the kitchen. Kawsar knows that she is brave enough to climb over the high orchard wall. She regrets the shards of glass she has embedded along
the top to deter thieves. Nurto, bleeding or not, will have to creep through the bushes and farms beside the ditch until she reaches her family’s shack in north Hargeisa.

The tanks start to fire, a blast of heat accompanies every mortar. Kawsar puts her fingers in her ears but the rattle penetrates her skull. A plume of dust billows in from the windows, carpeting
everything in plaster and sand. Kawsar stretches a hand over the jug but still the water is contaminated.

The tanks blow their way down the street cloaked in a white pall of smoke. Kawsar props herself up on her elbows and looks through the side window. Her neighbours try to flee, hidden in a haze
of cement dust, but bright sandals and dresses give them away and the soldiers drop to their knees and shoot at the ghostly figures. Overhead there is the groan of a plane’s engines and then
sweeping down from the direction of the airport she sees a MIG with the Somali flag on each of its wings. Kawsar feels the air swarm about her and steal the breath from her lungs as missiles peel
off the clanging tin roofs of the neighbourhood.

She collapses back onto the bed and pulls a blanket over her face, fearing that a bomb will explode through her roof in a matter of seconds. Both she and Guryo Samo have reached the end of their
time; the soldiers will return the street to the desert, unplug the stars, shoot the dogs and extinguish the sun in a well.

Filsan spends her days in Hargeisa but the nights in the city she misses so much that she wakes with its spicy marine scent in her hair. Mogadishu the beautiful – your
white-turbaned mosques, baskets of anchovies as bright as mercury, jazz and shuffling feet, bird-boned servant girls with slow smiles, the blind white of your homes against the sapphire blue of the
ocean – you are missed, her dreams seem to say The memories cleave to her ribs like barnacles. She feels an exile but doesn’t understand what keeps her here: ambition, a desire for
change, a need to escape from her father – it doesn’t seem enough to make her stay away.

Filsan is alone, untouched, forgotten. She opens her eyes with her hand on her stomach, imagining the hand is someone else’s. There is no use shaving her underarms, legs or privates
because there is no one to see them; only her own fingertips run along her thighs. Once upon a time men had called for her and made their intentions known to her father, but he had ridiculed them,
and she too had nothing but contempt for their preening flattery; they had no interest or knowledge of her as a human being, just that she was his daughter. She wanted someone who wouldn’t
ask his permission but would strip him down to the old, insignificant man that he was, who would just take her away, but it was becoming too late for anyone to want to spirit her anywhere; things
like that happened to seventeen-year-old girls, not women with frown lines deepening on their foreheads.

Filsan rises and takes her uniform from the peg on the door; she is up ten minutes before the alarm but doesn’t want to remain with her thoughts, simultaneously mulling over everything and
nothing. She pulls her tunic over her head and her trousers over her legs. A quick visit to the bathroom and then she is beside the stove in the communal kitchen, the wall above her blackened with
soot, the smell of meat and ghee still in the air from the previous night. Water boils in her saucepan, tea leaves, cardamom pods and cloves shivering on the surface; as it’s about to bubble
over she grabs the handle and pours just enough to fill her enamel cup. She tips in three spoonfuls of sugar and then washes and dries her saucepan before locking it away in her cupboard. She is
naturally untrusting, but has become obsessive about securing her possessions in these barracks; the other women have no shame in stealing underwear from the clothesline, dishes from the kitchen,
and soap from the sink. Their rations are reduced not by rats in the storeroom but by fellow soldiers who cut into the rice sacks or tap holes into the vats of oil. Filsan wishes she could report
the culprits, but they are hidden behind a culture of venality; in the local police stations wealthy prisoners are allowed to ‘rent’ a cell, paying the guards to let them spend their
days free and only returning at night for a snooze. They have no concern for the country or the revolution; it is simply a case of what they can get for themselves.