Maps by Nuruddin Farah

Author:Nuruddin Farah [Farah, Nuruddin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61145-499-4
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2012-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

All is illusion — the words written, the mind at which they are

aimed, the truth they are intended to express, the hands that will

hold the paper, the eyes that will glance at the lines. Every image

floats vaguely in a sea of doubt — and the doubt itself is lost in an

unexplored universe of uncertitude.

Joseph Conrad

CHAPTER SEVEN

I

Physically, you thought Hilaal was the exact replica of Misra, only he was a man—which, at that point in time, didn’t make much difference to you anyway—and older than she. He was better dressed and, you imagined, a great deal more knowledgeable. He was as large as she; he was as fat as she, although the echo of his voice, when he opened his mouth, resounded in your ears long after he had ceased speaking. You had been shown in by the maid who had answered the door. It was she who had led you down a small corridor to meet him. You didn’t know why she had hesitated—could it be that she didn’t want to disturb him? Or that she suspected he would've shouted at her for allowing you to enter in the first place? She knocked mildly on the door to his study—and you both waited. A minute or so later, he stood in the half-open doorway, as prominent in the landscape of your vision as Misra had been in that of your memory. For a moment, you failed to breathe; for a moment, you didn’t know where you were and why; for a moment your tongue lay inert in your mouth and you stared at him in the half-dark, speechless. Half-dark? Yes, because the curtains in his room were drawn; yes, because he had shut out the daylight glare, and the small light which the table-lamp provided had made a soft space in the darkness and had pushed aside the opaqueness all around. Then he struck a matchstick and lit a cigarette; then he took a sip of the drink he had in his hand; and you could hear the ice shake against his glass, you could hear the dripping of a broken tap somewhere else in the house. Could it be that the alternating elemental presence in the form of water and fire decided you would feel at home in Mogadiscio?

Hilaal said, “Yes?”, looking from you to the maid.

She mumbled something you couldn’t understand. As if to allow you into the room, he stood aside. His head, when moving, blocked. like a smothering hand, more than half the brightness the table-lamp light had given.

“Come,” he said to you, and you followed him.

He pushed open a door. He said, “This is your room. That is the bed, and on it are the sheets, the bedspreads, the pillows—and all you need. The room has a wc too. The maid will make the bed, fix you a meal. You can wash, you can sleep, you can do what you please,’ and, having said that, he walked away and vanished through the corridor, back into his study Half a second later, his head emerged and he was saying, “Welcome, Askar.

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