Secrets by Nuruddin Farah

Author:Nuruddin Farah
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611457513
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2019-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

I with a surprising suddenness thought how powerful my once-upon-a-time calf-love Sholoongo was, making us take each other on, making us tear into one another’s viscera, impervious to the damage we were doing to ourselves. If she had power, I imagined this to be not animal power but the power of her personality. And if she were able to metamorphose into anything, she was in a position to do so only because we, my mother and I, were avowedly weaker than she. Not Nonno. Nor my father. Both were strong in the conviction of who they were, both agreeably more generous to her than either my mother or I. However, there was much sadness all around, my mother speaking with the slowness of an unseeing person negotiating blind bends, my mother who was known to cover a great deal of ground with her fast talk.

“Nothing makes sense anymore,” I ventured.

“What doesn’t make sense?” she asked.

“I cannot seem to follow the meaning of your folktales,” I said, “nor do I see the relevance of my dreams, mysteries, secrets threaded into a weftage serving as a veil. Meanwhile you and Sholoongo trade insults, you and my father trade hush-hush confidences, you and Nonno exchange innuendoes. Now, is there any man, other than my father, who played in your life before I was born?”

This was a small matter for my mother. “None.”

Then I remembered Nonno mentioning a man known by his alias Gacme-xume. And so I asked, “What’s his real name?”

Even though she was clearly shaken, she wouldn’t say anything. In fact she turned her back to me to make certain I didn’t see her face.

“I shall make a point of asking my father.”

Not a sound out of her.

“Let’s try this. What document did Sholoongo steal?”

Her voice level, “It was my marriage certificate.”

“Why?”

“You ask her yourself.”

“Why bring it here? Why hide here for a day or two?”

“You’ll have to put the question to her.”

“Did she give it to Nonno, do you think, for safekeeping?”

“You ask her yourself.”

My brain was a wire burning at one end. There was also an explosive mechanism attached to the other end. I didn’t know when we might all blow up in the air. I asked, “Were you planning to divorce my father?”

“Of course not.”

“Were you betrothed to another man, as his lawful wife?”

“What nonsense is this?”

“Why didn’t you get a duplicate copy from the municipality, no sweat, if you were not planning to divorce my father and were not secretly betrothed to another man? What was the fuss?”

“You won’t understand,” she said.

“You wanted the original back?” I asked.

She didn’t say anything.

“You wanted to punish her?”

“I doubt that you will ever understand.”

“Why kill her now?”

She stayed motionless, not speaking.

“Why, Mother? Why?”

Shifty, the fingers of her hands laced together into a wringing posture. I took an absentminded sip of my tea, my gaze falling on the skim of weak milk floating on it. Undrunk, the stuff presently resembled a paranoiac’s idea of a witch’s distillation of prophylactic cures.

I said, “Do

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