Knots by Nuruddin Farah Page A

norm.
    He said, shaking with rage, “This is your world, and I am made to feel privileged to live in it the way a poor relative lives in the house belonging to his well-to-do kin.”
    She imagined several months on, when he might behave like a man with a mind to beat her up because he couldn’t have his way with her. She saw his unwarranted behavior as being like the red traffic cones in the middle of their journey, warning her that danger lay ahead and that she must act promptly.
    She was so incensed she left the apartment without packing even an overnight bag, flew to Ottawa late the same evening, and informed her mother that she wanted Zaak out. Arda agreed—now that he had all she had wanted him to have, his nationality papers—that the time had come for him to make a world where he might be comfortable to be his own man, live his own life, and marry if he had the wish.
    He moved out of the apartment into another in a borough that was the farthest suburb from hers. He became an employee-consultant to a Toronto-based NGO, tasked with resolving clan-related conflicts in Somalia, used his first salary to rent a more convenient place, and then a few months later made a down payment for a two-bedroom apartment with a loan from the bank, underwritten by Arda, who also topped up his monthly mortgage payments. When he landed a decent-enough job that allowed him to settle the bills himself, Arda announced it was time that Cambara filed her divorce papers. Two weeks after they came through, Zaak surprised everyone, including his aunt, by taking a wife. Arda was hurt, because she had hoped he would let her in on his decision and consult her. Several years and three children—all of them girls—later, everyone except Cambara was in for another surprise: Zaak appeared before a court, accused of excessive cruelty to his wife and his three daughters, whom he beat almost to death.
    Unwelcome among close family and his friends, Zaak relocated to Mogadiscio to be the local representative of the NGO with which he worked. He was made the coordinator of its peace-driven line and, from all accounts, redeemed himself, at least in the first few years.

    Showered and dressed and ready to go down, if need be, to prepare a meal for the two of them, since she won’t imagine eating his food, she tells herself that Zaak is a hopeless man in a ruined city. In Nairobi, while on the CBS job, she did not benefit professionally from his input on the documentary on the fleeing Somalis, about which he too had a lot to say. It was he who profited from her visit, becoming a husband to her and moving to Canada. Sadly, he reduced himself to a wreck and destroyed whatever opportunities might have come his way. He was a wife-beater, an abuser of children, and an ingrate fool. She supposes that this being the fourth time when chance brought them together—first as children, then in Nairobi, after that in Toronto, and now in Mogadiscio—she will endeavor not to make the same error, however one might define this.
    Will she capitalize on her presence here in Mogadiscio and make something of herself, or will she waste the opportunity and return to Toronto empty-handed? If she hasn’t let Arda know much about the plan taking shape in her mind, it is because she wants to be her own woman, not a marionette her mother might control from as remote a city as Ottawa. Only one other person is aware of the bare bones of her plan: her closest friend, Raxma.

    Cambara hears a knock at the door. The tapping insinuates itself into the gap between the sounds made by the proverbial owl hooting and warning her to take care, and Cambara’s recall of what took place between her and Wardi, her current husband.
    â€œYou are coming down?” Zaak asks.
    She interprets this as “Are you going to cook?”
    â€œHalf an hour, and I’ll be down,” she says.

THREE
    Cambara enters the living room, half of which is bathed in amber