Hiding in Plain Sight

Nuruddin Farah

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781780748009
• Subtopic: Literature General

From 'the most important African novelist to emerge in the past twenty-five years' (New York Review of Books) comes a novel set in Somalia and Kenya about family, freedom and loyalty

When Bella, an internationally known fashion photographer, dazzling and aloof, is forced to return to Nairobi to care for her teenage niece and nephew, she feels an unfamiliar surge of protectiveness and responsibility. But when their mother unexpectedly resurfaces, reasserting her maternal rights and bringing with her a gale of chaos and confusion that mirrors the deepening political instability in the region, Bella must decide whether she can – or must – come to their rescue.

1.

“Like beads unstrung,” Bella says to Marcella.

“What a terrible thing death is!” says Marcella to Bella.

They hug for a long time, the elderly Italian woman holding the younger woman, each wailing louder than the other—their lamentation a survivor’s threnody expressive of so huge a loss.

The doors of their respective apartments are open. They sob bitterly in the corridor, neither of them battling to hold back their keening. Some of the neighbors come out of their apartments and stand gawking at the women and exchanging questioning glances.

It is Bella’s ill luck that she was one of the last to hear of Aar’s death. When he was killed, she was finishing up a photo assignment in Bahia for the German magazine GEO. She had just cleared customs at Fiumicino when she came upon the headline in the Italian daily La Repubblica. According to witnesses, a suicide bomber blew up a car at the main entrance to the UN compound, then four heavily armed gunmen entered the building and a gun battle lasting more than an hour ensued. In all, twenty people lost their lives, fifteen of them Somalis and five foreigners, Aar among them.

Bella had barely finished the first paragraph when her legs buckled and she collapsed at the feet of a man offering her taxi service. When she came to, a throng of people had crowded around her and a fierce debate had ensued as to what to do with her. The taxi driver, an elderly Sicilian with a broad face sporting at least a week of stubble and a sweet smile showing only a few front teeth, bent down and helped her to sit up. “Signorina, take notice,” he said. “You are in Rome, whose proud citizens frown on public weeping.” He offered her a pile of paper napkins. “Here, dry your tears.”

The taxi driver, a gentleman of rare breeding and charm, led her to his car and they sat together until she came to her senses. Then he drove her home, left his car parked illegally in the street, helped her up the stairway with her luggage, cameras and all, and refused to accept the fare.

On the drive, Bella used her phone to glean further details from the Internet. The attack was remarkable for its ruthlessness, which had attracted intense international attention. The body parts of the dead were found strewn about the outbuildings, so charred and mangled as to be unidentifiable. Aar’s head was found far from where the rest of his body fell, although that was according to some of the unreliable Somali websites, which are given to exaggeration and releasing unverified information. Those body parts that were identifiably Somali were buried in a mass grave, and those of a recognizably paler shade were collected and put in containers to be catalogued later before being passed on to their next of kin.

Now, at the sight of her beloved friend and neighbor, who has been listening for her return, Bella is again undone. Marcella holds her until her sobbing ceases, then they retreat into Bella’s apartment, still clinging tightly to each other.

Marcella makes her sit. “I’ll make you tea with sugar, the way Somalis like it,” Marcella says. Bella stares back at her, as if she doesn’t understand the language or can’t comprehend why anyone would have sugar in her tea. “Please,” she says. Too weak to sit up straight and too jet-lagged to keep her eyes open, too exhausted to sleep and much too disoriented to take in all that has happened, Bella is at the point of losing control over her bodily movements.

Marcella sits down opposite her. The old woman has known Bella literally from birth. She remembers the day in 1981 when Hurdo came to have her second child at Mogadiscio’s Digfer Hospital. It was a Muslim holiday and the hospital was short-staffed; Marcella, as head of obstetrics, was putting in a long shift, and it fell to her to perform the delivery. My lucky day, Hurdo always said. Hurdo and her husband, Digaaleh, were colleagues of Marcella’s husband on the law faculty, and the two couples knew each other well. Hurdo was a much-adored professor of international law, having gained her higher degree from Bologna in the days when a large number of Somalis pursued their professional training in Italy.

There was an additional layer to the intimacy of Marcella’s connection with Bella, in that she was among the few who knew of Hurdo’s affair with Giorgio Fiori, a Dante scholar on the faculty of letters, and she suspected that Bella was Giorgio’s child even before it was confirmed. So she had a certain proprietary feeling about Bella from the beginning, which was rekindled years later, when Marcella and her husband—who had died recently of lymphoma, poor soul—took on the role of surrogate parents to Bella in Rome, helping her to find her apartment opposite their own and watching after it when photography assignments took her far and wide.

Lately, Marcella has been losing more and more of her recall, fading like a cloth losing the brightness of its original dye. Now she is reaching for the memory of the last time she saw Aar, but it is earlier memories that surface. Aar was twelve years old when Bella was born. From the beginning, he had an older brother’s protectiveness and affection for her, buying her toys with his own pocket money and helping with her studies (she was bad at mathematics and science). He’d encouraged her interest in photography; in fact, he bought her first camera and sat for her as she began to master her art. One of Marcella’s great joys was to host brother and sister together, delighting in the way they comforted each other, holding hands and hugging at every opportunity. They had a deeper affection for each other than could exist between even the most intimate husband and wife, Marcella thinks. But still she can’t retrieve the memory of Aar’s last visit.

“When was Aar here last?” she asks.

But the question leads Bella to a dim hall lined with fogged mirrors, where she searches frenziedly for answers and, finding none, weeps some more. Marcella can’t think of anything to say that might help, and so she says only, “Let me make the tea.”

“Actually, I would prefer coffee,” says Bella.

“Black or with milk?”

“A latte if possible.”

Marcella knows how to work Bella’s espresso machine and goes about feeding the grinder with coffee beans, apologizing for the hideous noise. She regrets that since her husband’s death she hasn’t been looking after the young woman’s apartment as before. In the old days, she would often do the tidying herself or hire a Filipino woman to do it, services that Bella would insist on reimbursing with money and favors in return. Now Marcella notices the dishes in the sink; the books lying open, abandoned like orphans; the drawn curtains; the windows unopened for days on end so that the whole apartment emits a musty odor. This is not clean living, she thinks. In an effort to alleviate the dark mood, she parts the curtains to let in the daylight and opens the windows. She sets the coffee to brewing while she begins to clear away the clutter then interrupts herself to froth the milk and pour the latte into a large mug, worried that Bella might spill it in her state of discomposure.

“Here,” she says, handing it to Bella. “This will do you good.”

Bella receives the mug with both hands and murmurs her thanks. But she doesn’t take a sip, not yet; it is too hot. And when she does, she continues to look dazed, her eyes unfocused, her hands trembling as she lifts the mug to her lips and lowers it again, untasted.

Marcella has noticed that the red button of the message machine is blinking. She knows that one of the messages is her own condolence, left earlier in the day, when she was still at work and Bella had not yet returned. But there may be more. She debates whether she should bring the messages to Bella’s attention. After all, one or more may be from Aar, or from his colleagues. But Bella is staring ahead of her, looking at nothing, and Marcella decides not to mention it.

Bella looks up into Marcella’s eyes, finding comfort in their warmth and familiarity. Then, as if remembering something, she tries to stand but nearly loses her balance before she steadies herself with her hands and sits back down, narrowly missing spilling her latte, which she still has not tasted.

“What do you need done? I’ll do it. What?”

Apologetically, Bella says, “Could you please help bring in my camera cases? In my state, I left them outside, in the corridor.”

“Gladly, and you stay put.”

Marcella fetches the bags and asks if she should put them in the spare bedroom, which Bella rightly calls Aar’s room, as it is always ready to receive him—the bed made, clean towels in a neat stack, his pile of reading material (much of it novels bought at airports) at bedside, a spare pair of pajamas and hotel slippers, all of it arranged neatly as he liked things kept. Bella has never allowed anyone else to stay there. So Marcella’s question initially strikes her as almost insensitive, but after a moment of thought, she says, “Yes, in the guest room, please.”

Marcella knows all about homage to the dead. She has only recently finished going through her late husband’s things, getting rid of all but a handful that she left where he last placed them, cautioning the cleaning lady not to shift them. It is the prerogative of survivors to honor their dead and salute them the best way they can, she thinks.

When Marcella has finished moving the camera cases, Bella says, “Come and sit with me, please.” Marcella obliges, settling at the bottom end of the couch where Bella has indicated she should. Soon enough, though, an uneasy silence descends, and with it, a gnawing feeling of despair. Marcella scans the far wall of the living room, which is lined with Bella’s photographs, some of which have made her into one of the fashion industry’s most sought-after photographers. Even so, Marcella’s favorites are the family portraits, of Aar alone and with Valerie and his children at different ages. Bella has the true artist’s knack for showing the ugliness inside those she detests, Marcella thinks, as can be discerned in the photographs she took of Valerie.

In an effort to ease the tension and hardness in Bella, Marcella takes the young woman’s feet in her hands and gently massages them until she feels a kind of calmness taking hold both in her own as well as Bella’s body. Then she blurts out, “Where is Aar’s corpse?”

When Bella does not answer, Marcella persists. “Any idea when and where he will be interred?”

Marcella has always had this tendency to say the unspeakable in public, to ask the unanswerable in private. And before Bella can think what to say, the old woman says, “Will you have time to get there before his burial? I wouldn’t go to that dreadful country if I were you—but I can understand if you choose to do so. But I suppose, knowing them, they will not wait for your arrival.”

Marcella’s questions remind Bella how little even educated Europeans know about Islam, let alone about Somalis and their culture. “He’ll have been buried before dark the same day he died,” she says.

“Already buried—but where, when? Before dark?” Mercifully, Marcella stops herself before she blunders in deeper, and she stares at Bella in confusion. It is obvious that Marcella is upset with herself for asking inappropriate questions at such an inopportune time, but Bella waits to be certain Marcella is done before she says, “Aar was buried the same day he died.”

“What a way to go!” This time not even Bella’s expression of palpable distress is enough to keep Marcella from continuing in this vein. “What a way to end the noble life of a man who served everyone with honor, untainted integrity, and purpose.”

At last, Bella, wincing, takes her first sip of the latte.

“Has anyone been in touch with you officially?”

Bella looks at the blinking answering machine, and Marcella goes to it and presses the button to play back the messages. A woman speaking in perfect English with a Nordic-sounding voice has made several attempts to leave a message. In the most recent, she scarcely gets past Bella’s name before she bursts into tears and hangs up; the second time, she says, “Gunilla here,” and then, “There’s been terrible, terrible news from Mogadiscio—” She breaks off, then attempts to continue, stuttering, stopping, and weeping copiously before she again hangs up. On the third try, she says her piece, as if she were reading from a script: “Aar lost his life in a terrorist suicide bombing. The Somali authorities have ordered that his corpse and the others will all be interred in a mass grave in Mogadiscio.”

Bella utters an Irish curse, wishing the killers hell and worse in the spirit of all the saints of every faith anywhere. This message is followed by several earlier messages from Aar, who sounded desperate to speak with his sister. At the sound of them, Bella breaks down again. Marcella shushes her, tapping her cheeks and then holding her face in her gentle hands until the weeping ends. And for the first time, Marcella allows herself to wonder to whom the responsibility of informing Aar’s children and Valerie will fall.

Aloud she says, “Would you like me to call the children or had you rather do it yourself?”

Of course, Bella insists on being the one to tell her nephew and niece about their father’s death. As for Valerie, Bella will start by calling her mother, who will know how to locate her if anyone can.

Bella remembers that the Hausa way of informing a relation living far away about the loss of a parent, a sibling, or another intimate is to send an emissary to deliver the news in person. The emissary dispatched on such a delicate mission does not share the sad news, however, until they are in close proximity to a place where a wide community of friends and relatives are on hand to provide support. A pity, Bella thinks, that whoever it was who called and left the news of Aar’s death on the answering machine—or whoever turned it into international headline news—did not take a leaf from the Hausa book of etiquette.

Actually, Bella is not certain from whom she learned about this custom. Perhaps it was Marcella, come to think of it. As a former senior obstetrician at a Vatican-run hospital in one of Rome’s poor neighborhoods, she had become deeply familiar with corpses and what becomes of them, depending on the faith of the dead...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title
• Copyright
• Prologue
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Acknowledgments