“Dinner in five minutes,” he promised briskly.
And in five minutes dinner appeared, complete with soup course.
Mohamed came to me one day with an exercise book and a pencil.
“Memsahib – you will teach me to read and write?”
No one had ever asked me to teach anything before. I was pleased by this request, and touched by his wish for self-improvement. Certainly, I told him, I would be only too glad to teach him. Why I should have thought myself qualified to teach anyone to read and write, especially in a language not his own, I do not know. But it seemed to me that it would be relatively easy, for Mohamed had a quick mind and a good memory.
I have read, in many books about Africa, of Europeans who taught their servants how to read and write. Under my tutelage, Ali made very rapid progress and was soon able to write down his market accounts and to read the correspondence in The Times. I wonder how they managed it. Mohamed was as clever as the next person, but he had never become accustomed to the discipline of constant practice. He soon grew tired of copying the same words over and over. As for myself, it became obvious that I did not have the faintest idea how to communicate a knowledge of reading and writing. One day he closed his exercise book and smiled ruefully.
“I think maybe not much use,” he said.
The failure, I felt, was mine. Perhaps he felt it was his. Actually, we had both under-estimated the difficulties. But it was I who should have known better, simply because I was literate and ought to have had some comprehension of the fact that literacy is not acquired magically in a few days. What else had I under-estimated?
Ismail had been hired as houseboy, Mohamed as cook. Ismail was Habr Yunis, while Mohamed was Habr Awal, but this difference of tribe was only one of the troubles between them. Mohamed was the younger and least experienced of the two, yet we had made him cook, which was usually the senior post. Ismail had a brooding nature, and his resentment grew inwardly for some time without our being aware of it. He became more and more quiet; he barely spoke at all. Then, suddenly, touched by some trivial flame, the whole situation exploded. He and Mohamed had wrangled before, but never as vehemently as this. They screamed accusations at one another, and when we tried to sort it all out, we became hopelessly entangled.
Mohamed claimed that Ismail had frequently said, “Is the sahib your father, that you don’t steal from him?” Ismail claimed that Mohamed had told everyone the sahib and mem-sahib liked him so much they could not refuse him anything.
Who to believe? We were angry at both of them. We resented everything that was implied in the conflicting statements. Had Ismail, so competent and so devoted to the formalities (“all sahibs have soup on trek”), merely been using this apparent concern as a mask for wholesale theft? Had Mohamed misconstrued what we intended as casual friendliness, and taken it instead as some magnetic attraction, some power over us? We felt ourselves to be misunderstood, and we knew that we had misunderstood both of them. More than anything, we felt confused. Only one thing was plain.
“We can’t possibly discover which of them is telling the truth,” Jack said. “Probably neither one is. All we can do is choose the one we want to keep, and fire the other.”
Rightly or wrongly, we chose Mohamed. Ismail left us with bad feeling all around, having first handed us a letter written by a local scribe, in which his many grievances were set down in copious detail. We did not deceive ourselves that justice had been done. But what was justice, in this situation? We did not know.
Now Mohamed reigned supreme in the kitchen. He very much enjoyed having Mohamedyero, Little Mohamed, to command. He scolded the yerki unmercifully, but he protected him as well. Mohamedyero was ten, the same age Mohamed himself had been when he first went to work for the English in Berbera. Mohamedyero could never get rid of the idea that all his pay was to be sent home to his family, so he himself was constantly without funds. Mohamed lectured him sternly on this point, but then allowed the little boy to share his rice and jowari, so what the yerki learned, actually, was that if he was consistently helpless, Mohamed would provide for him.
“Mohamedyero, he has not much idea,” Mohamed said patronizingly and often.
It was true that the yerki possessed a vast capacity for making errors. Even the fluent Mohamed was speechless one day when the little boy dumped out a large panful of fresh lime juice which Mohamed had just painstakingly squeezed, under the impression that it was dirty dishwater. Mohamed struck his forehead, turned up his palms beseechingly to the sky.
“I don’know – I think this boy, he no got nothing for brains –”
He hovered over the yerki, instructing him, haranguing him, but in the final analysis accepting the child’s mistakes gladly enough, for the sake of having someone to take under his wing.
Whenever Abdi shot an aul or a dero, we divided the meat among everyone in the camp. One day when Mohamed wanted to show me something in the cook-tent, we entered and saw the yerki cutting slices off the cold venison intended as lunch for Jack and myself, and stuffing them into his mouth. With the other hand, he was busily turning on the charcoal stove a large aul steak for himself. So brazen was the child that both Mohamed and I burst out laughing.
“He like meat too much,” Mohamed said.
The little boy looked up with a winning smile, believing that somehow he had miraculously escaped chastisement. Mohamed immediately caught him a swift blow to the ear and yelled at him that if he could not stop thieving he had better find himself another job. The yerki’s jaw dropped open in surprise and so did mine. The only basic paradox was that of Mohamed himself, harsh and indulgent, blithe and despairing.
When we were at Sheikh, Mohamed asked if he could bring his wife there. Shugri, he told us, was fifteen, and they had been married only a few months.
“She is a little small person,” he said, as though to guarantee that she would not be in the way.
We agreed readily, and so he sent for her. He told us about his wedding, which nearly caused a tribal war. Shugri’s mother was Habr Yunis, and wanted her daughter to marry a man of that tribe. Shugri’s father was Habr Awal, and was favourably disposed towards Mohamed, but the mother and father were divorced, and the father was living at Erigavo while the girl was with her mother in Berbera. Shugri’s mother went on a visit to Burao, and while she was away Mohamed married Shugri. To marry without the full agreement of the two tribes – at first, this seemed to us to have been brave of Mohamed. Later, we realized it had been foolhardy as well, for the price of defiance can be ostracism. At the wedding celebrations, the Habr Yunis man who had been the candidate favoured by Shugri’s mother, showed up and demanded the girl. With him he brought a group of Habr Yunis. Mohamed’s wedding guests, however, included many stalwart Habr Awal, who swore that the girl would not be relinquished. Spears would be raised. Never let it be said of Habr Awal that they failed to defend – and so on. After much muttering, the entire company withdrew to the Qadi’s court. As the marriage had already taken place, the Qadi’s judgement was in Mohamed’s favour. The battle was averted, and the H.Y. men went away.
In the meantime, however, Shugri’s mother had heard the news and had caught the first trade-truck back to Berbera, furious at both her daughter and Mohamed. When she arrived, she screeched outside the huts where the festivities were still taking place, but no one heard her. Mohamed, telling of it, was almost convulsed with laughter.
“Too much shouting – too much singing – too much dancing. Nobody hear her at all!”
Another feature of the hubbub was the accidental breaking of the glass in the hurricane lamps through having perfume thrown profusely around – the hot glass, splashed with liquid, snapped as noisily as rifle shots. Finally, in desperation, Shugri’s mother sent Mohamed a letter. When they met and conferred, he managed to pacify her. But she would not give up so easily, and he still expected trouble.
When I listened to this tale, it seemed to have only a ludicrous quality, a wild humour that appealed to
me. But later, recalling Mohamed’s hectic laughter, I wondered if it had not also been a kind of whistling in the dark.
Shugri arrived at Sheikh. She wore red sandals and a robe of indigo, and her headscarf was yellow silk. She was tall and slightly plump, and she carried herself beautifully. Her extreme youth imparted a softness to her face, but there was haughtiness in it as well. Mohamed was overjoyed to see her, and she was overjoyed to see him.
This undiluted joy lasted for less than a week. Then Shugri decided she must visit her mother, who was now living in Burao.
“I have to go there in a week’s time,” Jack said. “Tell her she can come along in the Land-Rover then.”
Shugri tossed her head in refusal. Her mind was made up. She was going to Burao today. This meant that Mohamed had to pay her fare on the trade-truck. She would not ride in the back of the truck, either. She had to ride in the front beside the driver, which cost seven rupees extra. Jack and I were somewhat taken aback. Could this be the downtrodden Muslim woman? She got this stubborn quality from her mother, Mohamed explained morosely. If only Shugri could get away from the old she-devil, she would be all right.
Shugri did not return to Sheikh. Mohamed asked us what we thought he should do. Should he send money? Should he go himself, to try to persuade her?
“I never want no other woman,” he said. “Only her.”
Who does not like to be asked for advice? I gave mine liberally. Certainly, he should go to Burao, but he should be much more firm. After all, she was his wife. What right had her mother to interfere? He should tell the old lady where to get off.
What I was assuming, of course, without realizing it, was that Mohamed’s mother-in-law trouble was identical with the situations I had read about in the lovelorn columns of North American newspapers, and that his request for advice meant precisely the same as it would to a person at home. As it happened, I could not have been more mistaken.
Buoyed up by our encouragement, Mohamed went to Burao. When he returned, Shugri was not with him. He wore such a bleak expression that we hesitated to ask what had happened. Finally he told us.
“Finished,” he said. “All finished with Shugri and me. Her section, they come very angry for me. My tribe come angry, too – I hear it. They say ‘Mohamed, he don’ know what he do. He no have much idea.’ Everything finish.”
Now we did not know what to say, for the problem was a much more complicated one than we had realized. These two had married without either tribe’s consent, and now neither Mohamed nor Shugri was able to see it through. Shugri had told him she would like to return to him, but would do so only if her mother’s people agreed. Mohamed, who had not lived in the dwellings of his people since he was a child, could not bear the thought that the members of his tribe were thinking ill of him.
When we went out to the Haud, Mohamed began to have trouble with Abdi. Mohamed was very protective where our possessions were concerned, and highly suspicious of anyone touching them. He was also tactless and did not trouble to hide his suspicions. Abdi came to us in a fury one evening and said Mohamed had accused him of stealing one of our spoons. Mohamed said he had not accused Abdi of stealing it – merely of having inexcusably borrowed and lost it. As usual, everyone denied everything, and the air was filled with maniacal shouting. Finally peace was restored. Mohamed grudgingly apologized to Abdi, who consented grudgingly to be placated.
Later that evening Mohamed came to us and tried to explain his position. His face was tense and anguished. He was speaking in a language not his own, and he was trying to express things he did not really comprehend himself. He hesitated, stammered, tried again.
“I work for you. I stay with you. Must be I care for your things. Must be you are like my mother and my father –”
He had used this phrase before, and we had shrugged it off, with some feeling of embarrassment, as an effort to consolidate his job by flattery. But now we could not dismiss it so lightly. No one could have, looking at his strained face, his beseeching eyes. There was something here that we had not seen before, and seeing it now we were appalled.
“Same like my mother and my father – same like my family –”
Almost everyone else in the camp was Habr Yunis. Mohamed was the only Habr Awal. But this was the least aspect of his severance from his tribe. The circumstances of his whole life had cut him off. His marriage had incurred the anger not only of his wife’s tribe, but of his own as well, and now even his wife had left him. He had a deep need to belong somewhere, and so, without our knowing it, he had latched onto us. It was not a question of what sort of people we were, nor even of whether he liked us or not. It was merely any port in a storm. Unthinkingly, we had encouraged his feeling of our adoption of him. We had chosen him in preference to Ismail. We had been free with advice to him. We had certainly liked him – and perhaps we had needed him to like us, more than we knew. And now, to our dismay, we found we had apparently acquired responsibilities towards him of which we had no knowledge and with which we felt unable to cope.
“Listen, Mohamed,” Jack began firmly, “you mustn’t –”
Then he hesitated and glanced at me, but saw only his own uncertainty mirrored in my face. If we cast Mohamed off now, abruptly, how could we possibly explain our reasons and how could he possibly understand?
“Abdi, he is old man –” Mohamed struggled on. “I never come angry for him. I speak softly-softly. But must be he never no touch your things, never no more. Must be I look for your things. I no go somewhere. I swear it. Always, I stay here. Abdi, he don’ know – nobody, he don’ know –”
He felt that nobody understood. He did not understand himself. But he must try to express it, all the same. He must try to make us see.
We would never entirely see, for we had not worn his sandals nor looked through his eyes. But one thing we did see – his undeniable need, and our own inability to meet it. And yet we were trapped. What could we say, without making him feel worse than he already did? It seemed to us that whatever we said would be wrong. And so we did what people generally do in situations where they perceive some of the difficulties but none of the solutions – we evaded the issue. Peace had been reached with Abdi – everything was settled now, we told Mohamed falsely. Let us not worry about these things any more.
“All right.” He shrugged and went away. For him, nothing was settled.
In his heart, however, he must have known one thing that sooner or later would have to be done, for he took the first step out of his dilemma himself. He came to Jack one day and asked for the rest of his month’s pay in advance, for he had decided to call a shir, a meeting between members of his tribal section and those of Shugri’s, and he had to supply tea and sugar for the elders. The dispute over Shugri had gone far beyond the question of the marriage now – he would never find any peace within himself until there was some general settlement of the trouble, some acceptance of him from his own tribe. And although he had lived away so long, he needed the elders now, to tell him what to do.
Our initial reaction was one of unqualified relief. Thank God, someone else could deal with the problem. Only later did we wonder about it – was it a step backwards, after all, for Mohamed to be forced at last to beg the approval of the elders? Perhaps it was, but it was necessary all the same. The shir could do for him what no stranger ever could – receive him into the only community which had any real meaning for him.
The shir lasted two days, and finally the elders on both sides were able to reach an agreement. Shugri would not live with her mother any longer. Instead, she would go to Erigavo to be with her father and his new wife, and after a while the elders would re-assess her attitude and decide whether she was to return to Mohamed or not. Mohamed was thoroughly scolded for his bravado in marrying her without all the proper arrangements, and a fine was levied against him, to be paid to the kinsmen of Shugri’s mother.
Once more the belwo were chanted loudly in the kitchen, while the saucepans bubbled and snorted on the charc
oal burners. Once more Mohamed joked with the yerki as he used to do. And we tried to forget that he had made an appeal to us for understanding when he needed it desperately, and we had drawn back because we simply had not known what else to do.
After Shugri had been at Erigavo for some time, Mohamed received word that she was returning to him. He bought new clothes for her – a grey skirt, a lime-green bodice, a headscarf of fuchsia silk. He had saved for her one of the bottles of perfume he got in Djibouti. There was about a gallon of it, and it was called Etoile. He asked Jack for an advance of a hundred rupees.
“Isn’t that quite a lot for you to pay back?” Jack said dubiously.
“Oh true, true,” said Mohamed airily, “but when a Somali send money to somebody, a hundred rupees is very nice.”
So Shugri came back, and this time she stayed. When Mohamed learned we would be leaving Somaliland, he shook his head and said “I think you will stay,” but it was a token expression, spoken out of courtesy.
Mohamed was the first person I saw in Somaliland, and he was the last. When we climbed on the plane he came with us and handed us a packet of sandwiches he had made. We had misinterpreted one another very often, Mohamed and ourselves, and if we had been staying on here, we still would do so. But we had come to know something of him, and he of us. We had been present during a significant couple of years in one another’s lives. This must mean something, surely. We found it hard to say goodbye to him, and it seemed to us that he felt the same way.
A year or so later, when we were in West Africa, we heard from Mohamed. Through a local scribe, he wrote to tell us that Shugri had borne him a son, and he sent us a small pair of Somali sandals for our daughter. We heard one more thing about him. An English friend in Somaliland wrote to say that Mohamed was working now in a different field – he had become a union organizer for a newly formed domestic servants’ union.