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short skits were ever aired in prime time. In fact, earlier that month, Cambara had failed to get an audition for a role about a young, ambitious Somali woman who is at loggerheads with her in-laws over the infibulation of her seven-year-old daughter, a story that her agent made her believe had been written with her in mind. No wonder she was in a downbeat mood.
    â€œA pity that my biggest fan is in no position to hire me for an acting role,” Cambara would remark tongue in cheek to her mother and friends. Arda was so enthusiastic about her daughter’s potential that she would delight in speaking gloatingly and praising her to high heaven; she would describe her, preeminently, as an actor who would one day surprise the world, given the chance. When relatives or family friends pointed out that Cambara was getting on in years and hadn’t as yet made a breakthrough, married, and provided her with a grandchild, Arda, in her riposte, would speak of the primacy of her profession, which she would place above marriage or childbearing. She would add that Cambara would turn her mind to matrimonial matters only after she had secured an acting contract worth the wait. In the meantime, Cambara worked as a makeup artist for an outfit called The Studio and was very popular among theater folk and among Somalis, who sought her out so she would prepare the bride on the eve of her wedding.
    In fairness, Cambara was more realistic than her mother made her out to be. At times, it embarrassed her to hear her mother’s over-the-top bragging, her mother who awoke nearly daily animated with the energy derived from the belief that Cambara would one day make it big, and that she would bring a smile to everyone’s lips and pride to her own eyes and heart. Arda dreamed of precipitating a profitable scheme that would lead to her daughter’s ultimate success. Ever since her parents’ relocation to Canada several years preceding the fighting in Mogadiscio, which wrenched power from the dictator’s iron grip, Cambara assumed a central role in their lives. She rang them often and called on them whenever she could. When her father took ill, it fell to Cambara to drive to his house and spend her weekends or holidays. And when the old man became bedridden and there was need for round-the-clock care and her mother relied on an elderly Filipino woman for this purpose, Cambara helped out the best she could. Her father’s death brought them much closer. How the two women enjoyed their long conversations, complimenting each other, the one a fan, the other, in her self-restraint, refusing to lap it all up like a famished kitten consuming the milk in a saucer. However, seldom did either allow her talk to veer toward the very personal: marriage or babies. Discreet, Arda would reiterate that, in matters of the heart, she had faith that Cambara eventually would make the right choice.
    One day, half a year after her father’s death, Arda invited her on the pretext that she might have discovered an elixir for her professional problems. Cambara went to Ottawa to humor her mother, assuming that her mother’s summons had something to do, most likely, with the strife raging in Mogadiscio and the rest of the land, no more than that. If anything, she supposed that a relative was in some trouble and needing a leg up, or maybe the Canadian government was setting up a commission to help its policy makers come to grips with the Somali crisis, and it was possible that through someone’s intercession, Cambara was being asked to join the assembled pundits. Whatever it was, and even though she would not elaborate on it at all, her mother had sounded chuffed. She doubted if the visit would have any bearing on her professional ambitions or would result in her mother’s discovery of a panacea, but since, in her experience, Arda’s records of intervention were invariably marked by success, Cambara said to herself, “What do I