Maps Read Online Free PDF Page A

self-sufficient—and Uncle Hilaal and Salaado are. And I am the child they’ve been awaiting all these years. I am a godsend to them, although I am sure this isn’t the right way of putting it since they both strike one, at first, as not being at all religious. They lavish their love on me. And this matters greatly to me.”
    And you boasted of your material acquisitions. For example, a watch “that circulates with my blood, one that stops if I don’t wear it somewhere on my person”. And a radio which “is on all day and night, entertaining us with the latest songs”. Not to forget the room “that is all mine and on whose walls I have mirrors and maps, the one to reflect my visage, showing me whether or not I’ve grown a beard after so many disastrous beginnings including, do you remember? my saying that if Karin’s menopausal hair-on-the-chin was ‘manlier’ than mine then it was high time I did something about it; the other, i.e. the maps which give me the distance in scales of kilometrage—the distance that is between you and me. Which is to say that we are a million minutes apart, your ‘anatomy’ and mine”. Again, you boasted of the learning you acquired and spoke commendably of Cusmaan, whom Hilaal and Salaado had engaged as your tutor. You showed off by asking Misra if she knew how far the sun was from the earth.
    You were happy. You missed Misra. Evidently. Or, to put it differently, you missed her body’s warmth and the odour of her sweat—which was natural. Salaado was a cosmopolitan woman, she smelt of perfumes and her clothes smelt of mothballs, her nails of varnish, her shoes of polish. It was Hilaal who reminded you of Misra—his was the natural body odour. And he was fatter and liked to make bodily contact, just like Misra!
    There was one essential fact which you never mentioned, not even in those unposted, unfinished letters—that Hilaal cooked all the meals, and Salaado drove their only car and everything was in her name, bank accounts, land deeds, literally everything. He drove, yes, but only when necessary And she was a terrible cook. And neither did you translate into Somali one of Uncle Hilaal’s favourite phrases: “Sooner or later, sex”.
    They were wonderful: calm when you were caught in a storm of your own making; comforting whenever you were in some form of discomfort; providing space when that was what you needed desperately; trusting of you and of one another and of your need of each other, giving, forgiving and loving all the time. You were your own person and your life was your own and you could do with it what you pleased. And they? They were at your service, they were there to help you if it was their assistance you sought; they were there to let you go if that was what you wished. For example, there was that time in Hargeisa, where Salaado and you were holidaying—you had earned a vacation by doing well in your eighth-grade examination—when Hilaal sent you a letter you've preserved till this day. Here is the body of the letter:
    My dearest Askar
,
    I am indeed disturbed by your behaviour, disturbed and bothered by what Salaado refers to as your most depressive state of mind to date. And what do you mean by saying that you haven't become “a man" so you can sit “in a Mogadiscio of comforts, eat a mountainful of spaghetti while my peers in the Ogaden starve to death or shed their blood in order to liberate it from Ethiopian hands”? Do I also understand that you wish to straighten out "this question about my own birth"?
    Now, first point first. A man, indeed. Are you “a man”? One day, I would like you to define what or who is a “man”. Can one describe oneself as a man when one cannot make a viable contribution to the struggle of ones' people; when one is not as educated and as aware of the world's politics as ones enemy is; when one is not yet fifteen;