"Innaga oon haybad qabin
Hal beesa aan suubsan karin
Habaaskeey naga huftoo
Waa tii noo hiilisaye
Hooyadu waa lama huraan"

Careys Ciise Karshe’s Hooyadu waa lama huraan.

Filsan buries her face into the free end of her transparent silk red guntiino, suppressing the ominous strident cry oppressed deep in her throat. When her feet could no longer bear to support the weight of her burden, she collapsed in despair on the Saudi divan. She listens attentively to her mothers’ voice forced to squeeze into a telephone wire that connects from Hawl-Wadhaag, Mogadishu to Toronto. It is small and lukewarm, an obvious contradiction to the immense in all her entirety woman she had adored from a faded Polaroid. The woman’s glossy kohl rimmed eyes squinted into the flash of the camera. Her delicate face vaguely shield under a veil of white lace revealed a prominent nose and cherry coloured lips. Henna painted fingers were loosely linked to those of a man casting her a dreamy sidelong glance resonating admiration as they make their way through a sea of ululating women and men with olive green sarongs and gold fountain pens peering from the breast pockets of neatly pressed white shirts.  
 
At times Filsan holds the receiver distance away from her face with her free hand as the other clasping on to the ends of her guntiino works mechanically towards wiping with speed the stream that’s pouring from her mascara smeared eyes. She coughs nervously, an old habit of extinguishing protesting tears, but when she is questioned by her mother as to what the matter is in an unadulterated, genuine tone universally associated only with those who had once conceived, carried and delivered, she simply says—it’s flu season in Toronto.
 
“I can’t be expected to tolerate this Gutaale Gacameey” she could hear her say monotonously, somewhere dark and frightening in the corner of her mind. Gutaale would sit on the peacock housed divan, crossed legs hidden under a flamboyant sarong, white singlet displaying grey half moons under his armpit as he rests an elbow on the shoulder of his mother, prudently thumbing a amber rosary dangling from a hooked index. He listens to her unpack insults as accordingly as would a man avoiding to further rub salt onto the fresh wounds of a soon to be ex wife. He strokes his raven black goatee with care, nodding as if expected of him at her unfolding hysteria. He would follow with his dark chocolate coloured eyes as if wholeheartedly concerned her every step, nonchalantly  uttering ‘nacam, waa runtaa, adaa saxsan—your right’ as she talks uncensored, parading about, piercing the air with unrestrained hand gestures.  
 
Grandma Amina sitting beside Gutaale, bears a six months old baby in her arms, one hand under its neck, the other under its bottom, rocking it just as the midwife Batuulo had recommended: rhythmically from side to side. She lifts the baby above her head gazing at it lovingly, smiling overwhelmingly wide enough to reveal missing back teeth when the baby spills back undigested breast milk on her lap. The warmth and stench of the milk oozing through her dirac causes her to exhale theatrically, helplessly. Visibly disdained, she passes the baby however gently to Gutaale as she stands to remove her dodger blue with gold stitching dirac, pulling a satin turquoise petticoat with scallop edges to her chest. “All we ask is that you leave Filsan, you can go wherever you so please” she notes with an air of righteousness, powerfully flinging the spoiled garment atop dirty clothing in the far corridor.
 
And so, Filsan’s mother now paces about impatient and short on breath bolting into every room, determinately squeezing into a small sliver suitcase whose clasp had broke every piece of silk dirac and vintage guntiino and satin petticoat and antique shawl and flamboyant batik malqabat from various dresser drawers, collecting in a burlap bag naked chunks of frankincense and bottles of Egyptian jasmine and ornaments of inherited gold.
 
“If you think she’ll bare you a son, so be it!” she spits, producing a pair of Fiskars scissors from a drawer. “So be it Gutaale!” she declares haughtily, taking the set of sharp blades to one of her wedding pictures, diligently dismembering Gutaale’s head first. She now throws into thin air the Polaroid she had triumphantly minced “how dare he take a second wife!” she questions, knitting her brows before an invisible audience. “I suppose you don’t know children come from God uh? Pshaw, mi dispiace amore! From Allah we come and to Him we shall return. He gives and He takes you scoundrel! One must be satisfied with what one gets!” she declares vociferously in one breath. The depth of her words carrying this uncontested truth pleases her ears, alleviates the throbbing at her temples. “I should have suspected this long, long, long ago” she now says, snapping her fingers precisely to emphasize “long ago” as common amongst Somalis. “Look” she begins, directing an unapologetic index at Gutaale from the corridor “your money” she continues, rubbing the pads of her fingers together as Somalis do when referring to profit “ is not ample enough to buy me dignity” she notes, “and I refuse, habarteedee ka tahay, REFUSE to be married with another woman!” She confesses at once, narrowing her eyes to hold their astonished stare.  
The baby attempts to grab hold of the rosary Gutaale is dangling above its head. “Just leave the baby” Grandma Amina once more reiterates with finality, wrinkling her nose in vexation.
 
Propping up its fragile neck on Grandma Amina’s arm, the baby reaches vigorously, excitedly, with clenching and unclenching hands for the floating string of beads, receiving a wealth of attention as Grandma Amina rains kisses on its tummy, Gutaale tickles its toes.   
 
And so, Qaali decides to leave Waabberi that very night. Though afraid to return deflowered, disgraced and empty handed to her home in Jowhar, she would settle in Hawl-wadhaag with her older sister, Raalliyo. Gutaale advising that she take a breather and reason with herself in time to save face, would generously pay her in lump sum the equivalent of his earnings for the past year as a fair exchange, though temporary, of their baby. Qaali fathoms her condition, living in a country where custody rights are determined by the former spouse affluent enough to raise the child, intelligent enough to pass wisdom and having possessed none of the requirements save every ounce of resentment, she takes the money planted atop her small sliver suitcase reluctantly, hissing under her breath curses accustomed to either orphans or widows who wish the earth to open up and swallow all their sorrow.  
 
That night however, as dark clouds congregated in the skies, perhaps to indicate prophesy of the gloomy life ahead, Qaali decides to nurse for the last time her only child. But the baby is rather fatigued from being rocked side to side in the arms of its grandmother that when Qaali teases a tender breast under its droopy top lip, it shows no desire to be fed. The baby chooses instead, scrunching its face into a yawn, to sleep. As the lantern near its crib bathes rays of soft light illuminating its delicate face, its’ mother attempts to mathematically remember in fine details every essential piece of this precious, somewhat fortunate moment. And so, when salty tears flood her face curving in on the dimples in her cheeks, Qaali attempts not to wipe them away but instead welcomes the stream along with the air choked with a scent of cumin and frankincense and cloves and cardamom.
 
Qaali lowers her face level to her baby, kissing admirably the puffiness of its eye lids. She trails her fingers along the tuft of black curls mapped on its tiny scalp and rubs the back of her index on the pale translucent skin of its rosy cheeks. She finally shuts the door behind her, whilst Filsan silently sinks into blissful sleep before the very eyes of her mother for the last time—a civil war would separate them for twenty-six years to come! Qaali now tiresomely clasps her suitcase to her chest, mesmerized by her daughters chest rising and falling under a power blue guntiino.  
 
Filsan would grow eventually, old enough to be twenty five, claiming ownership of her destiny, with her name engraved onto a strip of gold plastic by the door of a noteworthy office, chauffeured home to be constantly and impatiently called hooyo by her teething toddler—yet still, every time her mother calling from Hawl-Wadhaag whom she’s never chanced on asks what’s wrong over the intricate wires of the telephone, she coughs nervously repressing the lump in her throat, replying even when bars of sunlight pour from the parting in the curtains, that its flu season in Toronto.

Ugaaso Boocow (Caasha Luula)
Email: gobeey@hotmail.com
Toronto, Canada

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