Hiding in Plain Sight by Nuruddin Farah Page B

the United States. For that matter, it reminds her of how some Zambians challenged Kenneth Kaunda’s right to be the country’s first president even after he’d been in power for twenty-six years because he’d been born, they claimed, a kilometer over the border with Malawi.
    She hopes that her luck will hold and that she will not find Salif and Dahaba in worse shape than she has been. At the very thought, her eyes fill with tears again, her chest heaving. She pulls out a towelette, the type airlines supply their passengers with before serving meals. She doesn’t want Salif and Dahaba to see her disconsolate. Or at least she doesn’t want to be the one to lead off the wailing.
    And then she finds it startling to be staring into the vehicle’s side mirror. Mirrors have always had an immediate impact on her thinking, and seeing her face so unexpectedly reflected in it does not only surprise her but also imposes on her mind a humbling rationale: that she is alive and Aar is not. In an instant, her face, unbidden, runs with buckets of tears making their way down to her cheeks and staining herpower suit. And her hand reaches up toward her eyes that are too unhandsome to behold. But when her wandering gaze encounters the driver’s worried look in the rear mirror, a shiver having its origin deep in the seismic tremor that has occurred within her produces a brief muscle spasm. Several seconds go by before the shaking slackens and she is able to wipe away the wetness from her cheeks.
    By then, she senses the car slowing down and she assumes that they have arrived at their destination. The driver, discreet as ever, does not delve into the matter in any manner or depth. Nor does he say, “We are here,” even after he has stopped at a manned boom gate, where a uniformed security guard approaches her side and asks her to fill in a form and wait. Bella pulls herself together and does as instructed and gives the clipboard back to the man, who goes into a cubicle and then emerges to tell the driver, “The principal’s house is the biggest bungalow to the left. You can’t miss it.”
    A few minutes later, they stop in front of a large bungalow. Bella gathers her thoughts in silence and then tells the driver to wait here, as he will take her and two other people back to Nairobi. But before stepping out of the vehicle, she is suffused with a mixture of anxiety and foreboding, and in a momentary fit of delirium, she wonders if she has the mental strength and physical stamina to maintain her self-control and make sure she won’t lose hold of her emotions and burst into tears the moment she sets eyes on Salif and Dahaba. Eventually, a woman Bella presumes to be Catherine Kariuki opens the door and waits. Bella, unsteady on her feet, somehow makes it out of the car and moves toward the woman holding the door, and her arms open to embrace her.
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    In spite of herself, however, Bella is sniveling again the instant Catherine says, “Bella, sincere condolences for your loss and ours,” and wrapsher massive body around her. Then both women let loose a torrent of damnations aimed at Aar’s murderers, at which point the mention of his name brings forth a salvo of blessings. They stand like that, two grown women, one in flat shoes and a flowery summer frock, the other in a power suit and beautifully designed Italian shoes, each repeatedly pleading with the other to please stop crying, please, neither obliging until soft steps descending the stairs behind them make them go silent.
    But it is not the children; it is the dog in playful but silent pursuit of the cat. Then the dog starts to bark and Catherine shushes her, saying, “Quiet, you silly thing. It is Bella.” She fetches a toy for the cat to play with, and the two women pause in their grieving, as if attempting to recast their roles in the tragedy they are reliving. The dog disappears and then reappears, holding a