Maps by Nuruddin Farah

like a woman; and he started saying: “When I grow up and I become a man…”, purporting, as it were, to speak for a long time, although he suddenly stopped, since he suspected she might not have noticed what he had wrapped round his shoulders.
    Her voice, teasing and friendly, “And I an old woman…, yes, when I grow older and I have no teeth left and no help forthcoming and you a grown-up man and I a helpless old woman … ! One day, when you are a youth… and I an old emaciated woman, friendless …,” and she was standing a few inches away from him …
    Firmly, “No,” he said, indicating that she had messed up his plans. “No,” he repeated, shaking his head as if saying, “This is not what I meant.”
    â€œWhat no? Why not?”
    He was silent. She thought that perhaps she had upset him greatly and so she extended her hand out to him and he took it in silence. They hugged slightly, neither speaking. Then his hands, when he tried to clasp them round her, wouldn’t make a circle, the fingers wouldn’t touch, they wouldn’t reach one another, and he was now saying, half-playful and half-serious, “No, no, no.” She looked at him and saw that the
shamma-
shawl had slipped away to the ground, trapping his feet, and the face that emerged was that of a half-man, half-child.
    â€œWhat no? Why no? What are you telling me, my man?”
    Again his voice sounding grown-up, “When I grow up and I am a man…I am trying to tell you if you care to hear it…Misra dearest…,” and he took a distance and stood out of her arms’ reach.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œI will kill you.”
    She stared at him in silence for a long time. “But why?”
    â€œTo live, I will have to kill you.”
    â€œJust like you say you killed your mother?”
    â€œJust like I killed my mother—to live.”
    V
    He asked himself the question whether, to live, he would have to kill her if he saw her in Mogadiscio—now that there were good reasons for him to do so.

CHAPTER FOUR
    I
    Y ou began debating with the egos of which you were compounded, and, detaching itself from the other selves, there stood before you, substantial as a shadow, the self (in you) which did not at all approve of your talking with or touching Misra, lest you were lost in the intensity of her embrace. For a long time, your selves argued with one another, each offering counter arguments to the suggestions already submitted by the others. Undecided, and undeciding, you stood in front of a mirror and you studied those aspects of yourself which could be seen with the naked eye and you concluded that Misra wouldn’t recognize you, even if she saw you in the street that day You wore your age on your face, for instance. And your hand felt a day’s growth on your chin as you wondered if you should shave. An instant later, you were on the mat of your younger stubble, watching Aw-Adan help Misra study her future in the flames of a fire she had made. Oh, if only… !
    If only you and Misra could meet in a room darkened for that very purpose, you told yourself. If only there were no mirror to divulge the secrets of your inner torments; if the two of you could touch each other in the dark; if you could get used to each other while still in the unlit room; if each could claim to be someone else, until you were together long enough to want to know the other; if each could fabricate a story which would go well with the identity you wished to assume (you hadn’t, by then, been told that she had entered the country in disguise!); if only you could speak to each other without recognizing each other, remembering hardly anything which might generate suspicions, anything which might activate emotions within, anything which might stir dormant memories of your life together.
    And if the two of you met in broad daylight, in the presence of other people, when, say