Maps by Nuruddin Farah Page A

Hilaal was here, or one of your friends, one of your acquaintances or one of your neighbours? You were certain your confidence would be so shattered you would break into pieces; at best, your dignity would drop at your feet as though it were a shawl flung by its wearer; possibly your tongue, short as the midday shadow, would curl up and lie exhausted in the sweaty siesta of the moment’s lethargy and you wouldn’t be able to speak
    What you needed to confront her with was an innocence with which to protect yourself, you thought. Alternatively, you could do with the kind of powered stare you were bom with—that unmitigatable, impenetrable, “whole” stare, one which might have caught sight of her guilt and focused on it. Could this be why you felt comfortable standing in the curtained silence of the darkened hour, standing, to be precise, in the confluences of your past and your present; standing your ground, withstanding the wholesome flood of your future! “You behave as though you were a husband to whom a woman has been unfaithful,” commented Uncle Hilaal, “as though you couldn’t bring yourself to touch the body which had betrayed your trust. It is unbelievable that you would avoid any physical contact with the woman who could justifiably say that ‘by touching me, it seems as though he were touching himself!’” You lifted your eyebrows as if in wonder, and no wonder! For there stood before you, upright and as though waiting,
another
you, younger surely and more confident. You couldn’t think of anything to say—you didn’t speak to your younger self. Instead, you moved away from the mirror and stared ahead of yourself.
    The world was open as the field you could see from the window and…
    II
    You were very old and your skin had started to sag and so you had it altered—that is, you exchanged your old body for another, one which belonged to a young woman. How this had taken place, or why, was something beyond your conjecture. Why, for instance, first wear the mask and features of an old man, only to discard them the following moment in order to don the visage and look of a young woman? Or why, for that matter, resort to a metamorphosis, changing face, visage, age, sex and features too?
    Anyway, the signs of your body’s sagging began to appear first in the hands and fingers which shrank to the size of a small child’s little fingers. The logic behind all this metamorphosis was so dim to your unilluminated perception of things that you couldn’t see anything clearly Your legs had stiffened so you couldn’t get up, walk or rise to your feet—the legs themselves having been reduced to the size of a monkey’s paw. And you were seventy years old.
    A second later, you were watching a young woman’s body being dismantled, right in front of you—each limb, part and organ was first shown to you so you could examine its fitness. Every now and then, you offered your approval or disapproval by nodding or shaking your head. You wondered why the young woman accepted the exchange. You were told that she was disgusted by her young body—a body which was beautiful, smooth and seductive. You were told that her father had raped her, that her elder brother had desired her and that her mother and sisters were envious of her. You were told that she couldn’t walk up or down a street without someone proposing to her, without feeling eyes of lust piercing through her body to the core of her soul. You were told that she felt she was a dartboard and an intrusion of eyes were penetrating through her. And why was she interested in yours? “Yours is a maturer kind of anima,” she said, standing in front of you, half old and half young, half you and the other half herself. Parts of your body mingled well with hers.
    You noticed that her head, hairless and smooth like a peeled onion, lay within your reach. You wished you could stretch