Maps by Nuruddin Farah Page B

out your hand and touch her but apparently your arms hadn’t been screwed on. Also, you didn’t like the ugly sights in front of you now that you could see better, nor did you like eating the food that was on offer, now that your appetite was that of a young person. So why did you accept the exchange? someone asked you. “You must know,” you said. “Only in dreams do such impossible things happen.” And you were silent, thoughtful—and concentrating.
    So far, you and the young woman coped grandly with the exchanges and you were civil to each other. Now, however, there was tension. You both remained hesitant and contemplative, and neither was willing to offer the final approval once it came to the exchange of the mouth and lips. You didn’t know what language she spoke; she didn’t know what syllabic, consonantal or guttural formations would come with your mouth and lips. You were worried what her political views were; she, whether you were conservative or no. You asked yourself what continent she was born in, whether her family was rich, if she had many friends—and what kind. She wondered to herself if you had a good or a bad conscience, if you were guilt-ridden and whether you had a happy life. These questions, these ideas, so far unhoused, unclaimed and unspoken, roamed about in the air, ideas without flesh, without soul and this made you wish you were whole again, this made you wish you were yourself again, a young man, barely seventeen. How very weird: to dream that you were dreaming? Or were you simply confronting your various selves, which consisted of a septuagenarian and of a young woman, not to forget the self whose identity you assumed when awake?
    You felt there was something unfinished about
you
, as though you had made yourself in such haste you roughened your features unnecessarily You had the feeling, however, that your face fitted you extraordinarily And the identity of
your
newer self? It was like a dot in the distance which assumed features you could identify, becoming now a man, now a woman—or even an animal, your perceptions of the new self altering with the distance or nearness of the spot of consciousness. Then the mirror vanished from right in front of you and the wall which had been there replaced it. And there on the wall appeared shadows and the shadows were speaking with one another, some laughing, some listening and some holding hands or touching one another.
    â€œAnd you—who are you?” one of the shadows asked you.
    You answered, “I am in a foreign body.’”
    â€œNow what does that mean?”
    You paused. Then, “It means that I am in a foreign country”
    â€œYes? Go on.”
    â€œI was once a young man—but I lost my identity. I metamorphosed into an old man in his seventies, then a young woman. I am a septuagenarian wearing the face, and thinking with the brain, of a young woman, although the rest of my body, my misplaced memory if you like, partly belongs to yet a third person, namely a seventeen-year-old youth.”
    The wall in front of you shook with laughter and all the shadows joined in making fun of you, some mimicking your voice, others mocking the rationale of your complaint. You didn’t know what to do; you felt uneasy and looked from one shadow to another. Finally your eyes singled out a smiling face and it belonged to an old man. He was saying, “And what do you think is the cause of this torment? What have you done?”
    â€œMy mother placed a curse on my head,’ you said.
    The old man’s look took on a most venomous appearance. “What did you do to earn her curse?”
    â€œI… er… I…,” you started to say but stopped.
    He commented, “Mothers are the beginning of one, they beget one, they give one a beginning. You must have done something unpardonable. You must have. Otherwise, why on earth would she place a curse on your head? Why why why? I