Hiding in Plain Sight (25 page)

Something is making Padmini a tad uncomfortable. Bella entertains a suspicion that Padmini does not want Valerie to see them conversing or to overhear them. Bella cranes her neck, trying to see where Valerie is before she says anything. “Not to worry,” she says to Padmini. “We'll have plenty of time to talk, you and I.”

Then in they come, Valerie and Salif. Valerie embraces Bella, and after exchanging cursory greetings, asks, “Where is my daughter?”

“She is showering and changing,” says Bella.

“Was she late in waking up as usual?”

Bella says protectively, “She was up early.”

“And we all had breakfast together,” adds Salif.

Bella washes her hands and dries them and offers to make coffee or tea. Padmini opts for coffee and Valerie for tea with milk and sugar.

Salif, in the meantime, goes upstairs and discovers that his sister has decided not to bother with showering. She is in her bedroom wearing a pair of many-pocketed safari pants, but she has decided she isn't happy with how they look or feel. She takes them off and puts on a pair of
jeans, but they are too tight. She complains that it is all the eating they've been doing lately that has made her gain so much weight. Salif, still standing in the doorway, looks from the clothes on the bed to Dahaba and back. He urges her to get on with it. “We're going on an outing, not on a photo shoot.”

But this only throws her into more of a muddle. She takes off the jeans and puts the safari pants back on. But now she can't undo the knots in the laces of her tennis shoes. Salif also observes that she has on socks mismatched in both color and size.

“I'll go ahead if you don't mind,” he says.

“Give me another minute.”

Salif cannot figure out why she is so nervous, nor why she is fussing about what to wear, especially in a country where outdoor clothing is an all-year affair. He importunes her to get moving when he hears their mother shouting from downstairs. “Where are my darlings?”

Bella says, “What has become of you two?”

He goes downstairs to find everyone waiting. “Dahaba will be here pronto,” he says. But when she does ultimately join them, Dahaba is back in the jeans and has on a pair of sneakers different from the pair whose laces she must have failed to untangle. Salif fights back a fledgling grin forming around his lips at the memory of the many occasions when Dahaba couldn't decide what to wear, what to eat, or whether she was a friend or foe to this or that person.

Valerie says, “Are we all set?”

Dahaba nods her head. “Yes, Mummy.”

“Auntie Padmini, who I understand has motion sickness, will sit in the front,” says Bella. “And I will drive.”

“And where is Mum going to sit?” asks Dahaba.

“In the back, between you and Salif.”

Valerie wraps herself around Dahaba, and the two of them walk
ahead in the direction of Aar's car. Salif hangs back to set the house alarm then locks up and hurries to join them. When they are all seated, Valerie, sandwiched between her son and daughter, whispers, “Are you okay?” to Dahaba. Dahaba says that she has an upset stomach. But when Valerie asks if she is well enough to come on the outing, Dahaba waves her away.

Salif attributes Dahaba's discomfort to nerves and her lack of control over the seating arrangements, which have deprived her of the front seat. Well, if she wanted to be present when that matter was being decided, Salif thinks, then she should have made up her mind which pair of pants she wished to wear a little sooner.

Dahaba wants to know if the restaurant where they will have their lunch has been decided on.

“I prepared all kinds of finger food yesterday when you were with your friends,” Bella says. “We have drumsticks, salad, pita bread, and a couple of baguettes from that French bakery opposite the Nakumatt supermarket. Plus we have all manner of soft drinks and bottled water. I was thinking we'd have a picnic near Lake Naivasha.”

Dahaba says nothing, even though it is obvious from the expression on her face that she doesn't like this either. Salif leans forward, as though he might reprimand her, but just then Bella turns on the engine, and he sits back. She adjusts her seat and programs the GPS, then voilà, bad-mannered Cawrala awakens, her voice gruff and impatient. “Out the gate, make a right.” No please and no sweet words from today's grumpy guide.

At the exit, the guard opens the gate for them, smiling broadly, and then they are off on the eighty-seven-kilometer drive to Naivasha, much of it uphill.

“What would we do without GPS?” says Bella.

To everyone's delighted surprise, Dahaba is soon her usual feisty
self. “We'd rely more on maps, no problem. Years ago we read maps. There was even a time when maps didn't exist, not the way they do in this day and age. Every generation finds its own answer to the questions life and its sidekicks pose. Now there is GPS. In a decade, there will be something else in its place.”

“And before city maps existed, what did people do to help them go places?” asks Bella, looking into the rearview mirror, her eyes meeting Dahaba's.

“People traveled less,” says Dahaba. “They were less adventurous and stayed within confined areas that they were familiar with.”

Salif, presently finding his tongue, says, “Dad told me that Somalis are hardly the ideal tourists. You don't find them exploring the flora and fauna of a new place and few of them set foot in a museum. They visit their relatives or friends, that's all. If you have a Somali visiting you and you go to work in the morning, it is possible you will find him still sitting there in front of the TV when you return, waiting for you. It doesn't occur to many of them to venture out on their own, to buy a metro ticket, and to experience life in the city to which they've come until you are there to be their guide and mentor.”

“You're aware he was generalizing?” says Dahaba.

“Of course he was,” concedes Salif. And in the silence that follows, he points out the Muthaiga Country Club, Muthaiga Road, and Limuru Road, which will take them up the steep hill toward their destination. Everyone seems relaxed because the stop-and-go traffic they were anticipating has not materialized.

Only Salif seems unsurprised. “It's a public holiday,” he informs them.

Bella asks, “In commemoration of what?”

“I forget which one, there are so many of them.”

Dahaba gives her two cents' worth of theory. “One can't remember
what the holidays are for when one is not entirely in sync with the national psyche.”

“I don't follow your meaning,” says Padmini.

Salif picks up where Dahaba has left off. “Somalis, even those who are to all intents and purposes Kenyans, do not feel part of this country. I saw a moving documentary on Al Jazeera the other evening, an original documentary put together and narrated by a Kenyan Somali, a well-respected journalist. He says that as a minority Kenyan Somalis feel politically disenfranchised, alienated from the country's body politic.”

Padmini says, “Maybe it is Jomo Kenyatta Day.”

Valerie asks, “Must we talk politics?”

“This is not politics, Mum,” says Dahaba.

“If it is not politics, what is it?”

“It is the history of this country.”

“Reminds me of the conversation I've often heard whenever two Somalis meet and, like the Irish, can't avoid talking politics—the Troubles, the massacre of year so-and-so, the IRA and who was in it and who wasn't.”

“Know why the English talk less about politics?” asks Dahaba, speaking too loudly for everybody's liking because she feels she has a valid point to contribute to the conversation.

Valerie turns to Dahaba, “Why, my darling?”

“Because you don't need to talk much about politics when you have so much power you don't know what to do with it.”

Although Bella is not displeased so far with the way the conversation has gone, she is also relieved that there have been no tantrums, no lost tempers. So far everybody has been making his or her point civilly. But like Valerie, Bella has had enough of this type of conversation. It's one reason she does not always like socializing with Somalis; they talk
politics incessantly, cutthroat clan politics. They live and breathe it, and they never agree on anything.

To get everyone's attention, she makes the unilateral decision to turn off the GPS. There. Silence. Then she says to Salif, “What would you say are the major formations that the East African Rift has evolved into over many tens of millions of years? I know you did a class project on that.”

Valerie says, “Now that will interest me.”

Salif becomes self-conscious and stays silent for a second. He breathes in and then out as he thinks about the answer to the question. He says, “There is the rift known as the Gregory Rift, then there is the Western or Albertine Rift. The peoples that inhabit these formations are vastly different from one another and so are the flora and fauna, as are the great gatherings of wild and not-so-wild animals found on its grasslands, each with its own particularities. The variety of landscapes are astounding, from the Afar Depression, where the land is some five hundred feet below sea level, to snow-capped mountains that reach almost to seventeen thousand feet.”

Padmini asks, “How was the rift formed?”

“Volcanic eruptions gave it its form, the same kinds of eruptions that have shaped many of the world's iconic volcanic regions.”

“Have you been to the Serengeti, to the Mountains of the Moon? Have you seen the volcanoes there that are still emitting heat and smoke?” asks Padmini.

“Dad took us to all those places,” Salif says.

“So you know a lot about the Rift Valley?”

Salif gives them a brief rundown of facts and figures, how the valley served generations of Ethiopians from the highlands and people from the wetlands of the Sudan; and how, during the British presence in this
area of Kenya, the Masai people were pushed out of their lands into reserves, the entire landmass becoming royal property, given at will by the governor of the colony to white men to do with it what they pleased.

They are nearly there. Salif guides Bella to his favorite place. Bella finds a spot with a good view. They get out of the vehicle, and young men selling touristy merchandise surround them with frightening speed. Valerie and Dahaba snap pictures of each other, then of the spectacular scenery down below. And Salif describes from memory the various features—the huge rocks down in the valley smoothed by centuries of passing water; a body of water appearing miragelike in the distance; a forest of trees so green they appear turquoise; a volcanic crater rising from the depths of the water and resembling a tiny cave; and, of course, the beautiful islets, each unto itself.

Salif doesn't go far from the vehicle. Bella observes that Valerie and Padmini admire the knickknacks, turning them this way and that, but neither one of them purchases anything, maybe because they have no extra cash to spare.

Dahaba wants a group photograph. Everyone obliges, and they stand side by side with the vista behind them.

When they get back into the car, they fall silent, as if in awe. The valley falls away on either side of the road, which is lined by the hardwood groves the farmers use to carve their plows.

Salif says, “There are many standout spots along the way, but none is as formidable as the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda, known to the ancient Greeks as the Mountains of the Moon, or those in the Serengeti savannah in Tanzania. And nothing is as hot or harsh as Lake Assal, in Djibouti. This is really a poor aspect of the rift's uniqueness, even if it is breathtakingly impressive.”

“Did Aar become more religious in the last days of his life?” Bella blurts out the question unexpectedly, eliciting surprise from her listeners.

Valerie's expression hardens, but Dahaba is venomous. “He did no such thing.”

Salif takes it easy. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I read it in a Canadian paper.”

“You've never told me this,” says Valerie.

“It doesn't matter,” says Bella. “Let us drop it.”

Salif says, “I don't think it is proper for you to say to drop it now. You've raised the issue and you said you saw mention of the claim that he became more Muslim toward the end of his life. Tell us what you meant so we understand.”

“His last words were words of prayer, it was reported,” Bella says. “Specifically, a verse from the Koran.”

“Well, he was culturally a Muslim,” says Salif.

“And very proud of it,” says Dahaba.

“But he wasn't religious.”

“If anything,” Dahaba goes on, “he was spiritual.”

“He was decidedly secular,” says Bella.

“Spiritual and secular,” says Dahaba.

Salif says, “But he was respectful of other people's faiths, just as he was of their way of life: Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and the lot. He was a good example to all who knew him.”

Valerie is not so much ill at ease—as she was when they were talking about politics—as irritated. “How could you say that when in all the years you and I knew him we never saw him enter a mosque and pray?”

Padmini says, “I was born and brought up a Hindu, but I seldom go to a temple to worship. Ought I to call myself secular?”

Bella stays out of it, saying nothing. She has lost interest in the discussion, which doesn't appear to be going anywhere. And lest she miss the upcoming turn, she switches on the GPS. Again she has everyone's full, undivided attention when she says, “Time to take a break. What say you?”

“Is this Naivasha?” Valerie asks.

“We are close to Lake Naivasha; it's to the left,” says Salif, “about twenty minutes' drive from here. Let us go there. You'll like it.”

“I like the name Naivasha,” Padmini says.

“What do you like about it?” asks Dahaba.

“It has a Sanskrit feel to it.”