She was a different woman in Somalia from the one she had been in Norway, where, devastated by the loss of her daughters, she had become an old lady of thirty-eight years.
She no longer cried every day. In Hargeisa she had two sisters, a younger brother and his wife, and children everywhere. Small nieces and nephews often came to the big house and stayed. Relations came before anything else. Sara had brought clothes from Norway that Isaq and Jibril had grown out of, and the daughter of her deceased sister, who was the same age as Ayan, had been given the one garment that had avoided the trash bags—the white jacket she had not been able to throw out.
The walls resounded with laughter and there was a smell of perfume in the hall. It was Sara’s house. She ruled the roost. All she needed from Sadiq was $300 a month in rent and money for a household of sixteen.
In the kitchen, there was a brick bench with two holes where the women placed charcoal and lit a fire every morning. Pots and pans were placed directly on the embers. Early in the day the aroma of sweet tea with cardamom seeds filled the air, later on the smell of bean stew, porridge, or pancakes. During the course of the day they mixed dough for samosas, then kneaded and rolled it. Spices were rinsed of pebbles, straw, and soil, the amount needed was transferred to two trays, and a small girl was tasked with picking out everything not going in the mortar. The women chopped the filling, sautéed it, put it in the dough packets, sealed them, and deep-fried them in oil.
Feeding the large household took most of the day, there was always someone in the kitchen. Sara was never alone. That was how she wanted it. She had lost her family twice and brought it together again. Now she had lost it for a third time. All she wanted was to have them all gathered under one roof. Preferably here, under the sun.
Sadiq had been ordered to Hargeisa by his mother. “My son, you must gather your family,” she had told him over the telephone. She’d had mixed feelings about Sara moving from Norway. Married couples should not be apart. No, either he had to move to Hargeisa, or Sara had to return to Norway, said the matriarch.
* * *
His head was thumping. His thoughts emptied of meaning. His mouth dry. His body drained of energy. Ramadan enforced its own rhythm. A month to feel the pain of the poor. A month of pure suffering. A month to come closer to God.
It was more than 100° in the shade. The air was still. Neither food nor drink was to pass their lips from before the sun came up until it went down—from around four in the morning until seven in the evening. At midday everyone was knocked out, even the children calmed down.
Sadiq solved some of the unpleasantness by turning the days around. He stayed up at night and slept during the day, usually from around noon until the early evening, getting up an hour or so before dinner.
There were obligations to attend to in Hargeisa that did not exist in Bærum. They were called relatives. All members of the extended family had to be paid a visit. Everyone requiring help had to receive it. Everyone who wanted to talk had to be listened to. Sadiq shifted into another mode. He dispensed with trousers and tied a macawiis, a sarong, around his waist. He swapped his shoes for sandals. He even dispensed with his phone at times, when he had no credit and could not be reached anyway.
Life ran its course. There were flies, cockroaches, and scorpions indoors. Donkeys, camels, and goats outside. No word from the girls.
A calm of sorts descended upon the family. Sadiq’s mother was bedridden and he spent a lot of time at her place. Her granddaughters’ hijra had affected her deeply and she could not refrain from talking about it while other relatives preferred not to. After almost two years, it was as if the girls had ceased to exist. As though the relatives did not want to stir a bad memory. The previous year the wound had been open, and everyone wanted to know all the facts, discuss them, wonder, and express hope. Now a heavy stone lay over the girls, a stone no one could face rolling off.
* * *
“She never leaves the house!”
Osman was frustrated.
“Your granddaughter is fifteen days old.”
Pretending the infant had an illness had not worked. Leila and Imran had left the hospital before the doctor Osman had made a deal with even knew they had been there.
Asiyah—pronounced with a long a and an aspirated last syllable—was named after the pharaoh’s wife who found baby Moses in a basket in the bulrushes. She, as opposed to her husband, believed in the existence of one God, and he ended her life, torturing her to death. A true heroine revered by Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
Sara received three pictures of the little girl. She looked like Leila when she was a baby, with lots of dark hair and full lips. Pink cheeks shone in the pale brown face, which would soon darken. Her eyes were closed in all the photographs. In one she was lying on her side, curved into an S shape, as she had been in the womb. She was lying on a green blanket with Arab writing on it that was impossible to make out. Sara recognized Leila’s glasses, narrow with plain black frames, nearby on the blanket. They had gone to the optician in Sandvika together to get them. Leila had wanted as discreet a pair as possible.
Asiyah was dressed in different outfits in the three photographs, in white and baby
