Banthology Read online

  Schrödinger is a cosmic anomaly; a place so unique it named itself. No matter how many names the villagers threw at it, it refused to go by anything other than Schrödinger. The name granted the village extraordinary powers; it could move through time and space, changing its orbit spontaneously as if it were the sun rising in one place and setting in another.

  When you are old enough, I want you to appreciate this otherworldly blessing, and to respect the one thing that doesn’t change in Schrödinger: the graves of the six American tourists that visited the village and never left it. Make sure to honour their souls on Remembrance Day, and make offerings at their graveside, as is our way. It’s said that Americans are born with ambition, while those born in Schrödinger are born satisfied. The American tourists were the first and last humans ever to visit our village; they stayed not out of love for the place, but because the walls of their own nation never stopped rising, day after day, until it was cut off from the world and the world cut off from it. Each attempt by an American tourist to scale the towering walls and return home proved fatal.

  Schrödinger would hover over America twice a week, hoping to return the bodies of the six American tourists to their families. Yet, each time, the walls had been built higher and higher, until all that could be seen was the snuffed-out torch of the Statue of Liberty and her bird-shit-splattered crown. The American strategic intelligence experts eyed Schrödinger’s movements with suspicion. They accused the village of acting with malicious intent, saying that feelings of inferiority—specifically geographical inferiority—plagued everyone living outside of their great nation’s walls. But who in their right mind would want to live in a walled prison with people who can’t even get along with themselves, let alone others? The American dream interpreters took a different approach, explaining Schrödinger’s movements in relation to space-time theory.

  The bodies of the tourists were an illusion between the folds of Schrödinger’s soil. While the village was in orbit, the tourists would occasionally lift their heads to ask, ‘Where are we? Are we there yet?’ We’d tell them to hold on just a while longer, that not everything happens for their sakes and that there is a corresponding non-human existence in a limitless world that we can’t control. Then we’d sprinkle fresh water on their graves and plant roses along the edges to protect them from the wind. All we wanted was for their souls to finally be at rest and for there to be peace between them and the people of Schrödinger.

  We used to sit by their graves for hours, telling them stories about our daily comings and goings, certain that they understood us, despite the language barrier. When the eldest tourist woke up one day and asked if I’d managed to get a new passport, his brother raised his head from the soil, removed the plant stalks from his face, and said, ‘No, not yet. She’s still waiting for the references from the governor and the Committee of Textbook Dividing, which will never happen of course. Character references just to allow students to carry books on their backs!’ He’d started to understand our strange ways.

  At that, the elder tourist heaved a great sigh, ‘What a load of shit. All this red tape and time wasting. They should just get on with repairing the potholes so that the students, bent over with their heavy books, can get to where they need to go.’

  His brother closed his eyes and faced the sun, ‘Why is what escapes me …’

  ‘Everything is intertwined,’ I said. ‘It sounds ridiculous, but it’s much easier for me to get permission to travel to the moon than to visit another part of this planet!’

  As the purslane vines continue to grow on the grave opposite him, the eldest tourist said, ‘It’s good that we died before America’s prison warden came to power.’

  Schrödinger’s peculiar manner of travel has given us all life; a raison d’être. We never feel lost in our village, but rather lost outside of it. The village moves freely through space with us all still inside it, those above ground as well as below. It doesn’t matter if you’re Arab or foreign; there is no difference between us, except in good deeds and acts of piety.

  We’ve travelled together far and wide. Once Schrödinger took us to Japan; one hour there felt like a glorious eternity, all flashing lights, buttons and smiles. The hours we spent in Libya were also filled with laughter. It was a godless land, because the men there had become gods themselves, limitless in what they thought they could control. One man based his divinity entirely on the appearance of his paunch and kept women as a shepherd keeps ewes for reproduction. He made travel about gender rather than ability or need, judging each traveller on the underwear they wore rather than the passport they carried. Even the movement of planes in and out of the country was determined by men. If a man ordered a plane to be grounded, then it wouldn’t take off. The passengers would get off the plane and return to their homes as if nothing had happened. Then another man would pull out his gun and order the plane to take off, so off it went to its destination without purpose or any passengers.

  The only time I left Schrödinger alone was to visit your grandfather who had left the village a few months before to find work. I was pregnant with your father at the time, and was stopped immediately at airport security for travelling without a male guardian, a mahram, even though your father was inside my womb and he effectively was my mahram, according to those who strictly interpret the holy texts. The airport security still demanded that I travel with my husband or my son, not understanding that I was travelling with my son to see my husband. Their demands made no sense; they wanted my husband to come to the airport and vouch for me before I could be allowed to travel to him! Luckily, the guard was partial to a bribe, so I paid a hefty sum and he agreed to drop the fatwa against me for travelling without supervision.

  Things weren’t easier when I reached Triangle. There, I found an entire city of people that worshipped the number three. The triangle was a sacred shape and the people there adhered strictly to its angles. Everything came in threes; food, clothes, furniture, everything. The village was plotted on triangular lines, and entry was only granted to those whose dates of birth were divisible by three.

  Fortunately, I passed the test at the airport and was granted entry into this angular world. My admittance was on the condition that I removed my striped headscarf and changed into something more ‘triangular’. I was forced to remove my coat, glasses, watch, shoes, even my underwear before going through the detectors. The hardest part was hiding my shame from the guard; especially as the country had recently passed a law making it a crime to feel embarrassed.

  After that, I reached an airport run by religious fundamentalists. All the guards spoke in holy verse and wore short trousers and unkempt beards. They prowled the airport looking for unaccompanied females, ready to lock them up or send them back to their husbands.

  The customs officer asked me why I was travelling alone without a hijab, so I told him about the officials at the previous airport. He yelled that I was a kafira, an infidel, and that Allah would torture me in the eternal hellfire, burning me to a cinder.

  I thought of your father in that moment, how could Allah burn me in eternal hellfire with a baby inside my belly; I could see no connection whatsoever between me showing my hair and the innocent baby growing inside me.

  I begged the officer to have mercy on me, if only for your unborn father. He refused to lighten the punishment of hellfire, and declared that I should be forbidden from entering all seven levels of heaven. Apparently, he had a direct line to the angels above.

  By the time I finally reached your grandfather, I was exhausted. The journey had almost finished me off. All I wanted was to bury myself into his chest. I threw my arms around him, but he was stone-like, unfeeling; it was like hugging a concrete column in an emergency ward in the hospital. I felt his hand move upwards and touch the top of my head. He was distant and cold.

  ‘Where’s your hijab?’ he shrieked. ‘Did you take it off?’

  It wasn’t the reunion I had imagined. Instead of being happy to see me, your grandfa
ther was furious, reeling off threats and insults, and rehashing every fight we’d ever had. It was almost as if he’d planned the whole thing the night before! I cursed him under my breath, repeating, ‘Oh Allah, how did I ever love such an odious man. Oh Allah, intercede on my behalf.’ But on he went; no stone was left unturned. I stood there dumfounded, waiting for him to bring up the time we fought over a TV show covering the election results of a country that shall remain nameless. I tried to calm him, asking him for forgiveness in my most pleading voice. He fell silent. I felt as if your father was in my belly, looking up at me, gobsmacked, demanding that I find him a new father, anyone but this sharp-tongued and unfeeling, bitter man. He kept repeating these words over and over, and then plucked from himself the only resemblance he held to his father; the hair on this head.

  They broke my husband’s trust in me when they removed the scarf from my head, and they plucked out my son’s hair forever in that same moment.

  They never think about the outcome of their actions or understand how they affect us. But I suppose the real disaster would be if they did know and truly understood, and still did nothing to change.

  And so, this was how the first family get-together started and ended all within the walls of the airport. To make matters even worse, when your grandfather discovered that I wasn’t wearing any underwear, he flew into another rage, divorcing me on the spot. This time, I really did hug the closest cement column I could find. I hugged it and cried, refusing to let go, as the planes took off, and landed in the distance, days merged into weeks, months into years. That airport became my home, never once did I cross the threshold. Instead, I became a woman without a past or a future, standing by the gates, going from airport to airport, without underwear, carrying an unborn child that pulled out its hair in protest.

  I slept on the chairs in the waiting area a thousand times, selling tissues to travellers until I could buy a return ticket to Schrödinger.

  My dear grandson, you will only truly understand the value of Schrödinger when the airports of the world search your heart, your pockets, the very pores of your skin, and leave you to waste away in their never-ending queues. Thankfully, our village is still a place where one can live and die as was intended; where light reflects and clean air reaches. If you are the wind, a bird, or even a stranger there, you’re in luck, because you’re still free, like those who are yet to be born.

  Translated from the Arabic by Sawad Hussain

  JUJUBE

  Ubah Cristina Ali Farah

  Somalia

  WHEN I THINK ABOUT Mama before the war, I see her sitting on her heels in the courtyard, hair wrapped in a green net, her face yellow with turmeric and butter, the precious ingredients of her beauty mask. She’s vigorously stoking the fire, fan clutched in her hand, while her head nods almost imperceptibly, right and left, up and down, like the feathery flower heads that sprout from acacia in bloom.

  The brazier is a cone of clay secured between her thighs. It emits ash and lapilli, and only settles when the embers are glowing hot, ready for cooking. Then Mama puts the water on to boil, though she doesn’t prepare tea for us as other women do. Instead, she makes a decoction of roots to protect us from typhus and cholera, pneumonia and measles, because there are too many diseases in this world and you can never be too cautious.

  Mama is a medicine woman by vocation, which is why the villagers both fear and admire her. My little sister and I wear bracelets of myrrh around our wrists, antidotes against snakes and sorcery. Mama’s features, beneath the subtle mandarin-coloured sheen, are like those of an Egyptian goddess, engaged with secrets which weren’t inherited, because it seems there were no herbalists among our ancestors.

  She watches me and smiles graciously while I draw us some water. There isn’t much left; later today I’ll walk to the well and ask the cart-driver if he’ll come fill the water tank. A barrel never lasts more than a week, and transporting it requires the strength of a donkey.

  Mama built our house with flamboyant tree branches and braids of palms, mixing a paste of resin, dung and red sand to protect us from water and from the monsoons. At dawn, the walls are streaked with coral iridescence like in a sea cave.

  I clean my teeth with a stick of caday, then gently wake my little sister who turns over on our straw mattress and hugs me, half asleep: she’s still young, her curls are damp on the nape of her neck.

  Each morning, we rise early and eat a breakfast of milk and sorghum before getting ready for school, carefully pulling on our threadbare uniforms and worn-out sandals. No one would comment upon our beauty if it weren’t for our hair. Mama extracts gelatine from the leaves of the Jujube tree—the only soap or shampoo we’re allowed to use—then sprinkles us with frangipani water and braids multicoloured ribbons into our hair. The wind transforms it into long vines filled with flowers. And thanks to her treatments, our hair has grown in extraordinary ways, black and lustrous like ebony, the fibres as ductile and strong as gold.

  In the evenings, we take turns brushing each other’s hair, crouched down in the threshold, coating our hair with coconut oil and separating it into sections that we twist like little tornadoes.

  Recently, Mama managed to set up a small kiosk next to our house where people in the area can buy rice, flour, molasses and sesame oil; tomato paste, Omo detergent and fuel; matches, tea leaves and, remarkably, even henna dust. But people mainly stop by to ask about Mama’s healing power and remedies, for which she never accepts monetary compensation. She says it would be the same as making a pact with the devil, getting rich from others’ misfortune. Her patients still insist on repaying her somehow, so instead they load her up with kilos of sugar, jars of tomato paste and bottles of oil.

  Mama prescribes earth-almond flour, melted butter and honey for newlyweds; qurac pods for parasites; aloe extract for swelling; carmo leaves for broken bones. She also prepares a dessert containing acacia resin and goat milk for the holidays. Yet the most sacred tree for her, the one she always takes us to see, in the middle of her temple of medicinal plants, is the Gob, the Jujube. ‘You see this stick,’ she says, ‘its roots grow in the sky, it cures ulcers and wounds, nausea and abscesses. Whoever dies with jujube seeds in their body goes directly to heaven.’ From its flowers, she extracts an infusion for the eyes, and when it’s the season, we go with big baskets to gather its fruits. When we get home, Mama candies them, dries them out and grinds them up so as to always have a reserve for her remedies and cures in the pantry. She sifts through the fruit with her mortar, a necklace of amber yolks around her neck, trusting in the miracle of plants.

  Ah, but Mama doesn’t foresee the war around the corner, the fleeing people who seek refuge in our village. The city burns and glows like a brazier, a filthy firework under the full moon. My little sister gets sick with an illness as horrible as the plague and Mama is no longer able to procure her roots, barks, berries. It’s too dangerous to venture out there in the brush. The little one squirms on the wicker mat, being eaten by the fevers, the worms, the sores, her mouth filled with foam. Her beautiful hair falls out in clumps, leaving a mosaic of tiny scabs.

  Defeated, Mama calls the cart-driver to carry her child to the hospital and entrusts me to the neighbours’ benevolence, promising to return in a few hours.

  Ayan Nur, a minor; country of origin: Somalia. Declares that mother and younger sister reside in the United States and requests that the procedure of family reunification be commenced. [Interpreter’s note]

  The world seems encased in ice this morning. I walk with my gaze lowered, like an acrobat on the frozen path. I see only the frayed corners of my duffle coat and the fringe of my scarf wrapped tightly around my shoulders. I’m not used to this cold. I can no longer feel my feet; I must have holes in my shoes. The sky is bent down towards the ground, carrying white clouds heavy with water. I try to feel my way forward, but my hands can’t get a grasp on the fog. It’s still early, I keep waking up at dawn. I pace back and forth, the light the colour of iron. Only
in the war did I see such barren landscapes of sad browns and bronzes. The trees have a funereal look. I jam my hands deep inside my pockets and jog on the spot. The fog lifts slightly, and the hour of my appointment finally arrives.

  I stop in front of the villa’s wrought-iron fencing and hold my breath. The villa hides itself almost shamefully behind a veil of organza. The entire building would seem deserted were it not for a flicker of light in the second-floor window, so faint it almost looks like the reflection of the sky, if only the sky weren’t covered by a blanket of clouds today. I push open the gate and step onto a path of dead leaves, some the colour of honey, others like embers and earth. Tall trees with leafy tops and tangled webs of thorns surround me. A gust of wind loaded with hail hits me like a handful of uncooked rice. The gate shuts behind me with a mournful sound, isolating me from the outside world. I am enclosed within an autumnal garden. I approach a heavy lead-grey door with large off-white stains. There isn’t a bell but a cast iron door-knocker in the shape of a sphinx. I feel a deep anguish, but I need to be brave, the classified ad in the paper seemed promising.

  As I cross the threshold, five crystal chandeliers light up and the door at my back closes silently, just as it had opened. I stand motionless in the centre of a constellation of vases filled with chrysanthemums, waiting for somebody to reveal themselves. There seems not to be another living soul in the villa. I’d almost resolved to leave when a black dog with a silver collar walks up to me. The owners of the house must be rich and eccentric. I’m petrified, there’s nothing I can do about my fear of dogs, in my country we had to defend ourselves against the strays. He wags his tail, licks my wet shoes, his eyes the colour of bananas, his ears dangling. He seems to want to tell me something. I swallow my fear and decide to follow him into a small room with grey walls and a small already-set table in the centre. He sits on his hind legs, as though inviting me to take a seat. There’s a cup of coffee waiting for me, a basket of pomegranates and—on a platter covered with an enormous silver cloche—freshly baked bread with butter and orange marmalade. I hadn’t eaten anything since morning. Before I finish breakfast, the dog disappears. I tiptoe through a labyrinth of vaulted rooms, each one smaller than the last like a set of Chinese boxes. I can hear the faint voice of a child behind a half-open door. Could this be the one mentioned in the ad? I step into the dark room, immediately stunned by a miasma of sour milk. A nauseating stench, sharp like shards of glass. The voice, however, grows stronger, crystalline. My pupils get used to the dark and I clearly distinguish two little phosphorescent eyes, green like apples, green like sea fruits. I find my way in the dark, feeling the walls, in search of a light source. Here, a heavy curtain. I pull it aside slightly, afraid that the child might be bothered by the sudden brightness. Now I can see her entirely; she’s standing at the edge of the crib, bouncing. In one of her hands she has an empty baby bottle, her onesie soaked with regurgitation and urine. And yet the child isn’t crying, she’s holding out her little arms towards me, almost chirping. She must be a little over a year old. I pick her up, automatically setting her on my hip just as I used to with my little sister. I’m no longer afraid, I venture down the hallway in search of a bathroom. The girl absolutely must be changed; the smell is disgusting. I enter a large room with a tub in the middle, set on feline claw feet. The faucet is made of brass. I turn it on to check the water temperature and I free the child from her wet onesie and heavy diaper. She’d worn it for too many hours, it was soaked with a yellowish stain. I wash her gently, I’m afraid of hurting her, she has pink spots all over her stomach and blonde hair like fine silk. Mama would be proud if she saw me now: if I find a good job soon I’ll be able to join her in the United States, her and my little sister. I get a towel to wrap the child in and, upon leaving the bathroom, see the Signora for the first time. She’s wearing an amaranth red silk slip, her shoulders covered by a scattered mass of fire-red hair. I back away, startled. She seems to be made of milk and freckles, two agate gems dangle from her ears. I’ve never seen so much exposed white skin.