Knots Read Free

women have nothing of importance to expect, save more war-related miseries and rape and sick children to care for, useless husbands whom they serve hand and foot as they chew to their heart’s satisfaction and talk politics.
    She thinks of herself as being, already, a victim of the habit. After all, he has dragged her out of bed and forced her to carry the lethargy of jet lag to escort him so that he might buy his daily ration. She has found proof of chewing in the upstairs room where she is staying, which is littered with the dried detritus of the discarded stems of the stuff. For a nonchewer, nonsmoker, she looks upon the upstairs room allotted to her as a hellhole, smelly, the walls green from the spit of the chewers, the crannies stuffed with the plant’s unchewed stems.
    When Cambara puts urgency into her steps with a view to catching up with him, she trips, loses her balance, and almost tumbles over. Zaak stares accusingly at her sandaled feet, which are now covered with fine brown sand.
    â€œI’ll put on walking shoes next time,” she says.
    â€œIf I were you, I would also put on a veil.”
    The liberties he allows himself, she thinks to herself, as she reflects on what he has just said. Of course, she is no fool; she has come prepared, having acquired a pair of veils, one in Dearborn, Michigan, the other in Nairobi. But she will don the damn thing on her own terms, not because he has advised her to wear one. She needs no reminding that she is dressed differently from the other women whom they have encountered so far, the largest number of them veiled, some in the traditional guntiino robes and others in near tatters. She is in a caftan, the wearing of which places her in a league of one. She wore it, she reasons, because it was close to hand and she hadn’t the time to open her suitcases and rummage in them, looking for a veil. Besides, this custom-made caftan permits her to carry a knife discreetly.
    He asks, “Shall I take you to a who-die stall? Where you can buy a veil?” She reads meanness in his eyes and interprets the expression as a male daring a woman to defy the recent imposition, which stipulates that women should veil themselves. When she was young, it was uncommon for Somali women to wear one; mostly Arab women and a few of the city’s aboriginals did.
    â€œâ€˜Who-die stalls’? Why are they called that?”
    â€œStalls from where you buy secondhand veils.”
    Then Zaak explains at length that in recent years, dumping of secondhand clothing on the world’s poor has become de rigueur, as many citizens of these countries are in no position to pay the astronomical prices for new clothes.
    â€œI see,” she says, nodding.
    He is in his element, and goes on. “The who-die stalls are run by local entrepreneurs who buy a shipload of secondhand clothes for next to nothing from a dump house in the developed world and then import these in. The importers and the retailers are all under the impression that everyone is getting a bargain. The truth is, sadly, different.”
    â€œWhy is that?”
    â€œBecause the practice has destroyed the local textile industries, as they can no longer compete with the dumpers. People have dubbed the practice with knowing cynicism; who-die clothes from who-die stalls!”
    Soon enough, a vast sorrow descends upon Cambara, as she remembers how she had taken a suitcase full of her dead son’s clothes, and donated them to charity so they might be parceled out among Toronto’s poor. Of course she does not know where the clothes that have survived her son have ended up. Years back when she lived here, it was the tradition for well-to-do people to offer the clothes of their dead folks to a mosque. Now, in the harsh light of what she has just learned, she is aware that it won’t do to shrug it all off. She will have to think of how best and sanely to dispense with the garments to which she attaches fond