Since dad left the phone has been silent. Thank goodness.
We’d reached an average of an Assalamu alaykum every forty-five minutes, between incoming and outgoing calls. And when I say forty-five minutes I include the night, too, because many of us live in America and for them the idea of giving you a ring (maybe the third one that day) at two in the morning is a really great idea. If you can’t fall asleep afterwards you can always pray or count sure and hope sleep will come sooner or later.
The call is generally brief and trivial, also considering that it’s the same person who will call several times over, often after a short interval, often for only a few seconds, but this I wouldn’t swear because in the end I didn’t understand much.
Usually the call is made up of several stages, so with just one call all the members of the family come to the phone. For example, if you phone Umi you can also talk to Maryam, then with Aisha, then with Aisha’s husband, then with Safyya, and it you want with Rufai as well. And vice-versa, but the choice in my house is much more limited, dad and I, me and dad. .
We call everywhere, not bothering about time zones. When I would ask, perplexed, “but won’t they be sleeping now?”, my father would answer confidently as he dialled a number with the speed of light, “Sure, of course they’re sleeping”, and he would stay on line letting the phone ring until they woke up.
Our extended family includes well over a thousand people dispersed to every corner of the world after the civil war. From Sweden to Yemen, from Kenya to Canada, and some I even discovered in Australia. Weddings are announced over the phone and congratulations are delivered by phone, since the prevailing famine of visas makes it hard for a Somali to afford the luxury of travelling for an engagement or birthday party. Now many have obtained a respectable passport to show first-world customs officials, but the habit of never seeing each other that developed over almost twenty years and the long practice of communicating by phone are a powerful substitute for a tête-à-tête. Internet lets us send photos of children that are growing up and of their financé/es, so if you don’t remember which of Ahmed’s four daughters is Farima you can find out simply by opening an email attachment.
There’s always someone who’s travelling, though, who during his travels from one country to another can dispense packages, preferably wrapped in plastic bags. Aspirin from Rome to Cairo, fabrics from Nairobi to Atlanta, shampoo and hair conditioner from Atlanta to Manchester and so on, because despite globalization prices vary sensibly from one place to another. In my extended family, and maybe all over Africa, there is a perverse taste for bargains. They call it business, this inexplicable buying and selling that means you pay for two and get three, resell four, take eight, except in the end you lose money in the carrying or shipping.
But I’m going off on a tangent. The main point isn’t the telephone. It’s who is calling, what they want, what they say, how they hang up the receiver, what you think immediately after. If, for example, after a call you have a headache or an uncontrollable yen for a beer you know you shouldn’t be drinking. If you feel decrepit. Or all three, which is precisely how I feel every time.
Yesterday Awes called me from London to tell me that in July he’s going to get married to a girl, a Somali, too, but from Manchester, but she’s been working in London for four months, in the West End to be exact, pity she’s going to leave the job in two weeks, but she’ll start working again in another place at the end of April, a private company in the City. A good job, he says. All without stopping for breath. .
Overcome by Awes’s delirium concerning his future wife’s professional curriculum I forget to inquire about her name or how he met her, and continuing with the topic of work I ask: "But what does she do?" At that point he starts muttering vaguely about administration / construction/ communication and in the end even inconveniencing the Government. Clearly he doesn’t know.
So I change the subject: "Tell me about this wedding – where, how"? .
He says that the inshallah will be divided in two parts, first the nikah followed by an inshallah for men only and then three days later the women’s party. Inshallah. Wow, I’m so excited I can’t stand it. .
There’s nothing worse than these two-act weddings. Not that I’ve been to many, only two actually, in America, boring as hell. While I’m running the two-act comic strip through my mind, I think among other things about what to do with J: .
A) I let him go to the massacre of the all-male party by himself, .
B) I dress him as a woman for the women’s party, .
C) he stays in Rome and I go. .
E I think it’ll be C.
Awes starts up again, this time with his job, his future prospects, again the story of the Government returning obsessively. .
I pretend to be interested; I stop pretending; I ooze boredom; he senses it. .
Then he changes his tone and asks about me: "And you?". I explain that I’ve won a research grant, a sort of post-doc. He asks brusquely – he asks this every six months-: "But how old are you now?" Twenty-eight. .
I’m twenty-eight years old, almost twenty-nine, and I don’t feel so old. One white hair on the left side – just one – and I had my first cavities six months ago. I weigh so little that for now everything is holding up well. A couple of marks that will become wrinkles in time, but actually I’ve had them for ages and it would be silly for me to worry about them now. .
In Italy I’m still young. Less so in Europe, where they consider me an adult, and they use the form of courtesy when they speak to me. But for Awes it’s different, for Awes I’m simply finished.
I go back to the subject of the wedding: inshallah I’ll come, maybe I’ll stay for a week and do some travelling while I’m there. He says the whole family will be there, it’ll be huge, our aunt must be there. .
But who’s that? .
I’m the aunt. I’d never realized before that I’m his aunt, he’s only three years younger than I am. .
His father is sixty and it’s hard to resign myself to the fact that we’re cousins. .
But this is the first time Awes has said I was his aunt. .
Maybe it’s the idea that I’m twenty-eight that has made him think he could call me aunt? .
For my extended family I’m not young, that’s clear. And it wouldn’t be easy not to give this much importance even if I didn’t want to - after all, there are a thousand of them. I haven’t been young ever since I started seeing them regularly, that is since I was eighteen and for many of them already of a certain age. .
Over the years I’d understood that for them the fact that you look young for your age doesn’t matter at all, because looking young translates as zero Caesarean and/or natural deliveries and it translates as zero job. In other words it means lousy luck. .
I hang up – half an hour on the phone with Awes is enough for an entire season. .
I mull it over in my mind. I think I won’t go to the wedding to be the aunt-who-is-late. .
I won’t go to stuff myself at the women-with-children-only party. .
And if I do go, since I can’t invent a pregnancy for myself, at the very least I’ll invent a job.