Free Knots by Nuruddin Farah

indifferent to its scathing maliciousness. She stares at him long and hard, maybe in an attempt to think of badinage of equal incisiveness. Alas, she cannot.
    He goes on. “I’ve seen you terrorize chefs.”
    â€œWhat’re you talking about?”
    â€œHaven’t I seen you turn your nose up at good food, lovingly and humbly served to you?”
    â€œI don’t recall ever making unfriendly remarks about your cooking,” she says, “never to your face, anyway.”
    â€œNow we’re talking.”
    He stares back at her in silence, his eyes reddening and his once-over smirking taking a more pronounced shape. He does not have to speak; his look says it all, in fact more than she can take at present or dare to cope with. This is the closest the two of them have ever come to sparring openly. If they have resorted to playing a power game—something they have never done before—then one of them has to concede defeat. There were the days when he avoided confrontations and withdrew into the tight-lipped taciturnity of equivocation, worried of what Arda might say or do to him. He was aware of his beginnings: that if it had not been for Arda, the likelihood of landing as many chances as he had under her patronage would have been either wholly nonexistent or minimal. Perhaps now that he is hanging on to the lowest rung of the ladder, he can’t be bothered.
    Like a hound that has tasted blood and is closing in for the kill, he says, “Time you grew up, time you began to live in the real world.”
    She feels her larynx seizing up, with her vocal cords failing to produce the slightest sound. However, she is still capable of processing the thoughts that her memory is transmitting. She thinks that when relationships between two persons who once thought they were intimate undergo major changes brought about by the presence or absence of sex that involve one party or both, the aggrieved one attacks the other with uninhibited animosity. She has been a victim of these types of assaults before—Wardi and now Zaak. She is alert to the contradictions and the unfairness of such reactions. Nonetheless, she understands where Zaak’s animosity comes from. Then she imagines herself in the body of an elephant, which puts the animal’s unparalleled strength into the equation; better still, given his physical shape, she likens herself to a sumo wrestler who lifts a challenger and drops him with accomplished flair. (Cambara is indebted to Arda, who is fond of comparing the strength of women to that of an elephant, which seldom makes full use of it, either because it does not know the extent of it and what it can achieve employing it or because its generous heart requires that it give more than it will ever receive in return.)
    He resumes, “Time I welcomed you to the real world.”
    â€œAs if I live in a world of my own manufacture.”
    â€œYou lie to yourself; that’s your problem.”
    â€œHow dare you speak to me in that tone of voice?”
    His silence serves as salt on her open wound.
    â€œTell me, why have you never spoken of this?”
    â€œBecause I’ve had no opportunity to do so.”
    â€œWhy today?”
    Zaak does not say anything.
    â€œWhy choose the very first day of my arrival in the city? Is it because you are aware that I am wholly reliant on you for guidance and for protection? Is that how to treat a guest?”
    â€œI’ve been a guest all my life,” Zaak says.
    â€œNot in our house, you weren’t.”
    â€œHow would you know?”
    She hurts deeply, her inside aching. “My mother raised you as if you were of her own flesh and blood.”
    â€œYou’re saying it yourself!”
    â€œWhat? What have I said?”
    â€œAs if I were of her own flesh and blood, which I was not. You knew it and exploited it every way you could; she knew it and made a point of reminding me whenever I stepped out of