Free Maps by Nuruddin Farah Page A

he moved towards the snake. Meanwhile, his hands, as he went to encounter the snake, gently touched a spot on his thigh where a snake had bitten him when small. He stared at the snake, expecting it would wear an expression of recognition; and yes; he saw the snake’s forked tongue cut the air surgically, its head nodding, its throat throbbing with coded speech. Then all movements, within himself and without, ceased; and he didn’t know where he was or who he was; and he no longer had any identity or name; nor was the snake there either. For a second or so, he was frightened, as if he were a traveller who had misplaced his travelling documents. Was it conceivable, he asked himself, that he had lost whatever knowledge he had gained about himself through the years?
    Alone, melancholic, he sat on a boulder, his head between his hands, his expression mournful. He was saddest that there was no one else to whom he could put questions about his own identity; there was no one to answer his nagging, “Who am I?” or “Where am I?” Luckily, however, Askar soon found he had a premonition—that the snake would return wearing a mask And lo and behold the snake did return, its face cast in the image of a man whose photograph Askar had seen before, a photograph identified as “Father”. He couldn’t, then, help remembering a relation telling him not to harm snakes that had called on the family compound years ago because some snakes were the family’s blood relations. He had given this serious thought and requested that someone, preferably an adult, answer his query: “He may be a snake in body and appearance although he is a human relation in all other aspects that are not easily revealed to you or I—is this possible?” Misra had answered, yes.
    Suddenly, an overwhelming silence had overcome Askar. And a voice nobody claimed, one which certainly did not emanate from his sub- or unconscious, called him away In other words, a voice lured him on to a field—a field greener with the imaginations’s pasture—and he spotted two horses neighing nervously as he approached them. One of the horses was frighteningly ugly, the other handsome like an Arabian horse of noble breed. The colour of the handsome horse, saddled with the finest material man could make, was jet black, sporting a white forehead, white forelegs and dark eyes, although its upper lips were not as white as its forehead. The other was ugly, but it appeared uglier standing by the handsome horse. It was sweaty and smelly and its teeth were as sharp as a sword. Askar suspected the handsome horse knew who he was, for it came up to him (the ugly one stayed behind, greedily eating its grass), and, head down in reverence, stood by him ready to be ridden. The speed, once he was on its back, was great; the grace, enormous; and the comfort of the ride indescribably refreshing. It galloped across rivers, it jumped any mountainous hurdle and flew in the air, as if winged! A horse, was this really a horse? It wasn’t as big-boned as the horses he had seen before, but was definitely a great deal taller, and of course heftier, than an Arabian horse. It had legs which adjusted themselves to the conditions of the terrain. When going down a hill, for instance, the horse’s front legs would stretch, they would become longer so that he, who had never ridden a horse before and who didn’t know how to, wouldn’t find it embarrassingly difficult to hold on to the saddle.
    Without being told to, the horse stopped.
    And a man, clothed in coarse garments of wool, appeared before them. The man was so quiet, so still, it seemed Askar and the horse’s breathing disturbed him. The horse went nearer the man, and it bowed its head low, as though in apology for some wrong done. The man patted the horse on the head. And Askar dismounted. The horse, as if dismissed, went away to the bushes behind Askar and the man, hidden from them.