On Tuesday morning they were all up early. Maggie
dressed herself in a khaki safari outfit that she had
picked up in a boutique in Nairobi on their way out to
the post, then dug out a pair of riding boots that she
had not worn in years. As she looked at herself in the
mirror she gave approval to her appearance, and she
hoped that Antonio would do likewise. Then, as a last
touch to provide color and a feminine contrast to the
monochromatic, masculine khaki, she tied her shoulder
length blond hair back into a pony tail with a red
scarf. Placing her Kenya beach basket, in which she had
loaded her gifts, in the trunk, she then put Kathy and
Amina in the back seat and Steve rode beside her in the
front.
Picking and weaving her way through the traffic, they
crossed town, passed through the old section of Hamar
Uin where mud and wattle shambas housed the poorest of
the natives, then turned away from the sea to inch their
way up a hill that led to the main highway out of town.
It was a nerve wracking experience to negotiate a car
through the confusion of stray animals, people, donkey
carts carrying five gallon cans of water, tinny red and yellow three-wheeled scooter taxis and overloaded trucks
that crawled along the road; she breathed a sigh of
relief when they reached the top of the hill and turned
onto the foreign aid financed dual highway leading to
the airport. A mile down Airport Road she turned onto
a narrow obsidian ribbon of roadway that knifed straight south into the bush toward the villages of Afgoi and Afmadu in the river country.
Within seconds they were beyond any traces of the
city, and even though it was still early morning the
road was blurred by the heat waves rising out of it;
there was a clean fresh smell in the air, though, and on
both sides of the highway the flat, windswept African
plains covered with thorn trees and a thick undergrowth
of prickly scrub brush stretched into infinity. The
vast expanse of the African countryside was so
overpowering that she felt as though she could see the
curvature of the earth, and the solitude was so
pervasive that it left her with a sensation of humble,
powerless impotence and awe in the sight of her Creator.
Everyone, even the children, remained silent as though
they each were aware of their own insignificance as they
raced down the road, and the feelings that welled up in
her chest were almost like a meditation.
Periodically, they came upon a solitary tall, lean Somali striding silently along side the road, bare-chested, a stick in his hand and a dingy gray muslin sheet-like cloth over his head to protect him from the sun;
several times they passed caravans of nomads.
Headed south to follow the rains into the Northern
Frontier District of Kenya, the nomads walked beside
their columns of camels and herded their goats and sheep
ahead of them. On most of the camels they had loaded a
conglomeration of animal skins and sticks which were
used to set up tents at the water holes where they
encamped along their way, while others carried a
primitive leather harness into which were fitted hand
carved wooden jugs to carry cooking fat and the camel's
milk on which the nomads could survive for weeks at a
time.
Unlike the inhabitants of the city the bush people
and nomads paid no attention to the white-faced
foreigners who sped along the road in their air
conditioned cars, nor did most people in the cars think
much or long about the nomads. Other than their shared
humanity there was nothing in their minds in the way of
frames of reference from common experience, that would
allow either to understand or identify with one another.
The bushmen trudged impassively along, staring straight
ahead; with mouths pulled open and their eyes twisted from centuries of squinting against the fiery African
sun, their faces carried an expression of permanent
grimace.
As Maggie approached the river country, the thorny
brown bush yielded to occasional plots of temporal,
unirrigated, cultivated farm lands where, so long as the
rains came, enough corn, sunflower and sorghum could be
produced to keep a family alive. In the distance she
could see a low strip of green that was the margin of
the zone where thick jungle foliage grew out of the
black soil and muddy river waters.
Stopping the car, Maggie consulted the map which
Antonio had given her, then continued slowly until they
arrived at a ramshackle tea house beside the road.
Groups of wild looking, wooly-haired, bushmen squatted
on their haunches in small circles drinking tea, and paid no attention to her when she turned off the
highway onto a graded dirt road that ran beside the tea
house to cut across rice paddies toward the river and
fields of broad-leafed banana trees.
Several minutes down the road, a cloud of dust in
the distance warned her of an oncoming vehicle, and she
slowed then pulled to one side to allow a truck, heavy
laden with bananas, move slowly past her. The black-faced driver smiled and waved his thanks, and on the door of the truck she read the name of the owner,
Antonio di Paulo, printed in an elaborate, old Italian,
script.
Never in her life would she have considered making
this trip alone in such a hostile and alien country,
and she was conscious of how great was her need to see
Antonio. Just the sight of his name on the side of the
truck was reassuring to her as she put the car in gear
to drive on.
Once inside the fenced perimeter of Antonio's
property the appearance of wild, uncared for virgin land
disappeared. The road was bordered on both sides by
flame trees which grew up to form a lush verdant tunnel
with a ceiling like a tapestry of dark green with
splashes of the red and yellow flamboyant flower that
grew out of the trees. The majesty of both the trees
and their flowers were accentuated by the background
patches of blue sky above them, and on both sides were
the long carefully cultivated rows of banana trees
standing, heavy with fruit, in the rich black river
soil.
At the end of the tunnel the road opened on to a
large clearing shaded by mango trees and surrounded with
flowering purple bougainvillaea and red hibiscus plants,
all neatly bordered with whitewashed rocks. On one side of the big square yard stood an old, whitewashed, thick-walled, Mediterranean style farmhouse in good repair,
and freshly trimmed with green enamel.
As she pulled her car into the clearing, a
Landrover turned in from a service road that led in from
the opposite side. Antonio was behind the wheel, and he
pulled the vehicle to a stop in front of the house, then
jumped out to indicate with his arms that Maggie should
pull her sedan along side him.
Walking to her side of the car, he opened the door
for her. "Good morning, Mahgee. I could see the dust
as you were coming in, and I came rushing to receive
you. I was waiting here for you, but we had trouble
with one of our cows who was birthing a calf, and I had
to go out and help her along."
"I hope she's alright, Maggie replied and climbed
out of her car.
"She'll be fine," he said and kissed her hand. "I
can see that you had no trouble finding the place. How
was the trip?"
"No trouble," she replied and stretched her body,
then carefully smoothed her jacket and trousers.
Running from the other side of the car the children came
and stood self-consciously beside her.
"So these are your children," Antonio said. "They are very handsome."
"Yes, this is Steve, and this one is Kathy, and her
ayah, Amina. Say hello to Mr. di Paulo, children."
The children offered their hands to Antonio and he
took each one and shook it, then spoke to Amina in
Somali.
"Do you really have a cheetah, Mr. di Paulo?" Steve
asked.
"Yes and in a few minutes you can see her," Antonio
replied.
"She won't bite me or eat me up, will she?" Kathy
said with apprehension.
Antonio leaned over and picked her up in his arms,
"No, never. She's just a big kitty, and she loves
little girls. She loves to have her ears scratched."
"What would you prefer, Mahgee? To have a look
around the place or first take a coffee?"
"For my part I could use the coffee," she said,
"but I imagine the children are anxious to get going.
They never tire, you know."
"Then if you don't mind we can send the children
and Amina along with my head man, Ali, and we can take a
coffee." He put Kathy down next to Amina, but she moved
to stand closer to Antonio.
"Will they be safe?" Maggie asked.
"Of course, mother," he replied and smiled at her.
"There's no danger here so long as you are careful, and
Ali is very cautious. He has children of his own."
"Alright, that's fine with me. Do you want to do
that, kids?"
"Yes," Steve replied and wiggled nervously showing
his excitement.
"I want you to come, too," Kathy said and took
Antonio's hand.
"I will come with you later," he said and knelt
down to look her in the eyes. "You go now with Ali,
Amina and your brother and later we'll all go together
down to the river to watch the hippos."
Calling to a native who stood beside the Landrover,
Antonio spoke to him in Somali then introduced him to
everyone as Ali, his head man. Ali did not offer his
hand, but touched his chest over his heart in a Muslim
gesture of greeting. Antonio again spoke to him in
Somali, then they all climbed in the Landrover and waved
as they drove off.
"Come along and I'll give you that coffee now," he
said and walked toward the house.
With the thick walls and big trees to shade it, the
interior was cool and comfortable, and like all of the
local houses it had large fans in the high ceilings which kept the air circulating. It was spotlessly clean
and comfortably furnished. Zebra and Somali leopard
skin rugs covered parts of the polished clay tile
floors; the furniture was all of light weight cane and
rattan construction and a tasteful use of local
handwoven fabrics gave color and cheer to the living
room. On the walls there were several large oil
paintings and a pleasing display of smaller water colors
which she stopped to examine. "Are these your
paintings?" she asked. "I mean did you paint them? I
know they belong to you"
"Yes," he replied. "I'm not a da Vinci, but I have
fun, and it helps keep my mind alive."
"They're quite good," she said. "Very good. I like
them, and I envy your talent, and the discipline to
express it."
The oils were tight, abstract geometric themes, but
the water colors were more free and open expressions of
Somali scenes of the bush, nomads and several landmark
buildings in Mogadishu. She turned to face him. "You
are sort of a Leonardo, you know. A renaissance man of
many talents."
"Flattery will get you everywhere," he laughed.
"Come on let's sit out to the veranda."
She followed him out to a screened porch where light weight cane chairs were set around a big round
coffee table cluttered with stacks of Italian and
English language newspapers and magazines.
"Either you have very good taste or a woman had a
hand in decorating your house," she said and sat down in
one of the cane chairs.
"You're right," he replied. "I mean, you're right
about a woman having a hand in the decorating. It was
women actually; my sisters, who live in Rome now do all
of the inside decorating. They come down for visits
periodically, and with all of the changes they make it's
pandemonium when they're here. As you can see I save
newspapers for weeks. I never seem to have enough time
to read everything I want; I keep saving the papers, and
hoping I'll find the time to read them.
Maggie turned to look through the screen at the
outside. To the right stood a weathered wood barn that
like the house was in a state of good repair, and beyond
that there was a high thatched roof shed, open on the
sides, where several bare-chested Somali workers were packing
bananas. To the left another Somali worked in a
vegetable garden, and like the entry road and the front
yard, everything was bordered with whitewashed rocks.
"It's like another world here, Tonio. So neat and
well ordered. I would never have believed that something like this could be accomplished in this wild
unforgiving land."
"What you are seeing is the result of a whole
family's work for two generations, and you can never let
up. The jungle is always just outside the fences
waiting to reclaim its territory."
A houseboy padded onto the porch with a tray of
thick Italian espresso coffee and hot milk which he
placed on the table. Maggie poured two cups and passed
one to Antonio, then leaned back in her chair to look at
him. "I'm glad you asked me here today," she said and
smiled. "I was very anxious to see how and where you
live." She took a sip of her coffee, "In fact, there
are a lot of things that I would like to know about
you."
"What would you like to know? They won't be very
interesting, but I'll tell you what ever you ask. I am
transparent, and I have nothing to hide."
She looked into his eyes and reflected for a moment
on what he had said; she realized that his transparency
and openness were what appealed to her. They were
qualities that she sensed, or perceived in some
inexplicable way, and they engendered feelings of trust
and confidence. Even five year-old Kathy had sensed it
when she first met him. Maggie had noticed how Kathy moved to stand close to him after Antonio had put her
down to stand near Amina.
"Oh, some of the things I would like to know are
how you came to be born here? What it was like to grow
up in a place like this? How you learned to speak
English so well? Where you went to school? I don't
know, just anything and everything."
"That covers a lot of years, but I can try to
condense it a little bit, otherwise we'll be here for
two days while I tell you the story of my life." He
laughed, and then became pensive. "I guess it begins
with my father. After World War I, he left Italy to
come out here. Italy was a hard place to make a living,
even for someone who wanted to work, and believe me he
wanted to work. He devoted his whole life to working,
and he loved it. With the small amount of money he got
from selling his small farm in his village in the South
of Italy he was able to pay his passage out and make a
new start. He was young, healthy and robust and just
recently married, so he brought my mother with him. She
may have been one of the first European women to
experience the hardship and isolation of the place.
Like any family, they struggled to make a go of the farm
and their marriage. I was the first born, and it was a
wonderful life for a boy. Wild animals to hunt; a savage and primitive people right at your doorstep to
get to know and observe, and plenty of work. I can
still track an animal across the bush, and if I have to
I can survive, just like a nomad, on a few cups of
camel's milk a day. What education I received I got
from my mother and reading books. When we weren't
working we had plenty of time to read. There were no
movies, TV or radio. Actually things have not changed
that much except you have more people in Mogadishu, and
there is always a party one can go to. It has not
always been that way. This is a new thing since
independence.
"When the next war came along I was conscripted and
because of my experience in the bush I was sent to Libya
in North Africa. That was where I learned my English
out of necessity when after the defeat at El Alamein I
was taken as a prisoner of war by the British."
"Is that where your leg was wounded?" Maggie asked.
" Yes," he said. "I took a piece of a British land
mine." He paused and took a sip of his coffee.
"Finally, when the war ended I came back here to
find the place pretty much tumbled down. As you know
the British occupied this area during the war and
nothing much was done to maintain things. My mother,
sisters and Ali just did what was required to survive.
We all pitched in and rebuilt everything again and
gradually things got better. As the economy in Italy
improved so did it here. We had a good market for our
bananas, and almost all of our food we raised ourselves.
Living on a farm has one advantage anywhere in the
world. No matter how poor you are, you generally have
enough to eat. My father died a few years ago and my
mother now lives in Rome with my sisters. After
practically a lifetime out here she had had enough. But
for me it's still the place I love the most. It's home,
and we have already talked about what home means. I
love to visit Rome, but after a few weeks I`m ready to
come back; to come home."
Maggie closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. "What a
lovely story," she said. "It's the kind of success
story that we American's love. It has everything -
love, hard work, discipline, adventure, danger. I loved
hearing it, Antonio. She was on the verge of saying,
and I love you, but she held herself back. "It must be
very satisfying to do something like this, to do it for
yourself. You have such real earthy objectives. I
doubt that my husband gets that kind of satisfaction,
the kind of satisfaction that you must get, from his
work. He lives in his head and deals only with abstract
ideas. He's involved with big issues - world peace, the international economy, development of the third world.
I admire you for knowing what you want out of life and
going after it."
Antonio looked at her and he sensed that she was in
pain - that she was making some worthless comparison
between him and her husband, and comparison of anybody,
he knew, was an exercise in futility. "Everyone has
their own path that they are following, Mahgee. I'm
sure that the work that your husband does is important
and worthwhile, and in some cases it is not so much
knowing what you want out of life as it a question of
alternatives. I had no alternative but to stay here and
farm."
"Maybe you're right," she replied. "But there's
one more question that I have, and then I'll leave you
in peace. You've never married?"
"No, and I'm sorry, but you know quite well
yourself how difficult life is out here for a woman. I
guess I've never found anyone who was willing to undergo
the hardships. Sure I could go back to a small town in
Italy, and find a healthy young woman who would be
pleased to come out here and work. What difference does
it make to her where she works, but I would want a
companion with whom I could share my ideas. I live in
my head a lot, too."
"It must be very lonely for you," she said.
"It is. Why do you think I go into town to see my
friends, and why do you think I was so thrilled that you
were coming to visit me?"
"Thrilled?" she said.
"Yes, Mahgee, thrilled."
She again closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply as
though gathering courage to say what she knew she had to
say. "Tonio, you may think I'm a brazen, neurotic
American woman, and if you do, just tell me that and
I'll go away, leave you alone, but" she paused, and
almost lost her courage. "I don't know, maybe I am
crazy, but if I am, I love it. Tonio, I love you. I'm
desperately in love with you, and I can't get my mind
off you. I'm in love with you and I want to go to bed
with you."
It was out. She had said it and she felt as
though she had dropped a weight from her shoulders.
Antonio stood up and walked around the table to
where she was sitting, and Maggie looked up at him. "Do
you think I'm terrible, and just one of those bored,
crazy women that you meet in all of the cocktail
parties?"
"Mahgee, you know I don't think that," he said
softly. "I've had you in my thoughts ever since that
day we met on the beach. I dream about you, and you're the first person I think of when I wake up in the
morning. I haven't known what was happening to me, and
I didn't dare admit to myself that I was falling in love
with you. I know you're a married woman, the wife of a
high ranking diplomatic officer, and the last thing in
the world I would want to do is bring shame or pain on
you. You are far too dear to me to do that."
His words flowed into her like a drug, and they
left her feeling light headed. She reveled in the
pleasure of giving and receiving love, and the delight
of saying out loud what she had known for over a week.
She would have liked to shout it, tell everyone, but she
knew that for the time being that was impossible. For
now it was sufficient to just be able to tell him, and
have this secret that only they, the two of them,
shared. She stood up and he embraced her. The
sensation of having his arms around her was beyond
anything she had ever experienced. He pressed his mouth
to hers, and when she closed her eyes she had a vision
of fields of wild flowers blowing in the wind; she could
taste the sweetness of their first physical communion.
"Te amo, Maghee, te amo molto."
She lay her head on his chest and she loved the
feel of his rough khaki shirt against her face.
"Are
you still transparent? she asked. "Nothing to hide?"
"Less so than when we started this conversation,
but I have nothing to hide from you. Te amo."
"I love you, Antonio. I love you so much that I am
frightened by the depth of my own feelings."
From outside, at the front of the house, they heard
the sound of the Landrover returning. Maggie returned
to her chair to sit down, and in a few minutes the
voices of the children echoed through the house as they
ran down the corridor toward the veranda. Bubbling with
excitement, Steve burst on to the porch. "Wow, mom, you
should see the cheetah. It's a huge cat and just as
tame as a kitten. Ali just walked right up to her to
pet her and scratch her ears."
Maggie reached out and took his hand in hers. "And
you didn't pet her?" she asked.
"Nah, Ali wouldn't let me, but I would have."
"I told you that Ali was very cautious," Antonio
said, and put his arm around Kathy who had gone to stand
beside his chair.
"I didn't like her," Kathy said. "She looked like
she wanted to eat me."
Maggie laughed. "Oh Kathy, I'm sure she didn't
want to eat you. How does a cheetah look when they want
to eat someone?"
"She looked right at my eyes and licked her face," Kathy replied.
"Oh Kath, you're crazy!" Steve said. "Didn't you
see the way the dik-diks and the gazelle walk right up
to her. If she was going to eat anything, she would eat
them."
"I don't care what you say, I don't like her. I
like the dik-diks. Oh, mommy, they're so cute. They're
just like little baby deers, and they're no bigger than
rabbits. They have little tiny horns, and they ate
right out of my hand."
"I guess I better see all of these things," Maggie
said and stood up. "How about it, Mr. di Paulo, will
you show me your place?"
"I'd love to," Antonio replied. "Come on." Kathy
took his hand and walked beside him out to the Landrover
while Maggie and Steve followed behind. Amina had gone
to join Ali and the servants in the kitchen for their
morning chai."
If Maggie had been impressed before, she was even
more so when they made their drive around the
plantation. To see the extent of the care, attention to
detail and hard work that Antonio put into operating it
simply reinforced her admiration and love for him.
Tractors, and other farm equipment were clean and well
maintained. A generating plant where he made his own electricity was fenced off to keep it safely out of
reach, he said, from the farm worker's children, and a
small water treating plant provided potable water for
his house as well as those of the workers and their
families who lived on the plantation. When Antonio
spoke with any of the workers their mutual respect and
trust of one another was obvious, and she did not have
the feeling that their relationship was one of patron
and peon. Antonio as well as the workers all took pride
in making the farm what could well be described as a
"showplace" or model of what can be done with this wild
jungle.
At the edge of the river, Antonio pulled the
Landrover to a stop and pointed to a family of hippos
that was wallowing in the muddy red water or sleeping on
the shore.
"Aren't they dangerous?" Maggie asked.
"Not generally," Antonio replied. "Naturally, like
anything, if you aggravate them they will attack. Not
long ago there was an American who was badly injured by
one, but when they killed the hippo they came to find
out that it had a bad tooth and the animal was crazy with pain."
"I remember that incident," Maggie said. "It was
one of the Marine Guards in the Embassy."
"Actually the worst thing you can ever do with a hippo is get between him and the water, if he happens to
be heading toward the water. The water is his natural
habitat, and if he feels threatened or cut off from his
natural place of being he becomes vicious and aggressive
immediately. They are wild animals and they translate
their feelings into action very fast."
"They're sort of like people, aren't they?" she
said and smiled at him.
"Exactly," Antonio said. "And like all wild
things, animals or people, it's best to know what their
habits, and natural tendencies are, and to give them a
wide latitude in following their instincts.
"The same is true of the nomads. When they are
migrating they will cut big branches of thorn bush and
place it around the water that gathers in low places on
the dirt roads that cut through the desert. If you
happen to drive through their "fenced off" water,
they'll kill you. Water is their most precious
commodity. Their survival depends upon it, and anybody
who threatens their survival is taking his life in his
hands. So, if you are ever driving in the bush and you
come upon a primitive fence around water standing in the
road, drive around it."
"I will," she said and felt a tingle of excitement
run through her body to hear him talk so knowledgeably about the nomads.
After another visit to the cheetah they returned to
the house where they had drinks on the veranda before
eating a leisurely lunch that in the Italian style
included several courses and started with melone,i
prociutto, which Antonio said was made on the farm,
followed by insalata, spaghetti, oso bucco and finally
fresh fruit. Antonio graciously answered a battery of
questions put to him by Steve about hunting and tracking
wild animals, and the nomads; by the time lunch was over
Steve had decided that he wanted to become a white-hunter and plantation owner when he grew up. "I'll live
just like Mr. di Paulo lives," he said.
When the lunch was over Ali brought two of his
children, a boy Steve's age and a girl Kathy's, and
introduced them. It was a touching sight to watch the
four of them as they shyly felt one another out, but
within ten minutes the self-conscious testing was over,
and they all ran outside to play as though they had
known one another for years. Maggie and Antonio
returned to the veranda where over coffee and a Strega
she curled up in a cane love seat beside him, and
listened to a recording of a Puccini opera which Antonio
had placed on the stereo.
She had the feeling that she was encapsulated in a soft state of suspended animation, and she spoke very
softly so as not to disturb the fragile web of
tenderness that engulfed them. "You have given me the
happiest day of my life. I can't begin to tell you what
this has meant, means, to me. It is a feeling that is
beyond description; something that I have never in my
life experienced. It's as though every illusion
I have had about myself is gone. Every semblance of
defense, armor, protection has been stripped away, and
my soul is standing naked in front of you." She lay her
head on his chest, and closed her eyes. "Oh, God,
Antonio, I love you so much that I'm frightened. I keep
thinking that one human can't love another human this
much. This is the kind of love that one has to reserve
for God." With her hand she reached up and stroked his
face. "May I come back tomorrow without the children?"
He brushed his fingers over her lips and leaned
down to kiss her ear. "If you like, I will come into
town. We could meet at the beach hut."
"No, I would prefer to come here. It's so
beautiful and peaceful here; it's like Shangri-la, and
it is so much a part of you. It's a very important
piece of the total mosaic that is you, and has now
become, or is becoming us."
"I'll be waiting for you, mi amore," he said and took her in his arms to kiss her.
Maggie lingered as long as she could, but as the
shadows from the mango trees stretched out into the
field behind the house she knew that she must leave.
Gathering the children into the car she set off for the
journey back to Mogadishu. The harsh reality, and all
of the implications of what she had initiated were not
yet focused in her mind, and she was still in a state of
euphoria as she drove down the long black highway into
the sunset.
