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her creativity. As things now stood, she would have to think of what Arda might say before instinctually terminating it. Zaak was not worth the candle that her mother was burning.
    â€œI repeat: You won’t have to marry him.”
    Cambara put on a worn smile, exhausted from trying to weather the storm that was her mother. Her head between her hands, she said, “Take me through it all. Tell me what you have in mind, this panacea.”
    The way Arda explained it, it was all easy. She was to travel to Nairobi on a commission from CBS to interview the Somalis as they arrived and work with a local crew to film them. While there, she was to look up a counselor at the Canadian High Commission who would facilitate the processing of Zaak’s application so he could join them in Toronto after half a year.
    Cambara said, “Everything is arranged?”
    â€œEverything.”
    Cambara said, “Still, I can’t understand why I can’t get him a visa with the help of this person whom I am to see? Why can’t you sponsor him and have a temporary visa issued to him? Why his spouse?”
    Arda said, “The drag, darling, is that most visas issued locally would have period limitation. Three months, half a year, and two years at most. There is the added hassle that you cannot renew visas issued outside Canada. The applicant will have to go out of the country and reapply to enter.”
    â€œCurse the day you became his aunt.”
    â€œMy sweet,” Arda said, holding her daughter’s hand, “I have it from good authority that Somalis wanting to come to Canada will find it very difficult to obtain visas, temporary or long term, in Nairobi. I have close friends in the relevant departments, some of them neighbors right here in Ottawa.”
    â€œAnd marrying is the best option?”
    â€œTwo of my neighbors are on the case, as we speak, one of them having obtained the commission from CBS, the other liaising with the deputy high commissioner of Canada to Kenya, who happens to have gone to the same prep in Montreal, to make certain that your and Zaak’s papers go expeditiously to the relevant desk.”
    â€œYou’ve thought it all through, haven’t you? Why doesn’t he show up at the airport? He’ll be granted refugee status the instant he puts his foot on Canadian soil, being Somali. Why can’t he come the way the others are coming? He is not counterfeit currency or contraband.”
    After a pause, Arda says, “A favor to me. Your mother.”
    â€œAnyhow, where is the accursed fellow?”
    â€œAs we speak, Zaak has an apartment in the center of Nairobi, paid for on my credit card, via a Nairobi-based real estate agent. As his wife, you will be staying with him there.”
    The Ottawa sky, darkening, made Cambara pause and stare at it as if daring it to rain. She knew that once her mother had made up her mind and had worked out the details of a plan, the likelihood of her backing down or finding fault with it would be minimal.
    â€œYou know what, Mummy?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou wouldn’t do this if Dad were alive.”
    â€œLet’s not go there.”
    â€œWould you?”
    â€œI would find a way,” Arda said.
    â€œI am not so sure,” Cambara said.
    In the silence that came after, Arda busied herself, attentively removing dirt from under her nails. This put Cambara in mind of a mother monkey picking lice off her baby’s head, then biting and chewing them.
    Cambara asked, “Have you thought ahead, Mummy, on what Zaak and I must do about sleeping arrangements, first in Nairobi and then here, assuming that he is allowed to join me?”
    â€œI have, indeed,” Arda responded.
    â€œYes. Go on. Tell me more.”
    Arda said, “The imagination of most Somalis is prone to rioting as soon as they reflect on a situation in which a man and a woman share an intimate space alone, with no chaperone. They will