The Orchard of Lost Souls

PART THREE

Kawsar’s door withstands five heavy bangs before smashing open. She turns to find an adolescent soldier dressed in a camouflage jacket in her room; their eyes meet for an instant before he retreats. The door clicks back into place but the bar lock is broken, swinging from its screws.

‘Well?’ says a voice behind him.

‘Ransacked, nothing in there. Let’s go.’

She wonders if he saw her or if he thought it was a corpse that met his gaze. How would she even know if she had died? There is no one to wail or weep beside her. No neighbour has come to check on her and from that she knows they must be either dead or gone.

Her head is pounding and her throat sore. She pours a glass of dusty water from the jug and checks the packet of painkillers. Only five left. She swallows them down. There are still footsteps outside her window, heavy boots on concrete. The soldiers are laughing, the mysterious delight of boys at play They are probably going through the undergarments in Maryam’s bedroom.

Kawsar rests a cheek against her damp acacia-print pillow case, tears hanging from the thin branches like leaves. She feels woozy, sepia images and sunken sounds washing up from the seabed of her mind: the thud of policemen’s laced boots as they paraded before the District Commissioner in Salahley. She had loved that sound when she was young, remembers bringing the breakfast dishes in a bowl to the veranda so she could listen to the thump of her husband’s feet on the grit; it flew to her over the birdsong, clinking metal plates and the British sergeant’s screamed commands. The policemen then were beautiful, their hair glossed and parted sharply to the side, their uniforms smelling of detergent and soap. Kawsar had dressed her new husband Farah as if he were a doll, washing and ironing his clothes every day, polishing his boots at night with Kiwi wax. She had taken pride in his appearance as well as her own. They planned to take their country back from the British and look beautiful while doing it.

She takes another sip of water and recites the prayer for the dying. She can accept a simple bullet — there is no need for them to waste their time on an old woman — but she fears they will pull her out of the bed or try to make her stand up. She intends to offer them the gold and cash under the mattress if they promise to not move her. It is a pathetic vigil. She places the radio next to her ear, turns the volume down and switches it on. For years the airwaves have been a frontline in the war between the dictator and the rebels, but now Oodweyne’s voice crackles out of the speaker, crisper, clearer and more triumphant with every word.

‘Citizens, we have been driven to extreme but decisive action. We appealed to our comrades in the North to seek peaceful means of resolving our differences; we begged them to not allow our sovereignty to be undermined by enemies of the Somali people and their collaborators. Our forbearance in the face of terrorism has earned us the sympathy of the world, even the President of the United States is sending aid to eradicate the threat we’re facing: a US Navy ship is expected to arrive imminently in Berbera port to deliver necessary supplies. We have the means and will to achieve a victory never seen before in our history and all anti-revolutionaries will learn bitterly what it means to defy authority and progress.’

Before the announcement is repeated Kawsar kills his voice. It is not so painful to die when all that she knows is dying around her. It seems as if the world had been built just for her and is being dismantled as she departs. Late one night towards the end of the sixties, in Mogadishu’s National Theatre, Kawsar had sat waiting for Farah to return to their table. She had pleaded with him to take her out while they stayed in the capital for his police training, but everywhere they went his attention was stolen by his Somali Youth League friends. She had watched forlornly as cleaners swept the floor and stagehands took apart the city that had seemed so alive only minutes earlier. Smooth-faced apprentice carpenters, who pinched almonds out of golden bricks of real halwa, dragged the comedian’s confectionery stall off the stage. A painted sunset backdrop fluttering with inky birds was rolled up and eased into a cardboard tube by another boy. Kawsar, who had been the first to build a bungalow on October Road, would see it forced back to its original state too, the homes levelled to the ground so that the juniper trees and baboons could return.

Deqo’s eyes snap open inside her barrel. It sounds as if men with hammers are smashing on its exterior. BANG, CRASH, BANG. She rises on her haunches and looks out but there’s nobody there, just the usual silent circle of trees. Still the blows continue and Deqo steps out of the barrel to investigate. She hasn’t seen another soul for weeks, having avoided the town and market in case the old man found her. The hair on her head is wild and hopelessly knotted, and her skin shows through the holes in the now-ragged dress she had fled Nasra’s house wearing. Her mouth is raw from her diet of hard, unripe fruit and she has lost every ounce of weight she had put on in Hargeisa; now taller, lean and spare, she doesn’t hear her footsteps when she walks, but rather seems to float over the earth, leaving no imprint. The flashes in the sky are welcome, the more rain that falls the greater her store of drinking water in the bucket that she has appropriated from the rubbish heap under the bridge.

As she squints up, she notices how oddly the lightning strikes; it seems to shoot up from the ground rather than downwards, and the thunder is guttural and metallic at once. A plane swoops deafeningly overhead and she stumbles into the bushes in fear. As she approaches the concrete bridge over the ditch, the ground rumbles from the procession of slow, dark green tanks crossing from north to south; she imagines there must be another parade taking place in the stadium, another day of soldiers, speeches and dances. After the tanks pass, the bridge is empty and she climbs the embankment up to it. She checks south to the airport and north towards the theatre: pillars of smoke stand irregularly here and there and everything is eerily quiet, apart from the mysterious blasts she could hear from the ditch.

Curious, she heads for the suuq, hoping to ask one of the market women what is going on. She expects it to be open like always, with the basket women on the left and the vegetable sellers on the right, hawkers her age milling between them selling snacks and individual cigarettes, the central market a dense confusion of heads and arms. It isn’t until she nears the huge blue and white flag painted on the side of the local government office — the same image she has only ever seen in fragments through the crowd, but which is now revealed in its rain-bleached entirety — that Deqo realises she is in the heart of the suuq. Overturned tables, crates and silence replace the world she knew, the only company the emaciated, flea-ridden cats cowering under an awning and lapping desperately at a dark pool of blood.

Deqo checks the ground for a morsel to eat but there are only scattered peanut shells and trampled vegetables. Taking the alley adjacent to the municipal building, she soon reaches a checkpoint. Soldiers in yellow camouflage jackets and trousers guard it, but a woman in a khaki uniform and beret gestures for Deqo to approach. ‘Put your hands in the air. Where have you come from?’ she shouts.

‘The market.’ Deqo points behind her. ‘Where are all the traders, Jaalle?’

‘Somewhere in the hills. Who are you? Where are your family?’

‘I am an orphan, from Saba’ad.’

‘Put your arms down.’

Deqo drops them slowly.

‘I am hungry, Jaalle, where can I find some food?’

The woman walks across to another soldier, discusses something and then returns with him. ‘If you are willing to do something for us, we can provide you with food.’

Deqo shelters her eyes from the sun with her hand and nods.

‘Follow us.’ The woman leads Deqo and the soldier toward the wealthy neighbourhood on the other side of the ditch. Crouched and with their rifles poised, they peek around corners before proceeding further. A radio on the woman’s belt crackles and she switches it off.

‘You see those houses at the end of the road?’ She points to two huge villas, their gates torn open. ‘I want you to go inside and see if there are any people in them.’

‘Is that all?’ Deqo asks.

‘Just that and then we’ll give you something to eat.’

As Deqo tiptoes forward, emulating the soldiers, she can see that the garden walls of the villas have holes punched out, craters as large as truck tyres. The houses themselves are unscathed and have glossy, new cars parked in front of them. Deqo glances back anxiously at the soldiers who quickly drop out of sight. She enters the compound of the slightly smaller villa and stands beside an abandoned child’s bicycle, expecting someone to challenge her; birds rustle, guns pop in the distance, but no one emerges. The whitewashed villa has a tiled, columned veranda leading to a glass double door. She walks inside. She counts seven rooms not including the bathroom and large kitchen. An overhead light has been left on in one of the bedrooms but she doesn’t know how to turn it off. The rooms still smell of the family they belong to, a strange combination of washing powder, spices and children.

The larger villa next door also appears empty, but there are dirty footprints on the rug. Deqo picks up a bullet from beneath the coffee table and holds it as a kind of charm as she inspects the rooms. There are two televisions in this house, one in the living room and one in the largest bedroom; her reflection is caught and watched by their black eyes. The kitchen is full of packets of food she doesn’t recognise.

She sprints back to the soldiers, who beckon her around the corner.

‘Did you see anyone?’ the woman asks impatiently.

‘No, they’re empty.’

‘Are you sure you didn’t see anyone? Tell me the truth.’

‘I checked every room.’

‘What’s that in your hand?’

Deqo unfurls her fingers to reveal the bullet. The female soldier takes it from her and whispers something in her companion’s ear.

‘I found it in the larger house. Under a table.’

The soldier replaces the bullet with a melted chocolate bar from her pocket. ‘Go your own way now,’ she orders before they retreat the way they came, checking every direction like thieves.

Roble said he had come running as soon he heard shouts. Filsan had been surrounded by a disparate gang; two older men — one in khaki, one in a safari jacket — and two teenagers, wearing jeans and big-collared shirts.

‘Give us your gun,’ the man in khaki demanded, his rifle trained on her.

Filsan stood absolutely still, unable to respond. It was as though everything that she had learnt had deserted her.

One of the boys reset the trigger of his Kalashnikov, and the sound of the metal jolted her back into her body. She looked down the barrel and saw her own end and roared for Roble to come to her.

Before the young gunman had the chance to recoil his Kalashnikov, a shot from the direction of the checkpoint had brought him down, with a bullet to the back.

The rebels turned to defend themselves, Filsan’s presence suddenly unimportant as she dived into the gulley they had been hiding in. The frantic exchange of fire was over in seconds, leaving three NFM dead on the ground and the man in khaki pursued into the night by the soldiers.

Roble sprinted up and pulled her away from the thorns, his heart thumping against her ribs, the moment only spoiled by the scent of dog shit on her boots. Crouched under his arm, shocked but unharmed, Filsan had marched with him back to the checkpoint, all hostility between them evaporated. He was completely in shadow, just the outline of what a man should be, and she held on, pushing closer and closer against him. She felt out of herself in an exhilarated, animalistic way, all her reticence and manners stripped away; she wanted to merge with him, become him. But Roble had sat her down on the barrel at the checkpoint, handed her the torch and turned to the radio transmitter, shouting demands for immediate reinforcement, his eyes darting fearfully in every direction. They had been separated that very night, he assigned to a checkpoint on the hills outside of town and she to Birjeeh to help coordinate Victory Pioneers with the armed forces already in Hargeisa.

Over the next few days, each time Filsan sees a military truck careering through the streets, uniformed casualties prostrate on the back, she is chilled by the thought that Roble could be amongst them. Far from being repelled and driven out of the city, the NFM have grown in number and entrenched themselves. Hundreds of rebels have returned from exile in the scrublands of Ethiopia, from their desert lairs, carrying their scavenged weaponry on their backs. Veteran fighters, whose names and photographs pepper dossiers of wanted men, have come to wreak havoc, their apparent resurrection a call to arms to thousands of the city’s angry youths.

At the checkpoint nearest to the National Theatre, Filsan oversees movement into the strategically important centre of the city. Most residents fled within the first hours of the bombardment, but stragglers remain: the crippled and elderly, the patients thrown out of the hospital when it was requisitioned by the military, street children and lunatics freed from the asylum by a mortar blow. Filsan switches on her radio and hears that the rebels have cut the water supply to the hospital and they need water to be trucked in immediately for the injured soldiers there.

Two members of the Victory Pioneers, Ahmed and Jimaale, are stationed at the checkpoint to help identify NFM sympathisers; they know everything about everyone — family, clan, neighbourhood, occupation, associates — the years of busybodying finally paying off. They seem invigorated, their pockets bulging with watches and money confiscated at other checkpoints; they keep asking the conscripts to give them a weapon but Filsan forbids it.

A group of civilians creeps up to the barrier, with bundles wrapped in blankets on their backs. The solitary male with them is around twelve years old and struggles to manoeuvre a cart full of their worldly possessions.

They stop beside the barricade and wait.

‘Where have you come from?’ Filsan asks.

‘Iftiin,’ a young woman says, a strap across her forehead to secure the load on her back. She seems to lead the group, while the eldest woman leans against the wall panting.

‘What is your name and who are these people?’

‘Nurto Abdillahi Yusuf. These are my mother and siblings.’ She waves back without turning her head.

‘Her father used to work in the cinema; they are a well-known anti family. Check that cart, they are probably giving supplies to the enemies,’ shouts Ahmed, rushing to the cart himself.

‘Stand back,’ Filsan orders before cutting through the tethers that hold the contents of the cart in place. She rummages within it: a foam mattress, a paper bag of medicines, sacks of flour and rice, a girgire cooker, and then something that surprises her.

She digs the revolver out of the hole it has been hidden in within the mattress.

‘There!’ exclaims Jimaale. ‘Caught like a cat with a piece of chicken.’

‘It is for protection against bandits, we are just women and children, we need something for our safety,’ pleads Nurto.

‘Who gave it to you?’ Filsan checks the gun over; it is an old police model.

‘We have had it for years, my father bought it after we were burgled in the seventies, everyone has one, drunks and glue-sniffers were breaking in at night.’

‘Liar! Liar!’ Jimaale shoves the girl. ‘You are an anti! Why not call the police if you are broken into?’

‘We have seen you at protests against the government, you can’t lie to us.’ Ahmed kicks her to the ground.

Filsan pulls him away. ‘Take them to Birjeeh. They will discover the truth.’

Ahmed and Jimaale pull the bundles off their backs while Filsan ties Nurto’s wrists and then her mother’s. Her children fight Filsan’s hands away, but she resists striking them and orders the two youngest conscripts to march the whole family to headquarters. As their figures recede, it strikes Filsan as ironic that they had delayed fleeing so they could take as many of their possessions as possible, but now those very possessions impede their flight.

The crackle of the radio breaks into Filsan’s thoughts; on the end of the line is Lieutenant Hashi, the logistics officer, ordering she move to the checkpoint beside the radio station. She leaves Ahmed and Jimaale to pilfer what they want from the cart and rushes to the next position.

Kawsar hears snatches of the chaos outside: the scrape of corrugated tin as it is pulled off the neighbouring homes, the whoompf of deep-throated cannons firing behind the hotel, the ominous approach of footsteps in the courtyard. She senses her death is imminent; every part of her is cold and her heart beats sluggishly, hopelessly. A weight presses down on the bed and she turns her head. Farah sits there in his favourite narrow-shouldered pinstripe suit; he leans back and sighs a bottomless sigh, ‘Who would have thought it would come to this?’

It is so good to hear his deep, clear voice that it brings abrupt tears to her eyes.

‘Kawsar-yaaro, little Kawsar, you have struggled too much without me. Put it behind you now.’ He smiles and she recalls the shallow dimple in each cheek. ‘We have been waiting for you.’

Teasingly, Hodan steps out of the kitchen, smiling her father’s smile and dressed in a satin wedding dress that pools on the floor around her.

‘Take me with you.’ Kawsar holds out her arms and lifts herself as far as she can.

As Hodan nears, Kawsar watches her perfect, luminous face fade until she sees nothing but dust motes floating in the air. She turns to Farah but the bed is empty. She drops her arms and cries out, cursing herself: why can’t she at least have a simple death after such a long, complicated life? What is this trial that she has been forced to endure? If she had a knife she would end it herself.

Deqo winds back to the villas. The trees are bare; all the birds have flown away, leaving an ominous silence in their wake. She wants to see those grand kitchens again, touch the gleaming copperware and empty those cupboards groaning with mysterious, exotic packages. The guttural thump of mortars booms behind her and she picks up speed, keeping close to the wall and hiding beneath the shadows of flowing pink bougainvillea bushes. Ducking into the largest villa she runs up the concrete steps and enters its cool, green-tiled reception room. A heavy wooden-framed armchair is close enough to the door to push back and use as a barricade. The overhead fan stirs at the change of air she has brought in with her, but the rest of the house is eerily still. Vast sheets shroud the other furniture, dust and dead insects already gathering within the folds on the floor.

Deqo paces through the hall and into the kitchen. White-painted cupboards dominate one wall and hide the pans, cutlery and provisions that would have crowded the floor of Nasra’s kitchen. A straw mat beside the window has the dark imprint of a body clearly visible, two plastic slippers and a caday the only other reminders of the maid who lived and worked in this room. Instead of a makeshift girgire she had had a permanent charcoal-burning range to prepare meals with, four circular hobs and an oven underneath that must have shortened her labour by hours. A huge enamelled sink holds the dirty plates that the family had used before fleeing. Deqo prods the congealed red sauce on a plate and puts her finger to her tongue; it still tastes good. Two large taps drip onto the dishes and she decides to wash them as a kind of payment for the family’s unknowing hospitality With difficulty she turns the stiff taps and water gushes out, clear and abundant; a cloth and dishful of detergent are within her reach and within moments the sink is empty.

Shaking her hands dry Deqo marvels over how all this luxury has been hidden from her. Work in a place like this isn’t work; there are no buckets to lug from the standpipe or collapsing piles of pans and knives to dodge. The kitchen has a high ceiling and two wide windows that funnel the midday sun inside, pale yellow walls casting a gentle light over everything. Three giant copper pans hang from the wall and their shifting bottoms shine beams of gold onto Deqo’s skin. She breathes deeply, knowing she has found where she belongs.

Opening the nearest cupboard she fills her arms with packets of imported biscuits she has seen in the market but has never eaten. Shoving a bottle of cordial under her arm she heads for a bedroom. She settles for the largest one and throws her stash onto the silken pink quilt that covers the gigantic bed; it is like reclining on a cloud, floating magically on a carpet. She extends her limbs into a star shape and then pulls them back and forth, caressing the silk and sending shudders of pleasure up her spine. Unscrewing the bottle with her mouth, she spits out the top and swigs the dark liquid, as thick and sweet as caramel. Scrabbling a hand over to the open biscuit wrapper, she draws three out and stuffs them into her mouth, letting crumbs cascade over her and flicking them carelessly away onto the bed, onto the floor. She is free to do as she pleases without punishment, guidance or scrutiny.

Waking up in a dim, strange room, full of shadows and dark recesses, Deqo panics at the wet sensation over her legs. She leaps from the bed and finds a pool of dark red cordial splattered over the quilt. Grabbing the sticky bottle, she curses herself for making this palace so filthy so quickly. She rips the cover away and to her relief the sheets beneath are still pristine: bundling the quilt up in her arms, she carries it to the bathroom to wash later.

No sound seems to penetrate the house from the war beyond the walls; it echoes and hums and ticks as if she has been swallowed by a giant and caught within his ribs. Deqo dances and slides over the tiled floor; she feels completely safe, hidden away, with only the pad of her feet for company. Light seeps from under a door and she remembers the other rooms, each of them as well furnished as the one she has slept in. She pushes the door open and discovers the room alive with shadows, fluttering, monstrous shadows that span each wall. Deqo looks up to see six white moths beating their wings between the bulb and floral lampshade. She wonders if this is the only light they could locate, if the rest of the town has descended into lifeless shade, and if like her they are afraid of what might happen in that darkness.

Approaching the window, she notices the hole in the mosquito mesh through which the moths must have entered. It is just a few moments before nightfall and a swipe of watery indigo separates the brooding sky from the sullen earth. Distant flares shoot up like stars but leave a sickly green vapour in their wake. It is an alien world being destroyed, one that she doesn’t belong to or feel any ownership over. Turning away from the window and drawing the curtain across, her attention turns to the key in the wardrobe; it clicks like a stiff knuckle and the thick-mirrored doors fall open. It is packed tight with clothes, the metal pole sagging with the weight of them, the bottom of the wardrobe covered with rows and rows of shoes. Deqo takes out a pair of silver high heels and slips her feet inside, a gap the size of her fist left behind the heel. She spies sequins between the layers of clothes and pulls out the garment, a kind of short-sleeved top heavy with embellishment, a palm tree picked out in jewel-coloured beads on the front. A wide-brimmed black hat finishes the look and Deqo totters back to look at herself in the mirror; for the first time she likes the girl smiling back at her.

After a motionless couple of hours at the theatre checkpoint, another order from Hashi comes, this time telling Filsan to join Roble on the Jigjiga Road to Ethiopia. A jeep collects her and she jumps in eagerly despite the danger of the district they are entering. Hundreds of rebels are hidden in the hills around Hargeisa and the exchange of fire between them and the soldiers reverberates down into the valley. Filsan covers her nose against the acrid smoke drifting over from burning houses and rolls the side window up. She has nothing to bring Roble, not even a bottle of cola; the only comfort she has to offer is her presence and she hopes that will be enough. Small dots clamber along the hills as the jeep sweeps past; the refugees appear nothing more than bundles of multi-coloured blankets moving in columns like ants.

‘Should just stay in their beds rather than dying out there,’ the driver says in an accent that reminds her of home.

Filsan turns to him, suddenly interested. ‘When did you arrive from Mogadishu?’

‘Three days ago. I have barely slept at all, just drive, drive, drive.’ He makes a cutting motion with his hand at the road.

‘How are things there?’

‘Difficult, the city is full of northern refugees.’

That isn’t what Filsan cares about; she wants to know if any new singers have broken through in her absence, if the Lido beach café is still open, if the television reception has improved at all.

He tells her he was born in Wardhiigley but brought up in Hamar Weyne, had attended a school she has only vaguely heard of, and worked as a mechanic before joining the army. They have no family, acquaintances or interests in common and the conversation quickly drifts to an end.

The jeep abandons the tarmacked road and climbs a dirt path up into the hills. ‘I can’t get any closer than this, just follow the curve to the right and you will see them.’

Filsan wipes her brow, hoping she doesn’t look or smell too bad. This isn’t how she would choose to be reunited, but it is better than waiting.

Suddenly he is there, leaning against a boulder with a pair of binoculars to his eyes; she stops to enjoy the sight of him, calm and nonchalant, as the din of machine-gun fire hitting rock clatters only a few dozen metres away. He notices Filsan after an age, the binoculars still to his eyes but a broad smile stretching beneath his four-day stubble. He holds his arms open, despite knowing she will not fall into them; instead she rushes up and shakes his hand between both of hers.

‘Welcome, welcome, Jaalle!’ He beckons her to the others. ‘This is Corporal Abbas, and Privates Samatar and Short Abdi. Tall Abdi is refreshing himself behind the boulder.’

She salutes and they jokily click their heels to attention.

‘Have you brought anything to eat?’ Abbas asks.

‘I’m sorry, I haven’t eaten myself.’

‘We’ll die of starvation up here, I swear,’ he groans.

Filsan looks up to Roble. ‘When did you last come down to the city?’

‘Two days, it’s a shambles! They keep telling us just a few more hours, just a few more hours, but still no one has come to relieve us, apart from you that is.’

‘They didn’t tell me to bring any provisions.’ She makes a show of checking her pockets for some chocolate.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Roble pats her shoulder. ‘At least we haven’t had any trouble.’

‘None?’

‘Nothing. We have just been watching through the binoculars — it’s better than being at the cinema. Here, have a look.’ Roble lifts the binoculars from his neck and passes them to Filsan.

Hargeisa looks beautiful for once, the sky an unusual haze of pink and purple, clouds tinted with smoke, tin roofs like golden pools reflecting the huge orange setting sun. The devastation is lost within deep shadows. She puts the binoculars to her eyes and scans until something comes into focus: a slice of road and the wheels of a car. The burgundy Toyota stops by the side of the road and about eight civilians disgorge from it. Other refugees run along the road and then walk a few breathless steps before resuming their flight. Swinging back to the car, she watches a father escort his young daughter — a girl of five or six in a spotty dress — to the scrub along the track to urinate; he holds her up by the arms and keeps his shoes far away in fear of splashes. A hail of mortars falls nearby, one of them only a few feet from where the father and daughter stand, and all the passengers jump out of the bushes and scurry back to the car. The father darts after them and gestures desperately for the girl to catch up. She stumbles behind, dragging her underwear up with one hand. The father jumps in just as the car begins to pull away; he holds the door open but the driver speeds off, leaving the little girl behind a screen of exhaust fumes. More missiles fall but the girl doesn’t stop her pursuit until she is engulfed in a volley of Katyusha rocket fire. Filsan drops the binoculars in disbelief that the father has just left his child to die. The car, now just a dark speck, continues up the winding road to Ethiopia.

She imagines herself in the girl’s position and feels a sudden longing for her father back home, seeing him clearly in her mind’s eye with a tumbler of whisky in front of the television, his right foot hitched up under his left thigh. For all his severity he would never have abandoned her like that. She had ignored the last two calls he had made to the barracks; he wants her transferred back to Mogadishu, away from the war.

The sun has set, the silhouetted hills resembling the spines on a lizard’s back, and the town within the valley is lit here and there by fires. A call has come through declaring that they are all to be relieved from the checkpoint for a briefing at Birjeeh and now they wait, blowing warm air onto their chilled hands. Abbas and Short Abdi have gathered twigs and built a pitiful fire, and Roble and Filsan huddle together in silence. Tall Abdi approaches and asks for a cigarette; he is shivering and scrawny in a short-sleeved shirt. Roble gives him his half-empty packet. At last they hear the crunch of tyres on grit, and five soldiers laden with assault rifles and an RPG arrive to replace them.

They drive slowly back to Hargeisa without headlights, hoping not to attract rebel attention or the increasingly common friendly fire from jittery conscripts. Filsan knocks against Roble as the jeep hits one pothole after another; they are squeezed together in the back, hidden from view and he puts his arm around her shoulder. She takes his rifle and leans it against the side with hers. A pirter patter of tracer fire sends white lights into the sky; it reminds Filsan of the cheap Chinese fireworks occasionally set off in her neighbourhood during Eid. The whites of Roble’s eyes glow for a second in the light of a checkpoint flash and then dim.

‘The moon’s going to be strong tonight,’ he says softly.

‘How do you know?’

‘We old nomads know these mysteries.’

She elbows him gently in the ribs. ‘You know as much as I do and that’s nothing.’

‘You’ll see. Give it another two hours and you will think there are floodlights above us.’

‘I’ll be asleep in my bed in two hours, not staring up at the moon like a fool.’

‘Well, I’ll be joining the other fools for our midnight social club.’

The jeep brakes suddenly and Filsan hits her mouth against her knee.

‘What was that?’ yells the driver.

‘What?’

‘Something was just thrown at the windshield.’

‘Don’t stop, then! Drive on!’

‘Go!’ shout the other soldiers.

Filsan tastes blood and rubs a finger on the stinging area of her tongue.

A flash of light illuminates the red smear on her index finger. Less than a second after the flash, an elephant charges into the jeep; that is how it seems to Filsan, an angry bull elephant dashing through, flinging her and Roble out onto the street.

Splayed out, holding the earth as if it might move, she turns to Roble and reaches out. ‘Get up, Roble. Get up.’

No answer.

‘How many?’ someone yells.

‘Seven, they’re all down!’ cries another.

Peeling herself up from the grit, Filsan scrabbles around her and grabs the strap of a submachine gun that has been blown out of the vehicle, pulling it near her.

Footsteps run towards her, voices calling unintelligible commands, flashlights scanning the massive wound in Roble’s back.

‘Abbas? Abdi? Can you hear me?’ she croaks.

‘I’m here, Corporal,’ whispers Tall Abdi. ‘I’m still here. Get ready.’

The rebels begin firing before she can pick any of them out. She sprays bullets into the darkness beyond the flashlights. Her grip is weak and the force of the gun makes it jump in her arms.

‘You’re going to hell,’ a fighter screams.

They turn off all of their torches and surge forward.

Filsan doesn’t stop shooting. Her gun spits out bullets and unlike in Salahley everything feels wholly real: her heart is thumping hard, she is aware of the smallest sound, feels like an animal about to be ripped apart. The smell of burning flesh blows over to her and she holds her breath.

Somewhere beside her Tall Abdi is shooting too. Bullets ping off the frame of the smouldering jeep and hit the sand with a small puff. The rebels are around four metres away; she can’t tell how many of them there are but she needs to maintain that distance, and she drags Roble’s Kalashnikov closer to use when her magazine runs out.

‘I’ve been hit!’ a rebel cries.

A flashlight switches on and off but it is enough for Filsan to train her sights at the figure who has briefly appeared: a bony young man in glasses who might have been any one of the science students at her university. She squeezes the trigger and aims a barrage at him in particular.

The fire from the rebels decreases. Her eyes have adjusted to the darkness and she can make out two silhouettes, one dragging, the other limping desperately behind.

‘Don’t stop, Corporal, don’t stop.’ Tall Abdi is somewhere behind her, his voice weaker than before.

She doesn’t need any encouragement. The preservation of her small, inconsequential life — the life she has so frequently wanted to end — is now all that matters.

Another layer is added to the cacophony when a vehicle skids to a stop behind the jeep.

Still firing, Filsan glances back to see if more rebels have arrived, but instead it is a unit of soldiers in an armoured personnel carrier. She continues shooting, her whole body shuddering with relief and fear.

The soldiers fan out around the jeep and soon two rebels crumple and hit the ground; the others try to melt back into the darkness from which they emerged but are pursued on foot.

As gunfire echoes around her, Filsan crawls on her hands and knees to Roble. His eyes and lips are open as if he has been caught mid-sentence. She puts two fingers to his jugular vein and presses hard. Nothing.

After seven attempts, the television finally comes to life; alarming voices shouting from the wooden box make Deqo duck under the bed. A woman’s face fills the screen; she smiles conspiratorially and talks directly to Deqo. ‘We have such a show for you, between now and ten o’clock you will be regaled by comedians, serenaded by singers and moved by poets. Gather the family and neighbours, prepare a flask of tea and put your cares aside.’

‘OK,’ replies Deqo, peeping out.

‘Our first guest is well known to all of you. Please welcome Sheikh Sharif to Mogadishu.’

The screen expands to include Sheikh Sharif, the garish orange backdrop and the heads of the live audience. Sheikh Sharif, to Deqo’s surprise, is dressed like a poor nomad in a ma’awis and vest in the middle of the elegant theatre, a caday clamped between his jaws; he races on, narrowing his eyes against the lights trained on him.

‘Take those things off me, I can’t see where I’m going,’ he hollers, holding a hand to his eyes and stumbling exaggeratedly.

Deqo laughs along with the audience.

‘Joow! Don’t I know you?’ He points to a man in the front row. ‘Aren’t you Hassan Madoobe’s sister-in-law’s cousin’s best friend’s nephew? Sure you are! Wasn’t it your mother who was trampled by ostriches?’

The camera zooms in on the audience member shaking his head with mirth.

‘Sure it was! Have you brought your whole reer with you tonight? The place is packed as tight as the purse my wife keeps her black market dollars in.’

‘What are you telling strangers our business for?’ bawls a harsh voice from the wings.

The audience cheers and then an old woman, decades older than Sheikh Sharif, emerges waving a cane at him, chasing him around the stage while he pleads for help. ‘Tollai! Won’t someone stop her? Ostrich boy, come and restrain her! This is what happens when you leave the miyi, your manhood is left behind with the camel bones.’

Between her giggles, Deqo picks up on a commotion near the window. She wriggles from underneath the bed and pushes the curtain aside.

Four men chase a lone, suited figure. ‘Stop where you are!’

‘I’m innocent! I swear on my faith,’ the fugitive shouts, but continues to run.

‘Shoot!’ orders the captain and the soldiers obey.

Deqo watches as the bullets hit his back, twisting him into one wild pose and then another. His legs propel him a good distance before he falls to his knees by the villa gate.

‘Swear on your faith now, dead man!’ exclaims a soldier.

Deqo regards his death with the same detachment she does the television show. She has no comprehension of why these grown men are tormenting each other and is grateful for the glass separating her from them.

Returning to the programme she watches the exploits of Sheikh Sharif and his wife impassively until a singer takes the stage. She recognises the songs from the cassettes Nasra used to play, but this woman makes them sadder and slower. Deqo fetches an overripe banana and a packet of lollipops from the kitchen and watches the rest of the variety show until only white snow cascades over the screen. She sleeps with the television on, bathed in blue light and shushed by white noise.

A truck takes Filsan and Tall Abdi to the hospital, along with the bodies of Roble, Short Abdi, Abbas, Samatar and the nameless driver. The floor of the van is awash with blood, mainly from the driver’s neck where a section of shrapnel from the rocket has nearly severed his head. Roble is flat on his back, staring up at the moon, which is as bright as he had predicted. The rush of adrenaline has left Filsan and she now feels the gunshot wound in her hip; she squeezes her trousers and blood oozes between her fingers.

Chains clang as the gate to the main hospital creaks open for them; an orderly in blue helps her down from the back while Tall Abdi is stretchered out. He fought the battle with a chunk of muscle blown out of his abdomen, but now wails like a child, pleading for help from God, from the doctors, from his mother. Filsan holds onto the orderly as the van trundles to the morgue, her heart imploding as if primed with dynamite. She shakes her head in disbelief, wishing for a way to rewind time by just half an hour to change this ending.

‘Come on, come on, it’s not safe out here,’ the orderly warns.

He leads her to the emergency ward. They have to pick their way carefully through the beds and the casualties on the floor with assorted tubes attached to them. A pink-uniformed nurse directs them to a stained bed in the corner with a curtain around it for privacy. The middle-aged woman brusquely sends the orderly away and tells Filsan to lie down, then whips the curtain closed with a noise like knives being sharpened and asks what’s wrong with her.

‘My hip,’ she winces.

The nurse yanks down Filsan’s trousers and underwear and prods the swollen wound with her bare hands. ‘It’s just a surface injury.’

‘Please, let me have something for the pain.’

‘What can you give me in return?’

‘Check my trouser pocket.’

The nurse roots through all the pockets until she locates the roll of small shilling notes; she counts out the money with bloody fingers and then tucks the whole lot into her waistband. ‘I’ll get you something,’ she whispers.

If this is how they treat the living, what must they be doing to the dead in the morgue? she thinks. Were greedy hands searching through Roble’s clothes already? Would they steal the watch he was proud of or rip the silver tooth from his mouth? The certainty that they would nauseates her. There is nothing to cover her body with so she tries to tug her trousers up, but collapses back, preferring the exposure of the unkempt thicket of hair below her stomach to the corkscrew-like pain drilling through her pelvis.

The doctor comes, his face partly hidden behind a mask like an Arab girl’s, his coat dyed brown with dried blood. He stitches the wound quickly. He doesn’t seem to see her nakedness and works mechanically without word or eye contact. At the end, the nurse bandages the wound and gives her painkillers and a soiled blanket to sleep under.

The ward is loud and bright all night. More injured soldiers arrive and some depart, carried out unceremoniously to make room for the living. The provincial hospital only has one operating theatre, so procedures usually done under general anaesthetic are now attempted under local right there in the ward. Wrapping a pillow around her head doesn’t soften the screams and hollering from men losing an arm or foot a few feet away. At about four in the morning, still wide awake and feeling almost deranged, Filsan calls for water, and calls again, and calls again. She pulls open the curtain around her bed and squints against the fluorescent light. The doctor, surrounded by all the nurses, is arguing with Lieutenant Hashi.

‘This is an order from the highest level. You have no choice.’

The doctor raises his hands in disbelief and walks out.

‘Coward!’ spits Hashi after him. ‘The job falls on you then, nurses. Do your duty.’ He beckons a group into the ward. Ten uniformed high-school students in handcuffs shuffle past, flanked by four policemen, and he orders them to follow the nurses into an ante-room.

Birds chirp in the trees outside but her thirst keeps her from sleep. Filsan waits for the nurses to reappear but they don’t. Eventually, the orderly who had brought her in slouches into the ward and she taps on the metal bedframe to get his attention. She gets a good look at him this time: a bald man in his thirties, with an obsequious, fearful expression on his face. He checks over his shoulder before bending down and putting a hand on her upper arm. ‘What’s wrong, cousin?’

Gesturing to her throat, she manages to croak, ‘Water.’

He rubs her shoulder in an intimate way that she doesn’t like. ‘I’ll get it for you but you need to wait.’

‘Why?’

‘They are doing something sensitive in the room.’

‘You cannot even get a glass of water?’

‘No, no, no. I don’t want to see it.’

‘See what?’ she says, exasperated.

‘The children, they are bleeding.’

‘They’re donating blood, that’s all.’ Filsan wonders at the ignorance of the man. ‘You don’t need to worry.’

‘No! They are being bled dry. The soldier said they should be used like taps.’

‘Hashi?’

‘That one.’

‘Like taps? So they die?’

‘That is the plan.’

A squabble between stray dogs wakes Deqo. They growl menacingly and she rubs her eyes and yawns loudly in frustration. She will fill a bucket of cold water, disperse the hounds and then return to sleep. Water sloshes over the lip of the bucket and onto the courtyard but there is still enough to give them a shock. Head down, biting her lip, two hands straining around the thin handle, she doesn’t notice the vultures perched on the roof until a shadow swoops over her. It drops something near her feet and she glances down. A leaf? A wrinkled piece of leather? She picks it up curiously. A human ear. She throws it and the bucket down and bolts back to the veranda. The vultures swoop and circle before settling on the mango tree. She has never seen so many in one place, the branches of the tree sag and bob under the weight of them.

A muscular white dog with brown patches enters the gate, droplets of blood hanging like dew from the hairs of its muzzle, and sniffs the track leading to the house. Deqo grasps the broom resting against the wall and charges it.

‘Bax! Out! Out!’ she yells, shoving the bristles of the brush into the dog’s pink nose.

He stops in his tracks, yelping a few times, before padding out into the street. She pursues him and throws a few rocks at his rear. ‘Stay out.’

Then she spots the fugitive: torn, bloodied, but still smart in his suit and tie. She hits the broom against the wall until the pack leave their feast. She avoids his face and focuses on the shiny black loafers on his feet, decorated with a gold link chain. Wedding shoes, she thinks. The dogs growl their impatience but keep at bay. His rotund stomach bulges against his shirt burtons and already there is a smell, sweet and repugnant at the same time. Deqo pulls the shoes off his feet — they are too good to waste — places them against the wall and then begins to dig a hole in the sandy earth with the handle of her broom. The dogs watch curiously but don’t interfere. She will never be able to dig a hole deep enough to prevent them getting to him, but she can at least give him the dignity of a burial. About two foot down she gives up and kneels down to rest. Her eyes accidentally fall on his face as he slumps forward. The dogs have ripped away his nose and exposed the bone underneath his left cheek. The ear is gone too. The undamaged part of his face is that of a wealthy forty-something with unlined, pale skin, the kind of man who has recently returned from overseas to find a wife or maybe build an ostentatious villa near his mother with the money he has saved.

Flinging the broom to the ground, Deqo grabs his leather belt and attempts to drag him to the edge of the pit. It is like hauling stone; she tugs again at the belt but the rigid body won’t shift. Stepping over him, she pushes his bullet-pierced back with her hands and then her feet; it is like the games she and Anab used to play in Saba’ad, play fights where one attacked and the other rolled up in a ball and resisted. Giggling a little, imagining that he is just pretending to be dead, she pushes his bottom. It is no good; he was at least twice her weight while alive and now has the dull burden of death on top of him. Deqo has learnt to be persistent though; there is no problem that she can’t find a solution to within her own limited means. She stalks around him, wondering how best to take him the few inches to his grave. If she could only lift his torso she could use his weight to flip him. Taking hold of the broom she slides it under his side and then levers it up; he moves slowly, slowly, slowly and then rolls onto his stomach. She tries again and this time he tumbles into the grave.

Sweating and with a stench of rotting flesh on her hands, she brushes great armfuls of fine sand over him, concealing first his face, then his torso and finally his long legs. It is done. She tears a cluster of flowers from the pink bougainvillea and plants it over his head. ‘There you go,’ she exclaims.

The children’s bodies are brought out of the anteroom in twos. A hand drops off the trolley as lifeless and yellow as an autumn leaf. Filsan watches mesmerised as the nurses go in and out of the bleeding room with barely a flicker of reaction. They hold scarlet bags of blood in their fingers — apparently destined for the operating theatre — and go around the ward with smiles for the patients. Follow orders. Follow orders. Follow orders. That is the code they have been brought up under and it endures until the burden of guilt cracks the spine. Her father would probably explain their actions as the necessities of war, but to her they seem like the cannibals of old tales: totally ordinary yet irrevocably depraved.

The orderly returns with a glass of water.

‘Has it finished in there?’ She gestures with her head to the anteroom.

‘One more to go.’

She gulps from the glass.

‘May Allah have mercy on their souls,’ he says, before pushing his squeaky trolley away.

She doesn’t know if he is referring to the students or the nurses.

Her mind travels to that last child beyond the unvarnished wooden door of the nurses’ station. At that age she was planning on becoming a pilot for the Somali national airline, a fanciful dream that never got off the ground but which had felt real and possible and irreplaceable at the time. Her father was under too much suspicion to influence the aviation professors by the time she was old enough to apply for university. She imagines the needle going into the student’s slim arm, the thick maroon blood seeping out of it, slowly, painlessly but lethally. When will they realise that life is leaving them? That for all the incandescence and noise of their short existence, death is wrapping its tendrils around them?

Filsan is both attracted to and repulsed by what is happening in that room. Is she brave enough to offer herself instead of that teenager? Or should she just submit to a future of growing grey hairs seated next to her father in their matching armchairs? The decision is made for her when the door jolts open and the last corpse is carried out in the arms of an orderly; it is a girl, her long, black plait swinging and bouncing beneath her, her wrists free of shackles, the expression on her face calm and beatific.

Filsan edges off the bed; the pills have subdued her pain enough to let her keep pace behind the orderly.

Time to leave, Deqo thinks. She does not fear death itself, but the idea of her body being eaten by the city’s scavengers chases her from the comfortable solitude she has enjoyed so blithely. People — both danger and sanctuary is to be found amongst people. The new-found possessions she can’t leave behind — the shoes, dresses, cans of food, compact mirror — she bundles into a scarf and knots up, away from jealous eyes. It is time to return to Saba’ad, to the lumpy porridge, dust and interminable waiting.

She tidies the various messes she has made, bidding farewell to each room and respectfully closing the doors. The vultures have left the mango tree but, on reaching the road, she sees two of them standing on the uncovered knees of the man she buried; the dogs must have unearthed his bottom half and then abandoned him, and now the birds pick vigorously at his thighs. Deqo trudges in the opposite direction.

The street is full of militiamen, dressed half in whodead and half in camouflage wear, stripping the homes as professionally as removal men: three short men carry a huge wardrobe on their heads to a nearby lorry, while a boy wrenches the corrugated tin roof off a samosa stall.

She avoids the checkpoints she can and talks her way through the ones she can’t. Her derelict condition is enough to convince the soldiers she is who she says she is. A few teashops and cafés are still open to cater to the military, but otherwise everywhere is deserted. She loses track of where she is in relation to the ditch and looks around for anything that might guide her out of the city, before wandering into a pretty neighbourhood with goats bleating plaintively in the yards.

The sun has passed its zenith and Deqo feels sweat trickling down her temples. She leans against a bungalow and notices an orchard opposite with tall fruit trees waving to her over the glass-crested wall. There is a low, wooden gate. She jumps up and climbs over. It is like being back in the ditch but tidier and sweeter smelling. The ground is littered with pomegranates, tamarinds and papayas. She fills her skirt and then sits in the shade under a tree to eat a wrinkled yellow papaya, spirting the slimy black seeds as far as she can. Someone has put hard labour into this orchard; there are no scrubby, unused patches or broken hoses and scrap metal piled up in a corner. Weaverbirds sing in the nests above her head and trumpet-headed flowers blow within arm’s reach.

Curious and emboldened by the peace of the orchard, she creeps towards the small, blue-painted bungalow and peers through a crack in the back door into a dark, empty hallway. The bars on the kitchen window are designed to keep out a burglar but are wide enough for her; she drops her bundle to the ground and crawls in, dropping feet first into a hillock of saucepans.

A clatter in the kitchen, a pot lid maybe, dancing like a cymbal before making its peace with the earth; Kawsar swivels her head towards the half-closed kitchen entrance.

‘Come on, I’m ready,’ she says with a voice that doesn’t sound like her own.

The kitchen door swings gently, tauntingly, but no one appears. She had once found a thief in her kitchen and held him tight as he tried to escape out the back; she fought with him and is eager to face the soldiers now.

‘Soobax! Come out!’ she yells.

Still nothing stirs. Kawsar grabs her glass and throws it with all her strength at the kitchen door. The glass shatters against the door handle, rainbows flaring as the shards tinkle to the floor.

A hunched figure emerges as if lured out by the yellows, reds and blues that Kawsar has conjured up. It is a small and indistinct shape. A girl with frayed plaits and a blood red smock holding her hands behind her back as if on parade.

‘Hodan?’ She is angry this time, fed up with her child torturing her.

The girl’s face is downturned, her chin pressed into her neck, a fan of black eyelashes hiding her eyes. She doesn’t evanesce this time.

‘Answer me,’ demands Kawsar, her heart beating harder. She searches the girl for injuries but there aren’t any; she is only playing dumb.

‘Get out of my house if you’re not going to speak.’ Kawsar points a stern finger towards the front door.

The girl doesn’t reply or shift an inch. Her feet are bare and dusty, her long legs sprout like weeds between cracked paving, but her resemblance to Hodan is certain: the heart-shaped face, the dimples, the reed-like body all belong to her child.

‘Watch your feet on the glass,’ Kawsar says, her tone softening.

The girl stretches her toes, shifts her balance, but stays rooted to the same spot. Her smock is torn in places along the side.

Kawsar takes a deep breath. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘I just want to rest.’ The voice is not Hodan’s; it’s deeper and wearier.

‘Rest then.’ Kawsar waves a hand in the direction of Nurto’s mattress.

The girl treads over to the divan and tucks her legs slowly underneath her, shyly pushing her skirt down between her knees as she crosses them. She chews her bottom lip nervously like Kawsar used to as a child.

‘What is your name?’

‘Deqo.’

‘Where have you come from?’

‘The ditch,’ she says, deciding that the old woman would prefer to hear that than Saba’ad.

‘Where is your family?’

‘It’s just me.’ The girl meets her eyes.

Kawsar feels a charge when she hears those words.

‘How do I know you are not here to steal from me?’

Deqo shrugs her shoulders, suddenly surly and tired of the questions. She picks at the dirt underneath her fingernails.

Kawsar’s eyes fall appraisingly on her, from the short toes to the dull, knotted hair on her head. She looks like one of those hardy, parasitical children born in times of famine, probably carried over from Ethiopia when only a few weeks old and nursed on rainwater and sugar, kept alive by a will already steely and adult.

The old woman’s room is like a tomb, sour with stale air and dust-coated. Deqo watches her for sometime before leaving the safety of the kitchen. She reminds her of those crones in Saba’ad who conduct ceremonies in their tiny buuls; with names like Sheikha Jinnow or Hajiya Halima, they are the ones who know how to let blood, burn sicknesses out, diagnose and remedy the myriad ailments that constantly afflict the unhappy women of the camp. Their holiness comes from pilgrimages to saint’s tombs and the miracle of their own longevity. Deqo assumes this old woman must be so convinced of her closeness to God that she doesn’t feel the need to flee like everyone else; she survives on prayers alone and is waiting for the dust to slowly settle and entomb her in her own shrine. Then Deqo steps into the bedroom and immediately recognises whom she has found.

Kawsar clears her throat and adjusts the bed sheets nervously. ‘You should leave now; this isn’t the time for tea and conversation.’

Deqo’s attention is suddenly pulled up. ‘I don’t have anywhere to go.’

Kawsar thinks that even the most ragged, glue-sniffing beggar-child would go running back to their family in fear of these bombs, but maybe Deqo is unafraid because her family are nearby, looting the neighbours’ homes alongside the soldiers.

‘So what do you expect to do when the soldiers arrive?’

‘There aren’t any nearby. We’ll be safe for a while.’

Kawsar raises her eyebrow at the presumptuous ‘we’ and feels a wave of mischief rise in her, ‘What shall we do until they get here then?’ she says with a smile. ‘Play shax? Chase a garangar along the street? Plait each other’s hair?’

‘Yes, would you plait my hair, please?’ Deqo replies eagerly, lifting a hand to her head as if to hide its scruffiness.

Kawsar senses a pulse of pleasure at the girl’s frankness, a kind of warmth that tending to a child’s needs has always given her, a sensation she has nearly forgotten.

‘Get the hair oil and comb from the dresser.’

Deqo hands them to her.

‘Sit beneath me,’ Kawsar orders.

The girl sits lightly on the floor, holding her weight up with her arms; she smells of fruit and sweat.

‘We should wash it, but never mind.’ Kawsar pulls apart the old plaits, sifting Deqo’s soft but dirty hair between her fingers, massaging jasmine oil into her scalp while Deqo toys absentmindedly with the bottle top.

The words of an old song play in Kawsar’s mind: ‘Love, love isn’t fair, teardrops always chase behind.’

‘Can I stay here for a while?’ Deqo asks.

Kawsar’s heart is beating hard, her breath shallow and quiet. She wants time to end at this moment, for there to be nothing in the world beyond her nimble fingers and the girl’s hair to spin into silk. There must be a hunchbacked, toothless sorceress somewhere who weaves all these disparate people together, thinks Kawsar, who carelessly throws this child together with me, while families are ripped apart.

Resting a hand on the girl’s narrow, sinuous back, she can feel the heat of her soul through the oily palm of her hand, as smooth and alive as an egg. She doubts that incandescence can just disappear. If they are killed right here, would their ghosts continue as they are, the old ghost plaiting and the young one waiting, fidgeting? She can imagine that, the silence and peacefulness of it, a source of envy to passers-by — battling with the rage and chaos of life — who happen to glance in through the barred window.

Filsan rushes through corridors behind the orderly and the dead student, disembodied voices flying past like birds, snatches of sunlight filtering through dust-specked windows. The orderly stops and she freezes. He enters a room and she can tell by the stench that they have reached the mortuary.

He returns empty-handed and she sneaks a peek through the closing door. There are no other hospital workers inside and she holds the door before sliding through. Bodies are heaped on the floor, three deep in places, in various states of decomposition. Her eyes dart around for Roble’s face but she keeps returning to the young girl, her narrow body stuck on a shelf above the others. Filsan catches sight of the metal stores on one side of the white-tiled room and opens them methodically, top left to bottom right. The faces are like molten wax models: a facsimile of an old woman here, a wealthy civil servant there, a newborn baby squeezed beside its mother. She opens the last door despondently, hoping to find him and not find him at the same time, but there he is.

They have wrapped Roble decently in white cloth, leaving only a diamond shape around his face. He appears to have aged twenty years overnight; his cheeks are sunken, his lips wide and slack, his eye sockets deep and dark. There is no blood, no visible injury; she touches his eyebrow and smoothes the hair, and the incredible frigidity of his skin is the only convincing proof that he is gone. She runs a fingertip over his bottom lip and then twists her head to kiss him on the mouth, her nose grazing his chin; the first kiss of her life numbs both her flesh and spirit. She opens her eyes to the mortuary tiles, to the grime on the fridge handles, to the prettily marbled veins on the hand of a corpse waiting on a concrete slab.

‘I’ll be with you soon.’ Filsan pushes the handle and returns Roble to his abode.

Shaking wildly, unable to withstand the stench, she strips to her bloodied underwear and shoves her uniform in a corner. She undresses a dead woman — a teacher-type with sensible, large-rimmed glasses — taking her paisley diric, shawl and delicate sandals, leaving the bruises on her naked body visible like emblazoned accusations.

She clambers out of the window into the bright sun of the weed-strewn hospital yard. She adjusts the scarf to cover her nose and mouth and bends her head down low. Putting one foot cautiously in front of the other, she knows that she will probably be killed before the day is out, either as a deserter or as a lone woman in the middle of a battlefield, but she cannot remain, whatever the cost.

‘Just walk, just walk, just walk,’ she mutters.

Beside the wall dividing the main hospital from the psychiatric ward is a tangle of bushes and discarded strips of barbed wire, beyond which is the incinerator block. She checks around her before slipping into a shadow to the side of the concrete cabin; she struggles to climb onto the low roof and over the perimeter wall in her light sandals. Losing her footing, she falls heavily on her back into the road.

The street is empty, the imprint of tank tracks visible like a giant’s footsteps. Filsan dusts herself down and turns east to the neighbourhood she used to patrol with Roble. There are more than fifty checkpoints dotted around the city — she had helped decide the location of each — and even if she manages to avoid them all, there are still mortars, cluster bombs and strafing fighter jets to evade. She catches sight of a crowd of people a few metres ahead, crouched against the hospital wall, a pair of grey trousers visible here, a bold-coloured diric there. She hides and makes certain no soldiers are with them and then advances. The group is motionless and silent; Filsan imagines they are too wounded or fatigued to move any further towards the hospital.

A few more steps and the truth sets in: thirty corpses lie dumped on top of each other, limbs entangled and frozen into grotesque shapes. Some have fresh blood on their skin while others are already discoloured and swollen: bulging thighs, purple faces, taut, shiny skin where shirts gape open. All have multiple bullet wounds, apart from one man whose throat is cut wide open, the rigid architecture of his neck bisected and revealed.

Filsan shields her nose against the smell and the ecstatic flies. She stares at one face for a moment and then another until she recognises the family she stopped at the checkpoint; all of them are here now, the limping mother, the three little girls, the adolescent boy with his over-burdened handcart, and the sharp-chinned young woman leading them all. Filsan tries to remember her name. Luul? Nura? The woman’s eyes are still open, her head thrown back in shock, her arms reaching out to her sisters. It seems from the spray of blood on the wall that they were executed here. Filsan does not feel guilt or remorse as she gazes over the bodies, rather an insatiable curiosity and desire to know when and where her own death will come and what expression she will wear to meet it. She has never been like other people, and the corpses confirm that she has no useful place on this earth; she is doomed to be nothing more than one of death’s handmaidens.

She checks the sky for planes and listens for tanks. All is quiet. She turns down a narrow alley littered with animal droppings and follows it through to the next alley and then the next.

‘Why did you leave me?’ Kawsar asks after staring at Deqo for a long time.

Deqo chews her upper lip, looking down guiltily; she remembers that day at the stadium in snatches, no thoughts or feelings, just momentary images of dancing, then blows, then the wind in her hair as she ran away.

‘I don’t know, I was frightened.’

‘Didn’t I look after you well?’

Deqo nods.

‘Was there anything more I could have done?’

Deqo shakes her head.

Kawsar exhales loudly and her eyes slowly fill with tears. ‘I have missed you so much.’

Deqo pads over to her bedside and wipes the tears away ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, delighted to have made such a deep impression on the old woman.

‘You left me with nothing but an empty heart,’ Kawsar sobs. ‘It’s too late to soothe me now.’

Deqo continues stroking her cheek. ‘It’s not too late, I can help you. I will get you out of here.’

In a few hours Deqo has removed the dirty sheets from the bed, fed Kawsar a can of tuna and rubbed a wet towel over her face and arms. Caring for her has distanced the war from Deqo’s mind.

‘It’s too late,’ Kawsar repeats over and over, crying bitterly.

Deqo leans against the bed and waits for the tears to pass, knowing that they always do. She learnt that from Nurse Doreen in Saba’ad: as rainstorms come quick and heavy before leaving a clear sky, so do tears.

Kawsar’s sobs ebb and then stop; her reddened and contorted face seems child-like, filled with perplexing thoughts.

Deqo looks away shyly while Kawsar slowly composes herself. She sits cross-legged beneath the bed and pats the tight, stinging plaits on her head. ‘I want to take you back with me to Saba’ad.’

Silence.

‘We will be safe there, everyone will think you’re my grandmother. Nurse Doreen will help you.’

No response.

Deqo turns her head and sees Kawsar’s eyes closed. Leaping up she puts her ear to her mouth and feels a warm stream of breath on her skin.

‘Sleep then,’ she pats the liver-sported hand.

Restless, Deqo watches out of a window that has a fine crack running diagonally from one corner to another; all it would take is a light press and the glass would snap in two. She sees the wind stirring the strands of a miri-miri tree and wants to feel that breeze on her face.

Stepping out into the street she turns right, away from the direction she came. Three dead bodies spoil the peaceful scene; the miri-miri and bougainvillea and juniper cannot cover the scent of their decomposition. She unties a goat that has been left tethered to a pole and the creature slumps to its knees in exhaustion, looking up at Deqo with terrified, wide eyes. She walks away, leaving it to its own fate. The local dukaan has been ripped open and looted, dented cans of condensed milk and kidney beans embedded in the sand. Deqo steps in and discovers the shopkeeper’s bloodied body behind the counter, a prayer cap on his head and a handful of worthless military chits clamped between his fingers. She picks through the goods on the ground and gathers bags of sweets, bottled drinks and potato chips in her skirt.

Lost, parched, Filsan tilts her head against the smoke-blackened wall and pants long, ragged breaths. She staggers out into the street and into view of a checkpoint. Their guns swivel over to her and she raises her hands in defeat. There is still about ten metres between them and Filsan thinks through what is about to unfold: one of them will recognise her and radio through that they have caught a deserter; if she is lucky they will send her to a southern jail, if not she will be executed in Birjeeh. Rejecting either possibility, she dashes into a dark alley and sprints as fast as she can, her pain momentarily lifted by the adrenaline pumping through her veins. The soldiers chase but don’t shoot, probably too young and still frightened of their weapons; they are gaining on her and she turns back to see one just five metres behind. She ducks into the tiny space between two buildings and then cuts through into another alley; she races to the rectangle of bright light at its mouth and is spat out into a familiar road. Hearing the soldier’s boots at her back, she continues as far as she can before collapsing behind the corrugated tin wall of a dukaan. A face appears in a crack in the metal and a refugee girl with a collection of looted items in her arms blinks at her. Filsan turns her back and wishes her away.

‘Hey yaari! Where did that woman run to?’ a soldier shouts.

Filsan holds her breath.

‘She went up there,’ the little girl says.

‘Where? Show me.’

She clomps forward. ‘Around that corner, you see?’

‘Comrades, follow me,’ he yells behind him and then their army boots bolt away.

The long-lashed eye appears back at the crack. ‘They’ve gone.’

She gestures for Filsan to follow and leads her to the safety of a small, blue bungalow.

An old woman is buried within the sheets of the bed, the lower part of her face covered by a blanket. A smell rises from her that makes Filsan gag.

‘Is that your grandmother?’ Filsan whispers.

‘Yes. I am looking after her. Who are you?’

‘Filsan.’

‘Why were they chasing you?’

‘Because I used to be one of them.’

‘And now?’

‘I am one of you.’

Kawsar stirs while Filsan is in the bathroom. She mutters indistinct words and moans before opening her eyes. Deqo stands impatiently beside her, waiting for the moment to tell her about the stranger.

‘What’s the matter?’

Deqo checks over her shoulder. ‘I brought a woman here while you were sleeping.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She used to be a soldier.’

Kawsar rises up on to her elbows and wipes her hands over her face. ‘She didn’t give you a name?’

‘Filsan.’

‘Is she alone?’

‘Yes.’

There is the sound of footsteps accompanied by the swish of a long diric trailing on the tiles. Then Filsan appears: gaunt, dishevelled, humbled but unmistakable.

Deqo looks between the women as they exchange fixed, cold stares.

‘Have you come to finish the job?’ Kawsar finally says.

Filsan raises her hands, whether in denial or surrender it is difficult to tell.

Deqo notices that Kawsar’s face has flushed a deep red and her eyes have a glassy film over them.

‘Look what you have done to me!’ She flings the blankets away to reveal her wasted legs discoloured by patches of peeling skin.

Filsan’s head bows a fraction.

‘Are you satisfied now that your friends have decided to send us all to hell?’

Deqo inches closer to Kawsar and holds her arms out as if to shield her. ‘What have you done to her?’

Filsan’s sobs are awkward, resistant, her mouth clenches to hold them in. The expression of emotion seems to cause her pain. ‘Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me,’ the words rock her.

Kawsar sets her jaw and watches without pity. ‘Only God can forgive you.’ Her voice is calm but icy. ‘Why are you here? Are they after you now?’

‘I’ve deserted.’

‘So they might follow you here?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Get out! Don’t bring more trouble than we already have.’

‘Let her stay.’ Deqo pleads, grabbing Kawsar’s hand. She turns to Filsan. ‘You can’t let her die. You owe me.’

Ashamed, Filsan approaches the bed and Kawsar flinches. ‘You cannot walk at all?’ she asks.

‘Not even one step.’

‘I always repay a debt. I will do whatever this child asks.’

Kawsar looks around her room, her tomb, and through the window to the red sky hanging over the skeletons of a familiar world. If she goes with them she will see exactly what has happened to her town, she will smell the destruction, taste it. If she stays she will only know her own end. ‘I’ll go with you.’

A wide smile brightens Deqo’s face.

Kawsar’s heart begins to pound; she wants escape, but now there is guilt at risking the little girl’s life, fear of the soldier and of what she will find outside, and a strange, strange thrill in declaring what she wants rather than what she thinks others need.

They rest in awkward silence until nightfall, and then by the light of a full moon open and share three cans of tuna from the kitchen. Their padding around in the darkness reminds Kawsar of stray cats sniffing through a larder. Her hearing is so acute that their shallow breaths, their mastication, and even the steady beat of their hearts seem deafening. It is easier to not see them; her fate rests in the hands of a scruffy urchin and a brutal, blood-stained deserter. Deqo fills all the flasks she can find with water, while Filsan stands in the middle of the room, almost catatonic. After gathering her thoughts she peers through the window and then opens the front door slightly and creeps out into the courtyard. Deqo watches through the lock and ushers Filsan in when she returns with a wheelbarrow. Stripping the bed of blankets they line the small carriage that Raage used to deliver metre-long baguettes to the local housewives. Kawsar feels soft patches of her skin ooze fluid onto the sheets as she moves closer to the edge of the mattress. ‘That’s enough blankets, I am not an egg. Come and take my arms.’

Filsan guides the wheelbarrow to the bed and then tentatively places an arm around Kawsar’s back. Her touch doesn’t feel as distasteful as Kawsar thought it would; it is just a hand, neither evil nor good in itself, but strong as she steers her into the wheelbarrow.

Deqo covers her with the last of the blankets and puts the flasks in the small spaces left beside her.

‘Lift the mattress and take out the box underneath.’

Filsan puts the wooden chest on the floor and then lets the mattress drop down. It contains the money Kawsar has saved since Hodan died — the rents she collected from the houses Farah had built, and the small police pension she had inherited should have been a sizeable amount, but their value has plummeted along with that of the Somali shilling.

‘Give it to me.’ Kawsar clutches the box to her breasts and remembers that the key is hidden inside the frame of the tapestry on the wall. She points to it and Deqo unhooks it from the nail, the key falling to the floor.

‘Have you got it?’

‘Yes!’ Deqo leaps up triumphantly and drops it into Kawsar’s palm.

‘Take warm clothes from the wardrobe.’ Kawsar feels awkward and foolish ordering them around from this idiotic throne, but tries to keep her voice authoritative.

‘No, we don’t want to be overburdened.’ Filsan speaks softly but there is an edge to her voice.

‘Just take a jumper, then,’ insists Kawsar, jabbing a finger at the wardrobe.

Deqo obeys Kawsar’s instruction and piles on warm clothes, knowing just how cold a night in the desert can be.

Filsan grasps the handles and tilts the wheelbarrow up. ‘How is that?’

Kawsar grips the sides, afraid that she is about to be tipped out, but holds her nerve. ‘It’s fine, let’s take our chance.’

With Deqo guiding the front and Filsan shoving from behind, Kawsar finally leaves the bungalow. She resembles a lizard that has crawled out of its burrow: scale-skinned, slit-eyed, ignorant of what it might find. After the concrete yard they sink into the deep sand of October Road, into a pale white moonscape that seems surreal yet familiar. Kawsar turns to her bungalow and bids a bittersweet farewell to the grief-blue walls.

They move slowly, as if through water, Filsan pushing with her whole body and stumbling repeatedly Kawsar huddles under the blanket and tries to piece together the broken shards of the shattered neighbourhood into something she recognises. Raage’s exceptionally tidy little shop has been ransacked; Maryam’s goat pants half-dead on its side; Umar Farey’s hotel has received an intense barrage of mortars, its green windows mostly splintered and blackened; the cassettes from the video hall have been smashed and tape flutters in the trees like mourning banners; a fire smoulders on Fadumo’s roof. Deqo pulls the wheelbarrow to the left, away from the three bodies lying on their stomachs. Kawsar puts her hand to her eyes to avoid the sight but feels drawn to look, recognising Maryam and two of her children from the gaps between her fingers. Neither Deqo nor Filsan look in their direction. Kawsar says a prayer for the family, ashamed that she cannot even stop to bury them. Maryam with her alligator bag full of medicines deserved more than this country had given her and her children. It has now reduced them to hide and meat for the vultures to pick over. Kawsar is humiliated by the sight of them. Nothing she believed in matters anymore: religion, tradition, civilisation has been swept away. Hodan was right to have gone when she did.

Apart from desultory gunfire and the far-away rattle of trucks crossing Hargeisa Bridge, it appears as if the soldiers and rebels have exhausted each other. The first orgy of violence has been enacted; now it is time for bodies to be buried, wounds to be attended to, sleep to be caught up on. The moonlight is so bright that Kawsar can see to the end of the street where short, velvety shadows huddle beneath the bushes like jinns. The tanks, the planes, helicopters, armoured vehicles and cannons have been put to bed and the few songbirds that haven’t fled begin to trill, calling out disoriented, despondent songs to one another for comfort. They will have to be the poets recording what happened here, indignation puffing their chests and opening their throats wide, the sorrowful notes catching in the trees and falling, if life returns, like dust over heads that would rather forget.

Filsan pushes deeper into the wheelbarrow to keep it moving; the frail old woman seems to weigh a ton, and the force it takes to move her over the rough ground makes her arms twitch uncontrollably. Bolts of pain shoot up and down her spine and she endures it silently, seeing them as part of the restitution she has to make, a physical purification if not a spiritual one. The pain worsens, beginning at the soles of her feet and slicing up to the top of her skull. Panting, sweating, she drives Kawsar out of Guryo Samo and into the scrubby patch of land behind, an oasis of sand, acacias and discarded mechanical parts. The entire wheel slides into the deep, fine sand and it falls to Deqo to dig it out while Filsan catches her breath. It is another three or four miles before they reach any of the roads leading out from Hargeisa. If they are lucky they will make it before dawn. If not, they will certainly be discovered by the army. Deqo passes around a flask of water and then slings the empty vessel into the aloes.

Filsan’s thoughts return to her father, asleep in his empty house in Mogadishu; this is the longest break in communication they have ever had. She has ignored his calls for two weeks but constantly hears his voice in her head anyway, the restrained but contemptuous tone: ‘What do you know?’ and ‘Don’t be such an imbecile’ run around and around in her mind. She knows in her bones that she has turned irrevocably against him; hating how she curled and shrank in his presence. There is no way to wipe the blood from her now, but she can turn her back on that old life.

Filsan strains against the wheelbarrow, biting her lower lip, gathering the last of her strength like a whipped mule. Careering left and right, they make slow progress to the poor neighbourhood the other side of the oasis. Here the stick and cloth houses have burnt to ash — finding nothing to loot, the advance party of soldiers have smashed, torn and incinerated every last thing the blacksmiths, latrine cleaners and shoemakers left behind. Five-shilling whodead flip-flops smoulder in the ruins.

Filsan trips over the debris and puts a hand on Kawsar’s shoulder to steady her feet. Kawsar responds with an accusatory look as if she holds Filsan personally responsible for what she sees.

Deqo walks a few feet ahead, scouting the horizon, looking back every few seconds to check they are still with her.

‘Don’t go that way, there are only wild animals that way. We need to go uphill to get to the main road,’ Kawsar calls out.

Filsan pushes the wheelbarrow to the crest of the hill and, when Kawsar is safely level, collapses onto her back. They have walked all night and now the diaphanous blue sky spins in dizzying circles over her. Deqo pours water into her mouth but it chokes her. She pushes the flask away and closes her eyes.

‘Come on, the road is in sight,’ Kawsar orders.

‘I can’t. .’

‘It’s already light, we can’t just sit here.’

Filsan doesn’t reply but covers her eyes, trying to im agine her companions and the situation away.

Deqo, tireless, jumps impatiently on the spot. ‘I am going to check the road,’ she shouts.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Kawsar hisses after her.

In the ten minutes that Deqo is away, Filsan falls asleep. The girl returns and shakes her roughly awake. Stretching her weeping, blistered hands over the wheelbarrow handles, she follows groggily as Deqo jogs and points to something ahead.

Fifty feet away a white lorry comes into sight, the open bed of it crammed with refugees and crates of qat. It pulls over with the engine running as a man chewing a matchstick approaches them. The qat smuggler is around thirty years old with a deep scar on his cheek and uncombed, clumpy hair.

‘Half a million shillings to take you all to the Ethiopian border.’

Kawsar unlocks the chest in her arms and rifles through it. Add to it the gold earrings she is wearing, and it might be enough.

Filsan stands impotently behind as Kawsar removes her earrings and passes everything to the smuggler.

He puts the matchstick behind his ear and re-counts the haul, showing off his green and gold teeth, then he grunts assent and takes the wheelbarrow from Filsan, running with Kawsar as if she is weightless before lifting her onto the flatbed. The morose passengers shift a little but offer no help as she yells in pain. Deqo jumps on beside her and then Filsan crawls aboard just as the lorry speeds away.

The smugglers drive as fast as their forty-year-old vehicle can take them, dodging all of the checkpoints by driving off-road, the qat dealers comfortable in their cab while the refugees are thrown about, cracking teeth on the metal railings, hitting noses against skulls, bruising ribs on the qat crates. A pregnant woman opposite Deqo sits weeping as blood pours from between her legs. They cross the Haud desert and enter a slice of the Ethiopian wilderness within two hours; the refugees are ordered to disembark at this barren place, Harta Sheikh, while the truck continues to Dire Dawa. The smugglers deposit Kawsar under a tree.

‘Just over there, the camp is just over there,’ the gold-toothed man bawls, pointing into the distance.

Filsan stays with Kawsar. Following the other refugees, Deqo walks for half an hour before stopping dead. One side of the horizon to the other is covered in buuls, clutched so low to the ground that they seem to be sand dunes rippling in the desert heat. Saba’ad could be dropped five times into the expanse. It takes her an hour to reach the camp. It is full of men in suits, women in dusty floral dirics and children wailing and scratching at the lice in their hair. Some of the men carry blue UN tarpaulin in their hands, but most of the structures are cobbled together from cloth and sticks, some expertly built by people who had once been nomads, others barely holding together. The camp is too new to have any water standpipes, clinics or latrines, and there is still vegetation — aloes, euphorbias, acacias — for people to raid for firewood and construction. A queue forms beside the only official tent, a massive structure with the UN crest on it, and Deqo joins the line, falling quickly back into the inquisitive, impatient stance she had in Saba’ad.

Eventually she is inside and beckoned forward by an Ethiopian woman with a tattooed cross on her forehead. A white ledger covers the wooden desk and her eyebrows furrow behind her glasses, ‘Name?’ She speaks Somali with a lisp.

‘Deqo.’

‘Age?’

‘Around ten?’

‘Are you alone?’

‘No.’

‘Who did you come with?’

Deqo pauses for a second to explain the situation, but then tells the lie her heart wants to tell. ‘My mother and grandmother.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Outside the camp, they need help, my grandmother can’t walk.’

‘We’ll get someone to assist you.’ She waves Deqo to the side and then a young Somali man with a wide smile and a red t-shirt with English writing on it approaches.

He places a hand gently on her shoulder and leads her out of the tent. He collects a wheelchair and she guides him to where Filsan and Kawsar wait. She is back in her familiar world; the war and all that time in Hargeisa just a complicated trial to achieve what she has always wanted: a family, however makeshift.