Crossbones

1

A YANKEES-CAP-AND-RAY-BAN-WEARING BOY OF INDETERMINATE AGE gets out of a car that has just stopped. He climbs out gingerly, like a spider creeping up a crevice. He retrieves a carryall from the trunk of the car without help from the two men sitting in the front. The men are old army hands, and although they haven’t said anything to him, he knows that they do not think highly of him.

The boy slings the carryall over his shoulder, nodding his thanks to the two men in the vehicle. They look away with obvious disdain; they do not wish to acknowledge his gratitude. He smiles with youthful bravado, betraying none of his trepidation. He does not want to fail; he cannot afford to fail. He is aware of the huge difference between martyring oneself and making a blunder of things and getting killed. Of course, he does not wish to die, not unless he has fulfilled his dream.

He is small in stature, huge in ambition. On his first day as a draftee into Shabaab, the instructor, upset with him, had pulled him up by the scruff of his neck, shouting in Somali, “Waxyahow yar!”—“You young thing!” The sobriquet stuck, and he answers to it now. The car reverses and he moves forward on the dirt road, his breathing heavy under the load he carries.

It is hot, and just before noon he meets a woman in a full-body tent going in the opposite direction. The woman takes an interest in him: a small-boned, four-and-a-half-foot-tall figure — a dwarf, she thinks at first — hoisting a carryall bigger and heavier than he is. She watches him as he puts the carryall down on the ground and sighs with relief. She waits for him to remove his sunglasses before she will consider peeling off her face veil or entertaining any question from him.

Deciding to be on an equal footing with him, she takes off her face veil and then crouches close enough to him, looking straight into his eyes in an effort to put him at ease. They exchange standard greetings, she addresses him in the may-peace-be-upon-you Somali greeting, Nabad, and he, in preference, uses the Arabic equivalent: Salaamu Calaykum.

“Can I help you?” she says. “You seem lost.”

He asks her to tell him the way to the qiblah.

She takes her time, wondering if he is one of the young Shabaab mules assigned to do their dirty work. The poor sod must be mistaking the qiblah—the Arabic term for the direction in which a praying Muslim faces — for north, she thinks. She wonders if he is a grown man with the voice of a boy, or a boy in the body of a man. They stand on the dirt road, in East Wardhiigley, a rundown district of Mogadiscio, sizing each other up. The woman, Cambara, is on her way to the Bakhaaraha Market; she needs a few last items for the apartment she is preparing for her guests, Jeebleh and his journalist son-in-law, Malik, arriving on the morrow. Now she lights upon a thought, studying the young thing, that maybe he is passing himself off as someone he is not, just as she puts on the body tent before she leaves the house, as part of her disguise, like a theater prop. Somali women, who never used to wear veils, resorted to them when the strife began, in 1991—a protection from sexual harassment by armed youths. But lately, ever since 2006, when the Union of Islamic Courts took control of Mogadiscio, expanding their rule of Sharia law, veiling has become de rigueur. Women are punished if they appear in trousers or the less restrictive dresses that were common before the civil war.

His hair is the color of ash and is cursed with kinks that no comb can smooth out. From the little she has heard so far, his voice has not broken. Yet his face crawls with the deep furrows she associates with the hardened features of a herdsman from the central region, where all of Somalia’s recent political instabilities have originated. Shabaab, the military wing of the Union of Islamic Courts, has been trying to terrorize the residents of the city into submission, and it appears to have succeeded to a degree. She assumes that he is one of the conscripts charged with “consecrating”—or rather, confiscating — a house in the neighborhood, from which he and his colleagues will launch attacks on their enemy targets. Cambara points south, sending him in the wrong direction, well away from the northeastern part of the city where she lives.

YoungThing lifts his carryall and walks in the direction the woman has shown him. He shifts the burden of his load from one shoulder to the other, breathing loudly through his nose. He plays at being tougher than he is; he tries to tread lightly, even if it is obvious that his attempt is a sham — he can’t take two steps without faltering. Hampered by the weight he has to bear, he can no longer remember the details of the instructions he was given. No doubt he feels lucky to have been chosen for this delicate assignment cloaked in secrecy, his first mission. He will do anything to impress the commanders of the cell of which he is now a bona fide member. This brings a smile to his face, and briefly injects fresh energy into his gait.

He loses his balance just as he recalls picking up the carryall earlier that day. He had been sent to see a heavily bearded man known by the nom de guerre Garweyne — BigBeard. BigBeard manages one of the largest computer shops in the Bakhaaraha Market — a sanctuary from within whose labyrinthine warrens the insurrectionists initiate frequent offensives. The market complex confuses anyone unfamiliar with its numerous dead ends, bounded by shacks and stalls that take half a day to construct and only a couple of hours to dismantle.

In the carryall, BigBeard has put roadside mines, grenades and other explosive devices, small arms meant to make holes in airplane fuselages in the event of an Ethiopian raid, YoungThing assumes. In truth, BigBeard shared little intelligence with him directly, and YoungThing knows that it is not his place to ask questions. He can’t give in to curiosity, since any departure from instructions will earn him severe punishment. YoungThing understands this much: He is the advance member of a commando unit preparing the ground so that Shabaab can respond immediately to an Ethiopian invasion of Mogadiscio. He is an explosives trainee, but his job today is to consecrate a safe house.

There are two men in charge of YoungThing’s unit — a select coterie of fighters sharing a central command. One of the leaders has the nom de guerre Dableh — FootSoldier. At the outbreak of the civil war, he was the commander of the largest weapons stockpile in the country, a colonel in the National Army appointed by Barre, the former dictator, himself. After the civil war began, the colonel changed sides and gave the warlord StrongmanSouth unfettered access to the arms cache, arming his ragtag clan militia and enabling them to run the head of state out of the city. Dableh has survived the civil war and changes in his masters’ fortune. When StrongmanSouth died, he lost no time in switching his allegiance to the Courts, aiding in their final triumph over the warlords, in 2006. Now, a few months on, he is contributing his military expertise to the plan to invade Baidoa, the seat of the weak Transitional Federal Government.

The second man in the command structure is known as Al-Xaqq—“the Truth”—one of the ninety-nine names of Allah. A modest man, Al-Xaqq gives a more temporal meaning to his name and prefers to be addressed as TruthTeller. He is an explosives genius and a member of the high order of the Courts, a learned man, with expertise in people management. He takes pride in his formidable ability to identify potential suicide bombers. Al-Xaqq sleeps and eats with them — at times exacting harsh punishment and ordeals to test their dedication — cementing loyalty before the young men are sent out on their missions. At times, he is the only one privy to the details of a sortie, plotting operations to suit the martyr he has handpicked. A few months ago, after YoungThing failed to make the grade as a suicide bomber, Truth-Teller suggested he train in the explosives trade and seconded him to FootSoldier’s unit.

YoungThing knows the protocol: BigBeard will have sent a text message to both FootSoldier and TruthTeller, confirming that YoungThing has picked up the carryall. Special events require special rituals, which are repeated many times over — each time an insurgent receives a cache of arms or a wad of cash from the men leading the insurrection.

Exhausted from lugging the carryall, YoungThing takes a long break, unsure that he’s going the right way. According to the driver, it should have been no distance at all to the house. But either he has been going around and around in circles or he was misled by the woman in the body tent. He senses that he won’t be on schedule. He quickens his pace, turns left, then right, and then right again. He happens upon two men conversing and decides they must be the two sympathizers who are supposed to give him further directions. The men do not pay him any mind at first, even though he stands close by. It seems to YoungThing that they cannot decide what to make of him. Then he remembers the agreed-upon code. In the rehearsed voice of an actor reciting his lines, he asks, “Will one of you please tell me which way is north?”

That the two men do not exactly match the descriptions given to him by his instructors does not worry YoungThing. Tired and hungry, he is becoming hazy about the details of his mission. The older of the men is slim and very dark, with intelligent eyes; he is in a sarong. His younger, stockier companion is in Bedouin robes.

The robed man, his teeth stained brown, is the first to speak. He turns to his companion and, with the characteristic flourish with which a highly literate man talks to the unlettered, says, “This young thing wants to know the way north.”

The older man replies, “What makes you think that he wants to know which way is north, when what he wants to know is the direction of the qiblah?”

YoungThing can no longer remember which stranger, or on what street corner, he was supposed to ask for directions, using the code word qiblah. From the tone of the older man’s voice, he suspects that they are leading him on. A longer look at them throws him into a further muddle. The robed man is behaving curiously, as if he wants to reach out and open the carryall. Then, as if to prove his superior knowledge to the older man, he creates further uncertainty in YoungThing’s mind. He says, “Does the young man think that the way north always points the way to the qiblah?”

Now doubts stir in the older man’s eyes, and his gaze, too, focuses on the carryall. He tells YoungThing to go back the way he came until he finds a big house with a green gate bearing the freshly painted inscription Allahu Akbar in red paint.

“How far is the house with the inscription?”

The older man replies, “It is a hundred and fifty paces to the four-way road. Then you turn right, and right again. That’s the way north, toward the qiblah, toward Mecca, the correct way. You can’t miss the green gate or the inscription in blood red. That’s the house you want.”

YoungThing is barely out of earshot when the robed man bursts into derisory laughter, amused at the thought that they have sent the boy to the wrong property, which belongs to a business adversary of the older man’s. The home owner is out of the country and has been renting it to a family from a rival clan with a questionable political history. “Two birds with one stone,” he says.

As YoungThing searches for the house with the green gate and the inscription, he blames the frailty of his memory on the fact that he has eaten no breakfast, and that a young thing like him can’t comprehend the intricate political games adults play. He suspects he is being used. Everything is a muddle. All at once, though, he finds the front gate with the inscription and he forgets his doubts. He walks past it and then takes a left turn. He wants the back gate, as per the directive. Here there is a high fence, which he must scale.

His heartbeat quickening, he sends a one-word text message informing his minder that he is at the back gate, and he receives a reply encouraging him to gain entry right away. He opens the carryall and takes out a light machine gun and a belt strung with bullets. He slings the collapsible gun over his shoulder, girdles the belt around his waist, and throws the carryall over a low part of the fence, then waits a few minutes.

YoungThing wishes himself good luck. As light-footed as a young dik-dik, he runs at the fence and shinnies up and over. He drops down on the other side with a quiet thud and remains in a crouch for a few seconds, his gun poised the way he has seen it done in movies.

An untended garden stretches before him, the shrubs low and scraggly, the trees stunted, and the wall of the house crawling with vines. He moves stealthily forward, as silent as the leopards in stories he has heard. He is certain his instructors at the madrassa would be pleased with him, assured that his training has turned him into a cadet ready to martyr himself in the service of the insurgency. He pauses for a startled fraction of a second when he picks out the sound of movement somewhere nearby. With purposeful speed, he retrieves the carryall and stands firm and unafraid behind the low shrubs — there are benefits to being of small size, after all, he thinks. But now he comes upon a shorter fence, of which no one has spoken. It goes to show, he tells himself, that even Shabaab’s intelligence gatherers are fallible. Still, he doesn’t look back, thinking that is the way of doom. Besides, there is no place for fear in a martyr. He’ll use the gun, shoot and kill, if there is need.

He backs up three paces, breathing in and out quickly until he feels a burning sensation in his lungs. Having omitted mention of the second fence, the men may have missed something of a trickier nature; he must be ready for all eventualities. Unless, of course, the omission was deliberate, meant to test his mettle. His minder has impressed on him the importance of using his weapon only when it is imperative or in self-defense, and of using the silencer if he does have to shoot.

One nervous move follows another. He throws the carryall over the fence. He waits for a few minutes, then runs at it, vaults over, and, landing, gathers himself into a tight ball — he’s learned this from watching videos on a jihadi website. In one video, the instructors encouraged young jihadis to retain the scalps of high-profile targets as trophies. YoungThing is uncertain that he will ever want to hang on to the head of a man he has killed. In fact, there is no chance in hell that he will want to do so, and in any case, he has no place to conceal a dead head; he has no home he can call his own.

Now he happens upon a second discrepancy in the directives given to him: he finds a half-open window, but it appears to lead not into a bathroom, as he was told, but into what looks like a kitchen.

He hides behind a huge tree with a trunk as big as a baobab’s. He is still as a worshipper waiting for the imam to resume his prostrations. Then, committing himself fully to every move he makes, like a jihadi leading the onslaught on the enemy from the front, he gains the back porch in two swift, long strides.

He scans the area for evidence of habitation: the telltale presence of a wicker chair someone has brought out to sit in; a cat curled up in purring slumber; clothes drying on a washing line.

He enters the property by the kitchen window, squeezing himself through. Of course, no instructions can prepare one for every contingency. There are decisions one must make on the job, without help. As far as he can tell, all is quiet inside. He walks about the house a little, feeling triumphant, then comes out to retrieve the carryall and take it back indoors. He makes a phone call to tell his minder that he is in the house and that it is safe.

His minder asks him to describe the outside of the house he has “consecrated.” In fact, he asks him several times to repeat how he got there. At first, YoungThing puts this down to a bad telephone connection. Then he begins to doubt whether he has gone to the right property.

He ends the call and embarks on a thorough reconnoitering, something he should have done first. He walks up the stairs and goes into the bedrooms. The rooms feel lived in: drawers ajar from recent use, socks black with dirt, a pair of underpants still damp from wear. He is in the wrong house, he thinks again. But what can he do about it?

The refrigerator in the kitchen is buzzing. He opens it and, seeing plastic containers full of last night’s leftovers, he feels hungry, and angry, too. He hasn’t had his fill of meat for a long time and is tempted to stuff himself with good food; he wishes he hadn’t already made the phone call.

He hears movements coming from the front porch. He turns and sees through the open door an ancient man, unshaven and wearing only a dressing gown and flip-flops, tottering in the direction of the house. The old man seems equally surprised to see him. But the old man mistakes YoungThing for one of his many grandchildren and says, “Why, you are back early! You see, the wind pushed the door locked, and when I couldn’t get back in, I fell asleep on the bench under the tree in the front garden.”