Crossbones

22

AS BEFORE, THE DOOR TO AHL’S ROOM IS LOCKED FROM THE INSIDE. After he knocks on it repeatedly, the TV programmer lets him in. Ahl can’t help but feel amused at this point, especially once he has reflexively checked that he still has his money belt, and felt the weight of the laptop he is carrying. Then, as if to prove a point, he pretends to check on the state of his suitcase, which has had its lock torn off. Without waiting for the TV programmer to leave, he telephones his wife’s cousin, Xalan, to ask her to please come for him as soon as she can. He doesn’t explain why, he just wants to leave. Basta!

He moves about the room, picking up a towel, running the tap, and with the luxury of a man who has a lot of time to kill, washing his hands and his face. Seemingly unperturbed and unflustered, the TV programmer stays in the room, fiddling with the knobs and taking no notice of Ahl’s presence or his need for some privacy. Maybe the never-ending conflict in this country won’t tail off until its burglars master their art, Ahl thinks. Maybe the foolishness displayed by the nation’s politicians, its so-called intellectuals, its clan elders and imams, and its rudderless youths is contagious; everyone in the land seems somehow lacking in horse sense.

His mobile rings: Xalan is downstairs, waiting. Ahl awkwardly picks up his suitcase with the broken lock, not bothering to check if any of his shirts, pairs of trousers, underwear, or sandals are missing. He leaves the door to the room open, the TV man still tinkering with the set, the volume high, then low.

Xalan is a joy to behold: she is dressed in a caftan, arms showing, her figure handsome and her smile beautiful. She meets him halfway and they both laugh when their attempt at a hug fails and they both stumble. She carries his laptop down and leaves him to struggle with the suitcase with the broken lock.

There is no one at the reception, so they decide to put the suitcase in the trunk and wait by the vehicle, in the hope that one of the receptionists will show up and alert the manager to bring Ahl the bill. As they wait, Ahl tells Xalan all that has transpired so far.

“It’s shocking,” she says. “He’s still in the room? In any event, I am delighted you are moving in with us.”

Then they have a laugh about it.

“I don’t look forward to having further altercations with the hotel staff, including the hotel manager. Most likely, he won’t believe me if I tell him: it’s my word against the TV tinkerer’s. And I suppose his coworkers will gang up against me, an alien guest, never mind that I speak Somali.”

When the manager arrives with the bill, Xalan studies the squiggly figures, frowning; among other things, Ahl is being charged for TV repair, along with the use of sheets and towels and meals he did not order. The combined shakedown comes to a lot, but Ahl knows that you do not negotiate with extortionists, and this price is par for the course for a diaspora Somali visiting home from the “dollar countries.” If he refuses to pay and reports the rip-off to the authorities, he stands little chance of success. Later, he’ll be made to pay at gunpoint, possibly with his life. Woe betide the man who denies his bodyguard’s request for a loan, or the journalist whose newspaper refuses the ransom asked when his kidnapping happens to occur on the day he is scheduled to leave for home.

But Xalan won’t be cowed. “What if he says he won’t pay?” she asks.

“I’d advise him not to take that route,” the manager says, in a tone meant to intimidate.

An argument ensues when Ahl points out that he had already reported the programmer’s misdemeanor to a one-eyed man at the reception and the manager denies that any such person works in the hotel.

“Well, that’s something,” Ahl says with a sigh.

Inevitably, Xalan and the manager exchange harsh words, after the manager accuses Ahl of lying. She threatens to call the police and the manager retorts that the police are in his pocket and, in fact, he’ll have her arrested if they don’t pay up and leave.

Meanwhile, the heat has grown unbearable. Ahl’s shirt sticks to his back; even his hair is damp with sweat. He hasn’t the proper hardiness for this situation. He remembers hearing of an incident in which armed youths, too weak to carry their loot home, forced their victims to load the plunder into their own vehicles and, since the thieves did not know how to drive, to chauffeur them home with it. He doesn’t want to lose sight of why he is here, and to him the sum demanded is paltry. He insists on paying it in full, in dollars, and adds a tip for good measure. At last they are free.

Out of the hotel grounds, Xalan tells him the harrowing story of a Somali friend visiting from Nairobi. “Our friend visits Puntland. He’s invested a great deal of time and money here,” she says. “In fact, he is a founding member of the autonomous state, a highly revered homeboy and a businessman of great intelligence and cunning. He rents a car to travel from Bosaso and Gaalkacyo, and they make several detours. With him are two armed escorts the rental company insists he takes along, and two other men, both relatives of his, getting a free ride home.

“Well, you know what an amazing landscape Puntland has. At one point on the journey, our friend stops to gathers a handful of rocks with exquisite shapes. You see, we Puntlanders are of the unshakable belief that our region is rich in oil, gas, and minerals, and that even our stones are precious — if only we had them analyzed. He puts several stones into his bag, announcing to everybody within hearing that these must contain some treasure more precious than gold. He’ll take them to Nairobi; then, depending on the outcome, maybe to Europe, to find out their value.

“He returns to Nairobi with the samples. He shows the rocks around, and resigns himself to the fact that they are not worth anything. His wife and business partner finds a use for them in her office as paperweights.

“Several months later, our friend returns to Puntland. And guess what — three of the men who were with him when he gathered the rocks present themselves at the friend’s house where he is being put up and demand their share of the money he made from the sale of the rocks. He tells them off. They take him hostage and hold him incommunicado for a couple of days, accusing him of shortchanging them. The clan members intervene to set him free.”

Ahl’s phone rings, but when he sees Fidno’s number on the screen, he decides not to answer. He hasn’t told Yusur about his dealings with the man, for fear of raising her hopes and dashing them, and so far he hasn’t told Xalan much. He will tell Yusur when his efforts bear fruit; he will share the news with Xalan only when he is certain there is no possibility of a setback. He worries that keeping all these secrets will eventually get to him, especially when he is under Xalan’s roof — make him ill, complicate matters.

He fears Xalan’s tough loneliness, though — the aftereffect of her horrible experience in Mogadiscio, which Yusur described to him in some detail. She can be moody and difficult to please, a woman of discomforting character, the sort Ahl would prefer to avoid. Since Warsame is seldom in the picture, either running his business or chewing qaat, he’ll have to become skillful at navigating her troubled waters.

The phone rings again, and again Ahl doesn’t take the call. Xalan trains her gentle eyes on him, grinning. Maybe she is thinking that it is a woman who is calling, and Ahl does not want to take the call in her presence. He’s about to say something to correct that impression when a small, colorful bird alights on his side of the window and then, unfathomably, manages to hang on, staring piercingly into his eyes. He falls under the spell of the bird and watches it, mesmerized, as the bird does the figures seven, eight, nine, one, and three. Is this feathered friend communicating mysteries he is unable to decipher? He is jolted out of his reverie when the car swerves, and he realizes that Xalan has almost run over a pedestrian ambling along in the center of the road.

She stops the car, digs in the glove compartment, then fumbles in her handbag and takes out an inhaler, inhales, exhales, and then sits back. Apparently her asthma, the consequence, probably, of the trauma of rape, is acting up. He waits, averting his eyes and staying silent.

She drives for a quarter of a kilometer and then turns the car around and, back at the scene of the near accident, pulls over and puts her hand in her handbag. This time she takes out a thick wad of cash, opens the door, and before Ahl can say or do anything, dashes over to the pedestrian, who is now walking alongside the road, to apologize. The man is embarrassed himself, and apparently thinks that he was as much at fault as she was, as he initially refuses the cash. At her insistence, though, he finally accepts the gift with both hands, demonstrating his gratitude for the unexpected windfall.

Ahl thinks about the bird’s appearance. An epiphany? He feels that things are falling into place. He takes the bird’s performance as a herald of Taxliil’s imminent arrival, the nearness of his hour. He doesn’t share his feeling with anyone, not least Xalan, not wanting to interpret wrongly, or to tempt fate.

On returning to the car and taking the wheel, Xalan mumbles something about “going crackers.” Ahl pats her on her wrist, as if to reassure her that everything will be all right. She relaxes her grip on the steering wheel, but doesn’t move: she needs more time to gather herself.

She says, “One minute I feel absolutely positive about myself and comfortable within myself, and the next minute everything goes haywire.”

She starts the car and drives on in silence for a few minutes, then stops in front of a gate and honks. A man in fatigues opens it. Driving in, she is a different person again: a woman in charge. She gives instructions to the man to carry in Ahl’s suitcase and computer bag. She calls to the maid, inquiring if the room she has prepared for Ahl is ready.

In the upstairs guest room, Ahl checks his phone. Three missed calls from Fidno, and two from an unknown caller. What can all these calls mean? He anchors in his mind the thought that whatever happens, he will try to save Taxliil from his own foolishness. Otherwise, what is the point of this mad expedition?

His attempt to suppress a sneeze starts to sound like a cat choking on a fishbone. He wipes away the moisture from around his mouth with the back of his hand. He sniffs repeatedly, like a man with whom the snuff he has just taken doesn’t agree. He quotes to himself one of his favorite lines of poetry, to hold at bay the waves of anxiety that he fears will engulf him: “‘I am everything that is around me.’”

He unpacks and sits on the edge of the bed, repeating the line several more times. Who was the poet, Wallace Stevens or Robert Frost? What is around him but the misery of a nation down in the dumps? He paces the room like an undertaker measuring the size of a coffin for a corpse, but he can’t bring himself to make the call to Fidno, afraid he will hear bad news. Again he thinks of the bird landing on the side of his window; and again he can’t decide if its arrival is a harbinger of good or ill.

There is a heavy knock on the door but he doesn’t answer at first, still gripped by a sense of foreboding. Then he hears Xalan saying, “…food on the table.”

He joins her in the dining room, not to eat, but to be with her — simply as a gesture of goodwill. He wishes he could bring up the subject of her missing nephew, Ahmed-Rashid, but he doesn’t want to upset her. Still, he thinks it odd that she hasn’t alluded to him at all, even when they are discussing Taxliil’s disappearance.

“Where is Warsame today?” he asks.

“Chewing qaat at a friend’s home,” she says. There is a glass of grapefruit juice at Ahl’s place. He takes a sip but says that he cannot eat because his stomach is upset. As if to prove it, he squeezes his stomach, which makes ugly noises. Xalan finds this amusing, and she laughs.

“You haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“Maybe later,” he says.

“Maybe the water here is hard on your stomach,” she says. “Would you like a glass of bottled mineral water?”

“I’ve no problem with the water,” he says.

“Let us have tea, then.”

She instructs the housekeeper to make tea for three. Tea for three? But who is the third? Again a line of poetry, this time from T. S. Eliot, intrudes—“‘Who is the third who walks always beside you?’” Ahl continues the poem silently, allowing his mind to be hostage to it, keeping him away from worrying thoughts. How curious and also how interesting that Xalan hasn’t shared with him who this third party might be. He decides, however, not to quiz her, as that would be bad manners. He senses that something out of the ordinary, something of great value and help, is taking place. First a mysterious bird, and now a mysterious third. Ahl’s heart beats, now not so much with anxiety as with expectancy.

Then, as though on cue, they hear a loud banging on the outside gate, and the sound of it opening and closing. Ahl waits, looking up at a spot on the ceiling, avoiding Xalan’s gaze. The visitor enters, a young man. Xalan jumps up and wraps herself around him as though he were a long-lost son. She weeps with joy. Then the visitor embraces Ahl.

He is a young man a few years Taxliil’s senior, tall and gaunt, with considerable facial hair. His bodily movements are extremely anxious, like those of someone on the run, and there is an untamed wildness to his eyes. Despite the joyful expression etched on his features, he also has fear written all over him. His disquiet is immense.

Ahl suffers anxious moments as he stares at the two of them touching, an image that instantaneously brings tears to his eyes and the memory of little Taxliil falling asleep in his arms. Ahl is utterly confused, so confused that he asks himself if either Fidno or No-Name, in their wish to keep their side of the bargain, have sent this young fellow to him in error. And because he cannot decide either way, he waits in hope that a framework in which he can make sense of all this will emerge out of the muddle.

He sees that Xalan is gripping the visitor by the wrist, as if he might run off. Now she pulls him forward, his elbow in her clasp.

No longer able to restrain himself, Ahl asks Xalan a run of questions. Who is this young man, where has he come from, and why is Xalan excited to welcome him, embrace him?

Xalan says, “His name is Ahmed. Ahmed-Rashid. This is my nephew.”

The young man pulls away, as if offended. Then he stands apart from Xalan and puts some physical distance between them. He says, “No, my name is no longer Ahmed. It hasn’t been Ahmed for a long while now.”

“To what name do you answer, then?” Ahl asks.

“My name is Saifullah,” the young man responds.

Something resembling clarity is beginning to emerge for Ahl, a clarity that allows him to see the young man for what he is: a religious renegade, a zealot with a vision.

“Is Saifullah your nom de guerre?” he asks.

Nodding, Saifullah says, “I’m no longer the person I used to be.”

“How did you get here?”

“I traveled incognito,” Saifullah says.

“From?”

“Nowhere in particular.”

Saifullah’s evasiveness strikes a warning chord in Ahl.

“And where are you going?”

“I am going to my heavenly destiny.”

An expression of fresh dread steals over Xalan. She looks from Ahl to Saifullah. Then once again she wraps herself around Saifullah, embracing him as if he is her beloved embarking on an arduous journey from which he may never return. Weepy, she clings to him and says, “Does my sister know you are here?”

Saifullah says, “My mom knows everything.”

Xalan stops crying. She dries her face, wiping away her tears. Then she lets go of him, sniffs, sits down, and asks, “What did she say?”

“You know what my mother is like.”

There is hardness to her voice when Xalan says, “Tell me how she is. We haven’t seen each other for a very long time.”

Ahl prepares to leave in order to give them privacy. Xalan, however, beckons to him not to go. Instead she says, “Tell me what your mum is like now. I know her to be a devout woman, reclusive, prayerful. But what is her position on you deciding to go to your heavenly destiny?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask her yourself.”

“She doesn’t approve, does she?”

“I suggest you get her to tell you her thoughts herself.”

Ahl senses that it is his moment to step in with his burning question. “Do you happen to know my son, Taxliil?”

Saifullah stares at Ahl, as if he does not appreciate the interruption. He catches Xalan’s eyes, but she looks away, and down at the floor. But then he says simply, “Yes, I do know Taxliil.”

Ahl reacts in silence, more in shock than relief, at Saifullah’s admission. His eyes dim, as if in concentration, but he cannot get any words out. After a long pause, he asks slowly, “Where and when did you last see him?”

Saifullah says, “We’ve served together, he and I, in the same contingent in a training camp close to Kismayo when he first got there.”

“How was he when you last saw him?”

“He was in good health apart from the trouble he was having with his eyes. He had broken his glasses within a week of arriving. Meanwhile, his sight has deteriorated.”

“And when and where did you last see him?”

“I can’t recall when and where. We moved a lot, went back and forth between camps, slept somewhere one night and then off at dawn, after the Subh prayer.”

“Otherwise, you reckon he is well?”

Saifullah replies, “He has some other personal problems, which have caused him trouble he could do without.”

“What is that?”

“He is a soft touch, that’s what.”

“In what way is he a soft touch?” Ahl asks.

“Please, no more questions,” Saifullah says. “I’m not authorized to speak of this or other related matters.”

As he turns as if to go, Xalan says, “How about a bowl of spaghetti with Bolognese? Faai will make it.”

Xalan explains that Saifullah has known Faai, her maid, from childhood, and he was a great favorite whom she plied with delicacies and sweets. Now it is Ahl’s turn to watch, as the two of them visit a non-polemical aspect of their past.

Saifullah is excited. “Where did you find her?”

“Here in Bosaso, at a camp for the internally displaced,” Xalan replies. “She lived in a shack and we found her just by chance.”

“How I loved the Bolognese she made!”

“She’s just made some.”

“First tea, with lots of sugar,” Saifullah says.

“Then spaghetti with Faai’s Bolognese?”

“Where can I have a lie-down?” he says.

“Upstairs, in the spare room.”

Just before Saifullah goes upstairs, Faai enters the living room, her hands stuffed into her apron pockets. She stares at Saifullah, and then at Xalan.

“Look at him, our Ahmed,” Xalan says.

Saifullah doesn’t bother correcting her. Instead, he takes one long stride toward the maid, who does not recognize him at first. Then recognition lights her features and he lifts her off the floor into a warm hug. They are a funny sight, he double her height, she twice his girth. When he lets go of her, she picks up his thin wrists and then cups his gaunt cheeks with her hands.

Faai says, “Look at you. Have you, too, been in a refugee camp or a detention center? Why, you are a beanpole, so thin!”

Xalan hastily changes the subject, not wanting to upset Saifullah or prompt him to flee. But Faai insists on knowing. “Where have you come from? Not from a detention center, where they hardly feed the inmates on proper food?”

“I am all right, actually,” Saifullah says.

Faai, ululating, says, “A miracle is at hand.”

Ahl shares Faai’s sentiment, but doesn’t say it.

Xalan says to Saifullah, “Ahmed was your grandfather’s name on your father’s side and Rashid your grandmother’s name on your mother’s side, two beautiful Muslim names. Why drop them for Saifullah?”

“The name is a perfect fit,” he says.

Faai clasps him more tightly and calls him by his old name several times, until tears run down her cheeks. Then she asks, “Now, what kind of name is Saifullah?”

No one answers and everyone looks at her as though she has made an unpardonable gaffe.

Then Saifullah says, “I am tired. I am off to bed.”

Xalan says, “That hungry body needs some food.”

“Where is the Bolognese, then?” Saifullah says, and at last Faai goes back to the kitchen to fetch it.

Rationally, Ahl doesn’t know what to make of all this, but he has the strong sense that it augurs well that he has met Saifullah, and he can’t wait until all is revealed. But he thinks worriedly that whatever else he may say or do, Saifullah’s behavior is going to prove unpredictable. And if this is true of Saifullah, what can he expect of Taxliil?

With Saifullah upstairs, Ahl and Xalan sit in weighty silence, assessing the significance of what has just happened. Ahl wonders if his expectations should be inflated or deflated by what he has heard about Taxliil.

Xalan repeats for his benefit a few salient facts: that Saifullah has been missing longer than Taxliil, and was rumored to have died in a failed suicide bombing. Or been court-martialed by Shabaab and executed.

Then one or the other of them changes the subject and they speak of how bizarre it is that the Shabaab minders choose such archaic names.

Ahl says, “I am delighted to hear Taxliil’s news, even if I can’t decide what to expect next.”

Xalan says, “For a second, I thought Saifullah might bolt out the door like a frightened horse. Or that he might seize up and not speak, or run off and disappear as mysteriously as he appeared.”

A brief silence follows.

Then Ahl says, “Funny, him saying that he is not authorized to speak on the matter. What manner of bureaucratese is that?”

Xalan says, “You know what is worrying me?”

“What’s worrying you?”

“He has the look of someone not meant to last.”

Ahl concurs, “As if he is on a mission.”

“I can’t bring myself to think about it.”

The thought troubles Ahl and he tries to fight it off by taking the opposite view, if only because he wants to believe that he will see Taxliil, too. “Maybe once he has slept off his nightmares, Saifullah will be more willing to talk to us.”

Xalan says, “I must visit his mother.”

Up in his room, Ahl makes several more attempts to reach Malik and Fidno. The messages he gets are identical: the subscriber is not in range. What on earth can that mean? At last he reaches Malik, and brings him up to speed, summarizing all that has happened.

Malik sounds optimistic. “I am sure everything will work out in the end. Taxliil will return, as runaways often do, unexpectedly, apologetic, and promising not to do it again. Look at Saifullah.”

Ahl gains courage from listening to what Malik has to say and is delighted and relieved to find his brother in a more receptive mood than he expected. It is then that he says to him, “Fidno has offered to introduce you to one Muusa Ibraahim, otherwise universally known as Marduuf, a former pirate, who also has it in for Shabaab, because they killed his younger brother, a teenage conscript of the group. Are you interested in talking to him?”

Malik is enthusiastic about the idea and takes down Marduuf’s contact details, although he cannot say when he will meet or talk to him.