Crossbones

23

MALIK RINGS THE BELL NEXT TO THE OUTSIDE GATE AT BILE AND Cambara’s, and then looks back at Qasiir parked within view of the gate, waiting. Qasiir wants to make sure that Malik gets in before he drives off.

While waiting for someone to appear or for the lock on the gate to be released via the intercom, activating the dogs’ barking, Malik recalls watching 101 Dalmatians on DVD with his baby daughter in his lap. At one she was too little to understand it, even though she points at real dogs excitedly, and imitates their barking. To amuse her, he likes to run through a repertoire of different breeds’ barks: he can yelp like a collie, woof like an Afghan hound, and bay like a husky.

Cambara’s arrival reminds him of where he is. She calls to tell him that she is on her way to open the gate manually, because of a power outage. Approaching, she walks cautiously, as if avoiding puddles, and affects a frown that is really a smile. She has on a pair of indoor shoes and a guntiino robe that flatters her, showing bits of flesh and a flash of cleavage when her garment fashionably slips off her shoulder. As she approaches the side gate, though, she pulls up the patterned summery shawl as if to make sure there is no misunderstanding on Malik’s part. He turns to wave at Qasiir in the departing car. Cambara passes the bunch of keys to Malik so that he can open the gate from the outside. Their fingers touch accidentally and this produces static electricity. Malik looks away, embarrassed, although Cambara appears unruffled. She walks ahead of him, and neither speaks until they are inside the house and Cambara has restored the key ring to the hook behind the door.

In a rehearsed voice, Malik says, “That death comes early and snatches away our best is a wisdom that many of us do not appreciate until someone dear dies. Of course, it is worse if he is murdered.”

Waiting for him to finish, with her hands outstretched, maybe to embrace him, Cambara has the look of someone with fog in her eyes and who can’t therefore see more than two feet ahead of her. For an instant, Malik stands so still that it feels as if bits of him have stopped functioning.

Cambara puts life back into him, saying, “Yes!”

Malik goes on. “I’ve known Dajaal for a short time, yet I will miss him. His death makes me think, What if I die when I have less than a page left to write? Dajaal had plenty of work to do, and some evil person cut his life short.”

Just when he had said his say and they are at last ready to embrace, she pricks up her ears and pauses in mid-movement, like a ballerina stopping before completing a pirouette — and backs off. Instead she takes his hand and together they walk forward, she leading, he keeping pace.

“No doubt a difficult man to please, at times harder on himself than on others, Dajaal was a man of such high principles. He was loyal, truthful; he was reliable. We’ll miss him terribly. He is our story, Bile’s and mine. He made our world go around a lot of the time, making our living together easier, even though occasionally he came in between us, causing mild frictions between Bile and me. But I was fond of him, very fond.”

Malik says, “I often think how, in fiction, death serves a purpose. I wish I knew the objective of such a real-life death.”

Cambara makes two tall drinks and a short one, adds a drop of something to one of the tall glasses — Malik is unsure what, maybe a drop of medicine, for Bile? She gives him one of the tall ones and raises her short one, saying, “To your health.”

He asks, “How’s Bile been?”

“He is coming down shortly,” she announces.

And soon enough, Bile joins them. He is looking much better, if a little nervous; his index and middle fingers rub against his thumb in rhythm with his slow tread, his every step bringing him closer to his goal — a soft chair with a hard back set between Cambara’s and Malik’s seats. They can’t help but be conscious of his gradual progress, but neither wants to focus on it. Malik rises to his feet to offer him a hug.

Cambara offers him the untouched tall drink and she says to him, kissing him on the forehead and then on the lips, “Your drink, my dear, with a drop of your medicine in it.”

He holds the edge of the glass to his lower lip and takes a sip, his Adam’s apple visibly moving, then another thirsty swallow.

Just then a single rocket falls close by. The house trembles slightly, the windowpanes shaking in their frames, the bulbs of the chandelier lightly knocking against one another with a tinkling sound that, to Malik, distantly recalls one of his daughter’s windup toys.

“Well, what do you say to that?” Malik says.

Bile, who obsessively keeps abreast of news of the fighting by listening to HornAfrik, has heard that some of the rockets are aimed in the general direction of the villa where the Ethiopians and the interim president are based. “Earlier, we could feel one of them flying overhead. Some of those interviewed on the radio talked of being able to identify the house where the insurgents firing the rockets were holed up.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then they heard the response coming from the direction of the presidential villa, with the Ethiopians employing heavier bombs, deadlier and causing more damage.”

“I’ve known rockets to miss their targets in the wars I’ve covered,” Malik offers. “And as a consequence there are civilian casualties.”

“Here neither of the warring parties cares,” Bile says. “The Ethiopians delight in causing more Somali deaths, and the insurgents, as religionists, by their very nature, are equally unpardonably brutal.”

“According to the radio reports, many of the bombs did in fact miss their intended destination,” Cambara says. “They cause enormous civilian casualties.”

“I am sure that it will interest Malik to visit some of the homes destroyed, and learn about the people whose lives are cut short,” Bile says.

“Shabaab assassinated Dajaal,” Cambara says.

“And the Ethiopians bomb and kill civilians.”

Cambara then adds, “Indiscriminately.”

Meanwhile, Bile, adjusting in his seat, unwittingly pushes away one of his slippers and then his feet search blindly for them, only to kick them farther, rather than bring them nearer. Malik is quick to get up and help recover the slipper slithering out of Bile’s reach.

Bile says, “Thanks.”

Malik offers his condolences for Dajaal, and Bile stammers a few almost inaudible words in reply, nearly spilling his drink as he says them. “Here I am useless and living, and there he was very useful — and dead. We have the tendency to self-destruct as a people.”

“He was wonderful to me, generous,” Malik says.

Bile inquires about Malik’s writing, the research and interviews, and if Qasiir is working out well so far. Malik’s positive replies delight Bile, and he drinks to everyone’s health.

“We want you to move into our house,” Bile says, “now that the two-room flat is empty of its troubled occupant.”

“What’s become of Robleh?” Malik asks.

Cambara answers. “He’s gone.”

“I’d say good riddance,” Bile says.

“He’ll get his just desserts,” she says.

“He was nothing but trouble,” Malik says.

Bile says, “Yet Cambara wouldn’t throw him out.”

Malik is thinking about changing the subject, when they hear another bomb exploding in the vicinity that makes the house shake. But Bile won’t leave the topic alone. He pursues it with vengeful venom. Malik thinks they are living on edge, amid all the bombs falling, and because Dajaal’s death has brought their own mortality home to them.

Bile says, “Robleh had the habit of bringing home neophytes from the mosques, and of telling them right in our presence that he has frequently advised us to ‘take the vow.’ A lie like any other, one he couldn’t say to us alone and, what’s more, didn’t. I would have killed the fool if I could.”

For a moment, Cambara resembles a cat in the gaze of a snake and she makes a hissing sound. Then, finding things to do in the kitchen, she departs, visibly annoyed. Malik is convinced that it won’t be the end of the stories about Robleh. He has a mind to pursue a tangentially related theme: Somalis with foreign passports leaving the country in the wake of the Ethiopian invasion. He wants to write an article about how they are treated at the Kenyan border, and he is sad that he has to give the topic a wide berth for now. Maybe Qasiir can find him someone to interview.

Cambara serves them a light repast of clear lemongrass soup and prawns. They eat right where they are, balancing their plates in their laps — Bile’s on a tray, so that he does not have to move, as his knees are bothering him. They sip their soup with hardly a sound, not even the clink of a spoon against a bowl. Malik has a worry knocking about in his head.

“I’ve meant to talk about Dajaal,” Malik says.

“What about him?” Bile asks.

Malik says, “Before Jeebleh left, he and I agreed that we would set up some sort of remuneration — on a monthly basis, the equivalent of a year’s pay — for Dajaal. Now that he has been murdered, I do not know what to do about the remuneration. I should have asked Qasiir, but it would be helpful to have the view of someone outside the immediate family circle.”

“What are you trying to ask?” Bile says.

“Did Dajaal have any family who could benefit from the funds, if I set it up?”

“We were his family,” Bile says, as if to preempt any further discussion of the matter. “I wouldn’t want you to bother,” he adds.

“I owe him his pay, though.”

Bile says, “You’re our guest, so don’t worry.”

“Jeebleh and I…,” Malik starts, and trails off.

“Please,” says Bile.

Cambara turns to him. “Let’s hear him out.”

Bile says firmly, “You stay out of it.”

Malik thinks that if the herdsman takes delight in talking of his camels, the Don Giovanni of his exploits, the statesman of his political savvy, the war correspondent of the risks taken, then those like Bile and Cambara, who have known nothing but strife, for lack of something else to focus on, risk turning on each other. Again he changes the subject in an effort to avoid an argument.

He says to Bile, “How did you and Dajaal meet?”

There is a rough edge to Bile’s tone when he speaks, as if he were clearing his throat after swallowing a fishbone. He says, “Dajaal and I met a day or two into the civil war. The gates of the prison where I had spent almost two decades, half of it with Jeebleh, had been flung open. Knife-brandishing street urchins were threatening to seize the car I was traveling in, and the money I had stolen from the house where I had taken refuge after my escape. As luck had it, Dajaal drove by just then. He was in military uniform and armed. He suspected the urchins were up to no good, and he intervened. Then he helped me find Shanta, my sister. And when I set up the Refuge with the stolen money, I made him my factotum. I loved him: he cultivated to perfection the uncanny knack of being just where his timely intervention was needed.”

Cambara drops her spoon. Bile and Malik look at her, and she blurts out, “Me, too!”

“You, too, what? What’re you saying?” Bile asks.

Cambara replies, “Dajaal’s first words to me were, ‘Are there any problems with which you need help?’ I had just fought off the menacing advances of several boys who pulled up alongside me in a car as I was on my way to this property, which at the time was home to a minor warlord. They’d offered me a ride and then tried to force themselves on me, saying, ‘Don’t you want it?’ I met Dajaal at the very moment I had managed to get them to drop me off, and I knew instantly that my life had taken a decisive turn. Dajaal would go on to help me recover the property.”

Malik feels he doesn’t need to add his own experiences with Dajaal, although he could sing the man’s praises for hours. He says, “I wonder why it never occurred to me to ask him if he had a family. It’s embarrassing, isn’t it?”

“He was so discreet,” Cambara says, “one hesitated to ask him questions about his private life or to ask if he had financial or other troubles. Unlike many employees, he never pestered you for a loan or absented himself from work.”

“He wasn’t an employee,” Bile says. “He was family.”

“Except he wasn’t family,” Cambara says.

Bile’s eyebrows arch with visible indignation.

Cambara asks, “Do you know what Dajaal did when he left us after dark, darling?”

“No idea,” Bile answers. “He was a private man and he wanted it that way.”

“Dajaal was, toward the end, a changed man,” she says.

“You two didn’t always get along well,” he says.

“He got touchy,” she says.

Bile says, “So is the entire country — nervous, self-murderous, on edge.” He raises his voice a little, stressing his points. “Admit it, he was more exposed to the daily menaces than we were. Also, thanks to him, we felt protected. For all we know, Dajaal may have died protecting us.”

“It’s not that he had ever talked back to me, or showed any dissent to me openly,” she says. “He was deferential to me, but I could feel a change in his behavior, his anger toward the world, toward life in general. It was as though he felt the times moving past him.”

Bile says, “You would be a changed person, too, if your life was under constant threat and you didn’t know when a murderer in a balaclava might come out of the shadows to assassinate you.” He pauses for a long time, then asks Cambara, “What is it you’re not telling us? Something has eaten into you; something has turned you against Dajaal. What did he do to upset you so?”

She sits up, looking miffed, and then stands, but at first does not seem to know what to do; then she sees Malik holding the plates and disposseses him of them, motioning to him to sit down.

“There is no love without jealousy,” she says, addressing herself to Malik. “I wonder if it has ever occurred to Bile how often I’ve felt redundant when I saw him and Jeebleh together, so relaxed in each other’s company, never exchanging an unkind word, their dialogue flowing seamlessly. No question about it: I’ve felt inessential. Bile looked younger, happier, and more alive chatting to Jeebleh. He appeared more ebullient in Jeebleh’s company than in mine, as if he finds me irritating, like a small child with insatiable demands. Alone with me, I sense he is less energetic and talks much less about life-and-death matters, only of what ails him and where. Often, he behaves as if I were his hired nurse.”

Then, in the silence that follows, she murmurs a few words, as if to herself, and for an instant she appears embarrassed. Too late to regret her inapt outburst, she strides off toward the kitchen, the plates clattering.

Malik blames the stresses under which Cambara and Bile have been living for her outpouring. Civil war makes excessive demands on those who suffer it, and many snap under the strain.

The silence lasts until she returns to ask if Malik or Bile wants tea or coffee. She gives her profile to Bile, indicating her annoyance.

Bile asks Malik, “Were you present at the last altercation between Dajaal and Gumaad in the apartment? Did you think that Dajaal went too far in provoking Gumaad?”

Thinking that one witness is no witness, and that in any case he can’t tell if that altercation led to Dajaal’s death, Malik asks Bile, “Does anyone have any idea who murdered him?”

Bile replies, “Qasiir claims to know.”

“Does he suspect Shabaab?”

“That’s what I gathered from talking to him.”

Malik asks, “Does he have concrete evidence?”

“His opinion is based on mere conjecture,” Bile says. “Not that that will stop him from acting on it, I fear.”

Cambara continues to seem uneasy. She shifts in her chair, then says, “Yet Shabaab and their allies claim to be jihadis, when they do not even behave like Muslims.” Then she gets to her feet, as if to leave their presence.

Bile says, “You can’t determine that. Only God has the privilege to decide if they are or aren’t Muslim.”

“Why kill in mosques or in the vicinity of mosques?” she asks, as if the answer to the question might unravel everything.

“The murders are political,” Bile says.

“Are these assassinations commissioned by fifth columnists allied to the Courts?” Malik asks.

“According to what Qasiir has told me, they are.”

“Is he implying that Dajaal set himself up for it, describing himself publicly as a secularist?” Malik says.

Bile ventures, “Shabaab knew all along where Dajaal stood. He needn’t have called himself a secularist. If anything, he was a democrat and therefore a secularist. It is a mystery they didn’t kill him sooner.”

Malik takes a furtive look at Cambara, assuming with little evidence that unless she occupies center stage, where she is appreciated, pampered, loved, and praised, she is the type who will stand apart, as she does now, listening to their banter as if it concerns someone she doesn’t know. He attempts to bring her back in.

“What’s your feeling, Cambara? The Courts are out — we know you weren’t enamored of them or their hard-line position. Now the Ethiopians are here. What would you say if I asked you what your feelings are today, as matters stand?”

“A plague on both their houses,” Cambara mutters.

Bile says, “As the Somali saying goes, ‘Drinking milk is unlikely to help you when you choke on water.’”

Cambara says, “Aren’t you saying the same thing I am saying, only with proverbs?”

“Perhaps I am saying more than that,” Bile says.

“Peace, please!” says Malik.

“I am saying that the Courts will have learned their lesson,” Bile retorts. “And if they get a second chance to rule Somalia, they won’t be as arrogant and unreasoning as they were the first time. Of course, there will be those who will insist on having an Islamic state at all costs, and there will be splinter groups, this faction against that faction and so on.”

“You can’t do much with a bad egg. That is what the Courts are, a bad egg,” Cambara says, pleased with herself.

“What are the Ethiopians, then?” Bile asks, amused.

“Pollutants farting against the wind,” she says.

There is a long silence.

Then Bile says, “The bad-egg image of the Courts is apt. But there are at least possibilities of negotiation. They are now in the political wilderness. They were wrong to assume that weapons from Eritrea would help them defeat Ethiopia here and march all the way to Addis, and take and occupy it. Easier dreamed of than done.”

Cambara stares at her fingers, thinking. She says, “You surprise me, darling. You have a soft spot for the Courts. I would never have thought that of you.”

“I so loathe the Ethiopian occupation and this interim president who engineered it, I would have the Courts back any day, in their place,” Bile says. “Still, I would choke on the water that I may have to drink.”

On another day, Malik might stay and enjoy bantering with Bile, especially as he seems to be in better health today. But he retreats into the bathroom to send Qasiir a text message asking him to come for him in a jiffy. When he rejoins Bile and Cambara, he says, “It’s past your siesta time, and I have plenty of work to get through. So I’ll thank you for the wonderful lunch and company.”

Bile says, in a tone of command not to be challenged, “I’ll ask Qasiir to bring your things from the apartment. I want you to move into the annex. It’s safer here.”

“We have everything you require,” Cambara says.

Bile adds, “Please, no back talk from you.”

“I will move in,” says Malik, “but not until tomorrow.”

“Why not right away, or tonight at least?”

“I am in the middle of something,” Malik says.

“We’ll tell the maid to set it all up.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

En route to the apartment — Qasiir at the wheel — Malik notices several missed calls, many of them dating back to last night, and one very long SMS.

In the SMS, Ahl, who says he has sent the same text in an e-mail format, shares his latest with him: that he confirms that he feels more comfortable putting up at Xalan and Warsame’s, indirectly suggesting to Malik that he move in with Cambara and Bile — but not clearly spelling it out. Ahl ends with, “Be on guard at all times.”

Malik can tell that Qasiir is excited: his eyes keep narrowing, like a shortsighted person concentrating on a faraway spot, and his lips are constantly moving. Malik asks him, “Is everything okay?”

“I’ve found Marduuf, the former pirate,” Qasiir says. “We met at a teahouse. He is a very angry man.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“I know what he does for a living, too. He sells rugs,” Qasiir says. “He told me that since he discovered there was more risk than money in piracy, he bought a small pickup truck with what money he had made and set up a rug-selling business.”

Malik asks, “When can I meet him?”

“Whenever you like, really.”

“You mean as soon as now?” Malik asks, excited.

Qasiir says, “But of course.”

“I am a bit exhausted.”

“Tell me what suits you, and it’ll be done.”

Malik thinks it over. A former pirate who has a lot of venom toward Shabaab is a good prospect. He says, “You’ll drop me and then fetch him.”

They fall silent. Then Malik ventures the question that has been on his mind. “What was your grandfather’s home situation? Is your grandmother still alive?”

Qasiir drives in silence for a while, in the attitude of someone taking the measure of a challenge. Finally, he answers, “Grandpa lived alone in a house that was in first-class shape when he bought it. Lately, however, it’s begun to fall apart, the roof leaking, the paint flaking, water gathering in puddles, the drainage not functioning. He kept saying he would deal with the structural problems and either rent it out or, if peace came, sell it and buy a one-room apartment. He didn’t want to bother fixing it piecemeal.”

“Did he have dependents?”

“Not if you’re speaking of a wife and children.”

“You were his only living relative?”

“May I ask where these questions are leading?”

“You see, before leaving, Jeebleh informed your grandfather that he would set up a monthly check. Did you know about this?” says Malik, who doesn’t mention his own discussion with Bile and Cambara, who were also of a similar mind, ready to put some money aside for Dajaal.

Qasiir asks, “That is very good of Uncle Jeebleh. But tell me, what is your question?”

“Did your grandpa have dependents, like a young family — you know, men in this part of the world continue producing until they are dragged off to their graves.”

“No, he had no young family.”

“None at all?”

Qasiir broaches the subject of his own younger sister, deaf from the noise generated by the helicopters of the U.S. Marines when they invaded the district in which StrongmanSouth had his base. He goes on, “She was a baby then. Sadly though, she hasn’t spoken since and can’t look after herself. Grandpa was her lifeline after I started my own family. She was dependent on him.”

“Let’s talk in more detail about it when we have the time,” says Malik, seeing that they are nearly at the apartment. “In the meantime, I need to ask: do you know anyone with firsthand information about what happens at the Kenyan border to Somalis with foreign passports who are suspected of being sympathetic to the Courts? Because according to a HornAfrik commentary I heard, there are a handful of FBI officers present when the Kenyan immigration officers conduct the interviews.”

“That’ll be easy,” Qasiir says. “In fact, I know a man, one Liibaan, who served in the National Army with Grandpa and who owns a fleet of buses that I think ply the route between Mogadiscio, Kismayo, and the border crossing. Maybe he will help find us someone, or better still, he may be prepared to talk to you. Leave it with me, and I’ll find somebody.”

What a beautiful phrase—“Leave it with me”—Malik thinks, especially when spoken with such confidence. He takes comfort in it and delights in its meaning: “Trust me, and everything will be done to your satisfaction.”

“You’ll call me if you can’t find Marduuf?”

Qasiir says, “I know where he lives, I know the mosque at which he prays, the teahouse at which he plays cards with a couple of his pals. I’ll get him. So see you shortly.”

While waiting for Qasiir to return, Malik wanders aimlessly around the apartment and ends up in his workroom. He picks up a piece of paper from the floor, and a few lines in his own hand catch his eye, part of a longer piece he has completed and sent off to some editor, he cannot recall which: Somalis are a people in a fix; a nation with a trapped nerve; a country in a terrible mess. The entire nation is caught up in a spiraling degeneracy that a near stranger like me cannot make full sense of. It is all a fib, that is what it is, just a fib.

On second thought, the scribbler has run a hesitant line through that last sentence and continued with these words: This conflict has nothing to do with clan or religious rivalries. Rather, it has everything to do with economics. There is a Somali wisdom that it is best that the drum belongs to you, so that you may beat it the way you please. If not, the second best thing is for the drum to belong to someone close, like a relative, who will share it with you. In other words, the Somali civil war has a lot to do with personal gains and personality conflicts.

Qasiir waits in the TV room, watching sports, while Malik gets down to the business of interviewing Muusa Ibraahim, aka Marduuf.

Marduuf has the deportment of a man whom, if he walked into your home and declared himself the owner, you wouldn’t feel fully entitled to challenge. He is of medium height, with a broad chest and the fists of a pugilist. Veins run all over the back of his hands, and they move as he gesticulates. He is soft-spoken, though, for a man his size, and his smile is disarming.

Malik asks him where and when he was born, how many siblings he has, and where, if anywhere, he was schooled. Marduuf’s voice is so soft that Malik brings the tape recorder closer to his mouth and adjusts the volume. There is something of the hillbilly to his accent as well, and Malik has to pay a great deal of attention to catch his nuances.

“I was born in Daawo, the twin sister to Eyl,” Marduuf says. “I am the firstborn. My family started large, but became reduced to three. Five of my siblings died before they reached the age of four; there were deaths from diseases like TB and malaria, or because there was no doctor in our village to cure a cough. Very few of the children born in our area survived. You had to be very strong from birth to live.”

Malik cannot decide if it is nerves or anger, but something makes Marduuf pause every few words, like a reader who has come late to literacy.

“How old are you?”

“I am thirty-five.”

“Where are your remaining siblings now?”

“My sister works on planes, as a stewardess.”

“And your brother?”

“He is recently dead. Shabaab killed him.”

Malik wants to ask why, but he doesn’t want to get diverted from his real interest in Marduuf’s story.

He asks, “How old was he when he died?”

“He didn’t die. He was killed,” Marduuf says, with emphasis.

“But how old was he?” Malik says.

Marduuf bristles slightly, then collects himself and says only, “He was small for his size. He had the face of an old man, but the body of a boy. He was sixteen, maybe a little older. Now that he has been killed, he has become large. In our memory.”

Malik notes that Marduuf’s voice goes up a decibel when he speaks about his murdered brother.

Malik asks, “Do you know Fidno?”

“Yes. I worked with him several times.”

“What work did you do for him?”

“I was a pirate,” Marduuf says.

“And Fidno — what was he? A pirate, too?”

Malik thinks he catches a slight sneer or even a snicker. Maybe he finds the thought of Fidno becoming a pirate either ridiculous or amusing. Malik waits. Ultimately, his patience pays its dividend.

Marduuf says, “If you are educated, you do not want to become a pirate.”

Now that is something new to Malik. He feels certain that it is equally new to many others: that it is the barefaced privation of opportunities, the total absence of any chance to improve your life that turns one into a pirate, especially when one’s livelihood has been threatened, interrupted, and destroyed. This runs counter to the theory that the presence of a strong central state guarantees a cessation to piratical exploits. He thinks of maybe one day writing an article titled “Poverty Is the Invention of Piracy.”

“What work did Fidno do?”

Finally, Marduuf is in his element, and the words pour out of him, with little stammering and fewer pauses. “Fidno is book-educated,” he says. “He reads all the time. Every time we saw him he had a new book in his hands, books in the white man’s language, not English. Maybe German, or so somebody said, because he lived in that country, a very powerful man there. When he talked on his mobile in one of these languages, he spoke fast, as fast as water running down a glass window after it has rained. But he is a bad man. He cheats his own pockets. He is the kind of cheat who puts something in his shirt pocket but makes sure that the ‘thief pocket’ in the front of his trousers has no idea what is in the shirt pocket. Do you know what I mean? You can’t trust him. He is too clever. With money, Fidno is a dangerous man.”

“Did you make a lot of money from piracy?”

“Not much,” Marduuf says.

“What do the pirates do with what they make?”

“Many buy Surf, a four-wheel drive.”

“Did you buy one yourself?”

“I have bought a small pickup. More useful.”

“Not lots of money in piracy, eh?”

“We went into piracy when we were told there was a lot of money in it,” Marduuf answers. “The BBC says that people on the coast of Somalia were rich, the pirates all getting the most beautiful women, every night a wedding. But I never saw any of the money everyone was talking about, even after working as a pirate for several years. The largest share I received was seven thousand dollars.”

Malik asks, “Can you name any of the ships you took hostage?”

“A Korean ship; a very, very big Saudi one, bigger than the biggest house I’ve seen in Mogadiscio — don’t ask me to tell you their names, because I cannot remember them. There was that Spanish one, we caught the Spanish ship fishing in our waters,” Marduuf says. “We used small boats to chase them and made gun noises heavier than rockets, and they stopped. We took what the ship workers had in cash, maybe three hundred dollars, we took their smart phones and expensive watches and ate their food and waited for three months. After that we received a thousand dollars each. I swear no more than that.”

“What business do you do now?”

“I sell rugs straight to some of the mosques. I have a shop high up in the Bakhaaraha,” Marduuf replies. “That is how my youngest brother entered his first mosque. Kaahin was with me, a young thing then, when one day I went into a mosque to conclude a sale. He said when we went out of the mosque into the sun, which beat into our eyes, that he felt comfortable inside the mosque. He left me a week or so later and joined the mosque as a pupil. He said they were teaching him to read the Koran and to write. A month and a half later, he showed me he knew how to write his name in Arabic. I was happy. Then I heard from Wiila, my sister, that someone from our family who also had a son in the mosque had heard that Kaahin had taken an oath and joined a special group inside Shabaab, very secret. He came back to see me less often after that. And then I learned he was dead, killed.”

“How did you learn that he was killed?”

“I asked his mucallim where Kaahin was.”

“What was his teacher’s reply?” Malik asks.

“He said that Allah willed Kaahin to die.”

“Did you ask the mentor to explain his meaning?”

“That Kaahin was in heaven,” Marduuf says.

“Did you ask how he knew Kaahin was in heaven?”

“He told me that Kaahin gave his life for Islam as martyr.”

Malik asks, “What did you do then?”

“I asked to see his body.”

“And then what?”

“He said he would kill me if he saw me again.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Nothing yet.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing yet’?”

“I will take action. I will avenge my brother.”

Malik is tempted to ask Marduuf if he is planning to report all that has happened to the authorities, but he checks himself. He realizes that such a question will mean nothing to someone like Marduuf, born in a lawless country and brought up in post — civil war conditions, who has never known authority in the positive sense of the term.

The tape recorder switches itself off. Marduuf is startled. He looks at the machine as if he might strike it for giving him a fright and then, for the first time, acknowledges Malik’s grin with a similar one.

Qasiir shows Marduuf to his pickup truck, parked in the lot, and then returns to find Malik happy with the interview, but clearly too exhausted to stay awake.

Qasiir asks, “How early do you want me to come in the morning with Liibaan?”

Malik knows that tomorrow will be a bugger of a day, what with several important interviews and the move to Bile and Cambara’s. “First thing in the morning,” he says.