Crossbones

24

SAIFULLAH HAS DISAPPEARED.

No one, not least Ahl, understands how this could happen. He’d been upstairs listening to tape recordings of the Koran. Or so they believed. They trusted he was taking his time and would come down at some point, relaxed and willing to talk to them. They were trying to wait for things to be revealed — in time.

Then, at teatime, Faai, bearing a cup of tea with lots of sugar, goes upstairs and taps at his door. When he doesn’t answer, she shouts his name and, for good measure, calls him by the endearments she used when he was a child. No reply. Xalan joins her, and the two women shout louder the longer they wait for him to answer their calls. Xalan wonders, What if he has jumped out of the window and is lying in the garden, unconscious? What if he has killed himself? Faai, keening, prays louder and more earnestly, “Please, God, no — please, God, no.” Xalan orders her to be quiet. Faai shuffles her way downstairs and sits at the bottom of the staircase, still pleading, “Please, God, no — please, God, no.” Then Ahl goes up to add his voice to the chorus, begging Saifullah to come out.

Xalan telephones Warsame and tells him to return urgently. When Ahl suggests he break down the door, Xalan collapses with nervous tension. She averts her head and presses her eyes closed with the tips of her fingers, as if attending to the self-tormenting questions that crowd one another out.

By the time Warsame arrives, Xalan is short of breath, and he worries about an asthmatic attack. He gets her inhaler from the bedside table and sits beside her, more worried about her than about Saifullah, of whom he has never been fond. He lifts her by the elbow, and together they walk toward the bedroom, their feet faltering in unison as Xalan leans on him for support. Warsame almost falls over when he misses a step.

Ahl goes in search of a hammer or something heavy with which to break the lock. It is clear that he has no idea what he is doing, because he mounts the steps again, empty-handed. Then he does what he has been wanting to do all along: he puts his shoulder to the door. He is astounded when he forces it open without much resistance. Then he announces loudly, “But he is not here.”

Warsame joins him. The two men look at each other, and their eyes converge on the unused bed. They then wander in tandem toward the open window, neither speaking. Ahl turns off the tape recorder, which still blares the Koran. Xalan rushes in and stares openmouthed at the window. It is clear that she has arrived at the same conclusion: that Saifullah must have jumped out, down to the ground. Ahl, leaving nothing to chance, goes over to the window and sticks his neck out, searching the ground for a body. Finding none, he shakes his head. Then they go downstairs to contemplate their next move.

Xalan says under her breath, “At least he hasn’t killed himself in our house. I don’t know what I would do if he did that.”

Ahl is not sure of her meaning. Does Xalan mean that she wouldn’t know what to do if he had killed himself, or wouldn’t know what to do if he committed suicide in a room in their house? His eyes range over the others in the no longer cheerful living room, coming to rest on Faai, who is standing in the doorway, quietly tearful.

Warsame calls in the guard and asks him if he has seen a young man leave. He doesn’t give a name, but he describes Saifullah in some detail.

The guard, boasting a right cheek the size of a bird’s egg from chewing leftover qaat, replies that he hasn’t seen any young man come in or leave.

Xalan turns to her husband. “What do we do now?”

Warsame observes that it is time they zeroed in on the places he might go and the persons he is likely to seek out. Warsame asks Xalan if it is possible that Saifullah has gone to her sister’s house, across the street from the main mosque. “Did he say that he had seen her on his way here?”

“Shall we go to her house and find out?” Xalan says. “A pity we were so excited at seeing him, and we forgot to ask if he had seen or visited her.”

Warsame answers, “I see no harm in doing that.”

“And if he isn’t there?”

“More important, will she receive us or will she throw us out?” Warsame says.

Ahl doesn’t want to tempt fate by saying anything. He knows of the bad blood between the two sisters, resulting from differences in character and outlook, the one very devout and uncompromising when it comes to her faith, the other of a secular cast of mind. He rises to his feet, ready to go to Zaituun’s place, but not prepared to speak.

Xalan feels ill at ease calling on Zaituun, her elder sister. They have not exchanged visits for years, even when they have lived in the same cities — previously in Toronto, currently in Bosaso. Zaituun is prayerfully devout, expending all her energy on worship. She and Xalan fell out because Zaituun does not approve of her younger sister’s lax ways, and said that she had rape and worse coming to her unless she changed. Xalan has no time for those who think she shouldn’t blame Islam for what the vigilantes did to her, raping her in a mosque as three imams looked on and did nothing to stop the defilers.

A young woman lets them into the house. She informs them that Zaituun is praying. Annoyed, Xalan looks at her watch, as if to determine the name of the prayer her sister would be performing at this time of day. When Xalan wonders if it is worth asking the young woman if she has seen Saifullah, Warsame counsels patience. They take off their shoes at the door to the living room. Ahl is unprepared for this; he is wearing boots, and he knows that his socks are dirty and that one of them has a big hole in the heel.

Zaituun’s house is a modest affair, with no flourish of any sort. Each room is conceived as separate from the others; it is not a house put together as one afterthought leads to another. Prayer rugs are in every corner, some standing against the walls, others laid out flat and ready for use, while others are expectantly hanging, as if awaiting a community of worshippers. The room faces the qiblah. The image comes to Ahl of a woman who will die praying, the words of worship stirring her lips.

And yet, Xalan has told him, as a young girl Zaituun played soccer with the boys and broke every school rule, challenging her teachers and correcting them when they were wrong. She was at loggerheads with her husband from the day they married until he died, killed in a shoot-out when armed militiamen came to loot their house in the initial stages of the civil war. Then, two years into her widowhood, the first spent at a refugee camp in Kenya, the second in a run-down two-bedroom apartment in Toronto, waiting for her Canadian refugee papers, she surprised everyone by deciding to dedicate her life to the study of the Holy Scripture. Her four daughters married and she relocated with her son to Bosaso, where she has lived ever since. Asked to explain what prompted such a sea change in her behavior, Zaituun once said to Warsame, her voice calm, her pauses well-timed, “All I recall is standing before an underground door, which opened onto a bright room awash with light from the sun. I recall going farther in until I felt totally immersed in the blessed waters of inner joy. It was only then that I realized how our daily realities are but chinks of light opening onto the darkness of our eternities.”

Zaituun arrives just when the young woman has served them tea. She enters the room clear-eyed, soft-footed, a person with an inner calm. She smiles gently and nods in the direction of Warsame and Ahl and, in passing, the two sisters touch shoulders in greeting. Unable and unwilling to give themselves over to a lengthy exchange, for fear that one of them will speak out of turn, they confine themselves to this token, hastily executed salutation, the best compromise they can manage on the spot.

Xalan asks, “Have you seen Ahmed?”

Zaituun makes a “be my guest” gesture, and then takes her sweet time, pretending not to recognize the name. To draw her out, Warsame says, “Maybe you call him Ahmed-Rashid or Saifullah?”

Zaituun remains standing upright. She says, “We prayed together. I asked him where he had been, where he was going, what his plans were. He didn’t answer any of my questions. We shared a meal in silence, he prayed more devotions. He kissed and hugged me, as if embarking on a journey from which he would not return, and I wished him Godspeed and God bless.”

Panic sets in, Xalan straightaway displaying clear signs of agitation; this gets to Ahl and Warsame, who have equal reason to be concerned. Warsame, because he is worried Xalan might go off balance; Ahl, because he has been of the view that any possible recovery of Taxliil hinges on Saifullah providing them with up-to-date information. It takes all his energy to control himself.

Warsame, decisive, says, “Let us go.”

Xalan asks, “Where are we going?”

“What are we doing here?” he counters.

Warsame hastily bids Zaituun farewell, and moves so fast that Xalan and Ahl have to scamper to their feet to catch up with him. Ahl says “God bless” to Zaituun, in an effort to soften her hard stare, which is trained on her sister. He feels the weight of defeat.

Back in the car, Xalan says, “Zaituun knows a lot more than she lets on. She is heartless, my sister. I wouldn’t put it past her to know exactly what Saifullah and his mentors are up to — and I have a sinking feeling that it’s nothing good. I am unsure whether to alert the authorities. Warsame, maybe you should call up one of your pals in Intelligence and share what we know with him.”

Warsame says, “I don’t want to rat on Zaituun. As it is, there is bad blood between us all. There is no need to make matters worse.”

“What if we share our speculation with the local authorities,” Xalan wonders aloud, “that an Ahmed, also known as Saifullah, may be planning an act of sabotage against the prevailing peace in Puntland?”

Ahl opposes the idea, which he feels might jeopardize any possible reunion with Taxliil. He says, “But we don’t have adequate, trustworthy information to report to anyone, really.”

“What an unpleasant mess!” Xalan says.

Ahl says, “Where could he have gone after he left?”

“I doubt he wants us to find him,” Warsame says.

Xalan, in a mood to speak in hyperboles, says to Warsame, “Darling, why are you so terribly, so unarguably pessimistic and so unpardonably uncooperative?”

Warsame drives, unspeaking.

Meanwhile, Ahl feels as if he were standing at the center of a suspension bridge spanning a river. Every angle affords him a different perspective and points him toward a different course of action. He is sick to the core.

Xalan’s hand searches for Ahl’s — he is seated in the back — and, despite the awkwardness of the angle, she takes it and squeezes it. “Whatever else happens, I pray that we’ll find Taxliil, safe and sound.”

When they get back, they see a jalopy parked badly, at an angle. Unable to maneuver past it, Warsame honks, and the chauffeur, cheeks full to bursting with qaat, takes over the wheel from Warsame, suggesting they welcome their visitor. Ahl’s hopes are raised afresh: he thinks maybe Saifullah is back. But his hope is dashed when he is presented to a man answering to the nickname Kala-Saar.

Kala-Saar, a professor at the newly established Puntland State University at Garowe, is a friend of Xalan’s; a pleasant-looking man, gangly, plainly dressed in baggy trousers and a many-pocketed khaki shirt stuffed with cigarettes, a pipe, and accessories. He has the habit of peppering his Somali with foreign terms in Italian, Arabic, or English, depending on the tongue with which his interlocutor is comfortable. He has a doctorate from the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples, his dissertation on the epistemology of Islam, and is given to a natural urge to get someone’s dander up. A non-cooking bachelor, Kala-Saar appreciates good tables; he is the rounder of guests at tables, invited whenever there aren’t enough interesting men, or when a single woman is visiting town and there is no other man to invite.

Xalan invites him to dinner on the spot, but he announces right away that he won’t stay unless he is allowed to light up at the dinner table. Then, without waiting for his hosts’ approval, he lights another cigarette from the butt of the one he is about to extinguish.

Xalan values Kala-Saar’s pronouncements, not his manners. She finds him inspiring to listen to when he speaks on politics or puts the actions of others under his sharp scrutiny. She says, “Wait until I return, and don’t say anything of note before I get back. I want to hear everything.”

Then she goes into the kitchen to attend to the meal preparation, helped by Faai. She switches off the radio Faai has been listening to in her attempt to hear snippets of their conversation from there.

Ahl senses that Warsame is less enamored of their guest as they touch base on a number of matters of common local interest. Neither has time for the president of Puntland, whom Kala-Saar describes as “highly incompetent,” and Warsame labels as “a corrupt simpleton.”

Kala-Saar then turns his attention to Ahl. The man is evidently well informed about Ahl’s situation, thanks to Xalan. He strikes Ahl as a man who flexes his knowledge like a muscle, along the lines of the gymnasiums that train young minds for higher things.

Then Kala-Saar asks Warsame, “Why does it strike me as if Xalan has had an out-of-body experience? You don’t look your usual self, either. Is there something you haven’t told me?”

Ahl suspects that Kala-Saar is casting around for confirmation of something he has already picked up from talking to either the chauffeur or Faai. Warsame tells him about the appearance and disappearance of Saifullah, ending with a caveat: that Kala-Saar hold back whatever comments he is likely to make until after Xalan has returned. Kala-Saar agrees to this condition, and turns to ask Ahl if there has been any sign of Taxliil yet.

Ahl says, “Not yet, but we live in hope.”

“Taxliil will be all right,” Kala-Saar predicts.

They fall silent and wait for Xalan’s return.

That there are several of them gathered at her table, eating a meal she has prepared, gives immense joy to Xalan, who constantly thinks about “family.” She takes her place next to Kala-Saar, calling to Faai to lower the volume of the radio in the kitchen so that the conversation can flow.

Meanwhile, for a man who didn’t want to eat, Kala-Saar is only too eager to start on the feast Xalan has prepared, with a choice of vegetables and meaty things of every variety, and fish cooked in batter. Maybe Xalan has cooked her way out of her despair.

Kala-Saar takes a sip of water and makes a face. He quotes from Yusuful Khal’s “Prayers in a Temple,” in which the Lebanese poet writes about a stone speaking and becoming bread, and then wine. Pressed by Xalan to explain his meaning, and egged on by Warsame, Kala-Saar looks in Ahl’s direction, and quotes: “A lack, a regrettable absence from this good table, a glass of good wine.”

He continues, “When you put Saifullah’s and Taxliil’s disappearances into the wider perspective, I can’t help but conclude that it is all part of a new thinking among the young. As parents, we are at fault. As adults, we are no models to our children. As teachers, we are no example to our students. We’re culpable in that we, who think of ourselves as educated secularists, have not inspired the younger generation, who are responding to our failure with rebellious rejection of everything we have so far stood for. In the early nineties, many of the young joined the clan-based militia groupings as recruits and killed and died serving the warlords who hired them. Lately, they’ve sought and found their role models elsewhere: imams and gurus from other places, other disciplines, and other cultures. Some have even become infatuated with dub poets of whom we may not approve. The young have marked their dissent in the strongest of terms, because we, as parents, as adults, and as teachers, have not been open with them.”

Ahl asks, “But as rejectionists, what have they become?”

Kala-Saar says, “Some have become terrorists, others insurgents.”

“What are the essential differences between the terrorists and the insurgents?” Ahl says.

“The terrorists massacre the innocent purposely, whereas the insurgents’ resistance to the Ethiopian occupation compels their opponents, that is to say the Ethiopians or the Somalis fighting in the name of the FedForces, to kill the innocent without meaning to do so.”

“I see no difference between these slaughterers,” Warsame says.

Ahl asks, “How would you describe Shabaab — insurgents or terrorists?”

“Shabaab are terrorists: they aim to destroy, not to build, and as such they do not value human life, as we do,” Kala-Saar says. “Even so, I would think of them as genuine insurrectionists, who oppose the occupation and fight it by all means possible. Sadly, though, it is in the nature of wars to kill the innocent.”

“What about the women?” Xalan says.

“What about them?” Kala-Saar asks.

Xalan says, “Do you think that only the young form a movement of discontent?”

“They do so without a doubt,” Kala-Saar says.

Ahl asks, “In your view, to what does this unhappiness lead — eventually?”

“This eventually leads to self-hate.”

“Which will in turn lead to what?” Ahl asks.

Kala-Saar puts down his spoon and fork and takes his time chewing a mouthful, pondering. He stares at Ahl for a long time, and finally shifts his gaze to Xalan, smiling with the contentment of someone who has found an answer to a very tricky question. He says, “To paraphrase the French sociologist Bruno Étienne, this type of self-hate results in the nation murdering itself, and in the process of doing so, the individual committing suicide becomes a metaphor for the death culture.”

The silence following this indicates to Ahl that no one has understood Kala-Saar’s meaning, but no one asks him to elaborate. They all go back to their food with renewed concentration.

Xalan says, “What about us women? Don’t women inveigh against the male injustices in a stronger fashion than before?”

“I don’t wish to hurt your feelings, my dear Xalan, but I don’t see the women in Somalia working their commitment to liberation into a viable force for change,” Kala-Saar says. “They haven’t shown signs of rebellion in the way the youth have done. Women in Somalia at present are no longer a force of positive, progressive change, but of retrogression. This is because the mosques serve as clubs — and you know you are hardly represented at the mosques. In my view, women have become backward-looking retrogrades, veil-wearing and submissive. Times were when Somali women were better organized — as members of political movements, as beacons of the nation. Not anymore.”

Xalan studies her knuckles. “Talking about the young, what is your position on suicide bombing or self-murder — actions that are classed among their kind as martyrdom?”

Kala-Saar chews awkwardly, as though his front teeth are wobbly and of little use. He speaks with his mouth half-full and spits bits of food in all directions. “I might approve of Shabaab if their actions were likely to bring about change — a change toward a better society. They are not. They are good at disrupting, not at constructing anything. Like the Brigate Rosse. I lived in Italy when they terrorized that country. I do not approve of destructive methods. Moreover, Shabaab is a passing fad — they will go the way fireflies go.”

He pauses, wipes his mouth, sips his water, and then goes on. “What is my attitude toward suicide bombing? Here is the problem. No priest is prepared to pay the ultimate price for Islam through self-sacrifice himself. Nor do any of them put forward their own children to die for the cause for which they claim to be fighting; only other people’s sons and brothers. They are a dishonest lot, and I do not approve of dishonest behavior.”

Kala-Saar pours more water into his glass and takes another mouthful of food before continuing. He says, “I am full of admiration for the young, because they perform sacrifice on a scale till now unknown in our part of the world. Think of Japan, of the Amhara ethnic group in Ethiopia. Two peoples with traditions in which sacrificing one’s life to cause heavy damage to enemy combatants has a noble history: kamikaze pilots flying small aircraft laden with fuel, explosives, and bombs into the Allied ships; the battle of Adwa, in Ethiopia, where barefoot Takla Haymanot of Gojjam fought against the Italian invaders, who were better equipped than the Abyssinians. We in Somalia have never had a tradition of putting our lives on the line for our nation. Thomas Jefferson is worth quoting here: ‘the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.’”

“So you approve of Shabaab?” asks Warsame.

“I do not approve of Shabaab’s actions. They are not fighting for liberty but to gain power. They are not fighting for the national interest; they are fighting for sectional interest, insofar as they are fighting on behalf of a specific segment of Somali society, the radical fringe.”

Ahl says, “What about fighting for Islam?”

Kala-Saar says, “Islam is under no threat. Nor do I think that stoning a thirteen-year-old accused of adultery and then sparing her rapist constitutes preserving the good name of Islam. Rather, it denigrates the reputation of the faith. Do you think that imposing a type of veil indigenous to other societies on Somali women is a good thing? Or banning music, disallowing sports on TV, stopping veiled women in the street on their way home or to the market and checking if they are or aren’t wearing bras?”

The conversation continues along these lines, with Kala-Saar pontificating on various aspects of the same topics, or subjects related to them.

Then they hear Faai shouting from the kitchen to Xalan, “Please come and listen to this.” Xalan joins Faai and then returns, slack-jawed.

“What’s happened?” Ahl asks.

Xalan replies, “A suicide bomber has blown himself up in the center of Bosaso, killing at least ten people and injuring several more.”

Ahl sucks in his breath, his skin loses its natural color and he sits still, unmoving. Kala-Saar, too, falls silent, seemingly shamefaced, as though he has been the cause of such terrible things. Ahl stands up and moves to the window.

His mobile phone rings. It brings him unexpected news, far beyond his expectations, news he thinks he can’t cope with, his heart nearly bursting out of his chest. The phone nearly drops out of his hands. He pulls himself together to listen.

Xalan, Warsame, and Kala-Saar watch him in silence as he asks, “Wh25ere are you now?” He waits for an answer and then says, “Shall I come and get you from where you are, right now?” Then, the mobile phone almost slipping out of his hands, “If you know how to get to where I am, then I will wait.” A pause. “I, too, my dearest, I am so pleased to hear your voice, so pleased to know that you are alive and well, and that I’ll see you shortly.” Then just before disconnecting, he adds, “Yes, of course I love you, too, my darling.”

They all look in his direction, waiting to hear his news in full. But Ahl has difficulty speaking, not only because he cannot convince himself that he has just talked to Taxliil, but also because he doesn’t wish to share the good news with Kala-Saar. He doesn’t want to hear a man who, delighting in his superb turns of phrase, will embark on the exercise of distinguishing between a suicide bomber, whom he will cast in the vanguard of selfless young Somalis setting a new revolutionary trend, and Taxliil, a milksop unable or unwilling to bring his martyrdom to completion.

“Was that Taxliil?” Xalan asks.

By way of answer, Ahl’s cheeks flow with tears that gather momentum as they pour down. He wishes he had the luxury of privacy so that he could cry his heart out with joy, alone. Just as in Somalia’s civil war, the intimate affairs of this nation are fodder for gossip, shock, amazement, and newspaper headlines elsewhere, but not to the victims of the strife.

Xalan helps Ahl to his seat before his knees collapse from under him, his face and cheeks wet with tears, making him look like a child who has clumsily painted his own face. Then Xalan realizes something else: that Ahl’s trousers are soaked. Has he wet himself? When? In the name of heavens, what is happening to this poor man?

Xalan, standing behind Ahl, motions to Warsame and Kala-Saar to leave the room. Then she, too, departs and joins them in the living room.