Crossbones

25

MALIK, FOR ONCE, IS UNABLE TO CONCENTRATE ON LISTENING TO the radio at news time; he has other worries on his mind. Showered and shaved, his mobile phone by his side, he is waiting for a confirmation call from Qasiir to inform him that he is on his way, bringing along the man with information about Somalis with foreign passports at the Kenyan border. But when the phone comes to life, it is Ahl, excitedly informing him that Taxliil has been in touch.

“When?” Malik asks.

“He rang me yesterday, late afternoon.”

Malik takes an apprehensive glance at his watch, wishing Ahl hadn’t called this instant, because he doesn’t have time to talk for long. Why didn’t he call right away or even late last night to let him know he had heard from Taxliil? But in their near falling-out a few days ago, Ahl accused him of caring more about his work than about anyone, so he treads with caution — let Qasiir wait, he thinks. Then he chides, as genially as he can, “You kept that secret to yourself, didn’t you?”

Ahl replies, “I didn’t keep it a secret intentionally. He called, saying that he would come along shortly, and then didn’t do so. I’ve been waiting to hear from him again since then. No idea if he has changed his mind or if something has happened to him between the time he rang and now. I didn’t sleep the entire night.”

“If he rang you on your mobile, then you must have his number,” Malik reasons. “Did you try it?”

“The readout on my phone said ‘number withheld,’” Ahl explains. “I pressed the redial button but it gave me a busy signal.”

“So what are you doing now?”

“Waiting,” says Ahl. “What other choice do I have?”

“Ring Fidno and No-Name, see if they have news of him. It sounds like they’ve played a hand in his release from Shabaab’s clutches,” Malik says.

“No answer from either; their lines busy as well.”

“I wish I could assist,” Malik says.

Ahl says, “I am sure you would if you could.”

“Can I call you later, then?” says Malik.

“I’ll call you myself if I hear anything.”

But just as Malik is ready to hang up, Ahl asks, “What would you do if you were in my place?” He sounds vulnerable, desperate not to end the conversation.

“I’d wait, just like you are doing.”

“What else would you do?”

Malik reflects that he wouldn’t do well as a Good Samaritan, or even as the manager of a help hotline. He has no idea how to take in hand a situation that has gone uncontrollably wrong. He hopes that his failure at rescuing Ahl from his despair won’t lead his brother to do something rash.

“What do Xalan and Warsame suggest?”

“That I wait until he contacts me,” Ahl says.

“Where are they now? Can I talk to them?”

“They are in their room, sleeping.”

Malik says, “Why don’t you do as they suggest, sleep off your exhaustion, with the phone by your side, so you can answer it immediately if he rings. Meanwhile, I will think of something and call you.”

“Maybe that’s what I’ll do,” Ahl says. “Sleep.”

“Talk to you later, then.”

Malik, sighing, has barely put down his phone on the worktable when it rings. Qasiir is on the line. “Uncle Liibaan and I are down at the parking lot, wondering if you are ready for us to join you.”

Malik pauses, momentarily confused, then remembers that Liibaan is a former army colleague of Dajaal’s, hence the term uncle. “Please come up,” he says, and he unlocks the plate over the apartment door to welcome them.

Qasiir is the first to walk in, and he and Malik exchange a hurried greeting. Then both make room for a large man with a round belly, which he pushes ahead of himself, his feet in rubber flip-flops too small to bear his weight, the hair on his chin as sparse as the beard of a sixteen-year-old boy, and with eyes that squint into narrow slits as he concentrates.

As Malik goes off, saying, “I’ll make tea,” Qasiir assumes the role of a host and leads Liibaan into the living room, where they sit. Once the water is boiling, Malik joins them. He observes that Liibaan is comfortable enough to take off his flip-flops, and that the man’s toenails are perilous as weapons — long, with jagged ends.

“I am glad to meet you, Liibaan.”

Liibaan is silent, then he says, “Dajaal’s murder saddens me so. He was very dear to me — like a brother. He was my senior in age as well as in rank. A serious, honest man, and those of us who knew him admired him; we all adored him. May God bless his soul!”

Malik contributes to the chorus of “Amen!”

Then the kettle wails, and Malik gets up, relieved to have gotten that part of the conversation out of the way. He asks his guest how he likes his tea.

“Four sugars and lots of milk,” Liibaan says.

Malik says to Qasiir, “Come into the kitchen with me for a moment, please. I would like you to do something for me.”

Malik sets out cups, saucers, biscuits, and a few other nibbles. Then he puts two tea bags in the teapot and pours in the water. Qasiir watches and waits in silence, noticing that Malik has set places for only two.

“I would like to conduct the interview alone,” Malik says.

Qasiir says, “But of course.”

Malik goes into the workroom, leaving Qasiir in the kitchen, and returns with his recording gadgets. “Give us an hour and a half.”

“Okay,” Qasiir says. “I’ll see you in an hour and a half, unless I hear from you before then.” He goes to take leave of Uncle Liibaan.

Liibaan, obliging Malik, gives a brief biography of himself. He says, “I was born in Jalalaqsi and brought up in Belet-Weyne, Hiiran, but schooled in Mogadiscio until my second-year secondary, when I was recruited into the National Army as a noncommissioned officer. A year later, I went to Odessa, where I trained, specializing in the tank division and taking a diploma. I returned as a second lieutenant, and soon after was sent to fight in the Ogaden War — Dajaal was my commanding officer. I served in the army until the collapse of the state structures and, having no other choice, went into the import and export business with former army colleagues, some of whom made off with money stashed away when they looted the Central Bank of Somalia. Now I run a fleet of buses on behalf of a company with large holdings, and organize the security. That is how I make my living, in the field of security.”

Malik asks, “What does organizing security for a fleet of buses entail?”

“I have three dozen youths in my employ,” Liibaan says, “and I put them on the buses, three to four each, as armed escorts.”

“Do you go on the buses yourself sometimes?”

He replies, “Lately, I’ve been based in a village on the border crossing between Kenya and Somalia. It made business sense to move as soon as the men from the Courts fled. You see, I figured out that a large number of people, many of them foreigners — and these included Somalis with other nationalities — would be fleeing in the direction of the Kenyan border, aware that Somalia’s border with Ethiopia was closed, thanks to the invasion.”

“I presume you know how things are done at the border crossing,” Malik says, “since you go back and forth yourself. I presume, as a businessman, you know some of the Kenyan immigration officers, do you?”

“I do.”

“What are they like? How do they treat you?”

A knowing spark enters his eyes, as Liibaan answers, “They are easy to get along with if you are ready to part with a pocketful of cash. Then you are an instant success, their best friend, and you can come and go, no questions asked.”

“Is it true that they are prone to extracting money from every Somali who presents himself at a border post, whether the Somali has the right documents or not?” Malik asks.

“The salaries of the Kenyan immigration officers are low, and you can understand their greed, if not forgive it,” Liibaan says. “Besides, the Kenyans know that Somalis are by nature impatient, and do not mind paying what it takes to make their immigration problems disappear.”

Malik asks Liibaan to guide him through what occurs.

“The Kenyans instruct all travelers wishing to enter Kenya to form four groups: travelers with Somali passports are told to return for the process another day; they will be told when. It was suggested that they remain on the Somali side of the border. Somalis with Kenyan nationality are to form their own line: they are dealt with right away. Somalis with foreign passports wait in their own line, as do all non-Somalis.”

“Tell me about the Somalis with foreign passports,” Malik says. “How are they processed?”

“These are made to fill out entry forms in triplicate,” Liibaan says. “They hand these in with their passports, and they stand in line for a very long time in the sun, waiting first for their papers to be processed and then to be interviewed and have their fingerprints taken. With that exercise ended, they are taken to yet another cubicle to answer the same questions from three different officers, a Kenyan in uniform, and — according to one of the men who was refused entry, judging by their accents — an American and a Brit.”

“Any idea what questions are asked?”

“From what this man told me, each officer asks a question relevant to his vantage point, and the same questions are repeated, formulated differently. Mostly about terrorism, the men from the Courts, foreign jihadis in the country, questions about funding and where it derives from — plus of course personal questions specifically geared for each traveler.”

“Why was that man sent back?”

Liibaan replies, “His Dutch passport had expired six months earlier, and he couldn’t remember the name of the apartment block in Amsterdam where he claimed to have lived before coming to Somalia.”

“Any other unusual incidents you can recall?”

“I recall a man called Robleh talking himself into trouble earlier in the day from what a number of travelers informed me,” Liibaan says. “I heard the initial part of his troubles from a reliable source, one of the drivers of the bus; and the second segment describing his troubles from the Dutch passport — carrying Somali turned back from Kenya.”

“Do you know his other names?”

“His full name is Hassan Ali Robleh or maybe Hussein; I don’t know and couldn’t care less. And according to Dajaal, whom he made anxious, he upset Cambara and Bile. He’s a nasty piece of work.”

“What did he do to get himself into trouble?”

“On the way to the Kenya-Somalia border crossing, he spoke in defense of the Courts’ action and described everyone who disagreed with him as traitors to Islam.”

“He lived on welfare in Canada. Does anyone know why he claimed to be performing for the Courts in North America?” Malik asked.

“He was a scout for them.”

“What does that mean, a scout?”

“He helped recruit young Canadians into Shabaab.”

“What became of him?”

“The other Somalis on the bus who were with him and were also interviewed by the foreign officers but not detained fingered Robleh. They reported that he’d been bragging about being a scout for Shabaab. In the end, his bragging got him a ticket to Guantánamo. It’s said that’s where he still is.”

The interview done, Qasiir comes and drives Liibaan home, agreeing to come back for Malik, to take him to Bakhaaraha Market.

Not a day passes now without news of armed confrontation between the insurgents and the FedForces, that is to say the interim government’s forces, aided by the Ethiopians, shelling each other’s positions. According to Qasiir, the market is heavily involved in selling and hiding weapons, and providing intelligence to the insurgency.

While he waits for Qasiir, Malik whips up a quick meal of spaghetti and tomato sauce, just in case Qasiir wants to eat something. Himself, he would like a salad, only he has no fresh lettuce. He packs his things, ready to be moved into the annex. But he doesn’t think it wise to put his packed suitcase, computer, and cash in the trunk of the car if they are going to the Bakhaaraha, so he decides to leave his belongings in the apartment and to return for them. Then he telephones Cambara to alert her of what he is doing. After which he rings Ahl, who tells him, “No news.”

When Qasiir returns, Malik serves him the spaghetti and asks him for further background on the current role of the market in the insurgency.

Qasiir takes a long time chewing a mouthful of spaghetti, then swallows noisily and replies, “There are a number of reasons why the Bakhaaraha are aiding the insurgency. You see, no businessman will show eagerness in welcoming a government that is bound to levy tax on his business. They would rather there was no government; they would rather not pay tax. The second reason is they do not like the interim president, who hails from Puntland, and whom they accuse not only of having brought along thousands of trained soldiers from the autonomous state, but also of having invited the Ethiopians to invade.”

On the way to the market complex, they come upon more devastation, houses destroyed by recent bombing and families sitting out in the open or under the shade trees still standing in the rubble. Qasiir explains to Malik that many of the homeowners prefer the inconvenience of slumming it near their properties to moving out to the camps, where the homeless and the internally displaced are congregated.

They come across large groups of people moving in the opposite direction, as though they’ve seen enough of whatever it is they have seen. Malik reflects that in the old dispensation, when the Courts were in charge, the city was on the face of it peaceful. Now they drive through agitated movements: of men and women running away from something and looking back, checking to see if the trouble they are fleeing is pursuing them. They discern excitement, fear, and anger everywhere they look. Some of them shout excitedly at each other, heatedly exchanging views.

“Do you want us to stop?” Qasiir asks, glancing at him.

Malik shakes his head and they continue. Soon the smell of burning tires reaches them. A battery of youths and robed men charged with the energy of foment raise their fists and chant, “Down with Ethiopia!” Some shout, “Down with the invading Christians!” and yet others cry, “Long live the martyrs of the faith!” Qasiir turns into a broad dirt road and, just as he finds a parking spot, nearly runs over a man crossing the road with feverish intent. Malik says he wishes he had brought a camera, and then Qasiir pulls out his phone and, before Malik can say anything, starts to take photographs of youths nearby who are setting fire to a crudely assembled effigy of the Ethiopian premier. He and Qasiir walk farther and farther into the heart of the chaos, watching the goings-on with rabid interest. Despite the promise he made to his wife not to be pulled into the abyss, Malik without regret moves in deeper, excited to ferret about in other people’s heightened emotions; to eavesdrop on their sorrows; to listen in on their conversations and intrude on their private and public personae. After all, when one is in a mob, one is private in a public space.

Qasiir says, “For them, it is like theater and what they consider to be a bit of fun. It’s part of the political show, orchestrated to the smallest detail by men sympathetic to the insurgents and against the TFG. The idea is to humiliate the interim government.”

“Did you participate in the debasing of the corpse of the dead Marine in 1993, Qasiir?” Malik asks.

Qasiir doesn’t answer at first.

Malik says, “I know that the chopper nearly killed your younger sister and rendered her mute and forever traumatized. But did you take part in that heinous act of self-humiliation?”

Finally Qasiir says, “Grandpa Dajaal wouldn’t allow me to join them.”

“Would you have joined your mates if he hadn’t?”

“Yes,” says Qasiir. “I would have joined my mates if he hadn’t.”

“I would have expected better of you,” Malik says.

“The way it was put to us at the time, it was all part of a political show of solidarity to the general, an integral part of a performance. Everything pre-rehearsed, taking into account every possible detail,” Qasiir explains, and then after a pause, adds, “I was young, naive.”

“I’ve been to many of these pre-arranged demonstrations in Pakistan, in India, and in Afghanistan,” Malik says. “Initially, they all appear so real. My feeling is that the performance we’ve just seen had a rehearsed quality to it. Although that doesn’t stop many foreign journalists from being taken for a ride.”

“Like hired mourners, wailing,” observes Qasiir.

“I suppose nothing is free,” Malik says.

He recalls the names of giants in his field, journalists and authors who pried into the deeper horrors of the universe, and who returned with all kinds of spoil. He hopes to write an article about staring into the raw truths of rage. The further he goes into the inner sanctums of the market complex, forbidden to him until then by virtue of his outsider status, the more his heart sickens, though. Qasiir, with Malik following behind, is now exchanging high fives with a mate of his who fought alongside him, now giving the thumbs-up to a former fellow militiaman who is making sure that the demonstration doesn’t get out of hand and that the disorder is kept to a minimum.

Malik chokes on the smoke billowing from the effigies and other burning debris. Then he and Qasiir focus their interest on a clutch of youths in a circle clapping their hands, dancing and chanting to a chorus of protestations with the interchangeable terms — Ethiopia, America, Christians, infidels, apostates, traitors — occurring in a discontinuous song. As Qasiir takes pictures of the youths who pose for him, the atmosphere festive, the mood buoyant, Malik realizes with shock that they are stamping on a corpse in uniform.

For Malik, this marks the moment in a people’s history when sectarian rage may be portrayed as national panic. Malik thinks that a cross-section of Somalis have suspended their full membership in the human race because their behavior is unacceptable: one does not debase the dead. Nor, if one wishes to preserve the dignity of one’s humanity, does one raze a house of worship to the ground, desecrate cemeteries, drag a corpse, or kick it while dancing around it. One can understand the rage that inspires a certain section of the populace to behave this way, a rage resulting from the deaths and the humiliation suffered at the hands of the Ethiopians. However, Malik condemns their conduct, because it breaks with Somali as well as Muslim tradition and departs from the norms of civilized behavior.

Too embarrassed to admit to his own fear, he walks away, sorry for the Ethiopian, killed in a war in a country about which he probably remained ignorant until the moment of his death. He feels sorry, too, for the Somali youths kicking the dead Ethiopian, an ill-educated, ill-informed lot, as unfamiliar with the concept of respect for the dead as they are with Islam. Blame it on decades of civil war, in which these youths haven’t gone to schools, haven’t lived in homes where there is the semblance of harmony and functionality. Blame it, too, on the current Somali political class, who are equally ill educated and equally self-centered, and who behave inhumanely toward others. Malik’s sickened heart sicker than ever, he feels as if he is complicit in these terrible doings, because he cannot find a way to stop them.

Just before they leave the Bakhaaraha, there is a heavy exchange of gunfire, RPG rounds from the general direction of the presidential villa falling within a hundred yards from where Qasiir parked the car. The geography of the Bakhaaraha and the casbah make sense only to a native, he thinks. A stranger wouldn’t know which alleys end in dead ends and which would lead them to safety.

They get into the car and miraculously find their way through the back streets and onto one of the city’s arteries.

Malik’s phone rings. Fee-Jigan is on the line, informing him that earlier, maybe two and a half hours ago, a radio journalist, whose name Malik recognizes from his impressive commentaries on HornAfrik, has been shot inside the Bakhaaraha.

“What was he doing when he was killed?” Malik asks.

“He was interviewing an insurgent.”

“Where are you now?”

Fee-Jigan says he is on his way to join the funeral cortege, which is departing in half an hour from in front of Bank Tewfik. He asks Malik to put Qasiir on so that he can know how to get there.

Malik is the first to spot the cortege, and Qasiir pulls up at the rear. Malik then rings Fee-Jigan, who eventually joins them, and they stand beside the car, chatting. Other journalists make their appearance, and Fee-Jigan introduces them to Malik. He recognizes the names of the authors of some of the pieces he has read. Not one of the articles impressed him, he remembers, either because they lacked depth or because the author hadn’t done sufficient background research before committing to a point of view. It is apparent that a number of the reporters have had no training, at least not enough to be taken seriously. Even so, he has remained in awe of their courage, their indomitable behavior.

They tell Malik more about the killing, which occurred in the Bakhaaraha market complex. Shire, the deceased journalist, was waiting for his interviewee, a top insurgent, in the back room of the computer shop. Known for his lack of fear and his outspokenness, Shire put his name to his editorials even when he knew they would upset all parties to the conflict. He had often spoken of his “foretold” death at the hands of assassins, although he couldn’t predict, and didn’t seem to care, whether the Ethiopians or the insurgents would get him first.

He was struck by balaclava-wearing men in the shop’s back room, which was adjacent to the manager’s cubicle. Three men gained access to the room, where he was waiting for the interview, and one of them shot him, using a silencer. “They emerged, waved salaam to the manager and the staff, and departed, having accomplished their mission,” Fee-Jigan says.

“Who found the corpse?”

“The young tea boy, delivering tea to the room.”

Malik thinks, What a sad way to die!

“That’s the story,” Fee-Jigan says, his eyebrows raised. His expression seems to suggest that there is something not right here.

“And what explanations do the manager and the staff of the shop proffer so far?” asks Malik. He thinks this must have been an inside job, and vaguely recalls an incident in Afghanistan, when a warlord was killed by Arab men posing as journalists.

Fee-Jigan replies, “Everyone in the shop claims to have been in the dark about the arrangements, because Shire had insisted that his interviewee and his escorts, who would come into the shop wearing balaclavas, be granted entry to the room in the back, where he would be waiting.”

“Where is the corpse now?” Malik asks.

“At a mosque near his home.”

“Are we going to the mosque or his home?”

“First the mosque, then the cemetery.”

It takes the convoy of vehicles a long time to turn into a procession and get into a proper line. Malik thinks that someone with authority, in a uniform, like a traffic cop, is needed to clear the way if twenty or so cars wish to form an orderly file in a city enjoying peace. Organizing a column of cars into a well-ordered cavalcade during a civil war, however, is an impossible task.

But eventually they are under way, and Malik, while making no direct reference to their last encounter in Ma-Gabadeh’s company, asks how the book Fee-Jigan has been writing is coming along.

Fee-Jigan says, “I’ve put it on a back burner.”

“So what are you working on at present?”

“I’ve been working on matters closer to home.”

“Such as what?”

“I’ve been writing pieces of great topical interest in the international media,” says Fee-Jigan. “There is nothing more important these days than the targeting and killing of journalists, one dead every two days.”

“Who do you think is behind the killings?”

Fee-Jigan seems unduly worried about Qasiir, whom he stares at. Malik assures him that Qasiir is trustworthy not by speaking but by nodding his head in Qasiir’s direction.

Fee-Jigan says, “There are freelancing fifth columnists comprising former senior army officers, many of whom are allied to the Courts. These do the killings.”

“But why would they kill Shire, who, from what I understand, was interviewing an insurgent presumably sympathetic to the Courts?”

“They kill to confuse the issue.”

Malik can’t follow his logic. He asks, “What issue?”

“Shire favored the truth,” Fee-Jigan says. “He dared speak his mind, unafraid. At times, his hard-hitting commentaries upset Shabaab and their allies. The freelancing fifth columnists do anyone’s dirty work as long as it confuses the issue.”

Malik appreciates that Qasiir is doing what he can under confusing circumstances to make sure they are not left far behind, now slowing down, now going fast, and now communicating with a couple of the drivers with whom he exchanged mobile numbers before the convoy set off. They’ll keep in touch in the event of a problem. When they get to the mosque and discover they are late for the funeral service, there is disagreement over where to go, some suggesting they head for Shire’s family home, from which the bier will be carried on foot to the cemetery, a kilometer and a half away, others insisting they drive straight to the grave site and wait there. Malik concurs with Fee-Jigan that it is best to go to the family home and to help carry the bier.

They arrive in time to witness the bier already being carried out of the house. The street fills up with a crowd of well-wishers, passersby stopping to say, “Allahu akbar,” and the entire place reverberating with brief prayers of supplication addressed to the Almighty. Everyone hereabouts cuts a forlorn figure, head down in sorrow, mourning for the untimely death of a man who did no one harm and was loved by many.

The pace of the procession is quick, and a number of the journalists who arrived at the same time as Malik hurry to catch up with the coffin and help carry it, even briefly. In Islam, burial is quick, in hope that the dead will arrive at his resting place in a more contented state, with Allah’s blessing.

Malik finds himself for the first and only time in his life carrying the bier of someone he didn’t even know, and moved to be participating in the ritual. He gives his place over to Fee-Jigan, who in turns passes it to Qasiir, until they reach the edge of the waiting grave.

Just then Malik’s mobile, which is in vibrate mode, makes a purring sound in the top of his shirt pocket. He checks most discreetly at the first opportunity, having stepped out of everybody’s way. It’s a text from Ahl. “Taxliil here. All well, considering. Talk when you can.”

Malik recalls drafting a text message to Ahl, but not whether he sent it before the improvised roadside device struck the van he was traveling in. He remembers he’d been with others on their way back from the funeral of a journalist. Now, half-unconscious and lying on his side, in pain, he composes more text messages in his head: Talk of the walking wounded! But he can’t press the send button. One needs hands to write a message, and Malik can’t feel his hands. This does not stop him from adding a PS: Imagine the injured working through much pain, the wounded autographing the death warrants with a great flourish.

It is curious, he thinks, that he has not made personal acquaintance with an improvised explosive device until now.

In Somalia, IEDs did not figure much among the signatures of any of the armed factions in the Somali conflict until the Ethiopians arrived. Before, one would hear of two men on a motorbike or two or three on foot and in balaclavas, armed with pistols, hiding around a curve in the road as they waited for their victims to come out of a mosque or out of a car. The killers would ride away on their bike or they would run off, unidentified. Of late, however, roadside bombing has become the insurgents’ favorite mode of operation. They study the movements of their victims and plant custom-made, pre-designed explosive devices accordingly, to pick off by remote control a government official traveling by car or an Ethiopian battalion decamping from one base to another, or journalists covering a momentous event.

Malik drafts in his head yet another text message to Ahl, informing his brother that he is now a casualty of the device, but, thank God, he is still alive. In fact, he can hear the explosion replaying in his memory, he can see the smoke it generated, he can smell the powder it emitted and he can feel in his own body the demolition of the device. He is bruised here and there and has suffered a concussion, but he senses he is regaining his ability to move some of his limbs. He moves a leg, as if to prove it to himself. Alas, the leg won’t obey his command. What about his arm? His arm is more obliging, maybe because it is free from other obstructions, unlike the leg, which is bent under his body. It is in his head that the concussion has been concentrated. His neck is in some sort of a twist, and the back of his head is wet, but he cannot tell if it is blood or water that someone has spilled. He bends his knees some more and then stretches his leg, despite the impediment.

Then he opens his eyes, only to close them.

The device that blew up the car carrying Malik and his fellow journalists on the way back from Shire’s funeral claimed the lives of three of them. Malik had chosen to ride with the other journalists instead of driving alone with Qasiir. As he replays the explosion in his memory, he is uncertain if one or two of the tires of the twelve-seater van in which they were traveling had burst, or if it had been preceded by a man on motorbike shooting at them. Anyhow, instead of the vehicle collapsing in on itself like a punctured ball, Malik sensed the minivan lifting off the ground, just as one of the journalists, now dead, was describing Shabaab as “men short on reasoning, on political cunning, and who are notorious for their doublespeak.” Everyone, including the driver, also now dead, put in his word until the fragmentation grenade insinuated itself into the clamor and terminated their lively debate in instant darkness.

Even as his head hit the seat in front of him, Malik resisted dropping into the gaping dimness, remembering Amran’s words—“I do not want to raise an orphan.” His brief daze was replaced by a scary silence, and then he heard someone close by moaning in agony, and someone else pleading for help, saying, “I am hurt; very badly hurt.” Then a sound like a goat being slaughtered.

His concussion is mild, his memory not affected; his bodily and mental reflexes are all in relatively good order. But like a newborn baby, or a dead person just interred, he is not all there. He is sufficiently alert to remember the unsubstantiated claim among Somalis that soon after interment, the dead hear everything, can even recognize the voices of the relatives and friends present at their burial. Malik is alive, even if he is not all there. He follows the protocol a person follows after a concussion; he asks himself simple questions: his own name, his wife’s name, his brother’s name, his date of birth, and where in the world he is now. He becomes both the asker and respondent. Only when he passes the test does he reopen his eyes. A crowd has gathered around the vehicle, some helping, some just gawking.

He has on his forehead a bump as round and big as a golf ball. His chest aches; there is someone else’s blood on his clothes. Somewhere just above his groin, there are more traces of blood. He feels around and finds a fragment of glass through the rent in his trousers.

He hears Qasiir asking, “Can you hear me, Malik?” Then he feels someone hauling him out of the van the way one would heft a sleeping child out of a car.

“I am all right,” he says.

“Here, take my hand,” Qasiir says.

Malik does so and asks, “How about the others?”

Only when they are outside the vehicle does he see why it had taken so long for Qasiir to get to him: the dead and wounded were in Malik’s way. Qasiir offers to take the wounded to hospital, and with a mosque being close by, a number of bystanders improvise coffins out of sheets and place the corpses in them to carry. Malik knows there is no point telephoning for ambulances, because they are seldom available in a city in which there are more devices blowing up than there are ambulances. No point either in taking the dead to the hospitals or bothering about postmortems; they will be buried before nightfall.

By the time Qasiir has wedged him into the back of the sedan car with two of his wounded colleagues on either side of him and the head of a third on his lap, Malik realizes that he has his responsibility cut out for him. It has fallen to him to tell the world what has occurred, how these journalists died serving the cause of their profession. Is he capable of meeting the challenge? Does he have the mettle to mourn them openly, mention names, point fingers at the culprits? In his head he drafts an obituary of “the unappreciated journalist” on the move; no time to find a desk, but he begins to debrief one of the wounded journalists who is in a fit state to answer his questions.

A twinge of regret scratches inside Malik’s head, squeakily reminding him that he hasn’t yet published his piece about Dajaal’s murder. Then a portal of sorrow opens in the active side of his brain, and he worries that he, too, may die before he is able to write about the mobs of youth abandoning themselves to madness — and society looking on and doing nothing to stop them.

Malik and the wounded journalists are in luck. Qasiir has had the presence of mind to telephone Cambara and Bile, and Cambara has provided Qasiir with the names of doctors she knows at Medina Hospital, and mobile numbers for four medics in two of the private clinics, adding that she will try and reach them herself. Now Cambara and Bile ring Qasiir back with the message that they have reached one of the medics. He has reserved rooms in the intensive-care unit, and he and the nursing staff will be waiting for them.

And indeed they are. As the wounded are wheeled straight into surgery, Malik fills out the paperwork. He looks for the spot to provide his credit card information but learns that the clinic does not have the facility to process one. Still, he vows that he will pay if no one else does, and the administrator takes his word for it.

Now the invasive odor of chloroform sticks to his nostrils, reminding him of how close he has been to death. When the sweet smell almost knocks him out, he forces himself to sit up. He wishes he could move around, go outside for some fresh air. But he stays where he is, on a smelly, improvised camp bed with bloodstains on it. He feels a little squeamish and claustrophobic and goes out for a bit of fresh air and finds a bench in a small, untended garden. He sits down, sighing with relief.

A man approaches and asks if he may share the bench with him to rest his tired body. Malik indicates that he may. His phone rings and his editor at the daily paper is on the line, suggesting that he write a short piece about the events in Mogadiscio to go into the paper today. Malik feels his pockets, which are empty of pens and pencils. He asks the stranger if he has something with which to write. The man lends him a pencil. Malik moves a step away from the man, who seems to be eavesdropping on his conversation, to take notes on what the editor is looking for. After agreeing that he will file a story within several hours, he hangs up and returns the pencil to its owner, with thanks.

The stranger then introduces himself as Hilowleh, speaking his name in a way that makes Malik wonder if he ought to know it. His face stirs the vaguest of memories. Still, Malik can’t decide if they have met before, or when or where, maybe because his brain is in too much disarray and incapable of connecting the available dots and dashes. The man’s long eyelashes, his two-day-old stubble, and his ragged appearance are of no help. There is misapprehension in the man’s demeanor, suggesting that talking to him is wrong. Is he embarrassed, and if so, why? Is there something weighing on the man’s mind that he wishes to unload?

The man says, “I thought you were Malik.”

Malik recalls watching Edward Albee’s play The Zoo Story, in which a man sits next to another on a park bench in New York. The two men talk, and their talk leads one of them to murder the other. Anyhow, what does this man want?

“What if I were Malik?” he asks.

The stranger takes a small piece of paper out of his pocket, writes down a mobile number, gives it to Malik, and says, “Call me when you have a moment.” Then he departs, without another look or word.

Malik roots in the repertoire of memories at his disposal for the right kind of reaction, but he cannot come up with a suitable one. He holds the piece of paper as if it were on fire and about to burn his fingers, and scampers after the man. He asks, “Who are you? Where have we met?”

“I was in the minivan,” Hilowleh says. “My nephew is one of the three wounded journalists for whom you’ve offered to pay. I own a printing press, one of the largest in the city, which is why I know many of the journalists. I want first of all to thank you for your kindness.”

Malik nods and waits for more.

“That is going to be a hefty bill and I am offering to share it with you, and so will others, when the clinic gets round to submitting it,” Hilowleh says. “But yours is a generous gesture and it behooves us to acknowledge it, with thanks.”

“I’m sure you wish to say something else besides thanking me for a bill that hasn’t been submitted and which I haven’t yet settled,” Malik says.

Hilowleh nods and then says, “I do.”

Malik thinks that Hilowleh holds his self-doubts in check the way a cardplayer with a winning hand delays revealing it.

Finally, Hilowleh says, “I happen to be privy to a few facts. I hear a lot, because I am in the printing business and my nephew has been confiding in me.”

Malik feels unable to set sail in such a fog, so he waits for Hilowleh to state his real business. “What are you telling me?”

Hilowleh says, “Are you here for long?”

“I am here until I’ve paid the bill, for sure.”

“I meant, are you in the country for long?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I would leave soonest if I were you.”

With these new deaths, Malik is now of the same mind: he is planning to leave as soon as he has done a few more interviews.

“From what I hear you’re lucky to be alive,” Hilowleh affirms. “For what it is worth, it is now agreed that Gumaad has all along been the snake trailing the length of his betrayals, enviously causing their deaths, because he couldn’t produce a single line good enough to be published. The advice from me is this: leave quickly, quit this accursed country while you can.”

Not awaiting his reaction, Hilowleh walks off.

Qasiir finds Malik brooding. He has the surgeon with him. The surgeon informs Malik that the three injured journalists are now out of danger. They are, however, still under sedation in the intensive-care unit. Then the surgeon gives him a card, which has on it his full name, a home phone number, and a mobile one.

The surgeon says to Malik, “I mean what I wrote in the message on the back, thinking I might not see you. Please call whenever you want. No hour is late. I am on duty the whole week. Also, don’t worry about paying the bill on a foreign credit card. Hilowleh, an uncle to one of the journalists, has agreed to settle all the charges. So if you are feeling okay yourself, be on your way. And thank you.”

On their way to Cambara and Bile’s, Qasiir informs Malik that on their instructions he has taken Malik’s things to the annex just as he packed them.

“I wish you would have let me know before doing so.”

Qasiir shrugs, as if making light of the matter.

Malik, miffed, says, “As you can see, I’m well enough to decide for myself. Nor am I dead yet. Because when I am dead, it will fall to others, like Cambara and Bile, to do what they please with my personal things.”

“Just following instructions,” Qasiir says.

Malik ascribes his irritability, once he has given it thought, to the fact that he doesn’t wish to speak about his encounter or exchange with Hilowleh to anyone. He hates the “I told you so” posture that others would take if something terrible were to happen to him.

They listen to the news on the car radio: Nine peacekeepers from the Burundi contingent seconded to the African Union AMISOM died when a suicide bomber drove into their compound.

At Cambara and Bile’s, Malik gingerly steps out of the vehicle and stands, with his hand ready to ring the outside bell; but somehow he doesn’t press it. Instead, he sways this way and that, from a combination of pain and exhaustion, his head spinning, the ache in his entire body now returning, his feet feeling as heavy as lead. Qasiir rings the outside bell for him and waits until Cambara joins them. Only then does he go to take Malik’s suitcase and computer to the annex.

Cambara welcomes Malik in and holds him. They walk side by side to the annex. She is too familiar with the slow pace of the invalid, and supports him well. Bile accompanies them, bringing along a pouch with painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs, aiming to have the chance to inspect Malik thoroughly. They invite him to stay in the main house for the night, but Malik won’t hear of it.

“I don’t like the look of that bump on your head,” Bile says. “It is pretty nasty and the swelling hasn’t gone down.”

“Besides, from the look of you, you seem to be running a mild fever,” Cambara says. And to prove it, her cold hand touches his warm head.

Bile sits in the only easy chair in the room, Cambara on the edge of the bed, in which Malik is now lying prone. They ask him questions about the explosion. He gives the details he has already worked on in his head and which he intends to write down, just as is.

Done with his retelling, Malik points Cambara to the bag in which he has kept his soiled things. Then he goes into the bathroom to wash his face and take a look in the mirror at the bump on his forehead. Bile plies him with pills, and when Malik tells him that he is set on working on the short piece he promised his editor, Cambara prepares a couch on which to sleep and a desk on which to write.

Alone at last, Malik writes several versions of the day’s events and then e-mails the short piece — a pity he has no pictures to accompany it. He postpones starting on the longer piece till the next day, but before turning in, exhausted and still in pain, he rings Ahl to let him know what has happened and to ask after Taxliil.

Ahl is eager to talk. Worn out and still in considerable pain, Malik offers to say hello to Taxliil, “just to hear my nephew’s voice after such a long time.”

“Taxliil is in no mood to talk to anyone.”

“Says who?” Malik asks, galled.

“I say it, he says it, does it matter who says it?”

Malik tells himself that, like a contagion affecting them all, there is a lot of nervous tension going around. He is under a great deal of stress, because of the threats Hilowleh has alluded to and, more to the point, the fact that he won’t speak about it to anyone — which in and of itself carries its built-in anxiety; Ahl, because of the uncertainties surrounding Taxliil; Taxliil, because of what he has just been through and the unpredictability of his future safety. Maybe it is best that they do not lose their cool at what has proved to be an ordeal for all of them. He decides that it is time to compromise.

“What will make you happy?”

“Talk to Fidno and his friend,” Ahl says.

Malik asks, “Is No-Name coming along, too?”

“No-Name is not coming,” Ahl says. “Instead, Fidno’s associate, Il-Qayaxan, known among his friends as Isha, is joining you.”

“And where does Isha fit in?” Malik says.

Ahl says, “Just talk to them, please.”

“Where is Fidno now?”

“Both Fidno and Isha are in Mogadiscio waiting for your call,” Ahl says. “Let me give you their respective phone numbers. Please make sure to arrange to see them tomorrow at a place and time of your choosing.”

Malik takes down their phone numbers and hangs up. With the words of Hilowleh echoing in his mind, he calls up Qasiir and requests that he claim to be Malik’s assistant and set up a meeting for him with Fidno and Il-Qayaxan for one in the afternoon tomorrow. “Please call me back after you’ve spoken to them, and I’ll give you the name of the hotel and the room number, too.”

Then Malik does his duty by Amran and calls her, offering her a doctored version of what he’s been through, reducing the number of deaths by a third and distancing himself from their proximity.

He then speaks to Jeebleh, to whom he offers an unedited version of the day’s events.