Crossbones

28

AHL, READY TO DEPART FOR THE AIRPORT, TELEPHONES MALIK TO tell him how things are. Even now, Ahl does not wish to confide in Malik about Taxliil’s erratic moods and behavior — let alone what is going on just now, with him having barricaded himself in the room and refusing to open the door or to communicate with anyone.

Cambara answers instead of Malik anyway. Surprised at first and wondering if he has rung the wrong number, Ahl is about to disconnect the line when she hurriedly gives her name and then says, “You have the right number, but I am afraid Malik won’t be able to answer it.”

Ahl offers to ring again later, and leaves her with his name and the news that he and Taxliil will be off to the airport in a short while. Or so he hopes.

Even so, she doesn’t volunteer much. He wonders if Bile is in a bad way. Then he thinks about Malik’s interview, at just the moment when she says, “I’m sorry to bring you bad news.”

Then he knows it right away. The names Fidno and Isha join forces with his sense of guilt to choke him, rendering him speechless. His tongue feels disabled, his eyes bulge out of his face like those of one having a sudden fit.

“I am sorry, very sorry,” she says.

Between sobs, she confirms almost his worst fears. Malik is in the hospital, in critical condition.

Shocked and mute as he is, he revisits his recent arguments with Malik and Jeebleh. He thinks, At least Malik’s not dead. Malik is the kind not meant to die. He prays one of Malik’s many lives will reclaim him from a hospital bed.

She says, “The car he was in, driving back from his interview, hit another remote-controlled roadside device. Qasiir, who was at the wheel, is dead. Malik is in the intensive-care unit. I am spending the night here by his bedside. We’ve organized a special plane to fly him out to Nairobi in an hour or so. I’ll go with him myself.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“You have your hands full,” she says.

“I meant in terms of footing the bills?”

“That’s taken care of,” she says. “All paid.”

He can’t think of what to say; not even thanks.

She goes on, “I’ve telephoned Jeebleh. He’ll meet our flight.”

“If he is in danger, Cambara, please tell me.”

“He needs a hospital with better facilities than the one here,” she says. “Also Jeebleh will be in Nairobi when we get there.”

“What do the doctors in Mogadiscio say?”

“They are confident he won’t be in danger if he is taken in good time to a Nairobi hospital with more sophisticated facilities,” she assures him. And then she hangs up.

In the silence, Ahl is still for a moment. And then he breaks. He throws his mobile phone against the wall; he screams at the top of his lungs, cursing. Xalan rushes up the staircase and finds him still and silently staring at the phone, as though he has no idea what he has done and why. She follows his gaze and picks up the parts of the phone, scattered by the impact, then puts them back together, pressing the casing until the phone begins to function again. She gives it to him, and he acknowledges her with a nod of his head. She waits, ready to talk, ready to help, as his cheeks grow wet with his tears.

When his phone rings again, he moves away from it, shaking his head, so Xalan answers it, and this is how she learns what has made Ahl suffer a momentary disintegration. She takes him in her arms and the two of them rock together, as though she is helping a colicky baby to fall asleep. And as they rock, she repeats in alternation the two maledictions, “What a dastardly city!” and “What an accursed country!”

At last his features harden. He balls his fingers into a fist and remains standing, motionless, even after Taxliil joins them. Xalan doesn’t tell Taxliil about what has happened to his uncle. She doesn’t dare. One never knows with the young; they might say or do anything.

Of course, in the absence of an explanation, Taxliil misinterprets. Assuming that Ahl is finally showing his anger toward him, he locks himself in his room again and refuses to open the door and talk to Xalan, even after she has told him Malik’s sad news. He stays on in the darkened room, feeling sorry for himself one minute as the surrogate sufferer of other people’s pains, and in the next weighed down with guilt. He says loudly and repeatedly that he wishes he had finished the job in a courageous manner, as Saifullah had done, instead of chickening out at the last instant. He is in a rage, and nothing Xalan says can calm him down.

Warsame is on the phone. He has been in Garowe, the capital of Puntland, and has had a long chat with the deputy president of the region, a former classmate of Xalan’s. The president’s chief of staff has given assurances that the investigation into the explosion in which Saifullah died is still ongoing. Meanwhile, however, the minister of the interior has hinted to Warsame that he and Xalan may at some point be called in to answer questions. Xalan asks if Warsame has spoken to the minister about “the other matter, our young you-know-who.” Yes, says Warsame. “He suggested that we clean up our house fast and make sure we remove all the dirt ensconced in the corners.”

She assures her husband that she is hard at work to get Ahl and Taxliil out of Bosaso, not because they are dirty, but because their own safety depends on it; the longer they wait, the greater the chance that Shabaab will discover where they are.

Then she tells him what she knows about Malik, and everything else that entails.

She points out to him that, unfortunate as the events have been, Malik has been lucky on a number of counts: lucky that the explosion occurred close to Cambara and Bile’s place; lucky that their housekeeper happened to have been on her way home as the device exploded, so that she saw the crowd gathering around the vehicle and abandoned herself to curiosity, not knowing who the victims might be until she got close enough to recognize Malik and Qasiir.

Most fortunate of all: they found a Cessna Sovereign with no cargo or passenger for its return to Nairobi. Not that this made the flight any cheaper for them, but Cambara scraped enough cash together, adding to what Malik had in his bag. With help from some of the onlookers, she eased Malik out of the vehicle, and with Bile’s help, rushed Malik to a ten-bed private hospital after the housekeeper, with the help of bystanders, agreed to carry Qasiir’s corpse to the annex.

Ahl rings Bile for a further update.

Bile says, “I haven’t heard from her yet.”

“I hope everything is well,” Ahl says.

Bile asks, “When do you leave for the airport?”

Ahl doesn’t tell him about Taxliil’s behavior. He says only that the flight is delayed by at least an hour.

“I’ll call you if I hear anything,” Bile says.

“I would appreciate it very much.”

Bile then asks, “How’re things with Taxliil?”

“We are all jittery,” Ahl says.

Ahl sits alone, drinking his third cup of coffee and feeling a sickness for which there is no instant cure. He is in a dilemma. He looks up when Xalan suggests that they look at the passport Taxliil will use to get him to Djibouti, but he shakes his head, resigned to the failure of his schemes. She pours more coffee into his cup.

His phone rings and he answers it. He listens for a minute or two and then puts it on speakerphone, so that Xalan can hear the barrage of accusations Yusur is leveling against him.

“Taxliil says you are scaring him,” she says, “telling him that he may be flown from Djibouti straight to Guantánamo.”

“I’ve said nothing of the sort,” Ahl says.

“I can imagine you doing it,” Yusur says.

“Well, I didn’t.”

“I am his mother and I want him back.”

“But he is my son and I love him,” Ahl says.

She says, “Cut the crap. You know he is not your son, and you’ve never loved him as a father might love a son. And I believe him. I know what you are trying to do. Scare the hell out of him.”

“But Yusur, darling…!”

“Don’t you darling me!”

He doesn’t know what to do or say.

She asks, “Is Xalan anywhere near you?”

“She is.”

“Can I have a word with her?”

Xalan says, “I don’t wish to talk out of line, but let me tell you that you are making a grave mistake accusing Ahl of any wrongdoing. He deserves much more appreciation from you; he deserves gratitude from your son, who is being exceedingly difficult. I suggest that you hang up and call in an hour with an apology, because you don’t know what we are dealing with here.”

Xalan hangs up on Yusur. Then she goes upstairs and tells Taxliil that if he does not come out in half an hour and apologize, his father will take the flight to Djibouti on his own and leave him behind.

When she comes back down, she says to Ahl, “Yusur is out of line. The Yusur I heard just now is not the Yusur I’ve known and loved. When she called me, just before you boarded your flight, she described you as the most pleasant and caring husband any woman could have. So what has gotten into her?”

Ahl says, “Nothing new has gotten into her. This has always been there, a character trait that resurfaces when she is anxious or when she doesn’t have things her way. There are a number of things about Yusur you will never know until you’ve shared the same space with her daily.”

“What’s causing the outburst, though?”

“You see Yusur’s behavior replicated in Taxliil,” Ahl says. “Like mother, like son; sweet one minute, poisonously bitter the next.”

A frisson of doubt descends upon Xalan’s features, darkening her countenance. She is sorry to have born witness to Yusuf’s brazen outburst. But, knowing Yusur, Ahl is certain she will not withdraw her accusations or apologize, even if a chance presents itself. Apology is not a word his wife is familiar with.

Ahl, not liking the extended silence, asks Xalan if she is happy in her marriage.

“I am,” she says. Then, “Actually, I’ve often wondered if one needs to be happy in marriage. Happiness is such an elusive thing. I’ve been married for a good twenty-five years, but I’ve found him loyal, always loyal. Many a Somali husband would’ve walked away after what they did to me. Even my sister turned her back on me. Not my Warsame. He didn’t. That’s pure love.”

Ahl keeps his counsel and remains silent.

“Warsame is very unusual among his peers. He is the butt of their jokes, described as gutless, for not divorcing a wife dirtied by gang rape, and marrying another, younger woman. He is unique, because there are very few Somalis in whose blood loyalty runs.”

Marveling at her courage, he kisses her wrist.

His phone rings: Cambara reporting that they are in Nairobi, stuck in traffic between the airport and the hospital. She promises to telephone him later with the Nairobi clinic number.

When it is time for Ahl to leave for the airport as well, Taxliil is there, flaunting a Lakers cap worn backward, and dark glasses, tennis shoes, no socks, a pair of baggy trousers, and, in place of a belt, a string round his waist. Faai comes out to see them off.

At the airstrip, they remain in the car with Xalan, the air conditioner on, no one talking. Taxliil hasn’t spoken a word since getting into the car.

A man in a police uniform comes up, and he and Xalan exchange family news. He mentions that Warsame has called him from Garowe and has requested that he help. Xalan hands over the two passports. The man ambles away, dragging his boots on the ground and raising a cloud of dust.

Xalan asks Taxliil if he knows who he is, what his new name is in the passport that will take him to Djibouti, and where he is supposed to have been born. Taxliil has no answers to any of these questions, because he hasn’t bothered to open the passport. She asks if he prefers to stay behind, in Bosaso. He shakes his head no. She asks him why not? He has nothing to say to her.

Meanwhile, the officer in uniform returns with both passports duly stamped and hands them over to Xalan, who in exchange gives him a fat envelope stuffed with Somali shillings. He toddles away quickly, and Xalan hands back the passports, giving Ahl his, and giving to Taxliil a Somali passport with an exit visa. But Taxliil is not interested in learning his new name or birthplace, even though she spells it out for him. Nothing of what she does and nothing that she says are of interest to him. Finally she puts the passport into Ahl’s dependable hands. He’ll keep it with his own passport until they get to Djibouti; she can rely on him to do that.

Before the passengers are to board the plane, Xalan writes down the name of a hotel in Djibouti where they can stay in the event they make it past immigration. She also copies the home telephone and mobile numbers of a very good friend of hers there, a radio journalist who, depending on how they fare, will meet them and take them to the hotel at least for the first night.