Crossbones

5

DHOORRE, WEARING A DRESSING GOWN AND, UNDER IT, A PAIR OF pajamas and slippers, shifts in the discomfort of his sleep on the garden bench. Then he awakens in a startle, badly in need of a pee.

It takes him a while to remember that he came out to the porch to take a closer, admiring look at a gorgeous bird with an immense beak and colorful plumage. Then a gust of wind shut the door and he couldn’t get back in. The bird gone, he walked around the unkempt garden, where the trees, their bark like peeled-off skin, and the shrubs are emaciated from neglect. He feared he might come up against city riffraff camping out here, or someone fleeing the fighting, which has lately been ferocious. Property, after all, does not mean what it used to mean. He knows what he is talking about, he owned several houses, some of which were rented out. He was once an important man in Mogadiscio himself. Today he is a man without property, living in a house that his son himself is renting.

With no book to read and no one to talk to, he fell asleep on the garden bench. Now his bones are sore and the sciatica in his legs is extreme. He remembers he was having a sweet dream, in which he and a childhood friend were watching one of his favorite Italian movies, Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine. He recalls the mesmerizing beauty of the camera work as it captured the two boys riding a horse through Rome. Two boys living in innocence until tragedy strikes. There is no innocence in this city. After all, every resident of this city is guilty, even if no one admits to being a culprit.

He gets up, yawns leisurely, stretching first his arms, then his legs until he feels he has overdone the stretching. For a man his age, he is blessed with a sharp mind, but his body is bent as the young branch of a eucalyptus tree. He feels the belt of his dressing gown loosening; in an instant, he’ll feel exposed. Not that it matters — he presumes he is alone and his son, his daughter-in-law, his brood of grandchildren, and the maid are all out. It will amuse them to find him in the garden, unshaven, unwashed, in his pajamas and his dressing gown.

Suddenly his heart beats faster; he hears sounds from inside the house and realizes that this can only mean danger. He debates what he should do. He is on the verge of walking around the house to find out if there is a way of entering through a back window, when the front door opens. Out comes a young thing bearing a gun bigger than himself. The old man and the boy with the gun size each other up. Dhoorre thinks, What if he reacts as if the boy is holding a toy gun? What if he tells himself, even though this may not be the case, that the young thing does not know how to shoot and can’t pose much of a threat?

He asks, “What have you been doing inside?” He speaks the way one might to a mischievous grandchild.

The boy says, “What are you doing outside?”

Looking at the two of them and listening to them, you would not be able to tell who is the guest and who the host — the boy standing guard at the entrance to the house or the old man, befuddled and amused. Befuddled, because he can’t figure out what to do; amused, because he can’t imagine such a young thing frightening him. However, there is uncertainty in Dhoorre’s demeanor when the boy says, “Answer my question.”

Dhoorre tells himself that the boy is putting on a brave face, because he has a gun and this endows him with the hollow bravado of a coward. Is the boy the type who will beg for mercy when things turn nasty?

Hardness enters the boy’s voice. “Answer before I lose my patience, old man. What are you doing outside, in near rags, in the garden?”

Dhoorre replies, “The wind locked me out, pushing the door shut behind me when I came out to enjoy a bit of fresh air outside, in the garden, and I couldn’t get back in, so I napped on the bench. There.” He points at the bench, his voice laced with a genuine tremor.

The boy is thinking, What if he is wrong about the old man, whom he first imagined to be a drifter with nothing more than the rags he has been lent by a kinsman? A typical tramp, come off the streets without his begging bowl, maneuvering his way in.

“The wind, eh?”

“That’s right, the wind.”

The boy is not convinced.

“And your clothes, where are your clothes?”

“Inside.”

YoungThing considers his next move, and the implications if it does turn out that the Old Man lives in the house. He stares at the man, wondering how he can make him disappear before the advance team arrives. He could act like a trained insurgent — shoot first and explain later that he found this worthless hobo in the garden, insisting that he lived here. But the option of shooting the old man does not appeal to the boy. Yet how will he explain himself to the leader of the cell when he shows up?

The old man is saying, “My name is Dhoorre,” and his outstretched hand waits, ready to shake the boy’s. When the boy doesn’t react, Dhoorre says, “At least tell me your name.”

Then he takes one speedy step closer to the boy and another step closer to the door. The muscles of the boy’s neck stiffen, his jaw goes taut, his whole attitude becomes more threatening. He raises his gas-operated AK-47 and presses the selector switch that turns it fully automatic. This action gives him the composure of a boxer who has just won a KO in the second round.

“I wouldn’t act the fool if I were you,” says the boy. “It is at your peril that you take me for a lamebrain. You make one foolish move, you are dead.”

Fresh worries congregate in Dhoorre’s head, where they huddle together like a clutch of poorly clad men suddenly exposed to unseasonable frost. This is the closest Dhoorre has been to danger in his seventy-plus years. His hand runs over his head, smoothing what hair there is, a head as bereft of hair as it is of new ideas. How can he bring his peace-making pleas to bear on a young mind that has known only violence? He moves nearer to the boy, no longer afraid.

“Go ahead,” he says. “See if I care. Shoot.”

“I won’t shoot unless I have to,” the boy says.

They embark on a badly choreographed, lurching dance.

“What’s the matter?” challenges Dhoorre.

“One wrong move and you’re dead.”

In their gyrations for more favorable positions, Dhoorre now has his back to the door. All he has to do is move a step back and he’ll be inside the house, the boy outside. But to what end?

“Why are you here, armed?”

“I am not authorized to tell you.”

The word authorized coming out of such a small thing gives Dhoorre a jolt. Perhaps this is one of the boys he’s heard about — the new order of youths trained for a higher cause, who, even though they receive their instructions from earthlings, ascribe their actions to divine inspiration. He has heard about boys such as this, whom Shabaab has kidnapped and then trained as suicide bombers, boys and a few girls who see themselves as martyrs beholden to high ideals. But what can this boy want? Or, rather, what can his superiors want? And why here, why him and his family? He must disabuse the boy of the notion that he, Dhoorre, harbors any resentment toward religionist ideals, it is only that he privileges dialogue, prioritizes peace.

“I am not an enemy to your cause,” Dhoorre says.

Their eyes meet, the boy’s glance anxious in its desire to make sense of the old man’s sudden friendliness. Dhoorre’s gaze takes on a more incisive shrewdness, his bearing grows more sanguine. He adds, “Tell me what you want done and I will do it.”

“Just relax,” says the boy. “That’s all.”

Dhoorre asks, “How can I relax when you haven’t told me why you are here in our house, with a gun, threatening to shoot me, an old man, of the same age as your grandfather, if you have one?”

“You say our house? How many of you live here?”

“My son, his family, and I.”

The exchange is interrupted by YoungThing’s cell phone. He is aghast. Perhaps the advance team from the command center is already at the gate, waiting to be let in. His voice breaking, he says, “Yes, Sheikh,” several times, bowing in deference to his absent commander. Dhoorre can sense an abrupt change in the boy’s body language, as though he has just realized that he has made a major gaffe, maybe even disobeyed a command. From the little he can gather, the boy is being told off by the man he addresses as Sheikh.

When the call finally ends, the boy seems more agitated than before and barks orders to Dhoorre. “Follow me into the house.”

When they are past the threshold, the boy says, “Go into the bathroom and bolt the door from inside. Be quick about it. And make no sound.”

“What’s happening?” asks Dhoorre.

“I’ll do all I can do to spare your life,” the boy says.

When Dhoorre goes into the bathroom, the boy bolts the door from outside, too, and then goes to welcome the men at the gate.