Crossbones

6

AHL FEELS ELATED, LIKE A MAN WHO HAS THE WORLD IN HIS sights, when he lands in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, forty-eight hours later. Relaxed, he walks over to the officer at Immigration to exchange brief banter with him, in Somali.

It’s been a tiring journey, the longest Ahl has undertaken for quite a while. It has also been almost as taxing as when he used to fly from Europe as a student, across the entire world to visit his mother and other family members in Malaysia. But he was younger in those days, and there was a lot of excitement in planning and then executing his travels. Not so anymore, or not this time. Until his arrival in Djibouti, there has been hardly any joy in making the trip.

So far, everything has gone without a hitch. In Paris, he picked up his visa from the Djibouti consulate in time for his departure out of Orly. They hardly bothered to scrutinize his form once he started speaking in Somali, if hesitantly at first. Ahl put “tourism” where the form asked the purpose of his travel, well aware that many people do not think of Djibouti as a tourist destination. Of course, he was tempted to tell the truth: that he was on his way to the Horn of Africa in search of his missing son — there is no equivalent, in Somali, for stepson. Anyhow, from what he has read, Djibouti is worth a visit. Nature lovers especially are bound to admire the lunar look of the landscape, which boasts of geological wonders on a par with the best anywhere.

French was the operating language in the aircraft. In addition to a two-day-old Le Monde, Ahl found a copy of a day-old Le Canard Enchaîné, the French satirical paper, in his seat. He read the two papers, now one and now the other, since both had front-page pieces about a Panamanian-flagged, Norwegian-owned chemical tanker seized by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, with the Canard providing more sensational copy about the seizure of the vessel and giving more inside information about the hostages’ communication with their families. The 50,000-ton bulk shipper had a crew of sixty, many of them — almost two-thirds — from Korea, and the captain was Norwegian.

On a Canard inside page, the article claimed that the hijackers were treating the hostages well, allowing them to speak to their families once a week. From the conversation between the seamen and their families, it became clear how the pirates had captured the boat. They arrived in twelve-foot fiberglass speedboats with inboard motors, escorted by two smaller skiffs with outboard motors; a mother ship waited close by. The ship, weighed down with heavy cargo, moved slower than the small boats. The second mate had alerted the captain to the presence of the boats. But before the captain was able to organize a way of repelling the attack, a dozen armed men had gained access to the tanker before the seamen had a chance to lock themselves in. The leader of the pirates found his way to the captain’s cabin, put a machine gun to the captain’s forehead, and vowed to kill him unless he instructed his men to go where they were told to go and do what they were told to do. The ship was directed toward Garcad, which came within view the following day. There, the captain was allowed to make a call to the shipowners to inform them of their new situation. According to him, they wouldn’t release the ship unless they were given $25 million.

Too tired to read any more, Ahl puts the newspaper away. But as he tries to sleep, he keeps thinking about the details of several other attacks — on luxury yachts, on an Israeli boat carrying chemical waste, on a huge Korean-owned tanker loaded with almost sixty tanks and other heavy weapons, destination unclear. Certainly the pirates received intelligence from an unnamed informant, who suggested that the buccaneers approach with only two skiffs and attack from the port side. No doubt the pirates would not know that the seamen keeping watch were likely to focus on the starboard side. One of the pirates would claim later that they knew the nature of the cargo as well, having received intelligence about it. He went on to say that they knew, too, that the cargo would in itself interest the world media, a shipment of weapons intended for Sudan, where it would fuel the civil war to flare between north and south.

Ahl is aware of another more recent hijacking. The Saudi-owned supertanker Sirius Star had been taken by a hardened lot of pirates armed with shoulder-launched antitank weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, Kalashnikovs, and other small arms. The pirates had taken the ship close to their lair, within view of Hobyo. Several men from the Courts entered the fray, claiming that the pirates would not be allowed to hold hostage a ship that belonged to a Muslim nation. According to reports received in Minneapolis, it was this delegation for whom Taxliil had acted as translator.

On another occasion, persistent rumor had it that Taxliil, whom “History” (the instructor of the unit to which he was seconded) looked upon with favor, because he had been teaching her English, was given the honor of escorting the envoys from the Courts to meet up with a delegation that had arrived in Kismayo following the capture of an Iranian-flagged boat in Puntland. The ship moored near the ancient historical town of Eyl, along with several other ships held within view of the town. While the negotiations for the release of this ship dragged on for months, rumor spread in the town that the pirates assigned to guard it were starting to lose much of their hair and breaking out in rashes or suffering skin burns. One of the pirates spoke to the local press of exposure to radiation or heavy doses of chemical waste that the ship was carrying.

Ahl is about to fall asleep when he hears the captain announce that they will be starting their descent into Djibouti in a few minutes and that the passengers must make sure their seat belts are on.

In his hotel room, Ahl lies on the bed, fully clothed and waiting for a local SIM card so that he can send a text message to his wife and to Malik, to let them know of his safe arrival. The air conditioner is on, and so is Al Jazeera, blaring in Arabic. As he listens, he thinks how every decade brings its own political troubles: Palestinians hijack aircraft for political reasons; the Italian Red Brigades kidnap Aldo Moro; the German Baader-Meinhof group assassinates bankers and top government officials. Just like Al Qaeda and its offshoots, of whom Shabaab claims to be one, are doing in Somalia. Despite the differences in their modus operandi, the differences in the provenance of their adherents, the use of terrorism for political gain runs through them. There was a time, in the sixties, when university-based movements engaged in agitations, albeit not as deadly. At present, entire regions are considered “terrorist territories”; entire nations are said to “host terrorism.” Western commentators clued in on recent events add Islam to the equation, work it into the quandary, as if the idea to terrorize is in the Muslim’s genetic makeup, forgetting that more Muslims than non-Muslims die at the hands of terrorism.

Now Ahl hears the maids in the corridor making a loud ruckus over a missing broom, nearly coming to blows over it. How he wishes Somalis in Minnesota showed the concern for their sons’ disappearance that these women do about a missing broom. The Somali imams at the mosques in Minnesota responsible for the young men’s disappearances go unchallenged. The feeling among Somalis is that it is a “clan thing.” The curse of it, Ahl thinks. Somalis, adept at surrounding themselves with smoke screens, relish confounding issues. You are seldom able to corner them, because they know how to give you the runaround.

The phone in the room rings, reception telling him his SIM card has arrived. He collects it immediately, then sends brief messages to Yusur and Malik, giving them his Djibouti mobile number, which will be valid for only twenty-four hours. On learning that the airline offices reopen at four, he takes a nap.

In a dream of a clear quality, he meets a Somali woman unknown to him in a room in an unfamiliar city. They talk about nothing in particular for a very long time. Then they go for a walk, up a mountain, into a valley of extreme greenery, the leaves shiny, the shade of the trees delicious. To make him speak, a masseuse offers him a massage.

He wakes up, feeling rested.

In search of something to eat, Ahl walks out of the hotel and turns left. He has a cap on against the glare and the midday heat. Here the sun is very, very strong and, never weakening, bakes everything in sight, shortening one’s shadow, almost obliterating it. He knows from having lived in Yemen that only after the sun has exhausted its stamina the afternoon shadows emerge.

Djibouti is a small country caught in the crosshairs of several tendencies — it shares a border with Somalia; is close to Yemen; lies along a stretch of an important waterway, the Bab el Mandeb; and exists cheek by jowl with Ethiopia and Eritrea. The eyes of the Western world are trained on it, and NATO has a prominent presence on its soil. It is a miracle that Djibouti continues to exist and fight for its corner in its own wily ways.

The country, rich in history, replenishes Ahl’s sense of nostalgia, and he walks with the slowness of a hippo after a fight, taking in Djibouti’s polyglot of tongues — Yemeni Arabic, Somali, Amharic, French, and Tigrigna. He’s read somewhere that there is proof of sophisticated agriculture in the area, dating back four thousand years. Important evidence comes from the tomb of a young girl going back to 2000 BC or earlier. Now he is impressed with the city’s cosmopolitanism.

The noise of children running in every direction attracts his attention: a dog is giving chase to five, six boys, one of whom has apparently run off with its bone, maybe to eat it; his mates are in the running for fun, but the dog wants its bone back. A Somali-speaking Yemeni who is standing in front of an eatery observes that the boys are not so much engaged in mischief as they are in finding something to eat. They won’t let a dog eat its bone in peace.

Ahl asks the man if he is open for business. He asserts that he is, and they talk. It turns out that the man relocated from Mogadiscio to Djibouti after the eruption of the civil war there. Ahl orders a meal of mutton and injera, Ethiopian pancakes made from teff, the millet-like grain grown exclusively in the highlands of Ethiopia and ground into flour. Ahl loves the spongy feel of the injera, and its sour taste.

The Yemeni asks him where he is from, and Ahl says he is going to Bosaso.

“You must be in business, then,” the Yemeni says.

“Do you know Bosaso at all?”

The Yemeni sings Bosaso’s praises, describing it as a booming town. He claims to know a couple of people who are making a mint out of shady businesses such as piracy and people smuggling. Pressed, he won’t give their names, only their broad identities. This is not of much help in a region more varied in hyphenated identities than even the United States. But the man is becoming suspicious, knowing that Djibouti is chockablock with spies from the United States, Ethiopia, and other countries. His conversation comes to a halt, and he goes away and returns with the bill, announcing that it is time for him to close up and join his mates. Ahl isolates the key word sit, which in Djibouti, Yemen, and everywhere else Somalis live means to chew qaat.

On the way back to his hotel, the streets are empty; everyone, it seems, is chewing qaat. Ahl comes across an abandoned building, with the paint coming off in layers, birds nesting in its gable, and a dog and its litter of pups sheltering in a quiet corner. The lintel is engraved with the Star of David. A huge lock the size of a human head, and an equally large chain, both brown with rust and old age, hang on the door.

In Mogadiscio, the cathedral was razed to the ground in the general mayhem at the start of the civil war, but here in Djibouti, the synagogue stands as testimony to peace. One of the first victims of the Somali strife was an Italian, Padre Salvatore Colombo, who lived in Mogadiscio for close to thirty years as the head of the Catholic Church — funded orphanage, one of the oldest institutions in the city. More recently, a Shabaab operative desecrated the Italian cemeteries, digging up the bones and scattering them around. To Ahl, the presence of a synagogue in a country with a Muslim majority is a healthy thing: cities, to qualify as cosmopolitan, must show tolerance toward communities different from their own. Intolerance has killed Mogadiscio. Djibouti is a living city, of which its residents can be proud.

At the hotel, he learns that the building served as a synagogue during the colonial era, but lately it has not been active as a place of worship. The man at the reception adds, “But do you know, there are Somalis claiming to be the true lost tribe of Israel.”

“What’s their evidence?” says Ahl.

“Their professional clan name — professional, because they work with metal and leather, and act as seers to other clans — sounds almost like a bastardization of ‘Hebrew.’”

The pin drops. Ahl knows the name of the clan.

He watches some more TV news, and when the airline office has reopened, he buys the ticket to Bosaso, paying in U.S. dollars. Then he goes for a long walk, luxuriating in a day in Djibouti before flying out to Somalia.

To savor the city at night, he goes for a stroll without worrying about his safety. A clutch of men and half a dozen ladies of the night are at the entrance of a nightclub. He pays for a ticket and goes in. The music is terrible. There are four couples on the floor, only two dancing, the others talking and smoking. Despite this, he finds a corner table and sits. What has he to lose? He doubts there are nightclubs in Bosaso or that alcohol will be openly available for fear of what the religionists might do.

A woman with a cigarette between her lips, her dress tight across her chest, her cleavage showily pushing through, wants a light. Instinctively, Ahl feels his pockets, as if he might find a lighter there, or a box of matches. He shakes his head, and with the white of his palms facing her, shouts over the music, “I’m sorry, I don’t smoke.”

“No need to be sorry. But are you alone?”

He pretends he hasn’t heard her question. Even so, she sits down, and as she bends down to do so, he gets a whiff of her perfume. Whatever else he may do, he mustn’t lead her on. But how can he tell her that he is in the nightclub just for the experience of it? Granted, he hasn’t had sex with his wife since Taxliil went missing.

“If you have no objection to sitting with me for a chat and no more,” Ahl says, “then I can offer you a drink of your choice.”

“I’ll sit with you until I find a client.”

He agrees to the deal. She orders hard liquor, a packet of cigarettes, and a lighter. The waiter insists on advance payment for the liquor. Then she asks, “Where are you from?”

“I am on my way to Somalia.”

“Why would you go to a place everyone is leaving?”

“Maybe there is a purpose to my visit,” he says, and falls silent.

The waiter arrives with the order.

“Why come into a nightclub when you are not drinking, dancing, or picking up a woman for the night?” she asks.

“As I’ve said, I am on my way to Somalia,” he says.

“But I know many women like me from your country.”

“But they aren’t open about it, are they?” he asks.

“Like Arab women, they whore secretly.”

He asks, “How do you mean?”

“Veiled in public,” the woman says, “Arab women strip naked and are game faster than you think. Maybe that is what they do in Somalia these days. They whore secretly, covered from head to toe. You can’t believe the stories we hear.”

Ahl leaves when she spots a white client, and he suggests that the man come and take his place. He says, “All the best. Maybe we’ll meet again.”

“Take care,” she says.