Crossbones

9

AN AIRSTRIP IS A MISNOMER FOR THE SANDY PIT ON WHICH AHL’S plane lands in Bosaso. Close by, less than half a kilometer away, is Somalia’s sea, in your face as always. Someone with a perverted sense of humor sited the airstrip here, for it requires pilots to perform some acrobatic feats on landing, and leaves only the most strong-hearted passengers unaffected.

With the plane now on the ground, the passengers rising to their feet in harried haste, Ahl looks in the direction of the flight attendant sitting across the aisle, her head in her hands, shoulders heaving. Earlier, she seemed morose, apathetic. He tried to get her to speak, to find out if there was anything he could do — not that he knew what he could do to help. When she didn’t respond to his queries but kept staring at the photograph of a young boy and weeping, he decided to let her be. He listened to her sobbing for a long while before offering her his handkerchief to wipe away the tears. Now at the journey’s end, he is still curious to know the cause of her sorrow. Is the young boy in the photograph missing or dead? He hangs around a little while more, taking his time to gather his things. Finally, she raises her head and looks up at him, the slight trace of a smile forming around her lips as she tentatively holds out the handkerchief in her cupped hand, as if uncertain that he will accept it back in its soiled state. Ahl suggests that she keep it, as he affords himself the time to read her name tag: WIILA. Nodding his head, he wishes her “every good thing.”

The airstrip, now that he can observe it, has no barrier to fence it in; nothing to restrict unauthorized persons from walking straight onto the aircraft and mixing with the passengers as they land. A mob gathers at the foot of the stepladder, joining the man in a yellow vest, flip-flops, and trousers with holes in them who guided the aircraft to its parking position. He, too, chats up the passengers as they alight, asking for baksheesh.

The passengers, who in Djibouti fought their way onto the plane and to their seats, now scramble for their luggage, some hauling suitcases heavier than they are. Ahl stands back, amused, watching. He has all the time in the world to stretch his limbs and massage his back, which is aching after two hours in a plane with no seat belts. The pilot — Russian, Ukrainian, Serb? — joins him where he is, and behaves discourteously toward Wiila, whom he describes, in bad, accented English, as “fat-arsed, lazy, and weepy.” Ahl is about to reprimand him when Wiila urges him to “stay out of it.” Feeling all the more encouraged, the pilot dresses Wiila down in what sounds like a string of hard-bitten expletives. Embarrassed and feeling defeated, Ahl regrets involving himself in a matter of no immediate concern to him.

The breeze and the scent of the sea it bears help Ahl get purchase on his fractious disposition. Calmed, he tries to identify his hostess, Xalan, or her husband, Warsame, neither of whom he has met. He looks around sadly, quiet, like a pinched candle, wondering if he can recognize either of them from the descriptions his wife has given him. Then he tells himself that there is no happier person than a traveler who has arrived at his destination and feels the comfort and confidence to face the world before him with an open mind, without fear or tribulation. He is in no imminent danger, even though he is in Somalia. He has someone waiting to pick him up. And if no one shows up, he is sure he won’t have any difficulty getting into town or to his hotel.

A couple of porters in blue overalls are bringing the baggage out of the hold and passing it around. Ahl receives his bag and remembers to offer a couple of U.S. dollars to the porter, thanking him. But he realizes that he is attracting the unwelcome attention of a loiterer, who follows him, persistently clutching at his shirtsleeve and computer bag. The man points to his mouth and belly. Ahl doesn’t know what to do to rid himself of the beggar. Then he hears someone calling his name, and sees a big-bellied man duckwalking toward him. Ahl and the beggar wait in silence as he approaches.

“Welcome to Puntland, Ahl. I am Warsame.”

Warsame wears his trousers low on his hips, like youths imitating jailbirds. But unlike the copycat youths, Warsame has on a belt, which is tight under his bulging tummy. As they walk away, he shoos off the pesterer, who stops bothering Ahl.

Warsame says, “I bring warm greetings from Xalan. She is home, cooking. But I’ll take you to your hotel first, then home. Come now.” Warsame takes Ahl by the forearm.

Ahl hates uncalled-for physical contact with other men in public. He faces the dilemma of reclaiming his arm from cuddly Warsame without undue rudeness so soon after their meeting. He doesn’t wish to offend his kind host.

Warsame says, “Let me carry something.”

“Thanks, but there is no need,” Ahl says.

Warsame says, “You travel very light for a man coming from the United States.”

“I love traveling light,” Ahl says. “Less hassle.”

“When Xalan returns from Canada,” Warsame muses, in the long-suffering tone many men take when the discussion touches on their wives’ luggage, “she requires a truck.”

Ahl doesn’t join in the wife-bashing, because while he knows some women who pack heavy suitcases for an overnight outing, he also knows men who wear more perfume than a Sudanese bride on the day of her wedding. He recalls Yusur telling him about a horrible incident involving Xalan and some of Mogadiscio’s clan-based vigilantes — a most terrible incident, which, according to Yusur, Xalan’s sister, Zaituun, accused her of provoking. In a bid to avoid spreading further bad blood, Ahl changes the subject. “How long has this airstrip been functioning?”

“Three years and a bit,” Warsame says.

Ahl won’t ask what’s become of the funds the autonomous state collects as tax. He can guess where they have ended up; in someone’s corrupt coffers. Nor does he comment on the shocking absence of an airport building of any sort, or even a runway. As if he has voiced his thoughts aloud, Warsame says, “We keep asking where the funds go.”

It’s never wise to make enemies of people on the first day you meet them, Ahl tells himself, especially if you don’t know them well. He won’t pursue the subject of corruption. Who knows, Warsame himself could be in on it, quietly receiving his share.

“Where’s Immigration?” he asks.

Warsame points. “There.”

Ahl looks around, his eyes following Warsame’s finger. He spots a shack out to the left of a cluster of vehicles bearing United Arab Emirates license plates, on what would have been the apron of the runway had there been one.

“We’ll get to our vehicle and someone from Immigration will come and collect your passport,” Warsame says, “and return it stamped.”

“Is that how things work out here?”

“Here, everything is ad hoc,” Warsame explains.

Warsame leads Ahl to a waiting four-by-four with UAE plates, opens it, starts the engine, and turns on the AC full blast. A young man arrives to collect Ahl’s passport. Saying, “Back in a minute,” he disappears into the shed. Ahl thinks that until today he has never understood the full meaning of the term ad hoc: the heartlessness, the mindlessness of a community failing its responsibility toward itself; a feebleness of purpose; an inadequacy.

The young man is as good as his promise, though. He is back in a minute, ready to return Ahl’s stamped passport on payment of twenty U.S. dollars. Warsame gives the young man a couple of dollars as well, thanking him, and then says to Ahl, “Now we may go.” And they are off, raising dust and moving faster and faster, as if competing in a rally.

Like the airstrip, the city falls well below Ahl’s expectations. Yusur and many other Puntlanders in the diaspora have talked up Bosaso, describing it as a booming coastal city bubbling with ideas, its gung-ho, on-the-go residents making pots of money, many of them from trade, a handful out of piracy. It is a city, he has been told, that has benefited from the negative consequences of the civil war, with thousands of professionals and businessmen who ancestrally hailed from this region returning and basing themselves here.

But the roads are not tarred, and the dust billows ahead of them disorientingly. The buildings within range appear to be little more than upgraded shacks. Cars are parked at odd angles, as if abandoned in haste. The streets themselves look to be assembled ad hoc, with temporary structures thrown up to house the internally displaced communities that have fled the fighting in Mogadiscio or have been deported from the breakaway Republic of Somaliland to the north. Now and then they drive past houses of solid stone, with proper gates and high fences. But there is something unsightly about these, too, because of the discarded polyethylene bags that are hanging, as if for dear life, from the electric wires with which the properties are surrounded.

Despite his attempt not to sound disapproving, Ahl’s voice strikes a note of discord when he asks Warsame, “Has the city always been like this?”

As if in mitigation, Warsame says, “The state is autonomous, albeit dysfunctional. Our economy is underdeveloped. We are a city under siege, with immigrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Tanzania. They all want to make their way to Yemen and Europe, courtesy of the human traffickers who exploit them as stowaways in flimsy boats — just to escape from here.”

“Everyone comes because there is peace here?”

Warsame says, “There is of course the lucrative potential of piracy, given Bosaso’s strategic location. Taken together, these features attract all sorts of riffraff.”

“Do you have any idea what the population of the city is and what percentage of its residents are local?” Ahl asks.

“No one knows the number of its residents.”

Ahl is aware that you need to put certain structures in place before it is possible to take a census. He says, “Because everything here is ad hoc.”

Warsame nods and adds, “And life must go on.”

Ahl asks Warsame to stop somewhere he can get a SIM card for his mobile phone.

Soon enough, Warsame obliges. He stops in front of a low structure with ads on its front walls for all makes of cigarettes and other products, and a few goats, in the absence of pasture, chewing a weather-hardened castaway pair of leather shoes, they are so hungry. Ahl buys a local SIM card and airtime with a ten-dollar bill. Still inside the shop, he inserts the SIM card in his phone.

In the vehicle, Warsame encourages Ahl to place his calls right away. “Go for it, please,” he says, driving. “Make your calls. Tell Yusur or whosoever that you’ve landed, you’ve been picked up, and all is well.”

Malik answers the phone on the first ring. They speak in Chinese and Ahl gives him his news. Malik asks Ahl what impression the city has made on him so far. Ahl responds that the city has more the look of a flea market than the prosperous metropolis he expected. He says, “I haven’t been here half an hour and I am already wondering where the money said to be pouring in from piracy and hostage-taking has gone.” Then he asks, “What about you, Malik? How are you doing?”

Malik is depressed, because, in the past day and a half, in Mogadiscio, three journalists have been killed — blown up — the latest an hour ago. The first two were radio journalists, killed dropping off their children at their nurseries or school before going to work. The third was on his way back from burying a colleague. A fourth journalist was wounded by a roadside device while walking, and hovers in critical condition, with little chance of surviving his injuries.

“Who is responsible?”

Malik says, “There are unconfirmed reports blaming shady fifth columnists who are believed to target anyone who writes anything the top men of the Courts don’t like. They use remote-controlled roadside bombs or shoot their victims at point-blank range. Nobody knows much about them or their alliances. Except everyone points at Shabaab, which has an imprecise, albeit mutually beneficial rapport with the Courts.”

Ahl says, “That’s worrying.”

“All good journalists are now on the radar of the assassins,” Malik says. “It’s sickening. This is killing me.”

“Do you feel you’re in danger?”

“I won’t pack up and leave.”

“Have I suggested you do that?”

“Amran has done just that every time I’ve spoken to her. I thought you might do the same,” Malik says.

“What are your plans?”

“I may have to move in with Bile and Cambara.”

“Would you feel safer with them?”

“I would.”

Warsame drives past security at the hotel gate and stops in front of the building to let Ahl out, telling him he’ll return for him later.

Out of the car, his gait wobbly, Ahl retrieves his bags and walks toward the sign that says, “Respecshin,” amused that not one of the bellhops loitering in the parking lot offers to help. The muscles of his thighs a bit tight, he reaches the porch, aware that it has been a few days since his last workout. He thinks it unlikely that this two-star hotel will have a gym, and he imagines it would be unwise to go out for a jog or even for a swim.

At the reception, two young men are playing cards intently. One of them has a gap in his upper teeth, and the other is sporting a Mohawk. Even though neither is in uniform, Ahl speculates that Gap-in-the-Teeth is the one temporarily in charge. He is odds-on the son or other blood relative of the hotel owner. Back from school for the day, he mans the reception, while his friend is on an afternoon break.

Gap-in-the-Teeth asks Ahl, “What do you want?”

Ahl is not sure what answer to give, because he has discovered, now that he has searched for it, that Gap-in-the-Teeth and his stepson, Taxliil, share some remote resemblance: the manner in which they hold themselves apart, as if the world is synonymous with the dirt that prevails everywhere, and they wish to stay clean; and in their sweet smiles, as masterly as they are mistimed, smiles that often lead to misunderstandings.

“Has a room been reserved for Ahl?”

Gap-in-the-Teeth tells him he will be in room 15.

Ahl, unaided and unescorted, goes to his room, up the winding staircase with its uneven risers, pleased with the lightness of his bags, content that his needs are modest. He comes to a stop in front of room 15. The door is open, no need to make use of the key. He looks in and finds a vast room, the wall at the back of the bed tiled high and neatly in brown against a white background. A man is in the room, fiddling with the knobs and wires of the TV set, which is on, belting out a concatenation of what at first sounds like an alien language because the volume is so unbearably loud that the words are almost impossible to decipher.

“Please,” Ahl pleads. “Turn the TV off.”

“I am fixing your satellite TV,” the man shouts loudly, in competition with the racket. He is chewing qaat, and his tongue, emerging from his mouth as he speaks, resembles a chameleon’s — narrow, repellent.

Ahl repeats his plea, slowly this time, the better to be understood. The TV man stays on his haunches. He stares at a knob he is holding in his right hand, as if he might admonish it for its obstinate behavior — presumably this is the piece of hardware that is causing the set to malfunction. He shrieks, “I must fix the problem.”

Ahl says, “Please do it later.”

But the technician does no such thing. He has been instructed to see to it that all the rooms have functioning TV sets. Ahl feels that the din is making him lose touch with his senses or, worse, with his reason. But he has been warned that one must be circumspect in one’s dealings with young Somalis. People out here are a nervy lot, quick to anger and to reach for their guns.

His voice calm, he says, “Please, please.”

He ascribes the first please to the Somali part of his upbringing, which emphasizes considerateness to the point of formality, and the second please to fear of provoking that notorious Somali crankiness. He says, “I want to use the bathroom. Urgently.”

At last the technician turns off the TV, disconsolate, clearly offended, and, as if to show his annoyance, masticates his qaat furiously. Just before he walks off in a huff, Ahl says, “Will you do me a favor, please?”

Rudely the man asks, “What do you want?”

“I’d like to eat if the kitchen is still open.”

“What do you want to eat?”

“A fish dish and rice, if these are available.”

“Of course they are available.”

“I’d appreciate it if you could place an order.”

And as a token of his appreciation, Ahl brings out a couple of U.S. dollars to give as a tip. But no, the man won’t take the baksheesh, either because it is too small or because he doesn’t wish to be appeased. He leaves in a fit of pique. Bemused, Ahl closes the door behind the man and goes into the bathroom.

Then, bizarrely, the TV comes on again, noisier than before. Ahl is incensed, assuming that the technician has returned and turned it back on. Ahl decides to finish peeing, and then deal with it. He is of several minds as to how he will achieve his aim. Kick the man in the butt and face the consequences, or kick the set to smithereens and pay for it? Or should he accept defeat? But when he comes out, there is no one in the room and Ahl is looking at an Arab in a suit and tie interviewing a Somali on Al Jazeera, with the ruins of the twelfth-century Arbaca Rukun mosque, destroyed in the 1991 fighting in Mogadiscio, serving as background.

The Somali interviewee is saying, “We, as mujahideen, martyrs of Islam, are ready to lay down our lives in the name of Allah. We’ll help defeat Ethiopia and America, the enemies of Islam.” Then, just as mysteriously as it came on, the TV goes off again.

The shower is very cold, despite the tropical heat. Ahl decides a birdbath will do. He washes his face and armpits, changes his shirt, and rings Warsame and Xalan to find out when they are coming for him. No answer. Before going downstairs to eat the fish dish he ordered by telephone after calling the reception, he packs his computer in its bag, puts all his cash in its pockets, and descends the stairs with caution. When he walks past the reception desk, Gap-in-the-Teeth tells him he has a guest waiting for him. Assuming his visitor to be Warsame or Xalan, he asks where, and Gap-in-the-Teeth points to a small gazebo where a man is sitting alone at a table meant for four, with two of the untaken chairs tipped forward.

The man does not bother to introduce himself or even to greet Ahl. He has a down-turned mouth, very fine teeth, and bulging eyes, and he is dressed in a pleated shirt from another era. Even though he is the ugliest man Ahl has ever set eyes on, he is nonetheless a charmer, reminding Ahl of a midget from Agrigento whose daughter Ahl once dated for almost a year, secretly, when he was at university in England. The woman was studying English, a pretty slow learner. She made up for it elsewhere: she was excellent in bed and a superb cook.

When the man in the gazebo asks Ahl how his room is, Ahl wonders if he is the hotel manager. But the man says, “As for things not working? We have no plumbers to install hot water systems for hotels. Even though Puntland is in relative peace, we suffer from a shortage of trained personnel in all fields. Here we go about things with a trial-and-error and try-and-see attitude. Now things work, now they don’t. Uncertainty reigns supreme.”

Ahl decides there is nothing to lose by engaging in such banter in the middle of the day, with the security everywhere close, his mobile phone boasting airtime, Warsame or Xalan a touch of two buttons away. “What’s become of the trained personnel in these fields?” he asks.

“Those with good education have joined the exodus, and, fleeing the country, have ended up in refugee camps in Kenya or Ethiopia, and then eventually some have made it to the Arabian Gulf as low-paid workers, or gone to Europe or North America as refugees. Imagine — one and a half million of them, many of them destitute.”

The arrival of food interrupts their conversation. “What will you have?” Ahl asks his guest, whom he does not want to leave. Who knows, this mysterious man may lead him to Taxliil.

The waiter says, “The kitchen is closed.”

“This is enough for two. Please bring another plate and some more cutlery,” Ahl says. “We can share this.”

The waiter makes resentful noises but does as Ahl has requested, bringing a plate and more cutlery. The man tucks into the food with evident enjoyment.

“We haven’t had the pleasure until now,” he says. “I know your name is AhlulKhair. My full name is Ali Ahmed Fidno, but I am known among friends as Fidno.”

Ahl asks, “How do you know who I am?”

Cautious like a feral cat defending its catch, Fidno bares his teeth and makes some sort of animal noise emanating from deep inside him. Taken aback, Ahl focuses his stare first on Fidno’s hands, whose fingers now form into a fist, with the knuckles palely protruding, and then on his heavy jowls, which seem to expand, as if intimating impending trouble. Fidno looks away, and then, pulling from under him a large brown envelope on which he has been sitting, leans forward and says to Ahl, “Here. I have brought you these photographs.”

Ahl’s imagination runs off ahead of him: he envisions photographs of Taxliil posing in fatigues in some training camp close by.

“Photographs of who or what?”

“Of some boys doing their own thing.”

Ahl hopes that Fidno is not taking him for a sex pervert. Does he think that Ahl is a fifty-something tourist after young things with whom he wants to play sex? Ahl has lost his appetite. He puts down his utensils and asks, “Of whom are the photos?”

Fidno favors the question with silence.

“Why, of all people, have you brought them to me?”

Fidno says, “Someone at the airport who saw you arrive has said to me that you are a Somali journalist, based in America.”

“Let me have a look at them.”

Ahl removes them from the envelope and takes his time studying them, a picture at a time, as he listens to Fidno’s running commentary. They are all indeed of young men — in boats, in ships, manning guns, holding men, faces covered with balaclavas. Young men eating, sleeping, fooling around with one another, speaking on their mobile phones, some of them dressed in the jackets of which they dispossessed their hostages, of whom there are also photos. The names of the ships and their provenance are written on the sides: Ukrainian, Russian, Italian, Turkish, Israeli, Saudi, Filipino, Indian. The haul is big. But the young men wielding the AK-47s, the collapsible machine guns, are skinny, hungry-looking, many appearing as ill prepared for what life may throw at them as Paris Hilton might be going into the ring with Mike Tyson. Are these youths pirates? And if they are not pirates, then who are they, what are they? Six months is a long time in the life of a teenager, who may grow a beard or start wearing contact lenses.

Will Fidno, sitting at Ahl’s table, stripping the last morsels of fish off the spine, be able to tell him more? Will he involve Malik? Can Fidno help him track down Taxliil?

“Where did you get the pictures?” Ahl asks.

Fidno is champing at a toothpick, taking his time.

“I had them taken by a photographer I hired.”

It is a pity Fidno is not a pirate, a privateer, or even a buccaneer, because he has the charm that makes women lift their arms, place them right behind their heads, their armpits exposed and their breasts raised. Why do women find pirates charming, why do they giggle invitingly in their presence? Ahl recalls that the Sicilian woman did just that within an hour of his meeting her. Like a cat going on her back, waiting to be petted.

Ahl says, “In your capacity…as what?”

Fidno looks at their lunch things, not yet collected. Ahl beckons to the waiter standing close by to take the plates away and bring the bill.

“And coffee, if possible,” Fidno says.

“Make it two coffees. Mine espresso,” says Ahl.

Fidno says, “Make mine lungo, with lots of sugar.”

The waiter gone, Ahl asks again, “In what capacity?”

Fidno responds, “I’ve had the photographs taken in my capacity as a mediator, a negotiator, an interpreter, and, most important, a go-between, when matters get too sticky between the pirates and the negotiators on behalf of the shipowners.”

Ahl asks, “With whom do the negotiators deal?”

“They use intermediaries,” Fidno replies, “often through middlemen based in Mombasa or Abu Dhabi.”

“So they don’t come to Puntland, and prefer assigning intermediaries to negotiate on their behalf?”

Fidno says, “They remain at their desks in London, Tokyo, or Moscow, wherever they are normally based. One of my jobs is to iron out unexpected difficulties when things get sticky, which they do a lot of the time. Each of these men — insurers, middlemen, facilitators — gets his cut, depending on his rank and his importance in the company hierarchy, without any direct contact with us.”

“Too many people, too much money, and no direct communication — isn’t that a recipe for possible disaster?” Ahl ventures.

Fidno says, “It is a recipe for deceit, double-dealing, and counterfeiting. And we are the marquee pawns of the greatest dupe. We’re cheated, and yet there is no way we can prove any of this to the world, because they have the backing of the international media and we do not.”

“Wait, wait. What are you saying?”

“Let’s imagine you reading in your newspaper, wherever you are, that the owners of a ship hijacked by Somali pirates have paid five million dollars as ransom,” Fidno proposes.

“Let’s imagine I do.”

Fidno says, “What if I told you that, to begin with, the largest bulk of the five million does not leave London, where the insurers are based, because no bank in Britain will countenance approving of so much money going out of its vaults to pay off a ransom?”

“That makes sense,” Ahl concurs.

“What if I told you that in the end, after months of negotiations, proposals and counterproposals, broken agreements and delays, only half a million of the five million dollars will reach the pirates. First the negotiators of the insurers based in London, the middleman based in Abu Dhabi, and the intermediaries in Mombasa have each taken their huge cuts, so that the final payment is reduced to a pittance from which the funder financing the hijacking still has to pay the pirates holding the ship. You know the Somali proverb ‘Mana wasni, warna iraac,’ said to have been spoken by a woman suspected of having enjoyed lovemaking, when the man never even touched her. We’re buggered, however you want to put it, and needless to say, we don’t enjoy it at all.”

“That’s hairy,” Ahl says.

“This utter disrespect makes us indignant.”

Ahl says, “That is criminal.”

Now Fidno is nervous, like a Mafioso not used to explaining the reason for his actions. In a telltale sign of confession, he leans forward, as though sharing a secret, and then changes his mind after policing the surroundings and seeing the waiter returning with the bill and the two coffees. Ahl settles the bill in U.S. dollars. Then they resume their conversation.

“What’s your precise role in this business?”

Fidno replies, “Among the pirates, I am all things to almost every one of them. I am a link, a connector, an in-between man, an extinguisher of fires when fires need extinguishing. I am all things to the shipowners, the London men at their desks, bowler hats or not. I deal with insurance and safety matters with the captain, the crew, the ship, and the cargo, when held. I am all things to the men at the Suez Canal and many other men stationed at different ports in different countries, men privy to the secret details involved in the movements of the ships, the nature of cargo, whether legal or illegal, whether the cargo is chemical waste and who is carrying it and where it is to be dumped. I log in the departure details and the ships’ destinations, too.”

Ahl says, “You are something, aren’t you?”

Fidno continues, “Sea banditry is a very risky business. It can get you killed easily in these lanes. You can make pots of wealth, depending on how you play the game. Questions to do with who gets to collect the ransom when the young Somalis hold a ship; who gets to receive the funds; who gets his due cut; who gets paid and who gets swindled. These pirates are not like the pirates of old, who got to keep a portion of their booty and share the loot among themselves — democratically! I am not in fact sure you can call the Somalis pirates.”

Ahl wants to ask why not, but before he can say anything, Warsame is at their table, greeting Ahl and looking from him to Fidno. Fidno scrambles to his feet, almost knocking over his chair and coffee cup. Ahl introduces them.

Then Ahl asks, “Why don’t you come with us?”

“Depends on where you are going.”

Ahl turns to Warsame, “Can he?”

“Of course.”

Fidno asks, “But where are we going?”

“To my home,” Warsame says.

“Come along,” Ahl urges Fidno.

They follow Warsame to the car. When Ahl tries to put the photographs in the pocket of his computer bag, Fidno extends his hand and, grinning, reclaims them from him. Then he walks over to his jalopy, parked across from Warsame’s vehicle, to put them in his glove compartment.

Ahl thinks it will be easier to find out more about Fidno in the company of others. He tells himself that a liar seldom knows how to repeat his lies.