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24

HOW DID HE GET HERE?

He was in a restaurant, sitting by himself at a table, and before him was a cup of tea — which, he found by dipping in his finger and touching it to his lower lip, was highly sugared. There was a huge gap in his memory. He couldn’t recall what had happened between the moment his knees gave way, after the jab from the muscleman-cum-medico, and now.

He studied the curious faces surrounding him and concluded that he didn’t know who they were, and hadn’t the slightest idea how or why he had been brought to this place, or by whom. His memory had run out, abandoning him at the mound. But in his mind he replayed Af-Laawe’s rude remarks, which he hoped Af-Laawe would pay for sooner rather than later. Jeebleh remembered the supposed housekeeper pointing at a grave, her forefinger extended, and saying, “Your mother’s here!” Then Af-Laawe’s sass. . and then what? Did the jab come before or after he had had enough of Af-Laawe’s lip and the woman’s lies?

The mystery was now cast in a framed moment that was difficult to define. He had been on his knees when he felt the jab; he had smelled something noxious, although he couldn’t determine its nature. He had seen the shadowy presence of the muscleman in the corner of his vision, then a second muscleman’s hand insinuating itself into the lamp of his consciousness, making him go out as quickly as the flames of a fire extinguished with a miasmic liquid. He had heard the voices of the two men in shades, before a needle pricking him on the upper thigh interfered with his thinking. Now he felt his stomach to make sure that he hadn’t undergone a surgery in which an organ of his had been removed. He touched where the needle had prodded, and it ached. He hoped he wasn’t developing an exaggerated sense of paranoia, in which, like Shanta, he would detect the hand of the cartel everywhere.

What would become of him now, he wondered, as he listened to a miscellany of male voices. Af-Laawe was somewhere near, he was sure. And he was damned if he knew the purpose to all this, or where his new reality began and where it might end. But why did “they” have to resort to these crude methods?

He heard someone calling his name.

TALL, BUCKTOOTHED, THIN AS A CANE, FAAHIYE STOOD BEFORE HIM. DISSOLVING into the shadow he cast, he was as elusive as a mirror reflected in the image of its own shiftiness. Jeebleh stared up at him, and he wouldn’t take a seat. Jeebleh focused on the toothpick in the corner of Faahiye’s mouth, which his tongue was busying itself with, moving it here and there, back and forth. He had the drawn-in cheeks of a man of advanced age. Jeebleh made sure that he was seeing no visions. He thought it safe to assume that Faahiye, who had come out of hiding, should be the one to say something first.

And that was how it came to be. Faahiye took the toothpick out of his mouth and said, “I’m surprised you recognize me.”

“Where am I?” asked Jeebleh.

“I was told you’d be here.”

“Who told you that I’d be here?”

“I am not at liberty to disclose that particular detail.”

Jeebleh said, “Sit down anyhow,” and Faahiye did so. Then, because they hurt, Jeebleh closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, then exhaled, counting to thirty, and praying that he wasn’t hallucinating, seeing things and thinking weird thoughts at this most crucial moment of his visit. Faahiye sat close to him, their thighs touching, Jeebleh’s itching. How he wished he could scratch the spot! But uncertain what to make of Faahiye, he did not dare.

“We’ve all been through it!” Faahiye said.

“We’ve all been jabbed, have we?”

“Jabbed?” Faahiye asked.

“Poisoned!”

“I meant that all of us who’ve lived in this civil war have become someone other than ourselves for brief periods of time, in which we’ve entertained moments of doubt, or dropped into a deep well of despair. Have you too become someone other, in spite of yourself?”

Listening to Faahiye was working positively on him, and he was managing to take it easy, despite himself. Faahiye’s words had taken him to a comfort zone, where he didn’t mind dwelling for as long as they were in the teahouse. Jeebleh would have been the first to admit that it would be unwise to meet up with Af-Laawe, after he had been told about him; Af-Laawe would put him through a grinder, he suspected. But now he was looking at the brighter side of things: at least he had gotten to meet Faahiye, never mind his dissipated condition. Who knows, he might even get to meet Raasta and take her home shortly, back to Shanta and Bile!

“We’ve all learned to be someone other than ourselves, and have relaxed ourselves into accepting our perverse condition,” Faahiye was saying. “This makes living easier, less tedious.”

Jeebleh felt as naked as a cat with singed hair. Were Af-Laawe and his cohorts making him jump through hoops of humiliation in order to warn him that worse things were to come unless he stopped being a nuisance? His tongue was now in a tangle, in part because he didn’t know whether it was wise to confide in Faahiye. After all, if trusting Af-Laawe had gotten him to where he was now, jabbed and in pain, then where would trusting Faahiye lead him?

“I know I am someone other than myself,” Faahiye said. “At times it’s pretty hard to figure out who I am, especially when I am by myself. This gets a lot more challenging when I am with others, who are themselves others!”

“What about when you are with Raasta and Makka?”

Jeebleh felt uncomfortable, because Faahiye’s expression didn’t change at all, as if he didn’t even recognize the names of the girls. To interpret his interlocutor’s shiftiness, Jeebleh willed himself into becoming as humble and calm as the metallic silver of a mirror. This way he might make sense of the shadowy apparition moving at the deeper end of what was reflected in Faahiye’s features.

“You know it and so do I,” Faahiye said. “You become someone other than yourself when you spend many years in isolation, or live separated from those who mean a lot to you. You become someone other than yourself when you live together with your jailers, whom heaven wouldn’t admit into its courtyard, and whom hell wouldn’t deign to receive.”

“Why did you opt out?”

“I am sure you’ve heard the proverb that says that even a coward, alone and untested, thinks of himself as a brave man?”

“I know the proverb, all right,” Jeebleh said.

“I left because I thought I’d do better if I struck out on my own, away from the constraints of in-laws and so on. And because I didn’t like the false lives we lived.”

“False lives? What false lives, whose?”

“It would be unbecoming of me to name names.”

Faahiye beckoned to a waiter, who came and recited the menu of meats and pasta dishes. When he had taken Faahiye’s order, and it became obvious that Jeebleh didn’t want anything, the waiter relayed it at the top of his voice to the kitchen, about ten meters away, through an open hatch. Jeebleh drew comfort from the fact that he was meeting Faahiye in a restaurant filled with absolute strangers. Because no one there was carrying a gun — at least not openly — and no one appeared worried or frightened, Jeebleh remembered Mogadiscio as it used to be, peaceful. Not far from where they sat, several men were busy counting piles of Somali shillings, then handing them over to other men in exchange for U.S. dollars. Jeebleh guessed they were close to the Bakhaaraha market.

Faahiye continued talking. “Memory runs in awe of all that’s false, mean, and wicked. Myself, I’d ascribe my failure to adapt to life with Bile to the fact that before his arrival on the scene, Shanta and I had all the time we needed to construct a world out of dreams. I was, I must say, unprepared to live in an intimate way with Bile at the same time as having Raasta. It was all too much, too soon — I found it unhealthy, and contrived. Before his arrival, Shanta and I had dreamt dreams the size of a huge home with all its comforts, dreamt that we would enjoy our child’s love and companionship to the fullest extent. I had dreamt that I would relish being a father to Raasta, whom I hoped to rear on a diet of affection.

“We began our lives, Shanta and I, as a twosome, a loving couple, rarely raising our voices in anger at each other. We spent much of our time together, loving, bonded, tied to each other by the mutuality of our needs, the need to survive the war, which was then between the Dictator and the clan-based militias. Neither of us imagined life without the other. There was joy in our sharing of pure love, and we melted into each other. She was my barber, and devoted loving time to giving a smoother shape to my straggly toenails. I paid attention to all of her needs in every detail. We would shower together, soap each other’s bodies, and then make love.”

The waiter brought Faahiye his order, but wouldn’t go until he was paid in cash. Faahiye touched his pockets, then showed his palms, indicating that he had no money. Jeebleh offered to pay, but he had only dollars. “No problem,” the waiter assured him, and took the bill to the money changers nearby, who gave him Somali shillings.

Between mouthfuls, Faahiye continued to speak, saying that when Shanta became pregnant, both he and she felt that if she carried the pregnancy to term and gave birth to a healthy baby, then such an issue, given Shanta’s age, would be a miraculous one. “If only I could bid yesterday to return, and make it explain why Bile’s arrival changed everything, why I didn’t take to him, couldn’t stand him, and why he didn’t take to me and couldn’t stand me either. Perhaps it was because we lived on top of one another. Moreover, the civil war was entering a very tense new phase. Or maybe it was because he took over the running of our lives, ruining what prospects there were for Shanta and me to enjoy being parents to Raasta together — I don’t know!”

The noise of the teahouse ascended in cigarette smoke toward the low ceiling and then descended as an indecipherable din. The ceiling fans turned and turned, but didn’t produce cool air. Straining his neck, his eyes focused on the window farthest from him, Jeebleh saw a jalopy resembling Af-Laawe’s.

“Before Bile came, Shanta and I had lived in mutual dependence, to the exclusion of everyone else,” Faahiye said. “We both held the view that hell is a blood relation. Myself, I can take my blood relations only in small doses, never in concentrated form. We got together a year after her mother’s death, some time before yours passed away. She was a wonderful woman, your mother, God bless her soul, and I was very fond of her.”

Jeebleh was more moved to hear this than he might have expected.

“Your mother was the first to hear of our wish to marry, because Shanta treated her like a second mother. Sadly, we had very little time for anyone else, and we seldom visited her. But whenever we did, she was warm and caring. Her housekeeper was a brave woman, able to tell Caloosha off when he got out of line. She loved you, your mother, and had nothing but praise for what you stood for.”

Tears coming to his eyes, Jeebleh asked whether Faahiye had any idea how he could reach the housekeeper.

“I know where she is,” Faahiye said.

“Where?”

“She and I lived in adjacent rooms in the refugee camp in Mombasa. She was penniless, depressed, and lacking in energy. She came to life only when she was angry and cursed Caloosha, or was full of joy and praised your mother’s generosity of spirit — or yours!”

“When did you get back from Mombasa?”

“This morning.”

“Tell me more. Please.”

“I am not at liberty to do so,” Faahiye said.

“And why not?”

“This is too complicated to get into now.”

There was a long silence.

“Anyhow,” Faahiye said finally, “Bile came when Shanta had lain on her back for almost two days, in labor. We were cursing our misfortunes, to be bringing a baby into a world falling around our ears. The Dictator had fled, and many members of my own clan family had been rounded up and killed en masse. So bad was the rabble-rousing rhetoric that Shanta, between groans, kept suggesting that I leave, that maybe it wasn’t safe for me.

“Bile came. I’ve got to hand it to him, he knew what to do. He turned the baby to a position that would make for a healthy delivery. He delivered Shanta of a baby in a shorter time than it took him to decide whether to put aside the moral and psychological constraints of his medical ethics. Then he touched Raasta.”

“Touched Raasta?”

“He appropriated her soon after delivering her. I understand now that he touched her out of human tenderness, which he must have missed, given that he had spent many years in solitary confinement. Later, I noticed that she quieted down whenever he picked her up, whereas she was in great distress when I held her. Raasta was jinxed, I thought. Why, she’d make as if suckling at his breast. I went ballistic, and on the attack. I spoke of murder, and of robbery. I had the proof. Bile had arrived with a duffel bag full of money. Where had he gotten it? No one leaves prison with a duffel bag full of money. He gave me some incredible spiel about stumbing on the funds, but I wasn’t satisfied, and demanded proof of his innocence, which he couldn’t provide.”

“Why did you leave without any explanation?”

Faahiye replied, “I was irreconcilably hurt by Shanta’s flippant remarks, spoken first in jest and in private, then in anger, in total seriousness, and in public. I had felt since Bile’s arrival that she was a changed woman. Occasionally, she behaved as though her brother’s presence turned her on sexually. And when I called him a murderer and we exchanged rude words, she took his side, saying how she hated having to deal with two children, one of whom was a grown adult — meaning me — and the second — meaning Raasta — a baby at her breast. I was reduced to an outsider in my own home, made into an ogre in front of my friends, and treated like an embarrassment in the presence of acquaintances. I withdrew in shame. I was of use only when they needed a fourth at the card table. Then they would ask me to join them.”

“Did you at any point suspect that Bile had it in for you, because the two of you belonged to different clans?” Jeebleh asked.

“That never crossed my mind.”

“Did you talk to Bile?”

“According to him, there was no basis for what he referred to as my self-exclusion. And the fact that he turned things around and made me feel that I was excluding myself didn’t help matters at all. I quoted to him a proverb: ‘A cow got while on a looting spree doesn’t produce a calf that’s legally yours.’ And I forbade my daughter to be fed on the powdered milk that he had bought. The battle lines were drawn. We were engaged in a war of wills over what was right and what was wrong!”

Jeebleh had heard enough about Raasta, and so he asked: “Where’s Raasta?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

Faahiye struck Jeebleh as straightforward.

“How about Makka?”

“No idea either.”

“When did you last see them?”

“I saw them before I left for Mombasa.”

“At Bile’s or at Shanta’s?”

“At one or the other’s. I can’t be certain.”

“Where are you staying now?”

“I am not at liberty to disclose this detail.”

“With Caloosha? With Af-Laawe?”

“I am not at liberty to disclose this,” Faahiye repeated.

There was another long silence.

Jeebleh wondered if the cartel — and there was clearly a cartel, he told himself, organ-stealers or not — had flown Faahiye in from Mombasa, promising that he would see his daughter and Makka on the condition that he kept certain secrets to himself. He asked, “Will you call me if they will let me meet with Raasta and Makka after you’re allowed to see the two girls yourself?”

Faahiye’s eyes became evasive. He looked around, as if searching for someone tailing him or eavesdropping on his conversation. And then, with a knowing smile covering much of his face, maybe out of relief that Jeebleh had worked out the mystery for himself, he replied quietly but urgently, “I’ll see what I can do!”

Then, without much ado, both got up to leave.

ONCE OUTSIDE THE TEAHOUSE, JEEBLEH USED THE MOBILE TO PHONE DAJAAL and ask that he pick him up. Dajaal questioned him about where he was, and set a spot to meet him.

Before the two men bid each other farewell, Faahiye told Jeebleh a folktale.

“It happened a long, long, long time ago,” he said. “A son, reaching the age of twenty-something, marries. Blessed with children and a loving wife, the son takes his blind, now senile father to a tree very far from the family dwelling, gives the old man some water in a gourd and some milk in a pitcher, and leaves the helpless old man there. He promises he’ll return for him shortly, only he knows he has no intention of doing so. The old man dies from exposure to the elements. But before dying, the old man curses his son.

“The years come and go, and the son grows to become an old man, his sight weak, his hearing gone, almost an invalid, a burden to his family. One day, his own son takes him for a walk, away from the hamlet to a desolate place. He puts two gourds, heavy with milk and water, close to him, and vows that he’ll return for him before nightfall.

“The old man remembers what he, as a young, strong man, had done to his ailing, blind father. So he calls back his son and says, ‘My father cursed me for doing to him what you’re doing to me now, because I left him, a senile old man, to die alone. I lied to him, he cursed me, and so from then on, misfortunes called on me frequently. I’ll pray for my father’s pardon, and I’ll pray that God blesses your every wish with His approval. May good fortune smile on you and your family, my son!’

“The son takes his father back to the hamlet, and the chains of curses, guilt, and more sorrows are thus broken.”

Then Faahiye was gone!

25

AFTER DAJAAL PICKED HIM UP OUTSIDE THE RESTAURANT, JEEBLEH judiciously related some of what had transpired since he left Bile’s apartment. He withheld the part about his visit to the cemetery with Af-Laawe, his musclemen, and the supposed housekeeper. Then he asked Dajaal’s interpretation of the folktale.

“I would assume that he is now prepared to return to the fold of the family.” Dajaal clutched the machine gun lying in his lap. After a silence, he added, “I doubt that it’ll be a let-bygones-be-bygones return, though. He’ll lay down his conditions, that’s for sure.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I have the feeling that he is being blackmailed. But however you look at it, it’s definitely a relief that he is ready to break the cycle of curses and to reconcile himself to his new situation.”

Jeebleh said, “He’s from the old world, all right!”

Dajaal drove without talking, visibly hampered by the gun on his lap, which slipped whenever he took a bend. They were headed back to Bile’s, and were less than a kilometer away when Jeebleh asked if Dajaal could do him a favor.

Dajaal slowed the car. “Y-e-s!”

“Could you take me to the cemetery, please?”

“Why?”

“I wish to visit my mother’s grave, to pay my belated respects to her, to say a brief prayer in peace there. I’ll be in your debt forever if you get me there and back.”

“How do we find the grave?”

Jeebleh explained that Shanta had given him directions, and that he knew what to look for.

“We’ll have to let Bile know.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Jeebleh said.

Dajaal gave this a moment’s thought, and then deferred to Jeebleh’s decision. Even so, he fidgeted as he drove. The gun kept slipping off his lap, and he kept grabbing it with his left hand just before it dropped to the floor.

“Since I am playing truant today, I might as well hold the gun,” Jeebleh offered. “At least that’ll make your driving easier.”

Dajaal had yet to come up with an answer when Jeebleh took hold of the weapon, turning it this way and that. Admiring it. He surprised even himself when he said, “This is a beauty, isn’t it?”

“It’s well put together, I agree.” Then a rider: “Mind you, go gentle, okay?” Dajaal might have been warning a toddler about the dangers of fire.

This was the first time in his life that Jeebleh had held a firearm. What worried him was his spellbound, facile adoration of the gun. The muscleman had injected him with a potion that had altered his nature and personality, and soon he might no longer challenge a statement like the one spoken by Af-Laawe on the day of his arrival: that guns lack the body of human truths! As he fondled the gun, he realized that he was a changed man, different from the one who had left a loving wife and two daughters back home, promising to be cautious, and to bring back the life, his, of which he was a mere custodian.

They arrived at the broken signboard that marked the entrance to the General Cemetery, and drove around in search of the landmarks Shanta had told Jeebleh about. He was sweating with worry when they passed the section where Af-Laawe had taken him; he remembered what had been done to him, and how rude Af-Laawe had been. But he chose not to speak of any of this to Dajaal. He was relieved as the uncut wild shrubs impeded their progress, and they had to take a long, roundabout way toward a large mango tree.

Jeebleh apologized for making Dajaal go through all this. “If my mother had not departed the way she did,” he said, “with her soul bothered and her peace troubled, I should not have insisted on your bringing me here now.”

As soon as he discovered a straight path to the mango tree, Dajaal revved the engine. He parked the car under an acacia, and stayed there, covering Jeebleh with the machine gun — they could not be sure, Af-Laawe or his cronies might be lying in wait. Jeebleh got out of the car without fear and, no longer tired, strode forward with a fresh spring. Now that he had found the spot marked with four medium-to-large stones bearing his mother’s name, Waliya, he looked around and saw how close he had been to it on his previous visit. He doubted that the purported housekeeper knew where the grave was; Af-Laawe, however, did. From where he stood, Jeebleh could see that here too the earth had shifted, and several mounds had collapsed on themselves.

He sank to his knees, humbling himself in prayerful memory of a mother whom he felt he had failed. In this crouched posture, he resembled a haunted creature from prehistory deferring to a sky god. His eyes opened wide onto an endless day of prayer, and an eternal night of commiseration.

He was now more at peace with himself than at any time since his arrival in the city of ruin. And when Dajaal came to him, suggesting that it was time to leave, Jeebleh requested that they call at Bile’s mother’s grave. Again, he crouched in supplication, the boundary marked with a fruitless lemon tree which offered hardly any shadow, and four medium-to-large stones bearing the name: Hagarr.

AT THE APARTMENT, HE TOLD BILE AND SEAMUS MORE THAN HE HAD BEEN prepared to share with Dajaal, about what had been done to him and how he had suffered at Af-Laawe’s hand. Then he explained what he had done, and how, soon after calling at the graves of his mother and that of Auntie Hagarr, peace had returned to him.

When Shanta, who was in a party mood, joined them, Jeebleh purged his story of the mention of the jab he had been given by Af-Laawe’s muscleman. Nor did he bother to inform her of his thought that the muscleman was a doctor on retainer to the cartel. Yet Jeebleh harbored his own worries. His hand kept returning to the spot where he’d been jabbed, and he wondered whether it would grow larger than a boil before the night was out. Earlier, he had shown it to Bile, who promised that they would go for tests at the city’s only lab with a pathology facility, rudimentary as it was. Jeebleh’s mind kept returning to the many occasions in their youth when Caloosha had subjected him and Bile to torture; he knew that he had come to a point in his life when he should face his demons, and in some way deal with them. To take his mind off his worries, he emphasized Dajaal’s opinion that Faahiye was a victim of blackmail. When she heard that Jeebleh had called at their mothers’ graves, Shanta became more boisterous, kissing, ululating, a woman in celebration.

The four stayed up most of the night, talking, engaging in conjecture. No one wanted to break up the improvised gathering, and of course, Shanta had no wish to go back to an empty, desolate home; she preferred instead to sleep on the living room floor. Whereas Shanta, in her nervous optimism, felt that Raasta and Makka’s return was imminent, the others were not of that view, especially Bile. All the same, the apartment was charged with Shanta’s renewed energy. They tried to imagine their way into Faahiye’s mind, speculating over the same ground: Why did he keep telling Jeebleh that he wasn’t at liberty to disclose this or that bit of information? How was Raasta bearing up, and what was her mental state? Was Faahiye telling the truth when he said that he had been at the refugee camp in Mombasa? With Shanta’s spirits so high, the three men were careful not to say or do anything that might spoil her flowering enthusiasm.

For fear of being thought a party-pooper, Bile acquiesced to Shanta’s demand that the generator run for much longer than was customary. All sorts of drinks came out of the cabinet, soft, hard, and in between. Seamus helped himself to several bottles of beer and as many generous tots of whiskey as his tumbler could contain. A wine bottle of excellent Italian vintage, bought in Rome, was uncorked. Coffee was made, and tea brewed. Glasses that hadn’t been dusted for years, since no one could think of a good enough reason to celebrate, were passed around. Shanta insisted on a very sweet orange drink.

Bile, though not unnecessarily mistrustful of Faahiye or his motives, was by nature ill disposed toward hatching his eggs before he had a hen to lay them. He couldn’t help returning to the same questions: How was Raasta doing in captivity? How was Makka coping? How much help, if any, had the abductors received from Caloosha or Af-Laawe? What purpose was the abduction meant to serve?

The posse of security personnel — discreetly recruited from within the displaced community nearby — was on the alert, busy watching over the entire neighborhood. And because there was electricity for them from the generator for much of the night, there was gaiety among the security detail too, a modest calm informed by self-restraint.

The three men did not abandon their instinct of caution; while one moment Seamus and Jeebleh agreed that there were positive signs pointing to an early reunion with the missing girls, the next moment Bile wondered whether they would be able to meet Faahiye’s conditions, whatever these were.

It wasn’t so with Shanta, who was overwhelmed with joy, her tongue where her heart should have been. She kept jabbering away, at times making it difficult for the others to get a word in edgewise. Not once did she say anything terrible about Faahiye. What’s more, she asked for Jeebleh’s forgiveness, because of the results obtained. “I wouldn’t have accused you unfairly of talking to Faahiye behind our backs, if I imagined for a moment that you were capable of achieving miracles.” Embarrassed, he looked away, remembering being told that she was given to speaking of herself as a mother “damned to tears and sorrow.” With an expression of pained wonder, she went over and for the second time kissed him on the brow, almost tumbling on top of him. She regained her balance and caught her breath, and kept saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you in the name of our mothers!”

Now the past, which Shanta had smuggled in by alluding to their mothers, became the fifth person in the room, assuming a larger presence than anyone had been prepared for. Bile admonished them to desist from introducing the past, as a contraband idea, as this would exclude Seamus. Nor could the three friends and coevals speak of their more recent past, as this would exclude Shanta. Seamus stepped in to steer the conversation away from the present to a past not close to anyone’s heart: the role the United States had played in Somalia!

“I’ve my misgivings about saints and angels,” he said, “especially as I fear that people describe the Yankees as ‘good angels’ come on a humanitarian mission, to perform God’s work here. Do you think Yankees ceased being angels, because of the conditions they met here, conditions that wouldn’t permit them to perform any work but Satan’s? When do angels cease to be angels and resort to being who they are, Yankees? That’s a topic worth pursuing, wouldn’t you agree with me, my American friend?” And Seamus looked at Jeebleh, teasing.

Jeebleh was comforted by the prospect of affording his mind time to dwell on another subject, and he thought, half remembering a quotation attributed to J. M. Synge, that there was no one like Seamus to soothe and quiet one’s nerves on an evening such as this. Meanwhile Seamus’s unerring sense of kindness toward everyone made it possible for him to speak a gentle reprimand in the very idiom that made you think he was praising you. The man thought of the world, Jeebleh reflected, in images that surprised even Seamus: unpredictable in an interesting way.

Shanta was excited to high heaven, and so was her voice, as she addressed Seamus, who now assumed the role of a moderator at a panel discussion, but only momentarily. “They ceased to be angels,” she said, “which they weren’t in any case, and became who they were, Americans, when they used overwhelming force in such an indiscriminate fashion and lots of innocent Somalis died.”

Bile agreed, adding that, from the moment they landed and started putting on a circus for the benefit of prime-time TV back home, you felt they couldn’t have come to do God’s work.

“Why did they come, then?” Seamus said. And when no one spoke, he gave his theory: that everything that could’ve gone wrong for the Yanks had gone wrong because they saw everything in black and white, had no understanding of and no respect for other cultures, and were short on imagination, as they never put themselves in anyone else’s shoes. They were also let down by their intelligence services, arriving everywhere unprepared, untutored in the ways of the world; he brought up the collapse of the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and the disintegration of several ramshackle states in different parts of the globe. “They came to show the world that they could make peace-on-demand in Somalia, in the same dramatic fashion as they had made war-on-demand in the Gulf. They came to showcase peace here, as a counterpoint to their war effort elsewhere. Iraq and Somalia had one thing in common: both were made-for-TV shows. Christ, they were uppity, but they never lost their focus — the prime-time performance was their focus all along.” He turned to Jeebleh, who looked ill at ease. “I am agreeing with you. What’s your gripe?”

Jeebleh pondered for a few seconds. “Doesn’t the sound of a gunshot make the birds perched side by side on a telephone wire take off in fright, all at the same time?” he asked rhetorically.

“Y-e-s?” Bile seemed interested.

“But a few seconds after taking off in fright,” Jeebleh said, “don’t many of the birds that haven’t been hit come back to sit on the same telephone wire, or another one very much like it?”

“What’s your point?”

“The Americans shouldn’t have permitted the armed vigilantes to return to their haunts. They should’ve disarmed them soon after their arrival, when the irregular armies allied to the Strongmen were afraid of America’s military might. They sent contradictory messages to the warlords, and then fell back on this zero-casualty idea. I’d say they lost their focus, all right.”

“Perhaps the cutthroat conditions the Americans encountered here, which they had no way of dealing with, made them blow hot and cold?” Shanta speculated.

“There was another problem,” Bile said. “A problem to do with definitions.”

“How do you mean, definitions?” Seamus asked.

Perhaps because the conversation was no longer about Raasta and Makka’s return, Shanta became more garrulous than Jeebleh had known her to be since their first encounter, and couldn’t control her enthusiasm. She fidgeted, got up, moved about, then returned to her original seat, mumbling something to herself. No one paid her any mind.

Bile spoke. “The U.S. forces failed to define why they really came to Somalia in the first place, soon after the Gulf War. This was never made clear. The ‘good’ Americans, just back from defeating Bad Guy Saddam, were seen on TV holding a dozen starving babies at a feeding center — a picture of postcard quality. Later, after the trigger-happy U.S. soldiers massacred hundreds of innocent civilians and turned the life of the residents into hell, we asked ourselves how the Americans could reconcile the earlier gestures of mercy with the bombings of the city, in which many women and children were killed. And did you hear what one of the U.S. officials said when they pulled out after the October debacle? ‘We fed them, they got strong, and they killed us!’ Do you recall who it was said that?”

“Some U.S. major or other,” offered Seamus.

“A spokesman of the UN, actually,” Bile said.

“He could’ve been U.S. Army, though.”

“What’s the difference?” Shanta said.

“A matter of definition!” Bile said.

Seamus took it from there: “Surely StrongmanSouth’s armed youths who shot at the Americans, and killed many UN Blue Helmets of other nationalities, were not the emaciated babies with whom the Marines had those heart-wrenching pictures taken in front of the cameras? Surely the spokesman of the UN military was mistakenly equating the small group of armed militias who fought against them with the whole of the Somali nation?”

“Don’t Somalis take the part and mistake it for the whole too?” Jeebleh knew he was in a distancing mode, apart from “them.”

“I agree,” Bile said. “We too mistook the small group of senior officers and the military on duty here for the whole of America. You’d have thought from listening to the ranting of a supporter of StrongmanSouth that America had gone to war against the whole of the Somali nation, which of course it hadn’t. When one takes the part for the whole, one seldom bothers to distinguish between the uncouth soldiers with whom we’ve become acquainted and other, well-meaning Americans. I am sure there are millions of Americans who are good people, and millions of Somalis who wouldn’t hurt an American fly. When you think of it, the Americans, by their actions, made a hero out of StrongmanSouth, and this prolonged the civil war. After all, it was after their hasty departure that he nominated himself president. I’d say the American-in-Charge met his equal and Faustian counterpart in StrongmanSouth.”

“What of the Belgians, the Italians, or the Canadians?” Seamus asked. “They didn’t act less uppity or more humanely toward the Somalis, did they?”

Shanta now addressed Jeebleh: “Did you know that in everyday Somali, the term amerikaan means ‘weird’? Why do you think that is so?”

“I know too that the term amxaar, the Somali word for ‘Ethiopian,’ means ‘unkind,’ ‘brutal,’” Seamus said. “And I can tell you why.”

“The coinage of amerikaan to mean ‘weird,’ I should point out, precedes the Somali people’s recent encounter with Americans in the shape of the Marines and Rangers who shot the daylights out of them,” Jeebleh said. “Maybe it came about as a result of the Hollywood movies we’ve seen?”

“I think it’s in the nature of the strong and the weak to define each other in ways that make sense only to one of them, not necessarily to both,” said Seamus. “To the Somali, the Amerikaan is weird, to the American GI, the Somali is an ingrate and a skinny.”

“And I would hate it if a GI Joe not worth a quid of chewed tobacco were to make up our minds for us about America!” Jeebleh replied. “Moreover, let’s ask ourselves a question: Can we blame them? Is a whole country responsible for a crime committed by one of its citizens? Can all of America be held responsible for the gaffes made by one of its nationals, however high-ranking, or however representative of the power invested in him?”

It was then that Bile reminded them of how the rotors of one U.S. helicopter had blown a baby girl, barely a year old, out of her mother’s arms and up into the dust-filled heavens. They all fell silent, affected by the unimaginable horror. Jeebleh wanted to know if Bile had ever met her.

“She was brought to my clinic,” he offered.

Jeebleh remembered Dajaal’s mentioning that his granddaughter had been blown away in a helicopter’s uprush of air.

“Dajaal came along to the clinic with the girl and her mother.”

“I’ve been meaning to see her,” Jeebleh said. “Perhaps Dajaal can take me to her.”

Shanta was the first to yawn, and the yawning became contagious, everyone agreeing that it was time to turn in. Bile reminded Jeebleh that just to be on the safe side, he would take him to the lab first thing in the morning.

Shanta overheard and worriedly wondered if all was well with Jeebleh.

“Just a checkup,” he reassured her. “I’d also like to go to the barber for a haircut,” he told Bile.

“I’ll ask Dajaal to drive you. And maybe on your way to or from the barber’s you can make a detour and visit his granddaughter and her mother.”

Shanta said, “Good night, then!”

Instead of saying good night, Seamus left Jeebleh with an admonition: “Let no madness hurt you into bearing a gun!”

Not rising to it, Jeebleh said, “Good night!”

“Night-night!”

“Night-night!”

26

“WHICH DO YOU PREFER, WALKING OR TAKING THE CAR?” DAJAAL ASKED, when he and Jeebleh, back from the lab, met the following morning.

“Are the two places far apart?” Jeebleh paused, feeling awkward, after taking a step. He put on the sarong he had brought from New York, and borrowed a conical cap and a shawl from Bile, wanting to look like a local when he went to the barber’s, and to visit Dajaal’s granddaughter and her mother.

Dajaal replied, “At most, it’s half an hour’s walk from my daughter-in-law’s to the barbershop. I’ve arranged for Qasiir to meet us there.”

Jeebleh had had a slight fever during the night and had been awake almost until dawn, tossing and turning, at times deciding to pack his bags and leave, then changing his mind and persuading himself to stay the course. Now his swollen glands were causing him discomfort, and several of his joints were burning from pain. Bile wouldn’t commit himself to a diagnosis until he had heard from the lab technician, who had promised to get back to them before the end of the day, tomorrow at the latest. If anything, Bile said, Jeebleh was lucky that he had a constitution as strong as a horse’s; Bile felt he was in no danger of imminent collapse.

“Let’s walk,” Jeebleh said.

“Are you sure?”

“Walking will do me good.”

The memory of what he had gone through hit him afresh with agony and anger. He felt an upsurge of masochism within, like a river rising in the Sahara. He told himself to withstand the pain with unprecedented stoicism, but not to forget what had been done to him, so that he might link yesterday’s agony and anger to those of yesteryear, and to what had happened to him as a child.

“Let’s walk and talk!” he said.

DAJAAL LED THE WAY AND JEEBLEH WALKED ALONGSIDE, CLUTCHING THE candies he had brought for Dajaal’s granddaughter. Death was no longer in every shadow cast by every wall. When he first arrived, he feared being ambushed by an unexpected death, and worried that he might die anonymously, killed by someone who did not know him and had no idea why he was administering death to him. Since then, he had wised up, coming around to the view that in the Mogadiscio of these days, death was seldom anonymous: it had a face and a name, and you were more likely to be killed by someone supposedly close to you or related to you. It was becoming rarer for total strangers to kill one another for no reason. Gone were the days of random killings. Lately, murderers were more calculating, factoring in their possible political and financial gains before killing you. Was it Osip Mandelstam who had said that only your own kind would kill you? To elude death of that sort, Jeebleh had fled south, where he was supposed to be an other, and where — here was the irony — he felt safer.

Dajaal interrupted his thoughts. “Are you happy in America?”

“America is home to me, but I doubt that I would use the word ‘happy’ to describe my state of mind there,” Jeebleh said tentatively. “I’m comfortable in America. I love my wife and daughters. I love them in New York, where we live. I can’t help comparing your question with one that I asked myself when I got here: Do I love Somalia? I found it difficult to answer.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I love Somalia.”

“What about as a Somali in America?”

“When I think about America from the perspective of a Somali, and reflect on what’s occurred following the U.S. intervention, then I feel I’m in a bind.”

Dajaal took a tighter grip on the ball he kept squeezing to help the blood in his hand circulate. You could see that he too was turning a thought in his head, stirring it, agitating it.

“Something happened that I hadn’t reckoned on,” Jeebleh said. “I discovered that I was not saddened by the deaths on either side as much as I was saddened by the ruthlessness displayed by the young fighters.” He watched the flight of an eagle briefly before turning to Dajaal to ask, “What did you think of the Marines and the Rangers as fighters?”

“I couldn’t fault the junior officers.”

“What about the commanding officers?”

Dajaal took an even firmer grip on the rubber ball, his knuckles protruding more prominently and appeared a shade paler than their natural color.

“My heart went out to the young Marines and Rangers,” Dajaal said, “even though on the night of the third of October, when I confronted them — man to man — I gave each of them as much of a piece of hell as I could. But during the lull in the fighting, I felt as though each of them was alone in his fear, like a child left in the pitch-darkness of a strange room by parents who were enjoying themselves elsewhere. I imagined them wondering what they were doing in Africa, away from their loved ones, and asking themselves why some skinny Somalis in sarongs were taking potshots at them. I imagined them questioning in their own minds the explanations put out by military spokesmen at Pentagon briefings. But you want to know what I thought of the commanding officers. From the majors upward, including the AIC?”

“Tell me.”

“I hoped to God they would be court-martialed, and wished them hell and much worse.” Dajaal squeezed the ball as though he might eventually succeed in getting blood out of it. “The senior officers were too ignorant to learn, too arrogant. If only they had had enough humility to put themselves in their subordinates’ shoes, I kept thinking. Their behavior was loony. But the young Marines and Rangers redeemed themselves with their fighting. They held up well, fought fiercely, and gave back as good as they got. As fighters, there was a major flaw in their character, however. They thought less of us, and that was ultimately the cause of their downfall. You should never think less of your opponent — we were taught this at military school. If you respect your enemy, you can be easier on yourself later, especially if you lose the fight, and it is of high moral value when you win.”

“They belittled StrongmanSouth’s militia?”

“They belittled all of us, fighters or no fighters,” Dajaal corrected him. “StrongmanSouth didn’t fight. I was there, and he didn’t fight. That was to prove the Americans’ undoing, the fact that they belittled the fighters.”

“You’re saying that pride can cause one’s ruin?”

“A lot of terrible things were done that night and the following morning by both groups, ours and theirs,” Dajaal said, “all in the service of the raging insanity. We had hardly wised up to what was being done on our side when we witnessed the worst imaginable horror in the shameful shape of youths dragging a dead American down the city’s dusty roads. But then I thought, A mob is a mob, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Mobs run riot, they are good at that: if they go mad, they do it everywhere, even in America.”

“Was there any way someone could’ve prevented it?”

“It all happened so fast,” Dajaal said, “we couldn’t have done anything, even if we had wanted to. We were aware of the mob gathering, chanting the usual anti-American slogans. Then, before you could say, ‘Please, let’s not do that,’ the youths, mostly urchins and riffraff, were rampaging, my grandson Qasiir among them. No one was in control. Many of us were too exhausted from the nightlong fighting and couldn’t be bothered. You must remember, there were so many deaths on our side, over a thousand by our reckoning. Many of us went straight from the fighting to the burial grounds. We were all out on a limb for all of thirteen hours or so, fighting to keep death at bay, and I doubt if we could’ve raised our voices against what the youths were doing. I can assure you that we were shocked. Were you not shocked?”

Jeebleh remembered seeing the scene on TV. He had thought of beasts of prey roaming the streets of the city and the countryside, beasts inhabiting the minds of the youths. But when answering Dajaal’s question, he moderated his reaction. “I thought of life-in-death, if that makes sense to you.”

“The mob had hardly dispersed,” Dajaal continued, “and we heard on our short-wave radio that the Americans were leaving, body bags and all. Some of us would’ve liked to talk things through. I’m sorry that wasn’t to be.”

“StrongmanSouth wouldn’t have wanted to talk?”

“Of course he wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because he was a spent force until the AIC gave him a new lease on life by making him ‘Wanted’ and placing a reward worth thousands of dollars on his head,” Dajaal said. “Thanks, but no, thanks, to the AIC!”

Jeebleh remembered the discussion of the previous night, and he asked Dajaal to tell him who, in his opinion, had fought whom. “Americans versus Somalis?”

Dajaal explained that the Somalis, fragmented in their sectarian loyalties, did not see the battle as having been fought between “Somalis” and “Americans.” “The fighting was between the clansmen supporting StrongmanSouth, and the AIC,” he said. “Truth was one of the first casualties of the war.”

“Did you see yourself as a man provoked into deadly action? What finally made you decide to dig up your gun? Were you in a rage?”

“Anger had nothing to do with it,” Dajaal replied, “but justice did.”

“Were you afraid?”

“I was prone to fear, like the Marines, and alone in my fear too. But I wasn’t in a strange country, I knew why I was doing what I was doing, and I knew where I was, even in the dark! That was the difference between our situation and that of the young Americans.”

They came across a zinc wall on which someone had scrawled “Dal-dalo maidkaada, tagna!” Jeebleh rendered this to himself as “Take away your corpses and leave our country!” He knew where the line came from. His memory galloping, he recited lines from a poem composed at the turn of the twentieth century by Somalia’s greatest poet, Sayyid Mohammed Abdulle Hassan.

“I have no cultivated fields, or silver

Or gold for you to take!

The Country is bush.

If you want wood and stone,

You can get them in plenty,

There are also many termite hills.

All you can get from me is War.

If you want peace, go away from my Country.”

Then a silence, which neither was prepared to break, came between them, like a referee stopping a fight. And into the silence walked a rabble of armed youths, like extras in a film about Mexican bandidos. As though on cue, one youth came forward. He was very short, stocky, and showily dressed as an outlaw — boots, bandanna, and Stetson hat. You could see that he was the kind who would waste you without blinking an eyelid. Jeebleh was expecting to hear a crescendo of gunshots, and death calling, when his worried gaze settled on Dajaal’s nonchalant expression. The youth shouted, “Nothing to worry about, Grandpa. We’re just having some fun, me and my friends!”

“Come and I’ll introduce you to my visiting friend, then,” Dajaal told the youth. He turned to Jeebleh and said sotto voce, “He’s my grandson, whom everyone calls Qasiir. A rascal, really. He can tell you how he partook of the fighting on the day his sister was hurt. He has been involved in a lot of tomfoolery too.”

Qasiir strode as though on a movie set, cameras rolling to catch every one of his antics. The combination of boots and Stetson made him appear taller; he put on a tough expression, thumbs stuck deep into his ammunition belt, teeth biting down on a chewing-stick the size of a cigarillo. Jeebleh imagined a harmonica being played nearby, and Clint Eastwood making a cameo appearance. For all his posturing, he struck Jeebleh as a youth who had come through muck, in which he wallowed; death, which he courted without fear; and humiliation, which he fought hard to subdue in his own way.

His voice firm, on edge, and low, Dajaal told Qasiir that he was fed up to the back teeth with his tomfoolery. “Send your sidekicks away, and follow us to your mother’s house, pronto!”

But first Dajaal made a detour to the spot where the helicopter had fallen that October afternoon in 1993. The place looked like any other in a dusty city where furious wars raged. Here, however, there were pieces of metal, once part of a war machine — elegant, noisily powerful, and threatening when up in the air, but unimaginably ugly when fallen and dismantled. A group of rowdy children kicking up a storm of dust abruptly suspended their ball game at Dajaal’s bidding, and they gathered close to him and Jeebleh. The children were curious about Jeebleh; they understood he was a visitor to the city. They guessed that he, like a number of other strangers before him, was calling on the disturbed girl and her mother who lived nearby, casualties of a battle that didn’t concern them.

Qasiir joined them now, and for Jeebleh’s benefit pointed out the battle lines: to the right, where the fighters supporting StrongmanSouth had been, and to the left, where the Americans had been. In a wall improvised from sheets of zinc, they could see evidence of liberal hits from all sides, by bullets of all sizes.

More children joined the group, and a handful of adults came out of their shacks. Dajaal ushered Jeebleh away from the curious onlookers, and led the way to the compound where Qasiir’s brain-damaged sister and her mother awaited them. Just as they reached the gate, a cat came out from underneath, flattening against the ground to avoid being cut by protruding nails.

It dawned on Jeebleh that he was acting out of character: there was nothing to gain from a visit to the little girl and her mother. No doubt, they had suffered as casualties of a senseless battle, and had survived huge personal ordeals. But he didn’t wish to cut the figure of the war tourist, making a voyeuristic study of a sordid aspect of a sad war that shouldn’t have taken place at all. Everything seemed more ominous as they moved into the compound, Dajaal holding back as tradition demanded, stopping outside and announcing “Hoodi!” and awaiting his daughter-in-law’s welcoming “Hodeen!” before going any further. Qasiir entered the squat building without ceremony. A moment later, music came at them from inside, James Brown screeching, hooting, and grunting to the timbre of his soul.

A HAND PUSHED THROUGH THE CURTAIN AT THE DOORWAY. THEN A WOMAN wrapped in a floral robe, an edge of it held between her teeth, emerged, her gaze deferentially downcast. With one hand clutching her right ear, the other holding a little girl’s hand, she came forward. The girl, her gaze diffuse, held the lower edge of the woman’s robe. It was clear from the little one’s movements that all was not well with her. Jeebleh was uncomfortable as he followed her inside, and he looked away from the pair to Dajaal, who by then had found two chairs for them to sit on. Jeebleh was tempted to turn his back on the whole business, and walk out of the house. But he thought better of it when Dajaal introduced the woman, calling her by name, which Jeebleh failed to catch. It wouldn’t do to unnecessarily displease Dajaal, who had been very kind to him all along, and he didn’t want to be rude to the poor woman or her unfortunate daughter. He shook the woman’s hand when she proffered it. Dajaal called to his granddaughter several times; her delayed response suggested that she was hard of hearing, or retarded, or both.

“She’s deaf from the helicopter noise,” Dajaal explained. “And yet she manages to hear ungodly noises, like airplanes, and huge diesel truck engines, and heavy-duty motorbikes, and she cries and cries and cries, nonstop. Maybe she senses the earth shaking, I don’t know.”

The girl stood staring at them, her thumb in her mouth. Jeebleh tried to entice her with the candies, but she wouldn’t approach. He tried to engage her in baby talk, but she just stared at him, as though in amazement.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The young thing wouldn’t speak. Now he looked up at her mother bringing tea, the child almost tripping her. “My daughter hasn’t spoken a word all these years,” the woman told Jeebleh.

Dajaal tried to bring the girl over to Jeebleh, but she cried so fiercely he left her alone. After a few minutes, when his daughter-in-law had served them tea, Dajaal invited her to come and take the candies out of his own palm. He sat so close to her he could’ve touched her. The girl’s pupils appeared dilated, but her stare was unseeing.

When her grandfather’s hand went nearer to give her the candy, she burst again into tears and, taking several steps at once, fell forward. Her mother picked her up, quieted her. The girl, now somewhat relaxed, studied the strange world from the advantageous height of her mother’s protective hip.

“She lives in a world of fear,” the woman said. “Dust storms disturb her, noises too.”

“You say she doesn’t speak at all?”

“She can’t string two words together.”

“And doesn’t laugh either,” Dajaal said.

“How old is she?”

“Almost five and a half.”

Jeebleh didn’t know what to say.

“A baby does not suffer alone,” the mother said.

Dajaal stayed out of it now, seemingly aloof.

The mother continued, “We all suffer with our babies, share in their suffering, don’t we? It’s been very difficult to be the mother of a child who’s never smiled, and never known laughter or the joy of being young. She cries fitfully, wets her bed and slobbers, her nose is forever moist. We keep trying to make her blow it, but I doubt she’ll ever blow it for herself.”

Jeebleh looked from the woman to the child and finally to Dajaal, as if he wanted to be helped out of a fix he had got himself into. He rose to his feet hesitantly and stood unsteadily. Then James Brown’s honking was no more, and Dajaal was telling Qasiir to tell Jeebleh all that had happened on the day the helicopter’s uprush hurt his sister.

Before Qasiir could speak, his mother began: “Children in search of a bit of fun were the first to run to the villa where the two helicopters were hovering menacingly. There were American soldiers in the helicopters, an attack team of about twelve, in big vests worn over fatigues. The earth shook to its foundation, and we were all frightened. We had a routine to follow when helicopters came or when we expected an attack: we would all go together and move north, in small groups to avoid being seen, all of us protected by men with AK-47s. This wasn’t the first attack, and as with all the others, we didn’t think it would be the last.

“But I couldn’t leave, because my daughter wasn’t feeling well, and I stayed behind to give her the medicine prescribed for her earache. Besides, the arrival of the helicopters filled my son Qasiir with bravado, and he came into the room we all share, looking for his dirt-brown jeans and his T-shirt with some writing in English. I thought he might help me join the others, but his mobile rang, telling him where to go and what to do. He ran off in haste with several other boys, answering the call of their commander. They knew no fear, my son and his posse.”

When she paused, Jeebleh looked at Qasiir, and the youth grinned foolishly. He took up the story where his mother had left it. “I was the leader of the posse, wasn’t I? I had on a T-shirt that said ‘Frank James is alive and well and living in Mogadiscio,’ and I was tougher than all the others. We were useful as spies, my friends and I, and I was the one with the mobile. One of the top men of our militia had given it to me.”

Qasiir received instructions via the mobile from a man he had never met, a deputy commander to StrongmanSouth. When he was on the phone, he tried to impress his boys, remaining dramatically silent, nodding in agreement with the invisible commander. Now and then he would proclaim, “Of course I won’t share the secrets with anyone else!” Jeebleh imagined the boy switching off the phone and picking up a sliver of wood, placing it in his mouth, and pushing it about with his tongue in imitation of Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars.

In spite of the terrific noise created by the helicopters, Qasiir’s posse could hear every word he said, as he told them what to do. He might have been relaying a message received directly from the Almighty, each syllable delivered as though he were honoring it, each vowel drawn out in deference to StrongmanSouth. The boys couldn’t tell whether or not he was quoting someone when he said, “Remember that death visits you only once. And so our commander in chief says we must be ready for it, and must welcome it too. How do we achieve the impossible? Discipline.” He repeated the word “discipline” several times, until it had the force of an incantation.

They went into a huddle and piled their hands one on top of another, like basketball players at the beginning of a game. They also took a collective oath, reaffirming their fearless commitment to total war against the enemies of StrongmanSouth. They were ready to undertake risky missions now that the assault had begun in earnest.

“And to prove how we were prepared to die for our commander, one of my boys began chanting in rhythm to the rotating helicopter blades,” Qasiir said. And to Jeebleh’s amusement, he got up and started chanting an imitation of an American gangsta rap. He sang some sort of war cry, “Dill, dill, gaalka dill, dill, dill, gaalka dill!” and after a pause, chanted in English, rapping in rhythm and repeating the command “Kill, kill, kill all!” Qasiir’s acting was so effective that Jeebleh could hear, in his own mind, the chopper’s noise, razor sharp, the blades turning and turning.

The deadly birds continued to hover, Qasiir said, raising an immense cloud of sand. And as the blades rotated faster and faster, the noise grew louder and more frightening, until the swirling currents tore zinc roofing sheets from flimsy dwellings and ripped cardboard from the walls of lean-tos serving as dwellings. A few odd pieces of plywood, no nails to hold them down, were blown away as well.

Qasiir’s mother interrupted her son. “None of this mattered to the helicopter pilots or the soldiers in their funny-looking vests! It was siesta time in Mogadiscio, when we all sought shelter from the scorching sun. But on that day it felt like the entire earth was caught up in waves of tremors, each tremor speeding up the pulse of every person or animal in the neighborhood.”

Qasiir rose to his feet, acting out more of that day, and Jeebleh was able to imagine the accelerated heartbeats of the ailing, the panting lungs of the infirm, the thrashing of the alarmed, the sand funneling in a mighty whirlwind, people cowering in their shacks, curses spoken, spells cast, homes destroyed, businesses disrupted, lives suddenly ended.

Qasiir’s mother described the horrific terror of her baby — then barely a year old — who, torn from her breast, had been caught up in the avalanche of courtyard sand stirred up by the rotors of the helicopters. And when the mother went on her knees, keening in supplication, praying, cursing, cursing and praying, Jeebleh stared, dumbfounded, now unable to imagine the terror.

“I became hysterical,” she continued, “and tore at my bare breast, where my daughter had been nursing. I wailed, I wept, I cursed, I prayed, but to no avail. I tore at my clothes, until I disrobed, convinced that my child had been swallowed up in the sand raised by the helicopter’s sudden arrival. Then I saw the shape of evil. Rangers pointing at my nakedness and laughing. I stopped wailing, and covered my indecency, and then cursed the mothers who bore these Rangers. I’ve never glimpsed worse evil than those men cupping their hands at me, their tongues out, pointing at my nakedness.”

Qasiir and his team heard her wailing. He shouted to his posse, instructing them not to shoot at the helicopters, fearing that his baby sister might be hurt in the crossfire. Looking back, both Qasiir and his mother speculated that one of the pilots might have become aware of what was going on and, in an effort to help, might have steered away from where the mother knelt, naked, weeping, praying, cursing, wallowing in the sand. “Then”—Qasiir acted it out in a wild charade—“two men appeared from nowhere with RPGs, and they gunned for the chopper. There was a mighty crash: the helicopter was down!”

“And I wouldn’t stop wailing,” his mother broke in, “until I saw my baby fall to the ground, close to where I was. I crawled on all fours to where my daughter lay, praying that I would find her alive, and unhurt. All the while, my hard, evil stare was focused on the Rangers in the downed chopper. I lifted my baby into my embrace, and half ran, half walked away, aware of the Rangers’ eyes trained on my back.”

THE STORY WAS OVER, THE MOTHER CLEARLY EXHAUSTED, AND JEEBLEH, NOW prepared to leave, got to his feet. Without thinking, he reached into his shirt pocket and handed over a large sum of money in the local currency — his change from the restaurant — to the mother of the child. The woman looked at her father-in-law, as if to ask, “What am I to do with this?”

“Please let her buy something for the child.” Jeebleh’s words failed him. He was embarrassed by what he had done so thoughtlessly. He walked out of the compound and, with feelings of guilt weighing him down, waited for Dajaal to join him.

27

ON THEIR WAY TO THE BARBERSHOP, JEEBLEH, HIS EXPRESSION FORLORN, relied on the strength of his own spirit to overcome the obstacles in his way.

He decided to approach Dajaal right away with specific demands, even at the risk of being turned down. He did not have all the time in the world: soon he would be returning home, back to his family and his teaching: from that distance, a Parthian shot at his present pursuers and his lifetime foe would be impossible. He wanted the job done, and done well — in and then out.

And there was another matter he needed to consult Dajaal about. Jeebleh wanted to hire a mason to build a miniature mausoleum in noble memory of his mother. Nothing extravagant, just a bit of stone neatly put together, in tribute to the woman who had built him into what he had become. His skin bristled as he thought ahead to the moment when, standing before the structure, he could say a prayer or two, in an effort to apologize for his failures. It would take a great deal of love, and more, to help her spirit lie in undisturbed peace.

He looked in Dajaal’s direction. The man seemed uncomfortable. “There are two jobs I would like to hire someone to do,” Jeebleh said. “Two jobs that are related, to my mind. Would you help me?”

“What are these jobs?”

Worry spread over Jeebleh’s face; he looked as wretched as a rusted drainpipe. “How would you go about it if you wished to commission a risky job?”

Dajaal’s cagey answer made it obvious to Jeebleh that the man knew where he was headed with his questions. “I wouldn’t, for instance, commission my grandson Qasiir to perform a risky job. It would have to be performed on a no-name, no-packdrill basis, with payment on execution.”

Jeebleh emerged after a while from his unclear thinking, and sighed with the confidence of a young colt. “Would you have someone in mind for such a job?”

“I would.”

Kaahin’s name came to Jeebleh’s mind. “Like who?”

Dajaal wouldn’t commit himself. “I can think of out-of-work former colleagues of mine who’ll do the job quietly, efficiently, and cheaply, and who’ll spare one all the gory details having to do with the disposal of bodies and evidence linking one to the deed.” So Dajaal not only knew what Jeebleh wanted him to do, but had given thought to the details like a professional assassin.

“How much?” Jeebleh maintained his confidence.

“I’ll come back to you on that,” Dajaal said.

The sun slanted at Jeebleh from the west, and the sand stirred by his feet rose up and caught on his hairy shins: the scratchy edge of his sarong felt drier. He fiddled with the hat, his fingers upsetting its comfortable fit. “Are you carrying a firearm?” he asked.

“I never go anywhere without one nowadays. Without it I feel naked, unsafe. As it happens, I’m carrying two. Now, may I ask, what do you care about firearms?”

“Could you lend me one?”

Dajaal stopped walking and bent down. He pulled out a revolver he had been wearing strapped to his shin, and offered it simply: “Here!”

Jeebleh took it without hesitation. The revolver felt heavier to him than the machine gun he had held on the way to the cemetery. Fear gathered in his throat, choking him. Before walking on, he admired the weapon, then hid it under his sweat-drenched shirt.

It froze his commoner blood to bear the blood-royal elegance of a machine built to kill at the touch of a trigger. The changes wrought in his behavior from the moment Af-Laawe’s muscleman had prodded him with that needle were enormous. Even though he had contemplated vengeance on Caloosha, he never thought the day would come when he, a peace-loving man, would resort to using a deadly weapon to settle scores.

“The second job you want done?” Dajaal asked.

“This is a lot more pedestrian.” Jeebleh explained the job he had in mind for the mason.

Dajaal asked, “When do you need him to start?”

“I’d say let him start right away.”

“Leave both jobs with me, then.”

Suddenly they heard a stir nearby. A mob shouting, “Thief, catch him!” was chasing a scraggly youth. Blind with fear, the boy ran smack into Jeebleh and almost knocked him over. The mob stopped a short distance away. The ringleader — a very well fed merchant from the market, sprinkled all over with his wares of flour, rice, and sugar — approached with his arms extended, saying, “Hand over the thief, then.”

The thin youth had his mouth full of the food he had apparently stolen, which he was now busy chewing. In his right hand was half of a roll, out of which a piece of meat protruded, like a dead tongue. Eyes as large as his fright, the youth begged in a low voice, “I am hungry, please!”

“How much did the sandwich cost?” Jeebleh asked.

“Hand him over! Hand him over!” the mob chanted.

“I’ll pay for what he’s eaten, so you can let him go free.” Jeebleh looked from the well-fed man to the scraggly youth, and then at the agitated mob, and finally at Dajaal, who stayed out of it, but, as ever, was prepared for any eventuality. Jeebleh addressed the fat merchant: “What’s your problem? I am prepared to pay for his sandwich.”

“He always steals food, runs off, and never pays!” the trader said. “Hand him over and we’ll teach him a lesson. And don’t waste our time.”

“The boy is hungry, that is why he steals!”

The mob moved in on Jeebleh threateningly. Now cowed, he brought out a dollar’s worth of the local currency, and made as though to give it to the trader, who scoffed at the idea of allowing the youth to go free. It was then that Jeebleh lifted his shirt and showed that he had a revolver — and immediately he discerned a change in the mood of the mob, which started to disperse. The trader accepted the money, and the youth scuttled across the road, vanishing into the dust he stirred.

“I’ll be damned!” Dajaal said.

DAJAAL LEFT JEEBLEH IN FRONT OF THE BARBERSHOP, AGREEING TO RETURN in an hour or so — he would get in touch with a mason he knew, in the meanwhile — and take him back to Bile’s apartment.

Jeebleh walked into the shop with the air of a man who, armed and knowing no fear, was prepared to meet his destiny. The three barbers stopped snipping, and the clients, some waiting on benches against a wall, stared at the stranger entering. He took a seat.

There were seven other customers: one having his hair cut, two having their moustaches and sideburns trimmed, and the rest waiting. Those in the chairs had limp towels wrapped around their throats. On the floor were curls of hair in impossible postures, waiting to be swept away. Even though he couldn’t tell who the men in the shop were, he sensed something earthy in their voices. They had been raised probably in the semi-arid hamlets of the central regions, where many of StrongmanSouth’s supporters hailed from, and where he recruited a large number of his militiamen.

A cassette of Somali music was playing. Jeebleh enjoyed listening to it. Did the fact that people were eating in restaurants and having their hair cut at the barbers’ mean that the most deadly phase of the civil war had ended? The fact that one could pursue these activities without fear suggested a degree of normalcy. Ostensibly, no one in the shop was armed. Certainly, everyone had looked in his direction with ferocious intensity and suspicion when Jeebleh entered, but no one had pointed a gun at him.

One of the barbers beckoned to him with the sweeping gesture of a Mogadiscian welcoming you to his home, indicating a chair vacated by a man whose hair and moustache he had just trimmed to perfection. As Jeebleh took the chair, a scruffy youth came in with a tray holding several metal cups and offered a cup to each of the customers and the barbers. He then began to sweep up the hair on the floor. The men waiting their turn read newspapers and sipped their tea. When the youth was done, he went to Jeebleh’s barber for payment, and then was gone, taking the empty tray with him.

Jeebleh just tasted his tea, didn’t drink it; not only was it too hot, but it was also sugary. He mused that the youth had brought the tray of tea, and the barber had paid for it; the boy trusted he would get paid, and that he would find the cups when he returned later. These small things represented society’s gradual recovery from the terrible trauma of war. Was the worst now over?

“How would you like yours done?” the barber had meanwhile asked.

“I’d like it cut very short.” Jeebleh placed the conical hat in front of him where he could see it, so he wouldn’t forget.

The barber brought out an electric clipper from under a table, where it had hung on a hook. He adjusted the blade and switched it on, then tested it against his open palm.

“I’d prefer that you use scissors and a comb, please,” Jeebleh told him.

The barber started cutting with avuncular charm, and the two of them talked in the soft tones of men confiding in each other. They spoke in general terms, eventually touching on the changes in the clientele of the shop, which, the barber explained, had been the rendezvous for the city’s cosmopolitans in the days before the civil war.

Then, out of the blue, the barber asked, “Are you a friend of Bile’s?”

“Do you know him?” Jeebleh asked.

“He’s one of my customers.”

“What about Raasta and Makka?”

“I remember them coming here with him. Have you met them yourself?”

“I’ve seen photographs of them at Bile’s.”

“They are so gorgeous, Raasta’s dreadlocks,” said the barber. “No one other than her mother is allowed to touch them, or tend to them.”

“I suppose you’d know Faahiye too?”

The barber went absolutely quiet and shifted uneasily. He took a sip from the teacup closest to him, and stared at the cup in front of Jeebleh, as though suggesting that he should take a sip of his. “Do you know Faahiye?” he finally asked.

“I’ve known his wife for a much longer time.”

“I’ve never met her myself,” the barber offered.

“Is it true that Faahiye lives around here?”

“I have no idea.”

Nervous, the barber clipped Jeebleh’s right ear, and instantly apologized. It was just a small snip, but there was blood. And that worried Jeebleh. An incision with a pair of scissors at a barber’s might not be dangerous in many situations, but here, given the AIDS epidemic, you couldn’t be sure. Jeebleh’s countenance was flustered. He felt the cut with his fingers, to determine how serious it was, how deep. The towel still wrapped around his throat, he half rose and daubed his ear with a bit of cotton dipped in alcohol. Then he leaned forward, staring into the mirror, preoccupied.

He had seen a girl resembling Makka in the deepest recesses of the mirror before him, and was following her movements: then snip! How did he know the girl was Makka, when he had never met her before? Because he had seen her photograph, and felt sure that there couldn’t be a facsimile of Makka. Also, the girl’s lower lip was drawn down and slightly out, and there was the ubiquitous sliver of saliva, as transparent as the fine knots in a spider’s net, lucid and purposeful.

While the barber fussed over the cut, daubing it with more alcohol, Jeebleh looked for Makka’s reflection, hoping that she might still be there. The barber held him down, telling him not to move, fearful that he might cut him again. Yes, Makka was there in the mirror, all right; and she was grinning with self-recognition. He watched her watching herself with fascination.

He studied her face. Maybe she was playing a child’s game modeled on one that his daughters were fond of playing. One child is blindfolded, and the fun lies in her looking for her playmates, and finding them. If Makka was at play here, could Raasta be far? The thought filled him with excitement. He pushed the barber’s hand away and got to his feet, his whole demeanor disorderly. One idea led to another. He decided to go after Makka. He was convinced that she either had a message for him or would take him to Raasta and Faahiye.

He paid the barber as much cash as he could bring out of his wallet, even though the job had been only half done, and badly at that. He dashed out in pursuit of Makka, half his head unevenly trimmed, the other boasting its shock of hair as yet untouched. Someone might have assumed that he was pioneering a new style.

He stood at a crossroads, looking this way and that, and making sure he was prepared in the event of a sudden attack, placed his hand close to the firearm. But he could not decide which way Makka had gone. He continued his search, then he saw her walking ahead of him, into a dusty alleyway. He followed her, aware of his own vulnerability in the city of the gullible.

JEEBLEH FELT AWKWARD AS HE TRIED TO KEEP PACE WITH MAKKA, LOOKING back every now and then, scouring the alleyway ahead. He drew comfort from the firearm; he wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

Feeling awkward, and perhaps looking ridiculous, he touched the cut side of his hair, then the uncut side. He had no idea why, but he was sure that even though he might appear ludicrous to grown-ups, he would look fine to Raasta and Makka, who at worst would find his hair funny and might even giggle. Anything that could bring a smile to those children’s lips was worth it. The unfinished haircut pointed to his incomplete sense of self: a man who did not know how to use a firearm, and yet was carrying one! He hoped he wouldn’t be caught in a web, a trap, as he kept following Makka farther and farther from the barbershop.

It was too late to abandon his pursuit now, too late to return to the barbershop as though nothing had happened and ask the barber to finish the job. He had lost his bearings a few streets back. He prayed that the little girl knew where she was going.

Now he walked faster, and checked to see if someone was on his tail. He saw Faahiye. The two were staring at each other from a distance, almost ready to acknowledge each other’s presence by waving. When Jeebleh looked again, Makka was gone. He might as well wait for Faahiye, he thought, and while waiting he touched his hair again — he had forgotten Bile’s conical hat at the barbershop.

“What game are we playing here?” Jeebleh asked Faahiye when he arrived.

“I am at a disadvantage.”

“How’s that?”

“I am at a disadvantage in that I’ve no option but to play a game whose rules were devised by someone else,” Faahiye said. Jeebleh looked at him quizzically, as he went on: “Let’s keep talking and stop looking behind us, for we’re both being shadowed. One of our tails is at my back, a street away, the other at the corner to the left of the crossroads. Let’s not do anything rash.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“To Raasta, of course!”

Could he trust himself? For that matter, could he trust Faahiye? Was it a mere coincidence that he’d had a glimpse of Makka when getting his haircut, or had all this been planned by someone? Amazingly, Jeebleh was now prepared to walk into whatever trap there was, to see the girls. And if Faahiye could be believed, and he was really taking him to Raasta, then all the risks would be worth it.

Faahiye’s steely expression softened, as he looked closely at Jeebleh’s haircut; suddenly he was in stitches, laughing without restraint. “Why, half your hair is cut and the other half isn’t,” he said. “No wonder you have a lackluster look about you!”

Both were relaxed. Jeebleh smiled, and his grinning gaze wandered away to the clouds, which appeared as lighthearted as he felt now. He anchored his mind to the delightful idea he and Faahiye were on the same side.

When they resumed walking, Faahiye said, “What does one blame — love, because it’s gone sour, or hate, because it’s gone seedy? Do we keep a record of one another’s wrongs, do we go at one another’s throats, daggers drawn?”

Jeebleh was weaving himself a shroud of wishes, as he touched his upper thigh, where it still hurt, and then the hidden firearm. He looked to his right, and the world was at peace with itself, the cows behaving as hungry cows do, busy pulling up shrubs at the roots, and enjoying them; he looked to his left, and saw a young herdsman chasing a goat. Close by, two cows were chewing their cud, and they raised their heads, lowed, and showing little interest in him, resumed their chewing. He had been told of cows and goats grazing and digging up a grenade or two, and being blown to death. No such thing happened as he went past, and he took this to be a good omen.

Faahiye crossed a road strewn with uncollected garbage. Following him, Jeebleh thought: All alliances are temporary. He had no idea why he thought this. Maybe because he knew there was no going back now — not until his attempts were crowned with success, or his efforts ended in failure or death. But were they allies now, he and Faahiye? He guessed not: his foolhardy persistence, his call on Caloosha, his insistence that Caloosha help him get in touch with Faahiye and the housekeeper, and his continued search for Raasta had ultimately paid off. Why did he have a childlike trust in Faahiye, whom he hardly knew? Did he feel sorry for the fellow, who could’ve irritated even an angel into fury?

“May I ask how the girls got here?” Jeebleh said.

“From what Raasta’s told me,” Faahiye replied, “they were picked up in a fancy car and taken to some house where they were kept in the basement for several weeks.”

“Do they have any idea who picked them up?”

“You should ask Raasta yourself when you see her.”

“I will.”

He listened to the lowing of a cow calling to one of its young. There were cows everywhere, cows communicating their mourning, grieving, lamenting their endangered state, and making sounds that frightened the daylights out of you. A young moon framed by clouds was up in the sky. A curious unease descended on Jeebleh at the sight of a young calf and an older cow fighting over a plastic bag, their horns colliding, both hurting. The tough, translucent material was torn apart, and the older one took a mouthful of it, while the calf stood apart, forlorn and hungry. Several other bags flew into the air, and were blown away to finish flat against a wire fence.

Jeebleh whispered: “Who owns the place?”

Faahiye answered in a mumble, “I have yet to find out myself. Remember, I just got back here.”

“Who brought you from the airport, then?”

Faahiye didn’t respond. They had come to a gate, at which he tapped hard three times, quick and uninterrupted. The voice of a woman from inside the house told them to wait. Then Makka came out to open the gate, saw Jeebleh, and ran off, back into the house, giggling.

28

HAVING PRECEDED THEM INTO THE HOUSE, MAKKA HID BEHIND THE DOOR playfully, then came out with the joy of a child welcoming a frolicsome parent. Faahiye took part in the fun with self-abandonment, laughing and loving too. Makka adored him, that much was clear. Instead of asking where Raasta was, Jeebleh watched Makka romp about with Faahiye. When she stopped, exhausted, the sun gathered in her eyes, and her tranquil features were even more of a delight.

She mumbled something in the tawdry tongue of a Marlon Brando doing his Sicilian bit, his cheeks heavy with cotton. Faahiye must have understood her question, for he replied, “His name is Uncle Jeebleh!” She watched him with wary eyes and kept her distance, biting her nails. She didn’t come rushing to hug him, as he had expected.

She turned to Faahiye instead, and gave him kisses and hugs, pleased to be holding his hand and fiddling with his fingers. There was such warmth there, gentle, tender, and sweet, even without another word exchanged between them. She waited with childish anxiety for him to return her affections, while he was eager to attend to his guest. When he did kiss her fingers and then her cheeks, her face beamed with the glee of the innocent.

Makka stared at Jeebleh, as if deciding whether he belonged inside or outside the circle of persons to whom she gave kisses and hugs. She hesitated, unsure of what to do, until Faahiye encouraged her: “Go on!” She went to Jeebleh, grinning, her hand outstretched. In her way, she was commiserating with him; or was she apologizing for having taken her time? She pulled herself to her full height and, in an instant, was touching and hugging him, kissing him on both cheeks, before letting him go. She might have been expecting to hear Faahiye’s approval for what she had done, and looked sad when neither man moved or spoke.

Jeebleh asked, “Why here?”

Surprising both of them, and maybe even herself, Makka answered. You could see how hard she worked at making herself understood, her forehead furrowed in concentration. Before speaking, she made a sucking noise, reclaiming the saliva hanging from her lower lips by drawing it in noisily. “No here, here!” she said.

Jeebleh didn’t ask for an explanation, either from her or from Faahiye. But he remembered the Arab wisdom that from the mouths of the simple you may receive something profound.

“No here, here!” she repeated several times. And again she was on her feet, pointing at herself and repeating, “Aniga anigoo ah,” many times. Then she went over to Jeebleh, touched his hair, first the cut side, then the uncut, and giggled excitedly. She mumbled something that Faahiye interpreted for him. “She is saying you are fun and she likes you.”

Then the world became a door, and a young girl, age indistinct, walked in. What impression did Raasta make on Jeebleh when he first laid eyes on her? He held two conflicting images in his head at one and the same time. He thought of a potholed feeder road, neglected to the point where it was hardly used, and therefore decidedly quiet and off-peak. Then he thought of a commuter train at rush hour in a big city, packed with workers jostling for standing space in the car into which they had squeezed themselves when the doors opened. It could be that he was already thinking to his return home, now that he had found the girls.

The moment grew in importance; things weren’t going to be the same from then on. Raasta was in her own element.

She walked over to her father, whom she embraced, then kissed. And when at long last she came to where Jeebleh was, he didn’t rise; instead, he went into a crouch, half kneeling, and waited. He didn’t want to be daring; this was not the moment to be brave, take her in his arms, lift her up and plant on her cheeks warm, loving kisses. He let her determine what was to happen. So she embraced him as you embrace someone dear to you, not because you know him but because you’ve heard his name mentioned often and in an endearing way. She knew how to draw lines, Raasta did. She said to him, in as grown-up a tone of voice as she could muster under all the excitement, “I’m very glad to meet you, Uncle Jeebleh!”

Then because Makka was giggling, her finger pointing at Jeebleh’s hair, Raasta put her hand on her lips, both to suggest that Makka stop misbehaving and to stop herself from giggling too. Jeebleh touched the uncut side and said to the girls, “Do you like my haircut?”

They both nodded, giggling.

And then silence.

There was no denying the fact that together and in such a setting, they represented joy itself, their expressions set in happiness, their smiles genuine, and the words they used connecting them lovingly. There was something malleable about their togetherness, as manageable and pliant as dough in the hands of an expert baker. Raasta looked away with amusement every time her gaze fell on Jeebleh’s hair. Makka came and touched it again, and then giggled for a long time.

“Who or what did you see on the way here?” Raasta now asked her father.

“We saw a cow chewing a bag, choking!”

The news upset Raasta, who said reproachfully, “Why do you do that sort of thing, talk about a cow dying in misery, when we’re doing our best to welcome Uncle Jeebleh?”

“I’m sorry, my sweet!” he apologized.

And he held the two girls to himself, hugging and kissing them. Makka, though not ill at ease, freed herself from his embrace. She took Raasta’s face in her hands, a face in the shape of an infant moon, then demonstrated a clock face with her arms, the minute and hour hands in slow forward motion. Faahiye wore a soft, tender smile as he clowned for Makka, who laughed. Jeebleh stood fascinated, moved to see them all together and happy.

Jeebleh admired the handsome features of the house: high ceilings, exquisite furniture, tiled kitchen floor, fittings still intact, clean and lovely. When he saw the dishes washed, drip-drying in the kitchen, the tea towels clean and hanging where they should, the fresh flowers in the vase on the dining table, he remembered the desolate life that Shanta had been leading, and he was sad. He wondered whether there was another adult sharing the house with the three of them — most probably a woman?

“What would you like us to do now?” Faahiye said.

Makka was repeating something over and over. Eventually Jeebleh figured out the word: “Perform!” He saw that Faahiye and Raasta were both seated and waiting for Makka’s performance to start. Smiling all the while, Makka might have been a girl taking pride in her acrobatic skills, showing off what she could do, feats she had seen on television, Jeebleh guessed. When she was done and everyone applauded, Makka was over the moon.

A few minutes later, Jeebleh heard the sounds of a television from upstairs. His memory took him back to his visit to Caloosha’s, and the sound of soaps coming from an upstairs room. Understandably, he didn’t wish to know more than he ought to, or to get involved in matters that weren’t his concern. He looked away, embarrassed, and his evasive gaze settled on a lemon tree in the garden, gorgeously committed to holding what there was of the sun in its leaves.

“I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU!” RAASTA SAID.

She was to Makka like a parent to an infant, and she set about organizing a play corner where Makka could keep herself occupied, as a parent wanting to speak to her peers about something important might do. She placed a box of beads close to Makka, who wore a single talismanic bead, blue, around her neck. Makka contentedly started stringing beads together. Faahiye made himself scarce, evidently to tidy up.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, from Uncle Bile, and you’ve been with me for a long, long time, from my birth. Now I know your face, and I’m very glad.”

Jeebleh didn’t know what to say. The questions gathering in his head were growing unruly, tripping over one another, each insisting on being given precedence. The sound of his breathing made him think of a door bolt going home. He fussed at his eye, cleaning it. Finally he said, “I know very little about you!”

“There is time yet,” she said. “There is!”

His breathing strained under the tension he felt. The firearm became obtrusive, weighing even more heavily on him. He didn’t dare remove it, lest she should see it. Who knows, she might run off, and not want to see him ever again. He didn’t want that to happen. Finally he was able to formulate a question: “How have you been?”

“We are good,” she said.

“Are you fed well?”

“Better than most.”

He asked tentatively, “Are things better now?”

“Things have been better in the last two days.”

“Because Daddy is back?”

“They’ve been kinder, since his return.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

Jeebleh could sense her instant withdrawal. Her eyes shamefully downcast, she said, “I am not sure.”

“Who is the person upstairs?”

“A woman,” she said.

“A woman?”

“She cooks for us, looks after us. Washes our clothes, makes up our beds, cleans after us. We found her here. She says little, and does what we tell her to.”

“Will you miss her?”

“No,” Raasta said. “I miss Uncle Bile, I miss my mother, I miss Uncle Seamus.”

She was a formidable girl, able to draw you into her comfort-giving world against your better judgment, if she chose to. He had fallen under her spell right away, because, he reasoned, she was accustomed to being loved, trusted, and obeyed. Looking at her now, and imagining the horrid things that she had been through, not to mention the uncertainties she had lived with as a kidnapping victim, Jeebleh was impressed with her perseverance, her noble bearing for one so young. Her clothes were almost rags, and so were Makka’s. Raasta had presumably outgrown hers, and yet she appeared impervious to the state of her clothing, like a duck getting wet in a tropical downpour.

She lapsed into a reflective mood, and withdrew into a private space he was in no position to reach. Jeebleh imagined her to be tough in the self-protective way of a tortoise withdrawing its softer head and legs. Was she thinking through her troubled thoughts? It would be unwise to push her, to try to make her speak. He should give her time, so that the trauma of being held prisoner might melt away. He would let her find peace in her silence, if that was what she was after. He said, “Everything will be all right.”

“I am beginning to think so too,” she replied, eagerly but absently, as tears appeared in her eyes.

Like all exceptional persons, no matter what their age or disposition, she was as prepared to show her strengths and perseverance as she was willing to demonstrate her weaknesses. And so when it came to weeping, she did so discreetly and undemonstratively, as a mother might in the presence of her child. This grown-up behavior too impressed Jeebleh.

“Shall we go?” she said.

“Where?”

“Home.”

Jeebleh didn’t know what answer to give. He was not sure whether Faahiye had up-to-the-minute instructions as to what he might or might not do, and did not know what their fates would be if they tried to leave. Nor had he any idea with whom Faahiye dealt, whether communications were by mobile phone, in dribs and drabs, on a need-to-know basis, or in person, direct from the head of the conspiracy. “Let’s ask your daddy,” he suggested.

“Let’s,” she said, and was just about to shout and ask whether it was okay to go home, back to her mother, Uncle Bile, and Uncle Seamus, when a ruckus was raised outside.

It was the kind of sound that might have been created by a rutting he-donkey chasing a she-donkey up and down a stone-filled alleyway. It ranked with the hideous racket Jeebleh remembered Italian youths making on their motorcycles through the streets of Padua at siesta time. How were the two girls coping? Raasta, out of sympathy, went to Makka’s play corner to hold her in a comforting embrace, to assure her that all would be well, not to worry. When Faahiye asked what on earth was going on, Jeebleh, because he had a firearm, volunteered to find out. He stood beside a window, weapon in hand, ready to put it to use.

Faahiye stayed behind with the girls.

Glancing up the stairs to the second floor, Jeebleh heard that the television had just been switched off. He was tempted to ask who was there, but he chose instead to devote what energy he had to discovering the cause of the ruckus, which showed no signs of letting up.

But he was relieved now to see who was making the noise — Qasiir, armed and Stetsoned, in a car with three of his mates, two of them armed, the other at the wheel. The car was a collectible Ford, a flivver most likely left behind by an American or a European seconded to UNOSOM. Tied to the back, dragging along behind, were several empty tin cans. As soon as Qasiir spotted Jeebleh, who was on the porch, waving, the car stopped, and so did the unearthly noise. “It’s only me and my friends,” Qasiir said. “This is fun — but maybe not as much as you’re having. Look at your haircut — cool! Are you all right? How are the girls?”

Again, Clint Eastwood to the rescue. “What a delightful young man,” Jeebleh told Faahiye, who had joined him. He put the firearm away, smiling, and noticed the stale sweat staining the armpits of Faahiye’s dark shirt. Jeebleh’s face was now daubed with relief.

He waited for Qasiir and his friends to get out of the car before asking how they had traced them to the house. Qasiir and another of the youths were busy untying the cans from the car, when two more vehicles came into view. Jeebleh assumed he and Faahiye were now in trouble; here was the head of the conspiracy come to put an end to the insurgency, they wouldn’t be allowed to leave with the girls. Hope drained out of him. But Qasiir called out: “No need to worry. It’s only Grandpa, our backup!”

The first car contained Dajaal and a driver. In the second, a battlewagon, were some seven or eight youths with machine guns and rocket launchers. Kaahin was up front, next to the youth at the wheel. Dajaal and Kaahin got out of their respective vehicles and remained where they were, poised to deal with any problem that might come up the road.

Jeebleh’s script had called for no fighting, for please-no-guns peace. Accordingly, he went over to Dajaal and gave the revolver back to him, with a whispered “Thank you.” Then he lapsed into confusion, as in the script, and paying no attention to the humorous remarks about his fashionable hairstyle, he walked with Raasta and Makka at either side to the warmed vehicle and got in.

They moved in convoy, the car carrying Jeebleh and the girls safely between the battlewagon, now carrying Dajaal, and the Ford. Only when they got to The Refuge did Jeebleh realize that Faahiye had not come.

He wondered why.

But this did not deter him from taking pride in their achievement, the recovery of the girls without a gunfight. Everything would be revealed when Raasta, once she was out of her trauma, relaxed into telling her story.