Links

EPILOGUE

THAT NIGHT EVERYONE APPEARED TROUBLED AND ANXIOUS, FOR OBVIOUS and not so obvious reasons.

Jeebleh cast his mind back on everything that had happened, perhaps to sort out what memories to take with him to New York. Could this be why he had stashed away the letter the clan elders had left for him? His intention was to frame it, and put it on his office wall. His hand kept going to his thigh, where the muscleman had injected him. He continued to wonder if his contagion of worry would kill him before he had even had his blood tested at home; he was worried less about the barber’s cut, now that it was healing.

He called New York, telling his wife and daughters in an edited fashion what had happened. He touched only briefly on Caloosha’s death and his burial, and did not even mention Af-Laawe. He would explain things better once he was back in the safety of home. He concentrated instead on the commemoration of his mother — the construction of the sepulcher, the symbolic reburial, and the upcoming alla-bari feast. He told his wife that he was changing his return date, and would let her know about it. Feeling guilty about not offering a complete and true version of things, he laid it on thick when he stressed how much he had missed them all, and how eager he was to return to the bosom of his loving family.

At last Bile came out of his room, where the light was now on. Jeebleh took the slight grimace on his face as a smile, but Bile remained silent. He seemed, however, to be in a cheerier mood than Jeebleh had expected. Perhaps the antidepressants, if that is what they were, had helped him emerge.

As for Faahiye, the poor fellow kept performing a ritual of his own invention, putting his index fingers in his ears and turning them around and around, as if his ears were filled to bursting with wax. Choosing not to raise the devil, because she knew no one would tolerate it, Shanta went to him and spoke solicitously. There was an opaqueness at the center of Faahiye’s insanity, as perhaps there was at the heart of Bile’s.

Shanta was the one to break the silence, to tell Raasta and Makka that they would be going home early, for they had a busy day ahead of them. As they left, Faahiye leaned against Shanta for support; Makka leaned on Raasta, as though for affirmation. It was a most humbling lesson in compassion.

Where was Seamus? Jeebleh had no idea, nor did anyone else. But this didn’t bother him, convinced as he was that Seamus was engaged in an activity worthy of a reliable friend.

WHEN SEAMUS RETURNED LATER THAT NIGHT, SILENT AND EXPLAINING nothing, Jeebleh shuttled between The Refuge — now turned over to several imams chanting the Koran — and the apartment, where his secular friends were camped, barely speaking to each other.

The imams were reciting the entire Holy Scripture, each with his own assigned chapters. At one point, Jeebleh listened to the head imam interpreting a verse for the benefit of his younger colleagues. The imam alluded to a remark ascribed to the prophet Mohammed, about sedition. And perhaps in order to throw more light on the situation in Somalia, the learned scholar paraphrased the Prophet’s words: “Cursed with the hearts of the devil in their bodies, some of the ‘leaders’ will inevitably veer from the virtuous path into iniquity.”

Feeling sufficiently instructed, Jeebleh walked out into the starry night to take a closer look at the cow that would be slaughtered the next day. Humbled by the sight, he stood before the heifer as though meaning to communicate with her. Jeebleh thought again about his belated attempt to make peace with his mother in the act of reclaiming her. How he wished he could send her a message and have the sacrificial beast before which he was standing deliver it. In subdued sorrow, unable to give flesh to his idea, he returned to the apartment.

On his way there, it struck him that madness was a country to which many people he knew in Mogadiscio had paid visits. He prayed that neither he nor any one of his friends would suffer permanent damage.

The apartment was quieter than when he had left it. Seamus’s door was open, but his room was empty of him. Bile’s door was open too, and he was there. Jeebleh wondered where Seamus might have gone, but said nothing to Bile, having no wish to bother him. Then he stretched out on his bed, fully dressed, thinking about what remained to be done. No, he was not ready to abandon himself to sleep.

JEEBLEH WAS UP AND ON HIS FEET SHORTLY, STANDING SHAKILY ON THE wrong side of forty winks, still so exhausted his knees were about to buckle under him. The morning hadn’t yet dawned, and he had on the same clothes as yesterday.

He was a changed man. He wasn’t quite on cloud nine yet, but he was on his way — aiming at it, hoping for the chance. He had opened a parenthesis with his decision to visit Mogadiscio on a whim, to elude death at the same time that he reclaimed his mother, whom he had neglected into an early grave. Now the parenthesis seemed to be closing, but he felt that it wouldn’t have served his purpose for that to happen just yet. After all, he was not prepared to dwell in pronominal confusion, which was where he had been headed. He had to find which pronoun might bring his story to a profitable end.

It was too early to assess the changes that the visit had wrought on his character. Presumably his general personality would be unaltered. No doubt, something in him had given here and there, the way fabric stretches. But the basics remained, gathered at the corners, perhaps sagging or giving at the seams, where the stitching might be faulty. Fancy living in an open parenthesis for as long as Jeebleh had lived in his.

His eyes were no longer drooping with bags of insomnia. Nor was he as harried as he had been the day before, when he went back and forth between the apartment and The Refuge. Granted, it would’ve been easy for him to kill, just as it would’ve been easy to die at someone else’s hands, in a city where death was treated like an acquaintance. He remembered his exchanges with Seamus on the related topic of burial. How Seamus lamented that in Mogadiscio they buried you quickly; how he found the idea of being buried, no questions asked and no postmortem, so troublesome; how it irked him that no one inquired what someone had died of, and that, at the mention of a name now forever linked to death, people sought refuge in the phrase “the will of Allah,” as if this were the alias of the deceased. Seamus would probably want people to have the facts, to know how Caloosha had died, at whose hands, and why. Because he did not wish to play a part in a cover-up, Jeebleh thought it wise to leave before he was tempted to speak of what bothered him.

Soon after his arrival, someone had said to him: “Our people are poor in their hearts. Our people are restless nomads in search of city-based fulfillment.” Jeebleh would be well advised to stay out of the people’s way, “as soon as the torch of ambition, backed by greed, begins to burn in their eyes.” He was damned if he could remember who had said this. It might’ve been Af-Laawe; it could equally have been Caloosha. That you could receive good wisdom from the mouths of bad men, never mind the names by which they were known or their main purpose in life, surprised him. He wished that he had shot back with a witty remark of his own, that whoever lets his dogs loose should prepare to feed them when they come back hungry. And he would add this for good measure: Take your cynical remarks and sprinkle them on your carbonara like the best Parmesan!

The muezzin called at dawn, and Jeebleh went to the hall where the imams were. He found them ready for a well-earned break. The head imam presented the prayers to Jeebleh, the official “owner of the corpse.” He received the blessings, his hands cupped, palms up, in the gesture of a devotee humbling himself before a deity. He handed over basketfuls of money to the head imam, relieved that the scholar had forgotten an earlier condition that he would arrange rides for each of them. When the imams left, Jeebleh returned to the apartment with the express aim of getting some sleep. And even though there was still no sign of Seamus, again he did not ask Bile if he knew where he might have gone. Bile was busy praying, and Jeebleh didn’t want to disturb him. Instead, Jeebleh went to sleep.

He woke up again at about eight in the morning.

AND HE WAS IN A MOURNING MOOD. HE WAS ALONE IN THE APARTMENT, AND took his time showering and shaving. He reminded myself of the tradition that a mourner desist as long as possible from changing his clothes. And so he wore the same clothes he had worn the day before, with the slight modification of a fresh pair of underpants.

When he walked to The Refuge, he knew he would have to take the rough with the smooth. As things stood, his own story lay in a tarry of other people’s tales, each with its own Dantean complexity. His story was not an exemplar to represent or serve in place of the others: it wouldn’t do to separate his from those informing it, or to rely solely on it for moral and political edification. Only when gathering the fragments together would he hold his mother’s tale in awkward deference, separating it from the others, giving it its deserved honor.

Jeebleh thought of how the country had been buried under the rubble of political ruin, and how Somalis woke to being betrayed by the religious men and the clan elders who were in cahoots with a cabal of warlords to share the gain they could make out of ordinary people’s miseries. The clan elders got their reward in corrupt gifts of cash; the religious elders, turning themselves into cabaret artists, conned the rest of the populace, as they carved an earthly kingdom for themselves. As Bile had put it, money was the engine that ran Somalia’s civil war. It stood to reason that money provided the cabals and the cartel with a ladder of lies, which allowed them to ascend out of harm’s way. Every other way of assessing the civil war was as futile as pouring wet sand through the interstices of history.

For what it was worth, Jeebleh held a childlike trust that things would work better for more people now that Raasta and Makka were back at The Refuge and Caloosha was out of the way. He trusted that things would improve if Af-Laawe followed in his mentor’s footsteps. Now, getting rid of Caloosha was no mean feat! Given the choice, Jeebleh would oppose all forms of violence. But what is one to do when there is no other way to rid society of vermin? Which would he rather be, someone who minds the opinion of others and advocates for peace, or someone who does what he can — despite the risks — to improve the lives of many others? Jeebleh would say, after Thomas Jefferson: “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.” He would go even further and say, again after Mr. Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” So which would he rather be, someone who kills for justice, or someone helplessly unable to do anything? He would rather he killed than twiddle his thumbs, waiting for others to do the job. To hell with the opinion of others, especially his clansmen, who hadn’t the right to sit in judgment on his actions! Jeebleh was all for justice, by any means possible.

NOW HE WAS AT THE GATE OF THE REFUGE. AND A PARTY WAS IN FULL SWING, announced by placards bearing his mother’s good name, boldly written in Seamus’s upright hand, green on white, and on very fine material, similar to the subeeci-xariir cloth in which Somalis wrap the dead when burying them.

A billboard welcomed everyone to The Refuge—“a home to Raasta and Makka, and therefore a place of peace and communal harmony!” Another placard bragged that on entering the grounds of The Refuge, one would “spend a tranquil day among people living in harmonious coexistence with many others with whom they don’t share the same clan.” Yet another invited the visitor to a place where “even though the residents may not see things eye to eye, they stay together without pulling guns or rank on one another.” Tears welled up in Jeebleh’s eyes, and his cheeks became wet. How it would have pleased his mother, or Bile and Shanta’s, to be here. This, yes, was worth living for!

As he walked farther in, he chatted with the women who worked at The Refuge. They praised Seamus for the signs and for providing the children with their colorful balloons, and commended Bile for being there at all. One woman alluded to his half brother, and said that she hadn’t expected Bile to attend a party honoring the mother of a friend right after his own brother had been buried. Others spoke of Faahiye, of seeing him and Shanta holding hands and, trailing them, arms linked, Raasta and Makka. A woman Jeebleh didn’t know whispered to him that Caloosha’s widow was somewhere on the grounds, and not veiled. Apparently, she was chatting amicably to Raasta or entertaining Makka. Jeebleh was in no hurry to present himself to Caloosha’s widow. He made the acquaintance of a few other people, who said how pleased they were that Raasta was back, or how good Faahiye looked, or how nice it was to see a joyful Shanta.

Jeebleh was delighted to see the doors of the dormitories festooned with colorful flags. Where the children were playing in the courtyard, the sky rained a confetti of colors, which clung to his skin. Jeebleh allowed himself to frolic noisily with the children. He helped a young girl blow bubbles, and welcomed a hungry-looking a boy to eat his fill of meat to his heart’s content, probably for the first time ever. People mixing, chatting, and looking happy: Jeebleh was pleased to have contributed his small share as the host, and content that his mother had permitted him to use her death as the excuse.

But then, as though darkness had suddenly descended, his progress was impeded. Jeebleh had intended to go to where Bile, Seamus, Shanta, and Raasta were standing. He was prepared to talk to Caloosha’s widow. Yet he felt lost, unable or unwilling to decide which road to follow. Until a way was offered to him.

Dajaal was there. And he held Jeebleh by the elbow, as though propping him up. He was entreating Jeebleh to accompany him, he didn’t say where. Jeebleh remembered hearing that Dajaal had guided Bile to where Shanta was giving birth. How he wished he had the strength to ask Dajaal whether he had helped Bile do the bloody deed! Instead, Jeebleh took refuge in the variegated meanings of their silence, and silently followed Dajaal. He realized he was being led away from the others. As Jeebleh walked alongside Dajaal and Kaahin, with Qasiir and his posse bringing up the rear, he listened to their conspiratorial voices. One or the other of them spoke of how Af-Laawe had felt the heat and fled the city, how he had been seen in Nairobi buying a plane ticket to France.

Jeebleh knew then that he would leave soon, without his friends’ knowing. He would fly to Nairobi to relax for a couple of days, and from there call Bile and Seamus to inform them of the decision to depart — but not why. Then he would book himself on a home-bound flight and, not wanting to tempt fate, get to New York before impulse propelled him in another direction.

Some people hate saying good-bye, some cannot bear to say arrivederci. Jeebleh assured himself that he loved his friends enough and that they loved him. He knew that they would visit one another, welcome one another into their homes, and into their stories. He and his friends were forever linked through the chains of the stories they shared.

LATE THAT NIGHT, TUCKED IN BED AND FLANKED BY THE TWO GIRLS, JEEBLEH listened to Raasta tell a folktale.

An ape, finding the throne empty, takes the crown, puts on the robes of the king, and begins to reign. A wildcat convokes the other beasts. These come and heap praises on the new king. Not so the fox, who plots to unseat the impostor. To this end, he gathers luscious fruits, the kind that apes kill or die for, and gives them all to the king. Excited, the ape leaps from his throne, jumping up and down, and to satisfy his insatiable gluttony, surrenders his weighty crown.

Amused, the fox addresses the gathering. He tells the other animals that donning the robes of a king has never made a monarch of a flunky.

And the ape is unseated!

Jeebleh quit Mogadiscio the following morning, without changing his clothes, though he did introduce yet a further modification: he put on clean underpants and clean undershirt.

Bile, Seamus, Raasta, and Shanta learned of his departure only later in the day. He left before the mist in his mind cleared, afraid that he might alienate his friends, to whom he owed his life. He left as soon as he sensed the sun intruding on the horizon of his mind.