The Orchard of Lost Souls

PART ONE

Five a.m. Too early to eat. There is hardly any light, perhaps just enough to distinguish a dark thread from white, but Kawsar washes her face in the basin inside her bathroom, runs a caday over her teeth and slips into the day’s costume without wasting any paraffin. She feels her way into her underskirt and red shift dress, squeezes thick amber bangles over each elbow and smoothes a heavy silver necklace over her sagging chest, then arranges the sheets neatly over her single bed. She finishes the glass of water on her bedside table and shakes out her leather sandals in case spiders or scorpions have sought shelter in them overnight, before finally locking the door leading from the bedroom to the kitchen. She knows that the day will be long and that she should force a little breakfast inside her, but her stomach is a closed fist. With the sandals on her feet and a long shawl over her shoulders, Kawsar opens the exterior door to find her neighbours, Maryam English, Fadumo, Zahra and Dahabo, mingling in her courtyard.

‘What took you so long, saamaleyl?’ Dahabo swishes the flask in her hand at Kawsar.

‘I was oiling my knees,’ Kawsar replies with a smile, linking arms with her childhood friend.

The men and women of the Guddi, the neighbourhood watch of the regime, have spent the night shouting orders through megaphones of what to wear and where to meet. The women have all dressed in the same traditional outfit and Zahra has torn down branches from a miri-miri tree, which she hands out to the women to wave at the stadium — another instruction from the megaphones. The narrow, sandy street ahead is filled with women in similar dress, and behind them even more follow languidly. They pass Umar Farey’s eighteen-room hotel, each window blind and shuttered as if the building itself is sleeping; no Hindi songs or Kung-fu sounds come from Zahra’s video hall; and Raage’s corner shop is just a corrugated tin shack rather than its usual Aladdin’s cave.

‘See how early they drag us out of bed. Nothing is too much for them, the swines.’ Maryam English tightens the strap holding her baby to her back; she has had to leave the two older children locked in at home.

Kawsar rubs the sleeping baby’s back and wishes it was Hodan’s instead, her child returned as an infant with the chance of a second life ahead of her.

‘Look at us, we are the same woman over the ages,’ laughs Fadumo, her cane weaving in front of her.

It is true: they are identical except that Maryam English is in her late twenties, Zahra in her forties, Dahabo and Kawsar circling their late-fifties and poor Fadumo a hunched-over seventy-something. They look like illustrations in a school textbook, everybody equal in the same garments and just a few lines on the face or a stooped back delineating age. That is the way the government seems to want them — simple, smiling cartoons with no demands or needs of their own. Now those cartoons have come to life — not tilling, weaving or working in a factory like on the shilling notes, but trudging to a celebration that they are forced to attend.

They walk through the backstreets, the sky above slowly getting paler and paler, until they reach the sports stadium. The Guddi activists in armbands are asking what neighbourhood they belong to and counting them as they enter the gate.

‘There’s Oodweyne watching over us,’ yells Dahabo, pointing up.

‘Shush!’ whispers Maryam. ‘They’ll hear you.’

Kawsar turns back to the Guddi to check, but they are preoccupied by the throngs of people pushing through the gate. The mothers of the revolution have been called from their kitchens, from their chores, to show foreign dignitaries how loved the regime is, how grateful they are for the milk and peace it has brought them. It needs women to make it seem human.

Beyond Dahabo’s pointed finger is a mammoth painting of the dictator, hanging over the stadium like a new sun, rays emerging from around his head. The painters have tried to soften that merciless, hangdog face but have succeeded only in throwing it off balance — the chin too long, the nose too bulbous, the eyes asymmetrical. The only accurate part is the short, clipped moustache modelled on that German leader.

Workmen hurriedly hang other paintings, slightly smaller, of his acolytes, the interchangeable ministers of defence, finance and internal security, their positions so insecure that by the end of the day new paintings might be commissioned. Fadumo leads the way to the stands and the rest follow, knowing that they will not be comfortable anywhere; there will be no shade, no rest, no sustenance for the next seven hours. Eighty-seven has been a year of drought and the morning sky settles yet again into an unrelenting, cloudless blue.

Filsan hasn’t slept for the last three days. She has had charge of three Guddi units and they have created problem after problem for her; she could not have imagined a more cantankerous, ineffectual, gossipy group in her nightmares. In the end she sent one of the units back to Saba’ad refugee camp to train a group of children in traditional dance, but she doubts that they can even do that right. One unit is now stationed at the stadium’s north gate while the other rounds up stragglers and clears rough-sleepers and debris from the route of the parade. The VIPs are not expected for another hour but the stadium still looks bare, disorganised; most of the participants are yet to arrive and when they do, God knows if they will be in shape.

This is Filsan’s first October Twenty-first in Hargeisa and it seems ramshackle compared to what she knew in Mogadishu. It is now eighteen years exactly since the President’s rise to power after a military coup, and the celebrations in Mogadishu show the system at its best, everyone working together to create something beautiful. The Military-Governor of the North Western region, General Haaruun, will be the President’s avatar in Hargeisa and has arranged the military parade with a flyover to start and finish the day. The civilian part of the ceremony has been patched together by the Guddi, who are using it as an excuse to exhibit their amateur singing, dancing and oratory.

Filsan strums the teeth of the plastic comb in her trouser pocket and chews her lip; she looks at the empty dais where General Haaruun will sit with the dignitaries and imagines herself placed in the centre, not as his companion but as his successor, waving down to her subjects. Her boots are polished beautifully, her khaki uniform clean and sharply pressed, and the black beret on her head brushed and angled just so. She has lined her eyes discreetly with kohl and pressed colour onto her lips with her fingers. She looks herself but a little better, a touch more feminine; she has resisted playing these games until now, but if the other female soldiers get noticed this way, maybe she can too.

She shoves the comb deep into her pocket and straightens her tunic over her rear. As she rushes past the south gate, two civilian policemen salute her, looking to each other with smiles in their eyes. Filsan’s face pinches with annoyance, knowing that they will stare at her behind as soon as they can. Beyond the south gate the military convoys are queuing up: tanks, jeeps, armoured vehicles, trucks carrying every type of rocket and missile, soldiers in metal green helmets waiting patiently inside and beside the vehicles. Filsan feels proud looking at them. She is part of the third largest army in Africa, a force that would have conquered all of Ethiopia, not just the Ogaden, in 1978 if the Russians and Cubans hadn’t switched sides.

Filsan walks down the convoy, and here the soldiers don’t stare at her or smile like the barely trained police; they show her the respect due another soldier. Her life has always revolved around these men, from her father down to her political science teachers at Halane College; it is their judgement that carries weight with her and she still feels small in their estimation. Filsan has volunteered to come north, hoping to show that although a woman, she has more commitment to the revolution than any of her male peers. This is the coalface of internal security, where real work can be done defeating National Freedom Movement bandits who persist in nipping at the government’s tail. As she looks around her, she realises it is not inconceivable that members of the banned group are here now, filtering anonymously through the gates between the mothers in robes and uniformed schoolchildren. It is impossible to tell enemy from friend.

It was a hard way to earn a new pair of shoes but for Deqo it was worth it. A month of dance lessons has taught her the Hilgo, Belwo, Dudi and the overly complicated Halawalaq. She isn’t a bad dancer but is better at improvisation than following the steps, and even now she turns left instead of right or jumps forward instead of back. They still haven’t seen the shoes but that’s all Toothless Milgo has talked about during the lessons. They have earned those shoes with sweat and tears and Deqo intends to wear them like a soldier wears his medals.

Think of the shoes. Don’t you want the shoes? Do you want to be barefoot forever? Concentrate then!’ A sharp swipe over their feet with an acacia twig.

They have learnt to dance to the beat of Milgo’s rough palm against the bottom of a plastic basin, but at the parade there will be real drums, trumpets, guitars, everything. They will be dancing in front of thousands, even the governor of the whole region will be watching, so they have to practise, practise, practise.

Now the day of the parade has finally arrived. Before dawn the troupe of five girls and five boys, all from the orphanage, are herded into the yard behind the camp’s clinic and scrubbed half to death. Deqo’s eyes are tinged red from the strong-smelling soap and she keeps rubbing them to ease the itch. A truck waits by the dispensary tent and they are dressed in traditional macaweis and guntiino and then loaded into the back. The truck starts up, a plume of brown smoke bursting from its exhaust, and Deqo grabs hold of the side as they pick up speed. It is her first time in a vehicle and she is surprised to feel such a strong breeze on her face, the edges of her hair whipped about as if on a stormy day. When the truck slows, the breeze disappears again and Deqo squints against the rising grit and clamps her lips together.

While the other children practise the songs they will sing at the parade, Deqo’s attention is drawn back towards the refugee camp, the semi-circular wooden aqals suddenly nothing more than speckles on the surface of the earth. The grain warehouse and various clinics constantly surrounded by milling refugees are invisible from here; the arguments, the bitterness, the sadness far away. The road snakes down towards Hargeisa, the landscape bare apart from the occasional aloe bush, animal bone and plastic shoe, the only difference from the camp being the freshness of the air. The horizon is all blue sky with just a streak of yellow leading them forward, and it is difficult to imagine anything of substance ahead. Deqo half-expects the truck to reach that yellow streak and then tumble over the edge of the earth, but instead it carries on the badly tarred road until it reaches the first military checkpoint outside the city.

Kawsar and her neighbours squeeze into the second stand; the stadium was made for three thousand spectators but today it is crammed with more than ten thousand. Corpulent women push along the narrow walkway, busy with their own conversations, stepping on Kawsar’s toes and using her arm for support without so much as a glance in her direction. The temperature is still cool but will rise steadily until they feel like hides drying in the sun. Her knees are swollen and already she begins to shift her weight from one foot to the other every few minutes.

The October Twenty-first festivals are poor imitations of the Independence Day celebrations, Kawsar thinks — like a bad husband reminding his unhappy wife of the good times they once shared while knowing that they would never return. When the British had left on 26 June 1960, everyone had poured out of their homes in their Eid clothes and gathered at the municipal khayriyo between the national bank and prison. It was as if they were drunk, wild; girls got pregnant that night and when asked who the father of their child was, they would reply: ‘Ask the flag.’ That night, crushed within a mixed crowd as the Somali flag was raised for the first time, Kawsar had lost a long, gold earring that was part of her dowry, but Farah hadn’t cared — he’d said it was a gift to the new nation. The party had moved to Freedom Park and lasted into the next morning, the sleepy town transformed into a playground, the youth of the country believing that they had achieved what their elders hadn’t. People always half-joked afterwards that that day changed the women of Hargeisa; that they never returned to the modest, quiet lives they had known after that bacchanalian display, that the taste of one kind of freedom led to an insatiable desire for every kind.

A flutter in her womb distracts Kawsar from the marching band tuning up near her. It is a sensation that comes regularly now, like fingernails brushing the inside of her skin, a heartbeat pulsing deep in the sea of her. Maryam’s daughter is fussing already her chubby hands pulling at her mother’s hair as she attempts to wriggle out of the sling. Maryam slaps the child’s thigh to make her settle but it just infuriates her more. What an easy stage that was: when a child’s only want was to walk around a little before collapsing back into your arms. Hodan had slept nestled against Kawsar’s shoulder on days like this, when the people had still been gullible enough to celebrate the regime with real emotion, when the shine of independence had made everything magical — our first Somali textbooks, our first airline, everything a wonder. It was the star that caused all the grief: that five-pointed star on the flag, with each point signifying a part of the Somali motherland, had led the country into war with Kenya and then Ethiopia, had fed a ruinous desire to reclaim territory that was long gone. The last defeat changed everything. After seventy-nine the guns that were turned outward reversed position and became trained on Somalis instead, the fury of humiliated men blowing back over the Haud Desert.

Filsan hates the squatness of Hargeisa. In Mogadishu the buildings soar and blind the eye with their whiteness; here everything clings to the earth, cowering and subservient, the cheap mud brick bungalows often left unpainted as if the town is inhabited by giant termites that cobble their dwellings together with dirt and spit. In Mogadishu the oldest residences are made of coral and have delicate wooden latticework and vaulted ceilings that give people a sense of wonder. In the centre of the city where the alleys narrow at points to the width of a man’s shoulder blades, you can walk as if in a dream, never certain of what might appear after the next bend: a bare-chested man with a silver swordfish slung over his thin black back, a shoal of children reciting Qu’ran from their wooden slates, a girl milking a white, lyre-horned cow. The place has enchantment, mystery, it moves backward and forward in time with every turn of the feet; it is fitting that it lies beside an ocean over which its soul can breathe, rather than being hemmed in by mountains like a jinn in a bottle.

The Guddi marching band in indigo tunics and white caps stand beside her, old men tuning their old instruments. What they lack in ability they make up for in their willingness to please; they will squawk and stomp until they are told to stop. The musicians in Hargeisa are amateurs; those who couldn’t make it in Mogadishu ply their trade here, in the solitary theatre or in the daytime weddings that take place in bungalows. It needs a real city to pound new rhythms out of life — the tick of the town hall clock, the scrape of a shovel, the whistle of a traffic policeman — it needs all of this for new, pulse-quickening styles to germinate and flower.

The foreign dignitaries step out from their motorcade on schedule, and Filsan recognises a couple from photographs printed in the October Star, the national paper. The US economic attaché leads the group, followed by the Egyptian ambassador and a man in flowing white robes and keffiyah. Maybe a dozen other officials line up along the blue and white dais to await the General.

The honk of car horns announces his arrival. A soldier clumsily spreads a threadbare red carpet from the gate to the dais, and then General Haaruun steps out of a black Mercedes. It is as if an electric current passes through the stands as he walks to his seat surrounded by bodyguards, the atmosphere tense, every sound magnified by the sudden, jagged stillness. Filsan turns quickly to monitor the situation behind her: the locals do not shout or throw missiles but their eyes are fixed on the tall, gaunt man in military dress. They crane forward in their seats and appear like an avalanche of bodies ready to fall onto her and bury the stadium beneath them.

At the sight of General Haaruun, Kawsar’s heart pounds in her chest. He is like a hyena — sparse, menacing, his very presence seeming to herald death. She blames him not just for Hodan’s passing but for her arrest, her disappearance and her decline into a huddled, diminished figure. Despite the crowd, Kawsar feels a wall of black grief descending on her, leaving her blind and deaf and voiceless as if she is at the bottom of a well, only ever able to climb halfway up before losing her grip yet again.

‘Stay with us.’ Dahabo pats Kawsar’s hand and through her numb skin she feels her warmth.

‘When is this accursed thing going to start?’ Kawsar pretends to return to events around her but her mind is still in that well.

‘Now! Look!’

Three MIG aircraft in arrow formation buzz overhead, as grey and long-necked as vultures, swooping over as if racing to a corpse somewhere, the six streaks of smoke behind them fattening out and then tearing apart. The dignitaries stand to attention; they are vultures of a different level, more like marabous in their finery, roosting with full stomachs for the moment, the eyes behind the dark glasses are always alert and watchful.

It is only Dahabo who touches Kawsar now. Every month or so they meet in Kawsar’s house for tea and lamentation, and Dahabo makes a point of resting a hand on Kawsar’s thigh as she speaks, as if she knows how chilling it is to live alone without any human sound or touch. Dahabo squeezes, kneads, pats according to the topic of conversation, but her hand is never far away; it is a hard, calloused hand with nails bitten down low, but it comforts, transfuses more than just heat. That is another thing about getting old, the constant need for heat. Kawsar’s bones ache for sunlight, and she has taken to sitting out for an hour most days just after the worst of the midday sun and basking in her orchard like a lizard. But her sense of distance and loneliness is not shifting today, despite the warmth of the sun scaling up the sky and the proximity of so many bodies all around her.

The large speakers garble announcements, but it’s not necessary because the sequence of the parade is well established already. Soldiers come first, their legs snicking like scissors, then the heavy, older policemen and women in their blue uniforms, then civilians in their work clothes — teachers, civil servants, students. The only enjoyable thing for Kawsar is sporting her neighbours and their children amongst the marchers, their blind eyes and lunatic grins as they strain to search out family members from the identical figures in the stands. The Guddi come last, waving branches and carrying images of Lenin, Kim Il Jung and Mao, the communists who once provided inspiration to the dictatorship but whose pictures have faded, carted out just once a year like church relics. The regime now seeks out friends of any description, be they Arab, American or Albanian.

On the way into the stadium Deqo has seen tatty-looking girls her own age gathered in the market, sweeping with short brooms made from dried grasses. Even as poor as they are, each has a pair of plastic jelly sandals on her feet.

Now she watches from behind Milgo’s legs as the soldiers begin their parade. They march as one, a tribe of insects with green shells on their heads, their thousand feet scuttling across the dirt, their thousand eyes pointing in the same direction. She has never seen so many men in one place; the camp is mostly women and children, all squabbling and fighting with each other. The soldiers are young, powerful and unified. They seem to belong to each other while she belongs to no one. Milgo ululates as the men pass beside them and Deqo tries to emulate her, swinging her tongue in her mouth and yodelling. She decides, as she looks at the soldiers, at the crowd, at the aeroplanes above, that this is the best day of her life, the day when everything in the world is laid out for her to see and enjoy. No more of the camp and its dust and flies. She feels her stomach fluttering with excitement; soon she will be out there to take her place at the centre of the earth.

In the stand opposite Kawsar there is a sudden shifting, an exhalation from thousands of lungs as the spectators bend down and arise with placards in their hands. At the instruction of Guddi activists in traditional dress these placards are turned over and held up. Within a few seconds the stand has disappeared and a shimmering portrait of Oodweyne faces Kawsar. A few rebels refuse to hold up their placards, making tiny little holes in his face, but the message is clear: the President is a giant, a god who watches over them, who can dissolve into pieces and hear and see all that they do. The young nomadic boy who knew how to hobble a camel and ease a tick out of a sheep’s flesh has become a deity. A blasphemer, thinks Kawsar as his face floats up at her, both he and his servant Haaruun. Before she remembers where she is, she spits violently at the sight, drawing a gasp from the spectators around her.

‘What are you doing?’ Dahabo exclaims, squeezing Kawsar’s upper arm tightly.

Kawsar doesn’t know, she isn’t really there; she just saw a face that disgusted her and reacted. The expressions in the aisle below reflect shock and fear that she has drawn attention to them, but Kawsar cannot comprehend that fear anymore, it seems so paltry and pointless in comparison to what she has lived through. What more can they hold to ransom when they have taken away her only child? It is fear that makes the soldiers brave, that emboldens the policemen to loot, that gives life to that old man in Mogadishu. She does not care enough about her life or possessions to keep abasing herself.

‘Now! Let’s go, let’s go!’ shouts Milgo.

The children stream out onto the ground, Deqo third in line. Sound explodes from every corner: drums, shouts, roars. Deqo can’t hear her own voice as she sings. Already, the whole routine has left her mind. She follows Safiya’s movements but her limbs are heavy, her mind swimming. She knew these dances, was better at them than Safiya, but now she is lost. Crushed by the expectation to not make a mistake, she now longs for the invisibility she had in the camp but cannot avoid the eyes watching and judging her. She is suffocated by the dust beaten up by the shield-and-spear dancers which still hangs in the air, and the discordant band music unsettles her even further. This wasn’t how it was meant to be.

Milgo comes running towards her, her hand held up ready to smack.

Deqo continues to dance, but her eyes are fixed on Milgo’s enraged face. Other women come behind her, just as angry. A thin, dark stream of urine trickles onto her feet.

Grabbing Deqo’s arm, Milgo drags her away so fast that when she opens her eyes she is in the dark recess between two stands.

The blows come as soon as she is out of sight of the crowd, hands and feet attacking from all sides and words stinging her ears. Milgo shouts one insult after the other, the music still blaring loudly behind them.

At the heart of the swirling mass of dancers Kawsar notices a still point, an emptiness that seems to reflect how she feels. Within the circle is a forlorn girl in red staring at her feet, unconscious of where she is. The sight touches Kawsar, a moment of truth within this fiction. The serene moment lasts a second before the Guddi descend on her and Kawsar watches as the little girl is pulled away by the arm, four or five women crowding around her; she can tell by their expressions what they are going to do and rises before they take her away. Kawsar feels something has broken loose inside her, something that has been dammed up — love, rage, a sense of justice even; she doesn’t know what, but it heats her blood.

‘Where are you going?’ demands Dahabo.

‘I’ll be back, stay here.’

‘Kawsar, wait!’

But she is gone, pushing past the women in the aisle, stepping on their toes and clambering over them when they don’t move quickly enough. A couple of steps down and she is free of the crush.

‘Whore. . imbecile. . bitch,’ shout the Guddi beside the stand, and there she is — an anguished face pleading for mercy.

‘Give her to me,’ Kawsar says with more calm than she feels.

‘Go back to your own business,’ replies a young turbaned woman dismissively.

‘This is my business. I said give her to me.’ Kawsar charges forward and reaches for the girl.

The young woman holds Kawsar back. ‘You want us to call security, you old fool? You want to be thrown in jail?’ she shouts.

‘Do what you like, you can’t hurt me. I am from this town, I was born here, I won’t be told what to do by you.’ Her voice is shrill as she lunges yet again for the girl.

The Guddi block her and form a semi-circle around the child. ‘Milgo, go and call security, this mad woman wants trouble,’ the young woman says, and a gaunt older woman runs back to the entrance.

The little girl breaks free from her captors and runs away at full pelt.

‘Naayaa! Naayaa! Don’t worry, I will catch her.’ The youngest girl in the group follows in pursuit.

Their attention returns to Kawsar. ‘You want a night in jail to show you how things are? Old women have hard heads and learn too late sometimes.’ The group’s leader presses her finger into Kawsar’s forehead for emphasis.

Kawsar brushes her hand away. They stand inches apart as if in a duel.

A petite female soldier wearing a beret approaches with two male soldiers on her heels. She looks disgusted by the whole scene and gestures impatiently for Kawsar to follow her. The Guddi make space and Kawsar departs with her head held high.

‘Kawsar! Where are they taking you?’ Dahabo asks, leaning over the edge of the stand, Maryam beside her.

‘Jail,’ replies the soldier, ‘and we’ll take you too if you don’t return to your seat.’

‘Go back, I will see you later.’ Kawsar is strangely jubilant; she is the one making things happen now.

Deqo carries on blindly into the strange city. Looking behind, she sees her pursuer still running clumsily after her. She accelerates, taking wide, elegant strides. In Saba’ad she had never been able to run freely between the crowded buuls, the women’s legs outstretched in the small spaces between them; it was an environment that enforced slowness, wariness rather than childish abandon. She imagines now that there had been hands grabbing at her skirt and pulling her back, down into the earth that sucked people in every day. Here there is space, endless space, wide roads and boundless buildings.

She pumps her legs and arms, her lungs heaving, her heart pounding, testing her body to the edge of its capacity. She feels faster than the cars on the road, the crows in the sky, the bullets in the soldier’s rifles. She races against herself until the stadium is far behind her; the thud of her feet hitting the dust matches the beating of her heart. She is a slick machine in complete possession of itself. She reaches a bridge and crosses the vibrating concrete. Past the two-storeyed Oriental Hotel with Land Rovers pulled up near its entrance and the glass-fronted pharmacy, the mechanic’s shop with black tyres piled up outside, the scrap metal merchant’s corrugated tin shack. The streets are empty of people, little piles of dust and leaves gathered in corners every few metres as if sweepers have just been there; a single bus passes her as she speeds towards the market.

The old woman is quiet in the back of the van, her nose in the air as if she’s in a taxi; haughtiness is all she has to hide behind now but it won’t work. She will have to spend a night on the floor like all the other miscreants, use a bucket to relieve herself and wait until she is told she can leave. This isn’t the oldest troublemaker Filsan has had to deal with — the market woman who pelted General Haaruun’s motorcade had to have been over eighty — but this one looks wealthier, well-bred.

They pull up beside the central police station. Filsan hasn’t bothered to handcuff her — what’s the point? She can hardly outrun anyone. The old woman pulls her headscarf around her cheeks but Filsan yanks it back to reveal her face. It is only then that their eyes meet, the old woman’s full of reproach and contempt. Filsan grabs her arm and leads her into the police station; she will report her behaviour in the stadium to police officers and then leave them to take care of her.

‘The cells are full,’ the policewoman at the desk barks, not even looking up from the paper in her hand.

‘She has caused a public nuisance during the celebration.’

The policewoman raises her head and looks at the suspect. ‘What did she do?’

‘Harassed and threatened women from the Guddi.’

The policewoman laughs and bends over the tiny public nuisance. ‘Are you not too old for this? Are you not ashamed of yourself?’ She is maybe twenty years old with streaks of bleached blonde hair peeking out from under her cap. ‘Where do you live?’

‘Guryo Samo.’

‘Name?’

‘Kawsar Ilmi Bootaan.’

She jots her details into a form and then shoves the pen behind her ear. ‘She won’t take up too much space, I guess.’ The policewoman sighs. ‘Hand her over.’

Filsan watches as Kawsar is escorted to a group cell. She walks slowly but shows no emotion; she moves like a tourist on a tour of the place, looking left and right as if to say, ‘Yes, yes, everything is as it should be.’ The barred doors click behind her and then she is gone, swallowed up in the guts of the police station to be digested and excreted out another day.

Saylada dadka, thinks Kawsar. This is where her journey ends, in the ‘people market’. From here the fortunate ones will be ransomed out while others end up in the hospital morgue or disappear into prisons all over the country This was the place that had broken her child. She looks around, imagining where Hodan might have sat that first night after she was arrested with her classmates. The cell is large with walls that had once been painted white but are now gangrened and blackened with mould. It is little more than a dungeon with around thirty women and girls spread across its concrete floor.

‘Take a seat, eddo,’ an inmate breast-feeding a child calls out.

Kawsar hesitates. It is clear from the woman’s jaundiced eyes and gaudy dress that she is a prostitute. The woman shifts over on her mat and pats the floor.

‘What’s a lady like you doing in a place like this?’

‘I couldn’t take any more of them, I realised.’ Kawsar crouches down slowly onto the woven straw mat.

‘What did you do?’ she prods, teasing her nipple back into the baby’s mouth.

Kawsar shrugs. ‘What can I do? I just told the Guddi to stop beating a child.’

‘Those bastards. You were lucky they didn’t beat you. Look here,’ she points to the infant’s temple, ‘see that dent? It’s where a policeman’s stick caught him during a raid. No apology, no nothing.’

Kawsar strokes the fine, smooth skin of the boy’s forehead. Before he has even reached his first birthday he has been marked by the violent world surrounding him; perhaps he will be unable to see or hear or walk in the future and that won’t matter to anyone but this drunk, sloppy mother feeding him her poison through her milk. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she says.

‘He should be, his father was very handsome, a real Ilmi Boodari.’

Kawsar smiles. ‘You look too young to know anything about Ilmi Boodari.’

‘He died the year I was born.’

‘Of love. .’

‘Of course, of love! He was the most romantic Somali man to ever live or write poetry, but no one knows his songs better than me. I have each and every one on tape.’

An addict of love as well as drink, thinks Kawsar. That makes sense, from one high to another.

‘What is your name?’

‘People call me China.’

A laugh escapes from Kawsar. ‘Why? Are you a coolie? Do you build roads in your spare time?’

‘No, but I help the men who do.’ China meets her gaze and raises an eyebrow flirtatiously.

Kawsar imagines the baby in a drawer under the bed while coolies with dirty hands climb into bed with his mother.

‘Don’t look so pious. When it’s not the coolies it’s probably your husband or son.’

Kawsar rises from the mat feeling small and vulnerable.

‘Go! Go to hell! It was my mistake to show you any kindness. Go and sit over there on the cold floor,’ China bellows, pushing her away.

Kawsar walks to the opposite wall where the smell of the waste bucket has cleared a circular space. Her breath is shallow and pained. She knows women like China always carry a weapon.

‘Please, Dahabo, come quickly, get me out of here,’ she prays. Whatever rush she had got from standing up to the Guddi has now evaporated. She wants nothing more than a cup of strong tea and to be back in her clean, safe home.

Deqo skids to a stop. Ahead of her is the woman who had come to her rescue in the stadium, climbing down from one of the jeeps that had overtaken her. She had looked so tall and brave when she confronted Milgo, but now the soldiers tower over her. She follows behind a female soldier, up the concrete steps, her knees seeming to buckle on the fourth step before she regains her balance and enters the building. Deqo crosses the road and stares up from the bottom of the stairs. The fragrant incense on the woman’s clothes is powerful and sweet and Deqo inhales deeply, imagining the home this smell comes from — it will have pots bubbling on the stove, clothes drying on a line in the sun and a bed piled high with pillows and soft blankets. A full stomach and a good night’s sleep were necessary to make people kind, Milgo said, when she went too far with the hidings.

Deqo decides to wait in the shade across the road until the gentle lady returns to thank her; it had been rude just to run away like that and leave her in trouble. Maybe she hasn’t got children and would let her live with her, she has seen that happen before — women arrived at the hospital, browsed the cots and took a baby home. Deqo could cook, clean, run errands; she was better for an old woman than a whining baby.

A few people emerge from the wide, dark entrance of the jail but not whom Deqo wants. They come out shielding their eyes from the light, their clothes crumpled and stained, but Deqo feels certain that her woman is unsulliable; she will smell as good on her release as she did when she went in.

A reverberation emanates from the direction of the bridge she has just crossed. Deqo takes a few steps towards it and watches a group of women, all dressed like her saviour, come slowly into view, a wave of red, white and brown crashing over the road, singing out in praise of the President and Somalia as they wave branches in the air. They march in rows of ten, some in the road, some clambering onto the pavement, an army of housewives invading the silence. Deqo ducks into an alleyway in case Milgo appears alongside them.

A Somali film crew run past. With their lumbering cameras, bags and microphones, they remind her of the foreign photographers who descended on Saba’ad during the cholera outbreak, stepping on people’s fingers and shoving cameras into their faces as they died silently on the ground. They had seemed friendly until they began to work, dominating the clinic as they littered it with cables, generators and so many different machines. They had filmed Old Sulaiman crying over his dead family, all four children and his wife wrapped in thin sheets ready for burial, his tears coursing down into his beard, their cameras less than a step away. He had survived but left the camp, not even a bundle on his back, abandoning his possessions for his neighbours to pick over. Some people said he went back to the Ogaden, others into the city, but he was never seen again.

The marchers wave their placards and shake their branches until the flow peters out, leaves and twigs are stomped into the tarmac in their wake. They take the life in the street with them and leave her with images of corpses lined up for burial outside of the clinic walls, the smell of them clinging to her skin like oil.

The stadium events are finally over and the dignitaries rise as the national anthem is played over the speakers. Filsan stands in a phalanx of soldiers just beneath General Haaruun. With the Guddi units safely despatched she has eased her way to the dais. There are two other female officers nearby but she is the closest, and she casts a competitive glance at them, hoping that the General will notice the sharpness of her uniform, the straightness of her back, the smartness of her salute. She has not eaten all day and her eyes are turning scenes into dreamscapes: spectral figures waving to her from the edge of her vision, the stands undulating with hands at their tips like surf, fires burning wherever the sun hits metal. A tap on her shoulder makes her jolt as the final strains of the anthem float away.

‘His Excellency wants you to be introduced to him.’ A sergeant with a star on each epaulette speaks in her ear.

‘Huh?’ She has waited for this moment for so long and that is all Filsan can say.

‘Quick, he is waiting.’ The sergeant turns his back and clicks his fingers for her to follow.

She rushes around the barrier and up the steps. Large electric fans stir the blue and white silken sheets covering the dais, and she feels like she is standing on a cloud as the wind pushes it across the sky.

Filsan dabs the sweat discreetly from her hairline and salutes General Haaruun.

‘At ease, soldier.’ His voice is smooth, soft, so comfortable in his power that he doesn’t need to bark it. ‘I always like to meet female comrades, encourage them in their career. What is your name?’

‘Adan Ali, Filsan, sir.’ She can’t look at him.

‘Which agency are you in?’

‘Internal Security, sir.’

‘Look up, comrade.’

Filsan raises her face and meets his gaze.

‘Are you from a military family?’

‘Yes, sir, my father is Irroleh.’

‘I trained with him in East Berlin. A wonderful soldier.’

It has worked. Her father’s name is like a key clicking in a lock; she can almost hear the door swinging open to her.

‘How is he?’

‘He is very well, sir, he is based in the ministry of defence,’ Filsan lies. Her father has been suspended and is currently at home while under investigation.

‘I will have to look him up next time I’m in Mogadishu. And you, how long have you been here?’

‘Just three weeks, sir.’

He smiles. ‘It’s a village, isn’t it?’

She smiles in return. He is like the men who carried her on their shoulders as a child, friendly giants with big hands and big laughs.

He turns to one of the foreign men and pushes his chair out, still addressing her. ‘Why don’t you accompany us to the Oriental Hotel, we can talk further there.’

Filsan grins and reveals her small, overlapping teeth. ‘Yes, sir!’ A knot of guards surround the General and she joins the outer shell protecting him.

He steps into his black Mercedes and drives away in a convoy. The sergeant who had called her now ushers her into his jeep. Let the Guddi clear up and deal with the stragglers and argumentative old women. She has studied and trained to take her place at the heart of things. The jeep speeds to the Oriental Hotel near the bridge, the grandest and oldest hotel in town.

General Haaruun enters ahead of them, his hand lightly touching the back of an Asian ambassador’s wife; he bows and lets her enter before him.

Filsan jumps out of the jeep and follows the dignitaries into the main hall. She has an urge to rush to the toilet and check her make-up and hair in the mirror, but the professional side of her scoffs at the idea. She has never set foot in this place but was practically raised in the hotels of Mogadishu, eating her meals in them while her father drank coffee and networked all day long. After her mother left and before they had found their housekeeper Intisaar, they had barely lived in their villa, only returning at night to sleep. She is deeply intimate with hotels — their structure and schedules, the smell of the blue soaps found in every hotel bathroom — but standing here surrounded by these worldly people she feels like a big-booted bedu staring at the mirrors and gilt-effect chandeliers. She wants to wrap herself in the long window drapes and hide like she did as a child when there were too many strangers in the house.

General Haaruun has a tumbler of drink in his hand, the same colour as the whisky her father enjoys; he swills it around the ice cubes as he speaks. He doesn’t look at Filsan at all but she waits awkwardly close, busying herself with the details of the room: the red bow ties of the waiters, the matching velveteen of the sofas and curtains, the lacquered finish to the dining table in the centre of the room. She isn’t sure what to do with her body, what role she is meant to be playing — protector, supplicant, daughter. Her back stiffens, slackens and stiffens again. Turning for a moment she grabs a glass from a passing tray and throws the drink down her dry throat. Cheap white wine sloshes over her taste buds and hits her stomach; pulling a face, she returns the glass to the tray and swivels back into position. She will wait until Haaruun is ready for her.

He is deep in mirthful conversation with the American attaché. English sentences from her school days come back to her and make her smile: ‘Could you please tell me how to get to Buckingham Palace?’; ‘I am waiting for the ten thirty to York’; ‘I have an urgent need to see a physician.’ She imagines Haaruun and the attaché speaking these sentences to each other, their whole conversation full of random declarations and questions.

None of the other guests approach her. Maybe if she weren’t in uniform they would think she was worth speaking to, but now they just crane their necks to look around her. There are soldiers outside that she can talk to but then General Haaruun might forget about her, jump into his car and drive away into the half-light of the late afternoon. She needs the patience of a bawab; those bare-chested black men in turbans standing in the background of harems, as immobile as stone, simultaneously absent and present, their eyes as bright as a cobra’s in the dark. She has nowhere better to be — just her tiny, bare room in the barracks with its slimy toilet and lumpy mattress.

‘Comrade! Come join us.’ It is Haaruun.

Filsan’s knees click as she walks to his side.

The American has his hand on Haaruun’s shoulder, his grey shirt wet under the arms.

‘You speak English, right?’

‘I do, sir.’ Filsan is self-conscious about her strong accent but has studied well.

‘I was just telling our American friend how strong Somali women are, that we don’t have any of that purdah here. Women work, they fight in our military, serve as engineers, spies, doctors. Isn’t it so?’

‘Absolutely, we are not like other women.’ She nods fervently.

‘I bet you this girl could strip a Kalashnikov in a minute,’ the General boasts, placing his gold-rimmed sunglasses on top of his bald head.

‘Yes, and she could annihilate an Ethiopian battalion while unicycling. I don’t doubt it,’ the American laughs.

‘Look, buddy. .’ General Haaruun grabs Filsan’s hand and raises it before twirling her around. ‘You’re going to tell me that American women can be trained killers and still look this good?’

Filsan fixes her gaze to the floor; she can feel others looking her up and down, eyes flicking over her like tongues.

‘Not bad, not bad. I wouldn’t want to meet her down a dark alley. Or maybe I would if it was the right kind of alley.’

General Haaruun clasps the attaché’s shoulder and hoots his approval before recovering himself. ‘Keep your capitalist hands to yourself.’ He mock-wags his finger in his face.

Filsan’s face burns hot, bringing tears to her eyes. She rushes away before they roll down, back to her corner as the lamps and chandeliers are lit across the room. She straightens her back and stands tall. Even in her uniform they see nothing more than breasts and a hole. He knows who her father is but still parades her like a prostitute. A waiter stops to glance at her; chest puffed out, barely a breath escaping her lips, she must look ready to burst.

‘Go to hell!’ she hisses.

He purses his lips to blow a kiss and grabs an empty glass from a nearby table.

One tear escapes down her left cheek and she scrapes it quickly away. The sky is black outside now, her reflection in the window shortened and stumpy-looking; she looks like an abandoned child on the verge of breaking down.

‘Comrade. Why don’t you let me drive you back to barracks?’ General Haaruun approaches and gestures to the door.

She hesitates but wants to salvage some of the hopes she had for the meeting, he might still offer her his patronage. Rearranging her features into an expression of gratitude, she nods acquiescence.

The Mercedes is parked two metres away from the hotel entrance. A young soldier bends to open the door but he waves him away. ‘Stay in the jeep,’ he orders.

General Haaruun holds the door open for Filsan and she slides in, holding her boots away from the upholstery. The windows are tinted black, and once the door has slammed shut they are in complete darkness with only the dials on the dashboard casting a fine red light over them.

Hargeisa is eerie at night. The electricity supply has been cut to make life difficult for the rebels, but the darkness feels portentous, and apparitions pass across the black windows as they race along, the glow of an occasional paraffin lamp radiating from a street-side shack. They are submariners passing through the deep sea, perhaps able to make it to dry land, perhaps not, strange creatures glubbing along on the other side of the glass.

‘Take your hat off.’ The General’s voice is more sober now.

Filsan unpins the hat from her head. Her hair is bundled up on top.

‘Let it out. Let me see it down.’

Filsan responds quickly to orders, she always has done, her father made sure of that. ‘Do it quickly and do it well,’ he instilled in her.

It takes a while to find and remove all of the metal pins; she gathers them in her lap and teases her hair down to her shoulders. It feels good to release the tension in her skull; her scalp tingles now, her fingertips making circles over it.

General Haaruun moves closer to her, the back seat squeaking beneath his weight. Filsan stares out of the windscreen, sees stray dogs and civilians diving into the headlights.

His hand is on her cheek, stroking it, his skin softer than she had expected, the smell of lotion faint on his fingers.

He moves closer again.

The driver’s eyes are framed in the rear-view mirror, looking back at her.

‘Ina Irroleh, daughter of Irroleh, look at me.’

The mention of her father is like a thunderbolt striking her ears. He is watching her now, she knows it; he can see her sitting in the back of this car and the veins in his temple are rising and tightening.

General Haaruun holds her chin and turns her face to him. ‘I can make your life so easy, whatever you want is yours.’

‘My father wouldn’t like this.’

He moves his hand down, brushing her thighs and then squeezing her knee. ‘You think your father doesn’t do this to girls he meets?’ He pushes his hand up her thigh and against her crotch. ‘You’re a virgin, aren’t you? A clean girl,’ he whispers in her ear.

Filsan is deep underwater now, unable to breathe or even swallow; she will never make it to dry land.

‘Please stop, my father. .’ she hears herself mutter.

‘Who cares about him? He is an old drunk. Think about what is good for you.’ Both his arms wrap around her, one hand padding around for her belt and zip.

The driver’s eyes are still on them.

Filsan grabs General Haaruun’s hand and throws it away. ‘No! No! No!’ She hits his chest with both palms at each word. ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘Stop the car!’ he shouts.

They screech to a stop and the jeeps behind fan out around the car.

Reaching around to the door handle, he opens the passenger door and pushes Filsan out of the car. ‘Abu kintiro, you cunt, make your own way home.’

Filsan lands on her knees in plain view of maybe twenty soldiers, the jeep headlights making the scene as bright as day.

The door thuds behind her and the Mercedes skids and then drives off. Darkness huddles around her as the convoy pulls away. She rises to her feet, her head whirring, and walks to the nearest light source.

The jail is where people’s stories end, thinks Kawsar. Whoever you are, whatever ambitions you nurse, however many twists and turns it has taken to arrive there, it is like the heart of a spider’s web that you eventually wind your way to. More women and girls have entered the cell and there are about fifty prisoners now. No one has used the bucket but the prostitute’s son has made a mess that still stinks an hour later. The lack of space means the youngest inmates are forced to stand; some of them are street-looking girls who seem unruffled by the whole experience, while others tremble in school uniforms. They crowd around her for comfort and she wishes she could extend her arms around all of them, Hodan must have wept through the night in this dank hole.

‘Kawsar? Where is Kawsar?’ The policewoman raps on the bars.

‘Here!’ It takes three attempts to rise to her feet, her knees making a loud crack as she finally succeeds.

‘This has been delivered for you.’ She holds up a bundle wrapped in a towel.

‘Is she still here?’ Kawsar asks plaintively.

‘No, I sent them home.’ She unlocks the door and hands it over. ‘Be careful, it’s hot.’

It smells good even through the cotton: coriander, pepper, cloves, garlic.

She is the first to be given food, but she can’t eat while the others go hungry. She approaches the young girls and gestures that they should eat with her.

She unwraps the towel and inside is a lidded saucepan with a stack of round roodhis folded to the side of it. Steam escapes as she lifts the lid. A lamb and potato stew fills the pot, more than she would ever be able to eat alone. Gingerly, like cats, the girls gather around the food.

Kawsar passes the bread around and there are still four or five in her hand; she turns to China, ‘Come and eat, you need milk for your son.’

China scrunches up her nose and shakes her head. ‘I have my own asho to wait for.’

Kawsar dips a piece of bread into the stew, twisting it around a cube of potato. The bread is Maryam English’s and the stew Dahabo’s — she knows their cooking well enough. They must have paid laluush to ensure that it didn’t become the guards’ dinner; she makes a mental note to repay them.

The girls have overcome their shyness, reaching deep into the stew. Their fingers are dirty, so are her own, there is no way of cleaning them, but it still makes Kawsar queasy to look at the thick line of dirt under one girl’s fingernails. Her stomach is tiny these days, one small meal a day is sufficient; she finishes one roodhi then leaves the remainder to them.

‘Kawsar! Come out, you’re wanted,’ the policewoman bellows through the bars.

‘What is this? The Kawsar hotel? What about us? I have been sat here all day with my infant,’ China shouts.

‘Hush, dhilloyeh! Whore! Keep your mouth closed if you don’t want us to shut it for you.’

Kawsar is embarrassed. She wonders if Dahabo has told them that her husband had once been chief of police in Hargeisa.

‘This way.’ Amber light fills the corridor; they turn the opposite way to the exit, even deeper into the building, and then down narrow concrete steps into the basement.

‘Are my neighbours back? Have they paid?’ she asks the policewoman.

‘You’re not free that easily.’ She knocks on a yellow door and then pushes the handle and looks inside the room. ‘Here she is.’

‘Let her in,’ a voice says.

‘Watch what you say,’ the policewoman whispers and then opens the door wide.

It is the female officer who brought her to the police station. She is less polished now, with her hair stuffed clumsily under her beret and her make-up smudged under the eyes. A bare light bulb of low wattage illuminates just the table and her pale face and hands. The windowless room still smells of the prisoners who have passed through — their exhaled breath, their sweat and the tang of their blood.

The officer points to a metal chair opposite her. It screeches as Kawsar pulls it along the concrete floor. The chair is tall and her toes can just about reach the floor when she sits down; a small murmur of pleasure comes from her as she relaxes into the padded plastic seat.

‘I am Officer Adan Ali.’ The woman clears her throat before continuing. ‘I am investigating the disturbance today at the October Twenty-first parade in Hargeisa stadium. What is your name?’ She produces a notebook and pen from her lap and jots down Kawsar’s name, neighbourhood, age, marital status, clan details. She has the same concentrated intensity to her face as Hodan once had.

There is a pause before either of them speak again. Kawsar takes in the solitary decoration in the room — a poster taped askew to the back wall showing Ogadeen refugees huddled under an acacia tree in one half and the same refugees smiling broadly in a fishing boat after they have been resettled by the government in the other segment; her eyes keep meeting those of a teenage boy in the picture instead of her interrogator’s.

Officer Adan Ali tugs at her collar and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘It was reported that you tried to assault members of the Guddi. What do you have to say in reply to this accusation?’

‘I neither raised my hand to anyone nor threatened to,’ Kawsar explains.

‘Are you saying the Guddi are lying?’

Kawsar hesitates and takes a deep breath. ‘Yes.’

Violent writing into the notebook. ‘You understand that defamation of public workers is an offence?’

‘An offence to God? To you? To me?’

‘To the country.’

Kawsar shrugs her contempt.

Officer Adan Ali slams the pen onto the table and throws her back against her chair; another petulant little girl in authority.

Filsan feels her leg jiggling underneath the table; it is a nervous habit that appears when she is about to lose her temper. This is her first ever interrogation; she had walked into the police station and demanded to see the old woman. The nightshirt guards were already red-eyed and bleary and let her in without much discussion. She had wanted to clear her head, focus on work rather than what had just happened in Haaruun’s car. Deep down she is terrified of returning alone to her little room. This old woman, Kawsar, has not only cleared her mind but is kindling a fire of anger in it; she thinks she is a gangster or something, refusing to look at Filsan and shrugging nonchalantly at questions.

Filsan has forgotten a standard question and she asks it now. ‘Do you have any children?’

‘Not anymore.’

Filsan’s suspicion grows; if the mother is this disrespectful, maybe she has sons amongst the rebels in Ethiopia or in the Gulf, sending them money. ‘When did they leave the country?’

Kawsar sighs. ‘About five years ago.’

‘Where did they go?’

‘Heaven.’

Another pause.

‘Do you think this is a game? If I want to I can make you disappear into Mandera or prisons that you have never heard of, where no one will find you.’

Filsan wants to take a hammer to her face. For some reason people feel they don’t need to respect her. ‘I am going to give you one last chance: tell me what happened between you and the Guddi.’

Kawsar spreads her hands on the table, her wrists just bone and bulging veins; the fingers curve as if the knuckles need oiling, the henna on her nails half grown out leaving small harvest moons at the tips.

‘I went to the stadium as instructed. I sat quietly with my neighbours watching the parade. I am old, I am tired, I have no energy for these all day events but I obeyed. I saw a scrap of a girl dancing in the stadium until she was dragged away by the Guddi.’

‘That is when you intervened?’ Filsan’s heart rate slows down.

‘Yes. They were thrashing her, four or five of them against a child. I didn’t want to just watch.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I approached and told them to stop. I didn’t touch anyone but I was pushed more than once.’

‘What happened to the girl after you flew to her rescue?’

‘She ran away.’

‘Is this your first conflict with public officials?’

‘I was once fined.’

‘Why?’

‘I was wrongly accused.’

‘What of?’ snaps Filsan.

‘Listening to NFM radio,’ murmurs Kawsar.

‘Are any of your family mixed up with the rebels?’

‘I don’t have family. I am alone.’

‘So why is a woman of your age tuning into childish propaganda?’

‘I wasn’t, but even if I did, aren’t these my own ears? Given by God to do with as I please?’ Kawsar’s hand flicks her right ear lobe.

The blows come one after the other. The first to her ear as loud as a wave hitting a rock, then to her temple, cheek, neck. For a moment they stop as Kawsar clutches Officer Adan Ali’s hands in hers but after a few heartbeats they resume. A swirl of sound and sight engulfs her until a punch to the chest knocks her from the chair onto the cement floor. Landing on her hip, Kawsar hears a crack beneath her and then feels a river of pain swelling up from her stomach to her throat, obstructing her breath. Resting her weight on one hand, she lifts an open palm to the soldier. ‘Please stop!’ she cries.

The girl shakes her head, tears in her own eyes, and rushes out of the room. The thud of her boots as she runs down the corridor gets quieter and disappears.

Every millimetre of movement electrifies Kawsar’s nerves. She can neither pick herself up nor lie flat on the ground but is fixed in an awkward, lop-sided pose. Her head sways with the enormity of the pain pulsing through her body, bile at the back of her tongue. Even if someone did arrive to help, how could she let them move her? It would be better to take a bullet to the back of the head. Her palms are clammy and she loses her grip, slipping closer to the ground, where drops of blood stain the white concrete. Kawsar licks her upper lip and tastes more blood. She rubs a hand under her nose; it comes away red.

The door is flung open and the policewoman with the blonde highlights and a man gather around her.

‘What the hell did you say?’ the policewoman asks, leaning over Kawsar’s face.

‘Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! I beg you,’ Kawsar sobs.

The policewoman hooks her under the arms while the policeman grabs her ankles.

‘My hip is broken. In the name of God, put me down, I beg you, put me down. .’ Her words become screams as they lift her into the air.

They shuffle out of the interrogation room and a curtain of black descends over Kawsar’s eyes, all feeling and hearing fading away.

Hidden in a narrow alleyway, Deqo peeps out at the crowd that has gathered outside the police station. Around ten women in red robes shout at a policeman, more policemen arrive and the women retreat but continue to shout. ‘Give her to us,’ she hears one say.

A civilian car drives past and one woman jumps out in front of it, banging on the windscreen until it stops and the driver steps out to speak with her. Behind them the shouting ceases as a prostrate figure emerges on a stretcher between two young policemen.

Deqo tiptoes out into the street, the area suddenly bright as cars slow to observe the commotion, their headlights revealing the face of the woman on the stretcher.

It is her.

Deqo rushes across the road. Nobody seems to see her; this is a trick she has, the power to become invisible. She wipes the blood away from her saviour’s face and pats her cheek. The women are shouting over her head, one older woman threatening the police with a cane; two of them take hold of the stretcher and push it into the open doors of the waiting car.

The car doors slam before Deqo can slip inside with them. A squeak, a crunch and the car starts, throwing up a plume of dust into her face. She chases its lights through the darkness, a pair of eyes looking back at her through the rear window. Deqo looks down at her garments glowing ghostly white and her limbs paled to the same colour. She realises how far away Saba’ad is, how exciting her life has become in the few hours she has been in Hargeisa, and she knows she cannot go back. The car begins to pull away from her and she quickens her pace, her legs eating up the road; the car turns and she follows, her feet now numb. Another acceleration and Deqo strains to keep up, her heart banging against her ribs. Her eyes focussed on the lights ahead, she misses the large pothole right ahead of her and falls in, scraping her knee and collapsing into it. The car slows to turn another corner and then disappears. Deqo is alone once more.