Crossbones (13 page)

Jeebleh yawns heavily, indicating he is tired; he wants Gumaad and Dajaal to leave. But before they do, he brings out the platter in which the food came, already washed and packed so that Dajaal may return it to its owner.

“See you tomorrow, about noon,” Jeebleh says.

“Good night. See you tomorrow.”

“Very good for a first day,” Malik says.

“I’m glad things are working out, except for the computer problem,” Jeebleh says. “But I know that you will not let that pull down your spirits.”

Malik says, “I should have known what the reaction of a religionist with sex on his mind would be to a naked photograph of a year-old girl in her bath. Pornography, my foot! Not to worry. I will not allow it to color my judgment.”

“What about the articles he deleted?”

“I have copies on a memory stick,” Malik says.

Jeebleh says, “I should have alerted you to the possibility, and I should have been more supportive. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t let that worry you; you did what you could under the circumstances,” Malik says, and he goes to embrace Jeebleh.

Jeebleh relaxes his features into a sweet softness, the night stars shining in his eyes. Just looking at him, Malik is so touched that he wants to wrap himself around his father-in-law yet again and to say
how delighted he is to be here. Instead, he tells him about the mini-recorder he has in his pocket, which has registered everything. Malik makes Jeebleh listen to some of the conversation he recorded.

Jeebleh says, “Whatever else you do, please don’t mention my name in any of your articles, lest it devalue your work or my input.”

“I am proud of our association and will say so.”

They embrace again and then go to bed, content.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warsame says, “Let me carry something.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Three years and a bit,” Warsame says.

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

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

“Where’s Immigration?” he asks.

Warsame points. “There.”

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

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

“Is that how things work out here?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Everyone comes because there is peace here?”

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

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

“No one knows the number of its residents.”

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

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

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

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

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