Crossbones (19 page)

When he rejoins them, Dajaal is in an awful mood. He curses, mumbles imprecations, and, naming no names, showers all manner of damnations on men who have never fought a war and who are now having recourse to war, mistaken in their belief that God is on their side and will help them prevail. Inarticulate in his rage, Dajaal speaks of the
harsh war of words exchanged between the Ethiopian premier, who announced “imminent retaliation for the provocation against the integrity of our country’s borders and the sanctity of its security,” and the provocative rebuttal from the Courts, whose executive director has said, “I trust to Providence that invaders of Muslim lands will be defeated.”

Dajaal goes on, “The entire city has the jitters, many people are going to the mosques to pray, or preparing to go away; many more are buying a week’s provisions, just in case. Now, tell me, one of you. Did Gumaad say he is leaving the city? Could he have been calling on you on his way out?”

“He said he would return later, if he is able.”

Dajaal says, “I wonder what he was up to.”

Qasiir volunteers, “Someone else was with him.”

“Who?”

Qasiir shrugs his shoulders in silence.

Malik has had enough of their speculations. He says, “Shall we go and buy the computer?”

He goes into his bedroom to organize the funds. He counts out several hundred U.S. dollars in easy-to-carry, high denominations and throws in an extra, just-in-case hundred. Malik knows that there are money changers in the markets who sit at low tables, wads and wads of highly devalued Somali shillings on one side, and on the other, heaps of cash in several other currencies, including U.S. and Canadian dollars, euros, Saudi dirhams. Unlike many other countries, where movement of money is tightly controlled, in today’s Somalia buying any currency you fancy is as easy as buying groceries.

When Malik reemerges from his room with the cash counted, he and Qasiir wait in apparent deference to Dajaal, who is still psyched up, not yet done with his tirade.

“I’ve known what it means to go to war and lose,” he says. “I fought
in the Ethiopia–Somalia war of 1977, as a major in the National Army. Somalia was much stronger then—we had an army, one of the strongest on the continent—and we lost the war, and were run out of the Ogaden. We haven’t recovered from that debacle, and it resulted in the current strife.”

“Grandpa, we are ready to go, if you are.”

Dajaal remains fired up and says, “Men like Gumaad and the so-called defense spokesman of the Courts who have never held a gun in their lives have no right to invoke Allah’s name in support for an ill-planned cause.”

Qasiir drags Dajaal by the hand, and they make it to the car in silence. Qasiir asks if he should drive, to which Dajaal retorts, “I am not mad in the sense of being dangerous. I am mad in the sense of being angry with what these men from the Courts are doing to our nation, endangering its continued existence.”

He sits at the wheel and sobers up fast as he prepares his mind for the next task. He reverses into the vehicle parked behind him as he drives out of his parking spot. It is unlike Dajaal to be so careless, and not to stop and check the damage he has caused to someone else’s car. But that is what he does: the world is not what it used to be; Dajaal is not the man he was an hour before.

They have barely rounded a corner when they come upon a familiar scene, of men and women fleeing their homes, carrying their worldly belongings on their heads. Antlike, people are escaping ahead of the coming fire, not wanting to burn in it. At one point, Dajaal barely avoids colliding with a heavily laden donkey that resists the commands of the young girl attempting to pull it forward by the rope tied around its neck.

The columns of those in flight lengthen and shorten, like the long and short shadows that define the various hours of the day. As they approach the market, Malik taking notes furiously, they notice that people are streaming out of it, carrying what looks like days’ worth of
food. Some of the women, wearing expensive body tents, climb into the backs of SUVs. Qasiir observes that these are the people who are not likely to leave the city, out of concern that squatters might move into their properties and vandalize them.

Malik looks up from his notebook and stops scribbling as Dajaal brings the car to a stop, and they prepare to enter the market.

AHL SITS UP FRONT. WARSAME IS DRIVING, AND FIDNO IS IN THE
back. Warsame speeds across an intersection and swerves to avoid a goat crossing the road, but catches her with the edge of the fender regardless. The goat sways this side and that, as if deciding whether to remain on her feet, her hips and ribs exposed, her breathing labored. Then she regains her balance and straightens up, takes a step, and halts again. Warsame has pulled over, and Ahl suggests they wait a minute or so. Even so, Warsame puts the car in gear, ready to move if the crowd milling on either side of the road looks likely to form into a mob. Ahl has his door ajar, preparing to get out and check on how the beast is faring, but at that very moment Warsame puts the vehicle in motion, and Ahl pulls the car door shut.

“I wish we had stopped,” Ahl says.

“Hereabouts,” Fidno says, “we’re all fearful of making fatal mistakes. More than ever, one must be wary of the unruliness
of crowds, living in a place where there is a total breakdown of law and order. You can get yourself into sticky situations if you aren’t careful. I am speaking of crowds waiting at the behest of their unreasonable greed, a crowd turning into a mob.”

Warsame, seemingly bemused, stays out of it.

Ahl challenges, “Crowd, what crowd? There was no crowd to speak of. There were people milling about, minding their own business, from what I could tell. Men and women selling or buying, young men standing in groups and bantering. I saw no crowd that was likely to turn into a mob.”

“Do you know what would have happened if the car had run over the goat and killed it?” Fidno asks.

“We would pay what is due to the owner of the dead goat,” Ahl says. “I see no problem there. Recompense the owner. What else is there to do?”

“How do you determine who to pay if as many as a dozen claimants present themselves, each saying he is the rightful owner of the goat, and several others, challenging these claimants, inform you that the goat’s owner is a clansman and you should pay them?”

Ahl says, “That’s altogether another matter.”

“A goat is other than itself,” Fidno says.

“I hadn’t realized,” Ahl agrees.

They come to a busy junction with throngs swarming around stalls, and Warsame stops. This moves Ahl to ask, “Where are we, and why are we here, stopping?”

Ahl is clearly wary of crowds.

“Warsame is getting his daily fix,” Fidno says.

They have pulled up next to Warsame’s favorite
qaat
stall, run by a woman from whom Warsame buys his ration of leaves of the mild stimulant he and millions of other Somalis chew daily. Ahl can perceive the craving in Warsame’s eyes, the anticipation working its way into his body at the sight of the green leaves spread out within reach of his
open window. The woman wears a
guntiino
robe, a bit of her breast exposed as she raises her arm to adjust the sacking around the bundles, which are wrapped in banana leaves and sprinkled with water periodically, to keep them fresh.

Ahl has read somewhere that Somalia boasts one of the highest populations addicted to
qaat
, a commodity imported from Ethiopia and Kenya at great cost to the national economy.
Qaat
is comparable in strength to cocaine, stronger if consumed in greater quantities for longer periods. The woman lifts a bundle to show Warsame how fresh her
qaat
is. The water sprays as she shakes the bundle, the leaves dancing, and Warsame’s eyes brighten and his mouth moves as the hand holding the money trembles. He pays the woman without getting out of the vehicle, its engine running.

Just as they are ready to drive off, there is a sudden congestion of traffic, caused, one of the
qaat
sellers tells them, by a head-on collision between two cars up the road. A crowd pours into the street to watch. Patiently, they sit and wait for the blockage to ease, Warsame taking the opportunity to telephone Xalan to tell her what is causing the delay.

Meanwhile, an SUV comes into view. The woman in the front passenger seat smiles in their direction and then discreetly waves. Ahl smiles back, despite feeling that he is not the intended recipient of the woman’s sweet grin and, bashful, looks about him to discover whether either Warsame or Fidno has chanced on the exchange. His wandering gaze encounters Fidno’s, whose hand is raised in greeting.

Ahl adds, “I know the face, but can’t put a name to it. Unless the two of you are acquainted and she is greeting you.”

“Her name is Wiila,” Fidno says.

“She is a flight attendant, isn’t she?”

“What a small world. Maybe you flew with her!”

“Now that you’ve said the name,” Ahl says, “I remember her. She seemed miserable, weepy for much of the flight from Djibouti.”

Fidno explains, “She is mourning the death of her youngest brother, killed in Mogadiscio while on a special Shabaab mission.”

“How come you know that?” Ahl asks.

“I know Marduuf, another of her brothers. We are close.”

“Youngest brother dead and you know the other?”

“The one I know is in the pirate business.”

“An associate of yours?”

Fidno says, “He is, as a matter of fact.”

In the silence that follows, Ahl reflects that it is a pity he and Fidno cannot continue talking later. He could use a siesta. He didn’t sleep well the night before, and he could do with a good rest.

Warsame throws a sheaf of
qaat
into the back of the vehicle, where Fidno is sitting. Fidno catches the bundle and selects a tender shoot to chew.

The roads are dusty and there is constant movement along them. Goats cross from one side to another, and humans carelessly walk across, impervious to danger, almost suicidal. Warsame drives with his foot an inch away from the brake pedal. He keeps the windows shut against the dust, and the air conditioner on. Even so, they can hear the music belting and recitations of the Koran blaring wherever they go. The buildings they pass, like those they saw on their way from the airport, have an improvised look, some whose walls consist only of zinc sheeting, others of corrugated aluminum, many unpainted. The sky is at times barely visible through the spaghetti of electrical wiring strewn between the structures.

“Do you want to chew some?” Warsame asks.

Ahl shakes his head no.

“I am impressed you never picked up the habit of chewing
qaat,
given that it is in Yemen. Especially as it’s one of their main export crops,” Fidno says.

Midly shocked that Fidno is so well informed about him, Ahl decides to be patient; he will find out at a later point how this is so. He says, “I don’t chew
qaat
, never have.”

Fidno asks, “Maybe your parents, as expatriates wanting their children to do well, discouraged it?”

“Chewing was not one of our pastimes as a family,” Ahl replies. “We did a lot of sports as we grew up, we read a great deal, we played chess, we were never left wanting for things with which to occupy ourselves.”

Out of deference to Warsame, his host, Ahl does not add that he finds the idea of wasting away the best part of a day masticating some green leaf and sitting doing nothing highly objectionable.

Warsame says, “Just like my wife.”

“What about your wife?”

“She hasn’t the patience to sit and chew.”

Just as well, Ahl thinks, because he looks forward to getting to know Xalan, Yusur’s best friend and almost sister. Yusur has described Xalan as a formidable woman, actively intelligent, with her heart in the right place, loyal. He will talk to her while the men enjoy their chewing.

Warsame says to Ahl, “I didn’t know you had a friend here. What is his full name, and how long have the two of you known each other?”

Ahl says, “His name is Ali Ahmed Fidno.”

Warsame says he doesn’t recall ever seeing him in town. “He must be new to the city.” Ahl finds it amusing that Warsame keeps talking about Fidno in the third person.

“Well, here he is, anyhow,” Ahl says. “He is alive and well and sitting in your car, as your guest. He is coming with us to your home.”

“I am pleased,” Warsame says unconvincingly.

Ahl is uncertain what Xalan will make of him. Will she fall for
him—a mysterious figure emerging out of the unknown and entering her life?

“Tell me more about your friend,” Warsame says.

Ahl has a big problem. How does one introduce a man he hardly knows to the husband of one’s wife’s best friend, whom one has yet to meet? Like it or not, he finds Warsame down to earth, whereas, much as he likes Fidno, he hasn’t met many men who are as shifty and hard to pin down. He says, “Fidno can tell you about himself better than I ever can.”

“I come from Garowe,” Fidno says. “Originally.”

“But you didn’t grow up in Garowe, did you?”

“I was sent to a boarding school in Qardho.”

“Then where?”

“Then I went to university in Europe.”

Warsame is attempting to locate Fidno’s family tree and then identify the branch and clan trajectory. He asks, “Whose name or nickname is Fidno—yours, your father’s, or your grandfather’s?”

“Mine,” Fidno responds.

Only now does it occur to Ahl that maybe Warsame does not wish to take into his home someone whose identity he can’t vouch for. Xalan is bound to take him aside, accost him in the kitchen, or privately in the bedroom, and say, “Who is this guy you’ve brought into our house, our lives?”

“So where do you live?”

“Lately between Mogadiscio and Nairobi.”

“What’s your line of business?”

“I trained as a medical doctor in Germany.”

“Where do you have your practice?”

“I’ve had some personal problems,” Fidno replies, “and have been compelled to shut down my practice. But that is a complicated story. For another day.”

Warsame repeats the name Ali Ahmed Fidno, as if the combination might fit some purpose, and then changes the order in which Fidno has given them and subjects them to a faster run, his tongue rushing at them, as if they might reveal a hidden secret. When they do not, he has several goes at them from different directions, each time to no avail. He says, “Every family name has its own story, and I doubt I know this story. Maybe Xalan will. She knows everyone’s family and the stories that go with them.”