Crossbones (22 page)

Dajaal has waited outside, to keep an eye on who is coming and going, and Gumaad stays close to Malik while Qasiir waits his turn. He spots his acquaintance, a hungry-looking, toothy youth. After exchanging a brief greeting, Qasiir requests Toothy to tell Sheikh-Wellie that he has come to pay for the item he’d reserved over the phone.

Toothy returns and goes back to serving customers, his eyes avoiding Qasiir’s. Malik is taking notes for the article on the computer store he’s already planning, but he sees that Qasiir is puzzled as to why Sheikh-Wellie is taking so long to come out. They wait so long that Dajaal sticks his head in to inquire if all is well. Malik, remembering that it’s been their intention to make it look as if Qasiir, not he, is buying the computer, slips him the cash. Then he continues eavesdropping on a man haggling over the price of a BlackBerry and watching another man eagerly collecting his new purchase, packed in a big cardboard box, beside which an urchin shorter than the counter is standing to take it to the man’s car.

It is not Sheikh-Wellie but BigBeard who emerges from the back of the shop. He does not seem to see Malik or Gumaad, but comes right
to Qasiir and starts to engage him in computer talk. Malik feels a chill go down his spine at the sight of his nemesis. Qasiir is careful not to make eye contact with Malik, or in any way to acknowledge their having come together. To this end, he holds Malik’s wad of cash in his hand and waves it close to BigBeard’s face.

Eventually Qasiir and BigBeard arrive at a price, ten dollars more than what was previously agreed, and BigBeard returns to the rear of the shop. In his place arrives Sheikh-Wellie at last. A very dark, weak-eyed, timid fellow in his thirties, he is actually the deputy accountant at the computer shop, and he seems agitated and ill at ease dealing with a customer. He brings out the machine, deposits it before Qasiir, and abruptly requests that Toothy handle the sale. Then he, too, returns to the back of the shop.

After the obligatory, albeit perfunctory checks Toothy demonstrates that the machine is new and working properly, and Qasiir orders a color laser printer as well. Then he pays for both with Malik’s cash, and they depart without further incident.

Gumaad accompanies them to the car. Dajaal is stewing over the incident at the flat, about which he is certain Gumaad is lying. He can no longer stand the sight of the man. Gumaad reminds him of everything that has gone wrong with the destiny of the country. He wants to be rid of him but doesn’t want to pick a bone with him in public. So he says to Gumaad, “I would rather you found your way home from here, because we have other
matters to attend to, Malik, Qasiir, and I.”

“I was hoping to talk to Malik.”

“Not now. Another time,” Dajaal says, dismissing him.

Gumaad goes, but Dajaal’s ire is not yet spent. His eyes, burning with rage, are now focused on Qasiir. He can’t even wait until they reach the car before he vents his spleen at his nephew. “What’s the matter with you, making us give more custom to BigBeard and then on top of that, striking an underhanded deal with your friend, whatever accursed name he answers to?”

“Let me explain, Grandpa.”

“Your behavior puts me to shame.”

Qasiir insists he can explain everything.

Dajaal says, “Don’t you ever take liberties with our trust or treat us as if we are all fools. We’ll talk, you and I. This is not the time and place.”

“It was the only computer of its kind I could find in the city, and I received no cuts,” Qasiir says, defending his honor. “Nor did anyone know I was buying it on Malik’s behalf. Give me some credit, Grandpa. I am not
that
cheap.”

“So what was BigBeard doing there?”

Qasiir says, “How would I know, Grandpa?”

Still clearly perturbed, Dajaal lets it go.

“Never a dull moment here, is there?” Malik says, hoping to lighten the mood. Malik wholly trusts Qasiir and is certain from Qasiir’s behavior that he had no idea BigBeard would be in the shop. If anything, Malik thinks that it’s Sheikh-Wellie who is guilty of “insider trading.” Qasiir is clearly offended that his granduncle suspects him of dishonesty. He won’t react to it angrily, not now, not in Malik’s presence. He and Dajaal will have a quiet word or two about it in the car later, on their way home, after he has set up the machine for Malik.

They drive off in silence, passing people thronging the stalls to stock up on provisions. At some stalls, meat hangs from hooks hastily nailed into the wooden frames, buzzing with flies. Others display wilted cabbages, lettuce, and broccoli, dried-out carrots, and cassava pockmarked with fungus. The poor anywhere live the only way the poor know how: they buy food that is inexpensive. And the majority of the clients at these roadside stalls belong to this category.

Dajaal stops often to let pedestrians pass in front of the car, even when the vehicles behind him honk impatiently. He tells Malik and Qasiir that Cambara has already finished her shopping, buying enough food to last them for weeks if need be.

They pick up Jeebleh from Bile’s house. Malik sits in the back and brings him up to speed, mentioning how much less the computer cost than it would have in New York. He notes with satisfaction that Dajaal has registered this comment, and hopes that it will ease his displeasure with and suspicion of Qasiir.

Jeebleh is neither surprised nor shocked to learn that they bought the machine from a shop presumably owned by BigBeard. After all, he thinks, Somalis are incestuous by nature, inseparable by temperament, and murderous by inclination; and such is their internecine closeness that quarreling is the norm—like twins fighting.

Malik asks, “What is your news?”

The news Jeebleh brings from his conversations with Bile and Cambara and from having watched the coverage on TV is just as unnerving as the sight of the hordes they are now passing along the roads, blocking traffic as they head out of the city, afraid of being caught in the impending war. He says, “There is a report of a most exasperating action of a Shabaab operative, who is leading a convoy of a dozen or so gun-mounted battlewagons to Buur Hakaba.” Buur Hakaba is the town nearest Baidoa, where the president, the Federal Forces, and the parliament have their bases. “When asked why he needed to provoke a confrontation between the forces of the Courts and the FedForces,” Jeebleh continues, “he said he meant nothing sinister by his actions, certainly not to do any harm to the ongoing peace talks between the two sides. He was paying a visit to one of his four wives. She lives in Buur Hakaba, as it happens.”

It takes a minute or so for the significance of this report to sink in.
Jeebleh tells them that the incident has set off alarm bells in a number of far-flung cities: in Baidoa, of course, where not only the interim president of Somalia, but the provisional prime minister and the cabinet are based; in Addis Ababa, where Ethiopia’s prime minister has called an emergency meeting of his cabinet and his military advisers; in Washington, D.C., where top functionaries at the Department of Defense and Department of State have called in those manning the Somali desk to brief them on the significance of this latest provocation. In Somalia, panic is everywhere, with everyone assuming that the garrison town of Baidoa will be attacked, if it hasn’t been already.

“War jitters, wherever you turn,” Malik says.

Jeebleh says, “Where will it all end? Will someone persuade the two parties to move away from the precipice, continuing with their peace negotiations instead of plunging this nation into an unnecessary, murderous war?”

“It’s war, war—not if, but when,” Dajaal says.

IT IS WITH TREMENDOUS WORRY, INEXPLICABLE THOUGH IT MAY
seem, that Jeebleh stirs in his sleep, dreaming, and registers horses neighing, donkeys braying, cows mooing, the night darkening just before dawn breaks, the muezzin calling. In the dream, Malik and he are, surprisingly, among the worshippers. Malik sticks close to Jeebleh, looking anxious, as if he is suddenly unsure what to do, whether to place the right hand upon the left below or above the navel when standing; whether, with head and body inclined and hands placed upon the knees, he should separate the fingers a little or not at all. He is aware there are differences among the sects as to what to do when. But having not set foot in a mosque or prayed for almost twenty years, he is uncertain, and watches Jeebleh with intent so as not to embarrass his father-in-law.

A man standing nearby speaks of “morning madness reigning.” Jeebleh doesn’t understand what he is talking about. Nor is he bothered by the fact that he doesn’t know who the man is until he discovers that Malik, with notebook in hand and pen ready to scribble away, is interviewing
the man. Billows of dust stir in the distance, beckoning, and Jeebleh wanders away in the general direction of the vortex of sand, over the hills, farther east.

Then Jeebleh finds himself in a neighborhood with which he is unfamiliar, where virtually all the houses are leveled, the roads gutted, the pavements reduced to rotted ravines, with unexploded mines scattered in the rubble. In a gouged spot past a massive ruin that must have been caused by a bomb with the force of a meteor, there is a Technical, its mounted gun smeared with the blood of its victims; the Technical is still emitting smoke. When he touches it, it is as warm as a living body. Somewhere nearby are corpses left where they have fallen, some of them Ethiopians, from the look of their uniforms, others of them young Somalis. Then several of the dead Somali youths come to life and go into a huddle, as sports teams do. The huddle breaks and they take what appear to be prearranged positions, speaking in the manner of actors rehearsing a badly scripted play. Dressed in immaculate white and donning colorful keffiyehs, they sport long beards. Several women come out of nowhere, uniformly pretty, gazelle eyed, the very image of the houris of Paradise, to tend to the youths.

Now the youths separate themselves into units. One unit digs up an arms cache from the rubble: rocket-propelled grenades, light and heavy machine guns, semiautomatic weapons, an array of homemade explosives. A second unit waits by the roadside, bantering. But they go quiet when several armor-plated pickup trucks mounted with antiaircraft guns approach, and the youths get in an orderly fashion. A third unit, composed of the youngest, receives training in explosives from a short man with thick glasses, who consults a manual every time one of the pupils asks him a question.

Jeebleh has the feeling that he is not in a city but in a village somewhere in the hinterland. But he is not sure; Mogadiscio has lost whatever
shape it used to have and is now as featureless as a ground-down cog in a broken machine. He is deeply disturbed that it is no longer the metropolis with which he is familiar, its current residents imported to raise a fighting force. Everywhere he looks, destitute men, women, and children in near rags wearily trudge by, many of them emaciated, their bellies swollen with undiagnosed illnesses, their eyes hosts to swarms of roaming flies. They seem exhausted, inarticulate with fear and vigilance, which imposes a further formlessness.

A mine detonates in the vicinity. Many people die and many more are injured. Jeebleh checks to see if any of his limbs are gone. Luck spares him this time. But he looks about in horror. Most of the dead and injured are young. There is little he can do to help. He meets a man as old as he is. When Jeebleh wonders aloud why the elderly have been spared, the old man says, “We are alive for a reason.”

“Why have you been spared?” Jeebleh asks.

“Because I recruit the martyrs,” the man says.

“You recruit them, they die, and you live on?”

“I blood the young brood of martyrs, suicides.”

“The young die as martyrs and the old live on?”

The old man replies, “That’s right.”

“But that is absurd,” Jeebleh says.

“On the contrary,” the man says, “it is exemplary to die for one’s country. There is nothing as honorable as martyring oneself, when young, for one’s nation.”

“Ultimately, it depends on the martyr, doesn’t it?” Jeebleh challenges. “Has it ever occurred to you to give the young the choice whether to live on or to die for a religious cause in which they may not believe?”

The old man quips, “It is the martyrs’ blood that helps keep the nation alive. Without that, there will be no country.”

The old man walks away and sits nearby, pretending to pray. Jeebleh assists the wounded and then buries the dead in a mass grave, with no help from the recruiter of the martyrs. Then he leaves, and walks past a house caving in. He can spot human figures hanging from the rafters. He wonders if anyone will be charged with this mindless mass murder, if anyone will be made to answer for these crimes.