Crossbones (28 page)

“There is no wrong mosque,” Jeebleh says.

“But you know what I mean.”

“You chose the wrong day,” Jeebleh tells him. “If you go to a mosque on a Friday, you are likely to hear an earful of condemnation from the pulpit.”

“What’s been the reaction in Kenya?” Malik asks.

“There is an air of incredulity here.”

“No communiqué from the Kenyan government?”

“None so far as I know,” replies Jeebleh. Then he says, “Wait,” and Malik can hear him saying to a hotel maid, “I do not want my bed turned down. I am in it, can’t you see?” Then he hears the slamming of a door, and Jeebleh is back on the line. “I’ve read the two interviews.”

“I’ve just finished the draft of another.”

“I loved them.”

“Thank you,” says Malik. “I appreciate hearing that.”

“I’ve spoken to Bile and Cambara, too.”

“I had a long, rambling chat with Cambara myself,” says Malik.

Jeebleh says, “They suggest you move in.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Jeebleh asks, “Do you want to hear my opinion?”

“I always like to hear your opinion.”

“I would move in with them if I were you.”

From where he is, the sky is streaked with orange clouds, turning brighter as the sunlight strikes them from several angles. The twilight is formidably picturesque, and Malik wishes he had the knack for photography.

“I’ll call home and talk to Amran,” Malik says.

The offer to telephone home is a masterstroke. It frees Malik from having to continue the conversation with Jeebleh, just as it reminds both that he will not consider moving in with Bile and Cambara, because it may upset his wife, who, they know, has the tendency to be raving jealous, no matter what she says. A spouse in denial is a difficult spouse.

Jeebleh says, “Do that,” and hangs up.

The phone has barely rung a second time when Judith answers. Sweet and gentle, she speaks fast, saying that they are all well. Then she says, “Here is Amran. Bye for now. Love!”

Malik sweetens his words as best he can. “Hi, my dear, my darling, how are things? I miss you and miss my little one, too.”

Amran is in a foul mood. “When are you coming home?”

He says foolishly, “The airports are closed.”

Amran is furious that he has stayed behind instead of leaving Mogadiscio when her father did. When she is cross, she shouts; when jealous, she weeps; when loving, she is the sweetest thing there is. Amran has moods. Today, she is in a miasma of rage, she can’t stop screaming. Malik holds the phone away from his ear and listens without interrupting. Her parents often shake their heads in sympathy with Malik, and say to each other, “But you know what she’s like.”

Amran is now saying at the top of her lungs, “The war has started—the foretaste of terrible battles to come. We’re all worried sick about you. And all you can tell me is that the airports are closed. What’s gotten into you?”

Malik says, “I am doing well, writing.”

“I don’t wish to raise an orphan on my own.”

“What are you talking about? What orphan?”

“I want you to come home
now
,” Amran orders.

“As I explained, the airports are closed.”

“Then there is no point talking, is there?”

“But there is a point in talking, my love.”

“You’ve always been unreliable when it comes to timekeeping, always untrustworthy when it comes to phoning and letting me know where you are and what you are up to or who you are with. Work, work,
work. Women, more admiring women, eating out of your palms the words of your wisdom. Who are you with now? What’s her name? Why have a family if you work, work, and work? Why marry if you only want to entertain other women? While we wait for a word from you. While I worry how to raise an orphan on my own.”

“Listen to me, honey,” he pleads.

“Don’t call me honey,” she shouts back.

And, weeping, she hangs up on him. In a day or two, she will deny ever having said any of these things.

No more writing today, for sure. Knowing Amran, he may not be able to do any work the next day, either. She is a spoiler when she is unhappy, even if she also takes pride when Malik’s work is in the limelight, earning praise or a prize.

Unable to think lucidly enough to write, Malik calls Nairobi to plead with Jeebleh to intercede; no answer. When his own phone rings and rings—maybe the journalists he has been attempting to contact are now returning his calls—Malik doesn’t answer it. He takes to his bed, his heart heavy.

He gets up early and watches a series of pointless reality TV programs, involving housemates from a number of African countries living in an isolated house, with each contestant trying to avoid being evicted by viewers who have the power to vote him or her out. The last to be evicted receives a large cash prize at the end.

IT IS NOT TO AHL’S LIKING THAT HE HOSTS FIDNO FIRST THING IN
the morning, but he does it with brio. Upset, Fidno rang him earlier, to complain that Ahl has not been forthright with him. “Why did you not tell me right away that you were not a journalist?”

“What time is it?” Ahl asks sleepily.

Fidno says he is down at the gazebo, waiting.

The waiter takes Fidno’s breakfast order: tea, liver, and most Somalis’ favorite breakfast,
canjeero
pancake and bananas. Ahl asks for
canjeero
, with honey on the side, and caffelatte, no sugar, please. He doubts he will eat much; he is still too exhausted. A mosquito buzzed in his ears last night from the moment he turned in. He had barely dropped into deep sleep when his mobile phone, which he’d set to vibrate, came to life against his ribs. At first he thought it was another mosquito, somehow disguising its tune—these having lately become more clever, resistant to everything modern medicine has thrown at them. Then Ahl realized that his phone was ringing and answered, believing it was
Malik. But it was Fidno. Now Ahl feels cheated of his fair share of sleep, and bullied, too. He is still in yesterday’s clothes.

Ahl also regrets he hasn’t brought his computer bag down with him: all his cash is in an envelope in it. He hesitates whether to go back and fetch it, but figures that no one will go into the room to clean until later in the morning. In any event, he has a few hundred U.S. dollars in an envelope in his back pocket, just in case. At least he can pay for their breakfast.

“You conned me,” says Fidno.

“I did no such thing,” Ahl insists.

“You made a fool out of me.”

“Remember that Warsame arrived unexpectedly to pick me up. I had no idea what to say or how to introduce you, as I hadn’t prepared him for your presence.”

“And when we got to their home?”

“I had to talk to Xalan. She and I needed to sort out some family business. We had no chance, you and I, to talk alone.”

“You could’ve said so to me. Plainly.”

The waiter brings their food. Ahl decides Fidno has no right to heap guilt on him; he did no wrong. When the waiter returns to inquire how they are doing, Ahl brings out his two hundred dollars, as if testing the waiter’s and Fidno’s reaction to seeing greenbacks in large denominations. But if Ahl is hoping that the money will move Fidno to resume speaking to him as he had on their earlier visit—to tell him, perhaps, about the bagfuls of cash delivered as ransom to boats with crews held hostage—at least according to the international media—Fidno does no such thing. They eat their breakfast, neither saying anything. Yesterday, Fidno ate his and Ahl’s lunch without embarrassment. Ahl thinks that no one with self-respect would do that. Maybe Fidno’s pennilessness has canniness added to it, his impoverished state being of recent vintage,
comparable to a gambler’s indigence—wealthy one day, impecunious the next.

Fidno says, “Let’s trade truths, you and I.”

“How do you mean, ‘trade truths’?”

“You tell me the truth of why you are here, like a man who wants to pick up a whore but dares not, and I’ll you the truth of who I am.”

Ahl is startled. He doesn’t like it when he can’t fathom a person’s character from his knowable features. Fidno, however, is several steps ahead of him. Fidno’s daring suggestion that they trade truths reminds Ahl of trading jokes with Malik. Malik knows thousands of jokes and, what is more, knows well how to draw out the punch line, how to mature it fully in the telling. Ahl has the terrible habit of ruining his jokes by mistiming the narration, the way some women foul their fine faces with the wrong makeup. Not wanting to fall for a ruse he does not recognize, Ahl takes his time, eating his breakfast in concentrated bites.

Fidno says, “I trained as a medical doctor in Germany, and had my own practice in Berlin ten years ago. Then I messed up by having affairs with two of my patients, one of them a close friend of my wife’s. My wife denounced me to the medical board, which charged me with malpractice; then she sued for divorce and won custody of our two children, but not before she’d emptied all our jointly held bank accounts. I left Berlin and joined the practice of an Indian in Abu Dhabi. He was not very good at his job; he knew it and I knew it. But he had an advantage over me: he knew the truth about me.

“For three years, however, things worked out well. Then—what a folly—I made another fatal error. I fell for a married Arab woman, my Indian colleague’s patient. When our affair went sour, she told him, and he reported me to her husband, who in turn reported me to the authorities. Because I did not want to face another case of presumed malpractice
in an Arab country, where the punishment would be severe, I came to Somalia.

“In Mogadiscio, an uncle of mine set me up as a financier. I put together half a dozen unemployed fishermen just as the Somali coast was being invaded by Korean, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese ‘sea bandits.’ These sea bandits were stealing our fish, denying access to our fishermen, taking away their livelihood. In those days, there were no Somali pirates; there were only these foreigner sea bandits robbing our seas. As a last resort, I funded the hijacking of a ship belonging to a Korean shipping firm. We held the ship for three months, in return for which we received a fine for their illegal, unregulated fishing. We shared out the proceeds among the fishing community. I didn’t make a huge profit, but I continued to advance the idea of taking any ship found fishing illicitly in our waters. That’s how my involvement in the funding of piracy started.”

He uses the recently coined Somali phrase
burcad badeed
, which translates as “sea bandits” and which is commonly employed as a sobriquet for “pirates.” Ahl finds the terminology a bit confusing, banditry being something with which Somalis are familiar; in fact, in Kenya, the term
shifta
is a derogatory moniker for Somali. In other words, contrary to what is understood elsewhere—that Somalis are the pirates—Fidno seems to be casting the vessels fishing illegally in Somali waters as the true “sea bandits.”

Ahl asks, “But aren’t Somalis bandits, in that they exact ransom in the same way sea bandits do? You are unnecessarily obfuscating matters. Why?”

“Somalis are neither pirates nor sea bandits,” Fidno says, his voice strong. “The world doesn’t afford to Somalis a sinecure similar to the one given to those who sin against us. That is a fact.”