Crossbones (32 page)

Malik is not convinced that he agrees with Ahl’s reasoning. But he opts not to speak, apprehensive that his brother might think that he places his professional advancement far above family loyalty.

“It’s been a long, eventful day,” Ahl says.

“You’re right. It’s been long and eventful.”

Ahl says, “Sleep on it, and let’s talk tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

“Good night to you, too.”

THE SKY IS DARK; THE NIGHT IS STARLESS. IN A DREAM, A TOTAL
eclipse has just ended, and Malik ventures out of the apartment for the first time in twenty-four hours. He is on his way to a hospital, walking; Dajaal is indisposed. Roadside mines, tanks, and four days of fighting between the insurgents and the Ethiopian army of occupation have made the city roads impassable, turned them unsafe.

When he finally reaches the hospital, he encounters more ruin; the main building has been hit and reduced to rubble. Radio reports place the number of dead at five hundred, and those critically wounded at over a thousand. A large number of the hospital staff figure among the dead and the missing, perhaps buried in the debris. To the left of the main entrance, a huge crowd is raising an unearthly ruckus. It takes Malik a few minutes to work out the nature of the conflict. The remaining Somali medical staff and several Europeans, no doubt flown in at huge expense by the World Health Organization to help save lives, are engaged in a heated back-and-forth debate with some bearded Shabaab types. The debate centers on whether dogs may be used to
save human lives from the wreckage of the hospital. A Gumaad look-alike describes the use of dogs to rescue people from the ruins as an affront to Muslim sensibilities. He is saying to the Europeans, as if from a pulpit, “Dogs are unclean, and we as Muslims are forbidden to come into contact with them.”

But someone is calling from below, deep down in the ruins. It is a man pleading for someone to help rescue his daughter, who is buried in the rubble. The man wants the medical team to use their trained dogs to bring his daughter out, alive.

The WHO team is led by a large woman with a red face, red hair, and skin the color of beetroot from a combination of anger and the tropical sun. She shouts at the Gumaad look-alike, “I’ll beat you up if you don’t get out of the way of the job I’ve come to perform.” Frightened by her outburst, he backs down sheepishly and quietly leaves the scene.

Meanwhile, another member of the hospital medical staff is engaged in his own shouting match with one of the other bearded men. The doctor is saying, “Do you think that Islam condones the desecration of cemeteries, even if the dead were once Christian? I view the desecration of Mogadiscio’s Christian cemetery as heinous and a more serious crime than permitting the use of dogs to pull a living girl out of the rubble. I feel certain that you will have to answer to the Almighty on Judgment Day for dishonoring and debasing the dead bodies of Christians, whereas I am convinced that as long as we mean well and save lives, all will be forgiven by the Divine. Not that I agree with you that Islam forbids the use of dogs to save human lives.”

The row continues, and Malik moves toward the cottages sprawled over an acre and a half in every direction. With the main building destroyed, the cottages now serve as the hospital. The sickening sights are reminiscent of the carnage from World War I, with the wounded lying everywhere on the floor, writhing in pain for lack of morphine or
enough doctors and nurses to attend to them. The uniforms of the nurses are dyed in blood.

A nurse, her hands dripping with blood, asks Malik to undo her bra; she explains that it is the only one she owns. Clumsily self-conscious, he suggests she turn so that he can unclasp the catch from the back. But, no, the hooks are in the front. He doesn’t recall ever taking so long to undo a woman’s bra. He sweats so liberally that a drop of perspiration from his forehead almost blinds him.

He remembers that he has an appointment with a doctor, but not why. He asks himself if he is ailing or if he is seeking help for someone else—and if so, for whom? Then he remembers that it is Dajaal who has been hurt in the blast from a roadside bomb, driving. And that when he failed to arrange an appointment with a doctor for Dajaal, he used his press card, describing himself as a journalist interviewing the victims of this ruthless bombing of civilians. To get what he wanted, he remarked that Ethiopia had atrocities to answer for, and that someone was bound to submit a case to the International Court of Justice for this reckless bombing of the city’s residential area.

A phone rings somewhere. At first it sounds as if it is ringing in his head, the way telephones ring inside the head of a dreamer—distant and yet so near, persistent, doggedly insistent, almost otherworldly. Malik listens to the ringing, but can’t be bothered, as if imagining that it is ringing for someone else.

Then he isolates the tone, which is coming from the kitchen counter, where he left his phone to recharge when he fell asleep in the small hours. He infers, eventually, that it must be his. Cursing, he gets out of bed to answer it, his head aching.

Cambara has very bad news. Dajaal is dead.

Malik asks, “Dead? How?”

“Killed at close range by an unknown assassin,” she finally manages to say. “I am told the murderer used the most powerful handgun available on the market—I can’t remember the name, but Bile has described using such a weapon as literally overkill.”

Malik wants to know the time, as if this has something to do with Dajaal’s death. As he searches for his watch, instant guilt preys on his mind. He wishes he knew if Dajaal was killed at the very time he, Malik, was dreaming of visiting him at the hospital, as if this might lessen or intensify his own sense of self-reproach. Cambara tells him that Dajaal’s passing occurred at dawn, as he was on his way to the mosque to pray. Tearful and choking, she adds, “Nobody remembers Dajaal ever going to the mosque for the dawn prayer.”

Malik’s watch reads almost eleven.

He says, “When is the burial?”

“He’s already been buried,” says Cambara.

Malik can’t believe it. When he finds his tongue, his words run in pursuit of one another; there are gaps in his thinking, which doesn’t keep up with the speed of his speech. He says, “Dajaal died at dawn. So why the hurry?”

“Because the gun that the assassin used hacks into its victims, tearing them apart with formidable force. Given the state of his body, it was deemed best to bury him right away.”

“A death meant as a lesson to us all, perhaps?”

She says, “One hated or loved Dajaal.”

“His friends and family loved him.”

“We’ll miss him, Bile and me.”

An alien disorder seizes Malik by the throat and renders him speechless. Plenty of words come to him, but somehow his tongue won’t let go of them.

“Are you still there?” Cambara asks.

He is barely audible when he says, “Yes.”

“Qasiir made the arrangements,” she explains. “He sent the diggers out early, called the sheikh to lead the Janaaza-prayer and community to prepare the body for interment, rented the bier, and organized the other burial rituals.”

“I wonder why he didn’t call me,” Malik says.

“He said he called,” she says. “No answer.”

Malik says, “Where will all this end?”

Cambara says, “I doubt it will ever end.”

“Do we have any idea who killed him?”

“Bile—he answered the phone—asked Qasiir to come over, and the two of them were locked in the upstairs bedroom for a long time. I am not privy to their conversation. Frankly, I doubt if anyone other than Shabaab was behind it. And you can be sure Dajaal’s murder will lead to more bloodletting.”

“I’d talk to Qasiir if he were still there,” says Malik.

“He left earlier, and Bile took to bed,” she says.

Malik senses sickness spreading through his entire body. He is remembering the last altercation between Dajaal and Gumaad, and the sensation he’d had at the time—that Dajaal would pay with his life for what he said about TheSheikh.

“How is Qasiir handling it?”

“He’s devastated,” Cambara says.

“Any idea what he is planning?”

“Qasiir won’t do anything in a mad rush,” she says. “Bile says that he is very much like his grandfather in this way.”

They talk for a few more minutes. Cambara tells Malik that, in between attempts to reach him, she spoke to Jeebleh and Seamus to let them know of Dajaal’s passing. She goes on to say, “Seamus thinks that you should base yourself in Nairobi, where you can get all the news about Somalia by the minute. Things will get much worse here before they get better.”

“What did Jeebleh say?”

“That he expects you to know what to do.”

“Jeebleh hasn’t suggested that I relocate to Kenya to cover Somalia from there, like all those European journalists do?”

“He says he will trust you to know what to do.”

Before hanging up, Cambara presses him to at least think more seriously about moving in with them, and she reminds him that if he needs transportation anywhere, both Qasiir and the car are at his disposal.

He thanks her and they hang up.

Depression sends Malik back to bed. From there he makes several attempts to reach Qasiir, but each time the line is either busy or disconnected. Despondency overwhelms him.

Later, when he rises, a strain of unfamiliar sorrow stirs him out of his depressive lethargy. But he doesn’t know what to do with himself. The day stretches ahead of him. He goes to the bathroom to clean his teeth, but he cannot bear the thought of looking in the mirror, worried at what he might see.

In the kitchen, he makes breakfast for two. Then he rings Dajaal’s number, just as he used to, aware that Somalis are unsentimental about death and certain that someone will have taken over Dajaal’s mobile phone and will use it until it runs out of airtime, and then decide whether to top it up or not.

A woman answers.

“This is Malik,” he says. “To whom am I speaking?”

She replies, “I am Qasiir’s mother,” and weeps.

Malik pays his respects and tells her how much he will miss Dajaal. “He’s been very dear to me,” he says. “I wish I had been there for his burial. But you know!”

“It’s God’s will that he is gone,” she says. “I loved him more than I loved my own father, because he raised me, supported and stood by me when the attacking Americans hurt my daughter. Allah will bless him.”

“Please tell Qasiir that I called.”

“I will, I will,” she assures him.

“I hope to come around and see you before I leave.”

“May Allah be praised,” she says.

Speaking to Qasiir’s mother does him good, helping him remember his responsibility as a journalist and as a friend to Dajaal and men like him, who are often murdered for the views they hold, risking their lives for their stands against tyranny. Dajaal loved the country, and has been killed by men who cannot love Somalia until they turn it into a different country, in which they prosper and their opponents perish. He will pen a piece about the tragic eradication of a generation of Somali professionals, of whom Dajaal was a prime example.

He gets down to just doing that.

Ahl calls. Malik tells him about Dajaal’s death. Ahl, however, is consumed by the thought of the newly appointed Ethiopian ambassador to Somalia lodging in Somalia’s presidential villa as though it were an upmarket hotel, not only as a guest of Somalia’s traitorous interim government, but on the false pretext of safeguarding the state and its interim president, who was escorted to the villa with a heavily armed detachment of Ethiopian and a hundred or so Somali soldiers.