Crossbones (38 page)

Ahl prepares to leave in order to give them privacy. Xalan, however, beckons to him not to go. Instead she says, “Tell me what your mum is like now. I know her to be a devout woman, reclusive, prayerful. But what is her position on you deciding to go to your heavenly destiny?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask her yourself.”

“She doesn’t approve, does she?”

“I suggest you get her to tell you her thoughts herself.”

Ahl senses that it is his moment to step in with his burning question. “Do you happen to know my son, Taxliil?”

Saifullah stares at Ahl, as if he does not appreciate the interruption. He catches Xalan’s eyes, but she looks away, and down at the floor. But then he says simply, “Yes, I do know Taxliil.”

Ahl reacts in silence, more in shock than relief, at Saifullah’s admission. His eyes dim, as if in concentration, but he cannot get any words out. After a long pause, he asks slowly, “Where and when did you last see him?”

Saifullah says, “We’ve served together, he and I, in the same contingent in a training camp close to Kismayo when he first got there.”

“How was he when you last saw him?”

“He was in good health apart from the trouble he was having with his eyes. He had broken his glasses within a week of arriving. Meanwhile, his sight has deteriorated.”

“And when and where did you last see him?”

“I can’t recall when and where. We moved a lot, went back and forth between camps, slept somewhere one night and then off at dawn, after the Subh prayer.”

“Otherwise, you reckon he is well?”

Saifullah replies, “He has some other personal problems, which have caused him trouble he could do without.”

“What is that?”

“He is a soft touch, that’s what.”

“In what way is he a soft touch?” Ahl asks.

“Please, no more questions,” Saifullah says. “I’m not authorized to speak of this or other related matters.”

As he turns as if to go, Xalan says, “How about a bowl of spaghetti with Bolognese? Faai will make it.”

Xalan explains that Saifullah has known Faai, her maid, from childhood, and he was a great favorite whom she plied with delicacies and sweets. Now it is Ahl’s turn to watch, as the two of them visit a non-polemical aspect of their past.

Saifullah is excited. “Where did you find her?”

“Here in Bosaso, at a camp for the internally displaced,” Xalan replies. “She lived in a shack and we found her just by chance.”

“How I loved the Bolognese she made!”

“She’s just made some.”

“First tea, with lots of sugar,” Saifullah says.

“Then spaghetti with Faai’s Bolognese?”

“Where can I have a lie-down?” he says.

“Upstairs, in the spare room.”

Just before Saifullah goes upstairs, Faai enters the living room, her hands stuffed into her apron pockets. She stares at Saifullah, and then at Xalan.

“Look at him, our Ahmed,” Xalan says.

Saifullah doesn’t bother correcting her. Instead, he takes one long stride toward the maid, who does not recognize him at first. Then recognition lights her features and he lifts her off the floor into a warm hug. They are a funny sight, he double her height, she twice his girth. When he lets go of her, she picks up his thin wrists and then cups his gaunt cheeks with her hands.

Faai says, “Look at you. Have you, too, been in a refugee camp or a detention center? Why, you are a beanpole, so thin!”

Xalan hastily changes the subject, not wanting to upset Saifullah or prompt him to flee. But Faai insists on knowing. “Where have you come from? Not from a detention center, where they hardly feed the inmates on proper food?”

“I am all right, actually,” Saifullah says.

Faai, ululating, says, “A miracle is at hand.”

Ahl shares Faai’s sentiment, but doesn’t say it.

Xalan says to Saifullah, “Ahmed was your grandfather’s name on your father’s side and Rashid your grandmother’s name on your mother’s side, two beautiful Muslim names. Why drop them for Saifullah?”

“The name is a perfect fit,” he says.

Faai clasps him more tightly and calls him by his old name several times, until tears run down her cheeks. Then she asks, “Now, what kind of name is Saifullah?”

No one answers and everyone looks at her as though she has made an unpardonable gaffe.

Then Saifullah says, “I am tired. I am off to bed.”

Xalan says, “That hungry body needs some food.”

“Where is the Bolognese, then?” Saifullah says, and at last Faai goes back to the kitchen to fetch it.

Rationally, Ahl doesn’t know what to make of all this, but he has the strong sense that it augurs well that he has met Saifullah, and he can’t wait until all is revealed. But he thinks worriedly that whatever else he
may say or do, Saifullah’s behavior is going to prove unpredictable. And if this is true of Saifullah, what can he expect of Taxliil?

With Saifullah upstairs, Ahl and Xalan sit in weighty silence, assessing the significance of what has just happened. Ahl wonders if his expectations should be inflated or deflated by what he has heard about Taxliil.

Xalan repeats for his benefit a few salient facts: that Saifullah has been missing longer than Taxliil, and was rumored to have died in a failed suicide bombing. Or been court-martialed by Shabaab and executed.

Then one or the other of them changes the subject and they speak of how bizarre it is that the Shabaab minders choose such archaic names.

Ahl says, “I am delighted to hear Taxliil’s news, even if I can’t decide what to expect next.”

Xalan says, “For a second, I thought Saifullah might bolt out the door like a frightened horse. Or that he might seize up and not speak, or run off and disappear as mysteriously as he appeared.”

A brief silence follows.

Then Ahl says, “Funny, him saying that he is not authorized to speak on the matter. What manner of bureaucratese is that?”

Xalan says, “You know what is worrying me?”

“What’s worrying you?”

“He has the look of someone not meant to last.”

Ahl concurs, “As if he is on a mission.”

“I can’t bring myself to think about it.”

The thought troubles Ahl and he tries to fight it off by taking the opposite view, if only because he wants to believe that he will see Taxliil, too. “Maybe once he has slept off his nightmares, Saifullah will be more willing to talk to us.”

Xalan says, “I must visit his mother.”

Up in his room, Ahl makes several more attempts to reach Malik and Fidno. The messages he gets are identical: the subscriber is not in range. What on earth can that mean? At last he reaches Malik, and brings him up to speed, summarizing all that has happened.

Malik sounds optimistic. “I am sure everything will work out in the end. Taxliil will return, as runaways often do, unexpectedly, apologetic, and promising not to do it again. Look at Saifullah.”

Ahl gains courage from listening to what Malik has to say and is delighted and relieved to find his brother in a more receptive mood than he expected. It is then that he says to him, “Fidno has offered to introduce you to one Muusa Ibraahim, otherwise universally known as Marduuf, a former pirate, who also has it in for Shabaab, because they killed his younger brother, a teenage conscript of the group. Are you interested in talking to him?”

Malik is enthusiastic about the idea and takes down Marduuf’s contact details, although he cannot say when he will meet or talk to him.

MALIK RINGS THE BELL NEXT TO THE OUTSIDE GATE AT BILE AND
Cambara’s, and then looks back at Qasiir parked within view of the gate, waiting. Qasiir wants to make sure that Malik gets in before he drives off.

While waiting for someone to appear or for the lock on the gate to be released via the intercom, activating the dogs’ barking, Malik recalls watching
101 Dalmatians
on DVD with his baby daughter in his lap. At one she was too little to understand it, even though she points at real dogs excitedly, and imitates their barking. To amuse her, he likes to run through a repertoire of different breeds’ barks: he can yelp like a collie, woof like an Afghan hound, and bay like a husky.

Cambara’s arrival reminds him of where he is. She calls to tell him that she is on her way to open the gate manually, because of a power outage. Approaching, she walks cautiously, as if avoiding puddles, and affects a frown that is really a smile. She has on a pair of indoor shoes and a
guntiino
robe that flatters her, showing bits of flesh and a flash of cleavage when her garment fashionably slips off her shoulder. As she approaches the side gate, though, she pulls up the patterned summery
shawl as if to make sure there is no misunderstanding on Malik’s part. He turns to wave at Qasiir in the departing car. Cambara passes the bunch of keys to Malik so that he can open the gate from the outside. Their fingers touch accidentally and this produces static electricity. Malik looks away, embarrassed, although Cambara appears unruffled. She walks ahead of him, and neither speaks until they are inside the house and Cambara has restored the key ring to the hook behind the door.

In a rehearsed voice, Malik says, “That death comes early and snatches away our best is a wisdom that many of us do not appreciate until someone dear dies. Of course, it is worse if he is murdered.”

Waiting for him to finish, with her hands outstretched, maybe to embrace him, Cambara has the look of someone with fog in her eyes and who can’t therefore see more than two feet ahead of her. For an instant, Malik stands so still that it feels as if bits of him have stopped functioning.

Cambara puts life back into him, saying, “Yes!”

Malik goes on. “I’ve known Dajaal for a short time, yet I will miss him. His death makes me think, What if I die when I have less than a page left to write? Dajaal had plenty of work to do, and some evil person cut his life short.”

Just when he had said his say and they are at last ready to embrace, she pricks up her ears and pauses in mid-movement, like a ballerina stopping before completing a pirouette—and backs off. Instead she takes his hand and together they walk forward, she leading, he keeping pace.

“No doubt a difficult man to please, at times harder on himself than on others, Dajaal was a man of such high principles. He was loyal, truthful; he was reliable. We’ll miss him terribly. He is
our
story, Bile’s and mine. He made our world go around a lot of the time, making our living together easier, even though occasionally he came in between
us, causing mild frictions between Bile and me. But I was fond of him, very fond.”

Malik says, “I often think how, in fiction, death serves a purpose. I wish I knew the objective of such a real-life death.”

Cambara makes two tall drinks and a short one, adds a drop of something to one of the tall glasses—Malik is unsure what, maybe a drop of medicine, for Bile? She gives him one of the tall ones and raises her short one, saying, “To your health.”

He asks, “How’s Bile been?”

“He is coming down shortly,” she announces.

And soon enough, Bile joins them. He is looking much better, if a little nervous; his index and middle fingers rub against his thumb in rhythm with his slow tread, his every step bringing him closer to his goal—a soft chair with a hard back set between Cambara’s and Malik’s seats. They can’t help but be conscious of his gradual progress, but neither wants to focus on it. Malik rises to his feet to offer him a hug.