Crossbones (44 page)

The interview done, Qasiir comes and drives Liibaan home, agreeing to come back for Malik, to take him to Bakhaaraha Market.

Not a day passes now without news of armed confrontation between the insurgents and the FedForces, that is to say the interim government’s forces, aided by the Ethiopians, shelling each other’s positions. According to Qasiir, the market is heavily involved in selling and hiding weapons, and providing intelligence to the insurgency.

While he waits for Qasiir, Malik whips up a quick meal of spaghetti and tomato sauce, just in case Qasiir wants to eat something. Himself, he would like a salad, only he has no fresh lettuce. He packs his things, ready to be moved into the annex. But he doesn’t think it wise to put his packed suitcase, computer, and cash in the trunk of the car if they are going to the Bakhaaraha, so he decides to leave his belongings in the apartment and to return for them. Then he telephones Cambara to alert her of what he is doing. After which he rings Ahl, who tells him, “No news.”

When Qasiir returns, Malik serves him the spaghetti and asks him for further background on the current role of the market in the insurgency.

Qasiir takes a long time chewing a mouthful of spaghetti, then swallows noisily and replies, “There are a number of reasons why the Bakhaaraha are aiding the insurgency. You see, no businessman will show eagerness in welcoming a government that is bound to levy tax on his business. They would rather there was no government; they would rather not pay tax. The second reason is they do not like the interim president, who hails from Puntland, and whom they accuse not only of having brought along thousands of trained soldiers from the autonomous state, but also of having invited the Ethiopians to invade.”

On the way to the market complex, they come upon more devastation, houses destroyed by recent bombing and families sitting out in the open or under the shade trees still standing in the rubble. Qasiir explains to Malik that many of the homeowners prefer the inconvenience of slumming it near their properties to moving out to the camps, where the homeless and the internally displaced are congregated.

They come across large groups of people moving in the opposite direction, as though they’ve seen enough of whatever it is they have seen. Malik reflects that in the old dispensation, when the Courts were in charge, the city was on the face of it peaceful. Now they drive through
agitated movements: of men and women running away from something and looking back, checking to see if the trouble they are fleeing is pursuing them. They discern excitement, fear, and anger everywhere they look. Some of them shout excitedly at each other, heatedly exchanging views.

“Do you want us to stop?” Qasiir asks, glancing at him.

Malik shakes his head and they continue. Soon the smell of burning tires reaches them. A battery of youths and robed men charged with the energy of foment raise their fists and chant, “Down with Ethiopia!” Some shout, “Down with the invading Christians!” and yet others cry, “Long live the martyrs of the faith!” Qasiir turns into a broad dirt road and, just as he finds a parking spot, nearly runs over a man crossing the road with feverish intent. Malik says he wishes he had brought a camera, and then Qasiir pulls out his phone and, before Malik can say anything, starts to take photographs of youths nearby who are setting fire to a crudely assembled effigy of the Ethiopian premier. He and Qasiir walk farther and farther into the heart of the chaos, watching the goings-on with rabid interest. Despite the promise he made to his wife not to be pulled into the abyss, Malik without regret moves in deeper, excited to ferret about in other people’s heightened emotions; to eavesdrop on their sorrows; to listen in on their conversations and intrude on their private and public personae. After all, when one is in a mob, one is private in a public space.

Qasiir says, “For them, it is like theater and what they consider to be a bit of fun. It’s part of the political show, orchestrated to the smallest detail by men sympathetic to the insurgents and against the TFG. The idea is to humiliate the interim government.”

“Did you participate in the debasing of the corpse of the dead Marine in 1993, Qasiir?” Malik asks.

Qasiir doesn’t answer at first.

Malik says, “I know that the chopper nearly killed your younger
sister and rendered her mute and forever traumatized. But did you take part in that heinous act of self-humiliation?”

Finally Qasiir says, “Grandpa Dajaal wouldn’t allow me to join them.”

“Would you have joined your mates if he hadn’t?”

“Yes,” says Qasiir. “I would have joined my mates if he hadn’t.”

“I would have expected better of you,” Malik says.

“The way it was put to us at the time, it was all part of a political show of solidarity to the general, an integral part of a performance. Everything pre-rehearsed, taking into account every possible detail,” Qasiir explains, and then after a pause, adds, “I was young, naive.”

“I’ve been to many of these pre-arranged demonstrations in Pakistan, in India, and in Afghanistan,” Malik says. “Initially, they all appear so real. My feeling is that the performance we’ve just seen had a rehearsed quality to it. Although that doesn’t stop many foreign journalists from being taken for a ride.”

“Like hired mourners, wailing,” observes Qasiir.

“I suppose nothing is free,” Malik says.

He recalls the names of giants in his field, journalists and authors who pried into the deeper horrors of the universe, and who returned with all kinds of spoil. He hopes to write an article about staring into the raw truths of rage. The further he goes into the inner sanctums of the market complex, forbidden to him until then by virtue of his outsider status, the more his heart sickens, though. Qasiir, with Malik following behind, is now exchanging high fives with a mate of his who fought alongside him, now giving the thumbs-up to a former fellow militiaman who is making sure that the demonstration doesn’t get out of hand and that the disorder is kept to a minimum.

Malik chokes on the smoke billowing from the effigies and other burning debris. Then he and Qasiir focus their interest on a clutch of youths in a circle clapping their hands, dancing and chanting to a chorus of protestations with the interchangeable terms—Ethiopia,
America, Christians, infidels, apostates, traitors—occurring in a discontinuous song. As Qasiir takes pictures of the youths who pose for him, the atmosphere festive, the mood buoyant, Malik realizes with shock that they are stamping on a corpse in uniform.

For Malik, this marks the moment in a people’s history when sectarian rage may be portrayed as national panic. Malik thinks that a cross-section of Somalis have suspended their full membership in the human race because their behavior is unacceptable: one does not debase the dead. Nor, if one wishes to preserve the dignity of one’s humanity, does one raze a house of worship to the ground, desecrate cemeteries, drag a corpse, or kick it while dancing around it. One can understand the rage that inspires a certain section of the populace to behave this way, a rage resulting from the deaths and the humiliation suffered at the hands of the Ethiopians. However, Malik condemns their conduct, because it breaks with Somali as well as Muslim tradition and departs from the norms of civilized behavior.

Too embarrassed to admit to his own fear, he walks away, sorry for the Ethiopian, killed in a war in a country about which he probably remained ignorant until the moment of his death. He feels sorry, too, for the Somali youths kicking the dead Ethiopian, an ill-educated, ill-informed lot, as unfamiliar with the concept of respect for the dead as they are with Islam. Blame it on decades of civil war, in which these youths haven’t gone to schools, haven’t lived in homes where there is the semblance of harmony and functionality. Blame it, too, on the current Somali political class, who are equally ill educated and equally self-centered, and who behave inhumanely toward others. Malik’s sickened heart sicker than ever, he feels as if he is complicit in these terrible doings, because he cannot find a way to stop them.

Just before they leave the Bakhaaraha, there is a heavy exchange of gunfire, RPG rounds from the general direction of the presidential villa falling within a hundred yards from where Qasiir parked the car. The
geography of the Bakhaaraha and the casbah make sense only to a native, he thinks. A stranger wouldn’t know which alleys end in dead ends and which would lead them to safety.

They get into the car and miraculously find their way through the back streets and onto one of the city’s arteries.

Malik’s phone rings. Fee-Jigan is on the line, informing him that earlier, maybe two and a half hours ago, a radio journalist, whose name Malik recognizes from his impressive commentaries on HornAfrik, has been shot inside the Bakhaaraha.

“What was he doing when he was killed?” Malik asks.

“He was interviewing an insurgent.”

“Where are you now?”

Fee-Jigan says he is on his way to join the funeral cortege, which is departing in half an hour from in front of Bank Tewfik. He asks Malik to put Qasiir on so that he can know how to get there.

Malik is the first to spot the cortege, and Qasiir pulls up at the rear. Malik then rings Fee-Jigan, who eventually joins them, and they stand beside the car, chatting. Other journalists make their appearance, and Fee-Jigan introduces them to Malik. He recognizes the names of the authors of some of the pieces he has read. Not one of the articles impressed him, he remembers, either because they lacked depth or because the author hadn’t done sufficient background research before committing to a point of view. It is apparent that a number of the reporters have had no training, at least not enough to be taken seriously. Even so, he has remained in awe of their courage, their indomitable behavior.

They tell Malik more about the killing, which occurred in the Bakhaaraha market complex. Shire, the deceased journalist, was waiting
for his interviewee, a top insurgent, in the back room of the computer shop. Known for his lack of fear and his outspokenness, Shire put his name to his editorials even when he knew they would upset all parties to the conflict. He had often spoken of his “foretold” death at the hands of assassins, although he couldn’t predict, and didn’t seem to care, whether the Ethiopians or the insurgents would get him first.

He was struck by balaclava-wearing men in the shop’s back room, which was adjacent to the manager’s cubicle. Three men gained access to the room, where he was waiting for the interview, and one of them shot him, using a silencer. “They emerged, waved
salaam
to the manager and the staff, and departed, having accomplished their mission,” Fee-Jigan says.

“Who found the corpse?”

“The young tea boy, delivering tea to the room.”

Malik thinks, What a sad way to die!

“That’s the story,” Fee-Jigan says, his eyebrows raised. His expression seems to suggest that there is something not right here.

“And what explanations do the manager and the staff of the shop proffer so far?” asks Malik. He thinks this must have been an inside job, and vaguely recalls an incident in Afghanistan, when a warlord was killed by Arab men posing as journalists.

Fee-Jigan replies, “Everyone in the shop claims to have been in the dark about the arrangements, because Shire had insisted that his interviewee and his escorts, who would come into the shop wearing balaclavas, be granted entry to the room in the back, where he would be waiting.”

“Where is the corpse now?” Malik asks.

“At a mosque near his home.”

“Are we going to the mosque or his home?”

“First the mosque, then the cemetery.”

It takes the convoy of vehicles a long time to turn into a procession and get into a proper line. Malik thinks that someone with authority, in a uniform, like a traffic cop, is needed to clear the way if twenty or so cars wish to form an orderly file in a city enjoying peace. Organizing a column of cars into a well-ordered cavalcade during a civil war, however, is an impossible task.

But eventually they are under way, and Malik, while making no direct reference to their last encounter in Ma-Gabadeh’s company, asks how the book Fee-Jigan has been writing is coming along.