Crossbones (45 page)

Fee-Jigan says, “I’ve put it on a back burner.”

“So what are you working on at present?”

“I’ve been working on matters closer to home.”

“Such as what?”

“I’ve been writing pieces of great topical interest in the international media,” says Fee-Jigan. “There is nothing more important these days than the targeting and killing of journalists, one dead every two days.”

“Who do you think is behind the killings?”

Fee-Jigan seems unduly worried about Qasiir, whom he stares at. Malik assures him that Qasiir is trustworthy not by speaking but by nodding his head in Qasiir’s direction.

Fee-Jigan says, “There are freelancing fifth columnists comprising former senior army officers, many of whom are allied to the Courts. These do the killings.”

“But why would they kill Shire, who, from what I understand, was interviewing an insurgent presumably sympathetic to the Courts?”

“They kill to confuse the issue.”

Malik can’t follow his logic. He asks, “What issue?”

“Shire favored the truth,” Fee-Jigan says. “He dared speak his mind, unafraid. At times, his hard-hitting commentaries upset Shabaab and their allies. The freelancing fifth columnists do anyone’s dirty work as long as it confuses the issue.”

Malik appreciates that Qasiir is doing what he can under confusing circumstances to make sure they are not left far behind, now slowing down, now going fast, and now communicating with a couple of the drivers with whom he exchanged mobile numbers before the convoy set off. They’ll keep in touch in the event of a problem. When they get to the mosque and discover they are late for the funeral service, there is disagreement over where to go, some suggesting they head for Shire’s family home, from which the bier will be carried on foot to the cemetery, a kilometer and a half away, others insisting they drive straight to the grave site and wait there. Malik concurs with Fee-Jigan that it is best to go to the family home and to help carry the bier.

They arrive in time to witness the bier already being carried out of the house. The street fills up with a crowd of well-wishers, passersby stopping to say, “
Allahu akbar
,” and the entire place reverberating with brief prayers of supplication addressed to the Almighty. Everyone hereabouts cuts a forlorn figure, head down in sorrow, mourning for the untimely death of a man who did no one harm and was loved by many.

The pace of the procession is quick, and a number of the journalists who arrived at the same time as Malik hurry to catch up with the coffin and help carry it, even briefly. In Islam, burial is quick, in hope that the dead will arrive at his resting place in a more contented state, with Allah’s blessing.

Malik finds himself for the first and only time in his life carrying the bier of someone he didn’t even know, and moved to be participating in the ritual. He gives his place over to Fee-Jigan, who in turns passes it to Qasiir, until they reach the edge of the waiting grave.

Just then Malik’s mobile, which is in vibrate mode, makes a purring sound in the top of his shirt pocket. He checks most discreetly at the first opportunity, having stepped out of everybody’s way. It’s a text from Ahl. “Taxliil here. All well, considering. Talk when you can.”

Malik recalls drafting a text message to Ahl, but not whether he sent it before the improvised roadside device struck the van he was traveling in. He remembers he’d been with others on their way back from the funeral of a journalist. Now, half-unconscious and lying on his side, in pain, he composes more text messages in his head:
Talk of the walking wounded!
But he can’t press the send button. One needs hands to write a message, and Malik can’t feel his hands. This does not stop him from adding a PS:
Imagine the injured working through much pain, the wounded autographing the death warrants with a great flourish.

It is curious, he thinks, that he has not made personal acquaintance with an improvised explosive device until now.

In Somalia, IEDs did not figure much among the signatures of any of the armed factions in the Somali conflict until the Ethiopians arrived. Before, one would hear of two men on a motorbike or two or three on foot and in balaclavas, armed with pistols, hiding around a curve in the road as they waited for their victims to come out of a mosque or out of a car. The killers would ride away on their bike or they would run off, unidentified. Of late, however, roadside bombing has become the insurgents’ favorite mode of operation. They study the movements of their victims and plant custom-made, pre-designed explosive devices accordingly, to pick off by remote control a government official traveling by car or an Ethiopian battalion decamping from one base to another, or journalists covering a momentous event.

Malik drafts in his head yet another text message to Ahl, informing his brother that he is now a casualty of the device, but, thank God, he is still alive. In fact, he can hear the explosion replaying in his memory, he can see the smoke it generated, he can smell the powder it emitted and he can feel in his own body the demolition of the device. He is bruised here and there and has suffered a concussion, but he senses
he is regaining his ability to move some of his limbs. He moves a leg, as if to prove it to himself. Alas, the leg won’t obey his command. What about his arm? His arm is more obliging, maybe because it is free from other obstructions, unlike the leg, which is bent under his body. It is in his head that the concussion has been concentrated. His neck is in some sort of a twist, and the back of his head is wet, but he cannot tell if it is blood or water that someone has spilled. He bends his knees some more and then stretches his leg, despite the impediment.

Then he opens his eyes, only to close them.

The device that blew up the car carrying Malik and his fellow journalists on the way back from Shire’s funeral claimed the lives of three of them. Malik had chosen to ride with the other journalists instead of driving alone with Qasiir. As he replays the explosion in his memory, he is uncertain if one or two of the tires of the twelve-seater van in which they were traveling had burst, or if it had been preceded by a man on motorbike shooting at them. Anyhow, instead of the vehicle collapsing in on itself like a punctured ball, Malik sensed the minivan lifting off the ground, just as one of the journalists, now dead, was describing Shabaab as “men short on reasoning, on political cunning, and who are notorious for their doublespeak.” Everyone, including the driver, also now dead, put in his word until the fragmentation grenade insinuated itself into the clamor and terminated their lively debate in instant darkness.

Even as his head hit the seat in front of him, Malik resisted dropping into the gaping dimness, remembering Amran’s words—“I do not want to raise an orphan.” His brief daze was replaced by a scary silence, and then he heard someone close by moaning in agony, and someone else pleading for help, saying, “I am hurt; very badly hurt.” Then a sound like a goat being slaughtered.

His concussion is mild, his memory not affected; his bodily and mental reflexes are all in relatively good order. But like a newborn baby, or a dead person just interred, he is not all
there.
He is sufficiently alert to remember the unsubstantiated claim among Somalis that soon after interment, the dead hear everything, can even recognize the voices of the relatives and friends present at their burial. Malik is alive, even if he is not all
there
. He follows the protocol a person follows after a concussion; he asks himself simple questions: his own name, his wife’s name, his brother’s name, his date of birth, and where in the world he is now. He becomes both the asker and respondent. Only when he passes the test does he reopen his eyes. A crowd has gathered around the vehicle, some helping, some just gawking.

He has on his forehead a bump as round and big as a golf ball. His chest aches; there is someone else’s blood on his clothes. Somewhere just above his groin, there are more traces of blood. He feels around and finds a fragment of glass through the rent in his trousers.

He hears Qasiir asking, “Can you hear me, Malik?” Then he feels someone hauling him out of the van the way one would heft a sleeping child out of a car.

“I am all right,” he says.

“Here, take my hand,” Qasiir says.

Malik does so and asks, “How about the others?”

Only when they are outside the vehicle does he see why it had taken so long for Qasiir to get to him: the dead and wounded were in Malik’s way. Qasiir offers to take the wounded to hospital, and with a mosque being close by, a number of bystanders improvise coffins out of sheets and place the corpses in them to carry. Malik knows there is no point telephoning for ambulances, because they are seldom available in a city in which there are more devices blowing up than there are ambulances. No point either in taking the dead to the hospitals or bothering about postmortems; they will be buried before nightfall.

By the time Qasiir has wedged him into the back of the sedan car with two of his wounded colleagues on either side of him and the head of a third on his lap, Malik realizes that he has his responsibility cut out for him. It has fallen to him to tell the world what has occurred, how these journalists died serving the cause of their profession. Is he capable of meeting the challenge? Does he have the mettle to mourn them openly, mention names, point fingers at the culprits? In his head he drafts an obituary of “the unappreciated journalist” on the move; no time to find a desk, but he begins to debrief one of the wounded journalists who is in a fit state to answer his questions.

A twinge of regret scratches inside Malik’s head, squeakily reminding him that he hasn’t yet published his piece about Dajaal’s murder. Then a portal of sorrow opens in the active side of his brain, and he worries that he, too, may die before he is able to write about the mobs of youth abandoning themselves to madness—and society looking on and doing nothing to stop them.

Malik and the wounded journalists are in luck. Qasiir has had the presence of mind to telephone Cambara and Bile, and Cambara has provided Qasiir with the names of doctors she knows at Medina Hospital, and mobile numbers for four medics in two of the private clinics, adding that she will try and reach them herself. Now Cambara and Bile ring Qasiir back with the message that they have reached one of the medics. He has reserved rooms in the intensive-care unit, and he and the nursing staff will be waiting for them.

And indeed they are. As the wounded are wheeled straight into surgery, Malik fills out the paperwork. He looks for the spot to provide his credit card information but learns that the clinic does not have the facility to process one. Still, he vows that he will pay if no one else does, and the administrator takes his word for it.

Now the invasive odor of chloroform sticks to his nostrils, reminding him of how close he has been to death. When the sweet smell
almost knocks him out, he forces himself to sit up. He wishes he could move around, go outside for some fresh air. But he stays where he is, on a smelly, improvised camp bed with bloodstains on it. He feels a little squeamish and claustrophobic and goes out for a bit of fresh air and finds a bench in a small, untended garden. He sits down, sighing with relief.

A man approaches and asks if he may share the bench with him to rest his tired body. Malik indicates that he may. His phone rings and his editor at the daily paper is on the line, suggesting that he write a short piece about the events in Mogadiscio to go into the paper today. Malik feels his pockets, which are empty of pens and pencils. He asks the stranger if he has something with which to write. The man lends him a pencil. Malik moves a step away from the man, who seems to be eavesdropping on his conversation, to take notes on what the editor is looking for. After agreeing that he will file a story within several hours, he hangs up and returns the pencil to its owner, with thanks.

The stranger then introduces himself as Hilowleh, speaking his name in a way that makes Malik wonder if he ought to know it. His face stirs the vaguest of memories. Still, Malik can’t decide if they have met before, or when or where, maybe because his brain is in too much disarray and incapable of connecting the available dots and dashes. The man’s long eyelashes, his two-day-old stubble, and his ragged appearance are of no help. There is misapprehension in the man’s demeanor, suggesting that talking to him is wrong. Is he embarrassed, and if so, why? Is there something weighing on the man’s mind that he wishes to unload?