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Both Dajaal and the driver shook their heads and then, still not speaking, allowed themselves the rare luxury of smiling, in the loaded way two adults might exchange a smile when a child asks an inappropriate question. Their watchful eyes no longer on the Coke bottle, the driver and Dajaal communicated in gestures, after which the driver pressed the horn three times, once gently, twice decisively, then paused and waited.

An old man and two boys, all with guns, emerged from behind an abandoned building, the man leprous, one boy with his right foot clumsy with elephantiasis, the other boy afflicted with wrist-drop agony. The boys lowered their weapons, their lips traced with smiles of relief. The old man, whom Jeebleh presumed to be the father and the leader of the band, aimed his gun at the vehicle. As though on a dare, the car crept up to the Coke bottle, which fell on its side. Jeebleh watched this with mixed pity and amusement. Dajaal wound down his window and threw a wad of money tied with a rubber band at the feet of the old man.

The smaller of the boys bent down and retrieved the wad. It was only when the vehicle came level with them—near enough to smell their unwashed bodies—that Jeebleh realized that all three had imitation guns, poor-quality mahogany painted black.

“What are they?” he asked.

Maybe Dajaal picked up on his unease or maybe he didn't, but Jeebleh was instantly regretful, wishing he had said “who” instead of “what.”

The driver spoke for the first time, his accent clearly from Mudugh. “Down in the south,” he said, “we call them ‘idiots of the north.'”

“Because they are a harmless lot?”

Dajaal had had enough. “Let's get going!”

And as the vehicle moved, Dajaal explained that the “three-man militia” had their checkpoint in a no-man's-territory, in the belief that they could continue profiting from their stickups. “Myself, I'm impressed with their cunning, because they expose a major weakness in the idea of the clan. After all, they too claim to represent the interests of a clan family—even if it's the smallest unit within the larger clan to which the two principal contestants, StrongmanSouth and StrongmanNorth, also belong. It's clever of them to poach in the no-man's-territory, claiming their share in what is to be got.”

The car slowed, the driver changing gears, looking this way and that. He signaled left but took a right and then—how very odd—reversed, managing to avoid a mound of dirt. They were at a crossroads. A cluster of children appeared. They stood by, watching.

“We're now entering the no-man's-territory, where the so-called green line is,” the driver said, pointing at a spot in the road to his right.

This was comparable to pointing at a spot in a river and saying that one's parents had drowned there several years before. To Jeebleh, Mogadiscio's green line and the no-man's-land both expressed not so much inadequate demarcations of territories, but rather the absence of compromise between the realities and the political zeal of the warlords. Such a line, and that no-man's-land, would continue to exist as long as these incompetent men refused to reach a compromise.

The roads had no names. No flags flew anywhere near where the car was now parked, and there were no sheds, however ramshackle, to mark the spot. For the first time on this drive, there were a lot of people, busy as shoppers; buses disgorging more people; lean-to shacks, where you could have tea; stalls where women ran their haberdasheries.

“Can I step out?” Jeebleh asked.

“And do what?” said the driver.

“I'd like to have a feel of the place, if I may.”

“We would advise you not to,” the driver told him.

Jeebleh nonetheless got out of the vehicle, leaving the door ajar, and crouched in the bent-knee posture of a supplicant before a deity. Passersby, men and women hurrying to catch the bus that would take them somewhere, gawked at him, some looking amused, others uncomprehending. What was he doing? Humbling himself before the god of peace, or Mother Earth herself ? The driver shouted to him to get back in the car.

A quarter of a kilometer later, they stopped so unexpectedly that the car slid forward when the driver braked. Several armed youths in military fatigues, who had materialized out of nowhere as far as Jeebleh could tell, flagged them down. The oldest would have been in his twenties, and none of them had proper shoes to give their uniforms respectability. They seemed thuggish to Jeebleh, all boasting the armed youth's standard chipmunk cheeks, their jaws busy chewing
qaat
. Their eyes were bloodshot and sore with exhaustion.

One of the youths recognized Dajaal, and said, “What if I hadn't recognized you? We could've shot you. Be careful next time. Now get going, and fast!”

Once the car had driven off, Jeebleh asked, “What do they do to people they don't know?”

“They make a nuisance of themselves,” Dajaal said, “they open the trunk of your car, pretending to check for weapons to confiscate, or for contraband goods on which StrongmanSouth's income revenue police levy a hefty duty. Often, they take the goods themselves as their share, since they are members of StrongmanSouth's militia. I would say every major and minor warlord runs the territory under his nominal control profitably.”

“Does StrongmanSouth provide them with the uniforms?”

“No.”

“Who, then?”

“Gadhafi has sent a planeload of these army fatigues,” the driver said, “and the AK-47s are available in the open market and cost only six dollars apiece. StrongmanSouth allows them a free run of the place every now and then, and supplies them with their daily ration of
qaat
, or at least enough cash with which to buy it.”

Another kilometer and three more checkpoints, and the vehicle came to a halt. Informed that they had arrived, Jeebleh gave a sigh of relief. Here, it was all peaceful. They were before a huge building, which he remembered serving as the State Secretariat. In the sixties, soon after independence, the prime minister and other important ministers had had their offices here. Now the building was rundown, the pillars about to collapse, and thatch and mud huts occupied what used to be parking lots. Jeebleh relaxed when he saw people behaving normally, children playing, women busy at braziers, cooking or washing.

“Is this The Refuge?” he asked.

Dajaal shook his head.

“What is it, then?”

Dajaal called out the name of a man, who then came running out of a side door. He was introduced as the day watchman, and Jeebleh learned that he would take him to the apartment where Bile awaited him.

JEEBLEH WALKED A COUPLE OF PACES BEHIND THE DAY WATCHMAN escorting him to Bile's apartment, serene at the sight of sunlight on the old man's bald patch. He walked in step with the man, and tried to remain attentive to all his movements, as he expected he'd be returning without a guide.

They were now in a narrow corridor, with a closed door to their left, and one slightly ajar on the right. The watchman led him past a metal gate, then down a ravaged staircase. They walked past a huge void, which may once have housed an elevator; who knows, Jeebleh thought with a chill, dead bodies may have once been thrown down the shaft. He wondered where they were, in a basement of some sort, close to a building that had been an annex to a government ministry. He was disheartened by the water he saw leaking everywhere. Scarcely had he decided that the building was not at all inhabited when he heard the distant voices of children and smelled onions being fried. Somewhat relieved, he followed the watchman down another half a dozen devastated steps before they were out of the building. Then up a stairway a-scatter with geckos, past a half-demolished wall crawling with cockroaches, past a bricked-up door, past a window with half a glass pane, and then through cavernous rooms with no doors. Jeebleh was depressed to bear witness to so much destruction, and to the fact that what the plunderers didn't have the will to destroy simply fell into destruction on its own.

Soon they exited again, and walked through an arch and into a large courtyard with a communal kitchen where women were cooking, and where toilets, their doors hanging on broken hinges, emitted a foul odor. The place swarmed with well-fed children at play, like puppies after feeding time. Jeebleh's furtive look fell on the watchman, who comported himself in the reverential way of a commoner approaching royalty: deferentially, knees slightly bent, as in a curtsy, and with a smile of sterling quality. From this, Jeebleh deduced they were on Bile's floor.

The open courtyard, kept spotlessly clean, boasted a freshly painted wall, and windows apparently recently repaired—there were X's on the panes, evidence the glass was new. They walked to a metal door, and the watchman pressed a bell. As they waited for an answer, Jeebleh read the verse scrawled in an upright Celtic hand on a plaque attached to the door lintel: “Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God!” He was pondering its meaning, whether it was from the Bible or some other scripture, and wondering who might have put it there, when the door opened.

 

 

BILE WAS STANDING IN THE DOORWAY, CLAD IN A SMILE OF WELCOME, HIS ARMS open and raised, in anticipation of taking Jeebleh into his embrace. The two friends hugged very warmly.

At about six feet, Bile was a head taller than Jeebleh, but Jeebleh was a lot heavier. With the tears of joy suppressed, the emotion of their reunion seemed momentarily under some restraint, as each remembered how he had visited the other in many dreams. In Jeebleh's dreams, Bile's arrival would often be heralded by the buzzing of a bee quietly, busily, and positively constructing a cosmos of harmony, a bee knowing not a moment of idleness—generous, loving, and kind to all. Jeebleh's arrival, in Bile's dreams, would be announced by the neighing of a young horse breaking loose; and when Jeebleh came to take his leave, the horse would be replaced by an eagle flying into the outer reaches of the heavens.

“How wonderful to see you,” Jeebleh said.

Bile was blessed with young-looking skin of a reddish hue that reminded his friend of a light wood treated to assume the darker tint of mahogany. He wore jeans, a T-shirt, and Indian thongs, and was much thinner than Jeebleh had remembered; he had a slight stoop, the result, perhaps, of aging in a prison cell. Otherwise, he appeared to be in good physical shape, his gaze bright, with the gentlest of smiles. When they hugged again, even more warmly, the crown of Jeebleh's baldness came into raspy contact with Bile's day-old stubble.

Even though visibly happy to be reunited with his friend, Bile had the expression of a man who had just emerged from a very long night of sorrow; now frowning, now grinning, he might have been suffering from an upset stomach. His thoughts provided their own subtext, prompting a shudder in Jeebleh as Bile broke the calm by reciting the verse above the door in a booming voice: “Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God!”

They became conscious of the watchman, still standing at the open door, looking rather sheepish, waiting, perhaps, for baksheesh and a thank you before being dismissed. Bile brought out a wad of cash and gave it to the man. Once he was gone, Bile slammed the door shut and turned his back on Jeebleh, ready to bring his idleness to a profitable end. “Would you like some coffee?” he asked.

“Yes, please!”

 

 

JEEBLEH STOOD TO THE SIDE OF A WINDOW WITH THE CURTAINS HALF DRAWN, and Bile stood away from the window in the cautious attitude of someone spying on what was happening outside without being seen. They were so full of joy that every now and then one or the other spoke of the pleasure of being together again. Now it was the
n
th time for Bile to say, “It's so good to see you!”

As Jeebleh studied the scene outside the window, the devastation and the ugly shacks, he remembered his and Bile's childhood: how each was strong where the other was weak. Jeebleh tended to be obsessive in pursuit of his goals. Bile was quicker and brighter, adept at anything to which he put his mind. He was an excellent athlete, who won medals in science and art too. He was, however, weak in the department of decision making. Nor did he have the guts to speak his mind, forever postponing the day when he might stand up to the daily battering meted out to him by Caloosha. Although Bile and Jeebleh were not related by blood or marriage, they were raised in the same household, and had laid the foundation of their closeness in what they called “a land all our own.” In Jeebleh's scheme of things, there was no place for tormentors. In Bile's scheme of things, life had its ugly surprises for those who were ugly of heart and cruel of mind. Desperate to move him into action, Jeebleh would have liked Bile to defend himself in word and deed. Time and again, not only would Bile balk at the suggestion that he fight back at his half brother, but he would discourage his friend from confronting Caloosha, even if they had privately decided to avenge themselves with violence. Thus there was never the choice of a truce, and many predicted that their conflict with Caloosha was set to continue until death.

Out the window, Jeebleh noticed a pile of rock-strewn earth, with stones placed on the summit. “What's that down below?” he asked.

“A child's tomb.”

“A tomb in the middle of the city?”

“At times, people are so scared to go to the cemeteries that they resort to burying their young ones close by, in tombs they improvise in their own neighborhoods.”

“Who are the people sheltering in the building?”

“They're some of the displaced,” Bile said, “who've come here because of the fighting in their regions of the country. We get an influx whenever there are confrontations between the armed militias.”

“Is this The Refuge, then?”