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“You're not mad!” he assured her.

“I only have circumstantial evidence,” she said, and the sad memory of what scanty evidence she had made her bend over. She held her head between her knees, sobbing.

They were back in her preteen years, when she used to embark on bouts of intense caterwauling, crying her throat sore until she got what she was after. Now she was a tantrum-throwing kid. She could contain herself one minute in lawyerese, her syntax perfect, her logic impeccable, and in the next minute burst into tears, and look mad and miserable.

He wouldn't lose hope. He would badger her until he got some adequate answers out of her: “Has anyone that you know of seen Raasta?”

“Af-Laawe has seen Faahiye!”

Clever at taking advantage of anyone with needs, Af-Laawe qualified as one of the deceivers. He had the knack of turning up to offer a hand. Who was Af-Laawe, and what was his role in all this?

“Have you mentioned this to Bile?”

“I have.”

“And his reaction?”

“He promised he would look into the matter.”

“Will he, do you think?”

“I doubt that he ever will!”

She was on firmer ground now. This was clear from her body language and her voice. She sat facing the curtainless window, now open, and the sun reflected in her eye made her appear less sad, but a trifle sterner.

She said, “Because Af-Laawe sees himself as a rival of Bile's, and as the other, that's to say, Bile's darker side, he's difficult to catch out. Af-Laawe will tell you that he's committed to the well-being of the dead, as if the dead cared, and that he buries them at no charge, which isn't true, of course, and that, like Bile, he came upon a windfall of funds with a mysterious origin. The truth is different. We know where Af-Laawe's money came from, that he is a devious fellow, and that Caloosha is his mentor—the overall head of what I'd like to call, for lack of a better term, the cartel. And don't think I'm mad or a raving paranoiac—I'm not, I'll have you know.”

She was making a convincing case, but he wanted to know: “What cartel? What're you talking about?”

“The business interests of the cartel are suspect,” she said. “Initially established by Af-Laawe as an NGO to help with ferrying and burying the city's unclaimed dead, it's recently branched out into other nefarious activities. The cartel, my reliable source has it, sends all the receipted bills to a Dutch charity based in Utrecht. But that doesn't bother me. What bothers me is what happens
before
the corpses are buried. Terrible things are done to the bodies between the time they are collected in Af-Laawe's van and the time they are taken to the cemetery. A detour is made to a safe house, where surgeons on retainer are on twenty-four-hour call. These surgeons remove the kidneys and hearts of the recently dead. Once these internal organs are tested and found to be in good working order, they are flown to hospitals in the Middle East, where they are sold and transplanted.”

Jeebleh sat upright. Outlandish as it all sounded, he remembered being present when the corpse of the ten-year-old at the airport was transferred into Af-Laawe's van, and that the young man killed in his hotel room was put in the same van. He remembered how quickly Af-Laawe had acted to move the bodies, and how he had arranged for Jeebleh to ride in another car from the airport, although he had clearly intended to pick him up. Maybe there was some grisly truth in what Shanta was saying?

“Is Bile aware of all this?”

“It's not in his nature to talk, even if he is.”

“Why not?”

“Because he doesn't wish his integrity questioned.”

A latticework of shadows fell on her face, and Shanta's features made Jeebleh think of an old canvas in the process of being restored. He saw crevices where there were darker shadows, and imagined scars where the shadows were lighter.

“And you think it's the cartel that has kidnapped the girls?” he asked. “To get them out of the way so there will be no refuge for those fleeing the fighting? Or are Af-Laawe and Caloosha getting at Bile, each for his own reason?”

“Everything is possible.”

“But the cartel, assuming it does exist, won't allow the girls to come to harm, will it? Especially if, as you say, Caloosha has something to do with it?”

Shanta was no longer in a mood to answer his questions, and her chest exploded into a mournful lament. She managed to say, despite her emotional state, “The cartel is in the service of evil!”

“Have you spoken to Caloosha about your worries?”

“I have.”

“His response?”

“He says he is doing all that he can to have the girls traced. He says they are probably being held in the south of the city, which is not under his—StrongmanNorth's—jurisdiction, but StrongmanSouth's. But you know why I think he too won't help at all? Because the cartel's source of corpses will dry up if Raasta is back in circulation.”

“Che maledizione!”
Jeebleh cursed.

Snuffling more mightily, she trotted off, head down and body trembling, in the direction of a door that he assumed would lead to the toilet, presumably to complete her crying away from his gaze. He heard the boy moving about upstairs and muttering, perhaps entertaining himself with talk. But who was the boy? What was he doing here?

Shanta was away for at least fifteen minutes, and when she returned she sat from across him, not quite recomposed. She crossed and recrossed her legs, reminding him of an agitated mother hen fighting with all her might to save her chicks from the vulture preying on them.

 

 

AT JEEBLEH'S SUGGESTION, THEY MOVED OUT TO THE GARDEN, WHERE THEY sat on a bench under a mango tree, its shade as sweet as the fruit itself. Unwatered and ravaged by neglect, the garden was a comfortless witness to the nation's despair, which was there for all to see.

“Whose house is this?” he asked.

She looked away, first at the mango tree, which had begun to bear fruit, and then at a colorful finch hanging over one of the branches, cheerfully young and full of chirp. “Our own house is in an area that in the days when you lived here was known as Hawl-Wadaag but that has recently been named Bermuda. The neighborhood was destroyed in the fighting between StrongmanSouth and a minor warlord allied with StrongmanNorth. This house belongs to friends of mine who've moved to North America.”

“Have you lived here for long?”

“We've been very unhappy,” she said.

Jeebleh looked about, distressed.

“Perhaps the deteriorated state of the garden and the house explains why we've been unhappy here,” she said.

How unlike one another are unhappy families: Tolstoy?

“We've stayed on a collision course, Faahiye and I,” she said, “quarreling a great deal and unnecessarily. We've been in the sight of an evil eye, that's seen much ill!”

“Because of what?”

“Because of the curse of which I've spoken.”

“But Bile at least had no choice,” Jeebleh reasoned.

Yet there was no reasoning with her. She said, her voice shaken, “He touched me in ways that he shouldn't have. And because of this, we've earned ourselves a curse, this way harvesting nature's ill intentions.”

“In his place, what would you have done?”

“In my rational mind, I know that it was a matter of life and death, and he had to make a decision, and voted in favor of life, voted for life. I am alive, and Raasta is a wonder child and, thank God, healthy. You ask what the problem is? Well, the problem is that what's been done can't be undone. The problem is that the curse has become part of us, affecting us all.”

Her expression reminded him of the oval face of an owl in the dark, seen from the advantaged position of someone in the light. “Was that part of the curse, what happened between Bile and Faahiye the moment they met?”

“They were at each other's throats, because of what happened,” she said, “and it fell to me to make peace between them. It's always fallen to women to forge the peace between all these hot-blooded men, always ready to go to war at the slightest provocation. Faahiye and my brothers are no different from the majority of men who've brought Somalia to ruin! Why do men behave the way they do, warring?”

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Maybe because they've got no sense of grief?”

He let this pass without comment, and waited for her tears to subside.

“Tell me who the boy in the house is.”

There was smugness in her gaze as she turned in the direction where the boy was playing by himself. “He belongs in The Refuge. He came here to play with Raasta the day she disappeared, and has since refused to go anywhere else until she's back. He has become a kind of insurance policy, mine, that there will be a child in this house!”

It struck Jeebleh that for his entire visit, she didn't seem mad at all. Emotionally charged, yes, but that was more than understandable in a woman whose daughter was missing. In fact, she was confident enough to pleasantly offer him a plate of warmed-up food—yesterday's leftovers—if he had a mind to eat. And she was talking in a straightforward manner and answering his questions, and saying and doing nothing far-fetched or deranged. No one would doubt that she was as sane as he was.

He shifted the conversation: “Whose idea was it, do you know, that dinners at The Refuge should be a communal affair?”

She wasn't sure specifically, but thought it could only have been a woman's idea, even if it had come from Bile, who might have relied on the women around him. Women, after all, often ate in this way and knew the benefits accruing from it.

He nodded, remaining silent.

“For one thing, women waste less food,” she said. “For another, eating together from the same plate is more gregarious. Besides, as you well know, we women have always eaten together, after serving our husbands. That women are content with seconds or leftovers suggests that we're prepared to compromise for the sake of peace. Not so men!”

He let the silence run its full course, and then asked if she had any suggestions about how he could reach the woman who had kept house for his mother. Her stare as hard as stone, she looked ahead of her, as though not aware of him at all. Again her lips moved like a bird feeding. Then her lips stopped and formed an O. “I knew where she lived, in Medina, before the collapse. I haven't seen her since then, as I had no reason to. But it shouldn't be difficult to find her if she's alive and in the city.”

“Caloosha tells me she's left for Mombasa.”

“Isn't that what he says about Faahiye too?”

“That's right.”

“Have you asked Dajaal to look for her?”

He responded that he hadn't, and she reiterated that Dajaal could find anyone or anything; he was useful that way.

“Bile tells me that, among other things, you've come here to honor the memory of your mother,” she said. “I would like to join you in doing so for our mother too. They raised us together as one family. What did you have in mind?”

His prayers for his mother began right away, in his imagining, with the whistle of a red-and-yellow-breasted robin perched on the branch of the mango tree.

He said, “I would like somehow to mark my mother's passing, perhaps with a day of prayers, a gathering of some sort, most likely at The Refuge. But first I'd like to locate her grave and pay a visit, and then maybe commission the raising of a stone in prayer, in her memory. Nothing extravagant, like a mausoleum, but it would be good if I could in some way reclaim her troubled soul from the purgatory to which Caloosha helped relegate her.”

“The idea of using The Refuge to commemorate her life is wonderful,” she said. “I like it very much, and hope that Raasta is there to celebrate the marking with us.”

She released a long-suppressed snuffle.

He fell silent, ready to ask her pardon and take his leave, as soon as it was decent to do so.

WHEN HE RETURNED TO BILE'S, JEEBLEH INSERTED THE KEY IN THE LOCK but had difficulty opening it. The key would turn loosely, without engaging to move the bolt. Then he heard footsteps approaching cautiously, and guessing it might be Seamus, he announced himself: “It's me, Jeebleh!”

The bolt was released at once, the door opened, and Seamus stood there, broad as his smile.

“Is she off her rocker, as Bile believes?”

Jeebleh didn't answer, and walked past Seamus into the living room, where he sat down. His friend joined him. When he'd brought Seamus up to speed about his visit with Shanta, Jeebleh fell silent, exhausted from the effort of remembering what he had been through.

“What about the boy?” Seamus wanted to know. “Is he still there at Shanta's, refusing to leave until Raasta returns home to play with him?”

Jeebleh didn't reply, because he had other worries on his mind. He wore a sullen expression, his stare unfocused, as if he couldn't see or hear a thing.

Seamus, disturbed, tried to reach out in sympathy: “Are you okay?”

“I am.”

“But you've got the shakes!”

On edge, Jeebleh was getting worse by the second, and looking as if he might have a nervous breakdown right in front of Seamus. He held his stomach and, bending double, made as though he might bring up his worries. A portmanteau of jitters, he was short of breath, his eyes startled, as if his guts were being emptied, to be flown out of the country, as parts. He was showing a passive side to his nature, like someone not responsible for what he was doing. Yes, something was happening to the action man, and he wasn't able to fight it off. Jeebleh, known for his tough stances and rational behavior, looked unlike anything Seamus could ever have associated with him. “I don't like what's happening to me,” he said.