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The moment grew in importance; things weren't going to be the same from then on. Raasta was in her own element.

She walked over to her father, whom she embraced, then kissed. And when at long last she came to where Jeebleh was, he didn't rise; instead, he went into a crouch, half kneeling, and waited. He didn't want to be daring; this was not the moment to be brave, take her in his arms, lift her up and plant on her cheeks warm, loving kisses. He let her determine what was to happen. So she embraced him as you embrace someone dear to you, not because you know him but because you've heard his name mentioned often and in an endearing way. She knew how to draw lines, Raasta did. She said to him, in as grown-up a tone of voice as she could muster under all the excitement, “I'm very glad to meet you, Uncle Jeebleh!”

Then because Makka was giggling, her finger pointing at Jeebleh's hair, Raasta put her hand on her lips, both to suggest that Makka stop misbehaving and to stop herself from giggling too. Jeebleh touched the uncut side and said to the girls, “Do you like my haircut?”

They both nodded, giggling.

And then silence.

There was no denying the fact that together and in such a setting, they represented joy itself, their expressions set in happiness, their smiles genuine, and the words they used connecting them lovingly. There was something malleable about their togetherness, as manageable and pliant as dough in the hands of an expert baker. Raasta looked away with amusement every time her gaze fell on Jeebleh's hair. Makka came and touched it again, and then giggled for a long time.

“Who or what did you see on the way here?” Raasta now asked her father.

“We saw a cow chewing a bag, choking!”

The news upset Raasta, who said reproachfully, “Why do you do that sort of thing, talk about a cow dying in misery, when we're doing our best to welcome Uncle Jeebleh?”

“I'm sorry, my sweet!” he apologized.

And he held the two girls to himself, hugging and kissing them. Makka, though not ill at ease, freed herself from his embrace. She took Raasta's face in her hands, a face in the shape of an infant moon, then demonstrated a clock face with her arms, the minute and hour hands in slow forward motion. Faahiye wore a soft, tender smile as he clowned for Makka, who laughed. Jeebleh stood fascinated, moved to see them all together and happy.

Jeebleh admired the handsome features of the house: high ceilings, exquisite furniture, tiled kitchen floor, fittings still intact, clean and lovely. When he saw the dishes washed, drip-drying in the kitchen, the tea towels clean and hanging where they should, the fresh flowers in the vase on the dining table, he remembered the desolate life that Shanta had been leading, and he was sad. He wondered whether there was another adult sharing the house with the three of them—most probably a woman?

“What would you like us to do now?” Faahiye said.

Makka was repeating something over and over. Eventually Jeebleh figured out the word: “Perform!” He saw that Faahiye and Raasta were both seated and waiting for Makka's performance to start. Smiling all the while, Makka might have been a girl taking pride in her acrobatic skills, showing off what she could do, feats she had seen on television, Jeebleh guessed. When she was done and everyone applauded, Makka was over the moon.

A few minutes later, Jeebleh heard the sounds of a television from upstairs. His memory took him back to his visit to Caloosha's, and the sound of soaps coming from an upstairs room. Understandably, he didn't wish to know more than he ought to, or to get involved in matters that weren't his concern. He looked away, embarrassed, and his evasive gaze settled on a lemon tree in the garden, gorgeously committed to holding what there was of the sun in its leaves.

 

 

“I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU!” RAASTA SAID.

She was to Makka like a parent to an infant, and she set about organizing a play corner where Makka could keep herself occupied, as a parent wanting to speak to her peers about something important might do. She placed a box of beads close to Makka, who wore a single talismanic bead, blue, around her neck. Makka contentedly started stringing beads together. Faahiye made himself scarce, evidently to tidy up.

“I've heard a lot about you, from Uncle Bile, and you've been with me for a long, long time, from my birth. Now I know your face, and I'm very glad.”

Jeebleh didn't know what to say. The questions gathering in his head were growing unruly, tripping over one another, each insisting on being given precedence. The sound of his breathing made him think of a door bolt going home. He fussed at his eye, cleaning it. Finally he said, “I know very little about you!”

“There is time yet,” she said. “There is!”

His breathing strained under the tension he felt. The firearm became obtrusive, weighing even more heavily on him. He didn't dare remove it, lest she should see it. Who knows, she might run off, and not want to see him ever again. He didn't want that to happen. Finally he was able to formulate a question: “How have you been?”

“We are good,” she said.

“Are you fed well?”

“Better than most.”

He asked tentatively, “Are things better now?”

“Things have been better in the last two days.”

“Because Daddy is back?”

“They've been kinder, since his return.”

“Who are ‘they'?”

Jeebleh could sense her instant withdrawal. Her eyes shamefully downcast, she said, “I am not sure.”

“Who is the person upstairs?”

“A woman,” she said.

“A woman?”

“She cooks for us, looks after us. Washes our clothes, makes up our beds, cleans after us. We found her here. She says little, and does what we tell her to.”

“Will you miss her?”

“No,” Raasta said. “I miss Uncle Bile, I miss my mother, I miss Uncle Seamus.”

She was a formidable girl, able to draw you into her comfort-giving world against your better judgment, if she chose to. He had fallen under her spell right away, because, he reasoned, she was accustomed to being loved, trusted, and obeyed. Looking at her now, and imagining the horrid things that she had been through, not to mention the uncertainties she had lived with as a kidnapping victim, Jeebleh was impressed with her perseverance, her noble bearing for one so young. Her clothes were almost rags, and so were Makka's. Raasta had presumably outgrown hers, and yet she appeared impervious to the state of her clothing, like a duck getting wet in a tropical downpour.

She lapsed into a reflective mood, and withdrew into a private space he was in no position to reach. Jeebleh imagined her to be tough in the self-protective way of a tortoise withdrawing its softer head and legs. Was she thinking through her troubled thoughts? It would be unwise to push her, to try to make her speak. He should give her time, so that the trauma of being held prisoner might melt away. He would let her find peace in her silence, if that was what she was after. He said, “Everything will be all right.”

“I am beginning to think so too,” she replied, eagerly but absently, as tears appeared in her eyes.

Like all exceptional persons, no matter what their age or disposition, she was as prepared to show her strengths and perseverance as she was willing to demonstrate her weaknesses. And so when it came to weeping, she did so discreetly and undemonstratively, as a mother might in the presence of her child. This grown-up behavior too impressed Jeebleh.

“Shall we go?” she said.

“Where?”

“Home.”

Jeebleh didn't know what answer to give. He was not sure whether Faahiye had up-to-the-minute instructions as to what he might or might not do, and did not know what their fates would be if they tried to leave. Nor had he any idea with whom Faahiye dealt, whether communications were by mobile phone, in dribs and drabs, on a need-to-know basis, or in person, direct from the head of the conspiracy. “Let's ask your daddy,” he suggested.

“Let's,” she said, and was just about to shout and ask whether it was okay to go home, back to her mother, Uncle Bile, and Uncle Seamus, when a ruckus was raised outside.

It was the kind of sound that might have been created by a rutting he-donkey chasing a she-donkey up and down a stone-filled alleyway. It ranked with the hideous racket Jeebleh remembered Italian youths making on their motorcycles through the streets of Padua at siesta time. How were the two girls coping? Raasta, out of sympathy, went to Makka's play corner to hold her in a comforting embrace, to assure her that all would be well, not to worry. When Faahiye asked what on earth was going on, Jeebleh, because he had a firearm, volunteered to find out. He stood beside a window, weapon in hand, ready to put it to use.

Faahiye stayed behind with the girls.

Glancing up the stairs to the second floor, Jeebleh heard that the television had just been switched off. He was tempted to ask who was there, but he chose instead to devote what energy he had to discovering the cause of the ruckus, which showed no signs of letting up.

But he was relieved now to see who was making the noise—Qasiir, armed and Stetsoned, in a car with three of his mates, two of them armed, the other at the wheel. The car was a collectible Ford, a flivver most likely left behind by an American or a European seconded to UNOSOM. Tied to the back, dragging along behind, were several empty tin cans. As soon as Qasiir spotted Jeebleh, who was on the porch, waving, the car stopped, and so did the unearthly noise. “It's only me and my friends,” Qasiir said. “This is fun—but maybe not as much as you're having. Look at your haircut—cool! Are you all right? How are the girls?”

Again, Clint Eastwood to the rescue. “What a delightful young man,” Jeebleh told Faahiye, who had joined him. He put the firearm away, smiling, and noticed the stale sweat staining the armpits of Faahiye's dark shirt. Jeebleh's face was now daubed with relief.

He waited for Qasiir and his friends to get out of the car before asking how they had traced them to the house. Qasiir and another of the youths were busy untying the cans from the car, when two more vehicles came into view. Jeebleh assumed he and Faahiye were now in trouble; here was the head of the conspiracy come to put an end to the insurgency, they wouldn't be allowed to leave with the girls. Hope drained out of him. But Qasiir called out: “No need to worry. It's only Grandpa, our backup!”

The first car contained Dajaal and a driver. In the second, a battlewagon, were some seven or eight youths with machine guns and rocket launchers. Kaahin was up front, next to the youth at the wheel. Dajaal and Kaahin got out of their respective vehicles and remained where they were, poised to deal with any problem that might come up the road.

Jeebleh's script had called for no fighting, for please-no-guns peace. Accordingly, he went over to Dajaal and gave the revolver back to him, with a whispered “Thank you.” Then he lapsed into confusion, as in the script, and paying no attention to the humorous remarks about his fashionable hairstyle, he walked with Raasta and Makka at either side to the warmed vehicle and got in.

They moved in convoy, the car carrying Jeebleh and the girls safely between the battlewagon, now carrying Dajaal, and the Ford. Only when they got to The Refuge did Jeebleh realize that Faahiye had not come.

He wondered why.

But this did not deter him from taking pride in their achievement, the recovery of the girls without a gunfight. Everything would be revealed when Raasta, once she was out of her trauma, relaxed into telling her story.

THE STORY OF HOW DAJAAL AND THE OTHERS HAD TRACKED JEEBLEH TO the house where he met the girls was a lot less complicated than the one about how the girls had been taken as captives. After supper, with Makka asleep in The Refuge, Raasta showed herself stronger than anyone had imagined. She was ready to speak of her ordeals. Even though he didn't always follow what was being said, Seamus stuck around to listen, and was satisfied with the summaries he was given—but sorry that, in her trauma, Raasta had forgotten how to string together a sentence in English.

Her story disagreed with the version circulated earlier on one major point: the nature of the car in which they had been driven away. Raasta described it as a black four-door no fancier than Uncle Bile's sedan. In it were four men wearing shades. When pushed into it from behind, she saw Makka lying on the floor in the back, not moving a muscle. The car traveled at frightening speed, a dilapidated battlewagon leading the way. When Raasta resisted, a muscular man held her down to stop her from screaming; he injected her with a hypodermic syringe with a clear solution, which knocked her out.