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Kept in a tiny cubicle, where it was impossible for a tall man like him to stand to his full height, he did what he could to remain fit, exercising within the limited space. But things were made even less tolerable, physically and mentally, when a month before the collapse of the state, more draconian security measures designed to confound the prisoners were introduced. He was kept in a dark room, allowed no contact with anyone, including the wardens. Then he was taken out of isolation and made to share a cubicle with petty thieves and other riffraff. Bile couldn't say whether he preferred total isolation in a dark cubicle to confinement in the same cramped space with lowminded thugs, who wouldn't let him be.

He remembered how at long last he had risen later that afternoon of liberation, only to find that his knees had stiffened, and his hip joints were as tight as rigor mortis. Nonetheless, he took a healthy long step with the stronger leg, swung the rest of his unwilling body around, and carried himself out of prison. It was that first, willing step that eventually brought him to Raasta, his niece.

And what a girl!

Now showered, shaved, and restless, Bile went to Raasta's room, where he found himself reliving a most pleasant memory: the day she was born. The image that stood out was one of a wet thing in his embrace, curled up, fists tight, as if she held the entire cosmos in her clasp. Asleep, she might have been a kitten delighting in the sound of its own purr. She was exceptionally beautiful, eyes the shape of almonds, mulberry-colored lips forever parted.

When she was born, there were four of them in the room: Shanta, her mother, half dead from exhaustion; Faahiye, her father; the midwife; and him. Faahiye, who was prone to going off in a dark rage, reminded Bile of a bird with its wings stuck in the mud it had wallowed in, clumsily trying to fly.

The girl was a few days old when it was discovered that she drew people to herself. They came by the hundreds whenever there was fighting, which was most of the time. People fleeing turned up at the house with the big compound, where they all stayed for the first few months of the civil war. They felt safe in her vicinity. Word went around that she was “protected,” and so were those who found themselves near her. As a result, more escapees in search of safety from the fighting arrived to camp in the compound. At the time, there was no telling whether Faahiye was exaggerating when he claimed that “peace of mind will descend, halo-like, on whoever holds the girl in his or her embrace.” Bile bore witness to the fact that Raasta, whose birth name was Rajo, meaning “hope,” was always calm. She was rarely given to crying, even when she wet herself, as other babies of her age did. Nor did she cry when she was hungry. She was a miracle child, gaining everyone's trust, serving as a conduit for peace, enabling any two people at odds with each other to talk and make up. Nothing troubled her more than words of disregard hurled by people at each other in front of her. In her presence, her parents, to their credit, tolerated each other, in contrast to their mighty quarrels when she wasn't around.

She was equally popular with children and adults, and had a way of attracting virtual strangers, who willingly fed from the open palm of her charm. Occasionally she displayed a sense of discomfort in the company of immediate members of her family, who knew no self-restraint and were in the habit of losing their tempers.

Raasta shared a spiritual closeness with Bile, whom she treated like a surrogate parent.

She was never bored; she seldom seemed lonely, even when alone. She jabbered, improvising stories with which she entertained herself. It was clear that other people were in need of her, not she of them. And she always had an entourage of children in tow. Some came from poor backgrounds and were in rags, the younger ones with wet noses and eyes crawling with famished flies; still others brought along kwashiorkor bellies, drop foot, rickets, and other complaints. At the age of three, Raasta had gone about The Refuge with pocketfuls of vitamins that she distributed to the other children, earning herself the nickname Dr. Dreadlock, bestowed on her by the Africa director of UNICEF, who was on a fact-finding mission after the U.S. withdrawal. Even earlier, her intelligence knew no bounds. Bile remembered how she learned languages as soon as she heard the first fricative consonant of the new tongue, or was asked to repeat the guttural in place of the vowel sound of a monosyllabic derivative. By the time she was three, she could speak, read, and write three languages. At five and a half, her mastery of a few more tongues was exemplary.

Bile had thought he could get used to anything, because he had survived years of detention and many more of humiliation at the cruel hands of his half brother. Getting accustomed to Raasta's absence, though, was proving impossible. She had been the only constant in his life since he regained his freedom. He might have achieved as much as he had without her help, or done whatever he had done without her input. But he most certainly would not have cherished life as the sweet thing it had become if it had not been for her. She had taught him what it meant to be happy.

At times, he believed that his most dear darling had gone simply because she was fed up with the way her parents quarreled; at other times, he believed she had been kidnapped.

 

 

TEARS OF SORROW WET BILE'S FACE AS HE RELIVED THE LAST EVENING HE had spent with his niece. It had been early evening, when, tucked in bed, comfortable, and ready to sleep, he had told a folktale to Raasta and her playmate Makka. As had been his custom, he had lain between them, each girl with her head on his shoulder, to listen attentively to a tale about two giants.

BILE WAS DRESSED, BUT NOT READY TO FACE THE DAY. HE SAT AT HIS DESK, which was pushed into a corner. Close to his right hand were three telephones, each linked to one of the city's networks. There was a fax machine, and two mobile phones.

He thought back to a conversation he had had years before with Seamus and Jeebleh. For some three years, they had lived together in an apartment in Padua, in Italy. He couldn't remember which of them had described their friendship as “a country—spacious, giving, and generous.” They held no secrets from one another, and lived out of one another's pockets, sharing all.

At the time, Jeebleh was doing his dissertation on Dante's
Inferno,
casting the epic into a poetic idiom comprehensible to a Somali; Bile was studying medicine; and Seamus was working on a postgraduate degree in Italian. Who would've thought that the three of them had discussed even then what Somalia would be like if the country plunged into anarchy? Reflecting on the
Inferno
made Bile shift to the recent past, and a conversation from a week before, when he had taken Seamus to the airport. They were, perhaps unsurprisingly, discussing hell.

Seamus was arguing that hell was a state of mind, not a place with its own territoriality, where the perpetrators of evil were condemned to serve an afterlife of punishments. Bile had reminded his Irish friend that in the Koran, the word for “hell” was specifically derived from “fire.” And he had quoted the Prophet, who, when asked to qualify the relationship between “hell” and “fire,” explained that the former was “more than the fires of the world by sixty-nine parts, every part of which is equal to all the fires of the world!” A sinner experiencing hell would feel as though he were wearing shoes or thongs made of fire, as though the brain in his head were melting. “It's like being thrown into a boiling copper furnace!” Bile said. Not quite sure of his facts, Seamus wondered whether the Arabic word for “hell” was not based on the Jewish concept Gehenna. To which Bile responded that, according to the Koran, Gehenna “is the purgatorial hell through whose gates all Muslims pass.”

Seamus countered with an Irish fable. A blacksmith deep in debt sells his soul to Satan in exchange for wealth. There is one proviso, however: he'll lose everything and die if he doesn't repay the loan in seven years. When the allotted time is up, Satan presents himself before the blacksmith to remind him of their contract. The blacksmith pleads for an extension, which is granted. At the end of this period, he pleads for more time, and again his request is granted. But when he asks for a third extension, Satan will not oblige. He takes possession of the man's soul. And the blacksmith dies.

The dead blacksmith comes to the gates of heaven, where he meets Saint Peter, who reminds him that because he has sold his soul to the devil in exchange for wealth, he is not welcome. With no other choice, the blacksmith goes to the gates of hell. There, the devil gleefully informs the unhappy fellow that he is not welcome in hell either. When he learns that no amount of pleading will help, he asks Satan, “But where am I to go, then? Where can someone like me go, a man with no soul, no wealth, no power, and no friends to intercede on his behalf?”

“Make your own hell!” Satan tells him.

And so, Seamus concluded, “hell is a warlord who's ransomed his soul to Satan, in exchange for elusive power.” Then he got on a plane bound for Dublin, leaving Bile alone in Mogadiscio.

 

 

THREE OF THE TELEPHONES ON BILE'S DESK STARTED RINGING SIMULTANEOUSLY, though not in any coordinated manner, because the phone companies were owned by subsidiaries of companies based in the United States, Norway, and Malaysia, and the tones they used were different. He didn't like to answer telephones at random. Then all three phones stopped ringing, only for one to resume after a brief pause. Bile picked it up, because he knew from the code that Dajaal, his man Friday, would be at the other end of the line.

Dajaal asked, “Is there any errand you would like me to run before I see you in half an hour?”

“Yes,” said Bile. “I'd like you to pick up my friend Jeebleh from his hotel, and to bring him here. In fact, I'd appreciate it if you came here first, so I can give you a note for him, just in case you don't find him there. I want him to know that I'd like to see him right away.”

Dajaal asked, “Do I go armed or unarmed?”

Bile did not answer immediately, because one of the phones had resumed ringing. Then he reminded himself that this was the first time Dajaal had put such a question to him, though he had offered to serve as Bile's hit man, when word circulated that men allied to an illicit group with links to Mogadiscio's underworld had kidnapped Raasta. Dajaal knew what was what, but Bile was a man of peace; he would not countenance such a heinous thought. Carrying a firearm was contrary to everything Bile held dear, anathema to his professional ethics as a doctor. “I would prefer for you to go unarmed. And in any case, I would like you to bring my friend Jeebleh here unharmed!”

He hung up, and let the other phone ring and ring and ring. He enjoyed an inner calm, as he thought about meeting Jeebleh, hugging and welcoming him warmly.

JEEBLEH SLEPT A TROUBLED SLEEP.

He dreamt of taking part in fierce clan fighting. He was serving as an auxiliary to Caloosha, who, as commander, saw to the deadly operation. Caloosha was at the wheel of the battlewagon. Trained as an attack animal, Jeebleh took pure delight in the killing spree: happy to be on such a savage mission, in which no prisoners were taken, and in which women were first disemboweled and emptied of their babies, then raped.