A few people emerge from the wide, dark entrance of the jail but not whom Deqo wants. They come out shielding their eyes from the light, their clothes crumpled and stained, but Deqo feels certain that her woman is unsulliable; she will smell as good on her release as she did when she went in.
A reverberation emanates from the direction of the bridge she has just crossed. Deqo takes a few steps towards it and watches a group of women, all dressed like her saviour, come slowly into view, a wave of red, white and brown crashing over the road, singing out in praise of the President and Somalia as they wave branches in the air. They march in rows of ten, some in the road, some clambering onto the pavement, an army of housewives invading the silence. Deqo ducks into an alleyway in case Milgo appears alongside them.
A Somali film crew run past. With their lumbering cameras, bags and microphones, they remind her of the foreign photographers who descended on Saba’ad during the cholera outbreak, stepping on people’s fingers and shoving cameras into their faces as they died silently on the ground. They had seemed friendly until they began to work, dominating the clinic as they littered it with cables, generators and so many different machines. They had filmed Old Sulaiman crying over his dead family, all four children and his wife wrapped in thin sheets ready for burial, his tears coursing down into his beard, their cameras less than a step away. He had survived but left the camp, not even a bundle on his back, abandoning his possessions for his neighbours to pick over. Some people said he went back to the Ogaden, others into the city, but he was never seen again.
The marchers wave their placards and shake their branches until the flow peters out, leaves and twigs are stomped into the tarmac in their wake. They take the life in the street with them and leave her with images of corpses lined up for burial outside of the clinic walls, the smell of them clinging to her skin like oil.
The stadium events are finally over and the dignitaries rise as the national anthem is played over the speakers. Filsan stands in a phalanx of soldiers just beneath General Haaruun. With the Guddi units safely despatched she has eased her way to the dais. There are two other female officers nearby but she is the closest, and she casts a competitive glance at them, hoping that the General will notice the sharpness of her uniform, the straightness of her back, the smartness of her salute. She has not eaten all day and her eyes are turning scenes into dreamscapes: spectral figures waving to her from the edge of her vision, the stands undulating with hands at their tips like surf, fires burning wherever the sun hits metal. A tap on her shoulder makes her jolt as the final strains of the anthem float away.
‘His Excellency wants you to be introduced to him.’ A sergeant with a star on each epaulette speaks in her ear.
‘Huh?’ She has waited for this moment for so long and that is all Filsan can say.
‘Quick, he is waiting.’ The sergeant turns his back and clicks his fingers for her to follow.
She rushes around the barrier and up the steps. Large electric fans stir the blue and white silken sheets covering the dais, and she feels like she is standing on a cloud as the wind pushes it across the sky.
Filsan dabs the sweat discreetly from her hairline and salutes General Haaruun.
‘At ease, soldier.’ His voice is smooth, soft, so comfortable in his power that he doesn’t need to bark it. ‘I always like to meet female comrades, encourage them in their career. What is your name?’
‘Adan Ali, Filsan, sir.’ She can’t look at him.
‘Which agency are you in?’
‘Internal Security, sir.’
‘Look up, comrade.’
Filsan raises her face and meets his gaze.
‘Are you from a military family?’
‘Yes, sir, my father is Irroleh.’
‘I trained with him in East Berlin. A wonderful soldier.’
It has worked. Her father’s name is like a key clicking in a lock; she can almost hear the door swinging open to her.
‘How is he?’
‘He is very well, sir, he is based in the ministry of defence,’ Filsan lies. Her father has been suspended and is currently at home while under investigation.
‘I will have to look him up next time I’m in Mogadishu. And you, how long have you been here?’
‘Just three weeks, sir.’
He smiles. ‘It’s a village, isn’t it?’
She smiles in return. He is like the men who carried her on their shoulders as a child, friendly giants with big hands and big laughs.
He turns to one of the foreign men and pushes his chair out, still addressing her. ‘Why don’t you accompany us to the Oriental Hotel, we can talk further there.’
Filsan grins and reveals her small, overlapping teeth. ‘Yes, sir!’ A knot of guards surround the General and she joins the outer shell protecting him.
He steps into his black Mercedes and drives away in a convoy. The sergeant who had called her now ushers her into his jeep. Let the Guddi clear up and deal with the stragglers and argumentative old women. She has studied and trained to take her place at the heart of things. The jeep speeds to the Oriental Hotel near the bridge, the grandest and oldest hotel in town.
General Haaruun enters ahead of them, his hand lightly touching the back of an Asian ambassador’s wife; he bows and lets her enter before him.
Filsan jumps out of the jeep and follows the dignitaries into the main hall. She has an urge to rush to the toilet and check her make-up and hair in the mirror, but the professional side of her scoffs at the idea. She has never set foot in this place but was practically raised in the hotels of Mogadishu, eating her meals in them while her father drank coffee and networked all day long. After her mother left and before they had found their housekeeper Intisaar, they had barely lived in their villa, only returning at night to sleep. She is deeply intimate with hotels – their structure and schedules, the smell of the blue soaps found in every hotel bathroom – but standing here surrounded by these worldly people she feels like a big-booted bedu staring at the mirrors and gilt-effect chandeliers. She wants to wrap herself in the long window drapes and hide like she did as a child when there were too many strangers in the house.
General Haaruun has a tumbler of drink in his hand, the same colour as the whisky her father enjoys; he swills it around the ice cubes as he speaks. He doesn’t look at Filsan at all but she waits awkwardly close, busying herself with the details of the room: the red bow ties of the waiters, the matching velveteen of the sofas and curtains, the lacquered finish to the dining table in the centre of the room. She isn’t sure what to do with her body, what role she is meant to be playing – protector, supplicant, daughter. Her back stiffens, slackens and stiffens again. Turning for a moment she grabs a glass from a passing tray and throws the drink down her dry throat. Cheap white wine sloshes over her taste buds and hits her stomach; pulling a face, she returns the glass to the tray and swivels back into position. She will wait until Haaruun is ready for her.
He is deep in mirthful conversation with the American attaché. English sentences from her school days come back to her and make her smile: ‘Could you please tell me how to get to Buckingham Palace?’; ‘I am waiting for the ten thirty to York’; ‘I have an urgent need to see a physician.’ She imagines Haaruun and the attaché speaking these sentences to each other, their whole conversation full of random declarations and questions.
None of the other guests approach her. Maybe if she weren’t in uniform they would think she was worth speaking to, but now they just crane their necks to look around her. There are soldiers outside that she can talk to but then General Haaruun might forget about her, jump into his car and drive away into the half-light of the late afternoon. She needs the patience of a bawab; those bare-chested black men in turbans standing in the background of harems, as immobile as stone, simultaneously absent and present, their eyes as bright as a cobra’s in the dark. She has nowhere better to be – just her tiny, bare room in the barracks with its slimy toilet and lumpy mattress.
‘
Comrade! Come join us.’ It is Haaruun.
Filsan’s knees click as she walks to his side.
The American has his hand on Haaruun’s shoulder, his grey shirt wet under the arms.
‘You speak English, right?’
‘I do, sir.’ Filsan is self-conscious about her strong accent but has studied well.
‘I was just telling our American friend how strong Somali women are, that we don’t have any of that purdah here. Women work, they fight in our military, serve as engineers, spies, doctors. Isn’t it so?’
‘Absolutely, we are not like other women.’ She nods fervently.
‘I bet you this girl could strip a Kalashnikov in a minute,’ the General boasts, placing his gold-rimmed sunglasses on top of his bald head.
‘Yes, and she could annihilate an Ethiopian battalion while unicycling. I don’t doubt it,’ the American laughs.
‘Look, buddy . . .’ General Haaruun grabs Filsan’s hand and raises it before twirling her around. ‘You’re going to tell me that American women can be trained killers and still look this good?’
Filsan fixes her gaze to the floor; she can feel others looking her up and down, eyes flicking over her like tongues.
‘Not bad, not bad. I wouldn’t want to meet her down a dark alley. Or maybe I would if it was the right kind of alley.’
General Haaruun clasps the attaché’s shoulder and hoots his approval before recovering himself. ‘Keep your capitalist hands to yourself.’ He mock-wags his finger in his face.
Filsan’s face burns hot, bringing tears to her eyes. She rushes away before they roll down, back to her corner as the lamps and chandeliers are lit across the room. She straightens her back and stands tall. Even in her uniform they see nothing more than breasts and a hole. He knows who her father is but still parades her like a prostitute. A waiter stops to glance at her; chest puffed out, barely a breath escaping her lips, she must look ready to burst.
‘Go to hell!’ she hisses.
He purses his lips to blow a kiss and grabs an empty glass from a nearby table.
One tear escapes down her left cheek and she scrapes it quickly away. The sky is black outside now, her reflection in the window shortened and stumpy-looking; she looks like an abandoned child on the verge of breaking down.
‘Comrade. Why don’t you let me drive you back to barracks?’ General Haaruun approaches and gestures to the door.
She hesitates but wants to salvage some of the hopes she had for the meeting, he might still offer her his patronage. Rearranging her features into an expression of gratitude, she nods acquiescence.
The Mercedes is parked two metres away from the hotel entrance. A young soldier bends to open the door but he waves him away. ‘Stay in the jeep,’ he orders.
General Haaruun holds the door open for Filsan and she slides in, holding her boots away from the upholstery. The windows are tinted black, and once the door has slammed shut they are in complete darkness with only the dials on the dashboard casting a fine red light over them.
Hargeisa is eerie at night. The electricity supply has been cut to make life difficult for the rebels, but the darkness feels portentous, and apparitions pass across the black windows as they race along, the glow of an occasional paraffin lamp radiating from a street-side shack. They are submariners passing through the deep sea, perhaps able to make it to dry land, perhaps not, strange creatures glubbing along on the other side of the glass.
‘Take your hat off.’ The General’s voice is more sober now.
Filsan unpins the hat from her head. Her hair is bundled up on top.
‘Let it out. Let me see it down.’
Filsan responds quickly to orders, she always has done, her father made sure of that. ‘Do it quickly and do it well,’ he instilled in her.
It takes a while to find and remove all of the metal pins; she gathers them in her lap and teases her hair down to her shoulders. It feels good to release the tension in her skull; her scalp tingles now, her fingertips making circles over it.
General Haaruun moves closer to her, the back seat squeaking beneath his weight. Filsan stares out of the windscreen, sees stray dogs and civilians diving into the headlights.
His hand is on her cheek, stroking it, his skin softer than she had expected, the smell of lotion faint on his fingers.
He moves closer again.
The driver’s eyes are framed in the rear-view mirror, looking back at her.
‘Ina Irroleh, daughter of Irroleh, look at me.’
The mention of her father is like a thunderbolt striking her ears. He is watching her now, she knows it; he can see her sitting in the back of this car and the veins in his temple are rising and tightening.
General Haaruun holds her chin and turns her face to him. ‘I can make your life so easy, whatever you want is yours.’
‘My father wouldn’t like this.’
He moves his hand down, brushing her thighs and then squeezing her knee. ‘You think your father doesn’t do this to girls he meets?’ He pushes his hand up her thigh and against her crotch. ‘You’re a virgin, aren’t you? A clean girl,’ he whispers in her ear.
Filsan is deep underwater now, unable to breathe or even swallow; she will never make it to dry land.
‘Please stop, my father . . .’ she hears herself mutter.
‘Who cares about him? He is an old drunk. Think about what is good for you.’ Both his arms wrap around her, one hand padding around for her belt and zip.
The driver’s eyes are still on them.
Filsan grabs General Haaruun’s hand and throws it away. ‘No! No! No!’ She hits his chest with both palms at each word. ‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Stop the car!’ he shouts.
They screech to a stop and the jeeps behind fan out around the car.
Reaching around to the door handle, he opens the passenger door and pushes Filsan out of the car. ‘Abu kintiro, you cunt, make your own way home.’
Filsan lands on her knees in plain view of maybe twenty soldiers, the jeep headlights making the scene as bright as day.
The door thuds behind her and the Mercedes skids and then drives off. Darkness huddles around her as the convoy pulls away. She rises to her feet, her head whirring, and walks to the nearest light source.
The jail is where people’s stories end, thinks Kawsar. Whoever you are, whatever ambitions you nurse, however many twists and turns it has taken to arrive there, it is like the heart of a spider’s web that you eventually wind your way to. More women and girls have entered the cell and there are about fifty prisoners now. No one has used the bucket but the prostitute’s son has made a mess that still stinks an hour later. The lack of space means the youngest inmates are forced to stand; some of them are street-looking girls who seem unruffled by the whole experience, while others tremble in school uniforms. They crowd around her for comfort and she wishes she could extend her arms around all of them, Hodan must have wept through the night in this dank hole.
‘Kawsar? Where is Kawsar?’ The policewoman raps on the bars.
‘Here!’ It takes three attempts to rise to her feet, her knees making a loud crack as she finally succeeds.
‘This has been delivered for you.’ She holds up a bundle wrapped in a towel.
‘Is she still here?’ Kawsar asks plaintively.
‘No, I sent them home.’ She unlocks the door and hands it over. ‘Be careful, it’s hot.’
It smells good even through the cotton: coriander, pepper, cloves, garlic.
She is the first to be given food, but she can’t eat while the others go hungry. She approaches the young girls and gestures that they should eat with her.
She unwraps the towel and inside is a lidded saucepan with a stack of round roodhis folded to the side of it. Steam escapes as she lifts the lid. A lamb and potato stew fills the pot, more than she would ever be able to eat alone. Gingerly, like cats, the girls gather around the food.
Kawsar passes the bread around and there are still four or five i
n her hand; she turns to China, ‘Come and eat, you need milk for your son.’
China scrunches up her nose and shakes her head. ‘I have my own asho to wait for.’
Kawsar dips a piece of bread into the stew, twisting it around a cube of potato. The bread is Maryam English’s and the stew Dahabo’s – she knows their cooking well enough. They must have paid laluush to ensure that it didn’t become the guards’ dinner; she makes a mental note to repay them.
The girls have overcome their shyness, reaching deep into the stew. Their fingers are dirty, so are her own, there is no way of cleaning them, but it still makes Kawsar queasy to look at the thick line of dirt under one girl’s fingernails. Her stomach is tiny these days, one small meal a day is sufficient; she finishes one roodhi then leaves the remainder to them.
‘Kawsar! Come out, you’re wanted,’ the policewoman bellows through the bars.
‘What is this? The Kawsar hotel? What about us? I have been sat here all day with my infant,’ China shouts.
‘Hush, dhilloyeh! Whore! Keep your mouth closed if you don’t want us to shut it for you.’
Kawsar is embarrassed. She wonders if Dahabo has told them that her husband had once been chief of police in Hargeisa.
‘This way.’ Amber light fills the corridor; they turn the opposite way to the exit, even deeper into the building, and then down narrow concrete steps into the basement.
‘Are my neighbours back? Have they paid?’ she asks the policewoman.
‘You’re not free that easily.’ She knocks on a yellow door and then pushes the handle and looks inside the room. ‘Here she is.’
‘Let her in,’ a voice says.
‘Watch what you say,’ the policewoman whispers and then opens the door wide.
It is the female officer who brought her to the police station. She is less polished now, with her hair stuffed clumsily under her beret and her make-up smudged under the eyes. A bare light bulb of low wattage illuminates just the table and her pale face and hands. The windowless room still smells of the prisoners who have passed through – their exhaled breath, their sweat and the tang of their blood.
The Orchard of Lost Souls Page 3