It is packed with men in uniform, seated on white plastic chairs around tables set unevenly into the gravel beneath; red light bulbs hang in a chain from one corner to the next and the drone of a generator masks the music from two large speakers.
The men glance up from their card games and meals to judge the woman in their midst.
‘Is this OK?’ Roble asks, pointing to a dark table under a bougainvillea bush.
Filsan knows what the stares mean. That she is a whore to be seen in public with a man she isn’t married to. Their eyes are still on her as she slips into her chair. A waiter in a black bow tie and shoes with the soles slapping free appears quickly beside Roble. He orders two colas and a lamb platter.
Slowly attention drifts away from Filsan back to the red nucleus of the restaurant.
‘Bedus,’ Roble smiles. ‘You would think they have never seen a woman before.’
‘Uneducated, that is all.’
‘Or jealous.’ Roble strokes her little finger with his knuckle.
‘Don’t do that.’ Filsan snatches her hands from his reach.
He raises his palms in acquiescence.
A fawn barely a foot high creeps close to their table, shivering nervously; Filsan takes a pistachio from the bowl on the table and holds it out on her hand. It comes nearer and nearer and sniffs Filsan’s palm. It is a thing of sublime beauty the large black eyes and extravagant eyelashes, the caramel coat, the delicacy of its bones. It refuses the pistachio and skits over to another table.
‘Why are you not married already?’ he asks.
‘No one has wanted me.’
‘Do you know the reason why?’
‘No, why?’ Filsan smiles with surprise; she decides to be candid tonight, to not hold back for once.
‘Because you act like you don’t need anybody.’
‘I don’t need anyone, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want certain things.’
‘And those certain things are?’
‘Someone by my side, on my side, who I can share my thoughts with, I guess.’
Roble lights a cigarette, adding another pin-prick of light to the dark. ‘Thoughts about the organisational budget of our office or other thoughts?’
‘All kinds. You wouldn’t guess how far and deep my thoughts reach.’
‘Ahh, so you are philosophising up there in your little room.’
The waiter returns with a tray piled high with rice and a lamb shoulder, and two cola bottles rough with reuse.
‘Sometimes, and other times I am just wishing something good would happen in my life.’
‘Something like me?’
Filsan raises an eyebrow ‘That is very arrogant.’
‘Accepted, but is it wrong?’
‘I don’t know yet. Why have you suddenly become so attentive?’
‘Time. We have much less time than we realise, especially as soldiers, and I don’t want to wait for anything.’
Filsan lifts the bottle to her mouth to hide her smile. ‘That is very dramatic. But our office is pretty safe, isn’t it?’
‘For now, but don’t worry, you have me to protect you.’
‘I think I would be better at protecting you.’
‘You would type them into submission, I’m sure.’
Roble walks Filsan back to the barracks. The curfew has shut the civilians inside their homes, with only faint smells of charcoal and spice and paraffin lights hinting at their existence. The street is dark and deserted, apart from the squeak and rustle of stray cats chasing mice and the soldiers at the checkpoint talking softly over the hiss of a radio. Filsan looks up; the sky stretched over them like a dome is alive with stars, thin black clouds with haloes of white and silver pass over the half moon – it is a city up there, teeming with life.
‘You know that on clear nights you can spot satellites?’
‘I’ve heard that. In Mogadishu there are too many lights to see anything like this.’ Filsan carries on staring at the heavens and stumbles over a stone.
Roble catches her by the waist and rights her; for a moment her hands rest on his and then she pushes them away.
They stroll slowly to the barracks, unafraid. Filsan remembers reading once that the night was made for lovers, each pair invisible to the rest. It was in a romance novel she had found under her bed, left behind by Rahma.
A sharp wind runs through the street, billowing out Roble’s cotton shirt and forcing Filsan to wrap her shawl tighter. They are nearly at the barracks.
‘You should stop here in case anyone sees you,’ Filsan says, turning to him and holding out her hand. ‘See you tomorrow.’
Roble chuckles at her formality but shakes her hand.
He waits for her to pass the sentry gate and enter the compound. Out of sight in the stairwell, Filsan watches him turn and walk away. She feels a pang in her chest as he strides, head bowed, into the dark; he seems so lonely, so vulnerable, prey to whatever ghosts or beasts might assail him. Filsan begins to blow a kiss at his back but feels ridiculous and just follows his white shirt as it disappears into the night, like a ship’s sail surrounded by high waves and low clouds.
Instead of the dreams she expected – tender, candlelit, sublime – Filsan sinks into a nightmare. She stands on a dark plain, just her and the elders, their backs against the wall of an intact berked. The wind howls all around them, whipping away the words that emanate from her mouth; she carries no rifle or pistol but a great serrated knife that shines in the grey light. The white pilgrim robes of the elders flick and snap against the bluster but they are silent. Filsan raises a leg and steps forward, gravity disappears, her step becomes a jump, a flight and she pedals desperately down. Floating past the tallest elder she grabs his arm and anchors herself to him. His skin is frigid and in his empty eye sockets are distant twisting whorls. Filsan touches his chest but there is no heartbeat, no exhalation or inhalation; the body is a hard shell, perfectly preserved by the sterile moon air. The berked behind is full to the brim with powdery white dust. The abyss beyond is starless, featureless, and seems to reach into eternity. Filsan sees that the only shelter to be found is inside this body. She saws at the elder’s neck with the knife, the skin clinking like metal against the blade, spitting out bright sparks. Arduously, Filsan draws the knife back and forth, raising blisters on her palms, until the metal jugular is slit open. Holding onto the elder’s robes, avoiding the void of his gaze, she lowers her arm and rotates her aching shoulder. She lifts the knife once again and turns to the incision she has made, a trickle of liquid slowly seeping out from the hollow within; pressing a finger into it, she scrutinises the stain. It is thin, bright blood. Seeing no alternative, she continues to force her way inside him, blood smearing the knife, her hands, her cheek. The head creaks back and falls to the dirt. Filsan tries to squeeze through the aperture but can fit no more than an arm inside, blood splashing through her fingers. There is nowhere to go but the abyss that pulls at her.
She starts awake in her bed and switches on the overhead light, certain that her slick, cold hands are covered in blood. She holds them near her eyes and they are clean, with the same brown lines on the palms and plump fingers as always. She rests her cheek on the pillow hoping for the dread to pass.
‘We will not be forgotten so easily,’ the elders seem to say.
‘I will outrun you,’ she replies, and throws the sheets away from her.
She leaves the barracks without visiting the bathroom or kitchen, and washes her face once she has got to the office. The sun rises through the barred windows and slowly the elders recede from her thoughts. She starts on the pile of reports she was too distracted to complete the day before. One particularly thick document contains sightings of a rebel commander, sported in Ethiopia but also within Somalia itself, inside the Oriental Hotel if the Guddi were to be believed. Filsan has noticed that the Guddi act as if false information is better than no information at all, but their constant machinations against one individual or organisation makes her j
ob ten times more difficult.
Outside a convoy of police cars streams past, sirens screeching. Filsan leaves her chair and stands by the window. A fire is burning in the direction of the Regional Security Council headquarters in the old District Commissioner’s house; the shouts of protesters are muffled under the sirens. A column of black smoke stands in the sky like a giant jinn escaped from a bottle. She picks up the phone and rings the number for Birjeeh; a busy tone wails back at her and she returns to the window. In that column of smoke she sees weeks of work and investigations; whoever set the council building on fire has thrown a gauntlet down to the government: if they can reach such a secure site there is nowhere they can’t penetrate.
Roble enters alongside Colonel Magan, the Mobile Military Court prosecutor. Filsan thinks she can see a hint of a smile on the Colonel’s face as he sits briskly behind Roble’s desk. A failure at the Regional Security Council could be a victory for him.
‘Do any of these damn things work?’ Magan shouts as he stabs at the burtons on the telephone.
She tries to catch Roble’s eye but he is staring down at the Colonel with a furrowed brow.
‘Dead.’ Colonel Magan replaces the earpiece, pulls his chair further in to the desk and gestures for them to stand before him. He has the face of a bird of prey: small-eyed, hooked-nosed and menacing. He winds his sinuous fingers together and rests his chin on his knuckles.
Filsan stands to attention in front of him and holds her hands nervously behind her back.
‘We need to get this situation under control. The fire at the council building is just a diversion. The real disaster was last night at Mandera prison,’ he taps his knuckles against his jaw and breathes in deeply, ‘where the rebels attacked and freed most of the prisoners.’
Roble finally glances towards her and she meets his gaze eagerly.
‘The roads to the east are closed for the time being and every infantry unit in the area has been sent to the border to stop the NFM smuggling their comrades out of the country. You will have patrol duty seven times a week and will be given additional instructions as soon as I receive them. I will be in meetings at Birjeeh for the rest of the day. I want you, Captain Yasin, to identify as many collaborators as you can and find out what they know about the prison escape.’
The creaky unwieldy machinery of the Somali National Army cranks up a gear after the prison attack. Within four weeks the Saba’ad militia receive their grenade launchers and an instructor to teach the use of them, more militias are raised in camps across the desert, and Filsan makes arrangements for divisions of troops from Beledweyne, Kismayu, Merka, Galkayo and Mogadishu to be quartered in government buildings across Hargeisa, including in their own office. Roble talks incessantly on the telephone, a pen behind his ear, organising the smooth transfer of heavy weapons from Mogadishu to Hargeisa. The only respite they enjoy is the security patrol they conduct in Guryo Samo neighbourhood between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. every day. The security organisations have been broken up into fragmented units, competing against each other to dig out the roots of the NFM, information hoarded like treasure rather than exchanged. Three hours they spend in solitude, wandering up and down streets so sandy their boots sink up to the laces, ignored by everyone apart from the children who flee at their approach. It is the first time Filsan has carried a rifle since Salahley and the weight of it seems ominous, the power inside the barrels and coils and hammers harder to ignore as she shifts it constantly to the side.
The neighbourhood has a somnolent atmosphere; they joke about falling under a sleeping spell, but sometimes they yawn so much it seems possible. They buy soft drinks from a stall under a willow tree using government-issued vouchers, to the bald shopkeeper’s evident but silent displeasure. After each patrol they stagger back to the barracks in the watercolour light past an overgrown orchard, frail flowers tumbling over the wall and nodding their translucent heads with almost synchronised timing. Roble picks at the red and pink blooms sometimes and gathers them into a limp bouquet for Filsan, which she then hides under her tunic and retrieves in her room, pulling out the crushed, damp stems from between her breasts.
Four hundred of the rebels from Mandera prison are caught within a fortnight, mostly toothless old men who intend to keep their secrets locked in their rattling bones. Filsan and Roble are instructed to interrogate a man, Umar Farey, from Guryo Samo, who is suspected of organising anti-revolutionary meetings inside his hotel. In the former armoury of Birjeeh, Roble reveals a flair for violence that Filsan hadn’t expected. While she sits in front of a typewriter, volleying question after question at the hotelier, Roble stalks around aiming punches with precision. At one point Filsan begins to giggle. She covers her mouth and lets the feeling pass, but the detainee reminds her of a concussed cartoon character; she can imagine tweeting birds circling his head. Umar Farey tries to appear indifferent to the knocks, his head swivelling back rigidly each time to the front, his blank, bloodshot eyes focussed on her. She can feel the elders leaning over her shoulder to peer at the typed pages she has written, their breath on her neck tickling to an infuriating degree; she turns around and shouts, ‘In the name of God, leave me alone!’
‘What’s the problem?’ Roble snaps.
‘Sorry.’ She drops her head.
The interrogation lasts another hour but they gain no valuable information from it. The prisoner is escorted back to his cell with a bleeding nose and Filsan wraps Roble’s swollen knuckles in her handkerchief and buys him a bag of ice from a hawker to press against it. She nervously touches him, brushing dust off his shirt and checking his damaged hand regularly, but he is unusually taciturn.
‘Who were you talking to in there?’ he says finally, as they walk back to their office.
Filsan blinks rapidly and smiles a false smile. ‘No one.’
‘And why were you laughing?’
‘He looked ridiculous. The prisoner.’
‘It didn’t exactly make us look professional though, did it?’ Roble says sternly. ‘And it’s not just that. I catch you sometimes, staring into space for minutes at a time, your mind somewhere else completely.’
‘Do I?’ Filsan feels her face burning, almost as if a mask has been ripped away.
‘You’re not like any other woman I’ve known.’ He smiles, but there is no softness to his words. He looks at her as though she is crazy.
Filsan trots obediently beside him, head down, wondering how long he has been thinking this about her. She steals glances at him, trying to read his expression; his eyes are narrowed and his lips set in a firm line, but this has been his normal look recently. She keeps quiet, hoping his mood will change; maybe it is the interrogation that has soured it and he just needs time to forget about the stubborn hotelier and his lies.
Roble barely exchanges any words with Filsan all afternoon and hides behind a barricade of papers on his desk. By early evening the distance between them lessens and he agrees to walk her home. They reach the checkpoint closest to her barracks after nightfall; the soldiers are clustered around the radio, slender young men in woollen greatcoats made for stout Russian or German fighters. The only light comes from a weak torch that sends out circles of diminishing white light. The group unfurls at their approach; they salute Roble and look Filsan up and down, up and down.
‘There has been an attack on Burao, Captain,’ says the boy with the torch; his face is in shadow and all Filsan can see of it are his crooked teeth and pointed little chin.
‘When?’ barks Roble, snatching the radio from a soldier’s hand; there is only static coming from the speaker.
‘It’s not clear, sir, maybe a couple of hours ago. There is serious fighting, hundreds of rebels have besieged the town.’ His voice sounds like it hasn’t fully broken yet, or maybe he just can’t find the words to describe the situation he has been thrown into.
‘Where is your commanding officer?’
‘He was called to Birjeeh. They believe more rebels are on their way to Hargeisa and he’s or
ganising reinforcements to secure our area.’
Filsan clenches her rifle tight.
‘I have to stay until their officer returns.’ Roble pulls the strap of his rifle over his head and clicks the radio to another channel, where faint voices speak in acronyms to each other.
‘I’ll stay too, Captain.’ Filsan takes position behind the metal bar of the checkpoint.
‘Corporal, go back to your barracks and wait for further orders.’ He turns his back on her and holds the receiver to his ear before asking a soldier, ‘What kind of numbers are we talking about exactly in Burao?’
‘We have no idea, sir, communications keep failing.’
Filsan approaches Roble and whispers in his ear, ‘I want to stay with you.’
‘Just go, Filsan, this is serious.’
Meeting his eyes she feels a sudden surge of hatred towards him. What makes him think he is better than her? ‘I’m going, Captain.’
‘Walk her home,’ he orders to no one in particular, but she marches on ahead without waiting.
The road is a pale strip surrounded by black trees, black walls, black absences where lives should be. It is only seven p.m. but there is not a sound apart from the thud of her boots.
She checks over her shoulder, sees a soldier from the checkpoint following her half-heartedly at a distance; his presence irritates her more and she speeds up, promising herself that she will never even look at Roble again, that she will teach him a lesson for humiliating her. She knows she will see him at his desk the next day, excitedly describing how the rebel assault was bloodily put down in Burao.
She doesn’t pay attention when the bushes beside her seem to whisper and shift, her eyes are fixed on the side turning to the barracks and do not register the shrubs lifting up off the ground. She pushes a strand of hair away from her forehead and adjusts the rifle strap to stop the gun knocking against her thigh. All she wants is a shower and then to fall asleep.
The Orchard of Lost Souls Page 20