Filsan ascribes the crack of a twig breaking behind her to a stray animal, the scent of musty sweat to her long physical day but a fluttering doubt makes her stop and turn around.
Stretched across the road are jinns with tangled branches growing from their heads and arms; she reaches out to touch one of the silhouetted figures and is surprised to feel real flesh against her fingers.
‘Raise your hands,’ the jinn demands in a Hargeisa accent, before drawing a Kalashnikov up to her face.
PART THREE
Kawsar’s door withstands five heavy bangs before smashing open. She turns to find an adolescent soldier dressed in a camouflage jacket in her room; their eyes meet for an instant before he retreats. The door clicks back into place but the bar lock is broken, swinging from its screws.
‘Well?’ says a voice behind him.
‘Ransacked, nothing in there. Let’s go.’
She wonders if he saw her or if he thought it was a corpse that met his gaze. How would she even know if she had died? There is no one to wail or weep beside her. No neighbour has come to check on her and from that she knows they must be either dead or gone.
Her head is pounding and her throat sore. She pours a glass of dusty water from the jug and checks the packet of painkillers. Only five left. She swallows them down. There are still footsteps outside her window, heavy boots on concrete. The soldiers are laughing, the mysterious delight of boys at play They are probably going through the undergarments in Maryam’s bedroom.
Kawsar rests a cheek against her damp acacia-print pillow case, tears hanging from the thin branches like leaves. She feels woozy, sepia images and sunken sounds washing up from the seabed of her mind: the thud of policemen’s laced boots as they paraded before the District Commissioner in Salahley. She had loved that sound when she was young, remembers bringing the breakfast dishes in a bowl to the veranda so she could listen to the thump of her husband’s feet on the grit; it flew to her over the birdsong, clinking metal plates and the British sergeant’s screamed commands. The policemen then were beautiful, their hair glossed and parted sharply to the side, their uniforms smelling of detergent and soap. Kawsar had dressed her new husband Farah as if he were a doll, washing and ironing his clothes every day, polishing his boots at night with Kiwi wax. She had taken pride in his appearance as well as her own. They planned to take their country back from the British and look beautiful while doing it.
She takes another sip of water and recites the prayer for the dying. She can accept a simple bullet – there is no need for them to waste their time on an old woman – but she fears they will pull her out of the bed or try to make her stand up. She intends to offer them the gold and cash under the mattress if they promise to not move her. It is a pathetic vigil. She places the radio next to her ear, turns the volume down and switches it on. For years the airwaves have been a frontline in the war between the dictator and the rebels, but now Oodweyne’s voice crackles out of the speaker, crisper, clearer and more triumphant with every word.
‘Citizens, we have been driven to extreme but decisive action. We appealed to our comrades in the North to seek peaceful means of resolving our differences; we begged them to not allow our sovereignty to be undermined by enemies of the Somali people and their collaborators. Our forbearance in the face of terrorism has earned us the sympathy of the world, even the President of the United States is sending aid to eradicate the threat we’re facing: a US Navy ship is expected to arrive imminently in Berbera port to deliver necessary supplies. We have the means and will to achieve a victory never seen before in our history and all anti-revolutionaries will learn bitterly what it means to defy authority and progress.’
Before the announcement is repeated Kawsar kills his voice. It is not so painful to die when all that she knows is dying around her. It seems as if the world had been built just for her and is being dismantled as she departs. Late one night towards the end of the sixties, in Mogadishu’s National Theatre, Kawsar had sat waiting for Farah to return to their table. She had pleaded with him to take her out while they stayed in the capital for his police training, but everywhere they went his attention was stolen by his Somali Youth League friends. She had watched forlornly as cleaners swept the floor and stagehands took apart the city that had seemed so alive only minutes earlier. Smooth-faced apprentice carpenters, who pinched almonds out of golden bricks of real halwa, dragged the comedian’s confectionery stall off the stage. A painted sunset backdrop fluttering with inky birds was rolled up and eased into a cardboard tube by another boy. Kawsar, who had been the first to build a bungalow on October Road, would see it forced back to its original state too, the homes levelled to the ground so that the juniper trees and baboons could return.
Deqo’s eyes snap open inside her barrel. It sounds as if men with hammers are smashing on its exterior. BANG, CRASH, BANG. She rises on her haunches and looks out but there’s nobody there, just the usual silent circle of trees. Still the blows continue and Deqo steps out of the barrel to investigate. She hasn’t seen another soul for weeks, having avoided the town and market in case the old man found her. The hair on her head is wild and hopelessly knotted, and her skin shows through the holes in the now-ragged dress she had fled Nasra’s house wearing. Her mouth is raw from her diet of hard, unripe fruit and she has lost every ounce of weight she had put on in Hargeisa; now taller, lean and spare, she doesn’t hear her footsteps when she walks, but rather seems to float over the earth, leaving no imprint. The flashes in the sky are welcome, the more rain that falls the greater her store of drinking water in the bucket that she has appropriated from the rubbish heap under the bridge.
As she squints up, she notices how oddly the lightning strikes; it seems to shoot up from the ground rather than downwards, and the thunder is guttural and metallic at once. A plane swoops deafeningly overhead and she stumbles into the bushes in fear. As she approaches the concrete bridge over the ditch, the ground rumbles from the procession of slow, dark green tanks crossing from north to south; she imagines there must be another parade taking place in the stadium, another day of soldiers, speeches and dances. After the tanks pass, the bridge is empty and she climbs the embankment up to it. She checks south to the airport and north towards the theatre: pillars of smoke stand irregularly here and there and everything is eerily quiet, apart from the mysterious blasts she could hear from the ditch.
Curious, she heads for the suuq, hoping to ask one of the market women what is going on. She expects it to be open like always, with the basket women on the left and the vegetable sellers on the right, hawkers her age milling between them selling snacks and individual cigarettes, the central market a dense confusion of heads and arms. It isn’t until she nears the huge blue and white flag painted on the side of the local government office – the same image she has only ever seen in fragments through the crowd, but which is now revealed in its rain-bleached entirety – that Deqo realises she is in the heart of the suuq. Overturned tables, crates and silence replace the world she knew, the only company the emaciated, flea-ridden cats cowering under an awning and lapping desperately at a dark pool of blood.
Deqo checks the ground for a morsel to eat but there are only scattered peanut shells and trampled vegetables. Taking the alley adjacent to the municipal building, she soon reaches a checkpoint. Soldiers in yellow camouflage jackets and trousers guard it, but a woman in a khaki uniform and beret gestures for Deqo to approach. ‘Put your hands in the air. Where have you come from?’ she shouts.
‘The market.’ Deqo points behind her. ‘Where are all the traders, Jaalle?’
‘Somewhere in the hills. Who are you? Where are your family?’
‘I am an orphan, from Saba’ad.’
‘Put your arms down.’
Deqo drops them slowly.
‘I am hungry, Jaalle, where can I find some food?’
The woman walks across to another soldier, discusses something and then returns with him. ‘If you are willing to do something for us, we can provide
you with food.’
Deqo shelters her eyes from the sun with her hand and nods.
‘Follow us.’ The woman leads Deqo and the soldier toward the wealthy neighbourhood on the other side of the ditch. Crouched and with their rifles poised, they peek around corners before proceeding further. A radio on the woman’s belt crackles and she switches it off.
‘You see those houses at the end of the road?’ She points to two huge villas, their gates torn open. ‘I want you to go inside and see if there are any people in them.’
‘Is that all?’ Deqo asks.
‘Just that and then we’ll give you something to eat.’
As Deqo tiptoes forward, emulating the soldiers, she can see that the garden walls of the villas have holes punched out, craters as large as truck tyres. The houses themselves are unscathed and have glossy, new cars parked in front of them. Deqo glances back anxiously at the soldiers who quickly drop out of sight. She enters the compound of the slightly smaller villa and stands beside an abandoned child’s bicycle, expecting someone to challenge her; birds rustle, guns pop in the distance, but no one emerges. The whitewashed villa has a tiled, columned veranda leading to a glass double door. She walks inside. She counts seven rooms not including the bathroom and large kitchen. An overhead light has been left on in one of the bedrooms but she doesn’t know how to turn it off. The rooms still smell of the family they belong to, a strange combination of washing powder, spices and children.
The larger villa next door also appears empty, but there are dirty footprints on the rug. Deqo picks up a bullet from beneath the coffee table and holds it as a kind of charm as she inspects the rooms. There are two televisions in this house, one in the living room and one in the largest bedroom; her reflection is caught and watched by their black eyes. The kitchen is full of packets of food she doesn’t recognise.
She sprints back to the soldiers, who beckon her around the corner.
‘Did you see anyone?’ the woman asks impatiently.
‘No, they’re empty.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t see anyone? Tell me the truth.’
‘I checked every room.’
‘What’s that in your hand?’
Deqo unfurls her fingers to reveal the bullet. The female soldier takes it from her and whispers something in her companion’s ear.
‘I found it in the larger house. Under a table.’
The soldier replaces the bullet with a melted chocolate bar from her pocket. ‘Go your own way now,’ she orders before they retreat the way they came, checking every direction like thieves.
Roble said he had come running as soon he heard shouts. Filsan had been surrounded by a disparate gang; two older men – one in khaki, one in a safari jacket – and two teenagers, wearing jeans and big-collared shirts.
‘Give us your gun,’ the man in khaki demanded, his rifle trained on her.
Filsan stood absolutely still, unable to respond. It was as though everything that she had learnt had deserted her.
One of the boys reset the trigger of his Kalashnikov, and the sound of the metal jolted her back into her body. She looked down the barrel and saw her own end and roared for Roble to come to her.
Before the young gunman had the chance to recoil his Kalashnikov, a shot from the direction of the checkpoint had brought him down, with a bullet to the back.
The rebels turned to defend themselves, Filsan’s presence suddenly unimportant as she dived into the gulley they had been hiding in. The frantic exchange of fire was over in seconds, leaving three NFM dead on the ground and the man in khaki pursued into the night by the soldiers.
Roble sprinted up and pulled her away from the thorns, his heart thumping against her ribs, the moment only spoiled by the scent of dog shit on her boots. Crouched under his arm, shocked but unharmed, Filsan had marched with him back to the checkpoint, all hostility between them evaporated. He was completely in shadow, just the outline of what a man should be, and she held on, pushing closer and closer against him. She felt out of herself in an exhilarated, animalistic way, all her reticence and manners stripped away; she wanted to merge with him, become him. But Roble had sat her down on the barrel at the checkpoint, handed her the torch and turned to the radio transmitter, shouting demands for immediate reinforcement, his eyes darting fearfully in every direction. They had been separated that very night, he assigned to a checkpoint on the hills outside of town and she to Birjeeh to help coordinate Victory Pioneers with the armed forces already in Hargeisa.
Over the next few days, each time Filsan sees a military truck careering through the streets, uniformed casualties prostrate on the back, she is chilled by the thought that Roble could be amongst them. Far from being repelled and driven out of the city, the NFM have grown in number and entrenched themselves. Hundreds of rebels have returned from exile in the scrublands of Ethiopia, from their desert lairs, carrying their scavenged weaponry on their backs. Veteran fighters, whose names and photographs pepper dossiers of wanted men, have come to wreak havoc, their apparent resurrection a call to arms to thousands of the city’s angry youths.
At the checkpoint nearest to the National Theatre, Filsan oversees movement into the strategically important centre of the city. Most residents fled within the first hours of the bombardment, but stragglers remain: the crippled and elderly, the patients thrown out of the hospital when it was requisitioned by the military, street children and lunatics freed from the asylum by a mortar blow. Filsan switches on her radio and hears that the rebels have cut the water supply to the hospital and they need water to be trucked in immediately for the injured soldiers there.
Two members of the Victory Pioneers, Ahmed and Jimaale, are stationed at the checkpoint to help identify NFM sympathisers; they know everything about everyone – family, clan, neighbourhood, occupation, associates – the years of busybodying finally paying off. They seem invigorated, their pockets bulging with watches and money confiscated at other checkpoints; they keep asking the conscripts to give them a weapon but Filsan forbids it.
A group of civilians creeps up to the barrier, with bundles wrapped in blankets on their backs. The solitary male with them is around twelve years old and struggles to manoeuvre a cart full of their worldly possessions.
They stop beside the barricade and wait.
‘Where have you come from?’ Filsan asks.
‘Iftiin,’ a young woman says, a strap across her forehead to secure the load on her back. She seems to lead the group, while the eldest woman leans against the wall panting.
‘What is your name and who are these people?’
‘Nurto Abdillahi Yusuf. These are my mother and siblings.’ She waves back without turning her head.
‘Her father used to work in the cinema; they are a well-known anti family. Check that cart, they are probably giving supplies to the enemies,’ shouts Ahmed, rushing to the cart himself.
‘Stand back,’ Filsan orders before cutting through the tethers that hold the contents of the cart in place. She rummages within it: a foam mattress, a paper bag of medicines, sacks of flour and rice, a girgire cooker, and then something that surprises her.
She digs the revolver out of the hole it has been hidden in within the mattress.
‘There!’ exclaims Jimaale. ‘Caught like a cat with a piece of chicken.’
‘It is for protection against bandits, we are just women and children, we need something for our safety,’ pleads Nurto.
‘Who gave it to you?’ Filsan checks the gun over; it is an old police model.
‘We have had it for years, my father bought it after we were burgled in the seventies, everyone has one, drunks and glue-sniffers were breaking in at night.’
‘Liar! Liar!’ Jimaale shoves the girl. ‘You are an anti! Why not call the police if you are broken into?’
‘We have seen you at protests against the government, you can’t lie to us.’ Ahmed kicks her to the ground.
Filsan pulls him away. ‘Take them to Birjeeh. They will discover the truth
.’
Ahmed and Jimaale pull the bundles off their backs while Filsan ties Nurto’s wrists and then her mother’s. Her children fight Filsan’s hands away, but she resists striking them and orders the two youngest conscripts to march the whole family to headquarters. As their figures recede, it strikes Filsan as ironic that they had delayed fleeing so they could take as many of their possessions as possible, but now those very possessions impede their flight.
The crackle of the radio breaks into Filsan’s thoughts; on the end of the line is Lieutenant Hashi, the logistics officer, ordering she move to the checkpoint beside the radio station. She leaves Ahmed and Jimaale to pilfer what they want from the cart and rushes to the next position.
Kawsar hears snatches of the chaos outside: the scrape of corrugated tin as it is pulled off the neighbouring homes, the whoompf of deep-throated cannons firing behind the hotel, the ominous approach of footsteps in the courtyard. She senses her death is imminent; every part of her is cold and her heart beats sluggishly, hopelessly. A weight presses down on the bed and she turns her head. Farah sits there in his favourite narrow-shouldered pinstripe suit; he leans back and sighs a bottomless sigh, ‘Who would have thought it would come to this?’
It is so good to hear his deep, clear voice that it brings abrupt tears to her eyes.
‘Kawsar-yaaro, little Kawsar, you have struggled too much without me. Put it behind you now.’ He smiles and she recalls the shallow dimple in each cheek. ‘We have been waiting for you.’
Teasingly, Hodan steps out of the kitchen, smiling her father’s smile and dressed in a satin wedding dress that pools on the floor around her.
‘Take me with you.’ Kawsar holds out her arms and lifts herself as far as she can.
As Hodan nears, Kawsar watches her perfect, luminous face fade until she sees nothing but dust motes floating in the air. She turns to Farah but the bed is empty. She drops her arms and cries out, cursing herself: why can’t she at least have a simple death after such a long, complicated life? What is this trial that she has been forced to endure? If she had a knife she would end it herself.
The Orchard of Lost Souls Page 21