Crossbones

by Nuruddin Farah

  Dhoorre, who is in the bathroom with the door bolted, eavesdrops on their conversation. When he hears all three men leave the house, he takes a hurried birdbath by letting the water drip into his cupped hands in the manner of somebody performing an ablution in an arid zone where water is scarce. In Islam, it is incumbent on a Muslim performing ablution to use even the sand if there is no water. Allah will look favorably on one if one is “clean” at the moment of death. He looks at his face in the mirror and confirms that he badly needs a shave—it’s a pity that the blade is dull and he has no replacements.

  Just then there is a sudden escalation of noise as TruthTeller returns, grumbling about the weight of the machine-gun and bazooka parts. Dhoorre hears weaponry being dropped near the door of the bathroom. It won’t be long before one of the men invades the space where he is confined, Dhoorre realizes. Then he hears the sound of chairs pulled back from the table and the men sit down.

  Straining his ears, he makes out the odd word. The arrival of these men, and their continued presence in the house, can mean only one thing: trouble. He surrenders to the wish to know more, if only to prepare for what is bound to come. He kneels down directly behind the keyhole, through which he can glimpse the faces of the men, discern their movements.

  BigBeard, as the others call the one in the purple keffiyeh, is in his thirties, prodigiously built, hirsute, with a husky desert voice; his facial muscles knotted, forehead furrowed, he listens to his companions, now encouraging one of the men to speak, now dismissing another’s comments. Dhoorre assumes that BigBeard is the leader of the group. His purple keffiyeh is folded almost in quarters, and wound around his forehead. His hand keeps coming into contact with the fold, caressing and readjusting it in a way that reminds Dhoorre of a vain young woman just returned from her hairdresser, whose hand keeps straying to her expensive hairdo. Dhoorre does not need to be told that keffiyehs have lately become fashionable among Mogadiscio’s religionist elite. He remembers watching Peter O’Toole wear one as Lawrence of Arabia, and how in recent years Arafat turned it into a symbol of Palestinian nationhood. But Dhoorre can’t tell if the color of the keffiyehs that these men wear points to their membership in a given cell.

  BigBeard addresses a question to the wearer of the red keffiyeh—TruthTeller—a man with a big nose; he teasingly inquires, “What’s bothering FootSoldier?”

  TruthTeller replies, “He needs the bathroom. He’s trying to get the door open.”

  BigBeard asks, “Has YoungThing come back without our permission?”

  FootSoldier assures BigBeard that YoungThing is outside. “In fact, I can see him standing by the gate saying his rosary.”

  BigBeard now looks troubled. “Why won’t the bathroom door open if we are the only people in the house?”

  TruthTeller goes over to check if there is a key in the door on the outside. He pushes the door, kicks at it, and then puts his shoulder to it and shoves. But the door does not give. He says to BigBeard, “It’s locked from the inside, I think.”

  FootSoldier asks, “Who is inside, then?”

  BigBeard is growing impatient. He slaps FootSoldier, shouting, “What kind of a man are you that you can’t hold your pee?”

  He turns to TruthTeller and orders him to call YoungThing in. TruthTeller knocks into the furniture as he goes, kicking at chairs. From the door, he shouts to YoungThing. He asks, “Is someone in the bathroom?”

  Dhoorre does not know what to do. He checks his face in the mirror—even a dying man wants to look comparatively clean. He realizes with concern that it’ll be the end of the boy. One moment, he has a good mind to open the door and be done with it; the next moment, he feels inadequate to the task. He is dizzy, gulping air into his lungs, fearing that he will faint before he can open the door.

  Then he hears the boy say, “Old man, open the door.”

  He unlocks the door and steps out. FootSoldier can’t wait any longer and hurriedly pushes past him. Meanwhile, TruthTeller and YoungThing step out of Dhoorre’s way and keep their distance. BigBeard asks Dhoorre to come closer to him; his eyes penetrate deep into Dhoorre’s fear. In a film, the old man thinks, BigBeard would be the one who pulls the trigger, a hard man with not one iota of gentleness. With such a man you can never work out the cut and thrust of his intentions.

  BigBeard asks, “Why are you here?”

  “I live here,” replies Dhoorre.

  FootSoldier comes out in time to hear this. The eyes of all three keffiyeh-wearing men converge on YoungThing.

  TruthTeller asks the boy if this is true.

  YoungThing says, “He is a hobo squatting here.”

  FootSoldier, who is angry because he had to wait until he almost wet his robes, smacks Dhoorre in the face. “Tell us the truth.”

  The sudden upwelling pain overwhelms Dhoorre. “I am telling the truth,” he replies.

  TruthTeller, for his part, hits YoungThing, the strike splitting the boy’s lower lip and making it bleed again. He asks, “Is he a hobo squatting here, or does he live here?” When the boy touches his lip, as if to wipe it dry, TruthTeller hits him again, twice.

  BigBeard tells TruthTeller to stop pummeling the boy in front of a stranger. He adds, “Can’t you see I am talking to the old man?”

  Dhoorre says, “I am a guest, not a drifter.”

  “So who lives here?”

  “My son,” he replies, “whom I am visiting.”

  “What is your son’s name?”

  Dhoorre now realizes that he has inadvertently brought his son into focus. All that remains is for him to say his son’s name. Dhoorre has two sons, and neither is in the good books of Shabaab. One of his sons, based in Baidoa, is a minister in the Transitional Federal Government, with which Shabaab is at war; the other son, who served in the National Army, is also a known foe of Shabaab, for he has declared himself a secularist and has often militated against the group in radio interviews. It is the latter, an American citizen living in Virginia, who has been visiting Mogadiscio with his family and is now hosting Dhoorre in this rented house. Too late to invent a false identity, Dhoorre gives his son’s name.

  BigBeard’s expression is fluid, like dirty water going down a gutter, habitually moving in a downward direction. Dhoorre is aware that Shabaab would be only too pleased to grace either of his sons with immediate beheading, and that he is not likely to be spared, either.

  Even though he is not sure that it will do the young thing any good, Dhoorre hopes that his statement will have in it the vigor of settling a matter in dispute. He says, pointing at YoungThing, “Let me say, for what it is worth, that this young fellow meant no ill to you or your cause. I would appeal to you to spare him. Islam is peace, the promise of justice. Because I may have misled him. Please.”

  Dhoorre discerns movement behind him, and from a corner of his eye he spots TruthTeller with his weapon poised, but not yet ready to shoot. He pushes Dhoorre down with the butt of the firearm. Sitting on a chair, the old man feels the harsh metallic coldness of the weapon against his nape.

  FootSoldier says to YoungThing, “You’ve proven delinquent in your behavior. Why?”

  YoungThing says, “I won’t do it again.”

  BigBeard orders YoungThing to get his gun from the carryall. YoungThing does as ordered, without fear or sentiment. As he waits for instructions, he does not plead with any of the men to spare his life or that of the old man.

  BigBeard says, “Shoot him.”

  Dhoorre says, “Please.”

  YoungThing can’t determine if the Old Man is pleading with him not to shoot, or if he is saying, “Go ahead and shoot.” He looks toward BigBeard, who is busy fingering his long, bushy beard, twisting it with the concentration of a philosopher deep in thought.

  Dhoorre thinks that it is in such a scene, where violence gains the upper hand, that one can bear testimony to tragedy in all its registers: a country held to ransom, a people subjected to daily humiliation, a nation sadly put to the sword.

  F
ootSoldier says, “What are you waiting for?”

  Times passes, as slow as death.

  TruthTeller shouts, “Shoot!”

  YoungThing might as well pull the trigger and be done with it, he thinks, without a flinch or immediate regret, although he is aware, despite his young age, that his action will ricochet about in his brain and keep him awake at night, disturbed and jittery. He knows, too, that he is only postponing his own death; no sooner will he shoot the old man than one of the keffiyehs will make him pay for the crime of not wasting Dhoorre right away. He wishes he had listened to his older sister, Wiila, a flight attendant, who had offered him financial help if he agreed not to join Shabaab and to go to school instead. Or to his older brother with the alias Marduuf, who tried, without success, to recruit him as a pirate.

  YoungThing shoots, using the silencer.

  As the bullet strikes Dhoorre in the forehead, YoungThing is certain that he hears a seabird cawing, only he cannot interpret what it is saying, or whether it is foretelling his own imminent death.

  Dhoorre falls off his chair, dropping to the floor in an uncoordinated heap of self-reproach; he is sad that he has had no time to alert his son, his daughter-in-law, and his grandchildren to the ambush that awaits them.

  From his posture alone, you can’t tell if the old man is dead. He lies on his back, head to one side, eyes not wholly closed, his position suggesting sleep.

  The keffiyeh-wearing men sit in the eerie silence that follows the shooting. The ringing of a cell phone startles them out of their immobility. They exchange bothered looks.

  YoungThing glances around, as if trying to calculate not if but how soon one of the men will shoot him. The realization that he might die in a matter of minutes concentrates his mind, and he resolves not to be afraid. He walks over to where the old man lies sprawled, his legs splayed, his neck crooked, his hands spread out by his side, his nakedness embarrassing. As a token of his fearlessness, YoungThing straightens the man’s legs and places his hands together across his chest, in the gesture of prayer. He moves back a pace and looks at what he has done, pleased that he has made the old man as comfortable in death as he can be. Then he waits.

  BigBeard has anger etched into his features. Impatient, he is looking from FootSoldier to TruthTeller, as though wondering why they have not yet acted on his rage; then, even more furious, he watches YoungThing, as if he were expecting the boy to fall to his knees in terror. He says to YoungThing, “Have you anything to say before you die?”

  YoungThing is defiantly silent. He glances from BigBeard to FootSoldier and then focuses his unrelenting stare on TruthTeller.

  BigBeard says to TruthTeller, “Will you do us the favor of ridding us of this thing, this vermin?”

  FootSoldier says, “I was hoping you’d ask me.”

  BigBeard says, “Fear not. You’ll have your turn. But this is TruthTeller’s turn. I’ve never seen him kill a thing before.”

  TruthTeller closes his eyes, winces like a child taking bitter medicine, and shoots YoungThing right between the eyes. Then he unscrews the silencer from his gun.

  “Well done,” BigBeard says. Then he orders FootSoldier to remove the two corpses, dump them in the garden, and report for duty, in double quick. He adds, “There is a lot of work for us to complete before nightfall. Remember, we have a country to liberate, a people to educate in the proper ways of our faith. Come; be quick about it, you two. What’s holding you?”

  TruthTeller volunteers to help FootSoldier, each of them dragging a corpse from the room before rigor mortis sets in.

  WHEN THEY GET TO CAMBARA AND BILE’S HOUSE AND DAJAAL RINGS the bell, Malik and Jeebleh, to their surprise, hear dogs barking. Since neither remembers anyone mentioning the presence of dogs there, they look at each other and then at Dajaal. Dajaal explains, “The ringing of the bell activates the barking of dogs inside the house. Cambara imported the device from Toronto to scare off potential burglars. It’s most effective because no one keeps dogs as pets or guards in a Muslim country, and virtually everyone is terrified of them.”

  Cambara receives Jeebleh and Malik with warmth. She has waited for them close to the entrance, the door open, her smile broad and beaming. She meets them halfway as they walk past the day guard. She hugs and kisses Jeebleh on the cheeks. She is formal with Malik; she takes his right hand in both hers. Dajaal takes his leave, suggesting that they ring when they are ready to be picked up.

  On the way in, Cambara walks between the two men, Jeebleh’s hand in hers in acknowledgment of their presumed closeness, even though the two have only ever spoken on the phone. He remembers that Cambara arrived here with the disquiet of a mother mourning, after losing her only son, her marriage broken and her life in tatters. Seamus, with whom he had spoken about her, described her as being equally suicidal and murderous. Then she met Bile, and he and Dajaal, with assistance from Seamus, helped her to deploy her strength constructively, in addition to helping her to reclaim her family and to produce a puppet play, the first of its kind in Mogadiscio, despite religionist threats. Eventually Cambara chose to throw in her lot with Bile’s, and the two became an item, despite the dissimilarity in their temperaments. Their need for each other has set the terms of their togetherness.

  Now Cambara says to him, “It feels as if I’ve known you ever since I met Bile. I am so pleased you are here.”

  With Dajaal gone, the features of the day guard harden and his eyes open wide at the sight of Cambara embracing and kissing Jeebleh and placing herself between him and Malik. Malik wonders if the man will report them to the religionist authorities for indulging in such un-Islamic intimacy.

  Inside, Bile is lying prone on the couch in the living room, only a few days after his return from Nairobi, following surgery on his prostate at a clinic there. But when Bile hears them approach, he jumps up to welcome them. He and Jeebleh hug for a very long time, despite the tremor in Bile’s grip. The storied house echoes with their words of joyous reunion, after which Bile hugs Malik, too.

  Bile is a little shaky on his legs. Jeebleh observes how age has affected them differently. Whereas he is heavier around the waist, paunchier, with bags permanently under the eyes, Bile has grown thinner in the face, his chin oddly extending downward, the anemic skin on it wrinkly and sporting grayish sprouts of hair, stylishly trimmed. He ascribes this suaveness to Cambara. Indeed, Bile is dressed with uncommon flair, a linen shirt and a pair of trousers, tailored with sophistication. Cambara stands by, confidently wearing a plain caftan with a matching shoulder cover. Not wanting to take the luster away from their meeting, she allows the conversation to flow, seldom interfering, though she pays constant attention to the changes of mood when they get to the table. Bile asks questions about Jeebleh’s family and grandchild as Cambara goes back and forth between them and the kitchen. Jeebleh remembers Seamus, their mutual Irish friend, commenting on how Bile, without two shillings to rub against each other, resisted having them take care of the expenses of his prostate surgery. “Typical Somali behavior,” Seamus had said. “Such vacuous arrogance.”

  When the meal is served, they tuck into their food in appreciative silence. Malik has many questions about the country. However, it is never easy to talk fluently and without inhibition in a room where the sick are. Cambara notes that Bile is starting to display early signs of exhaustion from the small talk. She says to Malik, “Et tu?”

  Malik says, “It feels bizarre that I am back in a place to which I have never been before.”

  Interested, Bile shifts in his seat and sits forward, his fingers close to his mouth in an effort to hide the ugliness of a front tooth with a tiny chip. He says, “Can one return to a place to which one has never been?”

  Malik explains, “I meant that even though I have never been to Somalia, I know a lot about the country, because my grandparents and my father wished they could visit the country of their ancestors. In fact, my old man is living somewhere in the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, tending to his camels, mar
ried to a much younger woman and raising a new brood of kids.”

  Cambara lays her hand on Bile’s thigh, and, turning to him, asks Malik if his mother is Chinese Malaysian. He nods his head. “She is. It is my father who is Somali.”

  Bile interjects, “You see Somalis everywhere.”

  “Stranded in an alien place, like flotsam,” says Cambara.

  Bile frowns and goes on, “I seldom imagine Somalis stranded. Many do well wherever they end up.” Then suddenly he holds his breath, as though he has the hiccups, and when he inhales he changes tack. “Have you ever heard of a Chinese female pirate, name of Mrs. Cheng?”

  Malik, who has read a lot about the exploits of the Somali pirates in the peninsula and is equally familiar with other aspects of piracy, appears puzzled. “No, I haven’t heard of Mrs. Cheng.”

  Jeebleh says to Bile, “Why did I think you would not be in the least interested in the question of piracy, either off the coast of Somalia or elsewhere?”

  Bile replies, “Of course, I am interested.”

  Jeebleh is aware that among the Somalis with whom he has discussed the subject of piracy, many without reservation condemn the illegal foreign vessels fishing in the Somali Sea. They say that this unchecked robbery has caused joblessness among fishermen and led them to piracy. In fact, Somali fishermen appealed to the United Nations and the international community to help rid them of the large number of foreign vessels, estimated in 2005 at about seven hundred, engaged in unlicensed fishing off the country’s southern shores. The country profile compiled by the United Nations’ own Food and Agricultural Organization in 2005 confirmed that not only were these vessels plundering Somalia’s marine resources but many of them were also dumping rubbish—nuclear and chemical waste.