Crossbones

by Nuruddin Farah

  Despite his attempt not to sound disapproving, Ahl’s voice strikes a note of discord when he asks Warsame, “Has the city always been like this?”

  As if in mitigation, Warsame says, “The state is autonomous, albeit dysfunctional. Our economy is underdeveloped. We are a city under siege, with immigrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Tanzania. They all want to make their way to Yemen and Europe, courtesy of the human traffickers who exploit them as stowaways in flimsy boats—just to escape from here.”

  “Everyone comes because there is peace here?”

  Warsame says, “There is of course the lucrative potential of piracy, given Bosaso’s strategic location. Taken together, these features attract all sorts of riffraff.”

  “Do you have any idea what the population of the city is and what percentage of its residents are local?” Ahl asks.

  “No one knows the number of its residents.”

  Ahl is aware that you need to put certain structures in place before it is possible to take a census. He says, “Because everything here is ad hoc.”

  Warsame nods and adds, “And life must go on.”

  Ahl asks Warsame to stop somewhere he can get a SIM card for his mobile phone.

  Soon enough, Warsame obliges. He stops in front of a low structure with ads on its front walls for all makes of cigarettes and other products, and a few goats, in the absence of pasture, chewing a weather-hardened castaway pair of leather shoes, they are so hungry. Ahl buys a local SIM card and airtime with a ten-dollar bill. Still inside the shop, he inserts the SIM card in his phone.

  In the vehicle, Warsame encourages Ahl to place his calls right away. “Go for it, please,” he says, driving. “Make your calls. Tell Yusur or whosoever that you’ve landed, you’ve been picked up, and all is well.”

  Malik answers the phone on the first ring. They speak in Chinese and Ahl gives him his news. Malik asks Ahl what impression the city has made on him so far. Ahl responds that the city has more the look of a flea market than the prosperous metropolis he expected. He says, “I haven’t been here half an hour and I am already wondering where the money said to be pouring in from piracy and hostage-taking has gone.” Then he asks, “What about you, Malik? How are you doing?”

  Malik is depressed, because, in the past day and a half, in Mogadiscio, three journalists have been killed—blown up—the latest an hour ago. The first two were radio journalists, killed dropping off their children at their nurseries or school before going to work. The third was on his way back from burying a colleague. A fourth journalist was wounded by a roadside device while walking, and hovers in critical condition, with little chance of surviving his injuries.

  “Who is responsible?”

  Malik says, “There are unconfirmed reports blaming shady fifth columnists who are believed to target anyone who writes anything the top men of the Courts don’t like. They use remote-controlled roadside bombs or shoot their victims at point-blank range. Nobody knows much about them or their alliances. Except everyone points at Shabaab, which has an imprecise, albeit mutually beneficial rapport with the Courts.”

  Ahl says, “That’s worrying.”

  “All good journalists are now on the radar of the assassins,” Malik says. “It’s sickening. This is killing me.”

  “Do you feel you’re in danger?”

  “I won’t pack up and leave.”

  “Have I suggested you do that?”

  “Amran has done just that every time I’ve spoken to her. I thought you might do the same,” Malik says.

  “What are your plans?”

  “I may have to move in with Bile and Cambara.”

  “Would you feel safer with them?”

  “I would.”

  Warsame drives past security at the hotel gate and stops in front of the building to let Ahl out, telling him he’ll return for him later.

  Out of the car, his gait wobbly, Ahl retrieves his bags and walks toward the sign that says, “Respecshin,” amused that not one of the bellhops loitering in the parking lot offers to help. The muscles of his thighs a bit tight, he reaches the porch, aware that it has been a few days since his last workout. He thinks it unlikely that this two-star hotel will have a gym, and he imagines it would be unwise to go out for a jog or even for a swim.

  At the reception, two young men are playing cards intently. One of them has a gap in his upper teeth, and the other is sporting a Mohawk. Even though neither is in uniform, Ahl speculates that Gap-in-the-Teeth is the one temporarily in charge. He is odds-on the son or other blood relative of the hotel owner. Back from school for the day, he mans the reception, while his friend is on an afternoon break.

  Gap-in-the-Teeth asks Ahl, “What do you want?”

  Ahl is not sure what answer to give, because he has discovered, now that he has searched for it, that Gap-in-the-Teeth and his stepson, Taxliil, share some remote resemblance: the manner in which they hold themselves apart, as if the world is synonymous with the dirt that prevails everywhere, and they wish to stay clean; and in their sweet smiles, as masterly as they are mistimed, smiles that often lead to misunderstandings.

  “Has a room been reserved for Ahl?”

  Gap-in-the-Teeth tells him he will be in room 15.

  Ahl, unaided and unescorted, goes to his room, up the winding staircase with its uneven risers, pleased with the lightness of his bags, content that his needs are modest. He comes to a stop in front of room 15. The door is open, no need to make use of the key. He looks in and finds a vast room, the wall at the back of the bed tiled high and neatly in brown against a white background. A man is in the room, fiddling with the knobs and wires of the TV set, which is on, belting out a concatenation of what at first sounds like an alien language because the volume is so unbearably loud that the words are almost impossible to decipher.

  “Please,” Ahl pleads. “Turn the TV off.”

  “I am fixing your satellite TV,” the man shouts loudly, in competition with the racket. He is chewing qaat, and his tongue, emerging from his mouth as he speaks, resembles a chameleon’s—narrow, repellent.

  Ahl repeats his plea, slowly this time, the better to be understood. The TV man stays on his haunches. He stares at a knob he is holding in his right hand, as if he might admonish it for its obstinate behavior—presumably this is the piece of hardware that is causing the set to malfunction. He shrieks, “I must fix the problem.”

  Ahl says, “Please do it later.”

  But the technician does no such thing. He has been instructed to see to it that all the rooms have functioning TV sets. Ahl feels that the din is making him lose touch with his senses or, worse, with his reason. But he has been warned that one must be circumspect in one’s dealings with young Somalis. People out here are a nervy lot, quick to anger and to reach for their guns.

  His voice calm, he says, “Please, please.”

  He ascribes the first please to the Somali part of his upbringing, which emphasizes considerateness to the point of formality, and the second please to fear of provoking that notorious Somali crankiness. He says, “I want to use the bathroom. Urgently.”

  At last the technician turns off the TV, disconsolate, clearly offended, and, as if to show his annoyance, masticates his qaat furiously. Just before he walks off in a huff, Ahl says, “Will you do me a favor, please?”

  Rudely the man asks, “What do you want?”

  “I’d like to eat if the kitchen is still open.”

  “What do you want to eat?”

  “A fish dish and rice, if these are available.”

  “Of course they are available.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you could place an order.”

  And as a token of his appreciation, Ahl brings out a couple of U.S. dollars to give as a tip. But no, the man won’t take the baksheesh, either because it is too small or because he doesn’t wish to be appeased. He leaves in a fit of pique. Bemused, Ahl closes the door behind the man and goes into the bathroom.

  Then, bizarrely, the TV comes on ag
ain, noisier than before. Ahl is incensed, assuming that the technician has returned and turned it back on. Ahl decides to finish peeing, and then deal with it. He is of several minds as to how he will achieve his aim. Kick the man in the butt and face the consequences, or kick the set to smithereens and pay for it? Or should he accept defeat? But when he comes out, there is no one in the room and Ahl is looking at an Arab in a suit and tie interviewing a Somali on Al Jazeera, with the ruins of the twelfth-century Arbaca Rukun mosque, destroyed in the 1991 fighting in Mogadiscio, serving as background.

  The Somali interviewee is saying, “We, as mujahideen, martyrs of Islam, are ready to lay down our lives in the name of Allah. We’ll help defeat Ethiopia and America, the enemies of Islam.” Then, just as mysteriously as it came on, the TV goes off again.

  The shower is very cold, despite the tropical heat. Ahl decides a birdbath will do. He washes his face and armpits, changes his shirt, and rings Warsame and Xalan to find out when they are coming for him. No answer. Before going downstairs to eat the fish dish he ordered by telephone after calling the reception, he packs his computer in its bag, puts all his cash in its pockets, and descends the stairs with caution. When he walks past the reception desk, Gap-in-the-Teeth tells him he has a guest waiting for him. Assuming his visitor to be Warsame or Xalan, he asks where, and Gap-in-the-Teeth points to a small gazebo where a man is sitting alone at a table meant for four, with two of the untaken chairs tipped forward.

  The man does not bother to introduce himself or even to greet Ahl. He has a down-turned mouth, very fine teeth, and bulging eyes, and he is dressed in a pleated shirt from another era. Even though he is the ugliest man Ahl has ever set eyes on, he is nonetheless a charmer, reminding Ahl of a midget from Agrigento whose daughter Ahl once dated for almost a year, secretly, when he was at university in England. The woman was studying English, a pretty slow learner. She made up for it elsewhere: she was excellent in bed and a superb cook.

  When the man in the gazebo asks Ahl how his room is, Ahl wonders if he is the hotel manager. But the man says, “As for things not working? We have no plumbers to install hot water systems for hotels. Even though Puntland is in relative peace, we suffer from a shortage of trained personnel in all fields. Here we go about things with a trial-and-error and try-and-see attitude. Now things work, now they don’t. Uncertainty reigns supreme.”

  Ahl decides there is nothing to lose by engaging in such banter in the middle of the day, with the security everywhere close, his mobile phone boasting airtime, Warsame or Xalan a touch of two buttons away. “What’s become of the trained personnel in these fields?” he asks.

  “Those with good education have joined the exodus, and, fleeing the country, have ended up in refugee camps in Kenya or Ethiopia, and then eventually some have made it to the Arabian Gulf as low-paid workers, or gone to Europe or North America as refugees. Imagine—one and a half million of them, many of them destitute.”

  The arrival of food interrupts their conversation. “What will you have?” Ahl asks his guest, whom he does not want to leave. Who knows, this mysterious man may lead him to Taxliil.

  The waiter says, “The kitchen is closed.”

  “This is enough for two. Please bring another plate and some more cutlery,” Ahl says. “We can share this.”

  The waiter makes resentful noises but does as Ahl has requested, bringing a plate and more cutlery. The man tucks into the food with evident enjoyment.

  “We haven’t had the pleasure until now,” he says. “I know your name is AhlulKhair. My full name is Ali Ahmed Fidno, but I am known among friends as Fidno.”

  Ahl asks, “How do you know who I am?”

  Cautious like a feral cat defending its catch, Fidno bares his teeth and makes some sort of animal noise emanating from deep inside him. Taken aback, Ahl focuses his stare first on Fidno’s hands, whose fingers now form into a fist, with the knuckles palely protruding, and then on his heavy jowls, which seem to expand, as if intimating impending trouble. Fidno looks away, and then, pulling from under him a large brown envelope on which he has been sitting, leans forward and says to Ahl, “Here. I have brought you these photographs.”

  Ahl’s imagination runs off ahead of him: he envisions photographs of Taxliil posing in fatigues in some training camp close by.

  “Photographs of who or what?”

  “Of some boys doing their own thing.”

  Ahl hopes that Fidno is not taking him for a sex pervert. Does he think that Ahl is a fifty-something tourist after young things with whom he wants to play sex? Ahl has lost his appetite. He puts down his utensils and asks, “Of whom are the photos?”

  Fidno favors the question with silence.

  “Why, of all people, have you brought them to me?”

  Fidno says, “Someone at the airport who saw you arrive has said to me that you are a Somali journalist, based in America.”

  “Let me have a look at them.”

  Ahl removes them from the envelope and takes his time studying them, a picture at a time, as he listens to Fidno’s running commentary. They are all indeed of young men—in boats, in ships, manning guns, holding men, faces covered with balaclavas. Young men eating, sleeping, fooling around with one another, speaking on their mobile phones, some of them dressed in the jackets of which they dispossessed their hostages, of whom there are also photos. The names of the ships and their provenance are written on the sides: Ukrainian, Russian, Italian, Turkish, Israeli, Saudi, Filipino, Indian. The haul is big. But the young men wielding the AK-47s, the collapsible machine guns, are skinny, hungry-looking, many appearing as ill prepared for what life may throw at them as Paris Hilton might be going into the ring with Mike Tyson. Are these youths pirates? And if they are not pirates, then who are they, what are they? Six months is a long time in the life of a teenager, who may grow a beard or start wearing contact lenses.

  Will Fidno, sitting at Ahl’s table, stripping the last morsels of fish off the spine, be able to tell him more? Will he involve Malik? Can Fidno help him track down Taxliil?

  “Where did you get the pictures?” Ahl asks.

  Fidno is champing at a toothpick, taking his time.

  “I had them taken by a photographer I hired.”

  It is a pity Fidno is not a pirate, a privateer, or even a buccaneer, because he has the charm that makes women lift their arms, place them right behind their heads, their armpits exposed and their breasts raised. Why do women find pirates charming, why do they giggle invitingly in their presence? Ahl recalls that the Sicilian woman did just that within an hour of his meeting her. Like a cat going on her back, waiting to be petted.

  Ahl says, “In your capacity…as what?”

  Fidno looks at their lunch things, not yet collected. Ahl beckons to the waiter standing close by to take the plates away and bring the bill.

  “And coffee, if possible,” Fidno says.

  “Make it two coffees. Mine espresso,” says Ahl.

  Fidno says, “Make mine lungo, with lots of sugar.”

  The waiter gone, Ahl asks again, “In what capacity?”

  Fidno responds, “I’ve had the photographs taken in my capacity as a mediator, a negotiator, an interpreter, and, most important, a go-between, when matters get too sticky between the pirates and the negotiators on behalf of the shipowners.”

  Ahl asks, “With whom do the negotiators deal?”

  “They use intermediaries,” Fidno replies, “often through middlemen based in Mombasa or Abu Dhabi.”

  “So they don’t come to Puntland, and prefer assigning intermediaries to negotiate on their behalf?”

  Fidno says, “They remain at their desks in London, Tokyo, or Moscow, wherever they are normally based. One of my jobs is to iron out unexpected difficulties when things get sticky, which they do a lot of the time. Each of these men—insurers, middlemen, facilitators—gets his cut, depending on his rank and his importance in the company hierarchy, without any direct contact with us.”

  “Too many pe
ople, too much money, and no direct communication—isn’t that a recipe for possible disaster?” Ahl ventures.

  Fidno says, “It is a recipe for deceit, double-dealing, and counterfeiting. And we are the marquee pawns of the greatest dupe. We’re cheated, and yet there is no way we can prove any of this to the world, because they have the backing of the international media and we do not.”

  “Wait, wait. What are you saying?”

  “Let’s imagine you reading in your newspaper, wherever you are, that the owners of a ship hijacked by Somali pirates have paid five million dollars as ransom,” Fidno proposes.

  “Let’s imagine I do.”

  Fidno says, “What if I told you that, to begin with, the largest bulk of the five million does not leave London, where the insurers are based, because no bank in Britain will countenance approving of so much money going out of its vaults to pay off a ransom?”

  “That makes sense,” Ahl concurs.

  “What if I told you that in the end, after months of negotiations, proposals and counterproposals, broken agreements and delays, only half a million of the five million dollars will reach the pirates. First the negotiators of the insurers based in London, the middleman based in Abu Dhabi, and the intermediaries in Mombasa have each taken their huge cuts, so that the final payment is reduced to a pittance from which the funder financing the hijacking still has to pay the pirates holding the ship. You know the Somali proverb ‘Mana wasni, warna iraac,’ said to have been spoken by a woman suspected of having enjoyed lovemaking, when the man never even touched her. We’re buggered, however you want to put it, and needless to say, we don’t enjoy it at all.”

  “That’s hairy,” Ahl says.

  “This utter disrespect makes us indignant.”

  Ahl says, “That is criminal.”

  Now Fidno is nervous, like a Mafioso not used to explaining the reason for his actions. In a telltale sign of confession, he leans forward, as though sharing a secret, and then changes his mind after policing the surroundings and seeing the waiter returning with the bill and the two coffees. Ahl settles the bill in U.S. dollars. Then they resume their conversation.