Crossbones

by Nuruddin Farah

  When he has lit his cigarette and taken a huge cloud of smoke into his lungs, Fidno continues. “In the absence of a central sovereign state, the community is the authority. Initially, the fishermen had the endorsement of the coastal communities that suffered at the hands of the invading foreign vessels.”

  “What percentage of the ransom did the community receive from those early adventures?” Ahl asks.

  “Initially, the community received a lot.”

  “And lately?”

  “Almost none.” Fidno starts another cigarette.

  “One question for my benefit,” Ahl says. “Why would the UN Security Council pass a resolution authorizing countries to contribute to an anti-piracy coalition if this august body is aware that these same countries are fishing illegally and in an unregulated manner in the waters of Somalia?”

  “Because the UN is at the service of the powerful veto-wielding countries that fund its programs and pay its electricity bills, the salaries of its staff,” Fidno replies.

  “What’s in it for the nations footing the anti-piracy bills?” Ahl wants to know. “What do they expect to gain from their financial commitments?”

  Fidno observes, “You might well ask.”

  Ahl says, “Is there truth to the media reports that insurers enjoying the support of European governments cite rampant piracy as a compelling reason for creating private navies to take on the Somalis?”

  Fidno says, “Basically, a number of the nations contributing to the anti-piracy outfits or setting up private navies are keen either on safeguarding the ability of their vessels to fish illegitimately in our seas, or they are hunting down Al Qaeda.”

  “Your reply may not wash with others,” Ahl says.

  Fidno announces unnecessarily loudly that he is off to the bathroom.

  Alone and sipping his coffee, Ahl jots down notes, aware that he will need to convince Malik that it is worth his while to interview Fidno. The stark reality, the dire conditions of most Somalis, the absence of food and environmental security, the never-ending conflict: each of these will have an impact on the future. From this perspective, Ahl views the future as one might view a troubled country marked by despoliation, devastation, and more poverty.

  When Fidno returns, he orders another coffee and says, “It is your turn to tell truths. Why are you here?”

  Ahl reminds himself that he has the right to edit his story, censoring portions of it and altering its general thrust for his own privacy as well as for Taxliil’s and Malik’s safety. However, he’ll tell enough of it to stoke the fire of Fidno’s curiosity. For now.

  “I am in Puntland for a family reason.”

  Fidno says, “We’re trading truths. Remember.”

  Ahl is about to elaborate on what has brought him here, when he suddenly feels ill at ease. He sits still and unspeaking for a long while, disturbed, his lips atremble, his breathing uneven, and his heart beating nervously faster. But then he senses Taxliil’s presence stalking him and prowling in the outer reaches of his conscience. When he infers that Taxliil wants him to trade his truth with his man, his resolve firms up. What is there to lose?

  He stumbles a bit, then begins. “I am in Puntland searching for Taxliil, my runaway stepson, a teenager, believed to be somewhere in Somalia, sent, the last we heard, to Puntland as a liaison between his religionist mentors and the pirates.”

  “Why Puntland?”

  “Because it is his mother’s ancestral home.”

  “Any other reason?”

  “I’ve been told that he is in Puntland because it is a transit point for the religionists to Yemen and beyond. Would you say it is true that some of the pirates and some of the religionists, especially those with bases in Xarardheere, have struck a deal—that they collaborate? I’ve heard it said that some young Somalis pretend on the way out that they are migrants, and on the way back, escort the foreign recruits in boats that are virtually empty anyhow.”

  “You think Taxliil is one of them?”

  “Do the pirates collaborate with Shabaab?”

  Fidno says, “There is a rumor that some do.”

  “Do those that bring in foreign jihadis, who aren’t necessarily young men, receive in exchange protection from the religionists?” Ahl asks.

  “There is a lot of movement between Somalia and Yemen,” Fidno says, “by means of dhows laden with goods, which return either empty or with illegal passengers. As for the human trafficking, that is part and parcel of the link; this is seasonal, with thousands of Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis, and other Africans trying their luck to get to Yemen in hope of making it to Saudi Arabia, where there are jobs, or Europe. I know some of the coastal villages from which they depart; I also know where the boats dock when they return. If you like, I can take you to some of these villages.”

  “I’d be happy to go anywhere to find my son.”

  “By the way, how old is Taxliil?”

  Ahl tells him, and in addition, promises to provide him with a photograph of his stepson, taken a month or so before his disappearance.

  “If he’s in Puntland, we’ll find him.”

  “I’d be grateful for any help.”

  Fidno says, “I’ll get things moving soon.”

  For an instant, Ahl keeps at bay a clutch of worries snatching at his heart. It is as if he is in a fast-moving car, hurtling beltlessly down a ravine, moving perilously forward at an extraordinary speed, destination unknown, fellow passengers unfamiliar. It frightens him that he has been here for only a day and he has already formed a working relationship with a man who funds piracy, a man who, for all he knows, is on first-name terms with the owners of the dhows in the human trafficking business. Is it too late to withdraw? More to the point, is there any other means by which he may pursue his aim, to locate his stepson? After all, one devil knows another devil best—and it is best he gets to know Fidno, who may lead him to Shabaab’s redoubts in Puntland.

  He asks, “How will you get things moving?”

  “For a start, I’ll establish contact with the known big shots in the human-smuggling business and arrange for you to meet them,” Fidno says. “I’ll take you to a village called Guri-Maroodi, not far from here, from where the migrants depart. I have a mind to start with a man who has extensive connections among the top people in Puntland, the insurgents, the pirates, the lot. He is respected and at the same time feared everywhere in this country.”

  “Won’t you tell me his name?”

  “I’ll give you the information only on a need-to-know basis,” Fidno says. “And since I haven’t been in touch with him yet, I can’t tell you his name.”

  “Please explain how meeting a man in the human-smuggling business will help locate Taxliil, when what I need is to burrow into the underground structures of Shabaab?”

  “You are going about the matter in the way God-fearing, upstanding individuals do when they are dealing with a straightforward problem, when what you require here is to know the mind-set of those with whom you are dealing,” Fidno says. “If you are taking on men who operate outside the law, then you must approach the matter at hand from an equally shady angle.”

  “Men working outside the law?”

  Fidno says, “Shabaab, the pirates, and the human traffickers work outside the law, they know one another; they collaborate in ways not too obvious to ordinary men. Because of this, one needs a new approach.”

  Ahl hesitantly asks, “Is the man you have in mind to contact, the human smuggler, capable of helping us to tunnel our way into Shabaab’s hideout, and is he prepared to assist us—and if so, at what cost?”

  Fidno does not tackle several parts of the loaded question. All he says is, “A few of his men are seconded to Shabaab.”

  “How is one to tunnel one’s way in?”

  Fidno answers, “One will start from the outside, unsuspected, unannounced, and unseen, and with help from my contacts’ underlings, one will burrow one’s way in.”

  “That way we’ll find Taxliil?�
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  “If Taxliil is in Puntland.”

  “Why will he help us?”

  Fidno says, “I’ve told you why he’ll help.”

  “Because he owes you a big one?”

  “Because he and I are friends.”

  “What about the Shabaab operatives?”

  “Leave it all to me.”

  Ahl doesn’t know if he wants to do that.

  “You meet your side of the bargain, I mine.”

  Ahl looks away a little too timidly, determined to get their developing rapport on a firmer footing and to seal the deal with a declaration of his intent. Thinking that a thief believes that every man is a thief and can’t be trusted, he decides to assure Fidno that he’ll keep his word.

  He says, “Malik will be very pleased to know of your help, and he’ll do as you ask.”

  Fidno says, “I’m delighted we’ve traded truths.”

  “I know now who you are.”

  But Fidno is already dialing his mobile phone.

  THE PROPOSITION THAT HE AGREE TO CONDUCT AN INTERVIEW with Fidno as a way of securing his help with Taxliil strikes Malik as a development of second-water grade, as far as diamond discovery goes, even if Ahl makes it sound as though he has uncovered a first-water-quality gem.

  Ahl has called not only to share his breakthrough, as he puts it, but also to talk about the bombing of Mogadiscio’s airports. Malik senses both Ahl’s excitement at the thought of coming closer to locating Taxliil, and his worry for Malik’s safety. Yet as they talk, Ahl can’t bring himself to suggest that Malik should be quitting the country. It is curious, he thinks, that of the many ways humans express their affection for one another, worry is an effective one; worry about those whom you love. Ahl’s worry about Taxliil is of a different weave from the twine threaded into his concern for Malik.

  Now he says to Malik, “Maybe I am unjustifiably preoccupied, but do you think it is safe to remain while the city is bracing for more bombing?”

  Malik is not the worrying type. Ahl has often teasingly pointed this out to him, saying, “It is because you are younger and you leave all worries to others.” He is alluding to the Somali proverb that youngsters worry most about themselves, less about others, and least of all about their parents.

  Malik has no similar fears about Ahl, in large part because Puntland, as an autonomous state, has maintained an amicable rapport with the Ethiopian regime following the collapse of Somali state structures.

  When Ahl repeats at length the exchange between him and Fidno, Malik asks what it is that Fidno expects to gain, as Fidno is not asking for financial renumeration. “What is his game, really?” Malik wonders.

  Ahl does not have a clear answer, but he emphasizes the professional gain to Malik from the deal. Finally Malik agrees to the plan. “Still, I can’t commit myself to either the venue or the time where the meeting will take place,” he insists, and then he excuses himself, because he wants to get back to work.

  Malik stays in the workroom, taking notes and reading fitfully. He takes a break at some point and rings Fee-Jigan and a couple of other journalists whose names he has acquired; he is eager to build his base of contacts. No one answers, though. He is tempted to telephone Gumaad but thinks better of it.

  In the broadcasts he listens to and the newspapers he reads online, there is general consensus that the big men from the Courts have fled Mogadiscio, a number of them returning to their home villages, where their clans reign. Moreover, every pundit is surprised that the Ethiopians are in no hurry to take Mogadiscio: they take one town at a time, and then assign the militias loyal to the interim president of Somalia the job of mopping up any resistance. So far, reports reaching the wire agencies say there has been no resistance as such. This, to Malik, has an uncanny resemblance to what occurred in Iraq, when the Republican Guard melted away in time before the American ground forces took Baghdad. They returned a few weeks later, having organized themselves into a resistance. Will the men from the Courts do the same?

  In the broadcasts, there is persistent mention of Eritrea, described as the arms supplier to the men from the Courts. Eritrea is tarnished by her abysmal human rights record, one of the worst in Africa, and has the ignominy of being quarrelsome and of picking fights serially with all her neighbors: a bloody war with Ethiopia over a strip of cactus and sand dunes in which two million lost their lives; with Yemen, over claims to an island situated between them. Malik can’t even recall what prompted Eritrea’s confrontation with Djibouti. Now Eritrea is going out on a limb and fighting a proxy war with Ethiopia by aiding the Courts.

  Hungry, he eats stale bread and hardened cheese. Then he makes a pot of tea, of which he has two cups. While drinking these, he prepares coffee. As usual, he makes more than he can finish. No wonder his wife often describes him as wasteful. It is his habit to boil more water for tea than he needs, to cook far too much and then not bother to check what is in the fridge before buying more; anyway, he seldom remembers to put the leftovers in the fridge so that they won’t go bad. Feeling terrible about his profligacy, he decides he will force himself to drink all the coffee, one cup after another.

  He is still upset at the way Amran responded to his enforced stay. True, he had wanted to remain for a few more days, but it is also a fact that the airports in Mogadiscio have been bombed and are now closed to traffic. Her tone when she is unreasonably upset irks him. She seldom applies her acute intelligence to situations before jumping to conclusions, and she tends to get carried away emotionally—like when she talks of raising an orphan if he doesn’t fly home this minute. He will have a word with Jeebleh, who will intercede. Or maybe his mother-in-law, often more levelheaded than her daughter, can calm matters down for the moment.

  Insofar as the war front goes, HornAfrik Radio, indisputably Mogadiscio’s best, reports from the border regions that the Ethiopians are entering Somalia from different border posts, and every hour brings talk of another town falling into their hands. With no open resistance, the Ethiopians won’t need to defend or consolidate their hold on the territory they have occupied before moving on toward Mogadiscio. It is assumed they will be in the capital by as early as noon tomorrow. Meanwhile, the interim president, with half a battalion of Ethiopian soldiers and a smattering of Somalis in uniform escorting his entourage, has already arrived at the presidential villa, along with his own Ethiopian bodyguards and advisers, after receiving intelligence that TheSheikh and TheOtherSheikh and almost all the members of the Executive Board of the Courts have left soon after the bombing. What a tragic day it’s been for both Somalia and Ethiopia, Malik thinks, then writes these words and underlines them twice.

  Malik is drawing on his memory of other cities that he has witnessed on the verge of falling to enemy forces: in the Congo, in Afghanistan, and so on. He writes, “In most cases, it takes a long time for ordinary folks unaccustomed to bearing arms to work up an appetite for battle. There is more than one side to a fence, and peaceable civilians stay on whichever side makes them feel safer. Rather like young girls in countries with a tradition of arranged marriages, they will go with whichever suitor is presented to them.”

  He pauses, pen raised, and thinks how only later, after the occupation has been completed, a touch of cynicism will enter people’s attitude toward the carousel politics of which they have become victims.

  Now he writes, “Mogadiscians have met warlords of every variety; the memory of the trauma has cauterized people’s suffering, minimizing it. They see the Ethiopian premier as just another warlord, albeit a foreigner, no less savage than their homegrown politico-sadists. To spare themselves more atrocities, the city will not show any open resistance to his advances. As one former senior military officer known to me has predicted, even the armed men loyal to the Courts won’t attack the Ethiopians until after they’ve taken the enemy’s measure.” Yet Somalis everywhere are incensed by the invasion, he argues, including those who were and are against the politics of the Courts. “They’d wait for their payb
ack day with due patience. And when that day comes, they will dance a victory dance in the dirt roads of the Bakhaaraha Market, dance around the enemy dead, singing and kicking the corpses and burning effigies, giving in to the debasing pleasure of poisoning themselves with the toxins of vengeance. They will, in essence, take self-debasing pleasure in poisoning their souls, as one proverb has it, with the toxin that is vengeance. The world is no longer what the world used to be. Besides, Mogadiscians have done it before: danced a macabre, self-dishonoring dance around a dead Marine, and nothing will stop them from repeating that.”

  He marks the article as “draft,” prints it, and then puts it away for the time being. Maybe he can make a much longer piece out of it, he tells himself. A pity he doesn’t know many ordinary people in Mogadiscio. But walking the streets with a tape recorder, a camera, and a microphone isn’t an option in a city where journalists are subject to death threats.

  He pours himself another cup of coffee and turns to a new piece on the tendency of defeated armies to wreck cities before leaving them, and why. Before he puts pen to paper, he works the piece in his head, remembering parallel instances from other figures and places he has covered: the Afghani warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Congolese faction leaders Laurent Nkunda and Germain Katanga. The HornAfrik commentator, one Mohamed Elmi, is confessing to being “impressed with the grown-up manner in which the Courts have handled their withdrawal,” and Malik finds himself agreeing. Mr. Elmi imagines that “it can’t have been easy to leave the city they wrested from the warlords only six months ago. Now they’ve had to abandon it to the crueler hands of the Ethiopians. True to the wisdom that a parent must not strike in anger the child whom they love, the Courts quit without ransacking the city, promising to return. When they come back, better armed, will they bomb in anger the very people whom they claim to love?”

  The phone rings: Dajaal is on the line. Malik puts a couple of questions to him, most important, what he thinks about the Courts quitting the city.