Crossbones

by Nuruddin Farah

  He asks Malik, “Why do you want to see him?”

  Malik says, “I bought a computer from this shop a few days back and it is malfunctioning. The manager told me to come and see him personally anytime if there was a problem with the machine.”

  “Where is the computer?” the man asks.

  But Malik only repeats, “Is BigBeard here?”

  The man stands statue still, as if reflecting on Malik’s request, and then he is gone for a long time. Meanwhile, the shop empties, and one of the younger salesmen posts himself at the entrance to tell people wanting to enter the shop that it is no longer open for business that day, and to bid them to come back tomorrow.

  A man emerges from the back of the shop. He is identical to Malik’s memory of BigBeard, except that he is wearing a suit and he is beardless. He waits for one of the salesmen to point out the person who has asked for him, even though Malik and Qasiir are now the only customers left.

  “What can I do for you?” BigBeard asks, not a trace of recognition in his eyes, no tension in his body, no fear or worry evident anywhere in him.

  Malik says, “My computer is malfunctioning.”

  Then, as if he recognizes Malik’s face or remembers the sound of his voice, BigBeard’s easy composure wears off. He starts to look hard-pressed. He stares at Malik, as if taking his measure in an effort to determine what course of action is open to him. His eyes prowl the shop, like an eagle on the lookout for prey to pounce on. But when his wandering eyes land on Qasiir, he seems to regain his composure with a forced effort. He says to Qasiir, “I hadn’t realized you were here, in the shop. No one has told me. Please, please accept my condolences. And, please, please greet your mother and tell her how sorry I am to hear of your grandfather’s death.”

  A quiet hush descends. He turns to Malik and asks, “Did you bring the machine with you that you say is now malfunctioning?”

  Malik shakes his head.

  BigBeard says, “Bring it and we’ll fix it.”

  He turns to go.

  Malik calls him back. “Haven’t we met before?”

  BigBeard pauses briefly, then replies, “I am often mistaken for other people with whom I share a family resemblance. Maybe you’ve met one of my cousins. He used to work here.”

  Qasiir, meanwhile, has put a bit of distance between himself and Malik, the way teenagers stand to one side and look away in embarrassment when their parents start plying their friends with stories about them.

  Malik says to BigBeard, keeping his voice low, “I am not mistaking you for anyone else. I know who you are: you confiscated my computer, deleted the photograph of my daughter, and then poisoned my machine with a venomous virus, which ruined it. Do you remember any of that?”

  “You’re mistaking me for someone else.”

  They look hard into each other’s eyes, neither blinking. It is as if they are testing each other’s mettle. BigBeard seems almost buoyant, though, as if a victory is nigh; Malik’s confidence is fueled by his rage.

  “What exactly do you want?” BigBeard asks at length.

  “I would like my machine back.”

  In the silence that follows, Qasiir rallies his inner strength and says quietly to Malik, “Please let us go.”

  But nothing will move Malik from where he is.

  BigBeard says, “You are an impetuous man and a fool and you do not know what is good for you. If you value your life, you will go out of here this instant. If you don’t…!”

  “What, if I don’t?”

  BigBeard pulls his coat aside to reveal the butt of his Magnum. “You’ll die a painful death. I will make certain of that. And remember, I know where you live. I know everything about you.”

  Whatever he expected, Malik did not think their conversation would end in a cul-de-sac of such naked threat. His calm exterior and his steady stare now conceal an inner tremor, and he startles this time when Qasiir touches him and says, “Shall we go, please?”

  Malik wonders how much of what was said could be heard by Qasiir, or whether he, too, caught a flash of the Magnum.

  Back in the car, Malik is impressed at how Qasiir restrains himself from prying or from reprimanding him. He knows he is given to keeping his foibles under wraps, making a point not to publicize them. He has a bad sense of direction, for example, which makes him doubly grateful for Qasiir. On his own in other locales, he sometimes goes to the venues where he is to meet someone a day ahead, reconnoitering, to avoid making a fool of himself.

  Qasiir says, “One of my mates drafted as a Shabaab cadre has informed me of a young thing who died at BigBeard’s instructions a couple of days ago. He is a ruthless man, BigBeard.”

  “Can I meet your friend, the Shabaab recruit?”

  “I asked him if he would meet you.”

  “What was his answer?”

  “He prefers that you meet the brother of the young thing.”

  Qasiir explains that the dead boy was part of an advance team, sent out to “consecrate” safe houses close to the presidential villa from which they intend to launch their war on both the interim head and the Ethiopian invaders.

  “Do you know where to find him?”

  “He is a former pirate, now jobless.”

  Malik asks, “What’s his name?”

  “Marduuf.”

  “How bizarre,” Malik says. “Named for a large measure of wrapped qaat.”

  “He is partial to qaat, and wasted the money he made from piracy chewing it.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “He came to Mogadiscio soon after his brother was buried, and has spent a great deal of time gathering as much information as possible about his late sibling,” Qasiir replies. “I hear he has built a case for vengeance.”

  “And he is biding his time?”

  “He is waiting for a good opportunity to act on his rage,” Qasiir says.

  “Is he willing, do you think, to come to where I choose and do the interview?”

  “That’s my understanding,” Qasiir says.

  “What about a time of my choosing—will he agree to that, too?”

  Qasiir says, “I believe he will.”

  They part without saying more.

  AHL HEADS FOR HIS ROOM TO MAKE SURE THAT HIS PERSONAL effects, including his cash and passports, are safely locked away before going off to Guri-Maroodi, the village where groups of young men congregate—would-be illegal migrants bracing for a sea trip to Yemen and then Europe. He puts the key in the door, but the lock won’t engage. The TV in the room is blaring, but he doesn’t recall turning it on before going down earlier. He pulls the key out and inserts it a second time, and a third. Still, it won’t turn. He is about to go down to the reception desk to ask for help when the door opens a crack. He sees that a young man with a familiar face—the TV programmer—is in the room.

  Ahl asks, “What are you doing in my room?”

  As soon as the words leave his mouth, he asks himself if one can say “my room” when one has only temporary access to it.

  “I am programming the TV. For you.”

  “With the door locked?”

  “Does it matter whether the door is or isn’t locked when I am in the room, programming your TV?” the young fellow says with incorrigible cheekiness.

  Ahl stares in silence at the young man—the door open, the key in the clutch of his hand, his eyes washing over his suitcase and shoulder bag, uncertain if they are where he left them. Do they seem a little disorderly, as if someone has tampered with them? Ahl recalls opening the computer bag before he went down to breakfast. But did he leave the bag unlocked? No point asking the young man anything. People out here are jittery, their tetchiness priming them to jump to the wrong conclusions.

  He says to the young man, “Get out!”

  Alone in the room, the door securely latched from the inside, he unplugs the TV. The sealed envelopes with Taxliil’s photograph and the cash are still in the computer bag—there is no time to make sure that nothing else is m
issing. He decides to carry these valuables on his person, unable to think of a better way of keeping them safe. He wears the cash belt and carries the laptop with him. But for the sake of form, he locks his suitcase, in which there is nothing but his dirty clothes.

  Back outside, his eyes clap on a pack of young crows with feathers so shiny they look as if they’ve been dipped in black oil. Some strut around, as if daring him to chase them; others take off as he approaches, then alight on the tree branches and descend to the patch of garden. They make a racket, clucking and pecking at one another.

  Ahl goes to reception to complain about the TV programmer. An unfamiliar middle-aged man who is missing one eye is at the front desk. He hesitates, not sure if he wants to discuss his grievance with this man, whom he assumes doesn’t work here.

  “Where is the manager?” Ahl asks.

  “What do you want?” the one-eyed man demands.

  “I’d like to submit a complaint about the young man who has made a habit of locking my room from the inside, and rummaging in my stuff. He claims he’s the TV programmer,” Ahl says.

  The one-eyed man scratches his stubbled chin. He says, “I am afraid we do not have a TV programmer in our employ. We fired the last one who worked here three days ago precisely because he was found routing about in a guest’s room.”

  “But he was in my room just now,” Ahl says.

  “He has no business being in your room.”

  Ahl asks, “How does he gain access unless he has a master key, or collects one from reception? I chased him out a few minutes ago.”

  “He has no business being in your room, or collecting a master key from here,” the one-eyed man insists. “I’ll report him to the management. Action will be taken against him soon.”

  “Please do that,” Ahl says, although he doesn’t believe for a moment that the man will take any such action.

  A car horn honks, and the outside gate opens to admit a battered jalopy. Fidno is at the wheel. Ahl wonders whether it makes sense for him to carry all his cash and his computer with him when Fidno evidently thinks the village they are driving to rates no better than the bucket of bolts he is driving rather than his usual posh car. But what else can he do? He puts his faith in his good fortune, trusting that all will be well for now. Maybe he will check out of the hotel at the first opportunity and move in with Xalan and Warsame, if the offer still stands.

  Barely has Ahl clambered into the four-wheel wreck, placed his laptop at his feet, and put on the seat belt when Fidno squeals out of the gate and steps on the gas, as if eager to be clear of the place. Within half a kilometer they are in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, where the huts are built of coarse matting reinforced here and there with zinc, or from packing material bearing the names of its manufacturers, although they are moving too fast for Ahl to make out the letters. The doors to the dwellings, which are improvised out of cloth, blow in the wind. Everything about these huts and the lean-tos that serve as their kitchens has an air of the temporary about it. The residents are those displaced by the fighting in the south of the country. They have come to Bosaso because there is peace here.

  Fidno climbs through the gears in quick succession, the clunker rattling so loudly that neither man talks, not even when Fidno nearly runs over a couple of pedestrians loitering in the center of the road. At the last second, they scatter, and Fidno roars on, like a race-car driver participating in an autocross relay through an uninhabited countryside. The ride is as disagreeable as mounting a bad-tempered young male camel that spits, kicks, and foams furiously at the mouth.

  Straining to be heard over the ruckus, Ahl asks, “Why the rush? Are we late?”

  “Our man is restless,” Fidno says. “We may not find him still there if we delay.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Fidno responds irritably, “If you really must know, he is known by his nickname, Magac-Laawe. A no-name man.”

  “Have you spoken to No-Name yourself, then?”

  “I’ve spoken to his henchman.”

  Ahl wishes Malik were here, Malik who knows how to deal with this specimen of humanity, the dirt no one dare clean up, in a land with no laws, in a country where brute force earns high dividends. If warlords have deputies, and presidents their vice presidents, then it follows that, in a world in which coercion is the norm, a human trafficker must have underlings as well.

  “What have you told No-Name about me?”

  “That you are my friend.”

  What does that make him? Ahl wonders. An associate of a known criminal? Is this what children do to you, knowingly or unwittingly, make you into an accomplice of outlaws? He prays that Fidno does not run afoul of the authorities while they are together, especially not with so much cash and his laptop on him, in this beat-up vehicle on the way to Guri-Maroodi, a hot spot with few equals in notoriety, even within Puntland.

  “What else did you tell him?”

  “That you are looking for your runaway nephew.”

  “My nephew—why nephew? He is my son.”

  “Makes no difference. Nephew, son, stepson!”

  Of course it does make a difference; but Ahl says nothing.

  Fidno says, “I was worried that No-Name might think you would become too emotional, irrational, or hard to please if things do not go the way you want them to. ‘My son’ is different from ‘my nephew.’ I don’t know if this makes sense to you, but that is what I thought. I did it for your sake. To make things happen.”

  Again, Ahl thinks that he is not suited for this kind of assignment the way Malik is, having interviewed Afghani drug lords as well as Pakistani Taliban warlords. It requires a familiarity with the criminal mind that is beyond his experience. Ahl worries that once he’s endorsed a lie, he will be open to telling more, and there will be no end to it.

  He says, “I’ll set No-Name right on this. A lie does not run off my tongue easily, and I’ll have to beware of what I say all the time.”

  “Do what suits you,” Fidno concedes.

  They go through a drab-looking hamlet that boasts of only a few low shops built of stone, atop a wood foundation, the zinc roofing painted in different colors, mainly blue. Billboards advertise cigarettes, soda, milk, and other products, Ahl guesses more for decoration than because they are actually available. They have slowed to a snail’s pace, and Ahl can see people in clusters of three and four, with their curious eyes trained on the jalopy. He can even hear them: they are speaking a babble of Swahili, Oromo, Tigrinya, broken Yemeni Arabic, and Somali. A microcosm of the Horn, a cosmopolitan misery marked with unforgiving poverty.

  Minibuses ply the road to Bosaso, and young men and women walk along the road, hitching a ride or footing it; almost everyone here is young, and there are more men than women.

  “I could hear Amharic, Swahili, and Tigrinya as we passed,” Ahl says. “How on earth do they all get here?”

  “The Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Somalis from the south of the country walk for several days to get here,” Fidno responds. “Some of the Kenyans and the Tanzanians arrive by plane or by boat. But only a few make it to Yemen. The owners of the fishing boats have been known to throw three-quarters of their passengers overboard before they make it ashore to avoid the possible confiscation of their boats.”

  There is a group of young men gathered around a pickup with the back open. A woman has set up a stall close by selling qaat. Ahl sees one of the youths carrying a bundle and a number of his mates following, some clearly asking him to give them a share.

  “Tell me how you described Taxliil,” says Ahl.

  Fidno says, “A bright young fellow with excellent language skills, impeccable manners, assigned to welcome foreign Shabaab recruits here to join the insurgency in Somalia.”

  “In what capacity does No-Name enter the scene?”

  “It makes business sense for the boat owners not to return empty after transporting the migrants to the shores of Yemen,” Fidno explains. Ahl considers how this works to
the advantage of several groups operating outside the law. Likewise, it makes sense for the pirates and the religionists to work together, not only for profit but also for mutual security.

  They have reached the outskirts of the village. As they continue south, the landscape turns desolate, burned. Then there is a sudden change in the wind, which picks up and brings along with it a cooler breeze from the sea. The vegetation is sparse, much of it of the thorny sort, with a few trees to provide shade to humans and fodder for camels. A young boy, shirtless and in a sarong, with a chewing stick in his mouth, looks lost as his camels chomp away at one of the treetops. Ahl says, “There is a world of difference between the young Somali nomad looking after his beasts and the migrants wanting to cross the sea, isn’t there?”

  “Do you suppose the young nomad is content because he knows no better life?” asks Fidno.

  “I would imagine that many of the migrants, being city born and city bred, are unhappy with their lot and eager to seek adventure elsewhere,” Ahl observes. “Perhaps because they’ve seen too much TV and believe that life elsewhere is more comfortable.”

  “What about your son? He had the possibility of a successful future ahead of him. Do you know what made him leave Minneapolis to return to this desolate place?”

  “I wish I knew,” Ahl mumbles.

  They enter another enclave. The sea breeze is now stronger as they pass men sitting around or lying in the scanty shade of the trees, chewing qaat.

  “Who are they?” asks Ahl, pointing out a group of young migrants, half lying and half sitting, as if they are too tired even to sit all the way up.

  “Migrants exhausted from waiting.”

  “What are they waiting for?”

  But Fidno does not answer Ahl’s question. “We’re here,” he says instead, and he turns in and stops at a metal gate guarded by armed men in khaki uniforms. A young man with large eyes and a thin, half-trimmed mustache comes forward. Fidno waves his hand in greeting, and the youth acknowledges him with a broad smile.

  One side of the gate opens, and the young man steps out, just as another youth with a small head and wearing huge spectacles emerges from the gatehouse and stands by a second barrier that needs to be removed manually. The first young man approaches the car to check out Ahl.