Crossbones

by Nuruddin Farah

  On the way to the market complex, they come upon more devastation, houses destroyed by recent bombing and families sitting out in the open or under the shade trees still standing in the rubble. Qasiir explains to Malik that many of the homeowners prefer the inconvenience of slumming it near their properties to moving out to the camps, where the homeless and the internally displaced are congregated.

  They come across large groups of people moving in the opposite direction, as though they’ve seen enough of whatever it is they have seen. Malik reflects that in the old dispensation, when the Courts were in charge, the city was on the face of it peaceful. Now they drive through agitated movements: of men and women running away from something and looking back, checking to see if the trouble they are fleeing is pursuing them. They discern excitement, fear, and anger everywhere they look. Some of them shout excitedly at each other, heatedly exchanging views.

  “Do you want us to stop?” Qasiir asks, glancing at him.

  Malik shakes his head and they continue. Soon the smell of burning tires reaches them. A battery of youths and robed men charged with the energy of foment raise their fists and chant, “Down with Ethiopia!” Some shout, “Down with the invading Christians!” and yet others cry, “Long live the martyrs of the faith!” Qasiir turns into a broad dirt road and, just as he finds a parking spot, nearly runs over a man crossing the road with feverish intent. Malik says he wishes he had brought a camera, and then Qasiir pulls out his phone and, before Malik can say anything, starts to take photographs of youths nearby who are setting fire to a crudely assembled effigy of the Ethiopian premier. He and Qasiir walk farther and farther into the heart of the chaos, watching the goings-on with rabid interest. Despite the promise he made to his wife not to be pulled into the abyss, Malik without regret moves in deeper, excited to ferret about in other people’s heightened emotions; to eavesdrop on their sorrows; to listen in on their conversations and intrude on their private and public personae. After all, when one is in a mob, one is private in a public space.

  Qasiir says, “For them, it is like theater and what they consider to be a bit of fun. It’s part of the political show, orchestrated to the smallest detail by men sympathetic to the insurgents and against the TFG. The idea is to humiliate the interim government.”

  “Did you participate in the debasing of the corpse of the dead Marine in 1993, Qasiir?” Malik asks.

  Qasiir doesn’t answer at first.

  Malik says, “I know that the chopper nearly killed your younger sister and rendered her mute and forever traumatized. But did you take part in that heinous act of self-humiliation?”

  Finally Qasiir says, “Grandpa Dajaal wouldn’t allow me to join them.”

  “Would you have joined your mates if he hadn’t?”

  “Yes,” says Qasiir. “I would have joined my mates if he hadn’t.”

  “I would have expected better of you,” Malik says.

  “The way it was put to us at the time, it was all part of a political show of solidarity to the general, an integral part of a performance. Everything pre-rehearsed, taking into account every possible detail,” Qasiir explains, and then after a pause, adds, “I was young, naive.”

  “I’ve been to many of these pre-arranged demonstrations in Pakistan, in India, and in Afghanistan,” Malik says. “Initially, they all appear so real. My feeling is that the performance we’ve just seen had a rehearsed quality to it. Although that doesn’t stop many foreign journalists from being taken for a ride.”

  “Like hired mourners, wailing,” observes Qasiir.

  “I suppose nothing is free,” Malik says.

  He recalls the names of giants in his field, journalists and authors who pried into the deeper horrors of the universe, and who returned with all kinds of spoil. He hopes to write an article about staring into the raw truths of rage. The further he goes into the inner sanctums of the market complex, forbidden to him until then by virtue of his outsider status, the more his heart sickens, though. Qasiir, with Malik following behind, is now exchanging high fives with a mate of his who fought alongside him, now giving the thumbs-up to a former fellow militiaman who is making sure that the demonstration doesn’t get out of hand and that the disorder is kept to a minimum.

  Malik chokes on the smoke billowing from the effigies and other burning debris. Then he and Qasiir focus their interest on a clutch of youths in a circle clapping their hands, dancing and chanting to a chorus of protestations with the interchangeable terms—Ethiopia, America, Christians, infidels, apostates, traitors—occurring in a discontinuous song. As Qasiir takes pictures of the youths who pose for him, the atmosphere festive, the mood buoyant, Malik realizes with shock that they are stamping on a corpse in uniform.

  For Malik, this marks the moment in a people’s history when sectarian rage may be portrayed as national panic. Malik thinks that a cross-section of Somalis have suspended their full membership in the human race because their behavior is unacceptable: one does not debase the dead. Nor, if one wishes to preserve the dignity of one’s humanity, does one raze a house of worship to the ground, desecrate cemeteries, drag a corpse, or kick it while dancing around it. One can understand the rage that inspires a certain section of the populace to behave this way, a rage resulting from the deaths and the humiliation suffered at the hands of the Ethiopians. However, Malik condemns their conduct, because it breaks with Somali as well as Muslim tradition and departs from the norms of civilized behavior.

  Too embarrassed to admit to his own fear, he walks away, sorry for the Ethiopian, killed in a war in a country about which he probably remained ignorant until the moment of his death. He feels sorry, too, for the Somali youths kicking the dead Ethiopian, an ill-educated, ill-informed lot, as unfamiliar with the concept of respect for the dead as they are with Islam. Blame it on decades of civil war, in which these youths haven’t gone to schools, haven’t lived in homes where there is the semblance of harmony and functionality. Blame it, too, on the current Somali political class, who are equally ill educated and equally self-centered, and who behave inhumanely toward others. Malik’s sickened heart sicker than ever, he feels as if he is complicit in these terrible doings, because he cannot find a way to stop them.

  Just before they leave the Bakhaaraha, there is a heavy exchange of gunfire, RPG rounds from the general direction of the presidential villa falling within a hundred yards from where Qasiir parked the car. The geography of the Bakhaaraha and the casbah make sense only to a native, he thinks. A stranger wouldn’t know which alleys end in dead ends and which would lead them to safety.

  They get into the car and miraculously find their way through the back streets and onto one of the city’s arteries.

  Malik’s phone rings. Fee-Jigan is on the line, informing him that earlier, maybe two and a half hours ago, a radio journalist, whose name Malik recognizes from his impressive commentaries on HornAfrik, has been shot inside the Bakhaaraha.

  “What was he doing when he was killed?” Malik asks.

  “He was interviewing an insurgent.”

  “Where are you now?”

  Fee-Jigan says he is on his way to join the funeral cortege, which is departing in half an hour from in front of Bank Tewfik. He asks Malik to put Qasiir on so that he can know how to get there.

  Malik is the first to spot the cortege, and Qasiir pulls up at the rear. Malik then rings Fee-Jigan, who eventually joins them, and they stand beside the car, chatting. Other journalists make their appearance, and Fee-Jigan introduces them to Malik. He recognizes the names of the authors of some of the pieces he has read. Not one of the articles impressed him, he remembers, either because they lacked depth or because the author hadn’t done sufficient background research before committing to a point of view. It is apparent that a number of the reporters have had no training, at least not enough to be taken seriously. Even so, he has remained in awe of their courage, their indomitable behavior.

  They tell Malik more about the killing, which occurred in the Bakhaaraha mar
ket complex. Shire, the deceased journalist, was waiting for his interviewee, a top insurgent, in the back room of the computer shop. Known for his lack of fear and his outspokenness, Shire put his name to his editorials even when he knew they would upset all parties to the conflict. He had often spoken of his “foretold” death at the hands of assassins, although he couldn’t predict, and didn’t seem to care, whether the Ethiopians or the insurgents would get him first.

  He was struck by balaclava-wearing men in the shop’s back room, which was adjacent to the manager’s cubicle. Three men gained access to the room, where he was waiting for the interview, and one of them shot him, using a silencer. “They emerged, waved salaam to the manager and the staff, and departed, having accomplished their mission,” Fee-Jigan says.

  “Who found the corpse?”

  “The young tea boy, delivering tea to the room.”

  Malik thinks, What a sad way to die!

  “That’s the story,” Fee-Jigan says, his eyebrows raised. His expression seems to suggest that there is something not right here.

  “And what explanations do the manager and the staff of the shop proffer so far?” asks Malik. He thinks this must have been an inside job, and vaguely recalls an incident in Afghanistan, when a warlord was killed by Arab men posing as journalists.

  Fee-Jigan replies, “Everyone in the shop claims to have been in the dark about the arrangements, because Shire had insisted that his interviewee and his escorts, who would come into the shop wearing balaclavas, be granted entry to the room in the back, where he would be waiting.”

  “Where is the corpse now?” Malik asks.

  “At a mosque near his home.”

  “Are we going to the mosque or his home?”

  “First the mosque, then the cemetery.”

  It takes the convoy of vehicles a long time to turn into a procession and get into a proper line. Malik thinks that someone with authority, in a uniform, like a traffic cop, is needed to clear the way if twenty or so cars wish to form an orderly file in a city enjoying peace. Organizing a column of cars into a well-ordered cavalcade during a civil war, however, is an impossible task.

  But eventually they are under way, and Malik, while making no direct reference to their last encounter in Ma-Gabadeh’s company, asks how the book Fee-Jigan has been writing is coming along.

  Fee-Jigan says, “I’ve put it on a back burner.”

  “So what are you working on at present?”

  “I’ve been working on matters closer to home.”

  “Such as what?”

  “I’ve been writing pieces of great topical interest in the international media,” says Fee-Jigan. “There is nothing more important these days than the targeting and killing of journalists, one dead every two days.”

  “Who do you think is behind the killings?”

  Fee-Jigan seems unduly worried about Qasiir, whom he stares at. Malik assures him that Qasiir is trustworthy not by speaking but by nodding his head in Qasiir’s direction.

  Fee-Jigan says, “There are freelancing fifth columnists comprising former senior army officers, many of whom are allied to the Courts. These do the killings.”

  “But why would they kill Shire, who, from what I understand, was interviewing an insurgent presumably sympathetic to the Courts?”

  “They kill to confuse the issue.”

  Malik can’t follow his logic. He asks, “What issue?”

  “Shire favored the truth,” Fee-Jigan says. “He dared speak his mind, unafraid. At times, his hard-hitting commentaries upset Shabaab and their allies. The freelancing fifth columnists do anyone’s dirty work as long as it confuses the issue.”

  Malik appreciates that Qasiir is doing what he can under confusing circumstances to make sure they are not left far behind, now slowing down, now going fast, and now communicating with a couple of the drivers with whom he exchanged mobile numbers before the convoy set off. They’ll keep in touch in the event of a problem. When they get to the mosque and discover they are late for the funeral service, there is disagreement over where to go, some suggesting they head for Shire’s family home, from which the bier will be carried on foot to the cemetery, a kilometer and a half away, others insisting they drive straight to the grave site and wait there. Malik concurs with Fee-Jigan that it is best to go to the family home and to help carry the bier.

  They arrive in time to witness the bier already being carried out of the house. The street fills up with a crowd of well-wishers, passersby stopping to say, “Allahu akbar,” and the entire place reverberating with brief prayers of supplication addressed to the Almighty. Everyone hereabouts cuts a forlorn figure, head down in sorrow, mourning for the untimely death of a man who did no one harm and was loved by many.

  The pace of the procession is quick, and a number of the journalists who arrived at the same time as Malik hurry to catch up with the coffin and help carry it, even briefly. In Islam, burial is quick, in hope that the dead will arrive at his resting place in a more contented state, with Allah’s blessing.

  Malik finds himself for the first and only time in his life carrying the bier of someone he didn’t even know, and moved to be participating in the ritual. He gives his place over to Fee-Jigan, who in turns passes it to Qasiir, until they reach the edge of the waiting grave.

  Just then Malik’s mobile, which is in vibrate mode, makes a purring sound in the top of his shirt pocket. He checks most discreetly at the first opportunity, having stepped out of everybody’s way. It’s a text from Ahl. “Taxliil here. All well, considering. Talk when you can.”

  Malik recalls drafting a text message to Ahl, but not whether he sent it before the improvised roadside device struck the van he was traveling in. He remembers he’d been with others on their way back from the funeral of a journalist. Now, half-unconscious and lying on his side, in pain, he composes more text messages in his head: Talk of the walking wounded! But he can’t press the send button. One needs hands to write a message, and Malik can’t feel his hands. This does not stop him from adding a PS: Imagine the injured working through much pain, the wounded autographing the death warrants with a great flourish.

  It is curious, he thinks, that he has not made personal acquaintance with an improvised explosive device until now.

  In Somalia, IEDs did not figure much among the signatures of any of the armed factions in the Somali conflict until the Ethiopians arrived. Before, one would hear of two men on a motorbike or two or three on foot and in balaclavas, armed with pistols, hiding around a curve in the road as they waited for their victims to come out of a mosque or out of a car. The killers would ride away on their bike or they would run off, unidentified. Of late, however, roadside bombing has become the insurgents’ favorite mode of operation. They study the movements of their victims and plant custom-made, pre-designed explosive devices accordingly, to pick off by remote control a government official traveling by car or an Ethiopian battalion decamping from one base to another, or journalists covering a momentous event.

  Malik drafts in his head yet another text message to Ahl, informing his brother that he is now a casualty of the device, but, thank God, he is still alive. In fact, he can hear the explosion replaying in his memory, he can see the smoke it generated, he can smell the powder it emitted and he can feel in his own body the demolition of the device. He is bruised here and there and has suffered a concussion, but he senses he is regaining his ability to move some of his limbs. He moves a leg, as if to prove it to himself. Alas, the leg won’t obey his command. What about his arm? His arm is more obliging, maybe because it is free from other obstructions, unlike the leg, which is bent under his body. It is in his head that the concussion has been concentrated. His neck is in some sort of a twist, and the back of his head is wet, but he cannot tell if it is blood or water that someone has spilled. He bends his knees some more and then stretches his leg, despite the impediment.

  Then he opens his eyes, only to close them.

  The device that blew up the car carrying
Malik and his fellow journalists on the way back from Shire’s funeral claimed the lives of three of them. Malik had chosen to ride with the other journalists instead of driving alone with Qasiir. As he replays the explosion in his memory, he is uncertain if one or two of the tires of the twelve-seater van in which they were traveling had burst, or if it had been preceded by a man on motorbike shooting at them. Anyhow, instead of the vehicle collapsing in on itself like a punctured ball, Malik sensed the minivan lifting off the ground, just as one of the journalists, now dead, was describing Shabaab as “men short on reasoning, on political cunning, and who are notorious for their doublespeak.” Everyone, including the driver, also now dead, put in his word until the fragmentation grenade insinuated itself into the clamor and terminated their lively debate in instant darkness.

  Even as his head hit the seat in front of him, Malik resisted dropping into the gaping dimness, remembering Amran’s words—“I do not want to raise an orphan.” His brief daze was replaced by a scary silence, and then he heard someone close by moaning in agony, and someone else pleading for help, saying, “I am hurt; very badly hurt.” Then a sound like a goat being slaughtered.

  His concussion is mild, his memory not affected; his bodily and mental reflexes are all in relatively good order. But like a newborn baby, or a dead person just interred, he is not all there. He is sufficiently alert to remember the unsubstantiated claim among Somalis that soon after interment, the dead hear everything, can even recognize the voices of the relatives and friends present at their burial. Malik is alive, even if he is not all there. He follows the protocol a person follows after a concussion; he asks himself simple questions: his own name, his wife’s name, his brother’s name, his date of birth, and where in the world he is now. He becomes both the asker and respondent. Only when he passes the test does he reopen his eyes. A crowd has gathered around the vehicle, some helping, some just gawking.