“A lot of what you’ve told me is news to me,” Jeebleh said, and after a brief pause added, “From what I know, the abductions have a political motive. In fact, I recall reading somewhere that StrongmanSouth, the warlord, is implicated.”
“Where have you read that?”
“In the American press.”
“What do Americans know about things here?”
The man had a valid point, and Jeebleh chose not to challenge him until he knew more. He was silent for a long while, pondering how to continue this conversation. Finally he asked, “Were Raasta and her companion abducted together or separately?”
“Raasta and her playmate, Makka, who has Down’s syndrome, shared a room,” Af-Laawe replied. “They were inseparable. You saw one, you saw the other, you thought of one, you thought of the other too.”
“How’s Bile taking it?”
“He’s devastated.”
Jeebleh shook his head in sorrow, as he remembered reading an article about the abduction in The New York Times. The article had described Raasta as a symbol of peace in war-torn Somalia, the stuff of myth, seen by the city’s residents as a conduit to a harmonious coexistence. Jeebleh could remember parts of the story word for word: “People believe that they will not come to harm if they are in her vicinity; they feel safe from arbitrary murder, from stray bullets or from the pointless death of a mugging. This is why ordinary people seek shelter at The Refuge, where she resides.”
“If Bile just returns the money, will they be set free?”
“There’s no guarantee,” Af-Laawe said.
“Does anyone know who the abductors are?”
But when Jeebleh turned to hear his response, Af-Laawe was gone, and he was face to face with three armed youths. Terror-stricken, he wondered if he had conjured the man, with a little help from a friendly jinni, out of desperate need for a guide to help him navigate the anarchic city.
WHAT BEASTLY MOTIVE DID THESE ARMED YOUTHS HAVE FOR TAKING UP POSITION so close to where he was standing? Nonplussed by their devil-may-care postures and ragged outfits, Jeebleh supposed they were not acting with the authority of the police, who would have had uniforms and badges. He was certain that even if they had been in uniform, they would hardly have looked the part. And in any case, Somalis would not defer to someone simply because of his uniform: he would still be an armed thug trying to maintain authority.
Jeebleh remembered seeing a German play when he was a student in Italy, a play set in Prussia at the end of World War I, in which an ex-convict, with no papers, dons an officer’s uniform. Saluted and deferred to wherever he goes, his every word deemed to contain the voice of authority, he is welcomed everywhere; unlimited credit facilities are extended to him. Somalis never defer to the authority of a uniform in the way the Germans do, Jeebleh thought. We will defer only to the brute force of guns. Maybe the answer lies in the nation’s history since the days of colonialism, and later in those of the Dictator, and more recently during the presence of U.S. troops: these treacherous times have disabused us of our faith in uniformed authorities—which have proven to be redundant, corrupt, clannish, insensitive, and unjust.
Then he heard the word “Passport,” and turning, found himself before a man, neither in uniform nor bearing a gun, who seemed to arrogate authority to himself. Jeebleh looked him slowly up and down, questioning the wisdom of surrendering his passport on the say-so of a total stranger. Yet he dared not ask that the man show him proof of his authority to make such a request. Suddenly Af-Laawe was back, and no sooner had Jeebleh opened his mouth to speak than Af-Laawe broke in, his voice low and firm, advising: “Do as the man says. Give him your passport and twenty U.S. dollars cash. He’ll stamp the passport and return it to you, together with a receipt.”
Was he being set up? And if so, what should he do? Af-Laawe seemed to wield certain power hereabouts, but could he be trusted? And who were the gunmen? Being from New York, the Metropolis of Mistrust, Jeebleh decided not to part with his American passport. He reached into his shoulder bag and pulled out the Somali document, recently issued by the embassy in Rome, and a crisp twenty-dollar bill. He left his American passport where it was, together with the cash, in his wallet. The man leafed through the pages and demanded, “Why do you give me a Somali passport, not at all used, and with no visas in it?”
Jeebleh turned to Af-Laawe, and with a touch of sarcasm addressed both men: “When has it become necessary for a Somali to require a visa to enter Mogadiscio?”
“Is he taking us for fools?” the man protested.
“Please take the twenty dollars,” Af-Laawe told him, “accept his Somali passport, and return it stamped, with a receipt. Pronto!”
For a moment, the man paused, and it seemed he might not be willing to oblige. Af-Laawe pulled him aside and out of Jeebleh’s earshot.
Jeebleh’s thoughts drifted back more than twenty years, to the last time he had used a Somali passport. It had been at the Mogadiscio international airport, about forty kilometers south of here, and he recalled how a man—not in uniform, and without a gun—had taken his passport and disappeared for an eternity. Jeebleh was on his way to Europe, and he worried that he might be prevented from leaving the country, then under the tyrannical rule of the Dictator. Bile and several others, who had apprenticed themselves to Jeebleh politically, had been picked up by the National Security the night before. There was every possibility that, as their mentor, he too would be arrested. And he was.
He had been driven straight from the airport to prison. He was brought before a kangaroo court and sentenced to death. Several years later, he was mysteriously taken from the prison in a National Security vehicle and driven to the VIP lounge of the same airport, where he changed from his prison rags into a suit. He was handed a passport with a one-year Kenyan visa and put on a plane to Nairobi, all expenses paid. Someone whose name he could no longer remember suggested that he present himself at the U.S. embassy. There he was issued a multiple-entry visa for the United States. He still wondered who had done all this for him, and why.
Now, as he waited for Af-Laawe to return, he held the two contradictory images in his mind. In one, he was dressed in a suit, being roughly handcuffed and taken in a security vehicle, sirens blaring, straight to prison; in the other, he was in rags, being driven back to the airport, to be flown to Nairobi. In one, the officers escorting him to prison were crass; in the other, the officers were the epitome of courtesy. That’s dictatorship for you. This is civil war for you!
With every cell in his body responding to his restless caution, he wished he knew where danger lurked, who was a friend and who a foe. He had once been used to the arbitrariness of a dictatorial regime, where one might be thrown into detention on the basis of a rumor. That had been exchanged here for a cruder arbitrariness—a civil anarchy in which one might die at the hands of an armed youth because one belonged to a different clan family from his, if there was even that much reason.
Af-Laawe was back, telling him that his passport would be returned shortly, duly stamped. There was much charm to his lisp, as he commended Jeebleh for having surrendered the Somali document rather than the American one. Jeebleh couldn’t decide whether his self-appointed guide was a godsend or not. Nor could he decide whether the man had hidden motives.
“Any chance of a lift or a taxi?” Jeebleh asked.
“I’ve arranged that already.”
“I see no taxis anywhere.”
“Not to worry, you’ll get a lift,” Af-Laawe assured him.
“Tell me something about yourself in the meantime.”
“There’s very little to tell.”
“Then tell me what little there is.”
“I’m a friend of Bile’s,” Af-Laawe said.
“So it was he who sent you to meet my flight?”
“The pleasure of coming was entirely mine.”
Impressed with the man’s smooth talk, yet frightened by it too, Jeebleh wanted to know how Af-Laawe had managed to survive in th
is violated city, with his wit and his dignity—or at least his composure—intact. For all that, however, something didn’t add up. Af-Laawe reminded Jeebleh of an actor in a hand-me-down role for which he was ill suited.
“If you won’t tell me anything about yourself,” Jeebleh said, “maybe you can tell me more about Bile, whom I haven’t set eyes on for more than two decades.”
“Everything in due course, please,” the man responded.
Jeebleh wondered whether he should put Af-Laawe’s evasiveness down to discretion, or to the fact that he knew of the bad blood between Bile and Jeebleh, both personal and political, from long before. The bad blood had to do in large part with Bile’s being kept in prison, while Jeebleh had been released and mysteriously put on that plane. It was no surprise people believed that Jeebleh had betrayed the love and trust of his friend.
“Where does Bile live?” Jeebleh asked.
“In the south of the city.”
That Bile chose to base himself in the south of the divided metropolis did not surprise Jeebleh at all. His friend was of the same bloodline as StrongmanSouth, the warlord who ran the territory, supported by clan-based militiamen. Jeebleh was of StrongmanNorth’s clan, but he felt no clan-based loyalty himself—in fact, the whole idea revolted and angered him.
Jeebleh returned to the basics: “Will you help me find a hotel?”
Af-Laawe appeared discomfited. He looked around nervously, seemingly out of his depth, as put-upon as a babysitter asked to take on the responsibility of an absentee parent. Guessing that Af-Laawe knew more than he was prepared to let on, Jeebleh had the bizarre feeling that whoever had sent him had asked that he arrange a lift, but not book him into a hotel. Had Af-Laawe come under someone’s instructions, and if so, whose?
Now Af-Laawe was again conveniently wearing the confident look of a veteran guide, able to steer his charge through to safety. “We will have you taken to a hotel in the north, where we think you will feel safer! You see, in these troubled times, many people stay in the territories to which their clan families have ancestral claims, where they feel comfortable and can move about unhindered, unafraid. However, if you wish, we’ll have you moved eventually to the south, closer to Bile. Possibly Bile himself will invite you to share his apartment, who knows.”
Jeebleh took note of Af-Laawe’s use of “we,” but was unable to determine whether it was a gesture of amicability or whether someone else was involved in the arrangements being made for him. Was this “we” inclusive, in the sense that Af-Laawe was hinting that the two of them belonged to the same clan? Or did Af-Laawe’s “we” take other people into account, others known to be from the same blood community as Jeebleh? “What about Calooshii-Cune?” he asked.
Although Calooshii-Cune—Caloosha for short—was Bile’s elder half brother, he and Jeebleh were of the same clan. Curious how the clan system worked: that two half brothers sharing a mother, like Caloosha and Bile, were considered not to be of the same clan family, because they had different fathers, and that Jeebleh, Bile’s closest friend, was deemed to be related, in blood terms, more to Caloosha, because the two were descended from the same mythic ancestor. For much of the former Dictator’s reign, Caloosha had served as deputy director of the National Security Service. Many people believed that he had been responsible for Bile’s and Jeebleh’s imprisonment, for the death sentence passed on Jeebleh, and also for his eventual, mysterious release. Bile had remained in prison until the state collapsed, when the prison gates were finally flung open.
“Caloosha lives in the northern part of the city,” Af-Laawe said, “near the hotel you’ll be staying in. Say the word, and we’ll be only too pleased to take you to him, any day, anytime.”
Jeebleh was disturbed to learn about Af-Laawe’s intimacy with Caloosha, but wanted to wait until he knew more. “He is all right, Caloosha, is he?”
“He’s a stalwart politician in the north,” Af-Laawe answered, “and on the side acts as a security consultant to StrongmanNorth.”
Rumor mills are busiest, Jeebleh thought, when it comes to politicians with shady pasts. He had gathered, from talking to people and interesting himself in the affairs of the country, that many politicians with dubious connections to the Dictator had found safe havens in the territories where their clansmen formed the majority. The way things stood, Jeebleh should’ve expected that Caloosha would be chummy with StrongmanNorth, who would guarantee him immunity from prosecution for his political crimes. Of course, Jeebleh had no intention of looking Caloosha up, and he did mind staying in a hotel in the north of the city, close to this awful man’s residence. Yet who was he to raise objections about these things now?
“But staying in a hotel in the northern section of the city won’t prevent me from moving about freely, will it?” he asked.
“Crossing the green lines poses no danger to ordinary folks,” Af-Laawe replied. “Unarmed civilians and noncombatants seldom come to harm when crossing the green line. However, the warlords and their associates do not cross the line unless they are escorted by their armed guards.”
“Where do you live?”
“I live in the south.”
“In your own property?”
“No, I’m house-sitting!”
“House-sitting?” Jeebleh had read and heard about questionable dealings when it came to the practice of house-sitting.
“I’ve entered into an arrangement with a family who own a villa and who’ve relocated to Canada since the collapse,” Af-Laawe explained. “An empty villa in civil war Mogadiscio is a liability as well as a temptation. I live in the villa for free and look after it.”
In the local jargon, “house-sitting” meant the taking possession of houses belonging to the members of clan families who had fled, by members of families who had stayed on. Not all house-sitters were squatters, pure and proper. Some lived rent free. Others were paid to look after the properties of people living abroad, who hoped they would find them in good condition to do what they pleased with them once peace had been restored and a central government put in place. Of late, though, there had been a number of cases in which men claiming to be the owners of the properties they were looking after had sold them.
As Jeebleh was about to ask what kind of house-sitter Af-Laawe was, he was gone again, only to reappear with the immigration man in tow. Af-Laawe turned to the man and took the document from him. Then, sounding satisfied, he said, “Let’s see.”
The man bearing his passport wore the pitiful look of a son cut out of a wealthy parent’s will. Maybe he had hoped to receive some baksheesh and was unhappy when he saw he would not. Or maybe there was another reason, indecipherable to Jeebleh. Af-Laawe scrutinized the passport on Jeebleh’s behalf, then handed it to Jeebleh, who put it in his pocket without bothering to open it.
“What about the lift?” Jeebleh asked.
“Give me a few minutes,” said Af-Laawe.
WHILE WAITING, JEEBLEH LOOKED AT THE DISTANT CITY, AND SAW A FINE SEA of sand billowing behind a minaret. He remembered his youth, and how much he had enjoyed living close to the ocean, where he would often go for a swim. Time was, when the city was so peaceful he could take a stroll at any hour of the day or night without being mugged, or harassed in any way. As a youth, before going off to Padua for university—Somalia had none of its own—he and Bile would go to the Gezira nightclub and then walk home at three in the morning, no hassle at all. In those long-gone days, the people of this country were at peace with themselves, comfortable in themselves, happy with who they were.
As one of the most ancient cities in Africa south of the Sahara, Mogadiscio had known centuries of attrition: one army leaving death and destruction in its wake, to be replaced by another and another and yet another, all equally destructive: the Arabs arrived and got some purchase on the peninsula, and after they pushed their commerce and along with it the Islamic faith, they were replaced by the Italians, then the Russians, and more recently the Americans, nervous, trigger-happy, shooting before
they were shot at. The city became awash with guns, and the presence of the gun-crazy Americans escalated the conflict to greater heights. Would Mogadiscio ever know peace? Would the city’s inhabitants enjoy this commodity ever again?
From where he stood, the trees were so stunted they looked retarded, and the cacti raised their calluses and thorns in self-surrender, while the shrubs cast only scant shadows. The clouds of dust stirred up by successive armies of destruction eventually settled back to earth, finer than when they went up.
Jeebleh did not look forward to seeing the desolation that he had read and heard about. He was heavy of heart to be visiting his beloved city at a time when sorrow gazed on it as never before. Mogadiscio spread before him, as though within reach of his tremulous hand, a home to people dwelling in terrible misery. A poet might have described Somalia as a ship caught in a great storm without the guiding hand of a wise captain. Another might have portrayed the land as laid to waste, abandoned, the women widowed, the children orphaned, and the sick untended. A third might have depicted it as a tragic country ransacked by madmen driven by insatiable hunger for more wealth and limitless power. So many lives pointlessly cut short, so much futile violence.
“What’s it been like, living in the city?” Jeebleh asked.
Af-Laawe replied with what seemed to Jeebleh a non sequitur. “Danger has a certain odor to it, only there’s very little you can do to avert it between the moment you smell it and the instant death visits.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m smelling danger, that’s what,” Af-Laawe said.
“I don’t understand. Can you smell danger now?” Jeebleh asked.
He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he followed Af-Laawe’s gaze, and saw the three armed youths who had stood guard over him earlier, now in a huddle, mischievously whispering among themselves. And they were also glancing at the stairs of an aircraft being boarded.
“What are they up to?” Jeebleh said.
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