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by Nuruddin Farah

  “And you’ll like your coffee before you go?”

  It was news to Jeebleh that he was going anywhere. At least, he couldn’t remember arranging to go anywhere, unless he had clean forgotten. “Where am I supposed to be going?”

  “I was told you were going somewhere.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jeebleh’s breath caught in his throat. He dreaded things coming to this: appointments being arranged for him when he had no idea where or with whom. Did he have any choice but to honor the request for him to go somewhere, on someone’s whim? Had he no choice in what he did, where he went and when? He was about to goad the youth into giving him the source of his information, when another youth arrived bearing two pails, presumably containing hot water and cold. The two boys greeted each other amiably, and the breakfast boy went down a couple of steps to help carry one of the pails. When they came to within half a meter of him, Jeebleh noticed something quite odd about the bath boy’s features. He was missing a nostril. Maybe an untended bullet wound had turned gangrenous, damaging his face. Jeebleh indicated that they should give him the pails and he would take them in. They did as they were told, and left, holding hands and laughing luridly.

  Showered and dressed casually, Jeebleh picked up the two pails, which he meant to leave in the corridor, and was ready to pull the door open and bounce youthfully downstairs, when he heard another knock on the door. This time it was one of the bellboys to say that he had a visitor.

  JEEBLEH DESCENDED THE STAIRS SLOWLY, OVERWHELMED WITH FOREBODING. In his distracted state, he almost collided with a young woman going up with a pail and a mop. He regained his balance just in time, and continued down the steps, past the reception area, where several youths lounged, and out to the courtyard, awash with bright sunlight.

  Af-Laawe was there to surprise him, greeting him as one Arab greets another, with the left hand on the heart, head slightly bowed, right hand touching lips moving and emitting a salvo of blessings. Af-Laawe ended his theatrics with a sweeping gesture of his right hand, half prostrating himself. Then he spoke in an ellipsis: “A nightmare of loyalties!”

  Jeebleh refused to be taken in by anyone’s antics, least of all Af-Laawe’s. With a straight face, he replied, “Would you like to join me for coffee?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  They sat outdoors at a plastic table with three chairs around it. The breakfast boy brought Jeebleh his Yemeni coffee in an aluminum pot, which proved difficult to hold or pour; but he managed it, then pushed the sugar bowl toward Af-Laawe, who helped himself generously.

  “How was your first night back?” Af-Laawe asked.

  “Thank you for arranging the lift and the hotel.”

  “I hope the manager is treating you well.”

  “He is, considering the circumstances.”

  “The room is all right?”

  “I can’t ask for more,” Jeebleh said.

  And then all that the driver had said about Af-Laawe returned to Jeebleh in a flash. His lips were touched with a knowing grin, in anticipation of learning more about Af-Laawe’s link to Caloosha’s world of deceits, conspiracies, and killings. Jeebleh replaced the features of the driver with an identikit that might have been a cross between Af-Laawe and Caloosha; he superimposed this on the face of a hardened criminal wanted for a series of robberies worth millions of dollars.

  “I’m glad you’re having a good time,” Af-Laawe said.

  All around the courtyard, Jeebleh noticed vultures gathering. They arrived soundlessly, working to a precise timetable, one every half-minute, like airplanes landing. There were no fewer than a dozen, the largest the size of a Fiat Cinquecento, heads down, wings folded, beaks held dramatically in mid-motion. One particular bird disappeared every now and again, only to reappear a few minutes later as several more birds joined the gathering. Jeebleh found it strange to see vultures alighting in the courtyard of a four-star hotel. Where was the carrion to be had?

  He fell under the spell of the spectacle. He couldn’t take his eyes off the vultures, now dividing themselves into two groups, on what basis he couldn’t tell. The huge vulture went back and forth between the groups, then took off quietly, and was gone for a good while. He returned with a companion of similar size and comparable build, but with a beak of a different color. The two birds went back and forth between the two groups as if ferrying urgent messages.

  “Vultures, crows, and marabous have been our constant companions these past few years,” Af-Laawe said. “There’ve been so many corpses abandoned, unburied. You will see that crows are no longer afraid if you try to shoo them away. At the height of the four-month war between the militiamen of StrongmanSouth and StrongmanNorth, the crows and the vultures were so used to being on the ground foraging, they were like tourist pigeons in a Florentine piazza. These scavengers have been well served by the civil war.”

  “Why the nickname ‘Marabou’?” Jeebleh asked.

  “Somebody has been telling you things.”

  “And why ‘Funeral with a Difference’?”

  Af-Laawe said, “I started the funeral service when sorrow felt like something emitting a bad odor that was forever there, as though it had been smeared on the inside of my nostrils. After the mosques were raided and the women seeking refuge in God’s house taken out and raped, I set up an NGO to take care of the dead.”

  “Where did you get the funds to set it up?”

  “I raised them myself,” he said.

  Was Af-Laawe, as he told it, a lone do-gooder in the style of the folk heroes one read about as a child? Jeebleh wondered what good a single person could do in a place where the bad outnumbered the virtuous. Maybe one must do what one can, the best one can.

  Af-Laawe continued, “At least I am in the privileged position of choosing what I want to do and how I go about it. Not everyone is in this position.”

  Who was he, really—a troubleshooter on a fat salary from the EU; a bigtime swindler, with a heist stashed away in a Swiss bank; a do-gooder with an NGO to bury the unclaimed dead; a house-sitter looking after the property of a family who had fled?

  “Speaking of choices,” Jeebleh said, after a long silence, “did the members of the clan families who fled the city choose to flee, or were they forced to abandon their properties in a city they adored?”

  “These are abnormal times!”

  “I can see that,” Jeebleh said, and looked at the vultures holding a conference a few meters from where they were seated.

  The traces of a wicked grin formed around Af-Laawe’s drawn-in lips. He noticed Jeebleh’s gaze. “A cynic I know says that thanks to the vultures, the marabous, and the hawks, we have no fear of diseases spreading,” he said. “They clean things up, don’t they? My cynical friend suggests that when the country is reconstituted as a functioning state, we should have a vulture as our national symbol.”

  “You wouldn’t be that cynic yourself?” Jeebleh asked.

  Af-Laawe stonewalled again: “These are abnormal times.”

  “I would agree it’s abnormal to see scavengers of carrion at a four-star hotel, looking as though they are well placed to choose what they eat and where they go. They look better fed than humans.”

  It puzzled Jeebleh to see that Af-Laawe was upset. Had he said something to offend him? Now his drawn-in lips moved, like a baby fish feeding.

  “There were far more vultures and marabous in the aftermath of the October-third debacle, when over a thousand supporters of StrongmanSouth were massacred, and eighteen U.S. soldiers lost their lives. I bore witness to the arrival of these scavengers, gathered around the battle zone, and perched on the lookout points in the neighborhood.”

  The words were spoken like an attack. Did Af-Laawe think that Jeebleh, as an American, would be upset if he mentioned the U.S. dead in Mogadiscio in the same breath as sighting scavengers gathering at the battle zone? Because Jeebleh assumed that Af-Laawe’s badness was emerging, he prepared for an attack
, and waited. He was getting to know Af-Laawe a little better at least.

  Af-Laawe went on, still in attack mode. “On the fourth of October, there were as many carrion-eaters as there were human beings come to witness the massacre. But the birds had no chance to get at the corpses of the Somali dead, since these were taken away and buried by their families. A discerning person, like my cynical friend, would’ve seen two marabou storks, weighing no less than twenty kilograms each, discreetly following the progress of the riotous mob dragging the corpse of an American Ranger down the dusty alleyways of the city. The marabous followed the mob, and my friend tells me that their bare heads and bare necks were in clear view. Maybe they expected the crowd to abandon the corpse of the American at some point, so they might pounce on it. The hawks hung back, remaining at a distance. They didn’t want to get into direct conflict with the marabous.”

  Jeebleh, listening to Af-Laawe, realized that he himself was infested with more venom toward Caloosha and anyone associated with him than he had thought possible, despite his years of exile.

  “Do you wish to know the name of the cynic I was with?” Af-Laawe said. When Jeebleh nodded, he asked, “Have you ever met Faahiye?”

  “I know Raasta’s father,” Jeebleh said.

  “He’s the cynic I was with on the fourth of October.”

  Jeebleh was relieved that they had changed the subject when they did, even though he doubted very much that Faahiye had said any of the terrible things ascribed to him. “Where is Faahiye?” he asked.

  “A cynic, who’s angry at the world,” Af-Laawe said.

  “No stonewalling. Where is he?”

  “Faahiye hates being an appendage.”

  “An appendage of whom?”

  “Faahiye looks forward to the day when he is his own man, not an appendage,” Af-Laawe explained, “not to be referred to as Raasta’s father, or as Bile’s brother-in-law.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He was headed for a refugee camp on the outskirts of Mombasa when I last heard about him,” Af-Laawe said. “They say he was thin, as we all are, and the worse for wear, as we all are.” After a pause he added, “He was troubled like a rutting he-dog, not knowing what to do, where to turn, because he is terribly excited.” Pleased with his private joke, Af-Laawe graced his lips with a grin. Jeebleh waited, expecting Af-Laawe’s exculpatory defense of his own behavior, after he had been accused of such insensitivity, but Af-Laawe did no such thing.

  Now, why did the story about the marabou storks following the progress of the American Ranger disturb Jeebleh so? Before he had time to answer, a bellboy called him to the telephone. He asked who it was who wanted him on the phone, expecting it to be Bile. The boy said, “The name sounds like Baaja—I don’t know.”

  Af-Laawe stepped in helpfully. “He means Dajaal.”

  “Who’s Dajaal?”

  “Bile’s man Friday.”

  Jeebleh got to his feet, hurting and clumsy, and nearly toppled the plastic table. “Sorry!” he said, with guilt on his face, and he rushed off, passing the gathering of the carrion birds, their presence of no apparent concern to him.

  On the phone, Dajaal said he would come shortly to take him to Bile.

  7.

  THE ROADS MOVED: NOW FAST, NOW SLOW.

  From where he sat in the back of the car, Jeebleh saw vultures everywhere he turned: in the sky and among the clouds, in the trees, of which there were many, and on top of buildings. There were a host of other carrion-feeders too, marabous, and a handful of crows. Death was on his mind, subtly and perilously courting his interest, tempting him.

  He remembered with renewed shock how he and Af-Laawe had come to their falling-out earlier. Perhaps he wasn’t as exempt as he had believed from the contagion that was of a piece with civil wars as he had believed; perhaps he was beginning to catch the madness from the food he had eaten, the water he had drunk, the company he had kept. He doubted that he would knowingly take an active part in the commission of a crime, even if he were open to being convinced that society would benefit from ridding itself of vermin. He knew he was capable of pulling the trigger if it came to that. His hand went to his shirt pocket, where he had his cash and his U.S. passport. He meant to leave these in Bile’s apartment, where they would be safer than in his toiletry bag.

  Dajaal was in front beside the driver, and Jeebleh had the back to himself. The ride was bumpy, because of the deep ruts in the road. In fact there wasn’t much of a road to speak of, and the car slowed every now and then, at times stopping altogether, as the driver avoided dropping into potholes as deep as trenches.

  Looking at Bile’s man Friday, Jeebleh thought that Dajaal must once have been a high-ranking officer in the National Army. He deduced this from his military posture, from the care with which he spoke, and from his general demeanor. He suspected that Dajaal was armed: one of his hands was out of sight, hidden, and the other stayed close to the glove compartment, as though meaning to spring it open in the event of need. Getting into the vehicle, Jeebleh had seen a machine gun lying casually on the floor, looking as innocuous as a child’s toy gun. The butt of the gun rested on Dajaal’s bare right foot—maybe to make it easier to kick up into the air, catch with his hands, aim, and shoot. You’re dead, militiaman!

  What Jeebleh had seen of the city so far marked it as a place of sorrow. Many houses had no roofs, and bullets scarred nearly every wall. In contrast to the rundown ghetto of an American city, where the windows might be boarded up, here the window frames were simply empty. The streets were eerily, ominously quiet. They saw no pedestrians on the roads, and met no other vehicles. Jeebleh felt a tremor, imagining that the residents had been slaughtered “in one another’s blood,” as Virgil had it. He would like to know whether, in this civil war, both those violated and the violators suffered from a huge deficiency—the inability to remain in touch with their inner selves or to remember who they were before the slaughter began. Could this be the case in Rwanda or Liberia? Not that one could make sense of this war on an intellectual level—only on an emotional level. Here, self-preservation helped one to understand.

  “Why is ours the only car on the road?” Jeebleh asked.

  “We’re headed south, maybe that’s why,” Dajaal replied.

  “The roads were crowded on your way north?”

  “We’re taking a different route from the one we took coming.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the thing most drivers do.” Dajaal waited for the driver to confirm what he had said with a nod. Then he continued, “They believe that taking a different route from the one they used earlier will minimize the chance of driving into an ambush.”

  “This is a much longer route, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  The driver, in a whispered aside, commented to Dajaal that he thought Jeebleh had arrived in the country only a day earlier.

  Jeebleh’s eyes fell on a bullet-scarred, mortar-struck, machine-gunshowered three-story building leaning every which way, as if in homage to the towering idea of a Pisa. He was surprised that it didn’t cave in as they drove past—and relieved, for there were people moving about in the upper story, minding their business.

  He asked Dajaal, “Have you participated in any of the fighting?”

  “I’ve never been a member of a clan-based militia.”

  “So what fighting did you take part in?”

  “Let’s say that I got dragged into one when the American in charge of the United Nations operation ordered his forces to attack a house where I was attending a meeting.”

  “The American-in-charge.” Jeebleh strung the words together, at first hyphenating them in his mind, to capture Dajaal’s enunciation, then abbreviating them: AIC. Jeebleh had heard that that was how he was known in certain circles.

  “This was the first American attack on StrongmanSouth, in July 1993,” Dajaal went on. “I was at a gathering of my clan family’s intellectuals, military leaders, traditional elders, and other opinion
makers. It was our aim to find a peaceful way out of the impasse between the American in charge of the UN Blue Helmets, and StrongmanSouth and his militiamen. The July gathering has since become famous, because it led eventually to the October-third slaughter. It was the viciousness of what occurred in July, when helicopters attacked our gathering, that decided me to dig up my weapons from where I had buried them after the Dictator fled the city.”

  “I presume you know StrongmanSouth?”

  “I served under him,” Dajaal replied. “He was my immediate commander, during the Ogaden War. We didn’t get on well for much of the time, which was why I declined to be his deputy when he set up the clan militia. I knew him well enough not to want to be near him if I could help it. The man is determined to become president, and he’ll use foul means or fair to get what he wants.”

  The driver made a left turn, and as far as Jeebleh could tell, headed back the way they had come. He slowed down, as if to allow Dajaal time in which to gather his harried thoughts.

  “I remember that Cobra and Black Hawk helicopters attacked us in the house where we were having our meeting,” Dajaal continued. “Once the attack began, it was so fierce I felt hell was paying us a visit. The skies fell on us, the earth shook down to its separate grains of sand.”

  Jeebleh listened intently and remained still.

  Dajaal went on: “I felt each explosion of the missiles, followed by an inferno of smoke so black I thought a total eclipse had descended on my mind. And the shrapnel, the spurting blood I saw, the men lying so still between one living moment and a dead instant, the moaning—I was unprepared for the shock. I remember thinking, ‘Here’s an apocalypse of the new order.’ It’s very worrying to see a man you’re talking to blown away to dust by laser-guided death, deceptive in its stealth. We all lost our sense of direction, like ants fleeing head-on into tongues of flame, and not knowing what killed them.”