“You’re a liar!”
Jeebleh was at a loss for words, and he looked about the room as if he might find there the expressions that were eluding him. He saw Kaahin and his two sidekicks, and thought that even though he didn’t like what was being done to him, he wasn’t a fool and wouldn’t be misled into believing that he could gain anything by reacting violently. In the two days he had spent here, he had seen nothing but destruction, because none of the men at each other’s throats was prepared to compromise, and none showed humility. Where would arrogance lead him? It would create further rifts, cause more deaths, and spill more bad blood! He considered the possibility too that Caloosha was playing to the gallery, showing off for his buddies. Now he said, “I’m not a liar, and you know it.”
“Lying at your age. Shame on you!”
Jeebleh took a step to the right, and from the corner of his eye, he could see that Kaahin was moving watchfully closer to him. This was a badly acted piece of theater all around, and so he said, “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
Then he made to leave. He didn’t want to go—well aware that his departure would not bring him any nearer to learning how much Caloosha knew about where Raasta and her playmate were being held hostage, or who their captors were—and he suspected that Caloosha wouldn’t let him walk out like this.
“Af-Laawe has been to see me,” Caloosha blurted, “and he told me about your message to Bile, that you wanted to meet up with him. Why didn’t you send word to me too, unless you’re fibbing?”
“Maybe he forgot to deliver it?”
“He wouldn’t dare! It was I who alerted him to your arrival and sent him to greet you at the airport.”
“Truth-telling” sits awkwardly on evil men, Jeebleh thought. Caloosha’s distended belly was filled with sentiments of war and wickedness, which was why he looked so ugly, and so unhealthy. Attrition retarded his brain, evil dulled his imagination, did not sharpen it.
“How did you know what flight I was coming on?” Jeebleh asked.
“Because I know everything that happens hereabouts.”
Reminding himself of the purpose of his visit, Jeebleh smiled and chose not to be provoked. They might get somewhere if he didn’t deflate Caloosha’s inflated ego in the presence of his buddies.
“I’ve had you followed,” Caloosha asserted, “and I know where you’ve been, to whom you’ve spoken, what comments you’ve made, from the moment your plane landed until you walked in here. Tell me, are you or aren’t you a liar?”
Jeebleh felt like a mischievous pupil called to the headmaster’s office to explain why he had behaved badly. He didn’t know whether apologizing would help or play into the stronger hands of a brute, adept at exploiting a weakness in his character. He dodged and asked, “Where’s the family?”
“What family?”
“Your wife and children.”
A primal joy descended on Caloosha’s features, and his double chin trembled. It was touching to behold the sudden change in the man, whose expression was so infectious that Kaahin and his men grinned from cheek to cheek too. Jeebleh looked like a baby with a sweet tooth made to taste salt.
Caloosha intimated with a flick of his right hand that Kaahin and his companions should leave. Then he rose, heaving himself up and out of the high chair, and waddled toward Jeebleh, with every distended part of his body waggling. Jeebleh allowed himself to be hugged for the sake of peace. Caloosha smothered him in a fleshy, all-encompassing embrace. Jeebleh thought of women submitting themselves to men they loathed, for the love and safety of their children. Part of him didn’t wish to know what his life would be like after this embrace.
Jeebleh’s hand was entirely lost in Caloosha’s acquisitive grip. Even so, he thought it best not to withdraw, lest his action provoke a hostile reaction from his host. Now that they were standing close to each other, he saw how ugly the man was, short, fat, and always short of breath. “How are they, anyway, the family?”
“They’re all well.” Caloosha paced in circles as he spoke. “Do you know how many wives and how many children I have? Unlike you, I have twenty-two children, the perfect number for two soccer teams, with me as referee. I was married five times, and am currently married to three wives. I’ve been a grandfather seven times, all of them boys.”
“You’re married to three women?”
“That’s right.”
“Where are they, your families?”
“Almost all the children by my first five wives are in Holland, Sweden, and Denmark as asylum seekers, or in Canada and the U.S. as naturalized citizens. One of my wives is in Canada with her five children, another in the U.S. with seven, and so on and so on. In Canada and the U.S. my children changed their names to those of their mothers, fearing being linked to me, because of my earlier job. What a bore! But they’re all doing well, earning enough and living comfortably. In fact, the two oldest girls send me monthly remittances, but the boys think more often about themselves, their latest fads and the cars they drive, and seldom about their old man. But we thank God for His great mercies!”
Jeebleh said, “You must be relieved that they are all out of the country and out of harm’s way, what with the fierce fighting and all.”
“One of my current wives is here,” he said, and nearing Jeebleh, spoke in a whisper. “She’s somewhere in this villa, the latest acquisition of an old man ready to retire.” Crassly, his left hand went to his crotch, and made a show of caressing it.
“How did you acquire her?” Jeebleh asked.
“We blundered into each other,” he replied.
“Blundered into each other?”
“That’s one way of putting it. She and I blundered into each other out of fear, out of the loneliness of old age on my part, and out of the aloneness of youth on hers.”
There were no more mysteries to the brute, and Jeebleh could have killed him for that. If he did not act upon his visceral loathing, it was because the extent of Caloosha’s ugliness was so overbearing and revolting at the same time, and of course, he hadn’t the wherewithal to follow it through. Nor had the fool any sense of shame. The latest acquisition of an old man, indeed!
“Where did you find her?” Jeebleh asked.
“I found her alone after looters had emptied her family home and killed her parents. She was fifteen years old at the time, and was hiding in the attic, frightened out of her wits.”
“She could’ve been your granddaughter!”
“She’s very pretty, of Xamari descent,” Caloosha said with a grin and a wink. “And as I said before, we thank God for all His mercies, great and small. She’s been a blessing to me in my old age, my young thing.”
Jeebleh wondered what Caloosha had been doing in the girl’s family house after the looters had killed her parents and emptied the house of all that was useful. But because he doubted he would receive a true answer, he thought better of asking. Besides, such a question might take them away from where his own interest lay. Now he dwelled on Caloosha’s face, and concentrated on his eyes hooded with fat and hair, suspecting that he might read the man’s motives from his expression. As a ploy to humble himself, Jeebleh sat on a low three-legged stood diagonal to where Caloosha was standing. His gaze wandered leisurely across the settees, ottomans, and armchairs scattered about in spectacular disarray. Caloosha stopped moving in circles and took tortoise steps to a lounge chair, where he sat down. Not much of the furniture in the living room matched. Had he acquired the pieces through his various marriages, or from his looting sorties into the vacated homes of families who had fled the city, which was up for grabs during the initial stages of the civil war? Jeebleh was so upset he felt like the commander of a militia unable to hold a bridgehead seized in enemy territory.
“Whose house is this?” he asked.
“Mine,” came the answer.
Jeebleh believed that Caloosha was lying, that the house wasn’t his. There was something visibly aseptic about the place. It might be a minor warlord’s home,
where he stashed away all his plunder. It looked too clean, like that of a small-time thief who regularly brought stolen goods into his private living space. Or could it be that the heavy furniture came with the young wife?
“Where is she?”
“My wife?”
“The young thing for your old age.”
“Have pity on a man of my advanced years, Jeebleh.” Caloosha displayed a kind of humor Jeebleh hadn’t thought him capable of.
Maybe the light footsteps on the staircase when he came in had been hers, Jeebleh thought. Was it also possible that the soap opera dialogue in Arabic that he could hear was coming from her satellite TV? He was tense, his tongue as heavy as a wet hammock. Married serially five times, currently the husband of three, with twenty-two children, seven grandchildren, all of them boys: maybe the man had a right to all the furniture that was on disorderly exhibition in the living room. Who would’ve thought that the phoenix of Caloosha’s day would rise from the ashes of his evil deeds after the collapse of the regime he so wickedly served? But there you were, he was alive and well and lording it now in the city of his clan family.
“How about your family?” Caloosha asked Jeebleh.
“I’ve spoken to them twice since coming here.”
“Your daughters are both of college age?”
Jeebleh nodded.
“The younger one is left-handed, yes?”
“No, it’s the older one who is.”
As though no longer certain of his facts, Caloosha hesitated, then asked, “One of them had a Burmese cat, the other a dog, yes?”
Jeebleh was unprepared for this, because he knew he hadn’t given these details to anyone in Mogadiscio, except maybe to his mother, in his chatty letters to her. Had the housekeeper been sharing secrets with Caloosha?
“If you’re asking yourself how it is that I know a lot about your wife and daughters,” Caloosha said, “it’s because I make it my business to know how things are with the people I feel close to.”
Angry words not to be freed now clung shapelessly to Jeebleh’s tongue. He was relieved that he didn’t let go of them, and that he changed the direction of their talk. “Can you do me a favor?” he said.
“If it’s in my power to.”
“Can you help me reach my mother’s housekeeper?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’d be most grateful,” he said, meaning it.
Caloosha stretched out his right hand and pressed a bell, which rang on the upper floor. A young woman, evidently the maid, came down the stairs and walked over to a table partially hidden from Jeebleh’s view. When he craned his neck, he saw her standing in front of two flasks, and as she prepared the coffee, water first and then an undrinkable instant, Caloosha explained that his younger brother from America took his coffee black, no sugar. The young woman went about her job with more professionalism than the youths at the hotel had done. From having seen the maid, who was from the Rivers People, he assumed that Caloosha’s wife would most likely be veiled, in which case she might not be permitted to meet him. Maybe the truth about her not coming down was even simpler. Caloosha spent much of his time downstairs with the military types, and his young wife and the maid spent all theirs upstairs, watching soaps on satellite TV, as bored housewives did the world over.
HE HATED THE TASTE OF HIS INSTANT COFFEE, AND ALMOST ASKED FOR SUGAR and milk. But then he didn’t like the thought of the bell’s ringing and the maid’s coming all the way down to serve them. He was formulating the question “Where were you when the state collapsed?” but lest it sound tacky, didn’t ask it. Instead, he said, “Where were you when the Dictator fled the city?”
“I was here.”
The blueprint of a lie stared Jeebleh in the eye. But he chose not to allow the lie to blind him to his ultimate purpose. “Which side were you on, then?” he said. “With your employer, the Dictator, and against the militiamen fighting to overthrow him, or against him and with the militia recruited from the rank and file of the clan?”
Caloosha’s features resembled a boarded-up house that hadn’t enjoyed fresh air or sunshine for some time: a lifeless house, without light.
After a long pause, he said: “I did what I had to when I was battered by a blind storm: I organized myself, and discovered that I could only work on a short-term plan to survive. I thought hard when everyone helped themselves to the properties left empty by the ‘chased-out’ families!”
“What did your short-term plan produce?”
“When you work on a short-term plan, you think about yourself, not about the past, where the problem began, nor about the future, where there’ll be other problems waiting in ambush. I prepared myself for peace.”
Before he knew it, Jeebleh was shouting: “Was peace uppermost in your mind when you locked us up?”
“You know the answer to your question.”
“I’d like to hear it from you all the same.”
Caloosha was in the shade, the sunlight in the room having moved on, as though shunning him. He seized up, his eyes narrowing, his sight dimming, and broke into a cold sweat, his forehead ringed with beads of perspiration. “I trained in the Soviet Union, where obedience was drilled into me, obedience to my superiors first and last,” he said. “That was what the manual taught us. I was trained to act as though I was stationary while in motion. One of my Soviet instructors liked to compare his students who were training to be in the national security business in their countries, to hunters moving with the stealth of one who is prepared to kill and be killed. I am not an intellectual, you and Bile are. I am a military man. I obey the instructions given to me by my superiors.”
“Why was I released?” Jeebleh could feel that the intensity of the conversation was pushing to the brink of something disastrous, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“Those were my instructions.”
“Why was Bile kept in prison?”
“You’re putting your questions to the wrong man, and you’re making me unnecessarily nervous. I’m not the man you should ask.” Caloosha paused, perspiring liberally. “You don’t need me to tell you that a dictator makes his decisions without advice from his subalterns. I don’t need to tell you that a tyrant’s fickle decision is law. Why are you putting these questions to me?”
Jeebleh was on his feet, shaking. He heard a bell ringing faintly somewhere, then saw suspicious movements outside, among the trees. Was he imagining things? Could there be snipers at the ready waiting for him, men like Kaahin, lying flat on their chests, preparing to shoot? This talk about Soviet instructors drilling obedience into their students’ heads reminded him of his English teacher Miss Bradley, who was fond of repeating, “Memory is a bugger!” Now he watched the garden, imagining that it was crawling with armed men of dubious loyalties, military types working on commissions, on the completion of deadly assignments. He could get killed, and no one would know, for he hadn’t told anyone he was coming here.
Caloosha asked, “What’s brought you here?”
“Deaths, lies!”
“I haven’t killed anyone,” Caloosha said.
Jeebleh remembered his earlier encounter with the Kathakali dancer, who asked the murderers in the crowd to separate themselves from the innocent. “Have I accused you of being a murderer?” he said.
“You can’t pin anyone’s death on me!”
Yet Caloosha had been accused of murder, when he was young, hadn’t he? His own mother had suspected him of murdering her husband, his stepfather. But she didn’t have the evidence. Moreover, there were other murders that could be pinned on him, once the International Criminal Court charged Somalia’s warlords and their associates with crimes against humanity.
Caloosha had risen out of his chair. Now he was threatening: “Watch out!”
“Your loyalties are despicable.”
“I’m warning you!”
Jeebleh forced himself to concentrate on the pale moons of his own fingernails, to focus on the evenness of the lun
ar shapes. Was he showing signs of malnutrition? Peace and compromise both had gone out the window, and the two of them were on a warpath. So be it. “What were you doing in the family home of the girl who’s now your kept woman?” he asked.
“I’ve never robbed corpses, like someone else I know!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I bet Bile hasn’t told you!”
“Af-Laawe spoke of the alleged crime, all right.”
“And did Bile own up to this crime when you met him?”
“We didn’t get around to talking about alleged crimes, Bile and I.”
“Ask him why he blacked out for a good three days.” Caloosha had regained some of his composure. Both of them sat down again. “Ask him if he killed and then slept it all off, woke up, and then robbed. Or whether the robbing came first, and the killing later. We have three unaccounted-for days, three whole days. We know when he ran out, a free man, and we know when Dajaal picked him up, lost to the world. My junior half brother killed, robbed, and then slept it off!”
“Bile wouldn’t lower himself to such a base level.”
Caloosha applauded with an informed sarcasm, only he didn’t clap with his palms, but instead knocked his fingernails together, in jest.
“Do you continue to drink the blood of your foes?” Jeebleh asked.
Caloosha had a gory sense of humor. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been sick lately,” he said, “suffering, as I do, from severe inflammation of my joints and from an abundance of uric acid in my own blood.” Then he added, “You make me sick.”
Jeebleh didn’t know what to make of Caloosha’s behavior, and he got to his feet, unsure where to go or what to say. He paced back and forth, then placed his foot on a stool. They had both gone too far, and it was his turn to compromise, if necessary, to make amends. He put on his professional act: “In the pressure cooker of a civil war, in which the sides at war have been intimates, everyone exaggerates. Okay? And when a society has lost its general sense of direction and, along with it, its self-respect, then every individual is on his or her own, miserably alone. Like ants with no hierarchy or order. Okay? I suggest we forget whatever either of us has said in anger. Okay?”
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