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by Nuruddin Farah

  Jeebleh’s wandering gaze fell on a boy in a fancy cowboy hat and jeans, ruthlessly hitting an Alsatian with a stick. He turned to the young man at the next table and asked why the gun-carrying militiamen had been allowed in, and why no one was stopping the boy from abusing the dog. “Maybe the gunmen are the boy’s bodyguards?” the young man mused.

  “Who does the Alsatian belong to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The pregnant dog was writhing in agony, and actively giving birth. There was something odd about the clothes of the boy, and something odder still about a pure-bred Alsatian in today’s Mogadiscio. From another table, Jeebleh overheard a likely explanation: that the dog had once belonged to an Englishman, formerly of the BBC African Service, who had been seconded to the city by UNOSOM. But why had he abandoned his pampered pet to fend for herself, knowing she might fall prey to packs of bush dogs more feral than even the fiercest Alsatian? Or be beaten to death by Somalis not given to being friendly when it came to dogs? What madness could have compelled him to leave her behind?

  Jeebleh remembered how, when he was small, he had tried to stop Caloosha and his friends from molesting a dog. He had been beaten harshly himself for his impudence. (Many years later, he learned that one of the boys had met the fate he deserved: he died from rabies.)

  Jeebleh took courage, and found his tongue. He shouted, warning the boy to stop abusing the dog or he would deal with him. At the sound of the raised voice, the guns of the militiamen were trained on him.

  He stood up and stormed over to the boy and took him by the scruff of his pampered neck. The boy was so shaken that he choked on his scream, issuing none audibly. “If this spoiled brat disturbs this dog again,” Jeebleh shouted, so everybody could hear, “I’ll become violent and punish him.” The dog looked terribly frightened, and Jeebleh, for his part, felt overwhelmed. But when he snatched the stick from the boy, the dog began to relax. Jeebleh said, “When you hurt the dog, I hurt.”

  Now the Alsatian came closer to Jeebleh, and finding her tongue, favored his extended hand with a lick. Jeebleh crouched by the dog, touching her coarse coat, stroking her gently. This provoked a ripple of disapproval across the crowd that had now gathered to watch. Whatever they might think, Jeebleh and the dog looked at each other for a long while, and he discovered her intelligence in the steady confidence in her eyes. Then the dog, racked with birth pangs, went even closer to Jeebleh, who encouraged her to keep pushing. Someone in the crowd commented favorably on his kind gesture: showing mercy to a dog in labor. Someone else said that what he had done was un-Islamic; as a Muslim, he was supposed to avoid coming into physical contact with dogs.

  When Jeebleh next looked around, the armed youths were no longer aiming their guns at him. As a matter of fact, they weren’t even there. Perhaps they had sensed that their threatening posture was not acceptable anymore and had slunk away.

  He was now in an upbeat mood, and remained close by until the dog, having given birth, bit off the umbilical cords. He admired the compact beauty of the litter: puppies full of stir, half Alsatian, half bush dog, of exquisite grace. He wished someone with a home thereabouts would keep them and look after them. He found a quiet corner for the family, and took off his jacket and covered the puppies with it.

  Walking away, he felt good, proud of what he had done, despite the shock on people’s faces. As he moved toward them, a path opened before him, many shunning him because they did not wish to make any physical contact with a man who had touched and been licked by a dog. Customarily, Somalis who came into contact with dogs would cleanse themselves ritually, in obedience to the Islamic code of self-purification. He did not care a sick dog’s snuffle if anyone now shunned bodily contact with him.

  As he walked past one knot of bystanders, he heard a whisper: “What manner of man chases away the elders of his clan, and in the same afternoon risks his life to save a bitch?”

  The fact that many people had missed out on love because of the continued strife, Jeebleh thought, did not mean that one should stand by and do nothing or allow further cruelty to be meted out to animals or humans.

  13.

  THE SUN SHONE BRIGHTLY, THE NOON HIGH ON ITS DIAL.

  His expression sullen, Jeebleh squinted up at Af-Laawe, who towered above him where he sat. Because Af-Laawe was a friend and an associate of Caloosha’s, Jeebleh didn’t feel he could go to him for help, or share with him his concerns. But now that he was friendless and felt ostracized by the hotel staff—not so much for his kindness to the Alsatian as for his rude sendoff of the clan elders—he was wondering whether to seek out Af-Laawe, obviously a man with a murky history. Maybe things would work out well in the end. As he rose to take Af-Laawe’s hand, Jeebleh proposed a walk in the neighborhood.

  “A walk and a talk will do you good,” Af-Laawe agreed.

  Conscious of the hostility directed at him from all around, Jeebleh noted that even Bucktooth, the friendliest of the sentries, who had welcomed him with enthusiasm earlier, averted his visibly disturbed gaze. To make a point, though, he greeted Af-Laawe by name. There were rough edges to things, and Jeebleh was more aware of them because of the dirty politics of the place, and this was weighing down on his mind.

  He who alienates his clan family is dead, he thought, as he followed Af-Laawe out of his hotel grounds into the derelict streets lined with vandalized buildings. Parting with his clansmen, leaving the hotel—these were as easily done as throwing out a rotten banana when you were well fed. Besides, it was just as well that it had happened the way it did. A confrontation between him and the clan elders over his political loyalties was bound to happen sooner or later, and he was relieved that it had occurred when it had—a few days into his visit. He would move out of the hotel at the first opportunity, and take up Bile’s offer to share the apartment with him for a few days. He had a lot to do: locate his mother’s housekeeper, and make sure that his mother had found peace, that her soul was laid to rest; give a hand in recovering Raasta and her companion from their captors; and recruit Dajaal to exact vengeance on Caloosha.

  AF-LAAWE LED JEEBLEH IN THE DIRECTION OF VILLAGGIO ARABO, NAMED FOR the Yemeni community who had formed the majority in the district during his youth. He remembered it as a lively quarter, very cosmopolitan, its alleyways infused with spicy fragrances—the Yemeni kitchen was one of Jeebleh’s favorites. He didn’t need to ask what had become of the community: virtually all, he knew, had fled the city in the earlier weeks of the civil war, when the dust-laden pastoralists recruited into StrongmanNorth’s armed militia turned on them, raping their women and plundering their wealth.

  In the streets where Jeebleh and Af-Laawe now walked, minibuses ferrying passengers negotiated their way and almost knocked down pedestrians as they avoided potholes. There were also plenty of Angora goats that may once have belonged to the Yemeni residents, and these were forced to feed on pebbles; there were no shrubs, and the grass and the cacti were dry. The cows Jeebleh saw chewed away at discarded shoes, for which the goats had no stomach. The dogs looked rabid and were so skinny you could see their protruding ribs; they ran off at the slightest hint of threat. There were waste dumps every few hundred meters or so, where vultures, marabous, and the odd crow were having a go at the pickings. Jeebleh felt he had arrived in an area just devastated by wildfire, which had reduced it to spectral ruins, with only the charred sticks of houses remaining.

  He tried to express his sense of disbelief to Af-Laawe. “This city is a disaster. I haven’t met anyone who openly approves of what’s happening, and yet the fighting goes on and the clan elders continue soliciting funds for repairing deadly weapons. What’s going on?”

  “It’s like a fashion,” Af-Laawe replied. “Every clan family feels that it has to form its own armed militia, because the others have them. The elders, almost all of them illiterate and out of touch with your and my sense of modernity, spend their time trying to raise funds from within the members of the blood community. In truth, it’s all a pose
, though, and everybody knows that the elders are doing this to make sure they remain relevant.” Af-Laawe paused, surveyed the devastated street. “Incidentally, I agree with what you did, your refusal to pay for the repair of a battlewagon.”

  Jeebleh looked away, at a crow that was being denied access to its fair share of carrion, the smallest of the vultures chasing it away every time it approached. This is a place of grief, he thought, in which even crows starve; in which goats feed on pebbles or clumps of earth, and cows on discarded shoes. What in God’s name was he doing here? He turned to Af-Laawe, silent.

  Af-Laawe was ill at ease in the silence, and finally broke it. “I happened to be at Caloosha’s when the clan elders reported to him that not only did you send them away empty-handed, but you were rude to them too.”

  “What was his reaction?” Jeebleh asked.

  “He did his best to placate them.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He sounded as though he had your best interest at heart. He wants to be in their good books, and wants to make it up to you too in his own way.”

  “I can’t believe what I am hearing.”

  After a pause, Af-Laawe said, “The manager of the hotel phoned Caloosha, agitated.”

  “And what’s with him?” Jeebleh asked.

  “Something about the dog wore him to a frazzle.”

  “The hell with it,” Jeebleh fumed.

  His eyes focused and compact like a fruit stone, Af-Laawe recounted that the manager had called twice to lament that his hotel would now be remembered as the place where two terrible things happened, back to back, within half an hour.

  It was incredible, Jeebleh thought, how speedily peoples’ moods changed, friendly one moment, hostile the next. Was this what his beloved country had been reduced to, a land where the elders were unaware of being out of touch with the times, and where the young were armed and not right in the head, killing without remorse?

  “You know what I think?” Af-Laawe said.

  “Tell me.”

  “I think that because people who have lived under such stressful conditions assume they can set fire to vultures,” Af-Laawe said, “they believe they will rid the country of its problems by doing so.”

  “But this is raving lunacy!”

  Af-Laawe said nothing. He was busy responding to greetings from passersby. He nodded without bothering to pause or engage in conversation. He returned the greetings with the casualness of a superior officer acknowledging a minion.

  They were joined by a mob of beggars, who addressed themselves only to Jeebleh, touching their bellies, then their mouths, asking for alms. Maybe they sensed that Jeebleh might have a softer center than his companion, who they knew was not in the habit of offering alms. Jeebleh could tell from their accent that they were from the bay region that was the center of savage wars launched by StrongmanSouth. The Major and the driver whom he had met in the previous days had hailed from the same Death Triangle.

  “Does anyone help the city’s displaced?” Jeebleh asked.

  “These live in the buildings around here, but no one looks out for them, or care what happens to them. Many of them beg and squat in the ruined properties of those who’ve fled or in the buildings that belonged to the state.”

  “Any idea about how many there are?”

  “They are about a million and a half, and they’re on the increase, every time there’s fighting.”

  You’re seldom alone in the areas of a city where the poor are attracted in hope of finding help or a job, Jeebleh thought. There are beggars, shoeshine boys offering their services, urchins promising to look after your vehicle for a small fee, hangers-on, pimps, prostitutes, touts waiting to sponge on you.

  One of the beggars stuck to Jeebleh, and kept saying, “God is generous!” But unlike the others, who rubbed their bellies and then touched the tips of their fingers to their lips, he asked for nothing. This made Jeebleh uncomfortable. Af-Laawe explained that the man had belonged to Mogadiscio’s middle class and had held a high position in the government. A longer look at the beggar revealed the telltale evidence. The man eyed Jeebleh as if he hoped he would recognize him, a man like himself, who had fallen on hard times. And even though he appeared no different from his fellow beggars, remarkably he communicated that he knew what dignity was. As a cloud of dust stirred and swirled around him, Jeebleh sensed that sorrow skulked in every grain of sand. He asked Af-Laawe, “Who is this man?”

  “In his heyday, he was known as Xaar-Cune.”

  So this is what’s become of EatShit, Jeebleh thought. A torturer with no equal, he had taken sadistic pleasure in forcing political detainees on hunger strike to do as his name suggested. He had served under Caloosha. “How was he reduced to this state?” Jeebleh asked.

  “When the state collapsed, he stayed in the city, confident that no harm would come to him. But he made a mistake while foraging for political gain: he swore total loyalty to StrongmanSouth, who for a time put him to good use as a torturer. Because his mother, like mine, is from the north of the city, StrongmanSouth assigned to EatShit the job of ferrying messages between the two Strongmen. Then came the time when StrongmanSouth suspected EatShit of betraying him in an off-the-record remark to one of the local rags. He was summoned and humiliated in the presence of the in-group, and made to partake of a feast of feces.”

  “And he was put out to grass here?”

  “He was dumped here, painted with all sorts of shit and dung,” Af-Laawe said, “and everyone came out to mock him. His poor mother died soon after, heartbroken. His mind got twisted out of shape, and he fell into a state of utter malfunction.”

  Sad, like an owl flying into the sun, Jeebleh prayed that someone, it didn’t matter who, might mete out similar or worse punishment to Caloosha. But when he considered that it might fall to him to do it, he felt like a man invited to a wake at which the dead got up to say their say, then departed, promising to return to torment those who had made their lives a misery.

  “Would you like to have lunch?” asked Af-Laawe.

  For a moment, Jeebleh didn’t want to think about food. But he was hungry. “Is there a restaurant nearby?”

  “Right here,” Af-Laawe said.

  Jeebleh saw a hole in a wall and a curtain billowing out. But there was no sign, no name.

  Af-Laawe said, “Follow me,” and Jeebleh did so.

  Inside, it was dim, and candles were burning; the atmosphere was more jazz club than lunch spot. A waitress in overalls led them to a table, and Af-Laawe ordered their first course with exaggerated élan.

  “DESPITE IT ALL, WE’RE ALL INTIMATES, YOU KNOW.”

  “We? Who do you mean?” Jeebleh asked. With his back to the wall, he watched the candles nodding this way and that. Figures sat close together at other tables as though in whispery conspiracy; he couldn’t see their faces.

  “Do you know why,” Af-Laawe said, “when a wife is found dead under suspicious circumstances, her husband is brought in and questioned in depth?”

  “Because he is an intimate?”

  “Precisely.”

  Jeebleh was unsure what to say; he waited.

  “In a civil war, death is an intimate,” Af-Laawe said. “You’re killed by a person with whom you’ve shared intimacies, and who will kill you, believing that he will benefit from your death. And when you think seriously about an entire country going up in civil war flames, then you’ll agree that ‘intimacy’ is more complicated.”

  “I hadn’t thought of intimacy in that sense,” Jeebleh admitted.

  “Do you know the Somali term for ‘civil war’?”

  “Dagaalka sokeeye.”

  “Precisely,” Af-Laawe asserted.

  In his mind, Jeebleh couldn’t decide how to render the Somali expression in English, in the end preferring the notion “killing an intimate” to “warring against an intimate.” Maybe the latter described better what was happening in Somalia. He was uncertain what to say next, and waited.

 
; Af-Laawe went on, lapsing now and then into Italian: “The phrase, as you know, is of recent coinage, and it explains quite aptly something about the intimate nature of the civil war. Questioned in depth and under the investigative powers of the police, many a husband whose wife has died under suspicious circumstances will fidget, even if he is innocent. ‘Where were you on Thursday evening between nine and eleven?’ Every private thing is made public, and the husband must prove his innocence.”

  The waitress who served their spaghetti all’amatriciana, was not the one who had taken the order, and apparently she knew Af-Laawe. “Would you like me to bring your usual with your meal?” she said.

  Af-Laawe shook his head no, then asked Jeebleh what he might like to drink. Jeebleh ordered lemonade, and Af-Laawe told the waitress to make it two.

  “If I remember correctly, the driver who gave me a lift from the airport, thanks to your kindness, told me that you lived in Alsace. When did you come home from Alsace?” Jeebleh asked.

  “I bought myself a ticket as soon as I heard that the Dictator had been chased out,” Af-Laawe said. “When I arrived, there was still a palpable joy in the city because he had fled. The mood was short-lived, however. Soon it became a matter of us and them, clan families versus clan families. Instead of celebrating victory, it was the start of the war of the intimates! I couldn’t stand the thought of being part of this kind of schism, so I returned to Alsace.”

  “Were you here during the four-month war between the two Strongmen, when the city was severed in two?” Jeebleh asked.

  “I wasn’t here, but we are still living with the consequences of that war.”

  “How so?”

  “Those four months of war made it clear that the idea of the clan is a sham, as some of us believed all along,” Af-Laawe said. “More recently, those of us who think of ourselves as progressive argue not only that the clan is a sham, but that you cannot organize civil society around it.”