The espresso was majestic; there was no other word to describe it. Full of vigor, stronger than the kick of a young horse. It was dark, grainy, and concentrated like a Gauloise. It reminded him of their days in Padua, and he was tempted to ask for a cigarette even though he had abandoned the habit two decades earlier. Life was young in those smoke-filled days, days full of promise, all three friends eager to make their marks on the societies they had come from. Dreaming together, the three inseparable friends, and the two women whose presence became de rigueur for Seamus and Jeebleh, smoked their lungs away, and consumed great quantities of espresso.
In those long-ago days, you would see Seamus going off lonely and alone into the darkened moments of memory, as he recalled what had happened to his family in Belfast, blown up in their own apartment, a grenade thrown through an open window from a passing car. He had lived with constant worry about sudden death. He would talk like a man deciding to forget, but not forgive. And he would remind you time and again that two brothers, a sister, and his father had died in the massacre; only he and his mother had survived, because they happened to be out. Mother Protestant, father Catholic, he had been brought up to live as inclusive a life as he could, in which sectarian differences were never privileged. And then the massacre. He was hard-pressed to know what to do. There was something in the way Seamus told the story that made Jeebleh think that he had exacted revenge. And on several occasions he had heard Seamus screaming in his sleep, “The bloody dogs are done!”
Bile now asked Jeebleh, “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, I did. I dreamt too.”
“Do you feel like sharing your dream?”
“I saw a one-eyed, five-headed, seven-armed figure,” Jeebleh told him. “Maybe you’ll help me interpret it, the way you used to.”
“Was the one-eyed figure with multiple heads dancing?”
“Yes.”
“Were there voices in the background chanting narrative sequences to the tale being mimed?”
“How have you worked out all this?”
“Just answer my question.”
“Yes.”
“And was the movement of the figure with the multiple heads extravagant, the gestures now rapid, now deliberately slow, and were the index finger and the thumb held away from the rest of the body, and the arms of the dancer shaped into a wide circle?”
“Yes again.”
Silence settled on Jeebleh, as if permanently. He remembered the calmness as he watched the figure dancing, and saw several faces known to him. He was sorry he couldn’t put any names to the faces—maybe they were from an earlier life, now forgotten.
“Was the figure garlanded and in costume?”
“Y-e-s!”
“Hindu deities have a way of presenting themselves in movement,” Bile said, “some boasting an enormous headgear and the costume to go with it, others arriving while riding a rat. I’m thinking of Ganesh, whose intercession is sought whenever a Hindu embarks on a journey or an enterprise, whose potbellied image, with an elephant trunk and tusks and shiny countenance, is paramount at the entrance to a great number of temples.” Bile rubbed his palms together excitedly and asked with a grin, “Was there a peacock?”
“There was a peahen!”
“Not a peacock?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you saw Mira in your dream—a peahen!”
“Mira?”
“Miss Mira Meerut,” Bile said. “Our—that’s to say, Seamus’s—Mira from the city of Meerut, India, possibly the most beautiful woman to join our tables in Padua. She was in love with Seamus.”
Jeebleh’s ears throbbed, the skin tightening, the rhythm unnerving, his heart beating faster and faster. “Mira wasn’t from India,” he corrected. “She was of Indian origin, all right, but she was from Burma.”
Bile agreed that she may have been traveling on a Burmese passport when they met her, but she was from southern India, culturally speaking. Her parents had migrated from Gujarat, in western India.
“She was the one who brought along a couple of exquisite woodcarvings,” Jeebleh said. “I remember those.”
“That’s right,” Bile confirmed. “She was besotted with Seamus, who, in turn, was besotted with the carvings. The figure he fell for was caught in the process of movement. Such a vivid rhythm, I recall. We had it on our mantelpiece in the apartment in Padua.”
“I remember that there were carvings,” Jeebleh said, “but my memory of that particular carving is vague.”
“She was a beauty,” Bile said. “She wore peacock feathers and what a train of sari colors, of a silk I’ve never seen anywhere else. I was smitten with her too, but I dared not speak of it. She was breathtakingly beautiful, irresistibly charming, her almond eyes exceptionally large and in constant motion. I can’t believe you don’t remember her. Miss Mira Meerut moved about with a large following of admirers. She was like a peacock with a harem of peahens. Until she met Seamus.”
Mira’s father, Bile related, was a diplomat based in Rome—or was he with a UN agency? In addition to her striking beauty, she was also a first-class brain. She was ready for her finals, when her parents made her withdraw from the university because she was pregnant. Bile took this personally, because he was the only person in whom Seamus had confided that he was the baby’s father. To intercede on her behalf, and ask that she be allowed at least to take her finals, Bile presented himself at Mira’s parents’ apartment. An Italian woman opened the door when he rang the bell, and told him she was the new tenant. Bile learned that Mira and her parents had left the country, precise date unknown. He found this difficult to believe, and he walked from room to room in the apartment, hoping that somehow he would find Mira or her parents. The only trace of her he discovered was a drawing of a peacock in green-and-blue blossom, with a cropped tail. Bile took ill, and barely passed his exams that year. “And guess what?” Bile asked.
“What?”
Bile faltered as he spoke. “Mira Meerut was here in Mogadiscio less than two years ago, as a UNICEF consultant. She was the mother of two children, and the happy wife of a man several years her junior, an American. She was stunningly pretty, but not as free-spirited and wide-eyed with wonder as when we met her. She had resigned herself to being the ordinary wife of an ordinary American financier, on whom she doted. And when she and Seamus met, they had a ball remembering the good times, and even enjoyed recalling the bad times, the very depressing moments. But she wasn’t at all pleased to learn from Seamus that he had left the woodcarving in storage in New York, and didn’t take it along everywhere he went.”
“How fortunate that her tour of duty here coincided with Seamus’s presence,” Jeebleh said. “I bet it was wonderful for you to see a train of saris and to relive the past.”
“She was deeply hurt, though.”
“And she didn’t hide it?”
Bile shook his head no.
“How did you figure out my dream?”
Bile said, “You may not have remembered it for what it was, because there’s a photograph of Mira, taken by Seamus, on the wall in Raasta’s room. You probably saw it before you fell asleep, and the image of this stunning woman in motion insinuated itself into your dream. She still loves Seamus!”
“It is possible that my deep unconscious also became aware of Seamus’s presence in the apartment. Maybe the dream is in part a recognition of his arrival, a welcome event.”
And suddenly Seamus was there: in full flesh, grinning.
18.
JEEBLEH’S EYES WERE TOUCHED WITH A SMILE THAT SPREAD SIDEWAYS to his cheeks and down to his chin. Seamus’s eyes, like a falcon’s, were a dark brown, the pupils hardly visible.
Jeebleh held his breath in suspense, waiting to hear which language Seamus would speak. When they met last, in Padua, they used Italian. Would Seamus, knowing that Jeebleh had now lived in the United States for close to twenty years, choose English? In those long-gone days in Italy, the world had been in flux, but now things
were very different, and they were meeting in Mogadiscio; both were keenly aware of this.
“We’re all jumpy, aren’t we?” Seamus had chosen English.
Jeebleh guessed from his tone of voice that Seamus would not lapse into some piss-elegant Irish English as he used to. He had lived in England during his teens, then had gone on to Cambridge, where he had taken his first degree. And he had spent time in Italy, France, and Egypt.
“Understandably jumpy,” Jeebleh agreed.
Seamus came closer and said, “Never you mind, we’ll sort it out.” He opened his arms wide. “But let me give you a good, warm welcome hug to comfort you!”
Seamus was a well-built, beer-drinking man. He was as tall as he was wide, and sported a liberally grown beard, the kind a devout Sikh might wear to a temple on a Guru’s remembrance day and be showily proud of. He had beady eyes, bloodshot red, and thin arms that made his wrists appear scraggy. Physically, he had changed greatly since he and Jeebleh had last met. Younger, of course, and handsomer then, he had been much leaner too, clean-shaven and with a waist that might have been the envy of many a model. But Jeebleh would have recognized him anywhere, despite his girth.
Jeebleh let go first, so as to hold his friend at a look-and-see distance, and eventually to hug him yet again, even if briefly and more for effect.
Bile, who had been standing nearby, watching the goings-on, now sneaked out of the apartment. Neither friend paid him mind.
“Mogadiscio has been awful to you!” Seamus said.
Jeebleh noted a characteristic of Seamus’s that hadn’t changed: he exploded into a room, like a missile arriving on the quiet and detonating with a rush of excitement. His entry today was not as dramatic as it used to be, and he was quieter on the whole, growing only moderately louder the more he spoke. Would he make his usual sharp, insightful comments? Jeebleh, who associated him with an impressive presence, wore a wary expression, similar to that of a dog on whose pee-marked territory a wily cat has begun to trespass.
“My clansmen have been awful.”
Seamus went to the kitchen to make coffee, and Jeebleh followed. Seamus had unkempt fingernails, edgily bitten and dirty. His toenails were long, so long they put Jeebleh in mind of a museum postcard of a Neanderthal man in all his excessive wildness, as imagined and drawn by a modern illustrator. Jeebleh guessed that his wife’s remarks about unruly toenails would have cut Seamus to the quick, and made him deal with their disorderliness. Maybe he could grow his fingernails and toenails as long as he pleased because he wasn’t sharing his life or his bed with a partner.
“Bile’s told me how they behaved, your clansmen,” Seamus said. “What a repulsive lot! Fancy asking you to pay for the repairs of their war machine. Do they think you are a warlord? They don’t know you as well as some of us think we do. But what cheek!”
“I told them off.”
“Glad you told them to sod off!” Seamus was getting a little excited, and louder. “I know how you feel. I told mine off, whingers the lot of them. I told them to naff off, the moaners. I was a little tyke then, and I haven’t lived in Ireland since, because of my family. How I hate whingers. But you want to know what I think? I think you must be careful next time you meet any of them, if there is a next time. They’ll stick a knife in your back, easy as taking a toffee from a baby. They’re all plunderers, every single one of them. But then, you know that, don’t you?”
“I do!” Jeebleh agreed.
“And they bury you fast here,” Seamus said.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let them.”
“Good for you!”
“I refuse to die. My family wouldn’t want me buried here. My wife is an American, you know, and calls this place ‘a jerkwater of a ruin.’ I’ve other responsibilities elsewhere, a loving family to love.”
“Glad to hear it.”
There was a brief pause.
Jeebleh said, “It’s lovely to see you.”
“You know what pisses me off?” Seamus said.
“Tell me.”
“What pisses me off no end is how easily they dispense with the formality of a postmortem. They cart you off and away with the enthusiasm of a two-pot screamer heading for the pub, murmuring a few verses. I won’t stand for any of that. I’ve drawn up my will, and Bile has a notarized copy of it in the event of anything unexpected. I don’t wish to be planted in the earth fast. In fact, the mere thought of it kills me. I’ve provided Bile with a pile of cash locked in the safe. I want to be flown out of here, with the leisured slowness of an Irishman, and I want a wake and lots of drinking and feasting. That’s what I want!”
Then all at once, he wore an expression that Jeebleh didn’t know how to interpret. He remembered Seamus’s charming cheekiness, his posturing, his clowning.
“How’s your mother?” Jeebleh asked.
Seamus looked sad, and exhausted from jet lag. The color rose in his cheeks, and he said, “She’s tough as nails, and obstinately holding on. Thanks for asking.” His eyes dimmed and after a pause he said, “Sorry about yours. Please accept my belated condolences.”
Jeebleh looked steadily at Seamus as he poured coffee from the espresso machine into two cups, then passed one over. “Tell me your latest,” he said, “and then let’s work our way back to when we last met.”
“I’ve just come from Ireland,” Seamus said, obliging, “with a duffel bag of money to top up what Bile and I had between us, so we can keep The Refuge going until we run out of charity money again. As you can see, we’re all fine, may God help us, and the fat is not in the fire yet! We’re optimistic, despite the disappearance of our dearest, Raasta and Makka.”
“I’m not sure Bile’s told me how you got here the first time,” Jeebleh said. “If he has, I don’t remember. Anyway, he and I still have to catch up with each other. It is a bit of a blur, all that I’ve learned. So why Mogadiscio?”
Seamus was so still that Jeebleh thought he had seen a green-eyed fairy. “My life was gathering dust,” he said, “cobwebs forming in the corners, because of my nine-to-five job. The more the dust gathered, the more fits of uglies I had. I traveled a lot, but my travels were always work-related. I would spend a week in New York, two in Bangkok, a couple of days in Melbourne, then a month in New York, and another in Nairobi, always traveling and always working. I was in terrific demand as a simultaneous interpreter, and the pay was top-notch. I couldn’t complain about being everyone’s favorite, but it was getting to me.”
“What’s wrong with pegging away at work?”
“I hated becoming a gun for hire,” Seamus said. “You’ll remember I speak seven languages that are understood in areas of the world held apart by the guttural, the tonal, the diphthong, and other tongue-twisting differences. Well, I was on the road for long stretches of time. I made pots of money, but that wasn’t good enough, and I was on the verge of freaking out. I was lonely, and my life felt as though it had no purpose.”
Jeebleh said, “What passport do you travel on?”
“British.”
“Your loyalty lies with Britain or Ireland?”
A lightning sense of humor flashed in Seamus’s eyes, and he grinned. When Jeebleh looked at him, puzzled, Seamus said, “Funny you should ask that.”
Jeebleh waited patiently. In Padua, Seamus used to describe himself as “a colonial”! And since he was at a loss to find an equivalent word in Italian, he would often just use the English, and explain it to those who had no idea what he was talking about.
Now he said, “My loyalties do not lie with the Union Jack, for sure. Mine’s an all-inclusive Irish loyalty, with a good measure of cosmopolitanism. The idea of owing allegiance to a country is foreign to me.”
“You haven’t answered, Why Mogadiscio?”
“Because Mogadiscio was there, in Africa!”
“What about Mogadiscio? What about Africa?”
“I used to donate a little more than a third of my earnings to charities in Africa, when cobwebs laden with the memor
ies of a spider started to waylay me. Thinking of our friendship and our closeness turned to Africa into a cause. For me, Africa became my cause!”
“You never thought of Ireland that way?”
“No. I ruined Ireland for myself a long time ago, did some things there I couldn’t go back and live with.”
“And what might that have been?”
Seamus’s eyes dodged, and his conversation followed. “Mogadiscio seemed to be the ideal place for me.”
“Hiding out with warlords and mercenaries?” Jeebleh countered jokingly.
“And Bile too! But yes, you’re right.
“I was on the run most of the time anyhow,” Seamus said, after a silence, “spending a week on a curry-and-chow-mein tour, Delhi for a weekend, Hong Kong for a day. This wasn’t work, but run, run, and run, a lifestyle with no room for reflection, a life meaninglessly held together by a major absence: love! I’m not speaking of loving a woman or a man, don’t misunderstand me, but of a good, plain, old-fashioned, sixties-style personal commitment to love.”
“And what have you found coming here? Love?”
“Will you forgive a cliché?”
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve run into my self, coming here.”
“Is this good or bad?”
“There’s a purpose to my life now: Raasta!”
Then he was back to when he decided to come to Mogadiscio: how he bought the New York Times Sunday edition at midnight, in San Francisco; how he read about a UN-funded job in Somalia; how he applied; how he was short-listed; and how he was selected. He packed lightly, convinced that he would hate it. But he didn’t. He met Bile—“It was more like running into my self”—and Raasta; he stayed. “Perhaps there’s some truth in the wisdom that there is no happiness sweeter than the happiness built on someone else’s sorrow. And this city has enough sorrow, with much deeper foundations.”
“That’s how Mogadiscio has struck you?”
Seamus replied, “Mogadiscio, because of Raasta, is what a straw dripping with water is to a man dying of thirst. I’m aware of the fact that it’s a death trap, and because of this my heart goes out to those who’re caught up in the fighting, and those who cannot help losing themselves in its politics. I am here to stay, that’s what matters.”
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