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by Nuruddin Farah

  “The business interests of the cartel are suspect,” she said. “Initially established by Af-Laawe as an NGO to help with ferrying and burying the city’s unclaimed dead, it’s recently branched out into other nefarious activities. The cartel, my reliable source has it, sends all the receipted bills to a Dutch charity based in Utrecht. But that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is what happens before the corpses are buried. Terrible things are done to the bodies between the time they are collected in Af-Laawe’s van and the time they are taken to the cemetery. A detour is made to a safe house, where surgeons on retainer are on twenty-four-hour call. These surgeons remove the kidneys and hearts of the recently dead. Once these internal organs are tested and found to be in good working order, they are flown to hospitals in the Middle East, where they are sold and transplanted.”

  Jeebleh sat upright. Outlandish as it all sounded, he remembered being present when the corpse of the ten-year-old at the airport was transferred into Af-Laawe’s van, and that the young man killed in his hotel room was put in the same van. He remembered how quickly Af-Laawe had acted to move the bodies, and how he had arranged for Jeebleh to ride in another car from the airport, although he had clearly intended to pick him up. Maybe there was some grisly truth in what Shanta was saying?

  “Is Bile aware of all this?”

  “It’s not in his nature to talk, even if he is.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he doesn’t wish his integrity questioned.”

  A latticework of shadows fell on her face, and Shanta’s features made Jeebleh think of an old canvas in the process of being restored. He saw crevices where there were darker shadows, and imagined scars where the shadows were lighter.

  “And you think it’s the cartel that has kidnapped the girls?” he asked. “To get them out of the way so there will be no refuge for those fleeing the fighting? Or are Af-Laawe and Caloosha getting at Bile, each for his own reason?”

  “Everything is possible.”

  “But the cartel, assuming it does exist, won’t allow the girls to come to harm, will it? Especially if, as you say, Caloosha has something to do with it?”

  Shanta was no longer in a mood to answer his questions, and her chest exploded into a mournful lament. She managed to say, despite her emotional state, “The cartel is in the service of evil!”

  “Have you spoken to Caloosha about your worries?”

  “I have.”

  “His response?”

  “He says he is doing all that he can to have the girls traced. He says they are probably being held in the south of the city, which is not under his—StrongmanNorth’s—jurisdiction, but StrongmanSouth’s. But you know why I think he too won’t help at all? Because the cartel’s source of corpses will dry up if Raasta is back in circulation.”

  “Che maledizione!” Jeebleh cursed.

  Snuffling more mightily, she trotted off, head down and body trembling, in the direction of a door that he assumed would lead to the toilet, presumably to complete her crying away from his gaze. He heard the boy moving about upstairs and muttering, perhaps entertaining himself with talk. But who was the boy? What was he doing here?

  Shanta was away for at least fifteen minutes, and when she returned she sat from across him, not quite recomposed. She crossed and recrossed her legs, reminding him of an agitated mother hen fighting with all her might to save her chicks from the vulture preying on them.

  AT JEEBLEH’S SUGGESTION, THEY MOVED OUT TO THE GARDEN, WHERE THEY sat on a bench under a mango tree, its shade as sweet as the fruit itself. Unwatered and ravaged by neglect, the garden was a comfortless witness to the nation’s despair, which was there for all to see.

  “Whose house is this?” he asked.

  She looked away, first at the mango tree, which had begun to bear fruit, and then at a colorful finch hanging over one of the branches, cheerfully young and full of chirp. “Our own house is in an area that in the days when you lived here was known as Hawl-Wadaag but that has recently been named Bermuda. The neighborhood was destroyed in the fighting between StrongmanSouth and a minor warlord allied with StrongmanNorth. This house belongs to friends of mine who’ve moved to North America.”

  “Have you lived here for long?”

  “We’ve been very unhappy,” she said.

  Jeebleh looked about, distressed.

  “Perhaps the deteriorated state of the garden and the house explains why we’ve been unhappy here,” she said.

  How unlike one another are unhappy families: Tolstoy?

  “We’ve stayed on a collision course, Faahiye and I,” she said, “quarreling a great deal and unnecessarily. We’ve been in the sight of an evil eye, that’s seen much ill!”

  “Because of what?”

  “Because of the curse of which I’ve spoken.”

  “But Bile at least had no choice,” Jeebleh reasoned.

  Yet there was no reasoning with her. She said, her voice shaken, “He touched me in ways that he shouldn’t have. And because of this, we’ve earned ourselves a curse, this way harvesting nature’s ill intentions.”

  “In his place, what would you have done?”

  “In my rational mind, I know that it was a matter of life and death, and he had to make a decision, and voted in favor of life, voted for life. I am alive, and Raasta is a wonder child and, thank God, healthy. You ask what the problem is? Well, the problem is that what’s been done can’t be undone. The problem is that the curse has become part of us, affecting us all.”

  Her expression reminded him of the oval face of an owl in the dark, seen from the advantaged position of someone in the light. “Was that part of the curse, what happened between Bile and Faahiye the moment they met?”

  “They were at each other’s throats, because of what happened,” she said, “and it fell to me to make peace between them. It’s always fallen to women to forge the peace between all these hot-blooded men, always ready to go to war at the slightest provocation. Faahiye and my brothers are no different from the majority of men who’ve brought Somalia to ruin! Why do men behave the way they do, warring?”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Maybe because they’ve got no sense of grief?”

  He let this pass without comment, and waited for her tears to subside.

  “Tell me who the boy in the house is.”

  There was smugness in her gaze as she turned in the direction where the boy was playing by himself. “He belongs in The Refuge. He came here to play with Raasta the day she disappeared, and has since refused to go anywhere else until she’s back. He has become a kind of insurance policy, mine, that there will be a child in this house!”

  It struck Jeebleh that for his entire visit, she didn’t seem mad at all. Emotionally charged, yes, but that was more than understandable in a woman whose daughter was missing. In fact, she was confident enough to pleasantly offer him a plate of warmed-up food—yesterday’s leftovers—if he had a mind to eat. And she was talking in a straightforward manner and answering his questions, and saying and doing nothing far-fetched or deranged. No one would doubt that she was as sane as he was.

  He shifted the conversation: “Whose idea was it, do you know, that dinners at The Refuge should be a communal affair?”

  She wasn’t sure specifically, but thought it could only have been a woman’s idea, even if it had come from Bile, who might have relied on the women around him. Women, after all, often ate in this way and knew the benefits accruing from it.

  He nodded, remaining silent.

  “For one thing, women waste less food,” she said. “For another, eating together from the same plate is more gregarious. Besides, as you well know, we women have always eaten together, after serving our husbands. That women are content with seconds or leftovers suggests that we’re prepared to compromise for the sake of peace. Not so men!”

  He let the silence run its full course, and then asked if she had any suggestions about how he could reach the woman who had kept house for h
is mother. Her stare as hard as stone, she looked ahead of her, as though not aware of him at all. Again her lips moved like a bird feeding. Then her lips stopped and formed an O. “I knew where she lived, in Medina, before the collapse. I haven’t seen her since then, as I had no reason to. But it shouldn’t be difficult to find her if she’s alive and in the city.”

  “Caloosha tells me she’s left for Mombasa.”

  “Isn’t that what he says about Faahiye too?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Have you asked Dajaal to look for her?”

  He responded that he hadn’t, and she reiterated that Dajaal could find anyone or anything; he was useful that way.

  “Bile tells me that, among other things, you’ve come here to honor the memory of your mother,” she said. “I would like to join you in doing so for our mother too. They raised us together as one family. What did you have in mind?”

  His prayers for his mother began right away, in his imagining, with the whistle of a red-and-yellow-breasted robin perched on the branch of the mango tree.

  He said, “I would like somehow to mark my mother’s passing, perhaps with a day of prayers, a gathering of some sort, most likely at The Refuge. But first I’d like to locate her grave and pay a visit, and then maybe commission the raising of a stone in prayer, in her memory. Nothing extravagant, like a mausoleum, but it would be good if I could in some way reclaim her troubled soul from the purgatory to which Caloosha helped relegate her.”

  “The idea of using The Refuge to commemorate her life is wonderful,” she said. “I like it very much, and hope that Raasta is there to celebrate the marking with us.”

  She released a long-suppressed snuffle.

  He fell silent, ready to ask her pardon and take his leave, as soon as it was decent to do so.

  21.

  WHEN HE RETURNED TO BILE’S, JEEBLEH INSERTED THE KEY IN THE LOCK but had difficulty opening it. The key would turn loosely, without engaging to move the bolt. Then he heard footsteps approaching cautiously, and guessing it might be Seamus, he announced himself: “It’s me, Jeebleh!”

  The bolt was released at once, the door opened, and Seamus stood there, broad as his smile.

  “Is she off her rocker, as Bile believes?”

  Jeebleh didn’t answer, and walked past Seamus into the living room, where he sat down. His friend joined him. When he’d brought Seamus up to speed about his visit with Shanta, Jeebleh fell silent, exhausted from the effort of remembering what he had been through.

  “What about the boy?” Seamus wanted to know. “Is he still there at Shanta’s, refusing to leave until Raasta returns home to play with him?”

  Jeebleh didn’t reply, because he had other worries on his mind. He wore a sullen expression, his stare unfocused, as if he couldn’t see or hear a thing.

  Seamus, disturbed, tried to reach out in sympathy: “Are you okay?”

  “I am.”

  “But you’ve got the shakes!”

  On edge, Jeebleh was getting worse by the second, and looking as if he might have a nervous breakdown right in front of Seamus. He held his stomach and, bending double, made as though he might bring up his worries. A portmanteau of jitters, he was short of breath, his eyes startled, as if his guts were being emptied, to be flown out of the country, as parts. He was showing a passive side to his nature, like someone not responsible for what he was doing. Yes, something was happening to the action man, and he wasn’t able to fight it off. Jeebleh, known for his tough stances and rational behavior, looked unlike anything Seamus could ever have associated with him. “I don’t like what’s happening to me,” he said.

  “What’s happening to you?” Seamus asked.

  “I’m now part of the story, in that I’ve taken sides, and made choices that might put my life in danger.”

  Seamus shook his head in sorrow, as if he knew exactly what Jeebleh meant. “I know too many people who couldn’t help getting too involved, couldn’t avoid becoming part of this nation’s trouble. You need to return to being your usual self—a father to your daughters, a husband to your wife, and a professor to your students. You should leave the country while there’s time.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It’s time you left,” Seamus said.

  “It is, but I won’t leave yet.”

  “What’s holding you back?”

  “Some unfinished business awaits my attention.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing!” Seamus told him.

  In response, Jeebleh took refuge in a Somali wisdom about a man who bit the stronger of two fighting dogs on the ear in anger, because it was molesting the weaker one, torturing it. He added: “I’ve already made a name for myself, haven’t I, standing up to my clan family?”

  “For goodness sake,” Seamus pleaded, “they tried to murder you.”

  “I won’t risk my life unnecessarily, I promise!”

  Seamus ignored the promise. “It makes me sad to think that you’ll not only become part of the civil war story, but get totally lost in it, because the story is much bigger than you, and might prove deadlier than you can imagine. My only advice is that if you won’t quit, you watch out and make sure you aren’t sucked into the vortex.”

  “I’ll be very careful,” Jeebleh said.

  Seamus tried to steady his look before speaking. His arms folded across his chest, his manner ponderous, he said, “I’ve been there too at the crossroads, where arrivals meet departures, and where self-doubt meets with certainties and self-recrimination. And I’ve avoided becoming part of the story!”

  Jeebleh now watched Seamus busy himself with some domestic chore or other, acknowledging silently that he could’ve left without trying to tie the necessary loose ends. Now this was impossible. If he left, he would be walking away from a part of himself—and leaving behind a piece of his history too. He didn’t want to do that.

  “For years now,” Seamus was saying, “people have been coming to Somalia, every one of them intending to do their bit and then leave. The Americans came, as their then president put it, to do God’s work! God knows they didn’t do that. But then, did they just leave as they had planned? No, they were drawn into the vortices of clan intrigues, and when they left, they left parts of themselves behind. Making a choice and then acting on that decision and leaving: these are out of our hands before we’re aware of where we are.”

  Jeebleh asked, “Why have you stayed?”

  “Sometime during my second visit,” Seamus said, “I realized that I’d mislaid something of myself here during my first visit, and I had to return for it. Instead of retrieving it and leaving immediately, I’ve stayed. It’s possible that some of us cannot help losing ourselves in the sorrows of other people’s stories. I can vouch that you’ve changed since your visit to Shanta’s, I can see that. If you asked what Somalia is to me, having stayed, I would respond that it is the Ireland of my exiled neurosis.”

  “My story cast in misanthropy!” Jeebleh said.

  “You’re doing whatever it is you’re doing out of empathy, not hate,” Seamus suggested. “You feel deep love for justice. I’m moved to hear you tell the story of the man who bit the stronger of the two dogs. After all, there isn’t much of a story in ‘dog bites man,’ because it happens all the time. But when a man bites a dog for reasons to do with justice, it’s a big story, worthy of a newspaper headline. So could you explain to me, in the light of all this, why you’ve returned to your country in its hour of tragedy? I’ve been told that you’ve come to visit your mother’s grave. But you’ve done bugger-all about that! So what made you come?”

  Jeebleh reached inside his mind for the strength he sensed he now lacked, and found himself in a corridor as narrow as tunnels are dark. He tried to locate the arrows that might point to an exit, but there were none. His hands in front of him, he fumbled forward, and finally fell back on a version he had rehearsed to himself several times before. Retelling it for Seamus’s benefit, he described his unpleasant br
ush with death, when a Somali, new to New York and driving a taxi illegally, nearly ran him over. He conjured it all like a film shot on a busy New York street, demonstrating the startled look on the face of the Somali, and revisiting his own days recovering in a hospital. He slowed down to prepare himself for a challenge from Seamus, well aware that his friend could argue that by coming to Mogadiscio, he was not so much thinking about his mortality as seeking out death.

  “Have you come to court death, then?” Seamus asked.

  “It’s no longer clear why I’ve come,” he said.

  “Would you be ready to bite the stronger of two dogs on its ear, in anger, as the Somali wisdom has it?”

  Jeebleh assured him that he would.

  “Are you prepared to kill and to be killed?”

  “I could be, depending.”

  “On what?”

  “What’s at stake.”

  Apropos a question not asked, Seamus said, “The violence that’s war, combined with the violence that’s famine, run in my blood and in the veins of my memory, and so I understand where you’re coming from, and where you find yourself.”

  Agitated, he took his drawing pad and traced a half-human, half-animal figure, a man of advanced age, supporting himself on a walking stick and begging. Then he drew the figure of a woman à la Matisse, strong lines, prominently Fauvist in their pursuit of self-release. Jeebleh knew that Seamus would continue drawing until he provided the woman with a singularly abundant breast. And if he was in the mood, he would draw a baby, whom the woman would suckle. He would grow calm only when the drawing was done, and once the baby wore the capricious expression of a cynic.

  Jeebleh put this down to Seamus’s childhood terrors: a grenade had been thrown into the window of his family’s living room, killing Seamus’s father, his sister, and two brothers—everyone but Seamus and his mother; in frequent childhood nightmares, Seamus would wake from his sleep, shouting, “But why me?” He would talk expansively about the incident, but not about the fact that the man alleged to have thrown the grenade had later died violently himself. At being asked pointed questions about this, Seamus would drop into a depressive silence. After regaining his tongue, he might tell you that although he had been in the area when the man died, he hadn’t been charged, and that the police had cleared his name within a few days, for lack of evidence.