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by Nuruddin Farah

  But Jeebleh risked asking about it. He felt he had to hear about it. “If you didn’t have a hand in the man’s death, and I’ll assume that to be the case,” Jeebleh said, “why were you accused of it? How was it that your presence in the area had been noted and you were suspected?”

  “Because no one living in a country in which a civil war is raging is deemed to be innocent. Here in Somalia too everyone is potentially guilty, and may be accused unfairly of crimes they’ve committed only by association. If you are a member of the same clan family as a perpetrator of a crime, then you’re guilty, aren’t you?”

  “Do you still wake up, shouting ‘Why me’?”

  “Not anymore I don’t,” Seamus said.

  “That’s a relief!”

  “Living in Mogadiscio, seeing so much devastation and death from the civil war, and working at The Refuge have cured me of that.”

  Jeebleh had heard the passion in Seamus’s voice when he spoke of Raasta. He obviously adored her, as though she were his own child. His affection seemed to border on obsession. That morning Jeebleh had seen Seamus’s room in the apartment. There were photographs of the girl everywhere, on the walls, on key rings. Two photographs that he had taken hung on either side of his bed. In addition, he had many drawings of Raasta, stacks and stacks of them. Seamus was apparently in the habit of drawing her when he was nervous, which was a great deal of the time, and he drew rather competently, at times almost like a professional. “She gives a purpose to my continued stay in Mogadiscio, despite the risks,” he said now.

  “What is she like?”

  “A halo of comfort to me,” he said. “An elated sense of peace descends on my head when she is around me. In her presence, I am as happy as a yuppie throwing his first housewarming party.”

  It occurred to Jeebleh that Seamus, the polyglot from Northern Ireland, might have some thoughts related to his pronoun obsession. He tried it on him: “What pronoun do you think is appropriate when you refer to the people of Belfast? Not in terms of being Catholic or Protestant, but just people?”

  “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”

  “Do you use ‘we’ because you see yourself as part of that community, or ‘they’—a ploy as good as any to distance yourself and to distinguish yourself from the sectarian insanity of which you’re not part?”

  After some serious thought, Seamus said, “I don’t know if I’m as conscious of the pronouns as you are. Anyway, what pronouns do you deploy?”

  “Myself, I use ‘we’ when I mean Somalis in general, and ‘they’ when I am speaking about clan politics and those who promote it. This came to me when I was refusing to contribute toward the repair of their battlewagon, for I didn’t want to be part of their war effort. I left their side of the green line and relocated in the section of the city where the other clan family is concentrated. It’s as if I’ve written myself out of their lives.”

  “Enemies matter to those who create them,” Seamus responded quickly.

  “I’m not with you.”

  “When you think of them as ‘they’ and therefore create them yourself, then it follows that you become an enemy to them the moment you opt out of their inclusive ‘we.’ As it happens, you are worth a lot more to them dead than alive, assuming of course that they can lay their hands on the wealth you had in your room or on your person.”

  Jeebleh nodded in agreement. “Another Somali proverb has it that the shoes of a dead man are more useful than he is.”

  “How cynical can a people get.”

  “I would say we’re a practical nation.”

  “Deceitful too,” Seamus said, and after a pause went on: “I bet Af-Laawe would’ve helped them to effect their clannish claim on your cash and so on. He’d be attending to your corpse in jig time, before anyone else knew you were a goner.”

  “Is he as much of a shit as Shanta depicts him to be?” Jeebleh asked. A wayward silence gave him the luxury to recall Af-Laawe’s thoughts on pronouns. But when other memories from other dealings that had passed between him and Af-Laawe called on him, Jeebleh felt his body going numb, as though his limbs had been rendered lifeless. Nor could he shake off the shock of hearing Shanta’s suspicions about the cartel! Shanta was a mother with a missing daughter, and at times she was clutching at straws, but some of her speculations made sense to him. “Tell me about Af-Laawe.”

  “The man is in the thick of every wicked deed,” Seamus said. “Unconfirmed rumor places him in the role of go-between, something he’s apparently good at.”

  “Where else does rumor place him?”

  “I understand he ran an underhand scheme,” Seamus said, “in which four-wheel-drive vehicles were spirited away with the help of Somali drivers and some UN foreign employees. Again, he acted as a go-between, linking the UN insiders and the Somali drivers. But he received the biggest cut, because it was his racket. The Somali drivers would vanish into the city’s no-go areas, and the Lord knows there were many, and some UN bureaucrat would get his commission in cash. And the vehicles would end up in Kenya or Ethiopia! You’ll probably have heard of the four-million-dollar heist, the one that made it into the international press.”

  “Why do you think he hasn’t quit, retired on his millions?”

  “He’s past the stage when he can just walk away,” Seamus speculated. “I presume he gets a kick out of courting danger on a daily basis. Sure as eggs is eggs, he’s his own story now, and too big a man to lose himself in other people’s fibs, or to care about them. My guess is that he’ll eventually tempt Caloosha’s wrath, and he’ll end up dead.”

  Jeebleh looked disconcerted: “And the AIC?”

  “What about him?”

  “Did he become part of the story too?”

  “Fools are famous for the gaffes they make,” Seamus said. “We weren’t on first-name terms, the AIC and I, but we got on reasonably well until he lost his way in the complex plot of Somalia’s story. He may have meant to do ‘good,’ but his methods were highly questionable. In the process, he ended up behaving very much like StrongmanSouth, whom he meant to expose.”

  “He too became his own story?”

  “And he compounded the problem by misinforming the American militariat and the UN too. I don’t wish to be unfair to him, but I think that in the end he mislaid his marbles.”

  “Would you say he was evil?”

  Seamus’s worries made him look more careworn, and a little paler. “I would say he was banal.”

  “No one’s going to think of anything else when ‘banal’ comes this close to ‘evil.’”

  “He was true to type, and American.”

  Not knowing what to make of this, Jeebleh let it be. He concentrated his stare on a gecko at the bottom of the wall, within reach of his hand, and a fly washing its head reflectively, as though tempting the gecko.

  SEAMUS’S EYES CLOSED VERY, VERY SLOWLY, LIKE THOSE OF A CHILD RESISTING sleep. Then the phone rang, and Jeebleh answered it. Shanta was at the other end. There was a life-or-death urgency to her voice. She wanted Jeebleh at her place right away, but wouldn’t tell him why. Assuming the worst, he got in touch with Dajaal, who promised he would take him there at once.

  22.

  NO SOONER HAD JEEBLEH PUT ON HIS SEAT BELT THAN HE APPROACHED Dajaal about joining his cause. He broached the subject with the timidity of someone who had no wish to spend another day behind bars in a detention cell.

  “Supposing that I set my sights on destroying a man who’s wrought havoc on my life and done irreparable damage to others close to me,” he said, “and supposing I were to ask you to help, would you give me a hand?”

  Sounding as if he had given the subject some thought, and had been expecting the request to come for some time, Dajaal answered, “Of course I would.”

  Jeebleh mulled this over and then said noncommittally, “You realize I haven’t a clear idea of what’s involved?”

  “Nor have I much of an idea what you’re talking about, come to think of it,” Dajaal s
aid, “but there’s time to develop these plans, plot and fine-tune them. In my previous experience as an army man, and as a long associate of Bile—I’m eternally devoted to him—I have undertaken tough jobs. My training has prepared me, and I am always willing to accept risky tasks in the line of duty.”

  Jeebleh assured him that he hadn’t discussed the topic with anyone else, and that it was too soon to come up with a blueprint. In any case, they wouldn’t make any moves until they were clear in their heads about the fate of the girls. Till then, Jeebleh said, mum’s the word!

  Dajaal told Jeebleh that as an army officer he was trained to share secret information on a “no-name, no-packdrill” basis. He, Dajaal, would honor that.

  “What about Bile?”

  “What about him?” Dajaal asked.

  They had arrived at Shanta’s gate. “How will he take it?” Jeebleh said.

  “He’s aware of your plans?”

  “I haven’t spoken to him at all about my plans.”

  “When I met him at the clinic this morning,” Dajaal explained, “Bile alluded to how a female bee mates with any drone she meets in the course of her honey-making business.”

  “Have you any idea what he was saying to you?”

  “Not really,” Dajaal replied. “But he explained it this way: that for his self-fulfillment, a torturer will be content to torture a victim wherever he may come across one.”

  When Jeebleh said, “Thank you,” he did not know whether he was thanking Dajaal for the lift or for the details of what Bile had said, or simply bringing their conversation to an abrupt end because he was feeling uncomfortable.

  Jeebleh got out of the car. Dajaal chose not to accompany him, but to wait outside until he was sure that his presence was no longer needed.

  JEEBLEH WAS SURPRISED THAT SHANTA DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER TO WELCOME him or thank him for coming promptly. As soon as she saw him, she cursed: “The son of a bitch has called.”

  He was tempted to say, “Where are your manners?” but decided to make an allowance for Shanta. Of course, he could guess whom she meant, and he waited for her to say more. There was rage in her voice, old rage mixed with new.

  “Did he say where he was calling from?”

  “He sounded so close that it could’ve been from the house next door,” she said. Then she turned her back on Jeebleh and, again cursing like a drill sergeant—“The son of a bitch”—walked away. He didn’t follow her inside immediately.

  He averted is gaze, finding no pleasure in seeing her curves through the diaphanous dress she wore, a garment adorned with fluttering birds. He thought of his wife, to whom he had spoken the day before.

  Shanta made him even more uncomfortable with her abusive language. “The son of a donkey has rung, but doesn’t want to speak to me. Can you believe it?”

  He entered the house and shut the door. He reminded himself how he had been reared in a venerable tradition in which you pretended that nothing untoward had taken place if a respectable person misbehaved in your presence.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, while we’re waiting?” she asked.

  He wondered whether it was wise to have tea with her or even to wait, when he didn’t know why he was waiting, precisely for whom or for what, or for how long. That she continued to swear irritated him greatly, he had no idea why. He spoke slowly: “Tell me if I’m right. Faahiye, your husband, called between the time I was here last and the time you called me at the apartment, and he said he’d call again, but didn’t give a definite time or reason. Did he name the person he wanted to talk to?”

  “He wants to speak to you.” She nearly flew into a fresh rage. “‘I want to speak to Jeebleh.’ That’s how he put it. ‘I want to talk to that man and no one else, and I want you to ring him and get him, and I’ll call!’”

  “I hope you’re not blaming me.”

  “Have you been talking to him behind our backs?” She looked like a floor cloth, untidy in her moment of sheer rage. “Tell me the truth!”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “So why has he rung you, if you haven’t?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “If Faahiye and I had spoken, as you say,” Jeebleh challenged her, “would he not have a better way of reaching me?”

  “I suppose you are right.” She settled into the sofa, shifting in it. She rubbed her forehead with her hand, as though this might help reduce her pain. The minutes passed slowly. He thought of trying to assure her that he was not offended by her insinuation, but chose not to, certain that it would be of no use.

  “He rang me soon after you left,” she said.

  Jeebleh thought that maybe one of Caloosha’s security operatives who was keeping tabs on him had seen him with Shanta, as they walked away from where the epileptic man had collapsed. When the word got through to Caloosha, he might have called Faahiye and asked that he speak to Jeebleh. It was safe to assume that Faahiye would do what he had been told.

  “Did he say anything about Raasta?”

  “No.”

  Even though it wasn’t in Jeebleh’s nature to see the bright side of things, he felt he needed to be optimistic. The words came to him easily, but he was having difficulty in delivering them convincingly, so he repeated them to himself over and over. Faahiye wouldn’t be making contact unless he had decided to bring the crisis to an agreeable end; he was free to make such a decision on his own, and not at someone else’s suggestion. But Jeebleh couldn’t pass his optimism on to Shanta, as he feared that she would become more aggressive.

  And she would not give up. “Why, of all the people in the world, has he chosen to talk only to you, if you haven’t been in touch with him on your own?”

  “I have no idea,” Jeebleh said.

  “There’s got to be a reason,” she insisted. “I’ve never known him to do anything unless he’s given it a lot of consideration, and studied it from every possible angle.”

  Jeebleh said, “Maybe he thinks it’ll be easier to talk to me, because I’m the only one who’s known him for donkey’s years and with whom he hasn’t quarreled?”

  “I am Raasta’s mother.”

  Jeebleh was on the verge of saying that that was beside the point, but it dawned on him that the opposite was the case: The fact that she was Raasta’s mother was the point. He speculated aloud: “Maybe he looks on me as a neutral person, or an impartial judge, able to listen to the two sides of the argument judiciously?”

  “What two sides? There are no two sides! I want my daughter back, and I want her now. He can go where he pleases, something he’s already done. I don’t care. I want my Raasta back.”

  “We’re assuming, without knowing it for a fact, that he’s holding Raasta hostage,” he countered.

  “Why do you say we’re assuming that?”

  “Because we are,” he said.

  “Isn’t he?” she asked.

  “We haven’t established that.”

  Shanta grew more and more tense, and then, exhausted, slumped back lifelessly. He sat forward and, turning slightly, saw a slim book in Italian written by Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, a Somali of Persian origin. He recalled reading the book in New York, and thinking that it was no mean feat for a housewife to write about her life in Mogadiscio, and then her exile in Italy. He was pleased that Somalis were recording their ideas about themselves and their country, sometimes in their own language, sometimes in foreign tongues. These efforts, meager as they might seem, pointed to the gaps in the world’s knowledge about Somalia. Reading the slim volume had been salutary, because unlike many books by authors with clan-sharpened axes to grind, this was not a grievance-driven pamphlet. It was charming, in that you felt that the author was the first to write a book about the civil war from a Somali perspective. He asked Shanta what she thought about the book.

  “I hadn’t been aware of the depth of her hurt until I read it,” she said, “just as I hadn’t given much thought, I confess, to the suffer
ing of many Somalis of Tanzanian, Mozambican, or Yemeni descent. The civil war has brought much of that deep hurt to the surface. I hope that one day we’ll all get back together as one big Somali family and talk things through.”

  “Who’s to blame for what’s happened?”

  “I hate the word ‘blame,’” she said.

  “Is Shirin Fazel Persian? Or is she one of us, Somali?”

  “She is a deeply hurt Somali, like you and me,” she said. “When you are deeply hurt, you return to the memories you’ve been raised on, to make sense of what’s happening.”

  “Do you reinvent your life?” Jeebleh asked.

  “It is as if you see yourself through new eyes. And then you reason that you’re different, because you are after all from a different place, with a different ancestral memory.”

  “You feel left out when you are hurt?”

  “I suppose that is what Shirin Fazel feels. Left out and victimized, because she is of Persian descent.”

  “Is Faahiye hurt in a similar manner?” Jeebleh asked.

  “Because his family was different from ours?”

  “Did he speak about it?”

  “That would be uncharacteristic of him.”

  “Because he belongs to the old world, in which you don’t speak about what hurt you, is that why? Or is it because he believed that the clan business had nothing to do with his hurt? That it was personal?”

  “He belongs to a world,” Shanta explained, “in which he expects that those hurting him will realize their mistake of their own accord and, without being told, stop hurting him any further.”

  “What do people do when they’re hurt?” he asked.

  “Tell me.”

  “Some people go public, and they show the world that they’re hurt. They accuse those who’ve hurt them, they become abusive, vindictive. Some become suicidal. Some withdraw with their hurt into the privacy of their destroyed homes, and sulk, and whine. To someone who’s hurt, nothing is sacred.”