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by Nuruddin Farah

  The waiter brought Faahiye his order, but wouldn’t go until he was paid in cash. Faahiye touched his pockets, then showed his palms, indicating that he had no money. Jeebleh offered to pay, but he had only dollars. “No problem,” the waiter assured him, and took the bill to the money changers nearby, who gave him Somali shillings.

  Between mouthfuls, Faahiye continued to speak, saying that when Shanta became pregnant, both he and she felt that if she carried the pregnancy to term and gave birth to a healthy baby, then such an issue, given Shanta’s age, would be a miraculous one. “If only I could bid yesterday to return, and make it explain why Bile’s arrival changed everything, why I didn’t take to him, couldn’t stand him, and why he didn’t take to me and couldn’t stand me either. Perhaps it was because we lived on top of one another. Moreover, the civil war was entering a very tense new phase. Or maybe it was because he took over the running of our lives, ruining what prospects there were for Shanta and me to enjoy being parents to Raasta together—I don’t know!”

  The noise of the teahouse ascended in cigarette smoke toward the low ceiling and then descended as an indecipherable din. The ceiling fans turned and turned, but didn’t produce cool air. Straining his neck, his eyes focused on the window farthest from him, Jeebleh saw a jalopy resembling Af-Laawe’s.

  “Before Bile came, Shanta and I had lived in mutual dependence, to the exclusion of everyone else,” Faahiye said. “We both held the view that hell is a blood relation. Myself, I can take my blood relations only in small doses, never in concentrated form. We got together a year after her mother’s death, some time before yours passed away. She was a wonderful woman, your mother, God bless her soul, and I was very fond of her.”

  Jeebleh was more moved to hear this than he might have expected.

  “Your mother was the first to hear of our wish to marry, because Shanta treated her like a second mother. Sadly, we had very little time for anyone else, and we seldom visited her. But whenever we did, she was warm and caring. Her housekeeper was a brave woman, able to tell Caloosha off when he got out of line. She loved you, your mother, and had nothing but praise for what you stood for.”

  Tears coming to his eyes, Jeebleh asked whether Faahiye had any idea how he could reach the housekeeper.

  “I know where she is,” Faahiye said.

  “Where?”

  “She and I lived in adjacent rooms in the refugee camp in Mombasa. She was penniless, depressed, and lacking in energy. She came to life only when she was angry and cursed Caloosha, or was full of joy and praised your mother’s generosity of spirit—or yours!”

  “When did you get back from Mombasa?”

  “This morning.”

  “Tell me more. Please.”

  “I am not at liberty to do so,” Faahiye said.

  “And why not?”

  “This is too complicated to get into now.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Anyhow,” Faahiye said finally, “Bile came when Shanta had lain on her back for almost two days, in labor. We were cursing our misfortunes, to be bringing a baby into a world falling around our ears. The Dictator had fled, and many members of my own clan family had been rounded up and killed en masse. So bad was the rabble-rousing rhetoric that Shanta, between groans, kept suggesting that I leave, that maybe it wasn’t safe for me.

  “Bile came. I’ve got to hand it to him, he knew what to do. He turned the baby to a position that would make for a healthy delivery. He delivered Shanta of a baby in a shorter time than it took him to decide whether to put aside the moral and psychological constraints of his medical ethics. Then he touched Raasta.”

  “Touched Raasta?”

  “He appropriated her soon after delivering her. I understand now that he touched her out of human tenderness, which he must have missed, given that he had spent many years in solitary confinement. Later, I noticed that she quieted down whenever he picked her up, whereas she was in great distress when I held her. Raasta was jinxed, I thought. Why, she’d make as if suckling at his breast. I went ballistic, and on the attack. I spoke of murder, and of robbery. I had the proof. Bile had arrived with a duffel bag full of money. Where had he gotten it? No one leaves prison with a duffel bag full of money. He gave me some incredible spiel about stumbing on the funds, but I wasn’t satisfied, and demanded proof of his innocence, which he couldn’t provide.”

  “Why did you leave without any explanation?”

  Faahiye replied, “I was irreconcilably hurt by Shanta’s flippant remarks, spoken first in jest and in private, then in anger, in total seriousness, and in public. I had felt since Bile’s arrival that she was a changed woman. Occasionally, she behaved as though her brother’s presence turned her on sexually. And when I called him a murderer and we exchanged rude words, she took his side, saying how she hated having to deal with two children, one of whom was a grown adult—meaning me—and the second—meaning Raasta—a baby at her breast. I was reduced to an outsider in my own home, made into an ogre in front of my friends, and treated like an embarrassment in the presence of acquaintances. I withdrew in shame. I was of use only when they needed a fourth at the card table. Then they would ask me to join them.”

  “Did you at any point suspect that Bile had it in for you, because the two of you belonged to different clans?” Jeebleh asked.

  “That never crossed my mind.”

  “Did you talk to Bile?”

  “According to him, there was no basis for what he referred to as my self-exclusion. And the fact that he turned things around and made me feel that I was excluding myself didn’t help matters at all. I quoted to him a proverb: ‘A cow got while on a looting spree doesn’t produce a calf that’s legally yours.’ And I forbade my daughter to be fed on the powdered milk that he had bought. The battle lines were drawn. We were engaged in a war of wills over what was right and what was wrong!”

  Jeebleh had heard enough about Raasta, and so he asked: “Where’s Raasta?”

  “I haven’t any idea.”

  Faahiye struck Jeebleh as straightforward.

  “How about Makka?”

  “No idea either.”

  “When did you last see them?”

  “I saw them before I left for Mombasa.”

  “At Bile’s or at Shanta’s?”

  “At one or the other’s. I can’t be certain.”

  “Where are you staying now?”

  “I am not at liberty to disclose this detail.”

  “With Caloosha? With Af-Laawe?”

  “I am not at liberty to disclose this,” Faahiye repeated.

  There was another long silence.

  Jeebleh wondered if the cartel—and there was clearly a cartel, he told himself, organ-stealers or not—had flown Faahiye in from Mombasa, promising that he would see his daughter and Makka on the condition that he kept certain secrets to himself. He asked, “Will you call me if they will let me meet with Raasta and Makka after you’re allowed to see the two girls yourself?”

  Faahiye’s eyes became evasive. He looked around, as if searching for someone tailing him or eavesdropping on his conversation. And then, with a knowing smile covering much of his face, maybe out of relief that Jeebleh had worked out the mystery for himself, he replied quietly but urgently, “I’ll see what I can do!”

  Then, without much ado, both got up to leave.

  ONCE OUTSIDE THE TEAHOUSE, JEEBLEH USED THE MOBILE TO PHONE DAJAAL and ask that he pick him up. Dajaal questioned him about where he was, and set a spot to meet him.

  Before the two men bid each other farewell, Faahiye told Jeebleh a folktale.

  “It happened a long, long, long time ago,” he said. “A son, reaching the age of twenty-something, marries. Blessed with children and a loving wife, the son takes his blind, now senile father to a tree very far from the family dwelling, gives the old man some water in a gourd and some milk in a pitcher, and leaves the helpless old man there. He promises he’ll return for him shortly, only he knows he has no intention of
doing so. The old man dies from exposure to the elements. But before dying, the old man curses his son.

  “The years come and go, and the son grows to become an old man, his sight weak, his hearing gone, almost an invalid, a burden to his family. One day, his own son takes him for a walk, away from the hamlet to a desolate place. He puts two gourds, heavy with milk and water, close to him, and vows that he’ll return for him before nightfall.

  “The old man remembers what he, as a young, strong man, had done to his ailing, blind father. So he calls back his son and says, ‘My father cursed me for doing to him what you’re doing to me now, because I left him, a senile old man, to die alone. I lied to him, he cursed me, and so from then on, misfortunes called on me frequently. I’ll pray for my father’s pardon, and I’ll pray that God blesses your every wish with His approval. May good fortune smile on you and your family, my son!’

  “The son takes his father back to the hamlet, and the chains of curses, guilt, and more sorrows are thus broken.”

  Then Faahiye was gone!

  25.

  AFTER DAJAAL PICKED HIM UP OUTSIDE THE RESTAURANT, JEEBLEH judiciously related some of what had transpired since he left Bile’s apartment. He withheld the part about his visit to the cemetery with Af-Laawe, his musclemen, and the supposed housekeeper. Then he asked Dajaal’s interpretation of the folktale.

  “I would assume that he is now prepared to return to the fold of the family.” Dajaal clutched the machine gun lying in his lap. After a silence, he added, “I doubt that it’ll be a let-bygones-be-bygones return, though. He’ll lay down his conditions, that’s for sure.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I have the feeling that he is being blackmailed. But however you look at it, it’s definitely a relief that he is ready to break the cycle of curses and to reconcile himself to his new situation.”

  Jeebleh said, “He’s from the old world, all right!”

  Dajaal drove without talking, visibly hampered by the gun on his lap, which slipped whenever he took a bend. They were headed back to Bile’s, and were less than a kilometer away when Jeebleh asked if Dajaal could do him a favor.

  Dajaal slowed the car. “Y-e-s!”

  “Could you take me to the cemetery, please?”

  “Why?”

  “I wish to visit my mother’s grave, to pay my belated respects to her, to say a brief prayer in peace there. I’ll be in your debt forever if you get me there and back.”

  “How do we find the grave?”

  Jeebleh explained that Shanta had given him directions, and that he knew what to look for.

  “We’ll have to let Bile know.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Jeebleh said.

  Dajaal gave this a moment’s thought, and then deferred to Jeebleh’s decision. Even so, he fidgeted as he drove. The gun kept slipping off his lap, and he kept grabbing it with his left hand just before it dropped to the floor.

  “Since I am playing truant today, I might as well hold the gun,” Jeebleh offered. “At least that’ll make your driving easier.”

  Dajaal had yet to come up with an answer when Jeebleh took hold of the weapon, turning it this way and that. Admiring it. He surprised even himself when he said, “This is a beauty, isn’t it?”

  “It’s well put together, I agree.” Then a rider: “Mind you, go gentle, okay?” Dajaal might have been warning a toddler about the dangers of fire.

  This was the first time in his life that Jeebleh had held a firearm. What worried him was his spellbound, facile adoration of the gun. The muscleman had injected him with a potion that had altered his nature and personality, and soon he might no longer challenge a statement like the one spoken by Af-Laawe on the day of his arrival: that guns lack the body of human truths! As he fondled the gun, he realized that he was a changed man, different from the one who had left a loving wife and two daughters back home, promising to be cautious, and to bring back the life, his, of which he was a mere custodian.

  They arrived at the broken signboard that marked the entrance to the General Cemetery, and drove around in search of the landmarks Shanta had told Jeebleh about. He was sweating with worry when they passed the section where Af-Laawe had taken him; he remembered what had been done to him, and how rude Af-Laawe had been. But he chose not to speak of any of this to Dajaal. He was relieved as the uncut wild shrubs impeded their progress, and they had to take a long, roundabout way toward a large mango tree.

  Jeebleh apologized for making Dajaal go through all this. “If my mother had not departed the way she did,” he said, “with her soul bothered and her peace troubled, I should not have insisted on your bringing me here now.”

  As soon as he discovered a straight path to the mango tree, Dajaal revved the engine. He parked the car under an acacia, and stayed there, covering Jeebleh with the machine gun—they could not be sure, Af-Laawe or his cronies might be lying in wait. Jeebleh got out of the car without fear and, no longer tired, strode forward with a fresh spring. Now that he had found the spot marked with four medium-to-large stones bearing his mother’s name, Waliya, he looked around and saw how close he had been to it on his previous visit. He doubted that the purported housekeeper knew where the grave was; Af-Laawe, however, did. From where he stood, Jeebleh could see that here too the earth had shifted, and several mounds had collapsed on themselves.

  He sank to his knees, humbling himself in prayerful memory of a mother whom he felt he had failed. In this crouched posture, he resembled a haunted creature from prehistory deferring to a sky god. His eyes opened wide onto an endless day of prayer, and an eternal night of commiseration.

  He was now more at peace with himself than at any time since his arrival in the city of ruin. And when Dajaal came to him, suggesting that it was time to leave, Jeebleh requested that they call at Bile’s mother’s grave. Again, he crouched in supplication, the boundary marked with a fruitless lemon tree which offered hardly any shadow, and four medium-to-large stones bearing the name: Hagarr.

  AT THE APARTMENT, HE TOLD BILE AND SEAMUS MORE THAN HE HAD BEEN prepared to share with Dajaal, about what had been done to him and how he had suffered at Af-Laawe’s hand. Then he explained what he had done, and how, soon after calling at the graves of his mother and that of Auntie Hagarr, peace had returned to him.

  When Shanta, who was in a party mood, joined them, Jeebleh purged his story of the mention of the jab he had been given by Af-Laawe’s muscleman. Nor did he bother to inform her of his thought that the muscleman was a doctor on retainer to the cartel. Yet Jeebleh harbored his own worries. His hand kept returning to the spot where he’d been jabbed, and he wondered whether it would grow larger than a boil before the night was out. Earlier, he had shown it to Bile, who promised that they would go for tests at the city’s only lab with a pathology facility, rudimentary as it was. Jeebleh’s mind kept returning to the many occasions in their youth when Caloosha had subjected him and Bile to torture; he knew that he had come to a point in his life when he should face his demons, and in some way deal with them. To take his mind off his worries, he emphasized Dajaal’s opinion that Faahiye was a victim of blackmail. When she heard that Jeebleh had called at their mothers’ graves, Shanta became more boisterous, kissing, ululating, a woman in celebration.

  The four stayed up most of the night, talking, engaging in conjecture. No one wanted to break up the improvised gathering, and of course, Shanta had no wish to go back to an empty, desolate home; she preferred instead to sleep on the living room floor. Whereas Shanta, in her nervous optimism, felt that Raasta and Makka’s return was imminent, the others were not of that view, especially Bile. All the same, the apartment was charged with Shanta’s renewed energy. They tried to imagine their way into Faahiye’s mind, speculating over the same ground: Why did he keep telling Jeebleh that he wasn’t at liberty to disclose this or that bit of information? How was Raasta bearing up, and what was her mental state? Was Faahiye telling the truth when he said that he had been at the refugee ca
mp in Mombasa? With Shanta’s spirits so high, the three men were careful not to say or do anything that might spoil her flowering enthusiasm.

  For fear of being thought a party-pooper, Bile acquiesced to Shanta’s demand that the generator run for much longer than was customary. All sorts of drinks came out of the cabinet, soft, hard, and in between. Seamus helped himself to several bottles of beer and as many generous tots of whiskey as his tumbler could contain. A wine bottle of excellent Italian vintage, bought in Rome, was uncorked. Coffee was made, and tea brewed. Glasses that hadn’t been dusted for years, since no one could think of a good enough reason to celebrate, were passed around. Shanta insisted on a very sweet orange drink.

  Bile, though not unnecessarily mistrustful of Faahiye or his motives, was by nature ill disposed toward hatching his eggs before he had a hen to lay them. He couldn’t help returning to the same questions: How was Raasta doing in captivity? How was Makka coping? How much help, if any, had the abductors received from Caloosha or Af-Laawe? What purpose was the abduction meant to serve?

  The posse of security personnel—discreetly recruited from within the displaced community nearby—was on the alert, busy watching over the entire neighborhood. And because there was electricity for them from the generator for much of the night, there was gaiety among the security detail too, a modest calm informed by self-restraint.

  The three men did not abandon their instinct of caution; while one moment Seamus and Jeebleh agreed that there were positive signs pointing to an early reunion with the missing girls, the next moment Bile wondered whether they would be able to meet Faahiye’s conditions, whatever these were.

  It wasn’t so with Shanta, who was overwhelmed with joy, her tongue where her heart should have been. She kept jabbering away, at times making it difficult for the others to get a word in edgewise. Not once did she say anything terrible about Faahiye. What’s more, she asked for Jeebleh’s forgiveness, because of the results obtained. “I wouldn’t have accused you unfairly of talking to Faahiye behind our backs, if I imagined for a moment that you were capable of achieving miracles.” Embarrassed, he looked away, remembering being told that she was given to speaking of herself as a mother “damned to tears and sorrow.” With an expression of pained wonder, she went over and for the second time kissed him on the brow, almost tumbling on top of him. She regained her balance and caught her breath, and kept saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you in the name of our mothers!”