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by Nuruddin Farah

  Jeebleh remembered seeing the scene on TV. He had thought of beasts of prey roaming the streets of the city and the countryside, beasts inhabiting the minds of the youths. But when answering Dajaal’s question, he moderated his reaction. “I thought of life-in-death, if that makes sense to you.”

  “The mob had hardly dispersed,” Dajaal continued, “and we heard on our short-wave radio that the Americans were leaving, body bags and all. Some of us would’ve liked to talk things through. I’m sorry that wasn’t to be.”

  “StrongmanSouth wouldn’t have wanted to talk?”

  “Of course he wouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he was a spent force until the AIC gave him a new lease on life by making him ‘Wanted’ and placing a reward worth thousands of dollars on his head,” Dajaal said. “Thanks, but no, thanks, to the AIC!”

  Jeebleh remembered the discussion of the previous night, and he asked Dajaal to tell him who, in his opinion, had fought whom. “Americans versus Somalis?”

  Dajaal explained that the Somalis, fragmented in their sectarian loyalties, did not see the battle as having been fought between “Somalis” and “Americans.” “The fighting was between the clansmen supporting StrongmanSouth, and the AIC,” he said. “Truth was one of the first casualties of the war.”

  “Did you see yourself as a man provoked into deadly action? What finally made you decide to dig up your gun? Were you in a rage?”

  “Anger had nothing to do with it,” Dajaal replied, “but justice did.”

  “Were you afraid?”

  “I was prone to fear, like the Marines, and alone in my fear too. But I wasn’t in a strange country, I knew why I was doing what I was doing, and I knew where I was, even in the dark! That was the difference between our situation and that of the young Americans.”

  They came across a zinc wall on which someone had scrawled “Dal-dalo maidkaada, tagna!” Jeebleh rendered this to himself as “Take away your corpses and leave our country!” He knew where the line came from. His memory galloping, he recited lines from a poem composed at the turn of the twentieth century by Somalia’s greatest poet, Sayyid Mohammed Abdulle Hassan.

  “I have no cultivated fields, or silver

  Or gold for you to take!

  The Country is bush.

  If you want wood and stone,

  You can get them in plenty,

  There are also many termite hills.

  All you can get from me is War.

  If you want peace, go away from my Country.”

  Then a silence, which neither was prepared to break, came between them, like a referee stopping a fight. And into the silence walked a rabble of armed youths, like extras in a film about Mexican bandidos. As though on cue, one youth came forward. He was very short, stocky, and showily dressed as an outlaw—boots, bandanna, and Stetson hat. You could see that he was the kind who would waste you without blinking an eyelid. Jeebleh was expecting to hear a crescendo of gunshots, and death calling, when his worried gaze settled on Dajaal’s nonchalant expression. The youth shouted, “Nothing to worry about, Grandpa. We’re just having some fun, me and my friends!”

  “Come and I’ll introduce you to my visiting friend, then,” Dajaal told the youth. He turned to Jeebleh and said sotto voce, “He’s my grandson, whom everyone calls Qasiir. A rascal, really. He can tell you how he partook of the fighting on the day his sister was hurt. He has been involved in a lot of tomfoolery too.”

  Qasiir strode as though on a movie set, cameras rolling to catch every one of his antics. The combination of boots and Stetson made him appear taller; he put on a tough expression, thumbs stuck deep into his ammunition belt, teeth biting down on a chewing-stick the size of a cigarillo. Jeebleh imagined a harmonica being played nearby, and Clint Eastwood making a cameo appearance. For all his posturing, he struck Jeebleh as a youth who had come through muck, in which he wallowed; death, which he courted without fear; and humiliation, which he fought hard to subdue in his own way.

  His voice firm, on edge, and low, Dajaal told Qasiir that he was fed up to the back teeth with his tomfoolery. “Send your sidekicks away, and follow us to your mother’s house, pronto!”

  But first Dajaal made a detour to the spot where the helicopter had fallen that October afternoon in 1993. The place looked like any other in a dusty city where furious wars raged. Here, however, there were pieces of metal, once part of a war machine—elegant, noisily powerful, and threatening when up in the air, but unimaginably ugly when fallen and dismantled. A group of rowdy children kicking up a storm of dust abruptly suspended their ball game at Dajaal’s bidding, and they gathered close to him and Jeebleh. The children were curious about Jeebleh; they understood he was a visitor to the city. They guessed that he, like a number of other strangers before him, was calling on the disturbed girl and her mother who lived nearby, casualties of a battle that didn’t concern them.

  Qasiir joined them now, and for Jeebleh’s benefit pointed out the battle lines: to the right, where the fighters supporting StrongmanSouth had been, and to the left, where the Americans had been. In a wall improvised from sheets of zinc, they could see evidence of liberal hits from all sides, by bullets of all sizes.

  More children joined the group, and a handful of adults came out of their shacks. Dajaal ushered Jeebleh away from the curious onlookers, and led the way to the compound where Qasiir’s brain-damaged sister and her mother awaited them. Just as they reached the gate, a cat came out from underneath, flattening against the ground to avoid being cut by protruding nails.

  It dawned on Jeebleh that he was acting out of character: there was nothing to gain from a visit to the little girl and her mother. No doubt, they had suffered as casualties of a senseless battle, and had survived huge personal ordeals. But he didn’t wish to cut the figure of the war tourist, making a voyeuristic study of a sordid aspect of a sad war that shouldn’t have taken place at all. Everything seemed more ominous as they moved into the compound, Dajaal holding back as tradition demanded, stopping outside and announcing “Hoodi!” and awaiting his daughter-in-law’s welcoming “Hodeen!” before going any further. Qasiir entered the squat building without ceremony. A moment later, music came at them from inside, James Brown screeching, hooting, and grunting to the timbre of his soul.

  A HAND PUSHED THROUGH THE CURTAIN AT THE DOORWAY. THEN A WOMAN wrapped in a floral robe, an edge of it held between her teeth, emerged, her gaze deferentially downcast. With one hand clutching her right ear, the other holding a little girl’s hand, she came forward. The girl, her gaze diffuse, held the lower edge of the woman’s robe. It was clear from the little one’s movements that all was not well with her. Jeebleh was uncomfortable as he followed her inside, and he looked away from the pair to Dajaal, who by then had found two chairs for them to sit on. Jeebleh was tempted to turn his back on the whole business, and walk out of the house. But he thought better of it when Dajaal introduced the woman, calling her by name, which Jeebleh failed to catch. It wouldn’t do to unnecessarily displease Dajaal, who had been very kind to him all along, and he didn’t want to be rude to the poor woman or her unfortunate daughter. He shook the woman’s hand when she proffered it. Dajaal called to his granddaughter several times; her delayed response suggested that she was hard of hearing, or retarded, or both.

  “She’s deaf from the helicopter noise,” Dajaal explained. “And yet she manages to hear ungodly noises, like airplanes, and huge diesel truck engines, and heavy-duty motorbikes, and she cries and cries and cries, nonstop. Maybe she senses the earth shaking, I don’t know.”

  The girl stood staring at them, her thumb in her mouth. Jeebleh tried to entice her with the candies, but she wouldn’t approach. He tried to engage her in baby talk, but she just stared at him, as though in amazement.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  The young thing wouldn’t speak. Now he looked up at her mother bringing tea, the child almost tripping her. “My daughter hasn’t spoken a word all
these years,” the woman told Jeebleh.

  Dajaal tried to bring the girl over to Jeebleh, but she cried so fiercely he left her alone. After a few minutes, when his daughter-in-law had served them tea, Dajaal invited her to come and take the candies out of his own palm. He sat so close to her he could’ve touched her. The girl’s pupils appeared dilated, but her stare was unseeing.

  When her grandfather’s hand went nearer to give her the candy, she burst again into tears and, taking several steps at once, fell forward. Her mother picked her up, quieted her. The girl, now somewhat relaxed, studied the strange world from the advantageous height of her mother’s protective hip.

  “She lives in a world of fear,” the woman said. “Dust storms disturb her, noises too.”

  “You say she doesn’t speak at all?”

  “She can’t string two words together.”

  “And doesn’t laugh either,” Dajaal said.

  “How old is she?”

  “Almost five and a half.”

  Jeebleh didn’t know what to say.

  “A baby does not suffer alone,” the mother said.

  Dajaal stayed out of it now, seemingly aloof.

  The mother continued, “We all suffer with our babies, share in their suffering, don’t we? It’s been very difficult to be the mother of a child who’s never smiled, and never known laughter or the joy of being young. She cries fitfully, wets her bed and slobbers, her nose is forever moist. We keep trying to make her blow it, but I doubt she’ll ever blow it for herself.”

  Jeebleh looked from the woman to the child and finally to Dajaal, as if he wanted to be helped out of a fix he had got himself into. He rose to his feet hesitantly and stood unsteadily. Then James Brown’s honking was no more, and Dajaal was telling Qasiir to tell Jeebleh all that had happened on the day the helicopter’s uprush hurt his sister.

  Before Qasiir could speak, his mother began: “Children in search of a bit of fun were the first to run to the villa where the two helicopters were hovering menacingly. There were American soldiers in the helicopters, an attack team of about twelve, in big vests worn over fatigues. The earth shook to its foundation, and we were all frightened. We had a routine to follow when helicopters came or when we expected an attack: we would all go together and move north, in small groups to avoid being seen, all of us protected by men with AK-47s. This wasn’t the first attack, and as with all the others, we didn’t think it would be the last.

  “But I couldn’t leave, because my daughter wasn’t feeling well, and I stayed behind to give her the medicine prescribed for her earache. Besides, the arrival of the helicopters filled my son Qasiir with bravado, and he came into the room we all share, looking for his dirt-brown jeans and his T-shirt with some writing in English. I thought he might help me join the others, but his mobile rang, telling him where to go and what to do. He ran off in haste with several other boys, answering the call of their commander. They knew no fear, my son and his posse.”

  When she paused, Jeebleh looked at Qasiir, and the youth grinned foolishly. He took up the story where his mother had left it. “I was the leader of the posse, wasn’t I? I had on a T-shirt that said ‘Frank James is alive and well and living in Mogadiscio,’ and I was tougher than all the others. We were useful as spies, my friends and I, and I was the one with the mobile. One of the top men of our militia had given it to me.”

  Qasiir received instructions via the mobile from a man he had never met, a deputy commander to StrongmanSouth. When he was on the phone, he tried to impress his boys, remaining dramatically silent, nodding in agreement with the invisible commander. Now and then he would proclaim, “Of course I won’t share the secrets with anyone else!” Jeebleh imagined the boy switching off the phone and picking up a sliver of wood, placing it in his mouth, and pushing it about with his tongue in imitation of Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars.

  In spite of the terrific noise created by the helicopters, Qasiir’s posse could hear every word he said, as he told them what to do. He might have been relaying a message received directly from the Almighty, each syllable delivered as though he were honoring it, each vowel drawn out in deference to StrongmanSouth. The boys couldn’t tell whether or not he was quoting someone when he said, “Remember that death visits you only once. And so our commander in chief says we must be ready for it, and must welcome it too. How do we achieve the impossible? Discipline.” He repeated the word “discipline” several times, until it had the force of an incantation.

  They went into a huddle and piled their hands one on top of another, like basketball players at the beginning of a game. They also took a collective oath, reaffirming their fearless commitment to total war against the enemies of StrongmanSouth. They were ready to undertake risky missions now that the assault had begun in earnest.

  “And to prove how we were prepared to die for our commander, one of my boys began chanting in rhythm to the rotating helicopter blades,” Qasiir said. And to Jeebleh’s amusement, he got up and started chanting an imitation of an American gangsta rap. He sang some sort of war cry, “Dill, dill, gaalka dill, dill, dill, gaalka dill!” and after a pause, chanted in English, rapping in rhythm and repeating the command “Kill, kill, kill all!” Qasiir’s acting was so effective that Jeebleh could hear, in his own mind, the chopper’s noise, razor sharp, the blades turning and turning.

  The deadly birds continued to hover, Qasiir said, raising an immense cloud of sand. And as the blades rotated faster and faster, the noise grew louder and more frightening, until the swirling currents tore zinc roofing sheets from flimsy dwellings and ripped cardboard from the walls of lean-tos serving as dwellings. A few odd pieces of plywood, no nails to hold them down, were blown away as well.

  Qasiir’s mother interrupted her son. “None of this mattered to the helicopter pilots or the soldiers in their funny-looking vests! It was siesta time in Mogadiscio, when we all sought shelter from the scorching sun. But on that day it felt like the entire earth was caught up in waves of tremors, each tremor speeding up the pulse of every person or animal in the neighborhood.”

  Qasiir rose to his feet, acting out more of that day, and Jeebleh was able to imagine the accelerated heartbeats of the ailing, the panting lungs of the infirm, the thrashing of the alarmed, the sand funneling in a mighty whirlwind, people cowering in their shacks, curses spoken, spells cast, homes destroyed, businesses disrupted, lives suddenly ended.

  Qasiir’s mother described the horrific terror of her baby—then barely a year old—who, torn from her breast, had been caught up in the avalanche of courtyard sand stirred up by the rotors of the helicopters. And when the mother went on her knees, keening in supplication, praying, cursing, cursing and praying, Jeebleh stared, dumbfounded, now unable to imagine the terror.

  “I became hysterical,” she continued, “and tore at my bare breast, where my daughter had been nursing. I wailed, I wept, I cursed, I prayed, but to no avail. I tore at my clothes, until I disrobed, convinced that my child had been swallowed up in the sand raised by the helicopter’s sudden arrival. Then I saw the shape of evil. Rangers pointing at my nakedness and laughing. I stopped wailing, and covered my indecency, and then cursed the mothers who bore these Rangers. I’ve never glimpsed worse evil than those men cupping their hands at me, their tongues out, pointing at my nakedness.”

  Qasiir and his team heard her wailing. He shouted to his posse, instructing them not to shoot at the helicopters, fearing that his baby sister might be hurt in the crossfire. Looking back, both Qasiir and his mother speculated that one of the pilots might have become aware of what was going on and, in an effort to help, might have steered away from where the mother knelt, naked, weeping, praying, cursing, wallowing in the sand. “Then”—Qasiir acted it out in a wild charade—“two men appeared from nowhere with RPGs, and they gunned for the chopper. There was a mighty crash: the helicopter was down!”

  “And I wouldn’t stop wailing,” his mother broke in, “until I saw my baby fall to the ground, close to where I
was. I crawled on all fours to where my daughter lay, praying that I would find her alive, and unhurt. All the while, my hard, evil stare was focused on the Rangers in the downed chopper. I lifted my baby into my embrace, and half ran, half walked away, aware of the Rangers’ eyes trained on my back.”

  THE STORY WAS OVER, THE MOTHER CLEARLY EXHAUSTED, AND JEEBLEH, NOW prepared to leave, got to his feet. Without thinking, he reached into his shirt pocket and handed over a large sum of money in the local currency—his change from the restaurant—to the mother of the child. The woman looked at her father-in-law, as if to ask, “What am I to do with this?”

  “Please let her buy something for the child.” Jeebleh’s words failed him. He was embarrassed by what he had done so thoughtlessly. He walked out of the compound and, with feelings of guilt weighing him down, waited for Dajaal to join him.

  27.

  ON THEIR WAY TO THE BARBERSHOP, JEEBLEH, HIS EXPRESSION FORLORN, relied on the strength of his own spirit to overcome the obstacles in his way.

  He decided to approach Dajaal right away with specific demands, even at the risk of being turned down. He did not have all the time in the world: soon he would be returning home, back to his family and his teaching: from that distance, a Parthian shot at his present pursuers and his lifetime foe would be impossible. He wanted the job done, and done well—in and then out.

  And there was another matter he needed to consult Dajaal about. Jeebleh wanted to hire a mason to build a miniature mausoleum in noble memory of his mother. Nothing extravagant, just a bit of stone neatly put together, in tribute to the woman who had built him into what he had become. His skin bristled as he thought ahead to the moment when, standing before the structure, he could say a prayer or two, in an effort to apologize for his failures. It would take a great deal of love, and more, to help her spirit lie in undisturbed peace.