He looked in Dajaal’s direction. The man seemed uncomfortable. “There are two jobs I would like to hire someone to do,” Jeebleh said. “Two jobs that are related, to my mind. Would you help me?”
“What are these jobs?”
Worry spread over Jeebleh’s face; he looked as wretched as a rusted drainpipe. “How would you go about it if you wished to commission a risky job?”
Dajaal’s cagey answer made it obvious to Jeebleh that the man knew where he was headed with his questions. “I wouldn’t, for instance, commission my grandson Qasiir to perform a risky job. It would have to be performed on a no-name, no-packdrill basis, with payment on execution.”
Jeebleh emerged after a while from his unclear thinking, and sighed with the confidence of a young colt. “Would you have someone in mind for such a job?”
“I would.”
Kaahin’s name came to Jeebleh’s mind. “Like who?”
Dajaal wouldn’t commit himself. “I can think of out-of-work former colleagues of mine who’ll do the job quietly, efficiently, and cheaply, and who’ll spare one all the gory details having to do with the disposal of bodies and evidence linking one to the deed.” So Dajaal not only knew what Jeebleh wanted him to do, but had given thought to the details like a professional assassin.
“How much?” Jeebleh maintained his confidence.
“I’ll come back to you on that,” Dajaal said.
The sun slanted at Jeebleh from the west, and the sand stirred by his feet rose up and caught on his hairy shins: the scratchy edge of his sarong felt drier. He fiddled with the hat, his fingers upsetting its comfortable fit. “Are you carrying a firearm?” he asked.
“I never go anywhere without one nowadays. Without it I feel naked, unsafe. As it happens, I’m carrying two. Now, may I ask, what do you care about firearms?”
“Could you lend me one?”
Dajaal stopped walking and bent down. He pulled out a revolver he had been wearing strapped to his shin, and offered it simply: “Here!”
Jeebleh took it without hesitation. The revolver felt heavier to him than the machine gun he had held on the way to the cemetery. Fear gathered in his throat, choking him. Before walking on, he admired the weapon, then hid it under his sweat-drenched shirt.
It froze his commoner blood to bear the blood-royal elegance of a machine built to kill at the touch of a trigger. The changes wrought in his behavior from the moment Af-Laawe’s muscleman had prodded him with that needle were enormous. Even though he had contemplated vengeance on Caloosha, he never thought the day would come when he, a peace-loving man, would resort to using a deadly weapon to settle scores.
“The second job you want done?” Dajaal asked.
“This is a lot more pedestrian.” Jeebleh explained the job he had in mind for the mason.
Dajaal asked, “When do you need him to start?”
“I’d say let him start right away.”
“Leave both jobs with me, then.”
Suddenly they heard a stir nearby. A mob shouting, “Thief, catch him!” was chasing a scraggly youth. Blind with fear, the boy ran smack into Jeebleh and almost knocked him over. The mob stopped a short distance away. The ringleader—a very well fed merchant from the market, sprinkled all over with his wares of flour, rice, and sugar—approached with his arms extended, saying, “Hand over the thief, then.”
The thin youth had his mouth full of the food he had apparently stolen, which he was now busy chewing. In his right hand was half of a roll, out of which a piece of meat protruded, like a dead tongue. Eyes as large as his fright, the youth begged in a low voice, “I am hungry, please!”
“How much did the sandwich cost?” Jeebleh asked.
“Hand him over! Hand him over!” the mob chanted.
“I’ll pay for what he’s eaten, so you can let him go free.” Jeebleh looked from the well-fed man to the scraggly youth, and then at the agitated mob, and finally at Dajaal, who stayed out of it, but, as ever, was prepared for any eventuality. Jeebleh addressed the fat merchant: “What’s your problem? I am prepared to pay for his sandwich.”
“He always steals food, runs off, and never pays!” the trader said. “Hand him over and we’ll teach him a lesson. And don’t waste our time.”
“The boy is hungry, that is why he steals!”
The mob moved in on Jeebleh threateningly. Now cowed, he brought out a dollar’s worth of the local currency, and made as though to give it to the trader, who scoffed at the idea of allowing the youth to go free. It was then that Jeebleh lifted his shirt and showed that he had a revolver—and immediately he discerned a change in the mood of the mob, which started to disperse. The trader accepted the money, and the youth scuttled across the road, vanishing into the dust he stirred.
“I’ll be damned!” Dajaal said.
DAJAAL LEFT JEEBLEH IN FRONT OF THE BARBERSHOP, AGREEING TO RETURN in an hour or so—he would get in touch with a mason he knew, in the meanwhile—and take him back to Bile’s apartment.
Jeebleh walked into the shop with the air of a man who, armed and knowing no fear, was prepared to meet his destiny. The three barbers stopped snipping, and the clients, some waiting on benches against a wall, stared at the stranger entering. He took a seat.
There were seven other customers: one having his hair cut, two having their moustaches and sideburns trimmed, and the rest waiting. Those in the chairs had limp towels wrapped around their throats. On the floor were curls of hair in impossible postures, waiting to be swept away. Even though he couldn’t tell who the men in the shop were, he sensed something earthy in their voices. They had been raised probably in the semi-arid hamlets of the central regions, where many of StrongmanSouth’s supporters hailed from, and where he recruited a large number of his militiamen.
A cassette of Somali music was playing. Jeebleh enjoyed listening to it. Did the fact that people were eating in restaurants and having their hair cut at the barbers’ mean that the most deadly phase of the civil war had ended? The fact that one could pursue these activities without fear suggested a degree of normalcy. Ostensibly, no one in the shop was armed. Certainly, everyone had looked in his direction with ferocious intensity and suspicion when Jeebleh entered, but no one had pointed a gun at him.
One of the barbers beckoned to him with the sweeping gesture of a Mogadiscian welcoming you to his home, indicating a chair vacated by a man whose hair and moustache he had just trimmed to perfection. As Jeebleh took the chair, a scruffy youth came in with a tray holding several metal cups and offered a cup to each of the customers and the barbers. He then began to sweep up the hair on the floor. The men waiting their turn read newspapers and sipped their tea. When the youth was done, he went to Jeebleh’s barber for payment, and then was gone, taking the empty tray with him.
Jeebleh just tasted his tea, didn’t drink it; not only was it too hot, but it was also sugary. He mused that the youth had brought the tray of tea, and the barber had paid for it; the boy trusted he would get paid, and that he would find the cups when he returned later. These small things represented society’s gradual recovery from the terrible trauma of war. Was the worst now over?
“How would you like yours done?” the barber had meanwhile asked.
“I’d like it cut very short.” Jeebleh placed the conical hat in front of him where he could see it, so he wouldn’t forget.
The barber brought out an electric clipper from under a table, where it had hung on a hook. He adjusted the blade and switched it on, then tested it against his open palm.
“I’d prefer that you use scissors and a comb, please,” Jeebleh told him.
The barber started cutting with avuncular charm, and the two of them talked in the soft tones of men confiding in each other. They spoke in general terms, eventually touching on the changes in the clientele of the shop, which, the barber explained, had been the rendezvous for the city’s cosmopolitans in the days before the civil war.
Then, out of the blue, the barber asked, “Are you a frie
nd of Bile’s?”
“Do you know him?” Jeebleh asked.
“He’s one of my customers.”
“What about Raasta and Makka?”
“I remember them coming here with him. Have you met them yourself?”
“I’ve seen photographs of them at Bile’s.”
“They are so gorgeous, Raasta’s dreadlocks,” said the barber. “No one other than her mother is allowed to touch them, or tend to them.”
“I suppose you’d know Faahiye too?”
The barber went absolutely quiet and shifted uneasily. He took a sip from the teacup closest to him, and stared at the cup in front of Jeebleh, as though suggesting that he should take a sip of his. “Do you know Faahiye?” he finally asked.
“I’ve known his wife for a much longer time.”
“I’ve never met her myself,” the barber offered.
“Is it true that Faahiye lives around here?”
“I have no idea.”
Nervous, the barber clipped Jeebleh’s right ear, and instantly apologized. It was just a small snip, but there was blood. And that worried Jeebleh. An incision with a pair of scissors at a barber’s might not be dangerous in many situations, but here, given the AIDS epidemic, you couldn’t be sure. Jeebleh’s countenance was flustered. He felt the cut with his fingers, to determine how serious it was, how deep. The towel still wrapped around his throat, he half rose and daubed his ear with a bit of cotton dipped in alcohol. Then he leaned forward, staring into the mirror, preoccupied.
He had seen a girl resembling Makka in the deepest recesses of the mirror before him, and was following her movements: then snip! How did he know the girl was Makka, when he had never met her before? Because he had seen her photograph, and felt sure that there couldn’t be a facsimile of Makka. Also, the girl’s lower lip was drawn down and slightly out, and there was the ubiquitous sliver of saliva, as transparent as the fine knots in a spider’s net, lucid and purposeful.
While the barber fussed over the cut, daubing it with more alcohol, Jeebleh looked for Makka’s reflection, hoping that she might still be there. The barber held him down, telling him not to move, fearful that he might cut him again. Yes, Makka was there in the mirror, all right; and she was grinning with self-recognition. He watched her watching herself with fascination.
He studied her face. Maybe she was playing a child’s game modeled on one that his daughters were fond of playing. One child is blindfolded, and the fun lies in her looking for her playmates, and finding them. If Makka was at play here, could Raasta be far? The thought filled him with excitement. He pushed the barber’s hand away and got to his feet, his whole demeanor disorderly. One idea led to another. He decided to go after Makka. He was convinced that she either had a message for him or would take him to Raasta and Faahiye.
He paid the barber as much cash as he could bring out of his wallet, even though the job had been only half done, and badly at that. He dashed out in pursuit of Makka, half his head unevenly trimmed, the other boasting its shock of hair as yet untouched. Someone might have assumed that he was pioneering a new style.
He stood at a crossroads, looking this way and that, and making sure he was prepared in the event of a sudden attack, placed his hand close to the firearm. But he could not decide which way Makka had gone. He continued his search, then he saw her walking ahead of him, into a dusty alleyway. He followed her, aware of his own vulnerability in the city of the gullible.
JEEBLEH FELT AWKWARD AS HE TRIED TO KEEP PACE WITH MAKKA, LOOKING back every now and then, scouring the alleyway ahead. He drew comfort from the firearm; he wouldn’t hesitate to use it.
Feeling awkward, and perhaps looking ridiculous, he touched the cut side of his hair, then the uncut side. He had no idea why, but he was sure that even though he might appear ludicrous to grown-ups, he would look fine to Raasta and Makka, who at worst would find his hair funny and might even giggle. Anything that could bring a smile to those children’s lips was worth it. The unfinished haircut pointed to his incomplete sense of self: a man who did not know how to use a firearm, and yet was carrying one! He hoped he wouldn’t be caught in a web, a trap, as he kept following Makka farther and farther from the barbershop.
It was too late to abandon his pursuit now, too late to return to the barbershop as though nothing had happened and ask the barber to finish the job. He had lost his bearings a few streets back. He prayed that the little girl knew where she was going.
Now he walked faster, and checked to see if someone was on his tail. He saw Faahiye. The two were staring at each other from a distance, almost ready to acknowledge each other’s presence by waving. When Jeebleh looked again, Makka was gone. He might as well wait for Faahiye, he thought, and while waiting he touched his hair again—he had forgotten Bile’s conical hat at the barbershop.
“What game are we playing here?” Jeebleh asked Faahiye when he arrived.
“I am at a disadvantage.”
“How’s that?”
“I am at a disadvantage in that I’ve no option but to play a game whose rules were devised by someone else,” Faahiye said. Jeebleh looked at him quizzically, as he went on: “Let’s keep talking and stop looking behind us, for we’re both being shadowed. One of our tails is at my back, a street away, the other at the corner to the left of the crossroads. Let’s not do anything rash.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“To Raasta, of course!”
Could he trust himself? For that matter, could he trust Faahiye? Was it a mere coincidence that he’d had a glimpse of Makka when getting his haircut, or had all this been planned by someone? Amazingly, Jeebleh was now prepared to walk into whatever trap there was, to see the girls. And if Faahiye could be believed, and he was really taking him to Raasta, then all the risks would be worth it.
Faahiye’s steely expression softened, as he looked closely at Jeebleh’s haircut; suddenly he was in stitches, laughing without restraint. “Why, half your hair is cut and the other half isn’t,” he said. “No wonder you have a lackluster look about you!”
Both were relaxed. Jeebleh smiled, and his grinning gaze wandered away to the clouds, which appeared as lighthearted as he felt now. He anchored his mind to the delightful idea he and Faahiye were on the same side.
When they resumed walking, Faahiye said, “What does one blame—love, because it’s gone sour, or hate, because it’s gone seedy? Do we keep a record of one another’s wrongs, do we go at one another’s throats, daggers drawn?”
Jeebleh was weaving himself a shroud of wishes, as he touched his upper thigh, where it still hurt, and then the hidden firearm. He looked to his right, and the world was at peace with itself, the cows behaving as hungry cows do, busy pulling up shrubs at the roots, and enjoying them; he looked to his left, and saw a young herdsman chasing a goat. Close by, two cows were chewing their cud, and they raised their heads, lowed, and showing little interest in him, resumed their chewing. He had been told of cows and goats grazing and digging up a grenade or two, and being blown to death. No such thing happened as he went past, and he took this to be a good omen.
Faahiye crossed a road strewn with uncollected garbage. Following him, Jeebleh thought: All alliances are temporary. He had no idea why he thought this. Maybe because he knew there was no going back now—not until his attempts were crowned with success, or his efforts ended in failure or death. But were they allies now, he and Faahiye? He guessed not: his foolhardy persistence, his call on Caloosha, his insistence that Caloosha help him get in touch with Faahiye and the housekeeper, and his continued search for Raasta had ultimately paid off. Why did he have a childlike trust in Faahiye, whom he hardly knew? Did he feel sorry for the fellow, who could’ve irritated even an angel into fury?
“May I ask how the girls got here?” Jeebleh said.
“From what Raasta’s told me,” Faahiye replied, “they were picked up in a fancy car and taken to some house where they were kept in the basement for several weeks.”
�
�Do they have any idea who picked them up?”
“You should ask Raasta yourself when you see her.”
“I will.”
He listened to the lowing of a cow calling to one of its young. There were cows everywhere, cows communicating their mourning, grieving, lamenting their endangered state, and making sounds that frightened the daylights out of you. A young moon framed by clouds was up in the sky. A curious unease descended on Jeebleh at the sight of a young calf and an older cow fighting over a plastic bag, their horns colliding, both hurting. The tough, translucent material was torn apart, and the older one took a mouthful of it, while the calf stood apart, forlorn and hungry. Several other bags flew into the air, and were blown away to finish flat against a wire fence.
Jeebleh whispered: “Who owns the place?”
Faahiye answered in a mumble, “I have yet to find out myself. Remember, I just got back here.”
“Who brought you from the airport, then?”
Faahiye didn’t respond. They had come to a gate, at which he tapped hard three times, quick and uninterrupted. The voice of a woman from inside the house told them to wait. Then Makka came out to open the gate, saw Jeebleh, and ran off, back into the house, giggling.
28.
HAVING PRECEDED THEM INTO THE HOUSE, MAKKA HID BEHIND THE DOOR playfully, then came out with the joy of a child welcoming a frolicsome parent. Faahiye took part in the fun with self-abandonment, laughing and loving too. Makka adored him, that much was clear. Instead of asking where Raasta was, Jeebleh watched Makka romp about with Faahiye. When she stopped, exhausted, the sun gathered in her eyes, and her tranquil features were even more of a delight.
She mumbled something in the tawdry tongue of a Marlon Brando doing his Sicilian bit, his cheeks heavy with cotton. Faahiye must have understood her question, for he replied, “His name is Uncle Jeebleh!” She watched him with wary eyes and kept her distance, biting her nails. She didn’t come rushing to hug him, as he had expected.
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