Nadifa Mohamed - The Orchard of Lost Souls

Curious, she heads for the suuq, hoping to ask one of the market women what is going on. She expects it to be open like always, with the basket women on the left and the vegetable sellers on the right, hawkers her age milling between them selling snacks and individual cigarettes, the central market a dense confusion of heads and arms. It isn’t until she nears the huge blue and white flag painted on the side of the local government office — the same image she has only ever seen in fragments through the crowd, but which is now revealed in its rain-bleached entirety — that Deqo realises she is in the heart of the suuq. Overturned tables, crates and silence replace the world she knew, the only company the emaciated, flea-ridden cats cowering under an awning and lapping desperately at a dark pool of blood.

Deqo checks the ground for a morsel to eat but there are only scattered peanut shells and trampled vegetables. Taking the alley adjacent to the municipal building, she soon reaches a checkpoint. Soldiers in yellow camouflage jackets and trousers guard it, but a woman in a khaki uniform and beret gestures for Deqo to approach. ‘Put your hands in the air. Where have you come from?’ she shouts.

‘The market.’ Deqo points behind her. ‘Where are all the traders, Jaalle ?’

‘Somewhere in the hills. Who are you? Where are your family?’

‘I am an orphan, from Saba’ad.’

‘Put your arms down.’

Deqo drops them slowly.

‘I am hungry, Jaalle, where can I find some food?’

The woman walks across to another soldier, discusses something and then returns with him. ‘If you are willing to do something for us, we can provide you with food.’

Deqo shelters her eyes from the sun with her hand and nods.

‘Follow us.’ The woman leads Deqo and the soldier toward the wealthy neighbourhood on the other side of the ditch. Crouched and with their rifles poised, they peek around corners before proceeding further. A radio on the woman’s belt crackles and she switches it off.

‘You see those houses at the end of the road?’ She points to two huge villas, their gates torn open. ‘I want you to go inside and see if there are any people in them.’

‘Is that all?’ Deqo asks.

‘Just that and then we’ll give you something to eat.’

As Deqo tiptoes forward, emulating the soldiers, she can see that the garden walls of the villas have holes punched out, craters as large as truck tyres. The houses themselves are unscathed and have glossy, new cars parked in front of them. Deqo glances back anxiously at the soldiers who quickly drop out of sight. She enters the compound of the slightly smaller villa and stands beside an abandoned child’s bicycle, expecting someone to challenge her; birds rustle, guns pop in the distance, but no one emerges. The whitewashed villa has a tiled, columned veranda leading to a glass double door. She walks inside. She counts seven rooms not including the bathroom and large kitchen. An overhead light has been left on in one of the bedrooms but she doesn’t know how to turn it off. The rooms still smell of the family they belong to, a strange combination of washing powder, spices and children.

The larger villa next door also appears empty, but there are dirty footprints on the rug. Deqo picks up a bullet from beneath the coffee table and holds it as a kind of charm as she inspects the rooms. There are two televisions in this house, one in the living room and one in the largest bedroom; her reflection is caught and watched by their black eyes. The kitchen is full of packets of food she doesn’t recognise.

She sprints back to the soldiers, who beckon her around the corner.

‘Did you see anyone?’ the woman asks impatiently.

‘No, they’re empty.’

‘Are you sure you didn’t see anyone? Tell me the truth.’

‘I checked every room.’

‘What’s that in your hand?’

Deqo unfurls her fingers to reveal the bullet. The female soldier takes it from her and whispers something in her companion’s ear.

‘I found it in the larger house. Under a table.’

The soldier replaces the bullet with a melted chocolate bar from her pocket. ‘Go your own way now,’ she orders before they retreat the way they came, checking every direction like thieves.

Roble said he had come running as soon he heard shouts. Filsan had been surrounded by a disparate gang; two older men — one in khaki, one in a safari jacket — and two teenagers, wearing jeans and big-collared shirts.

‘Give us your gun,’ the man in khaki demanded, his rifle trained on her.

Filsan stood absolutely still, unable to respond. It was as though everything that she had learnt had deserted her.

One of the boys reset the trigger of his Kalashnikov, and the sound of the metal jolted her back into her body. She looked down the barrel and saw her own end and roared for Roble to come to her.

Before the young gunman had the chance to recoil his Kalashnikov, a shot from the direction of the checkpoint had brought him down, with a bullet to the back.

The rebels turned to defend themselves, Filsan’s presence suddenly unimportant as she dived into the gulley they had been hiding in. The frantic exchange of fire was over in seconds, leaving three NFM dead on the ground and the man in khaki pursued into the night by the soldiers.

Roble sprinted up and pulled her away from the thorns, his heart thumping against her ribs, the moment only spoiled by the scent of dog shit on her boots. Crouched under his arm, shocked but unharmed, Filsan had marched with him back to the checkpoint, all hostility between them evaporated. He was completely in shadow, just the outline of what a man should be, and she held on, pushing closer and closer against him. She felt out of herself in an exhilarated, animalistic way, all her reticence and manners stripped away; she wanted to merge with him, become him. But Roble had sat her down on the barrel at the checkpoint, handed her the torch and turned to the radio transmitter, shouting demands for immediate reinforcement, his eyes darting fearfully in every direction. They had been separated that very night, he assigned to a checkpoint on the hills outside of town and she to Birjeeh to help coordinate Victory Pioneers with the armed forces already in Hargeisa.

Over the next few days, each time Filsan sees a military truck careering through the streets, uniformed casualties prostrate on the back, she is chilled by the thought that Roble could be amongst them. Far from being repelled and driven out of the city, the NFM have grown in number and entrenched themselves. Hundreds of rebels have returned from exile in the scrublands of Ethiopia, from their desert lairs, carrying their scavenged weaponry on their backs. Veteran fighters, whose names and photographs pepper dossiers of wanted men, have come to wreak havoc, their apparent resurrection a call to arms to thousands of the city’s angry youths.

At the checkpoint nearest to the National Theatre, Filsan oversees movement into the strategically important centre of the city. Most residents fled within the first hours of the bombardment, but stragglers remain: the crippled and elderly, the patients thrown out of the hospital when it was requisitioned by the military, street children and lunatics freed from the asylum by a mortar blow. Filsan switches on her radio and hears that the rebels have cut the water supply to the hospital and they need water to be trucked in immediately for the injured soldiers there.

Two members of the Victory Pioneers, Ahmed and Jimaale, are stationed at the checkpoint to help identify NFM sympathisers; they know everything about everyone — family, clan, neighbourhood, occupation, associates — the years of busybodying finally paying off. They seem invigorated, their pockets bulging with watches and money confiscated at other checkpoints; they keep asking the conscripts to give them a weapon but Filsan forbids it.