Nuruddin Farah - Crossbones

Jeebleh isn’t keen on the city tour, but he doesn’t fuss. He sits silently while Dajaal acts as tour guide, answering Malik’s questions. Malik takes copious notes as Dajaal points out buildings, gives the names of streets, and spells the names of the districts through which they happen to be traveling. Dajaal has the sociology of it down pat. Malik writes in his notebook, “The heart sickens.”

Jeebleh finds a generic featurelessness to the city’s destruction, as if the impact of a single bomb, detonating, had brought down the adjacent buildings, or they had collapsed in sympathy. The city is oddly ostentatious in its vulgarity, like a woman who was once a beauty refusing to admit that the years have caught up with her. Dajaal says, “It’s an in-your-face city, whose various parts, hamlets of no mean size, are less than the whole. It extends in many directions, in utter disorder, as if a blind city planner has determined its current shape.”

Women in niqabs —veils — and body tents go past, treading with much care, in streets chockablock with minibuses speeding down the dusty roads. One loses one’s bearings in a city with few landmarks, no road markings, and no street names.

Dajaal says, for Malik and Jeebleh’s benefit, “The city has undergone many changes, in the residents it attracts and in the services it renders or doesn’t render anymore.”

Here, a set of dirt alleys leading into a maze of dead ends. There, hummocks of rubble accumulated over the years through neglect and lack of civic maintenance; kiosks, mere shacks, built bang in the center of what was once a main thoroughfare, now totally blocked. “How this city could do with the return of law and order in the shape of a functioning state!”

Malik writes away furiously, happy with the tour. Jeebleh suffers in shocked sadness.

Dajaal pulls off the road and stops. He asks Jeebleh if he remembers where they are. Jeebleh has no idea. He looks out in search of any distinctive features that might guide him, but finds none. Dajaal explains, “The Green Line dividing the territories of the two warlords during your last visit used to be here.”

Satisfied now that he has filled several pages with his scribbles, Malik asks, “How far are we from the Siinlay?” He is referring to the spot where the fiercest battle between the CIA-funded warlords and the religionists occurred, ending with the religionists running the warlords out of the city.

“Siinlay is far,” replies Dajaal.

“What about the Bakhaaraha market complex?”

“Too late,” says Dajaal.

Jeebleh adds, “Besides, you need a whole day.”

Dajaal looks at his watch and switches on the radio, just in time to hear a religionist announcing that the army of the faithful in control of much of Somalia is declaring war on Ethiopia.

Jeebleh says, “This is madness.”

Dajaal says, “This foolish man declaring war on Ethiopia thinks, erroneously, that invading the strongest military power in this part of Africa will be a walk in the park. It won’t be.”

Silence reigns until they get to the apartment.

Nearly an hour after dropping them off, Dajaal telephones Jeebleh to confirm that he will be bringing Gumaad along, as Malik has requested. Malik is interested in hearing Gumaad’s reaction to the declaration of war. He wants to know what an ardent supporter of the Courts will say.

Jeebleh is in the kitchen, improvising a light meal. He is troubled, because he has just learned from Malik that in addition to removing the naked photographs of Malik’s baby daughter and several newspaper clippings and files, BigBeard has fed his computer a vicious virus that has effectively ruined the machine. At present, it works fitfully, coming on and then going off and sometimes balking when Malik attempts to restart it.

Jeebleh is sad that so far things have not worked out to his and Malik’s expectations; he regrets that neither he nor Dajaal took preventive measures to avoid Malik suffering at the hands of a moonlighter claiming to be serving the interests of the Courts. Exhausted, his eyes closing as though of their own accord, Jeebleh is back now to the remote past, where he pays a nostalgic visit to his and Bile’s childhood and revisits his student days in Italy with Bile and Seamus. Thinking about the visit with Bile earlier today, the memory leaves him dispirited.

Many years separate his and Bile’s shared milestones, each representing a turning point in a life fully realized. Jeebleh still wishes to discharge his duty to his mother, on whose grave he will call at some stage, maybe alone, maybe with Malik — but only on the proviso that he does not write about it in one of his articles. He wants to protect his mother’s memory.

A knock on the door of the apartment coincides with the ringing of Jeebleh’s cell phone. Dajaal is outside. Jeebleh dismantles the security contraption, unbolting and then pulling back the metal sheet that covers the door. Then he pushes back the plating, which serves as a further impediment, meant to bar gunmen from gaining unwelcome access.

Gumaad is the first to enter, dressed to the nines, hands empty; he is all grins. He strikes Jeebleh as less of a finished product now that he is trying to impress. Dajaal follows, pushing the door wider. Malik joins them in time to see that he is carrying what looks like a platter wrapped in a handwoven shawl, the kind with which corpses of worthy Muslims are shrouded on their way to the burial grounds.

Once inside, Dajaal heads for the dining table, Gumaad on his heels to clear enough space for the platter. Dajaal sets it down with consummate care, as one might set down a soup bowl full to the brim. He says, “The best lamb dish Mogadiscio can offer. Compliments of Cambara and Bile.”

“How thoughtful,” Malik says.

“This is not homemade, is it?”

Dajaal replies, “Of course not.”

As all four prepare to tuck in, Jeebleh remembers a Mogadiscio tradition, in which families would send food over to the rows and rows of rooms facing a central courtyard. Those were the rooms of the unmarried young men of the family, who had only sleeping provisions, but no cooking facilities. If they had jobs and could afford it, the bachelors would eat at restaurants in the evenings, preferring not to join the rest of the family in the evening’s fare of beans and rice. There would be a glass of boiled and sugared milk waiting for them on their return home.

The lamb, soft-looking, juicy and cooked in the traditional way, is on the right side of brown, and sits on a bed of rice cooked in saffron and garnished with a mix of vegetables. The dish reignites in Jeebleh a memory of long-ago days at an institution called Jangal Night Club, famous for its lamb dishes. The restaurant got its name from its location in the bushes. You sat right under the acacia trees, trimmed into the shape of umbrellas, in the company of a young woman. Waiters flitted about in the semidarkness, bearing kerosene lamps to show clients the way to their private eating enclosures. You placed your order but the waiters would dawdle, allowing the couple sufficient time to “do their thing.” When they returned, carrying a kerosene lamp in one hand and the food platters in the other, they would announce their presence and not enter the enclosure until you bade them to.

Jeebleh is certain that the religionists wouldn’t permit such an establishment to function these days, but he asks anyway. “By the way, what’s become of Jangal?”

Dajaal says, “This food is from Jangal.”

Jeebleh says, “I am surprised to hear that.”

“Jangal has recently reopened, with a new management, in a hotel,” Dajaal explains. “The city’s top-ranking religionists are the regulars there, so no fooling around in the bushes, necking or making love on the quick. The chef has not lost his magical touch, though — the lamb is still the best in town.”