Nuruddin Farah - Crossbones

Warsame says, “You travel very light for a man coming from the United States.”

“I love traveling light,” Ahl says. “Less hassle.”

“When Xalan returns from Canada,” Warsame muses, in the long-suffering tone many men take when the discussion touches on their wives’ luggage, “she requires a truck.”

Ahl doesn’t join in the wife-bashing, because while he knows some women who pack heavy suitcases for an overnight outing, he also knows men who wear more perfume than a Sudanese bride on the day of her wedding. He recalls Yusur telling him about a horrible incident involving Xalan and some of Mogadiscio’s clan-based vigilantes — a most terrible incident, which, according to Yusur, Xalan’s sister, Zaituun, accused her of provoking. In a bid to avoid spreading further bad blood, Ahl changes the subject. “How long has this airstrip been functioning?”

“Three years and a bit,” Warsame says.

Ahl won’t ask what’s become of the funds the autonomous state collects as tax. He can guess where they have ended up; in someone’s corrupt coffers. Nor does he comment on the shocking absence of an airport building of any sort, or even a runway. As if he has voiced his thoughts aloud, Warsame says, “We keep asking where the funds go.”

It’s never wise to make enemies of people on the first day you meet them, Ahl tells himself, especially if you don’t know them well. He won’t pursue the subject of corruption. Who knows, Warsame himself could be in on it, quietly receiving his share.

“Where’s Immigration?” he asks.

Warsame points. “There.”

Ahl looks around, his eyes following Warsame’s finger. He spots a shack out to the left of a cluster of vehicles bearing United Arab Emirates license plates, on what would have been the apron of the runway had there been one.

“We’ll get to our vehicle and someone from Immigration will come and collect your passport,” Warsame says, “and return it stamped.”

“Is that how things work out here?”

“Here, everything is ad hoc,” Warsame explains.

Warsame leads Ahl to a waiting four-by-four with UAE plates, opens it, starts the engine, and turns on the AC full blast. A young man arrives to collect Ahl’s passport. Saying, “Back in a minute,” he disappears into the shed. Ahl thinks that until today he has never understood the full meaning of the term ad hoc : the heartlessness, the mindlessness of a community failing its responsibility toward itself; a feebleness of purpose; an inadequacy.

The young man is as good as his promise, though. He is back in a minute, ready to return Ahl’s stamped passport on payment of twenty U.S. dollars. Warsame gives the young man a couple of dollars as well, thanking him, and then says to Ahl, “Now we may go.” And they are off, raising dust and moving faster and faster, as if competing in a rally.

Like the airstrip, the city falls well below Ahl’s expectations. Yusur and many other Puntlanders in the diaspora have talked up Bosaso, describing it as a booming coastal city bubbling with ideas, its gung-ho, on-the-go residents making pots of money, many of them from trade, a handful out of piracy. It is a city, he has been told, that has benefited from the negative consequences of the civil war, with thousands of professionals and businessmen who ancestrally hailed from this region returning and basing themselves here.

But the roads are not tarred, and the dust billows ahead of them disorientingly. The buildings within range appear to be little more than upgraded shacks. Cars are parked at odd angles, as if abandoned in haste. The streets themselves look to be assembled ad hoc, with temporary structures thrown up to house the internally displaced communities that have fled the fighting in Mogadiscio or have been deported from the breakaway Republic of Somaliland to the north. Now and then they drive past houses of solid stone, with proper gates and high fences. But there is something unsightly about these, too, because of the discarded polyethylene bags that are hanging, as if for dear life, from the electric wires with which the properties are surrounded.

Despite his attempt not to sound disapproving, Ahl’s voice strikes a note of discord when he asks Warsame, “Has the city always been like this?”

As if in mitigation, Warsame says, “The state is autonomous, albeit dysfunctional. Our economy is underdeveloped. We are a city under siege, with immigrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Tanzania. They all want to make their way to Yemen and Europe, courtesy of the human traffickers who exploit them as stowaways in flimsy boats — just to escape from here.”

“Everyone comes because there is peace here?”

Warsame says, “There is of course the lucrative potential of piracy, given Bosaso’s strategic location. Taken together, these features attract all sorts of riffraff.”

“Do you have any idea what the population of the city is and what percentage of its residents are local?” Ahl asks.

“No one knows the number of its residents.”

Ahl is aware that you need to put certain structures in place before it is possible to take a census. He says, “Because everything here is ad hoc.”

Warsame nods and adds, “And life must go on.”

Ahl asks Warsame to stop somewhere he can get a SIM card for his mobile phone.

Soon enough, Warsame obliges. He stops in front of a low structure with ads on its front walls for all makes of cigarettes and other products, and a few goats, in the absence of pasture, chewing a weather-hardened castaway pair of leather shoes, they are so hungry. Ahl buys a local SIM card and airtime with a ten-dollar bill. Still inside the shop, he inserts the SIM card in his phone.

In the vehicle, Warsame encourages Ahl to place his calls right away. “Go for it, please,” he says, driving. “Make your calls. Tell Yusur or whosoever that you’ve landed, you’ve been picked up, and all is well.”

Malik answers the phone on the first ring. They speak in Chinese and Ahl gives him his news. Malik asks Ahl what impression the city has made on him so far. Ahl responds that the city has more the look of a flea market than the prosperous metropolis he expected. He says, “I haven’t been here half an hour and I am already wondering where the money said to be pouring in from piracy and hostage-taking has gone.” Then he asks, “What about you, Malik? How are you doing?”

Malik is depressed, because, in the past day and a half, in Mogadiscio, three journalists have been killed — blown up — the latest an hour ago. The first two were radio journalists, killed dropping off their children at their nurseries or school before going to work. The third was on his way back from burying a colleague. A fourth journalist was wounded by a roadside device while walking, and hovers in critical condition, with little chance of surviving his injuries.

“Who is responsible?”

Malik says, “There are unconfirmed reports blaming shady fifth columnists who are believed to target anyone who writes anything the top men of the Courts don’t like. They use remote-controlled roadside bombs or shoot their victims at point-blank range. Nobody knows much about them or their alliances. Except everyone points at Shabaab, which has an imprecise, albeit mutually beneficial rapport with the Courts.”

Ahl says, “That’s worrying.”

“All good journalists are now on the radar of the assassins,” Malik says. “It’s sickening. This is killing me.”

“Do you feel you’re in danger?”

“I won’t pack up and leave.”

“Have I suggested you do that?”

“Amran has done just that every time I’ve spoken to her. I thought you might do the same,” Malik says.