Nuruddin Farah - Crossbones

Jeebleh wakes up as exhausted as a wayfarer who has covered an immense distance to get here. His whole body aches, and his mind is weighed down with unidentified worries. He listens for sounds emanating from Malik’s side of the apartment but hears none.

He is enjoying a leisurely breakfast of toast and coffee when Malik emerges from his workroom, saying, “Coffee. That is what I need.”

Jeebleh says, “Good morning.”

“Morning,” Malik says.

“Sleep well?”

“I’ve slept little, but I’ve worked well.”

Malik — indicating that he wants Jeebleh to wait for a moment — walks away in haste and enters the bathroom, maybe to clean his teeth before coffee. Jeebleh says to his back, “You can always catch up on sleep.”

Malik is back before long. “Can I have some, please?” he asks, indicating the coffee.

Jeebleh replies, “With pleasure. And what else can I offer you?”

Malik says, “I agree that one can always catch up on sleep faster than one can catch up on writing when one has neglected it for some time.” He takes a sip of his coffee and, as if defining the extent of his haste and underscoring that he is in no mood to engage in a lengthy conversation, says, “You won’t mind if I leave you? I am itching to get on.”

Jeebleh says, “Brilliant.”

“It’s time I met a journalist or two, time I set up interviews with people in the piracy business,” Malik says. “But I plan to rely less on Gumaad and more on either Qasiir or Dajaal. They are plenty well connected.”

“Good idea,” Jeebleh says.

And Malik is off.

Jeebleh packs his suitcase and puts half the cash he has left in an envelope, to do with it what he will before he takes his flight early tomorrow — most likely share it out between Dajaal and Qasiir, giving the larger portion to the older man. Then he sits in the living room and catches up on his reading. He has brought along half a dozen books from New York, and he hasn’t had the time to so much as look at them, much less read them. He will probably leave them behind; they could be useful to Malik for his research into the piracy question and the Somali civil war, viewed from the perspective of how the continued strife and the resultant impoverishment and desertification of the country may herald future conflicts in Africa and the Middle East.

But Jeebleh is restive and can’t concentrate. It is unlike him to make hasty conclusions about what he has discovered so far about the men from the Courts, but from his brief encounter with BigBeard and the little he has gotten to know about Gumaad, he can’t help concluding that they are an unhealthy procession of hardened, self-obsessed men who have been waiting in the wings for the opportunity to run the country their way. He worries whether Malik will fall victim to the particular cruelty Shabaab metes out to secular-leaning journalists.

He hangs up and dials Bile and Cambara’s number. She picks up the phone on the first ring. Listening to her, Jeebleh realizes that he has taken to her more than he has been aware. He finds her voice not only pleasant but reassuring, and he is delighted that his friend is receiving the attention and affection he needs.

He says to her, “I wonder if it is convenient for me to visit? Malik is working, and I don’t feel like reading.”

“Yes, please,” she says. “Do come. Anytime.”

“How is Bile doing?”

“In bed, reading and occasionally napping.”

“I’ll see you shortly, then.”

After he hangs up, Jeebleh telephones Dajaal to come fetch him.

After a light lunch with Cambara and Bile, Jeebleh is at the sink, washing up. Cambara is upstairs with Bile, who has packed it in, exhausted. Cambara has assured him she will come down once she has attended to Bile’s needs.

He reads the Arabic writing on the bottle of dishwashing liquid: Imported from Australia, via the United Arab Emirates. Jeebleh thinks that the term globalization is misleading, a word that hardly describes all that is happening in businesses, big and small, the world over. His forehead is crisscrossed with furrows as he revisits his dream. He recalls that when he awoke, his hair stood out like the roots of a baobab tree battered by a tempest. He didn’t tell his dream to Malik.

But his thoughts return to happiness for his friend. Granted, their current circumstances, within the prison of civil war that curtails freedom of movement, expression, and association, may not make for picture-book intimacy all the time. But they seem comfortable in each other’s company. That they could live in these circumstances without giving in to acrimony indicates the depth of their commitment to each other. He couldn’t care less if they occupy separate bedrooms, although he hopes that his friend, who spent so many years locked away and denied the opportunity to love, has had some opportunity to make up for lost time before the prison of sickness and old age closed in.

Just as he finishes putting the dishes back in the cupboards, Jeebleh hears Cambara coming down. He looks up and observes how the dust motes disperse in the sunlight at her approach, opening a way for her.

She asks him to make them espresso, and to retrieve a bottle of mineral water from the fridge. Jeebleh is pleased that she takes this sort of liberty with him; it makes him feel at home.

They sit at an angle, facing each other. Demurely dropping his gaze from her face, he notices that the front of his trousers is wet from standing against the sink. Cambara notices, too, and looks away, smiling, then bows her head slightly. She has had a shower and changed into a more casual caftan, and she seems revived; with her earrings in the clutch of her thumb and forefinger, she pauses and inserts them in her earlobes. Barefoot, she gives him the impression of a woman who intends to tiptoe through the remainder of the day, without a care in the world. He remembers how relaxed his wife used to seem after the children fell asleep. She takes a sip of her coffee and then unclasps her earring, after a bit of struggle, and removes it. She places the stud on her palm and takes a long look at it, then tosses it up, catches it, studies it again, and pockets it. She shifts in her seat, as if considering whether to unfasten the earring in her left ear, but seems to think better of it.

They talk at length about the early days of her return to Mogadiscio, when she had to get accustomed to the discomfort of a body tent, something she had never worn when she first lived there.

Jeebleh asks, “How does it feel, to be all covered up?”

“It makes me miss Toronto,” she says.

Jeebleh senses she is comfortable with the figure she cuts, sitting confidently as she does now, her heels tucked under her. His gaze journeys from her heels to the firmness of the rest of her body. He doesn’t want to know what Bile and she do for love, with Bile sick and she his junior by twenty-something years. Maybe the two of them take a long view of the matter, as life partners do, secure in the knowledge that there will be tomorrow and the day after, the way he and his wife have been doing since her menopause. It is the luxury of old age to have both a long- and a short-term perspective on sex. Jeebleh has known couples of disparate ages who seem to struggle to find topics that interest both partners. Bile and Cambara never seem to have a shortage of things to say to each other. But will Cambara continue to stay by Bile’s side as his body weakens, as his health deteriorates? Himself, he has made a long investment in his rapport with his wife. They have a strong affinity, which will hold them together until their dying days.