Nuruddin Farah - Crossbones

“They have a point,” Malik intervenes.

Up close, Gumaad’s appearance bespeaks his true mental state. Tears well in the corners of his eyes. He does not seem to be lying, and perhaps he isn’t. After all, StrongmanSouth, when he was warlord, hid out in Mogadiscio for several months without the foreign “invaders” apprehending him. In fact, he used to throw parties within a mile of where the U.S. Marines were garrisoned, and they never found him. Will TheSheikh do the same with the Ethiopians if it turns out that he has stayed put to lead the resistance?

“Why is he here?” Dajaal asks, speaking not to Gumaad but to Malik.

But it is Gumaad who answers. “I’ve come to arrange an interview.”

Silence, in which they all exchange looks.

“TheSheikh wants to do an interview with Malik.”

“How very grand!” Dajaal says. “One minute he bides his time in concealment, like a bank robber keeping his loot company, the next instant he acts the role of royalty, granting an interview to a foreign journalist.”

“It’s Malik’s prerogative to accept or not accept the offer,” Gumaad says. “It is not my place or yours to decide.” He turns to Malik. “You make up your mind, if you will or won’t.”

“An interview by phone or face-to-face?”

“Depends on what we can arrange,” Gumaad says.

“I’d like to do the interview face-to-face.”

“As matters stand, he wants a phone interview.”

Dajaal says, “If I were you, I wouldn’t do it face-to-face, as there is always the risk of him being blown up. The drones are more active than before. They might pick up his movement and go for him.”

There is a spell of jumpiness, Gumaad shifting in his seat. Then he cries, “Malik has no reason to fear being blown up. What nonsense!”

“ They blew a former colleague of mine sky high with remote-controlled roadside bombs,” Dajaal says. “ They have perfected their art of killing. If I were you, Malik, I wouldn’t do a phone interview, either; a drone might mistake your number for his, and strike you dead.”

Gumaad has gone nervy and sweaty again, and a new layer of scurf coats the back of his neck and shoulders.

“Please, Grandpa,” Qasiir begs. “Stop this.”

“Why? His men have killed my colleagues.”

“Someone may hear you.”

“It isn’t long before they kill me , I know.”

Gumaad mumbles something inaudible, his words colliding discordantly. He mixes his tenses, trips on his adverbs, stops making sense. Malik’s stomach goes through the complete life cycle of the butterfly. He is remembering a fragment from a dream he had a few nights ago, in which Gumaad betrayed him, handing him over to a group of freelance militiamen, who took him hostage. In the dream, Malik pleaded with Gumaad not to break faith with him. But all he says is, “Enough now, Dajaal.”

For the first time, Malik thinks that maybe Dajaal’s days are indeed numbered. He also wonders if an interview with TheSheikh would be a scoop worth the risk. Then he picks up a foul scent. It is Gumaad’s breath — not so much ordinary bad breath as the scent of his fear, which Malik thinks he can smell in the same way that he believes he can smell Dajaal’s rage.

“Please, all of you,” he says abruptly.

Everyone looks at him, mildly shocked.

“I want to be alone.”

After they have gone, Malik telephones Jeebleh and asks his opinion about whether the interview with TheSheikh is worth the risk. In truth, what he really wants is for Jeebleh to be aware of what he is up to, in the event that something happens. In his head, Malik can hear Amran harping on about his taking needless risks.

Jeebleh acknowledges the professional benefits of doing the interview, but believes that it is not worth it, given the imminent Ethiopian occupation. “You may become an easy target for both the Transitional Government and the occupying force.”

“What if I use a pseudonym?”

“Don’t do it,” Jeebleh says. “Please.”

Next, Malik calls Ahl. Ahl, too, advises against it. He says, “TheSheikh is a man on the run, for crying out loud. Think of this: The FBI will be on your tail once it becomes known that you’ve talked to a wanted man.”

“But it would be a big scoop for me,” Malik argues. “And earlier you were all for my interviewing a funder of piracy who is by all accounts a crook. How is that?”

“That was different,” Ahl says.

“Different? What do you mean ‘different’?”

“We all want to get Taxliil to come home safe,” Ahl says. “What you are proposing poses danger to us all. Look at it from that angle. Please think again and do not do anything that might jeopardize our chance of recovering Taxliil.”

Malik is not convinced that he agrees with Ahl’s reasoning. But he opts not to speak, apprehensive that his brother might think that he places his professional advancement far above family loyalty.

“It’s been a long, eventful day,” Ahl says.

“You’re right. It’s been long and eventful.”

Ahl says, “Sleep on it, and let’s talk tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

“Good night to you, too.”

THE SKY IS DARK; THE NIGHT IS STARLESS. IN A DREAM, A TOTALeclipse has just ended, and Malik ventures out of the apartment for the first time in twenty-four hours. He is on his way to a hospital, walking; Dajaal is indisposed. Roadside mines, tanks, and four days of fighting between the insurgents and the Ethiopian army of occupation have made the city roads impassable, turned them unsafe.

When he finally reaches the hospital, he encounters more ruin; the main building has been hit and reduced to rubble. Radio reports place the number of dead at five hundred, and those critically wounded at over a thousand. A large number of the hospital staff figure among the dead and the missing, perhaps buried in the debris. To the left of the main entrance, a huge crowd is raising an unearthly ruckus. It takes Malik a few minutes to work out the nature of the conflict. The remaining Somali medical staff and several Europeans, no doubt flown in at huge expense by the World Health Organization to help save lives, are engaged in a heated back-and-forth debate with some bearded Shabaab types. The debate centers on whether dogs may be used to save human lives from the wreckage of the hospital. A Gumaad look-alike describes the use of dogs to rescue people from the ruins as an affront to Muslim sensibilities. He is saying to the Europeans, as if from a pulpit, “Dogs are unclean, and we as Muslims are forbidden to come into contact with them.”

But someone is calling from below, deep down in the ruins. It is a man pleading for someone to help rescue his daughter, who is buried in the rubble. The man wants the medical team to use their trained dogs to bring his daughter out, alive.

The WHO team is led by a large woman with a red face, red hair, and skin the color of beetroot from a combination of anger and the tropical sun. She shouts at the Gumaad look-alike, “I’ll beat you up if you don’t get out of the way of the job I’ve come to perform.” Frightened by her outburst, he backs down sheepishly and quietly leaves the scene.

Meanwhile, another member of the hospital medical staff is engaged in his own shouting match with one of the other bearded men. The doctor is saying, “Do you think that Islam condones the desecration of cemeteries, even if the dead were once Christian? I view the desecration of Mogadiscio’s Christian cemetery as heinous and a more serious crime than permitting the use of dogs to pull a living girl out of the rubble. I feel certain that you will have to answer to the Almighty on Judgment Day for dishonoring and debasing the dead bodies of Christians, whereas I am convinced that as long as we mean well and save lives, all will be forgiven by the Divine. Not that I agree with you that Islam forbids the use of dogs to save human lives.”