Nuruddin Farah - Crossbones

“I hope to come around and see you before I leave.”

“May Allah be praised,” she says.

Speaking to Qasiir’s mother does him good, helping him remember his responsibility as a journalist and as a friend to Dajaal and men like him, who are often murdered for the views they hold, risking their lives for their stands against tyranny. Dajaal loved the country, and has been killed by men who cannot love Somalia until they turn it into a different country, in which they prosper and their opponents perish. He will pen a piece about the tragic eradication of a generation of Somali professionals, of whom Dajaal was a prime example.

He gets down to just doing that.

Ahl calls. Malik tells him about Dajaal’s death. Ahl, however, is consumed by the thought of the newly appointed Ethiopian ambassador to Somalia lodging in Somalia’s presidential villa as though it were an upmarket hotel, not only as a guest of Somalia’s traitorous interim government, but on the false pretext of safeguarding the state and its interim president, who was escorted to the villa with a heavily armed detachment of Ethiopian and a hundred or so Somali soldiers.

Malik is conscious of his gauche failure — giving importance to the death of an individual when he should be concerned with the current state of the nation, in apparent contrast to Ahl, who, being physically distant from the scene of the bombings and having not known Dajaal in person, can afford a wider perspective in his assessment of these events. Maybe when one lives in a city riven by civil war, one is obsessed with the immediate situation almost to the exclusion of all else, whereas when one is operating outside these stressful conditions, one has the luxury, as Ahl does, to take a broader view and to study the matter from an entirely different perspective. At the moment, Malik is so preoccupied with Dajaal’s death — with thinking and writing about it — that he needs reminding that the Ethiopians are spreading their tentacles into strategic locations in Mogadiscio.

Malik ends the call and returns to his writing. Barely has he completed an initial draft and saved it when Qasiir calls.

After offering his heartfelt condolences, Malik says, “I suggest you take it easy for a couple of days. You need the time to grieve, to mourn your grandfather. He was a wonderful, wonderful man in my view, too.”

Qasiir says, “I would be failing Grandpa and dishonoring his memory if I did not get on with my life in the same way I had always done before his death — and perform my responsibility toward the jobs at hand.”

Malik is shocked and impressed: shocked, because he can’t imagine being able to function so soon after the untimely death of a beloved grandfather; impressed, because only pragmatists, who value life for what it is — a loan that is borrowed and, as with all loans, must be returned — appreciate every moment of it, conscious of the need to put food on the table, draw water from the well, graze the beasts, tend the sick — so that other people may go on living. He feels humbled, as he doesn’t think he would have done for anyone what Qasiir is doing.

“Then why don’t you come,” he says.

Qasiir arrives: hugs, condolences, and regrets.

He tells Malik about Dajaal’s death in a more succinct way than Cambara had done. Apparently a man stalked him as he walked to the mosque. Fifty meters before Dajaal reached the house of worship, the gunman pulled out his Magnum 55 and hit him in the back of the head; a professional killing, no room for error, and death was instantaneous. Malik is relieved that Qasiir spares him the gory details. He says purposefully, “Grandpa is dead. I know who will pay for it: a life for a life. We’ll have to do what we must do today, and then sometime in the future, the assassin will pay for what he has done. Meanwhile, I’ll bide my time and live my life in the way I see fit, and as Grandpa would have been happy with if he had been alive, relying on the guidance of a Somali wisdom — that the shoes of a dead man are more useful than he is.”

Malik isn’t familiar with Somali poetry or proverbs. But he is conversant with the Arabic tradition, having been brought up on a rich diet of Arabic poetry, especially of the pre-Islamic period, otherwise known as the Jaahiliya — the time of ignorance. So he recites in his head a couple of verses from Imrul Qays, indubitably the best Arab poet of any era, the son of a sultan, who uttered his most famous riposte on the assassination of his father, giving air to words of cynicism that have since entered Arab folklore. Asked when he might avenge his father, Qays replied, “Tomorrow is for drinking, tomorrow for vengeance.” Malik wonders if Qasiir will do the killing quietly, in his own time, since, according to Cambara, he is not the type to rush matters.

Malik finds himself discomfited to be alone with Qasiir, now that he has learned the shape of Qasiir’s thinking. Malik’s eyes wander away; he cannot bear to focus on Qasiir’s palsied features, his evasiveness a testament to his own desire not to bear witness to a mourner’s pain. In the long silence that follows, he fidgets, then makes tea and, to keep busy, offers to prepare a meal. When Qasiir tells him he has no wish to eat anything, he suggests they go for a drive. He finds the apartment too small to contain the two of them.

Qasiir asks, “Where?”

Malik has been wondering what changes the carousel of politics, with the Courts now departed and the Ethiopians and the Transitional Federal Government replacing them, has brought about. He thinks that there is no place better than the Bakhaaraha to study them.

“Let’s go to the Bakhaaraha,” Malik suggests.

“What do you have in mind?” Qasiir asks.

Malik says, “We may run into people we know.”

“And of what benefit is that to either of us?”

The thought of running into BigBeard so soon after the Courts’ authority has been dismantled perversely excites Malik. But he chooses not to speak of this wrongheadedness to Qasiir now, lest Qasiir think him deranged. He simply locks up, making sure that all the security contraptions are in good working order. Then he follows Qasiir, who leads the way, down the staircase, through the passageways, and finally to the parking lot.

In the car, Malik says, “Maybe we’ll run into Gumaad.”

“Gumaad is on his way to Eritrea,” Qasiir says, “appointed as the spokesman of the exiled Somali community in Asmara. The group includes the Courts and several other Somali associations opposing the Transitional Federal Government and Ethiopia. He was on the radio, giving an interview at the top of the hour.”

“How did he get there so quickly?” Malik asks. “I wonder if he is lying again, claiming to be speaking from Asmara when he is right here in the city.” It feels like a long time ago when Gumaad suggested that he interview TheSheikh. A lot can happen in a day in a civil war. Dajaal is dead and buried; Gumaad is in Asmara. What else has he missed? “And where is TheSheikh?”

“Gumaad escorted TheSheikh on a special flight that took him straight to Eritrea,” Qasiir says. “Presumably, they were flown out of an airstrip still believed to be in the hands of the Courts. The mystery now surrounds TheOtherSheikh. One rumor places him in a village near the Somali-Kenya border, another speaks of the possibility of him going to the Sudan or Libya, where he was schooled.”

“What’s become of the other Courts members?”

“Some are headed for Iran, some to the Gulf.”