Nuruddin Farah - Crossbones

“My name is Saifullah,” the young man responds.

Something resembling clarity is beginning to emerge for Ahl, a clarity that allows him to see the young man for what he is: a religious renegade, a zealot with a vision.

“Is Saifullah your nom de guerre?” he asks.

Nodding, Saifullah says, “I’m no longer the person I used to be.”

“How did you get here?”

“I traveled incognito,” Saifullah says.

“From?”

“Nowhere in particular.”

Saifullah’s evasiveness strikes a warning chord in Ahl.

“And where are you going?”

“I am going to my heavenly destiny.”

An expression of fresh dread steals over Xalan. She looks from Ahl to Saifullah. Then once again she wraps herself around Saifullah, embracing him as if he is her beloved embarking on an arduous journey from which he may never return. Weepy, she clings to him and says, “Does my sister know you are here?”

Saifullah says, “My mom knows everything.”

Xalan stops crying. She dries her face, wiping away her tears. Then she lets go of him, sniffs, sits down, and asks, “What did she say?”

“You know what my mother is like.”

There is hardness to her voice when Xalan says, “Tell me how she is. We haven’t seen each other for a very long time.”

Ahl prepares to leave in order to give them privacy. Xalan, however, beckons to him not to go. Instead she says, “Tell me what your mum is like now. I know her to be a devout woman, reclusive, prayerful. But what is her position on you deciding to go to your heavenly destiny?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask her yourself.”

“She doesn’t approve, does she?”

“I suggest you get her to tell you her thoughts herself.”

Ahl senses that it is his moment to step in with his burning question. “Do you happen to know my son, Taxliil?”

Saifullah stares at Ahl, as if he does not appreciate the interruption. He catches Xalan’s eyes, but she looks away, and down at the floor. But then he says simply, “Yes, I do know Taxliil.”

Ahl reacts in silence, more in shock than relief, at Saifullah’s admission. His eyes dim, as if in concentration, but he cannot get any words out. After a long pause, he asks slowly, “Where and when did you last see him?”

Saifullah says, “We’ve served together, he and I, in the same contingent in a training camp close to Kismayo when he first got there.”

“How was he when you last saw him?”

“He was in good health apart from the trouble he was having with his eyes. He had broken his glasses within a week of arriving. Meanwhile, his sight has deteriorated.”

“And when and where did you last see him?”

“I can’t recall when and where. We moved a lot, went back and forth between camps, slept somewhere one night and then off at dawn, after the Subh prayer.”

“Otherwise, you reckon he is well?”

Saifullah replies, “He has some other personal problems, which have caused him trouble he could do without.”

“What is that?”

“He is a soft touch, that’s what.”

“In what way is he a soft touch?” Ahl asks.

“Please, no more questions,” Saifullah says. “I’m not authorized to speak of this or other related matters.”

As he turns as if to go, Xalan says, “How about a bowl of spaghetti with Bolognese? Faai will make it.”

Xalan explains that Saifullah has known Faai, her maid, from childhood, and he was a great favorite whom she plied with delicacies and sweets. Now it is Ahl’s turn to watch, as the two of them visit a non-polemical aspect of their past.

Saifullah is excited. “Where did you find her?”

“Here in Bosaso, at a camp for the internally displaced,” Xalan replies. “She lived in a shack and we found her just by chance.”

“How I loved the Bolognese she made!”

“She’s just made some.”

“First tea, with lots of sugar,” Saifullah says.

“Then spaghetti with Faai’s Bolognese?”

“Where can I have a lie-down?” he says.

“Upstairs, in the spare room.”

Just before Saifullah goes upstairs, Faai enters the living room, her hands stuffed into her apron pockets. She stares at Saifullah, and then at Xalan.

“Look at him, our Ahmed,” Xalan says.

Saifullah doesn’t bother correcting her. Instead, he takes one long stride toward the maid, who does not recognize him at first. Then recognition lights her features and he lifts her off the floor into a warm hug. They are a funny sight, he double her height, she twice his girth. When he lets go of her, she picks up his thin wrists and then cups his gaunt cheeks with her hands.

Faai says, “Look at you. Have you, too, been in a refugee camp or a detention center? Why, you are a beanpole, so thin!”

Xalan hastily changes the subject, not wanting to upset Saifullah or prompt him to flee. But Faai insists on knowing. “Where have you come from? Not from a detention center, where they hardly feed the inmates on proper food?”

“I am all right, actually,” Saifullah says.

Faai, ululating, says, “A miracle is at hand.”

Ahl shares Faai’s sentiment, but doesn’t say it.

Xalan says to Saifullah, “Ahmed was your grandfather’s name on your father’s side and Rashid your grandmother’s name on your mother’s side, two beautiful Muslim names. Why drop them for Saifullah?”

“The name is a perfect fit,” he says.

Faai clasps him more tightly and calls him by his old name several times, until tears run down her cheeks. Then she asks, “Now, what kind of name is Saifullah?”

No one answers and everyone looks at her as though she has made an unpardonable gaffe.

Then Saifullah says, “I am tired. I am off to bed.”

Xalan says, “That hungry body needs some food.”

“Where is the Bolognese, then?” Saifullah says, and at last Faai goes back to the kitchen to fetch it.

Rationally, Ahl doesn’t know what to make of all this, but he has the strong sense that it augurs well that he has met Saifullah, and he can’t wait until all is revealed. But he thinks worriedly that whatever else he may say or do, Saifullah’s behavior is going to prove unpredictable. And if this is true of Saifullah, what can he expect of Taxliil?

With Saifullah upstairs, Ahl and Xalan sit in weighty silence, assessing the significance of what has just happened. Ahl wonders if his expectations should be inflated or deflated by what he has heard about Taxliil.

Xalan repeats for his benefit a few salient facts: that Saifullah has been missing longer than Taxliil, and was rumored to have died in a failed suicide bombing. Or been court-martialed by Shabaab and executed.

Then one or the other of them changes the subject and they speak of how bizarre it is that the Shabaab minders choose such archaic names.

Ahl says, “I am delighted to hear Taxliil’s news, even if I can’t decide what to expect next.”

Xalan says, “For a second, I thought Saifullah might bolt out the door like a frightened horse. Or that he might seize up and not speak, or run off and disappear as mysteriously as he appeared.”

A brief silence follows.

Then Ahl says, “Funny, him saying that he is not authorized to speak on the matter. What manner of bureaucratese is that?”

Xalan says, “You know what is worrying me?”

“What’s worrying you?”

“He has the look of someone not meant to last.”

Ahl concurs, “As if he is on a mission.”

“I can’t bring myself to think about it.”

The thought troubles Ahl and he tries to fight it off by taking the opposite view, if only because he wants to believe that he will see Taxliil, too. “Maybe once he has slept off his nightmares, Saifullah will be more willing to talk to us.”