Nuruddin Farah - Crossbones

Xalan says, “I must visit his mother.”

Up in his room, Ahl makes several more attempts to reach Malik and Fidno. The messages he gets are identical: the subscriber is not in range. What on earth can that mean? At last he reaches Malik, and brings him up to speed, summarizing all that has happened.

Malik sounds optimistic. “I am sure everything will work out in the end. Taxliil will return, as runaways often do, unexpectedly, apologetic, and promising not to do it again. Look at Saifullah.”

Ahl gains courage from listening to what Malik has to say and is delighted and relieved to find his brother in a more receptive mood than he expected. It is then that he says to him, “Fidno has offered to introduce you to one Muusa Ibraahim, otherwise universally known as Marduuf, a former pirate, who also has it in for Shabaab, because they killed his younger brother, a teenage conscript of the group. Are you interested in talking to him?”

Malik is enthusiastic about the idea and takes down Marduuf’s contact details, although he cannot say when he will meet or talk to him.

MALIK RINGS THE BELL NEXT TO THE OUTSIDE GATE AT BILE ANDCambara’s, and then looks back at Qasiir parked within view of the gate, waiting. Qasiir wants to make sure that Malik gets in before he drives off.

While waiting for someone to appear or for the lock on the gate to be released via the intercom, activating the dogs’ barking, Malik recalls watching 101 Dalmatians on DVD with his baby daughter in his lap. At one she was too little to understand it, even though she points at real dogs excitedly, and imitates their barking. To amuse her, he likes to run through a repertoire of different breeds’ barks: he can yelp like a collie, woof like an Afghan hound, and bay like a husky.

Cambara’s arrival reminds him of where he is. She calls to tell him that she is on her way to open the gate manually, because of a power outage. Approaching, she walks cautiously, as if avoiding puddles, and affects a frown that is really a smile. She has on a pair of indoor shoes and a guntiino robe that flatters her, showing bits of flesh and a flash of cleavage when her garment fashionably slips off her shoulder. As she approaches the side gate, though, she pulls up the patterned summery shawl as if to make sure there is no misunderstanding on Malik’s part. He turns to wave at Qasiir in the departing car. Cambara passes the bunch of keys to Malik so that he can open the gate from the outside. Their fingers touch accidentally and this produces static electricity. Malik looks away, embarrassed, although Cambara appears unruffled. She walks ahead of him, and neither speaks until they are inside the house and Cambara has restored the key ring to the hook behind the door.

In a rehearsed voice, Malik says, “That death comes early and snatches away our best is a wisdom that many of us do not appreciate until someone dear dies. Of course, it is worse if he is murdered.”

Waiting for him to finish, with her hands outstretched, maybe to embrace him, Cambara has the look of someone with fog in her eyes and who can’t therefore see more than two feet ahead of her. For an instant, Malik stands so still that it feels as if bits of him have stopped functioning.

Cambara puts life back into him, saying, “Yes!”

Malik goes on. “I’ve known Dajaal for a short time, yet I will miss him. His death makes me think, What if I die when I have less than a page left to write? Dajaal had plenty of work to do, and some evil person cut his life short.”

Just when he had said his say and they are at last ready to embrace, she pricks up her ears and pauses in mid-movement, like a ballerina stopping before completing a pirouette — and backs off. Instead she takes his hand and together they walk forward, she leading, he keeping pace.

“No doubt a difficult man to please, at times harder on himself than on others, Dajaal was a man of such high principles. He was loyal, truthful; he was reliable. We’ll miss him terribly. He is our story, Bile’s and mine. He made our world go around a lot of the time, making our living together easier, even though occasionally he came in between us, causing mild frictions between Bile and me. But I was fond of him, very fond.”

Malik says, “I often think how, in fiction, death serves a purpose. I wish I knew the objective of such a real-life death.”

Cambara makes two tall drinks and a short one, adds a drop of something to one of the tall glasses — Malik is unsure what, maybe a drop of medicine, for Bile? She gives him one of the tall ones and raises her short one, saying, “To your health.”

He asks, “How’s Bile been?”

“He is coming down shortly,” she announces.

And soon enough, Bile joins them. He is looking much better, if a little nervous; his index and middle fingers rub against his thumb in rhythm with his slow tread, his every step bringing him closer to his goal — a soft chair with a hard back set between Cambara’s and Malik’s seats. They can’t help but be conscious of his gradual progress, but neither wants to focus on it. Malik rises to his feet to offer him a hug.

Cambara offers him the untouched tall drink and she says to him, kissing him on the forehead and then on the lips, “Your drink, my dear, with a drop of your medicine in it.”

He holds the edge of the glass to his lower lip and takes a sip, his Adam’s apple visibly moving, then another thirsty swallow.

Just then a single rocket falls close by. The house trembles slightly, the windowpanes shaking in their frames, the bulbs of the chandelier lightly knocking against one another with a tinkling sound that, to Malik, distantly recalls one of his daughter’s windup toys.

“Well, what do you say to that?” Malik says.

Bile, who obsessively keeps abreast of news of the fighting by listening to HornAfrik, has heard that some of the rockets are aimed in the general direction of the villa where the Ethiopians and the interim president are based. “Earlier, we could feel one of them flying overhead. Some of those interviewed on the radio talked of being able to identify the house where the insurgents firing the rockets were holed up.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then they heard the response coming from the direction of the presidential villa, with the Ethiopians employing heavier bombs, deadlier and causing more damage.”

“I’ve known rockets to miss their targets in the wars I’ve covered,” Malik offers. “And as a consequence there are civilian casualties.”

“Here neither of the warring parties cares,” Bile says. “The Ethiopians delight in causing more Somali deaths, and the insurgents, as religionists, by their very nature, are equally unpardonably brutal.”

“According to the radio reports, many of the bombs did in fact miss their intended destination,” Cambara says. “They cause enormous civilian casualties.”

“I am sure that it will interest Malik to visit some of the homes destroyed, and learn about the people whose lives are cut short,” Bile says.

“Shabaab assassinated Dajaal,” Cambara says.

“And the Ethiopians bomb and kill civilians.”

Cambara then adds, “Indiscriminately.”

Meanwhile, Bile, adjusting in his seat, unwittingly pushes away one of his slippers and then his feet search blindly for them, only to kick them farther, rather than bring them nearer. Malik is quick to get up and help recover the slipper slithering out of Bile’s reach.

Bile says, “Thanks.”

Malik offers his condolences for Dajaal, and Bile stammers a few almost inaudible words in reply, nearly spilling his drink as he says them. “Here I am useless and living, and there he was very useful — and dead. We have the tendency to self-destruct as a people.”