Nuruddin Farah - Crossbones

“Shall we go to her house and find out?” Xalan says. “A pity we were so excited at seeing him, and we forgot to ask if he had seen or visited her.”

Warsame answers, “I see no harm in doing that.”

“And if he isn’t there?”

“More important, will she receive us or will she throw us out?” Warsame says.

Ahl doesn’t want to tempt fate by saying anything. He knows of the bad blood between the two sisters, resulting from differences in character and outlook, the one very devout and uncompromising when it comes to her faith, the other of a secular cast of mind. He rises to his feet, ready to go to Zaituun’s place, but not prepared to speak.

Xalan feels ill at ease calling on Zaituun, her elder sister. They have not exchanged visits for years, even when they have lived in the same cities — previously in Toronto, currently in Bosaso. Zaituun is prayerfully devout, expending all her energy on worship. She and Xalan fell out because Zaituun does not approve of her younger sister’s lax ways, and said that she had rape and worse coming to her unless she changed. Xalan has no time for those who think she shouldn’t blame Islam for what the vigilantes did to her, raping her in a mosque as three imams looked on and did nothing to stop the defilers.

A young woman lets them into the house. She informs them that Zaituun is praying. Annoyed, Xalan looks at her watch, as if to determine the name of the prayer her sister would be performing at this time of day. When Xalan wonders if it is worth asking the young woman if she has seen Saifullah, Warsame counsels patience. They take off their shoes at the door to the living room. Ahl is unprepared for this; he is wearing boots, and he knows that his socks are dirty and that one of them has a big hole in the heel.

Zaituun’s house is a modest affair, with no flourish of any sort. Each room is conceived as separate from the others; it is not a house put together as one afterthought leads to another. Prayer rugs are in every corner, some standing against the walls, others laid out flat and ready for use, while others are expectantly hanging, as if awaiting a community of worshippers. The room faces the qiblah . The image comes to Ahl of a woman who will die praying, the words of worship stirring her lips.

And yet, Xalan has told him, as a young girl Zaituun played soccer with the boys and broke every school rule, challenging her teachers and correcting them when they were wrong. She was at loggerheads with her husband from the day they married until he died, killed in a shoot-out when armed militiamen came to loot their house in the initial stages of the civil war. Then, two years into her widowhood, the first spent at a refugee camp in Kenya, the second in a run-down two-bedroom apartment in Toronto, waiting for her Canadian refugee papers, she surprised everyone by deciding to dedicate her life to the study of the Holy Scripture. Her four daughters married and she relocated with her son to Bosaso, where she has lived ever since. Asked to explain what prompted such a sea change in her behavior, Zaituun once said to Warsame, her voice calm, her pauses well-timed, “All I recall is standing before an underground door, which opened onto a bright room awash with light from the sun. I recall going farther in until I felt totally immersed in the blessed waters of inner joy. It was only then that I realized how our daily realities are but chinks of light opening onto the darkness of our eternities.”

Zaituun arrives just when the young woman has served them tea. She enters the room clear-eyed, soft-footed, a person with an inner calm. She smiles gently and nods in the direction of Warsame and Ahl and, in passing, the two sisters touch shoulders in greeting. Unable and unwilling to give themselves over to a lengthy exchange, for fear that one of them will speak out of turn, they confine themselves to this token, hastily executed salutation, the best compromise they can manage on the spot.

Xalan asks, “Have you seen Ahmed?”

Zaituun makes a “be my guest” gesture, and then takes her sweet time, pretending not to recognize the name. To draw her out, Warsame says, “Maybe you call him Ahmed-Rashid or Saifullah?”

Zaituun remains standing upright. She says, “We prayed together. I asked him where he had been, where he was going, what his plans were. He didn’t answer any of my questions. We shared a meal in silence, he prayed more devotions. He kissed and hugged me, as if embarking on a journey from which he would not return, and I wished him Godspeed and God bless.”

Panic sets in, Xalan straightaway displaying clear signs of agitation; this gets to Ahl and Warsame, who have equal reason to be concerned. Warsame, because he is worried Xalan might go off balance; Ahl, because he has been of the view that any possible recovery of Taxliil hinges on Saifullah providing them with up-to-date information. It takes all his energy to control himself.

Warsame, decisive, says, “Let us go.”

Xalan asks, “Where are we going?”

“What are we doing here?” he counters.

Warsame hastily bids Zaituun farewell, and moves so fast that Xalan and Ahl have to scamper to their feet to catch up with him. Ahl says “God bless” to Zaituun, in an effort to soften her hard stare, which is trained on her sister. He feels the weight of defeat.

Back in the car, Xalan says, “Zaituun knows a lot more than she lets on. She is heartless, my sister. I wouldn’t put it past her to know exactly what Saifullah and his mentors are up to — and I have a sinking feeling that it’s nothing good. I am unsure whether to alert the authorities. Warsame, maybe you should call up one of your pals in Intelligence and share what we know with him.”

Warsame says, “I don’t want to rat on Zaituun. As it is, there is bad blood between us all. There is no need to make matters worse.”

“What if we share our speculation with the local authorities,” Xalan wonders aloud, “that an Ahmed, also known as Saifullah, may be planning an act of sabotage against the prevailing peace in Puntland?”

Ahl opposes the idea, which he feels might jeopardize any possible reunion with Taxliil. He says, “But we don’t have adequate, trustworthy information to report to anyone, really.”

“What an unpleasant mess!” Xalan says.

Ahl says, “Where could he have gone after he left?”

“I doubt he wants us to find him,” Warsame says.

Xalan, in a mood to speak in hyperboles, says to Warsame, “Darling, why are you so terribly, so unarguably pessimistic and so unpardonably uncooperative?”

Warsame drives, unspeaking.

Meanwhile, Ahl feels as if he were standing at the center of a suspension bridge spanning a river. Every angle affords him a different perspective and points him toward a different course of action. He is sick to the core.

Xalan’s hand searches for Ahl’s — he is seated in the back — and, despite the awkwardness of the angle, she takes it and squeezes it. “Whatever else happens, I pray that we’ll find Taxliil, safe and sound.”

When they get back, they see a jalopy parked badly, at an angle. Unable to maneuver past it, Warsame honks, and the chauffeur, cheeks full to bursting with qaat , takes over the wheel from Warsame, suggesting they welcome their visitor. Ahl’s hopes are raised afresh: he thinks maybe Saifullah is back. But his hope is dashed when he is presented to a man answering to the nickname Kala-Saar.

Kala-Saar, a professor at the newly established Puntland State University at Garowe, is a friend of Xalan’s; a pleasant-looking man, gangly, plainly dressed in baggy trousers and a many-pocketed khaki shirt stuffed with cigarettes, a pipe, and accessories. He has the habit of peppering his Somali with foreign terms in Italian, Arabic, or English, depending on the tongue with which his interlocutor is comfortable. He has a doctorate from the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples, his dissertation on the epistemology of Islam, and is given to a natural urge to get someone’s dander up. A non-cooking bachelor, Kala-Saar appreciates good tables; he is the rounder of guests at tables, invited whenever there aren’t enough interesting men, or when a single woman is visiting town and there is no other man to invite.