Nuruddin Farah - Crossbones

And indeed they are. As the wounded are wheeled straight into surgery, Malik fills out the paperwork. He looks for the spot to provide his credit card information but learns that the clinic does not have the facility to process one. Still, he vows that he will pay if no one else does, and the administrator takes his word for it.

Now the invasive odor of chloroform sticks to his nostrils, reminding him of how close he has been to death. When the sweet smell almost knocks him out, he forces himself to sit up. He wishes he could move around, go outside for some fresh air. But he stays where he is, on a smelly, improvised camp bed with bloodstains on it. He feels a little squeamish and claustrophobic and goes out for a bit of fresh air and finds a bench in a small, untended garden. He sits down, sighing with relief.

A man approaches and asks if he may share the bench with him to rest his tired body. Malik indicates that he may. His phone rings and his editor at the daily paper is on the line, suggesting that he write a short piece about the events in Mogadiscio to go into the paper today. Malik feels his pockets, which are empty of pens and pencils. He asks the stranger if he has something with which to write. The man lends him a pencil. Malik moves a step away from the man, who seems to be eavesdropping on his conversation, to take notes on what the editor is looking for. After agreeing that he will file a story within several hours, he hangs up and returns the pencil to its owner, with thanks.

The stranger then introduces himself as Hilowleh, speaking his name in a way that makes Malik wonder if he ought to know it. His face stirs the vaguest of memories. Still, Malik can’t decide if they have met before, or when or where, maybe because his brain is in too much disarray and incapable of connecting the available dots and dashes. The man’s long eyelashes, his two-day-old stubble, and his ragged appearance are of no help. There is misapprehension in the man’s demeanor, suggesting that talking to him is wrong. Is he embarrassed, and if so, why? Is there something weighing on the man’s mind that he wishes to unload?

The man says, “I thought you were Malik.”

Malik recalls watching Edward Albee’s play The Zoo Story , in which a man sits next to another on a park bench in New York. The two men talk, and their talk leads one of them to murder the other. Anyhow, what does this man want?

“What if I were Malik?” he asks.

The stranger takes a small piece of paper out of his pocket, writes down a mobile number, gives it to Malik, and says, “Call me when you have a moment.” Then he departs, without another look or word.

Malik roots in the repertoire of memories at his disposal for the right kind of reaction, but he cannot come up with a suitable one. He holds the piece of paper as if it were on fire and about to burn his fingers, and scampers after the man. He asks, “Who are you? Where have we met?”

“I was in the minivan,” Hilowleh says. “My nephew is one of the three wounded journalists for whom you’ve offered to pay. I own a printing press, one of the largest in the city, which is why I know many of the journalists. I want first of all to thank you for your kindness.”

Malik nods and waits for more.

“That is going to be a hefty bill and I am offering to share it with you, and so will others, when the clinic gets round to submitting it,” Hilowleh says. “But yours is a generous gesture and it behooves us to acknowledge it, with thanks.”

“I’m sure you wish to say something else besides thanking me for a bill that hasn’t been submitted and which I haven’t yet settled,” Malik says.

Hilowleh nods and then says, “I do.”

Malik thinks that Hilowleh holds his self-doubts in check the way a cardplayer with a winning hand delays revealing it.

Finally, Hilowleh says, “I happen to be privy to a few facts. I hear a lot, because I am in the printing business and my nephew has been confiding in me.”

Malik feels unable to set sail in such a fog, so he waits for Hilowleh to state his real business. “What are you telling me?”

Hilowleh says, “Are you here for long?”

“I am here until I’ve paid the bill, for sure.”

“I meant, are you in the country for long?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I would leave soonest if I were you.”

With these new deaths, Malik is now of the same mind: he is planning to leave as soon as he has done a few more interviews.

“From what I hear you’re lucky to be alive,” Hilowleh affirms. “For what it is worth, it is now agreed that Gumaad has all along been the snake trailing the length of his betrayals, enviously causing their deaths, because he couldn’t produce a single line good enough to be published. The advice from me is this: leave quickly, quit this accursed country while you can.”

Not awaiting his reaction, Hilowleh walks off.

Qasiir finds Malik brooding. He has the surgeon with him. The surgeon informs Malik that the three injured journalists are now out of danger. They are, however, still under sedation in the intensive-care unit. Then the surgeon gives him a card, which has on it his full name, a home phone number, and a mobile one.

The surgeon says to Malik, “I mean what I wrote in the message on the back, thinking I might not see you. Please call whenever you want. No hour is late. I am on duty the whole week. Also, don’t worry about paying the bill on a foreign credit card. Hilowleh, an uncle to one of the journalists, has agreed to settle all the charges. So if you are feeling okay yourself, be on your way. And thank you.”

On their way to Cambara and Bile’s, Qasiir informs Malik that on their instructions he has taken Malik’s things to the annex just as he packed them.

“I wish you would have let me know before doing so.”

Qasiir shrugs, as if making light of the matter.

Malik, miffed, says, “As you can see, I’m well enough to decide for myself. Nor am I dead yet. Because when I am dead, it will fall to others, like Cambara and Bile, to do what they please with my personal things.”

“Just following instructions,” Qasiir says.

Malik ascribes his irritability, once he has given it thought, to the fact that he doesn’t wish to speak about his encounter or exchange with Hilowleh to anyone. He hates the “I told you so” posture that others would take if something terrible were to happen to him.

They listen to the news on the car radio: Nine peacekeepers from the Burundi contingent seconded to the African Union AMISOM died when a suicide bomber drove into their compound.

At Cambara and Bile’s, Malik gingerly steps out of the vehicle and stands, with his hand ready to ring the outside bell; but somehow he doesn’t press it. Instead, he sways this way and that, from a combination of pain and exhaustion, his head spinning, the ache in his entire body now returning, his feet feeling as heavy as lead. Qasiir rings the outside bell for him and waits until Cambara joins them. Only then does he go to take Malik’s suitcase and computer to the annex.

Cambara welcomes Malik in and holds him. They walk side by side to the annex. She is too familiar with the slow pace of the invalid, and supports him well. Bile accompanies them, bringing along a pouch with painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs, aiming to have the chance to inspect Malik thoroughly. They invite him to stay in the main house for the night, but Malik won’t hear of it.

“I don’t like the look of that bump on your head,” Bile says. “It is pretty nasty and the swelling hasn’t gone down.”