Nuruddin Farah - Crossbones

Cambara answers instead of Malik anyway. Surprised at first and wondering if he has rung the wrong number, Ahl is about to disconnect the line when she hurriedly gives her name and then says, “You have the right number, but I am afraid Malik won’t be able to answer it.”

Ahl offers to ring again later, and leaves her with his name and the news that he and Taxliil will be off to the airport in a short while. Or so he hopes.

Even so, she doesn’t volunteer much. He wonders if Bile is in a bad way. Then he thinks about Malik’s interview, at just the moment when she says, “I’m sorry to bring you bad news.”

Then he knows it right away. The names Fidno and Isha join forces with his sense of guilt to choke him, rendering him speechless. His tongue feels disabled, his eyes bulge out of his face like those of one having a sudden fit.

“I am sorry, very sorry,” she says.

Between sobs, she confirms almost his worst fears. Malik is in the hospital, in critical condition.

Shocked and mute as he is, he revisits his recent arguments with Malik and Jeebleh. He thinks, At least Malik’s not dead. Malik is the kind not meant to die. He prays one of Malik’s many lives will reclaim him from a hospital bed.

She says, “The car he was in, driving back from his interview, hit another remote-controlled roadside device. Qasiir, who was at the wheel, is dead. Malik is in the intensive-care unit. I am spending the night here by his bedside. We’ve organized a special plane to fly him out to Nairobi in an hour or so. I’ll go with him myself.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“You have your hands full,” she says.

“I meant in terms of footing the bills?”

“That’s taken care of,” she says. “All paid.”

He can’t think of what to say; not even thanks.

She goes on, “I’ve telephoned Jeebleh. He’ll meet our flight.”

“If he is in danger, Cambara, please tell me.”

“He needs a hospital with better facilities than the one here,” she says. “Also Jeebleh will be in Nairobi when we get there.”

“What do the doctors in Mogadiscio say?”

“They are confident he won’t be in danger if he is taken in good time to a Nairobi hospital with more sophisticated facilities,” she assures him. And then she hangs up.

In the silence, Ahl is still for a moment. And then he breaks. He throws his mobile phone against the wall; he screams at the top of his lungs, cursing. Xalan rushes up the staircase and finds him still and silently staring at the phone, as though he has no idea what he has done and why. She follows his gaze and picks up the parts of the phone, scattered by the impact, then puts them back together, pressing the casing until the phone begins to function again. She gives it to him, and he acknowledges her with a nod of his head. She waits, ready to talk, ready to help, as his cheeks grow wet with his tears.

When his phone rings again, he moves away from it, shaking his head, so Xalan answers it, and this is how she learns what has made Ahl suffer a momentary disintegration. She takes him in her arms and the two of them rock together, as though she is helping a colicky baby to fall asleep. And as they rock, she repeats in alternation the two maledictions, “What a dastardly city!” and “What an accursed country!”

At last his features harden. He balls his fingers into a fist and remains standing, motionless, even after Taxliil joins them. Xalan doesn’t tell Taxliil about what has happened to his uncle. She doesn’t dare. One never knows with the young; they might say or do anything.

Of course, in the absence of an explanation, Taxliil misinterprets. Assuming that Ahl is finally showing his anger toward him, he locks himself in his room again and refuses to open the door and talk to Xalan, even after she has told him Malik’s sad news. He stays on in the darkened room, feeling sorry for himself one minute as the surrogate sufferer of other people’s pains, and in the next weighed down with guilt. He says loudly and repeatedly that he wishes he had finished the job in a courageous manner, as Saifullah had done, instead of chickening out at the last instant. He is in a rage, and nothing Xalan says can calm him down.

Warsame is on the phone. He has been in Garowe, the capital of Puntland, and has had a long chat with the deputy president of the region, a former classmate of Xalan’s. The president’s chief of staff has given assurances that the investigation into the explosion in which Saifullah died is still ongoing. Meanwhile, however, the minister of the interior has hinted to Warsame that he and Xalan may at some point be called in to answer questions. Xalan asks if Warsame has spoken to the minister about “the other matter, our young you-know-who.” Yes, says Warsame. “He suggested that we clean up our house fast and make sure we remove all the dirt ensconced in the corners.”

She assures her husband that she is hard at work to get Ahl and Taxliil out of Bosaso, not because they are dirty, but because their own safety depends on it; the longer they wait, the greater the chance that Shabaab will discover where they are.

Then she tells him what she knows about Malik, and everything else that entails.

She points out to him that, unfortunate as the events have been, Malik has been lucky on a number of counts: lucky that the explosion occurred close to Cambara and Bile’s place; lucky that their housekeeper happened to have been on her way home as the device exploded, so that she saw the crowd gathering around the vehicle and abandoned herself to curiosity, not knowing who the victims might be until she got close enough to recognize Malik and Qasiir.

Most fortunate of all: they found a Cessna Sovereign with no cargo or passenger for its return to Nairobi. Not that this made the flight any cheaper for them, but Cambara scraped enough cash together, adding to what Malik had in his bag. With help from some of the onlookers, she eased Malik out of the vehicle, and with Bile’s help, rushed Malik to a ten-bed private hospital after the housekeeper, with the help of bystanders, agreed to carry Qasiir’s corpse to the annex.

Ahl rings Bile for a further update.

Bile says, “I haven’t heard from her yet.”

“I hope everything is well,” Ahl says.

Bile asks, “When do you leave for the airport?”

Ahl doesn’t tell him about Taxliil’s behavior. He says only that the flight is delayed by at least an hour.

“I’ll call you if I hear anything,” Bile says.

“I would appreciate it very much.”

Bile then asks, “How’re things with Taxliil?”

“We are all jittery,” Ahl says.

Ahl sits alone, drinking his third cup of coffee and feeling a sickness for which there is no instant cure. He is in a dilemma. He looks up when Xalan suggests that they look at the passport Taxliil will use to get him to Djibouti, but he shakes his head, resigned to the failure of his schemes. She pours more coffee into his cup.

His phone rings and he answers it. He listens for a minute or two and then puts it on speakerphone, so that Xalan can hear the barrage of accusations Yusur is leveling against him.

“Taxliil says you are scaring him,” she says, “telling him that he may be flown from Djibouti straight to Guantánamo.”

“I’ve said nothing of the sort,” Ahl says.

“I can imagine you doing it,” Yusur says.

“Well, I didn’t.”

“I am his mother and I want him back.”

“But he is my son and I love him,” Ahl says.

She says, “Cut the crap. You know he is not your son, and you’ve never loved him as a father might love a son. And I believe him. I know what you are trying to do. Scare the hell out of him.”