Nuruddin Farah - Crossbones

“But Yusur, darling…!”

“Don’t you darling me!”

He doesn’t know what to do or say.

She asks, “Is Xalan anywhere near you?”

“She is.”

“Can I have a word with her?”

Xalan says, “I don’t wish to talk out of line, but let me tell you that you are making a grave mistake accusing Ahl of any wrongdoing. He deserves much more appreciation from you; he deserves gratitude from your son, who is being exceedingly difficult. I suggest that you hang up and call in an hour with an apology, because you don’t know what we are dealing with here.”

Xalan hangs up on Yusur. Then she goes upstairs and tells Taxliil that if he does not come out in half an hour and apologize, his father will take the flight to Djibouti on his own and leave him behind.

When she comes back down, she says to Ahl, “Yusur is out of line. The Yusur I heard just now is not the Yusur I’ve known and loved. When she called me, just before you boarded your flight, she described you as the most pleasant and caring husband any woman could have. So what has gotten into her?”

Ahl says, “Nothing new has gotten into her. This has always been there, a character trait that resurfaces when she is anxious or when she doesn’t have things her way. There are a number of things about Yusur you will never know until you’ve shared the same space with her daily.”

“What’s causing the outburst, though?”

“You see Yusur’s behavior replicated in Taxliil,” Ahl says. “Like mother, like son; sweet one minute, poisonously bitter the next.”

A frisson of doubt descends upon Xalan’s features, darkening her countenance. She is sorry to have born witness to Yusuf’s brazen outburst. But, knowing Yusur, Ahl is certain she will not withdraw her accusations or apologize, even if a chance presents itself. Apology is not a word his wife is familiar with.

Ahl, not liking the extended silence, asks Xalan if she is happy in her marriage.

“I am,” she says. Then, “Actually, I’ve often wondered if one needs to be happy in marriage. Happiness is such an elusive thing. I’ve been married for a good twenty-five years, but I’ve found him loyal, always loyal. Many a Somali husband would’ve walked away after what they did to me. Even my sister turned her back on me. Not my Warsame. He didn’t. That’s pure love.”

Ahl keeps his counsel and remains silent.

“Warsame is very unusual among his peers. He is the butt of their jokes, described as gutless, for not divorcing a wife dirtied by gang rape, and marrying another, younger woman. He is unique, because there are very few Somalis in whose blood loyalty runs.”

Marveling at her courage, he kisses her wrist.

His phone rings: Cambara reporting that they are in Nairobi, stuck in traffic between the airport and the hospital. She promises to telephone him later with the Nairobi clinic number.

When it is time for Ahl to leave for the airport as well, Taxliil is there, flaunting a Lakers cap worn backward, and dark glasses, tennis shoes, no socks, a pair of baggy trousers, and, in place of a belt, a string round his waist. Faai comes out to see them off.

At the airstrip, they remain in the car with Xalan, the air conditioner on, no one talking. Taxliil hasn’t spoken a word since getting into the car.

A man in a police uniform comes up, and he and Xalan exchange family news. He mentions that Warsame has called him from Garowe and has requested that he help. Xalan hands over the two passports. The man ambles away, dragging his boots on the ground and raising a cloud of dust.

Xalan asks Taxliil if he knows who he is, what his new name is in the passport that will take him to Djibouti, and where he is supposed to have been born. Taxliil has no answers to any of these questions, because he hasn’t bothered to open the passport. She asks if he prefers to stay behind, in Bosaso. He shakes his head no. She asks him why not? He has nothing to say to her.

Meanwhile, the officer in uniform returns with both passports duly stamped and hands them over to Xalan, who in exchange gives him a fat envelope stuffed with Somali shillings. He toddles away quickly, and Xalan hands back the passports, giving Ahl his, and giving to Taxliil a Somali passport with an exit visa. But Taxliil is not interested in learning his new name or birthplace, even though she spells it out for him. Nothing of what she does and nothing that she says are of interest to him. Finally she puts the passport into Ahl’s dependable hands. He’ll keep it with his own passport until they get to Djibouti; she can rely on him to do that.

Before the passengers are to board the plane, Xalan writes down the name of a hotel in Djibouti where they can stay in the event they make it past immigration. She also copies the home telephone and mobile numbers of a very good friend of hers there, a radio journalist who, depending on how they fare, will meet them and take them to the hotel at least for the first night.

FOR THE ENTIRE FLIGHT, TAXLIIL AVOIDS MAKING EYE CONTACTwith Ahl, from whom he sits as far away as possible. He acts disdainful of Ahl’s suggestion, whispered in English, that he open the passport and get to know his presumed identity.

There is order in Djibouti, when they land and when they disembark. Uniformed ground personnel shepherd the passengers from the aircraft on foot to the arrivals hall. The security is competently vigilant, but without a show of naked authority. There is confidence in the organized efficiency of state power, whose trappings are evident. Given the size of the country, there are numerous aircraft on the tarmac and on the runway, with the flags of many nations on them.

Their flight has landed near the hour when many a Djiboutian loves to enjoy a sit-down chew, and a fearful slowness ensues. Ahl senses that the immigration officers on duty are eager to rush the passengers through the formalities. He is relieved not only because they are now beyond Shabaab’s reach but because he derives comfort from the sense of order everywhere around them. He likes to know where he is with authority; he loves it when he can challenge the rightness or the wrongness of the actions ascribed to the state. In Bosaso, state authority was so diffuse he could not tell who was in charge. He fills in the entry forms, stating the purpose of his visit and estimating the duration of his and his son’s stay at a week maximum.

He is still worried about Taxliil’s mood, though, and whether he is harboring a desire to get caught, deported, or denied entry. Is Taxliil martyring himself belatedly, to make up for a previous failure? Does he, like many misguided youths, place an exalted value on obduracy? Impervious to Ahl’s mild admonishments, expostulations, and appeals to get on with it, Taxliil doodles at the top and bottom of the entry form. Two different immigration officers ask Taxliil and then eventually Ahl what the problem is, and Ahl says to both, “The difficulties with teenagers.”

He does his utmost not to lose his temper, and with his teeth clenched in frustration, takes the form from Taxliil’s clutch and says, “Let me fill it in.”

Taxliil says, “There is a problem, though.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I don’t like something about this passport,” Taxliil says.

“What don’t you like about it?” Ahl asks.

“It makes me a year older. I don’t like any of my aliases, either.”

Who says that there is no life after death? Ahl remembers a line from Auden: that “proper names are poetry in the raw.” Ahl reads the run of names to which Taxliil is supposed to answer — Mohammed Mahmoud Mohammed — and cannot help agreeing that, taken together, they sound like a made-up name. So in a moment of rare sympathy, Ahl pats him on the back and fills in the forms when Taxliil raises no objections.