Nuruddin Farah - Links

Out the window, Jeebleh noticed a pile of rock-strewn earth, with stones placed on the summit. “What’s that down below?” he asked.

“A child’s tomb.”

“A tomb in the middle of the city?”

“At times, people are so scared to go to the cemeteries that they resort to burying their young ones close by, in tombs they improvise in their own neighborhoods.”

“Who are the people sheltering in the building?”

“They’re some of the displaced,” Bile said, “who’ve come here because of the fighting in their regions of the country. We get an influx whenever there are confrontations between the armed militias.”

“Is this The Refuge, then?”

“No,” he said. “The Refuge is close by, a few minutes’ walk from here. It has its own compound and permanent staff. The displaced who live here are an extension of The Refuge, in the sense that we provide them with food, run a school for them, and see to their health needs whenever we have to. But we refer to them as ‘the tourists,’ because their visits are often brief. When the conflict subsides, most of them return to where they came from, to their homes and properties.”

As they sat down, Jeebleh wondered to himself whether he could get used to the schizoid life that had become Bile’s: living in relative physical comfort, but dealing constantly with abject poverty, disheartening sorrow. He wouldn’t be at peace with his own conscience if he lived comfortably, yet so close to such miseries on a daily basis.

Jeebleh’s restless gaze landed on a bit of scriptural wisdom framed and hung on the wall, a runic inscription that read: “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood!”

“Whose apartment is this, then?”

“Everything here is Seamus’s handiwork,” Bile replied. “It was Seamus who hammered in every nail, and who copied the inscription over the entrance, and the verse on the wall too.”

“I had no idea that he was here,” Jeebleh cried happily. “Where is he?”

“He’s away, but he’ll be back in a few days.”

“So I’ll get to see him?”

“I hope so.”

“That’s wonderful!” Jeebleh now looked around the apartment with a more critical eye. “Seamus built all this? I didn’t know he was such an accomplished artist.”

“We decided, Seamus and I, to create an oasis of comfort here. Technically, the apartment is his, but I share it on and off, and Raasta and Makka have a room where they play, and stay in when they sleep over.”

At the mention of the girls’ names, Jeebleh saw a cloud of sorrow covering Bile’s features. And he spoke of them in the present tense too.

“Is he with an Irish NGO or something?”

“He’s here to help me.”

“That’s very dedicated of him.”

“Running The Refuge and the clinic is my principal occupation,” Bile said, “and Seamus sees to the smooth functioning of both. He is very punctilious, able to tell us how much we’ve spent on this, how much on that, how much money we have in the kitty, and how much more we need to raise. He goes back and forth a great deal between Mogadiscio and Dublin, where his mother is ailing and bedridden. But when he’s here, which is a lot of the time, he handles the daily chores and The Refuge’s demanding correspondence. I’m in charge of the core ideas, but he’s the nuts-and-bolts man, who makes them work. He’s our carpenter, when we need one, our interior decorator, our masseur, our male nurse, and our general advisor on matters mysterious. He’s his helpful self, you’ll remember that from our days in Padua. When something mechanical breaks down, he fixes it. I am not technical at all, in fact can’t change a fuse. He’s the man we call on when a door hinge falls off, or the roof of the clinic springs a leak. He is there at all hours, never complaining. In short, he’s a godsend! On his way back here this time, he’ll buy spare parts for the clinic generator, which has broken down. The young man on night duty switched it on without checking if there was sufficient oil in it.”

As Bile was talking, Jeebleh noticed how awful his teeth were. Since his arrival, Jeebleh had become obsessed with teeth. He caught himself thinking about them quite often, and about what bad teeth the youths he had met had. The sight of Bile’s teeth broke his heart, especially because the man seemed fit and healthy otherwise.

When Jeebleh realized that Bile had fallen silent, he felt embarrassed and guilty. But then he spoke: “I hope Seamus will be back before I leave.”

“You’ve only just got here,” Bile said. “Don’t tell me you’re already thinking of leaving?” Teasing, he added: “What’s the matter with people from Europe and North America? Always on the go, and on speeded-up time too!”

“I may have to depart in a hurry,” Jeebleh said.

“And why would you do that?”

Jeebleh didn’t mean to be secretive, but he didn’t want to talk about what he wanted to do. He needed time to find out more about Raasta and consider what help he might offer to recover her, and what to do about Caloosha and whom to recruit to do him in, if that was what he and Bile agreed to. He could understand Bile’s looking offended, shut out, or puzzled. He explained, “We’ll have the opportunity talk about things at length.”

Bile stole a glance at his watch. Jeebleh felt so uneasy that he swallowed some dry air, almost choking on it.

Bile wondered whether the years separating them and the bad blood that could make each distance himself from the other had given them an alternative memory, so that they might have difficulty remaining as good friends as they once were. Maybe it was wise not to talk about the past, or about what they had each been up to since then. They did not have time for this, and especially not today, for Bile had the clinic to attend to.

“How has your visit been so far?” he asked now.

Jeebleh became as restless as a colt. He turned away from the window, and his hand came casually into contact with his shirt pocket, where he carried his passport and cash. He appeared eager to get off his chest something that had been bothering him for decades, ever since he had left the country. Instead of answering Bile’s question, he sprang a surprise on his friend: “How have you dealt with Caloosha? Do you meet him often? Tell me about your relationship with him.”

Bile said nothing. Maybe, in his own way, he was making a point: that they viewed Caloosha differently, which explained why, up to now, he had not done anything about him.

Jeebleh insisted, “Do you see him at all?”

“This is a divided city, and you’ll discover when you’ve been here for a few days that you seldom run into people,” Bile replied. “We remain confined within the part of the city where we live, and try as much as we can to avoid contact with others.”

“What’s his occupation?”

“He is a consultant to StrongmanNorth on security matters.”

“Does he have his own detail of bodyguards?”

“He does.”

Bile saw that Jeebleh was apparently intent on dealing with Caloosha, whatever this was supposed to mean. But Bile was not prepared to jump into uncharted waters. Now he understood why Jeebleh had spoken earlier of possibly having to leave in a hurry — maybe after accomplishing his mission?

“We’ll have to talk more about all this,” Bile said, and again looked at his watch, ostensibly to let Jeebleh know that they didn’t have the time to do so now. And then he repeated his own question. “How has your visit been so far? I’m curious.”

“No one has a kind word to say about anyone else.”

“Civil wars bring out the worst in us,” Bile said. “There’s terrible bitterness that comes at you from every direction, everyone busy badmouthing everyone else, everyone reciting a litany of grievances. You’ll hear this one is a robber, that one is a murderer, that one a plunderer. Sadly, no one bothers to provide you with even flimsy circumstantial evidence to support the charges.”