Nuruddin Farah - Links

Reminding himself of the purpose of his visit, Jeebleh smiled and chose not to be provoked. They might get somewhere if he didn’t deflate Caloosha’s inflated ego in the presence of his buddies.

“I’ve had you followed,” Caloosha asserted, “and I know where you’ve been, to whom you’ve spoken, what comments you’ve made, from the moment your plane landed until you walked in here. Tell me, are you or aren’t you a liar?”

Jeebleh felt like a mischievous pupil called to the headmaster’s office to explain why he had behaved badly. He didn’t know whether apologizing would help or play into the stronger hands of a brute, adept at exploiting a weakness in his character. He dodged and asked, “Where’s the family?”

“What family?”

“Your wife and children.”

A primal joy descended on Caloosha’s features, and his double chin trembled. It was touching to behold the sudden change in the man, whose expression was so infectious that Kaahin and his men grinned from cheek to cheek too. Jeebleh looked like a baby with a sweet tooth made to taste salt.

Caloosha intimated with a flick of his right hand that Kaahin and his companions should leave. Then he rose, heaving himself up and out of the high chair, and waddled toward Jeebleh, with every distended part of his body waggling. Jeebleh allowed himself to be hugged for the sake of peace. Caloosha smothered him in a fleshy, all-encompassing embrace. Jeebleh thought of women submitting themselves to men they loathed, for the love and safety of their children. Part of him didn’t wish to know what his life would be like after this embrace.

Jeebleh’s hand was entirely lost in Caloosha’s acquisitive grip. Even so, he thought it best not to withdraw, lest his action provoke a hostile reaction from his host. Now that they were standing close to each other, he saw how ugly the man was, short, fat, and always short of breath. “How are they, anyway, the family?”

“They’re all well.” Caloosha paced in circles as he spoke. “Do you know how many wives and how many children I have? Unlike you, I have twenty-two children, the perfect number for two soccer teams, with me as referee. I was married five times, and am currently married to three wives. I’ve been a grandfather seven times, all of them boys.”

“You’re married to three women?”

“That’s right.”

“Where are they, your families?”

“Almost all the children by my first five wives are in Holland, Sweden, and Denmark as asylum seekers, or in Canada and the U.S. as naturalized citizens. One of my wives is in Canada with her five children, another in the U.S. with seven, and so on and so on. In Canada and the U.S. my children changed their names to those of their mothers, fearing being linked to me, because of my earlier job. What a bore! But they’re all doing well, earning enough and living comfortably. In fact, the two oldest girls send me monthly remittances, but the boys think more often about themselves, their latest fads and the cars they drive, and seldom about their old man. But we thank God for His great mercies!”

Jeebleh said, “You must be relieved that they are all out of the country and out of harm’s way, what with the fierce fighting and all.”

“One of my current wives is here,” he said, and nearing Jeebleh, spoke in a whisper. “She’s somewhere in this villa, the latest acquisition of an old man ready to retire.” Crassly, his left hand went to his crotch, and made a show of caressing it.

“How did you acquire her?” Jeebleh asked.

“We blundered into each other,” he replied.

“Blundered into each other?”

“That’s one way of putting it. She and I blundered into each other out of fear, out of the loneliness of old age on my part, and out of the aloneness of youth on hers.”

There were no more mysteries to the brute, and Jeebleh could have killed him for that. If he did not act upon his visceral loathing, it was because the extent of Caloosha’s ugliness was so overbearing and revolting at the same time, and of course, he hadn’t the wherewithal to follow it through. Nor had the fool any sense of shame. The latest acquisition of an old man, indeed!

“Where did you find her?” Jeebleh asked.

“I found her alone after looters had emptied her family home and killed her parents. She was fifteen years old at the time, and was hiding in the attic, frightened out of her wits.”

“She could’ve been your granddaughter!”

“She’s very pretty, of Xamari descent,” Caloosha said with a grin and a wink. “And as I said before, we thank God for all His mercies, great and small. She’s been a blessing to me in my old age, my young thing.”

Jeebleh wondered what Caloosha had been doing in the girl’s family house after the looters had killed her parents and emptied the house of all that was useful. But because he doubted he would receive a true answer, he thought better of asking. Besides, such a question might take them away from where his own interest lay. Now he dwelled on Caloosha’s face, and concentrated on his eyes hooded with fat and hair, suspecting that he might read the man’s motives from his expression. As a ploy to humble himself, Jeebleh sat on a low three-legged stood diagonal to where Caloosha was standing. His gaze wandered leisurely across the settees, ottomans, and armchairs scattered about in spectacular disarray. Caloosha stopped moving in circles and took tortoise steps to a lounge chair, where he sat down. Not much of the furniture in the living room matched. Had he acquired the pieces through his various marriages, or from his looting sorties into the vacated homes of families who had fled the city, which was up for grabs during the initial stages of the civil war? Jeebleh was so upset he felt like the commander of a militia unable to hold a bridgehead seized in enemy territory.

“Whose house is this?” he asked.

“Mine,” came the answer.

Jeebleh believed that Caloosha was lying, that the house wasn’t his. There was something visibly aseptic about the place. It might be a minor warlord’s home, where he stashed away all his plunder. It looked too clean, like that of a small-time thief who regularly brought stolen goods into his private living space. Or could it be that the heavy furniture came with the young wife?

“Where is she?”

“My wife?”

“The young thing for your old age.”

“Have pity on a man of my advanced years, Jeebleh.” Caloosha displayed a kind of humor Jeebleh hadn’t thought him capable of.

Maybe the light footsteps on the staircase when he came in had been hers, Jeebleh thought. Was it also possible that the soap opera dialogue in Arabic that he could hear was coming from her satellite TV? He was tense, his tongue as heavy as a wet hammock. Married serially five times, currently the husband of three, with twenty-two children, seven grandchildren, all of them boys: maybe the man had a right to all the furniture that was on disorderly exhibition in the living room. Who would’ve thought that the phoenix of Caloosha’s day would rise from the ashes of his evil deeds after the collapse of the regime he so wickedly served? But there you were, he was alive and well and lording it now in the city of his clan family.

“How about your family?” Caloosha asked Jeebleh.

“I’ve spoken to them twice since coming here.”

“Your daughters are both of college age?”

Jeebleh nodded.

“The younger one is left-handed, yes?”

“No, it’s the older one who is.”

As though no longer certain of his facts, Caloosha hesitated, then asked, “One of them had a Burmese cat, the other a dog, yes?”

Jeebleh was unprepared for this, because he knew he hadn’t given these details to anyone in Mogadiscio, except maybe to his mother, in his chatty letters to her. Had the housekeeper been sharing secrets with Caloosha?