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A rocket from a bazooka flew over their heads, hitting no one; then heavy machine guns went wild. A missile struck the battlewagon, severing it into two uneven halves. Caloosha and Jeebleh remained in the front of the battlewagon and drove off, separated from the fighters.

The two were in a jubilant mood, singing praises in honor of their common ancestor. Jeebleh wore a belt of bullets, and held a recently fired assault rifle close to his chest, hugging it as one might hug a baby. His fingers came into contact with the bloodied bayonet, as though testing its sharpness. It felt as dull as a dead tooth.

 

 

UPON WAKING, JEEBLEH WAS CONSCIOUS OF SHUFFLING MOVEMENTS, SOURCE unknown. He was bothered that he couldn't tell whether he was still in the Faustian country of his nightmare, a recruit fighting savagely to prove his worth to the clan family, or whether he was awake and hearing living sounds, of which he would eventually make sense.

It took him a long time to identify the source of the noise: a chameleon that was making its way along the floor of his room. What business did a chameleon have with him, up in his room on the second floor? Chameleons had terrified him as a child. Had someone who knew that brought it and deposited it on his balcony, while he was sleeping? Jeebleh doubted that the reptile could have covered such a distance by itself. So who was playing a prank on him, and for what purpose?

In an instant of utter insanity bodied forth by an odd mix of fear and superstition, he got down on the floor and, supporting himself on his elbow, eyeballed his saurian visitor. He watched the reptile's effete efforts as it headed for him, its one-step-forward, half-a-step-back movement holding Jeebleh under its spell. He sensed an inner tremor as he recalled the atavistic fears Africans had for chameleons, which were believed to have carried the message of death from the heavens. A number of African myths centered death on two oral messages, the one given to a hare and guaranteeing uninterrupted life, the other to a chameleon and presaging mortality. In the myths, the chameleon delivered the message, in obedience to an ancient dark fear. The hare, however, was distracted by its playfulness and failed to pass on the message of life.

Jeebleh took the measure of his own phobia as the reptile moved its eyes in constant gyration—first clockwise, then counterclockwise. It was probably making its presence felt, like an elephant employing theatrics to instill fear in its opponents. The eyes did not seem an ordinary part of its body, because they hung in front of its face, like two monocles, and rolled like dice dipped in Benetton colors. Its tail now curled up, its tongue out, it appeared, to Jeebleh, longer, its body grossly distended and intimidating.

But once he ceased to perspire so profusely, Jeebleh started to draw courage from the supposition that death is a direction rather than the end in the process of a life, and that the reptile is a mythical representation of an abstraction. After all, while the hare kept changing direction, the chameleon did not.

Now, for some reason, it was the reptile that was changing its course and moving toward the balcony, with the pained motion of an amputee on wobbly crutches making a U-turn. Leaving, the chameleon became a mere reptile, having no magical properties whatsoever.

And then there was a knock on the door.

 

 

A YOUTH WITH A MUDDY EXPRESSION, LIKE A FROG WITH DRIED CLAY STICKING to its forehead, was on the doorstep. Loath to allow him in, lest he should see the chameleon departing, Jeebleh held the door in a tight grip. “Yes?”

“What would you like for breakfast?”

Jeebleh couldn't imagine eating a breakfast that had been handled by such a youth. “Nothing for me, only coffee,” he said. “Please.”

“No cooked breakfast?”

“Only coffee.”

“What kind?”

“What's available?”

“Coffee in Yemeni style, or instant.”

With his skin prickling, and fearful that he might break into a sweat of itches at the thought of spending more time with the youth, he said, “Yemeni style, please.”

“No eggs, no bread, nothing else?” the youth urged.

“None.”

But the boy didn't seem ready to leave. He stood there, ogling Jeebleh, who couldn't bring himself to shut the door in his face. The soft morning sunlight separated him where he stood, with his hair on end, from the youth. He studied the teenager from close quarters, and decided that his face was much older than the rest of his body, what with the desert cracks in his dry, neglected skin. He couldn't help thinking of the degraded state of the soil of the Sahel, with its proximity to the Sahara. The youth's eyes were the size of black ants, his teeth appeared more rotten now that the gentle sun fell on them, and they had the hue of ginger taken from a curry pot. Hunger had gnawed at his cheeks too. Years of dictatorship, the habit of chewing
qaat,
and the civil war together had brought the boy's potential and his overall health to a sad, retarded state.

“And you'll like your coffee before you go?”

It was news to Jeebleh that he was going anywhere. At least, he couldn't remember arranging to go anywhere, unless he had clean forgotten. “Where am I supposed to be going?”

“I was told you were going somewhere.”

“Who told you that?”

“I don't know.”

Jeebleh's breath caught in his throat. He dreaded things coming to this: appointments being arranged for him when he had no idea where or with whom. Did he have any choice but to honor the request for him to go somewhere, on someone's whim? Had he no choice in what he did, where he went and when? He was about to goad the youth into giving him the source of his information, when another youth arrived bearing two pails, presumably containing hot water and cold. The two boys greeted each other amiably, and the breakfast boy went down a couple of steps to help carry one of the pails. When they came to within half a meter of him, Jeebleh noticed something quite odd about the bath boy's features. He was missing a nostril. Maybe an untended bullet wound had turned gangrenous, damaging his face. Jeebleh indicated that they should give him the pails and he would take them in. They did as they were told, and left, holding hands and laughing luridly.

Showered and dressed casually, Jeebleh picked up the two pails, which he meant to leave in the corridor, and was ready to pull the door open and bounce youthfully downstairs, when he heard another knock on the door. This time it was one of the bellboys to say that he had a visitor.

 

 

JEEBLEH DESCENDED THE STAIRS SLOWLY, OVERWHELMED WITH FOREBODING. In his distracted state, he almost collided with a young woman going up with a pail and a mop. He regained his balance just in time, and continued down the steps, past the reception area, where several youths lounged, and out to the courtyard, awash with bright sunlight.

Af-Laawe was there to surprise him, greeting him as one Arab greets another, with the left hand on the heart, head slightly bowed, right hand touching lips moving and emitting a salvo of blessings. Af-Laawe ended his theatrics with a sweeping gesture of his right hand, half prostrating himself. Then he spoke in an ellipsis: “A nightmare of loyalties!”

Jeebleh refused to be taken in by anyone's antics, least of all Af-Laawe's. With a straight face, he replied, “Would you like to join me for coffee?”

“Yes, I would.”

They sat outdoors at a plastic table with three chairs around it. The breakfast boy brought Jeebleh his Yemeni coffee in an aluminum pot, which proved difficult to hold or pour; but he managed it, then pushed the sugar bowl toward Af-Laawe, who helped himself generously.

“How was your first night back?” Af-Laawe asked.

“Thank you for arranging the lift and the hotel.”

“I hope the manager is treating you well.”

“He is, considering the circumstances.”

“The room is all right?”

“I can't ask for more,” Jeebleh said.

And then all that the driver had said about Af-Laawe returned to Jeebleh in a flash. His lips were touched with a knowing grin, in anticipation of learning more about Af-Laawe's link to Caloosha's world of deceits, conspiracies, and killings. Jeebleh replaced the features of the driver with an identikit that might have been a cross between Af-Laawe and Caloosha; he superimposed this on the face of a hardened criminal wanted for a series of robberies worth millions of dollars.

“I'm glad you're having a good time,” Af-Laawe said.

All around the courtyard, Jeebleh noticed vultures gathering. They arrived soundlessly, working to a precise timetable, one every half-minute, like airplanes landing. There were no fewer than a dozen, the largest the size of a Fiat Cinquecento, heads down, wings folded, beaks held dramatically in mid-motion. One particular bird disappeared every now and again, only to reappear a few minutes later as several more birds joined the gathering. Jeebleh found it strange to see vultures alighting in the courtyard of a four-star hotel. Where was the carrion to be had?

He fell under the spell of the spectacle. He couldn't take his eyes off the vultures, now dividing themselves into two groups, on what basis he couldn't tell. The huge vulture went back and forth between the groups, then took off quietly, and was gone for a good while. He returned with a companion of similar size and comparable build, but with a beak of a different color. The two birds went back and forth between the two groups as if ferrying urgent messages.

“Vultures, crows, and marabous have been our constant companions these past few years,” Af-Laawe said. “There've been so many corpses abandoned, unburied. You will see that crows are no longer afraid if you try to shoo them away. At the height of the four-month war between the militiamen of StrongmanSouth and StrongmanNorth, the crows and the vultures were so used to being on the ground foraging, they were like tourist pigeons in a Florentine piazza. These scavengers have been well served by the civil war.”

“Why the nickname ‘Marabou'?” Jeebleh asked.

“Somebody has been telling you things.”

“And why ‘Funeral with a Difference'?”

Af-Laawe said, “I started the funeral service when sorrow felt like something emitting a bad odor that was forever there, as though it had been smeared on the inside of my nostrils. After the mosques were raided and the women seeking refuge in God's house taken out and raped, I set up an NGO to take care of the dead.”

“Where did you get the funds to set it up?”

“I raised them myself,” he said.

Was Af-Laawe, as he told it, a lone do-gooder in the style of the folk heroes one read about as a child? Jeebleh wondered what good a single person could do in a place where the bad outnumbered the virtuous. Maybe one must do what one can, the best one can.

Af-Laawe continued, “At least I am in the privileged position of choosing what I want to do and how I go about it. Not everyone is in this position.”

Who was he, really—a troubleshooter on a fat salary from the EU; a bigtime swindler, with a heist stashed away in a Swiss bank; a do-gooder with an NGO to bury the unclaimed dead; a house-sitter looking after the property of a family who had fled?

“Speaking of choices,” Jeebleh said, after a long silence, “did the members of the clan families who fled the city
choose
to flee, or were they forced to abandon their properties in a city they adored?”

“These are abnormal times!”

“I can see that,” Jeebleh said, and looked at the vultures holding a conference a few meters from where they were seated.

The traces of a wicked grin formed around Af-Laawe's drawn-in lips. He noticed Jeebleh's gaze. “A cynic I know says that thanks to the vultures, the marabous, and the hawks, we have no fear of diseases spreading,” he said. “They clean things up, don't they? My cynical friend suggests that when the country is reconstituted as a functioning state, we should have a vulture as our national symbol.”

“You wouldn't be that cynic yourself?” Jeebleh asked.

Af-Laawe stonewalled again: “These are abnormal times.”

“I would agree it's abnormal to see scavengers of carrion at a four-star hotel, looking as though they are well placed to choose what they eat and where they go. They look better fed than humans.”

It puzzled Jeebleh to see that Af-Laawe was upset. Had he said something to offend him? Now his drawn-in lips moved, like a baby fish feeding.

“There were far more vultures and marabous in the aftermath of the October-third debacle, when over a thousand supporters of StrongmanSouth were massacred, and eighteen U.S. soldiers lost their lives. I bore witness to the arrival of these scavengers, gathered around the battle zone, and perched on the lookout points in the neighborhood.”

The words were spoken like an attack. Did Af-Laawe think that Jeebleh, as an American, would be upset if he mentioned the U.S. dead in Mogadiscio in the same breath as sighting scavengers gathering at the battle zone? Because Jeebleh assumed that Af-Laawe's badness was emerging, he prepared for an attack, and waited. He was getting to know Af-Laawe a little better at least.

Af-Laawe went on, still in attack mode. “On the fourth of October, there were as many carrion-eaters as there were human beings come to witness the massacre. But the birds had no chance to get at the corpses of the Somali dead, since these were taken away and buried by their families. A discerning person, like my cynical friend, would've seen two marabou storks, weighing no less than twenty kilograms each, discreetly following the progress of the riotous mob dragging the corpse of an American Ranger down the dusty alleyways of the city. The marabous followed the mob, and my friend tells me that their bare heads and bare necks were in clear view. Maybe they expected the crowd to abandon the corpse of the American at some point, so they might pounce on it. The hawks hung back, remaining at a distance. They didn't want to get into direct conflict with the marabous.”