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Jeebleh hoped that he wasn't losing his marbles, becoming paranoid and joining Mogadiscio's multitudes of borderline schizophrenics. He remembered Ali's pleading with him, when they first met, not to judge “them” too harshly. Jeebleh was quitting the north of the city, where his clansmen formed the majority, and taking up residence in the south, where Bile's folks reigned. He found it ironic that he felt safer outside his clansmen's territory.

In the car, he broke the silence, saying to Dajaal, “Tell me a little about Kaahin.”

Dajaal did not answer immediately. Waiting for an answer, Jeebleh was haunted by two images: in one, Kaahin and Dajaal communicated secretly, in a way that suggested conspiracy; in the other, Caloosha and Dajaal exchanged burning looks. The silence lengthening, Jeebleh noticed that the same driver was taking the same route as before to Bile's. Then a third image came to him: a vulture, the size of a Cinquecento, flying off into high heaven with a baby goat in its claws!

“Kaahin and I were very close at one time,” Dajaal said. “We were both army officers, we'd see each other at the mess frequently. And we were tennis partners. But we fell out just before the collapse of the state. Over a family matter.”

“You aren't related, are you?” Jeebleh said.

“We could've been, but we aren't.”

He fell silent, knowing that this wouldn't make much sense. Embarrassed, he looked away, averting his gaze from the driver too. He rubbed his face, like a monkey reflecting. There was an eerie quiet in the vehicle now, as though all three men had taken temporary residence outside of time, and were dwelling in a nightmare of family disloyalties and dissonance. The driver nodded at Dajaal, as if encouraging him to say what was on his mind.

“We came to fierce blows, Kaahin and I, when I learned that my youngest sister's child was his, and yet he wouldn't own up to it. Lately, since he admitted that he is the biological father of the boy, who is now eleven and living in Canada, we've been meeting to try to work things out.”

“Do you meet in secret or openly?” Jeebleh asked.

“In secret, of course,” Dajaal said.

“Because it would upset Caloosha?”

“It would, yes,” replied Dajaal. “Anyhow, I doubt that Kaahin would talk of this to anyone, least of all Caloosha, who would use it against him. It's not in my favor or his for such things to come to light.”

A whirlwind gathered and blocked the sun from Jeebleh's vision. He wondered whether Caloosha's discovery of these secret encounters of Dajaal and Kaahin might start another battle between the warring factions. He imagined fingers on triggers, imagined the joy on the faces of drug-crazed youths shooting and watching, as their victims collapsed in a heap of death.

“Here we are!” the driver said.

 

 

WHEN HE AND BILE MET IN THESE CHANGED CIRCUMSTANCES, THE ONE A host, the other a guest, Jeebleh was unable to recall things in as much detail as he would have liked. But he managed to tell Bile what had happened and in little time, fearing that he might not carry the telling through to the end. Bile listened without comment or interruption. When he was finished, Jeebleh felt restless, so he stood and opened the windows, wandered about, and then opened his shoulder bag, out of which he took the books he had brought as gifts. He presented them to Bile without ceremony, and then sat down, again without ceremony.

“Do you feel betrayed?” Bile asked.

“I hurt!”

Still restless, Jeebleh rose again and paced back and forth, agitated one moment, depressed the next, up and moving purposelessly one instant, down and wincing the next. At some point, he was surprised to find himself facing Bile, who had gotten to his feet too.

“Let's go!”

Jeebleh didn't ask where.

HE FOLLOWED BILE DOWN A FLIGHT OF STAIRS AT A RUN; THEN DOWN ANOTHER set of steps, which he approached with caution; past a knot of women, some washing their babies, others busy cooking at braziers; past a group of men sitting uncomfortably on a mat, playing cards.

Jeebleh was becoming two people, one leading a familiar life, the other a life that was unfamiliar; one looking in from the outside, the other looking out from inside. Alive to his surroundings, he was able, with his active side, to spot the security detail shadowing them. He could see Dajaal and two young men tailing them. His more contemplative side wondered whether the civil conflict was being driven as much as greed—the quick gains and limitless profits available for the warlords—as by bloodlust, shedding the blood of others to settle centuries-old scores. He questioned Bile as they walked.

“Money runs the civil war's engine, all right,” Bile agreed. “There are the corrupt commissions paid to the warlords for a start, the money they make from hiring out militiamen to foreign delegations on visits. There's the money paid to the warlords in the form of tributes by foreign firms operating in the country. And Mogadiscians also pay other tributes to the warlords, who levy road tax and duties on everything imported through the entry points of the city, which they control.”

Jeebleh remembered being stopped in the car, and StrongmanSouth's armed youths in fatigues readying to extort money when they recognized Dajaal. “Why do most vehicles on the roads have plates from the Arabian Gulf, and why do they all look just-bought?” he asked.

“Bringing vehicles in from the Arabian Gulf is a racket, all right!”

Jeebleh waited for an explanation.

“When a vehicle is in an accident and is written off somewhere in Europe or the USA,” Bile said, “a mechanic puts it back together and has it repainted, makes it look as good as new. An import dealer brings the reconditioned vehicles into the Gulf, usually into the Emirates, which specializes in import/export. The cars are quickly re-exported to Mogadiscio or Nairobi. Many vehicles stolen in Europe end up in the Gulf in the same way, and they're sent on to other countries with little or no customs control.”

Jeebleh was amazed. “There's a racket everywhere you turn, isn't there? And I bet the rackets are run by the same people who run the guns!”

Bile explained that vehicle owners hired gunmen for protection, and the more expensive the car, the more gunmen needed. But in the earlier days of the civil war, cars had their fuel tanks rebuilt in a way that reduced the fuel intake. In those days it was common to see two-liter plastic containers on the floor of a vehicle, by means of which the engine was fed, through a hose. You couldn't travel great distances, because you ran out of fuel frequently, and had to refuel more often. But your car was safe from potential carjackers.

“An American journalist described Somalia as an ideal model for the rest of the continent,” Jeebleh said. “In his view, Africans could do away with governments by studying what's happening in Mogadiscio, where telephones work better now than they did when there was a state. The same journalist pointed out that whereas there used to be only one daily newspaper—the government's mouthpiece—now there are no fewer than thirteen dailies, with opposing views. What do you think?”

“What do I think? Where's this journalist on education?” Bile challenged. “Where is he on providing hospitals, or security and other social services to the ordinary person with no gun? Every Somali not in the pay of a warlord would agree with me that even an inefficient and corrupt government will offer better services than those provided so far by the warlords, who are in the business not of building institutions but of demolishing them. The services may be faulty and faltering in other countries, but any central government, however weak it is, will do better than these murderous warlords and their cartels. Just look at this city! You know what it used to be like.”

“Are the warlords subservient to business cartels?”

“As long as they are from the same blood community. Fact: The warlords and the business community stand to profit from every skirmish, every confrontation. Fact: Most fighting takes place outside business hours, in the late afternoon, when the markets have closed for the day, or very early in the morning, before they have reopened, or at night. I would say that the so-called markets have something to do with much of the fighting, but you can't divide business and blood so easily in this country.”

“It doesn't look that way from the outside!”

“Of course it doesn't.”

Jeebleh murmured to himself: Warlords, market forces!

With subliminal grief on his face, Bile continued, “Some people, as a matter of fact, trace the falling-out of StrongmanSouth and StrongmanNorth to the arrival of billions' worth of Somali banknotes flown in from England, where they had been printed for the former dictator's regime. All hell broke loose when the plane bringing the banknotes in from Nairobi was diverted to an airstrip in the north of the city.”

“By StrongmanNorth?” Jeebleh asked.

“The excessive greed of both strongmen produced fragmentation, then a civil war,” Bile said. He stopped suddenly and turned to Jeebleh: “Here we are!”

“Where's
here
?”

“The Refuge.”

 

 

THE GATE SLUMPED ON ITS HINGES, CREAKING FORWARD, ITS BOTTOM EDGE almost touching the ground, its paint flaking off. Jeebleh assumed that it was seldom closed, and imagined children and abused women walking in, the children to be looked after and fed, and the abused women to receive comfort and professional counseling. You didn't need to close such a gate.

As he and Bile passed through, Jeebleh saw a number of bungalows. There was a sign saying “HOYI”—shelter—in prominent capitals, and a smaller one announcing “The Refuge.” “In days now long gone,” Bile explained, “when schools ran morning, afternoon, and evening sessions, most of these bungalows served as dormitories. Day students of several secondary schools in the neighborhood, whose parents lived in other towns, used to stay here.”

They walked past a low-ceilinged cottage where youths in dark overalls were gathered around a broken-down vehicle, being instructed in motor repair. As they walked farther, the din grew louder, and younger too. A bell rang, and twenty or thirty teenagers, most of them boys, came pouring out. Jeebleh and Bile stood aside. A door behind them opened, and more boys and girls, younger than the previous group, came out, running with the uninhibited enthusiasm of youth. The girls were giggly, the boys full of chase. They seemed so much younger than the armed youths at the airport, or the runners at the hotel.

An elderly woman greeted Bile by name, and then acknowledged Jeebleh's presence with a nod. Jeebleh learned that she was in charge of the children, with the help of several younger women. To one side, a man was bending down to tie the shoelaces of a very small girl.

Peace reigned here, Jeebleh thought. Bile had created several overlapping worlds, ideally conceived: the flat he shared with Seamus; The Refuge; the clinic, which Jeebleh had yet to see; and Raasta and Makka's world too, temporarily interrupted as that might be. These worlds were contrasted starkly with what one might experience in the rest of the city. They were oases of comfort in a land of sorrow.

Bile pushed open a door to the anteroom of an office. On the wall were photographs of children, some in school uniform, some not. For a moment, Jeebleh was lost in reverie, forgetting where he was. He stared at images of boys and girls receiving awards from an Italian monsignor. There were captioned photographs of a swimmer receiving a medal, a chess player who had finished second at a competition in Prague, a runner who had been second fastest in a steeplechase competition.

“Did you choose this place?” Jeebleh asked.

“Do you recall what it used to be?”

“I remember we used to call it ‘The Dormer.' When we were in our teens, it was a dormitory run by the Roman Catholic Church. It was a home to abandoned children, who were looked after by the fathers. And before that, it belonged to a Sicilian who had named it Villa San Giovanni.”

“Well done!” Bile said.

“Now tell me more about it.”

As it happened, Bile had walked into the building by chance one day, a few months into the civil war. He was on some errand or other, and for some reason took a detour. Maybe a mysterious force had led him here. He came upon a child in a corner, wrapped in a blanket and smartly dressed in pants and a handsome T-shirt with writing in Gothic script. The presence of the girl in an empty dormitory made no sense, and there was no way of knowing who had left her there. When he returned home with a girl for whom he had no name, Shanta and Faahiye, with whom Bile shared the house then, decided on one for her, because she kept pointing to herself and saying something close to “Marta,” or was it “Marcia”? They called her Makka, and sure enough, she responded to it.

They fell silent as a young man entered the office without knocking. He brought them tea on a tray. Bile nodded a thank you and waited until they were alone to speak further. “In another sense, you could say that Raasta brought us all here.”

“How's that?”

“Or rather, I should say that Raasta brought her mother here, as a prelude to her being born. And then guess what? Dajaal met Shanta here, again by chance.”

“I won't ask what Dajaal was doing here either.”

“He was in charge of the force holding the district.”

“Go back to Shanta, or how Raasta brought her here.”

“It's all fascinating and complicated,” Bile said, and paused. “Shanta was very pregnant with Raasta, eight months or so. She had gone to an appointment with an obstetrician, but because of the fierce fighting between the clan militia and the Tyrant's forces, the doctor wasn't there. Shanta had walked a great distance, all the way from Digfar hospital. The fighting between the clan militiamen and the regime was very fierce, bombs were falling everywhere. But at no time, Shanta would tell me later, did she fear for her own life or her baby's.”