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“How many bolts, how many chains, my God!”

Bile said, “When you share an apartment in a violent city, you accommodate each other's sense of paranoia. We bolt it up, chain and lock it, because it eases Seamus's paranoia. He refers to this”—he touched the Italian padlock, heavier than a gorilla's head—“as the ‘humor-me padlock,' and you can see him holding it in his lap and caressing it, as though it were a cat or a baby!”

“The choices one makes!” Jeebleh said.

“Seamus has developed another obsession.”

“What can that be?”

“He loves the sound of chains against chains, loves what he refers to as the handsome feel and sexy sight of heavy-duty padlocks. These turn him on. One of his lovers in Milan gave him the contraption as a present. When he got back to Mogadiscio, he brought it out and spoke of it in the most glowing terms. He might have been a herdsman talking of his favorite she-camel, praising her.”

“Would you say Seamus is a fetishist?”

“What do you mean?” asked Bile.

“Of chains, locks, and bolts.”

“He is.”

“What's your take on lock, bolt, and chains?”

“When we're together, he locks up,” Bile said, “I open up.”

Since there was a logic built into the relationship between these two bachelors, Jeebleh wondered what his job was going to be in a threesome flat share. Bile went toward the kitchen with the breakfast package, avoiding the seven pieces of luggage in the corridor.

“When did he get here?” Jeebleh asked when Bile returned.

“He rang at an ungodly hour,” Bile said, “and told me that his flight from Nairobi had landed just before dark at an airstrip in Merka, he had no idea why. He managed to get a lift from the airstrip, which is about a hundred kilometers from where we are, to a guesthouse in the north of the city. But the manager of the guesthouse had no place for him. It is a house for European Union officials visiting on short missions in Somalia. I was at a friend's house, but Seamus managed to get me on my mobile, and I arranged for Dajaal to bring him to the house where I was. It was in the dead of a dangerous hour in Mogadiscio, close to three in the morning. Then I drove him here.”

Good breeding kept Jeebleh from asking Bile where he had spent the night, or with whom. In the old days, it was Seamus who always told you everything about his one-night stands, provided you with their first names or aliases, gave you the size of their brassieres, informed you what they liked and didn't, how they kissed, or whether they were sloppy in bed or not. Details of Jeebleh's own infrequent forays came out sooner or later at Seamus's badgering. Bile, however, was unfailingly discreet; he wouldn't tell you a thing.

Jeebleh said, “I bet Seamus won't stir until midday.”

“Always dead to the world in the mornings, our Seamus.”

After a pause Bile asked, “Would you like an espresso?”

“If it's homemade and by your good hands, I would. A double!”

 

 

JEEBLEH TOOK A BITE OF HIS BRIOCHE. THE HONEY RUNNING DOWN HIS chin reminded him how much he used to enjoy these delicacies. It was comforting that life had plotted to bring the three of them together again, all this time after their days in Italy, and he couldn't help praying that they would still live in the country of their friendship.

The espresso was majestic; there was no other word to describe it. Full of vigor, stronger than the kick of a young horse. It was dark, grainy, and concentrated like a Gauloise. It reminded him of their days in Padua, and he was tempted to ask for a cigarette even though he had abandoned the habit two decades earlier. Life was young in those smoke-filled days, days full of promise, all three friends eager to make their marks on the societies they had come from. Dreaming together, the three inseparable friends, and the two women whose presence became de rigueur for Seamus and Jeebleh, smoked their lungs away, and consumed great quantities of espresso.

In those long-ago days, you would see Seamus going off lonely and alone into the darkened moments of memory, as he recalled what had happened to his family in Belfast, blown up in their own apartment, a grenade thrown through an open window from a passing car. He had lived with constant worry about sudden death. He would talk like a man deciding to forget, but not forgive. And he would remind you time and again that two brothers, a sister, and his father had died in the massacre; only he and his mother had survived, because they happened to be out. Mother Protestant, father Catholic, he had been brought up to live as inclusive a life as he could, in which sectarian differences were never privileged. And then the massacre. He was hard-pressed to know what to do. There was something in the way Seamus told the story that made Jeebleh think that he had exacted revenge. And on several occasions he had heard Seamus screaming in his sleep, “The bloody dogs are done!”

Bile now asked Jeebleh, “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, I did. I dreamt too.”

“Do you feel like sharing your dream?”

“I saw a one-eyed, five-headed, seven-armed figure,” Jeebleh told him. “Maybe you'll help me interpret it, the way you used to.”

“Was the one-eyed figure with multiple heads dancing?”

“Yes.”

“Were there voices in the background chanting narrative sequences to the tale being mimed?”

“How have you worked out all this?”

“Just answer my question.”

“Yes.”

“And was the movement of the figure with the multiple heads extravagant, the gestures now rapid, now deliberately slow, and were the index finger and the thumb held away from the rest of the body, and the arms of the dancer shaped into a wide circle?”

“Yes again.”

Silence settled on Jeebleh, as if permanently. He remembered the calmness as he watched the figure dancing, and saw several faces known to him. He was sorry he couldn't put any names to the faces—maybe they were from an earlier life, now forgotten.

“Was the figure garlanded and in costume?”

“Y-e-s!”

“Hindu deities have a way of presenting themselves in movement,” Bile said, “some boasting an enormous headgear and the costume to go with it, others arriving while riding a rat. I'm thinking of Ganesh, whose intercession is sought whenever a Hindu embarks on a journey or an enterprise, whose potbellied image, with an elephant trunk and tusks and shiny countenance, is paramount at the entrance to a great number of temples.” Bile rubbed his palms together excitedly and asked with a grin, “Was there a peacock?”

“There was a peahen!”

“Not a peacock?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you saw Mira in your dream—a peahen!”

“Mira?”

“Miss Mira Meerut,” Bile said. “Our—that's to say, Seamus's—Mira from the city of Meerut, India, possibly the most beautiful woman to join our tables in Padua. She was in love with Seamus.”

Jeebleh's ears throbbed, the skin tightening, the rhythm unnerving, his heart beating faster and faster. “Mira wasn't from India,” he corrected. “She was of Indian origin, all right, but she was from Burma.”

Bile agreed that she may have been traveling on a Burmese passport when they met her, but she was from southern India, culturally speaking. Her parents had migrated from Gujarat, in western India.

“She was the one who brought along a couple of exquisite woodcarvings,” Jeebleh said. “I remember those.”

“That's right,” Bile confirmed. “She was besotted with Seamus, who, in turn, was besotted with the carvings. The figure he fell for was caught in the process of movement. Such a vivid rhythm, I recall. We had it on our mantelpiece in the apartment in Padua.”

“I remember that there were carvings,” Jeebleh said, “but my memory of that particular carving is vague.”

“She was a beauty,” Bile said. “She wore peacock feathers and what a train of sari colors, of a silk I've never seen anywhere else. I was smitten with her too, but I dared not speak of it. She was breathtakingly beautiful, irresistibly charming, her almond eyes exceptionally large and in constant motion. I can't believe you don't remember her. Miss Mira Meerut moved about with a large following of admirers. She was like a peacock with a harem of peahens. Until she met Seamus.”

Mira's father, Bile related, was a diplomat based in Rome—or was he with a UN agency? In addition to her striking beauty, she was also a first-class brain. She was ready for her finals, when her parents made her withdraw from the university because she was pregnant. Bile took this personally, because he was the only person in whom Seamus had confided that he was the baby's father. To intercede on her behalf, and ask that she be allowed at least to take her finals, Bile presented himself at Mira's parents' apartment. An Italian woman opened the door when he rang the bell, and told him she was the new tenant. Bile learned that Mira and her parents had left the country, precise date unknown. He found this difficult to believe, and he walked from room to room in the apartment, hoping that somehow he would find Mira or her parents. The only trace of her he discovered was a drawing of a peacock in green-and-blue blossom, with a cropped tail. Bile took ill, and barely passed his exams that year. “And guess what?” Bile asked.

“What?”

Bile faltered as he spoke. “Mira Meerut was here in Mogadiscio less than two years ago, as a UNICEF consultant. She was the mother of two children, and the happy wife of a man several years her junior, an American. She was stunningly pretty, but not as free-spirited and wide-eyed with wonder as when we met her. She had resigned herself to being the ordinary wife of an ordinary American financier, on whom she doted. And when she and Seamus met, they had a ball remembering the good times, and even enjoyed recalling the bad times, the very depressing moments. But she wasn't at all pleased to learn from Seamus that he had left the woodcarving in storage in New York, and didn't take it along everywhere he went.”

“How fortunate that her tour of duty here coincided with Seamus's presence,” Jeebleh said. “I bet it was wonderful for you to see a train of saris and to relive the past.”

“She was deeply hurt, though.”

“And she didn't hide it?”

Bile shook his head no.

“How did you figure out my dream?”

Bile said, “You may not have remembered it for what it was, because there's a photograph of Mira, taken by Seamus, on the wall in Raasta's room. You probably saw it before you fell asleep, and the image of this stunning woman in motion insinuated itself into your dream. She still loves Seamus!”

“It is possible that my deep unconscious also became aware of Seamus's presence in the apartment. Maybe the dream is in part a recognition of his arrival, a welcome event.”

And suddenly Seamus was there: in full flesh, grinning.

JEEBLEH'S EYES WERE TOUCHED WITH A SMILE THAT SPREAD SIDEWAYS to his cheeks and down to his chin. Seamus's eyes, like a falcon's, were a dark brown, the pupils hardly visible.

Jeebleh held his breath in suspense, waiting to hear which language Seamus would speak. When they met last, in Padua, they used Italian. Would Seamus, knowing that Jeebleh had now lived in the United States for close to twenty years, choose English? In those long-gone days in Italy, the world had been in flux, but now things were very different, and they were meeting in Mogadiscio; both were keenly aware of this.

“We're all jumpy, aren't we?” Seamus had chosen English.

Jeebleh guessed from his tone of voice that Seamus would not lapse into some piss-elegant Irish English as he used to. He had lived in England during his teens, then had gone on to Cambridge, where he had taken his first degree. And he had spent time in Italy, France, and Egypt.

“Understandably jumpy,” Jeebleh agreed.

Seamus came closer and said, “Never you mind, we'll sort it out.” He opened his arms wide. “But let me give you a good, warm welcome hug to comfort you!”

Seamus was a well-built, beer-drinking man. He was as tall as he was wide, and sported a liberally grown beard, the kind a devout Sikh might wear to a temple on a Guru's remembrance day and be showily proud of. He had beady eyes, bloodshot red, and thin arms that made his wrists appear scraggy. Physically, he had changed greatly since he and Jeebleh had last met. Younger, of course, and handsomer then, he had been much leaner too, clean-shaven and with a waist that might have been the envy of many a model. But Jeebleh would have recognized him anywhere, despite his girth.

Jeebleh let go first, so as to hold his friend at a look-and-see distance, and eventually to hug him yet again, even if briefly and more for effect.

Bile, who had been standing nearby, watching the goings-on, now sneaked out of the apartment. Neither friend paid him mind.

“Mogadiscio has been awful to you!” Seamus said.

Jeebleh noted a characteristic of Seamus's that hadn't changed: he exploded into a room, like a missile arriving on the quiet and detonating with a rush of excitement. His entry today was not as dramatic as it used to be, and he was quieter on the whole, growing only moderately louder the more he spoke. Would he make his usual sharp, insightful comments? Jeebleh, who associated him with an impressive presence, wore a wary expression, similar to that of a dog on whose pee-marked territory a wily cat has begun to trespass.

“My clansmen have been awful.”

Seamus went to the kitchen to make coffee, and Jeebleh followed. Seamus had unkempt fingernails, edgily bitten and dirty. His toenails were long, so long they put Jeebleh in mind of a museum postcard of a Neanderthal man in all his excessive wildness, as imagined and drawn by a modern illustrator. Jeebleh guessed that his wife's remarks about unruly toenails would have cut Seamus to the quick, and made him deal with their disorderliness. Maybe he could grow his fingernails and toenails as long as he pleased because he wasn't sharing his life or his bed with a partner.