The Orchard of Lost Souls (27 page)

‘Where is your commanding officer?’

‘He was called to Birjeeh. They believe more rebels are on their way to Hargeisa and he’s organising reinforcements to secure our area.’

Filsan clenches her rifle tight.

‘I have to stay until their officer returns.’ Roble pulls the strap of his rifle over his head and clicks the radio to another channel, where faint voices speak in acronyms to each
other.

‘I’ll stay too, Captain.’ Filsan takes position behind the metal bar of the checkpoint.

‘Corporal, go back to your barracks and wait for further orders.’ He turns his back on her and holds the receiver to his ear before asking a soldier, ‘What kind of numbers are
we talking about exactly in Burao?’

‘We have no idea, sir, communications keep failing.’

Filsan approaches Roble and whispers in his ear, ‘I want to stay with you.’

‘Just go, Filsan, this is serious.’

Meeting his eyes she feels a sudden surge of hatred towards him. What makes him think he is better than her? ‘I’m going, Captain.’

‘Walk her home,’ he orders to no one in particular, but she marches on ahead without waiting.

The road is a pale strip surrounded by black trees, black walls, black absences where lives should be. It is only seven p.m. but there is not a sound apart from the thud of her
boots.

She checks over her shoulder, sees a soldier from the checkpoint following her half-heartedly at a distance; his presence irritates her more and she speeds up, promising herself that she will
never even look at Roble again, that she will teach him a lesson for humiliating her. She knows she will see him at his desk the next day, excitedly describing how the rebel assault was bloodily
put down in Burao.

She doesn’t pay attention when the bushes beside her seem to whisper and shift, her eyes are fixed on the side turning to the barracks and do not register the shrubs lifting up off the
ground. She pushes a strand of hair away from her forehead and adjusts the rifle strap to stop the gun knocking against her thigh. All she wants is a shower and then to fall asleep.

Filsan ascribes the crack of a twig breaking behind her to a stray animal, the scent of musty sweat to her long physical day but a fluttering doubt makes her stop and turn around.

Stretched across the road are
jinns
with tangled branches growing from their heads and arms; she reaches out to touch one of the silhouetted figures and is surprised to feel real flesh
against her fingers.

‘Raise your hands,’ the
jinn
demands in a Hargeisa accent, before drawing a Kalashnikov up to her face.

Kawsar’s door withstands five heavy bangs before smashing open. She turns to find an adolescent soldier dressed in a camouflage jacket in her room; their eyes meet for an
instant before he retreats. The door clicks back into place but the bar lock is broken, swinging from its screws.

‘Well?’ says a voice behind him.

‘Ransacked, nothing in there. Let’s go.’

She wonders if he saw her or if he thought it was a corpse that met his gaze. How would she even know if she had died? There is no one to wail or weep beside her. No neighbour has come to check
on her and from that she knows they must be either dead or gone.

Her head is pounding and her throat sore. She pours a glass of dusty water from the jug and checks the packet of painkillers. Only five left. She swallows them down. There are still footsteps
outside her window, heavy boots on concrete. The soldiers are laughing, the mysterious delight of boys at play They are probably going through the undergarments in Maryam’s bedroom.

Kawsar rests a cheek against her damp acacia-print pillow case, tears hanging from the thin branches like leaves. She feels woozy, sepia images and sunken sounds washing up from the seabed of
her mind: the thud of policemen’s laced boots as they paraded before the District Commissioner in Salahley. She had loved that sound when she was young, remembers bringing the breakfast
dishes in a bowl to the veranda so she could listen to the thump of her husband’s feet on the grit; it flew to her over the birdsong, clinking metal plates and the British sergeant’s
screamed commands. The policemen then were beautiful, their hair glossed and parted sharply to the side, their uniforms smelling of detergent and soap. Kawsar had dressed her new husband Farah as
if he were a doll, washing and ironing his clothes every day, polishing his boots at night with Kiwi wax. She had taken pride in his appearance as well as her own. They planned to take their
country back from the British and look beautiful while doing it.

She takes another sip of water and recites the prayer for the dying. She can accept a simple bullet – there is no need for them to waste their time on an old woman – but she fears
they will pull her out of the bed or try to make her stand up. She intends to offer them the gold and cash under the mattress if they promise to not move her. It is a pathetic vigil. She places the
radio next to her ear, turns the volume down and switches it on. For years the airwaves have been a frontline in the war between the dictator and the rebels, but now Oodweyne’s voice crackles
out of the speaker, crisper, clearer and more triumphant with every word.

‘Citizens, we have been driven to extreme but decisive action. We appealed to our comrades in the North to seek peaceful means of resolving our differences; we begged them to not allow our
sovereignty to be undermined by enemies of the Somali people and their collaborators. Our forbearance in the face of terrorism has earned us the sympathy of the world, even the President of the
United States is sending aid to eradicate the threat we’re facing: a US Navy ship is expected to arrive imminently in Berbera port to deliver necessary supplies. We have the means and will to
achieve a victory never seen before in our history and all anti-revolutionaries will learn bitterly what it means to defy authority and progress.’

Before the announcement is repeated Kawsar kills his voice. It is not so painful to die when all that she knows is dying around her. It seems as if the world had been built just for her and is
being dismantled as she departs. Late one night towards the end of the sixties, in Mogadishu’s National Theatre, Kawsar had sat waiting for Farah to return to their table. She had pleaded
with him to take her out while they stayed in the capital for his police training, but everywhere they went his attention was stolen by his Somali Youth League friends. She had watched forlornly as
cleaners swept the floor and stagehands took apart the city that had seemed so alive only minutes earlier. Smooth-faced apprentice carpenters, who pinched almonds out of golden bricks of real
halwa,
dragged the comedian’s confectionery stall off the stage. A painted sunset backdrop fluttering with inky birds was rolled up and eased into a cardboard tube by another boy.
Kawsar, who had been the first to build a bungalow on October Road, would see it forced back to its original state too, the homes levelled to the ground so that the juniper trees and baboons could
return.

Deqo’s eyes snap open inside her barrel. It sounds as if men with hammers are smashing on its exterior. BANG, CRASH, BANG. She rises on her haunches and looks out but
there’s nobody there, just the usual silent circle of trees. Still the blows continue and Deqo steps out of the barrel to investigate. She hasn’t seen another soul for weeks, having
avoided the town and market in case the old man found her. The hair on her head is wild and hopelessly knotted, and her skin shows through the holes in the now-ragged dress she had fled
Nasra’s house wearing. Her mouth is raw from her diet of hard, unripe fruit and she has lost every ounce of weight she had put on in Hargeisa; now taller, lean and spare, she doesn’t
hear her footsteps when she walks, but rather seems to float over the earth, leaving no imprint. The flashes in the sky are welcome, the more rain that falls the greater her store of drinking water
in the bucket that she has appropriated from the rubbish heap under the bridge.

As she squints up, she notices how oddly the lightning strikes; it seems to shoot up from the ground rather than downwards, and the thunder is guttural and metallic at once. A plane swoops
deafeningly overhead and she stumbles into the bushes in fear. As she approaches the concrete bridge over the ditch, the ground rumbles from the procession of slow, dark green tanks crossing from
north to south; she imagines there must be another parade taking place in the stadium, another day of soldiers, speeches and dances. After the tanks pass, the bridge is empty and she climbs the
embankment up to it. She checks south to the airport and north towards the theatre: pillars of smoke stand irregularly here and there and everything is eerily quiet, apart from the mysterious
blasts she could hear from the ditch.

Curious, she heads for the
suuq,
hoping to ask one of the market women what is going on. She expects it to be open like always, with the basket women on the left and the vegetable
sellers on the right, hawkers her age milling between them selling snacks and individual cigarettes, the central market a dense confusion of heads and arms. It isn’t until she nears the huge
blue and white flag painted on the side of the local government office – the same image she has only ever seen in fragments through the crowd, but which is now revealed in its rain-bleached
entirety – that Deqo realises she is in the heart of the
suuq.
Overturned tables, crates and silence replace the world she knew, the only company the emaciated, flea-ridden cats
cowering under an awning and lapping desperately at a dark pool of blood.

Deqo checks the ground for a morsel to eat but there are only scattered peanut shells and trampled vegetables. Taking the alley adjacent to the municipal building, she soon reaches a checkpoint.
Soldiers in yellow camouflage jackets and trousers guard it, but a woman in a khaki uniform and beret gestures for Deqo to approach. ‘Put your hands in the air. Where have you come
from?’ she shouts.

‘The market.’ Deqo points behind her. ‘Where are all the traders,
Jaalle
?’

‘Somewhere in the hills. Who are you? Where are your family?’

‘I am an orphan, from Saba’ad.’

‘Put your arms down.’

Deqo drops them slowly.

‘I am hungry,
Jaalle,
where can I find some food?’

The woman walks across to another soldier, discusses something and then returns with him. ‘If you are willing to do something for us, we can provide you with food.’

Deqo shelters her eyes from the sun with her hand and nods.

‘Follow us.’ The woman leads Deqo and the soldier toward the wealthy neighbourhood on the other side of the ditch. Crouched and with their rifles poised, they peek around corners
before proceeding further. A radio on the woman’s belt crackles and she switches it off.

‘You see those houses at the end of the road?’ She points to two huge villas, their gates torn open. ‘I want you to go inside and see if there are any people in
them.’

‘Is that all?’ Deqo asks.

‘Just that and then we’ll give you something to eat.’

As Deqo tiptoes forward, emulating the soldiers, she can see that the garden walls of the villas have holes punched out, craters as large as truck tyres. The houses themselves are unscathed and
have glossy, new cars parked in front of them. Deqo glances back anxiously at the soldiers who quickly drop out of sight. She enters the compound of the slightly smaller villa and stands beside an
abandoned child’s bicycle, expecting someone to challenge her; birds rustle, guns pop in the distance, but no one emerges. The whitewashed villa has a tiled, columned veranda leading to a
glass double door. She walks inside. She counts seven rooms not including the bathroom and large kitchen. An overhead light has been left on in one of the bedrooms but she doesn’t know how to
turn it off. The rooms still smell of the family they belong to, a strange combination of washing powder, spices and children.

The larger villa next door also appears empty, but there are dirty footprints on the rug. Deqo picks up a bullet from beneath the coffee table and holds it as a kind of charm as she inspects the
rooms. There are two televisions in this house, one in the living room and one in the largest bedroom; her reflection is caught and watched by their black eyes. The kitchen is full of packets of
food she doesn’t recognise.

She sprints back to the soldiers, who beckon her around the corner.

‘Did you see anyone?’ the woman asks impatiently.

‘No, they’re empty.’

‘Are you sure you didn’t see anyone? Tell me the truth.’

‘I checked every room.’

‘What’s that in your hand?’

Deqo unfurls her fingers to reveal the bullet. The female soldier takes it from her and whispers something in her companion’s ear.

‘I found it in the larger house. Under a table.’

The soldier replaces the bullet with a melted chocolate bar from her pocket. ‘Go your own way now,’ she orders before they retreat the way they came, checking every direction like
thieves.

Roble said he had come running as soon he heard shouts. Filsan had been surrounded by a disparate gang; two older men – one in khaki, one in a safari jacket – and
two teenagers, wearing jeans and big-collared shirts.

‘Give us your gun,’ the man in khaki demanded, his rifle trained on her.

Filsan stood absolutely still, unable to respond. It was as though everything that she had learnt had deserted her.

One of the boys reset the trigger of his Kalashnikov, and the sound of the metal jolted her back into her body. She looked down the barrel and saw her own end and roared for Roble to come to
her.

Before the young gunman had the chance to recoil his Kalashnikov, a shot from the direction of the checkpoint had brought him down, with a bullet to the back.

The rebels turned to defend themselves, Filsan’s presence suddenly unimportant as she dived into the gulley they had been hiding in. The frantic exchange of fire was over in seconds,
leaving three NFM dead on the ground and the man in khaki pursued into the night by the soldiers.