The Orchard of Lost Souls (29 page)

The jeep abandons the tarmacked road and climbs a dirt path up into the hills. ‘I can’t get any closer than this, just follow the curve to the right and you will see them.’

Filsan wipes her brow, hoping she doesn’t look or smell too bad. This isn’t how she would choose to be reunited, but it is better than waiting.

Suddenly he is there, leaning against a boulder with a pair of binoculars to his eyes; she stops to enjoy the sight of him, calm and nonchalant, as the din of machine-gun fire hitting rock
clatters only a few dozen metres away. He notices Filsan after an age, the binoculars still to his eyes but a broad smile stretching beneath his four-day stubble. He holds his arms open, despite
knowing she will not fall into them; instead she rushes up and shakes his hand between both of hers.

‘Welcome, welcome,
Jaalle
!’ He beckons her to the others. ‘This is Corporal Abbas, and Privates Samatar and Short Abdi. Tall Abdi is refreshing himself behind the
boulder.’

She salutes and they jokily click their heels to attention.

‘Have you brought anything to eat?’ Abbas asks.

‘I’m sorry, I haven’t eaten myself.’

‘We’ll die of starvation up here, I swear,’ he groans.

Filsan looks up to Roble. ‘When did you last come down to the city?’

‘Two days, it’s a shambles! They keep telling us just a few more hours, just a few more hours, but still no one has come to relieve us, apart from you that is.’

‘They didn’t tell me to bring any provisions.’ She makes a show of checking her pockets for some chocolate.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Roble pats her shoulder. ‘At least we haven’t had any trouble.’

‘None?’

‘Nothing. We have just been watching through the binoculars – it’s better than being at the cinema. Here, have a look.’ Roble lifts the binoculars from his neck and
passes them to Filsan.

Hargeisa looks beautiful for once, the sky an unusual haze of pink and purple, clouds tinted with smoke, tin roofs like golden pools reflecting the huge orange setting sun. The devastation is
lost within deep shadows. She puts the binoculars to her eyes and scans until something comes into focus: a slice of road and the wheels of a car. The burgundy Toyota stops by the side of the road
and about eight civilians disgorge from it. Other refugees run along the road and then walk a few breathless steps before resuming their flight. Swinging back to the car, she watches a father
escort his young daughter – a girl of five or six in a spotty dress – to the scrub along the track to urinate; he holds her up by the arms and keeps his shoes far away in fear of
splashes. A hail of mortars falls nearby, one of them only a few feet from where the father and daughter stand, and all the passengers jump out of the bushes and scurry back to the car. The father
darts after them and gestures desperately for the girl to catch up. She stumbles behind, dragging her underwear up with one hand. The father jumps in just as the car begins to pull away; he holds
the door open but the driver speeds off, leaving the little girl behind a screen of exhaust fumes. More missiles fall but the girl doesn’t stop her pursuit until she is engulfed in a volley
of Katyusha rocket fire. Filsan drops the binoculars in disbelief that the father has just left his child to die. The car, now just a dark speck, continues up the winding road to Ethiopia.

She imagines herself in the girl’s position and feels a sudden longing for her father back home, seeing him clearly in her mind’s eye with a tumbler of whisky in front of the
television, his right foot hitched up under his left thigh. For all his severity he would never have abandoned her like that. She had ignored the last two calls he had made to the barracks; he
wants her transferred back to Mogadishu, away from the war.

The sun has set, the silhouetted hills resembling the spines on a lizard’s back, and the town within the valley is lit here and there by fires. A call has come through declaring that they
are all to be relieved from the checkpoint for a briefing at Birjeeh and now they wait, blowing warm air onto their chilled hands. Abbas and Short Abdi have gathered twigs and built a pitiful fire,
and Roble and Filsan huddle together in silence. Tall Abdi approaches and asks for a cigarette; he is shivering and scrawny in a short-sleeved shirt. Roble gives him his half-empty packet. At last
they hear the crunch of tyres on grit, and five soldiers laden with assault rifles and an RPG arrive to replace them.

They drive slowly back to Hargeisa without headlights, hoping not to attract rebel attention or the increasingly common friendly fire from jittery conscripts. Filsan knocks against Roble as the
jeep hits one pothole after another; they are squeezed together in the back, hidden from view and he puts his arm around her shoulder. She takes his rifle and leans it against the side with hers. A
pirter patter of tracer fire sends white lights into the sky; it reminds Filsan of the cheap Chinese fireworks occasionally set off in her neighbourhood during Eid. The whites of Roble’s eyes
glow for a second in the light of a checkpoint flash and then dim.

‘The moon’s going to be strong tonight,’ he says softly.

‘How do you know?’

‘We old nomads know these mysteries.’

She elbows him gently in the ribs. ‘You know as much as I do and that’s nothing.’

‘You’ll see. Give it another two hours and you will think there are floodlights above us.’

‘I’ll be asleep in my bed in two hours, not staring up at the moon like a fool.’

‘Well, I’ll be joining the other fools for our midnight social club.’

The jeep brakes suddenly and Filsan hits her mouth against her knee.

‘What was that?’ yells the driver.

‘What?’

‘Something was just thrown at the windshield.’

‘Don’t stop, then! Drive on!’

‘Go!’ shout the other soldiers.

Filsan tastes blood and rubs a finger on the stinging area of her tongue.

A flash of light illuminates the red smear on her index finger. Less than a second after the flash, an elephant charges into the jeep; that is how it seems to Filsan, an angry bull elephant
dashing through, flinging her and Roble out onto the street.

Splayed out, holding the earth as if it might move, she turns to Roble and reaches out. ‘Get up, Roble. Get up.’

No answer.

‘How many?’ someone yells.

‘Seven, they’re all down!’ cries another.

Peeling herself up from the grit, Filsan scrabbles around her and grabs the strap of a submachine gun that has been blown out of the vehicle, pulling it near her.

Footsteps run towards her, voices calling unintelligible commands, flashlights scanning the massive wound in Roble’s back.

‘Abbas? Abdi? Can you hear me?’ she croaks.

‘I’m here, Corporal,’ whispers Tall Abdi. ‘I’m still here. Get ready.’

The rebels begin firing before she can pick any of them out. She sprays bullets into the darkness beyond the flashlights. Her grip is weak and the force of the gun makes it jump in her arms.

‘You’re going to hell,’ a fighter screams.

They turn off all of their torches and surge forward.

Filsan doesn’t stop shooting. Her gun spits out bullets and unlike in Salahley everything feels wholly real: her heart is thumping hard, she is aware of the smallest sound, feels like an
animal about to be ripped apart. The smell of burning flesh blows over to her and she holds her breath.

Somewhere beside her Tall Abdi is shooting too. Bullets ping off the frame of the smouldering jeep and hit the sand with a small puff. The rebels are around four metres away; she can’t
tell how many of them there are but she needs to maintain that distance, and she drags Roble’s Kalashnikov closer to use when her magazine runs out.

‘I’ve been hit!’ a rebel cries.

A flashlight switches on and off but it is enough for Filsan to train her sights at the figure who has briefly appeared: a bony young man in glasses who might have been any one of the science
students at her university. She squeezes the trigger and aims a barrage at him in particular.

The fire from the rebels decreases. Her eyes have adjusted to the darkness and she can make out two silhouettes, one dragging, the other limping desperately behind.

‘Don’t stop, Corporal, don’t stop.’ Tall Abdi is somewhere behind her, his voice weaker than before.

She doesn’t need any encouragement. The preservation of her small, inconsequential life – the life she has so frequently wanted to end – is now all that matters.

Another layer is added to the cacophony when a vehicle skids to a stop behind the jeep.

Still firing, Filsan glances back to see if more rebels have arrived, but instead it is a unit of soldiers in an armoured personnel carrier. She continues shooting, her whole body shuddering
with relief and fear.

The soldiers fan out around the jeep and soon two rebels crumple and hit the ground; the others try to melt back into the darkness from which they emerged but are pursued on foot.

As gunfire echoes around her, Filsan crawls on her hands and knees to Roble. His eyes and lips are open as if he has been caught mid-sentence. She puts two fingers to his jugular vein and
presses hard. Nothing.

After seven attempts, the television finally comes to life; alarming voices shouting from the wooden box make Deqo duck under the bed. A woman’s face fills the screen;
she smiles conspiratorially and talks directly to Deqo. ‘We have such a show for you, between now and ten o’clock you will be regaled by comedians, serenaded by singers and moved by
poets. Gather the family and neighbours, prepare a flask of tea and put your cares aside.’

‘OK,’ replies Deqo, peeping out.

‘Our first guest is well known to all of you. Please welcome Sheikh Sharif to Mogadishu.’

The screen expands to include Sheikh Sharif, the garish orange backdrop and the heads of the live audience. Sheikh Sharif, to Deqo’s surprise, is dressed like a poor nomad in a
ma’awis and vest in the middle of the elegant theatre, a
caday
clamped between his jaws; he races on, narrowing his eyes against the lights trained on him.

‘Take those things off me, I can’t see where I’m going,’ he hollers, holding a hand to his eyes and stumbling exaggeratedly.

Deqo laughs along with the audience.

‘
Joow!
Don’t I know you?’ He points to a man in the front row. ‘Aren’t you Hassan Madoobe’s sister-in-law’s cousin’s best friend’s
nephew? Sure you are! Wasn’t it your mother who was trampled by ostriches?’

The camera zooms in on the audience member shaking his head with mirth.

‘Sure it was! Have you brought your whole
reer
with you tonight? The place is packed as tight as the purse my wife keeps her black market dollars in.’

‘What are you telling strangers our business for?’ bawls a harsh voice from the wings.

The audience cheers and then an old woman, decades older than Sheikh Sharif, emerges waving a cane at him, chasing him around the stage while he pleads for help.
‘Tollai
!
Won’t someone stop her? Ostrich boy, come and restrain her! This is what happens when you leave the
miyi,
your manhood is left behind with the camel bones.’

Between her giggles, Deqo picks up on a commotion near the window. She wriggles from underneath the bed and pushes the curtain aside.

Four men chase a lone, suited figure. ‘Stop where you are!’

‘I’m innocent! I swear on my faith,’ the fugitive shouts, but continues to run.

‘Shoot!’ orders the captain and the soldiers obey.

Deqo watches as the bullets hit his back, twisting him into one wild pose and then another. His legs propel him a good distance before he falls to his knees by the villa gate.

‘Swear on your faith now, dead man!’ exclaims a soldier.

Deqo regards his death with the same detachment she does the television show. She has no comprehension of why these grown men are tormenting each other and is grateful for the glass separating
her from them.

Returning to the programme she watches the exploits of Sheikh Sharif and his wife impassively until a singer takes the stage. She recognises the songs from the cassettes Nasra used to play, but
this woman makes them sadder and slower. Deqo fetches an overripe banana and a packet of lollipops from the kitchen and watches the rest of the variety show until only white snow cascades over the
screen. She sleeps with the television on, bathed in blue light and shushed by white noise.

A truck takes Filsan and Tall Abdi to the hospital, along with the bodies of Roble, Short Abdi, Abbas, Samatar and the nameless driver. The floor of the van is awash with
blood, mainly from the driver’s neck where a section of shrapnel from the rocket has nearly severed his head. Roble is flat on his back, staring up at the moon, which is as bright as he had
predicted. The rush of adrenaline has left Filsan and she now feels the gunshot wound in her hip; she squeezes her trousers and blood oozes between her fingers.

Chains clang as the gate to the main hospital creaks open for them; an orderly in blue helps her down from the back while Tall Abdi is stretchered out. He fought the battle with a chunk of
muscle blown out of his abdomen, but now wails like a child, pleading for help from God, from the doctors, from his mother. Filsan holds onto the orderly as the van trundles to the morgue, her
heart imploding as if primed with dynamite. She shakes her head in disbelief, wishing for a way to rewind time by just half an hour to change this ending.

‘Come on, come on, it’s not safe out here,’ the orderly warns.

He leads her to the emergency ward. They have to pick their way carefully through the beds and the casualties on the floor with assorted tubes attached to them. A pink-uniformed nurse directs
them to a stained bed in the corner with a curtain around it for privacy. The middle-aged woman brusquely sends the orderly away and tells Filsan to lie down, then whips the curtain closed with a
noise like knives being sharpened and asks what’s wrong with her.

‘My hip,’ she winces.

The nurse yanks down Filsan’s trousers and underwear and prods the swollen wound with her bare hands. ‘It’s just a surface injury.’