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JEEBLEH AND BILE SAT WITH THE COFFEE TABLE BETWEEN THEM. JEEBLEH was studying the photographs in an album: Raasta in her mother's arms, in her father's, the pictures showing clearly how engaged she had been since birth. The gaze of the one-week-old followed the movements of the photographer.

Now he wanted to know what Bile's first thoughts were when he joined Shanta and Faahiye.

“I feel embarrassed when I look back,” Bile told him. “Regrettably, I haven't shared my shame with a living soul. It grieves me to remember what I did.”

A hush, as quiet as early-evening shadows, descended on Bile's face. He tilted his head slightly toward Jeebleh, in the posture of a pet being stroked.

“Why is that?” Jeebleh asked.

“I wanted to touch,” Bile said.

“Just to make physical contact?” Jeebleh recollected the urge to make contact when his solitary confinement came to its abrupt end. “I remember that feeling.”

“I wanted to be touched,” Bile said, “to be held in a human embrace. The desire to touch and be touched was so great that I nearly smothered everyone I met with a hug. I'd have been one of the happiest men on earth, if someone had touched me and I had touched them, innocuously, but lovingly too.”

“How did you satisfy the urge?”

“When I look back on those days, I recall being alive, free—but alas, I lived in a house that wasn't my house, with a sister I hardly knew, whose husband I didn't get on with, and I had plenty of money that wasn't mine. The first few days, I thought about my mother, who wasn't a physical person, maybe because, as a midwife, she looked on the human body as a shoemaker looks on leather—not intimately. Shanta was a touch-touch person and, when she was young, would cuddle up to you. Caloosha was so cruel he didn't ‘touch' you—you know that yourself—he hurt you. Often I remembered with pleasure the women I had loved, especially the women who had touched me where I liked to be touched, and whom I touched where they liked me to touch. I was in a needy, touch-me-please mood when I met Dajaal, soon after I gained my freedom.”

“And he dropped you off at Shanta and Faahiye's?”

“That's right. As it happened, I walked in through the front gate and heard a moan, which had some urgency to it. Dajaal had alerted me to Shanta's condition as soon as I introduced myself to him. I suppose the groan I heard helped make the urge to touch less important, for a while at least. And before long, I was washing my hands and rolling up my sleeves, ready to get down to work.

“I wish I had seriously considered the ethical implications of a brother delivering his younger sister's baby, but there was no time—the lives of the mother and the baby weighed heavily in favor of an intervention, mine. These were abnormal times. There were no hospitals functioning, and I had no way of finding another doctor to help my sister. So I did what I had to, and got down to work right away, conscious of the conditions I was working in, which were far from ideal.”

“And where was Faahiye all the while?”

“He was there, all right.”

“Doing what?”

“I seem to remember that he was as nervous as an adolescent,” Bile said. Raasta was their first baby, the first for both. His anxiety grew, and he kept knocking at the door, coming in and going out, and putting sophomoric questions to me.

“I had no idea he would want to hold his baby as soon as she opened her lungs with the welcome of life. Not many Somali men would want to hold a baby soon after birth. For me, however, everything was unreal, and I took delight in touching, hugging, being touched and hugged, because I didn't remember what I had just done—helped at the delivery of my sister's baby, which by medical standards in our country is unethical. We quarreled over who would hold her longer.

“I hadn't the calmness of mind to comprehend why Faahiye was fussing, or sulking, and why he was walking out of the room. Whenever I didn't hold her, I regretted my error of judgment, regretted that I was hogging my niece's company, and regretted that I didn't take into account the fact that Faahiye was as eager to hold and touch the baby as I was. Only it was too late. We were two men of advanced age, one a father, the other a maternal uncle, and we were ready to fight over a baby, just born! But never in her presence.”

“And then?”

“My sister was dead to the world for much of the first day, and when she came to and held the baby, she spoke of how she had fallen under a quiet spell. We sensed calm within ourselves whenever we were close to Raasta, and if we had to fight or argue, we would go out of the room where she was. She mattered to us all, because she guaranteed our safety. She was a child born to peace, she was an alternative to attrition. She was a protected person, so anyone physically close to her would be protected too. That's what we believed.”

Jeebleh asked, “What became of the duffel bag?”

“I had clean forgotten about it,” Bile said. “Faahiye found it in the house and confronted me, asked where I had gotten the cash. We argued, and he accused me of robbery and murder. I was at peace with myself, and my conscience was at peace with the truth, as I knew it, and I knew I was no murderer or robber. But I had a problem explaining, and felt affronted by Faahiye. I was hurt. We got off to a bad start. That was what it was. And then there was Shanta's sickness.”

“What was the matter with her?”

“She had an acute inflammation, which worsened soon after she started breast-feeding. This led to abscesses. Within a day, her breasts were swollen, and because there was increased hardness toward their lower edges, I decided the baby should be bottle-fed. But then Faahiye forbade his daughter to be fed on powdered milk bought with looted money. Shanta told us that as a woman she didn't want to become a victim of what she said were ‘men's endless petty quarrels over matters she considered to be of no importance.' To her, what mattered was that the baby had milk, not where the milk came from, or in what form. Faahiye sulked. It was all pretty horrid.”

In another long silence, the two friends looked at the cat, now busy pulling at a doll into which it had dug its powerful claws.

 

 

“SHANTA'S TROUBLE IS THAT SHE IS SHANTA!”

“What do you mean?” Jeebleh said.

“She describes herself as having her hands tied with a rope of tears. By which she means she cannot help being weepy,” Bile responded. “But she can be equally tough, and refuse to compromise. When she's in an obstinate mood, she becomes a tit-for-tat person, and lets the world burn in its ashes.”

Bile explained how proud he was of her politics, what he called her “civic consciousness,” and how she would engage Caloosha's politics with foolhardy courage. “Since Raasta's disappearance, however, she's started to demonstrate worrying signs of change. While she still despises his intimacy with the warlords, she's moved closer to Caloosha ideologically, not least when it comes to clan politics.”

“How does Faahiye react to this?”

“He belongs to the old world! He can be deferential to a fault, at least in public,” Bile said. “But he can prove hard to take in private, reducing all Shanta's grievances to a woman's nagging, a naught. All the same, he behaves in an upright, old-world manner, like a man who believes in his own dignity and in the honor of the family. In contrast, she is given to outbursts, and to making a spectacle of herself in public.”

“What's been your relationship with him?”

“We've been civil with each other, as in-laws, ever since he accepted my explanation of how I came by the money in the duffel bag.”

“That's a relief.”

“We got along quite handsomely until he disappeared,” Bile said. “He and I never exchanged a harsh word over his and Shanta's difficulties, for I saw how this was an affront to him. I stayed out of it as well as I could. I tried to intervene by speaking to my sister when things got out of hand, or when, in my presence, she behaved in an ill-mannered way.”

“How did he behave when she flipped?”

“He was very restrained.”

“Even when her behavior became unbearable?”

“There was the occasion when she made uncouth comments, described him as sex-starved, and claimed that he wanted her to ‘give' it to him every night. I remember how he looked at her as an adult might look on a spoiled child,” Bile said.

Jeebleh said nothing.

“There's nothing sadder than when someone you love takes leave of her senses right in front of you. Nothing as disturbing as when a well-brought-up, sane woman behaves uncontrollably badly in public.”

It was time to change the subject. “Who named her Raasta?” Jeebleh asked.

“We named her Rajo, in the belief that the girl represented every Somali's hope. But then people misheard it as ‘Racho,' and we didn't want anyone to assume she was an orphan, so I nicknamed her ‘Raasta,' on account of her dreadlocks. She was born with beautiful natural curls, which when washed, stayed as firm as jewels.”

Jeebleh remembered a detail from several articles he had read about Raasta and The Refuge, which stated that many people lived under the aegis of the dreadlocked girl. He hoped he could meet her before he left.

Bile yawned, mumbling about wanting to rise early, and Jeebleh agreed that they should turn in. But neither moved or said anything for a while. Then Jeebleh asked, “Do you think it will be possible for me to visit Shanta?”

“She'll be happy to see you, I'm sure.”

“Maybe I can try to see her tomorrow?”

“I'll arrange the visit,” Bile said.

JEEBLEH WOKE WITH A NAGGING ANXIETY ABOUT HIS IMPENDING VISIT with Shanta, worried that he might upset her more in her already weepy state. He wondered if he shouldn't postpone the visit until more was known about the fate of the girls.

He wished more people would speak in a tongue of regrets, as Bile had suggested in his meandering way when they talked earlier, and instead of insisting that they are not to blame, would admit to their part in the collapse, to their culpability in the failure. Maybe then they would benefit from Bile's humility, his honesty and magnanimity, these being assets in themselves, and seldom found in the same person.

There were night shadows and foreboding silences in the bedroom. He thought he had heard noises after midnight, and he wondered whether Bile had sneaked out of the apartment, like a man embarking on a dangerous mission, or a lover honoring a late appointment with a partner. He had exchanged good-night greetings with Bile soon after their conversation, ready to drop into the comforting well of a deep sleep.

The day before, he had called home and given his wife and daughters his doctored version of the truth, notable for its omissions. His wife, who knew him better, queried his decision to move south.

“I couldn't stand staying in that hotel.”

“But you've often spoken of the excessive violence in the south of Mogadiscio,” his wife said. “Does it make sense for you to move there?”

Jeebleh replied with a formidable sangfroid: “I've moved in with Bile, that's how I see it. What's more important now, anyway, is that I feel safer in his company and in the setup here.”

He exchanged a few words with his daughters, to whom he offered more of the same waffle. He interpreted his action as the acceptable behavior of someone being protective toward his family. There was no reason to make them worry unnecessarily.

Jeebleh thought that he may have been woken by a ringing telephone, but he wasn't sure. He looked at the clock—about three in the morning—and decided to get some water from the kitchen. On his way, he noticed the door to Bile's room was wide open, and the bed empty. He thought of attaching the door chain for security, but he wasn't sure if, or when, Bile might return. He stayed awake for quite a while, reading, then fell asleep to the sounds of the displaced families lodging in the improvised spaces below the apartment. Much later he heard a key turning as the door was gently locked from the inside, and chains and bolts being put on. He lay obstinately asleep, like a schoolchild at wake-up time. His unconscious got to work, and he had a dream in which peahens played their part in a young woman's self-arousal. How intriguing!

At eight in the morning or thereabouts, a gentle knock on the apartment door woke him. When he came out of his room, he saw several pieces of luggage in the corridor. Probably Seamus's, he deduced from the fact that the door to Seamus's room was closed. So who could be knocking? When he asked who it was, Bile responded, “The breakfast man is here!”

To let Bile in, Jeebleh removed the chains, of which there were at least three, then slid back the bolts, of which there were two. He wasn't convinced that these impediments would stop a determined man, armed and ready to shoot his way in. All the same, it took him an inordinately long time to get the hang of undoing the chains and bolts, and Bile had to instruct him what to do when he got stuck. Finally, he unlocked a padlock on which he set eyes for the first time, a lock in a class of its own, an Italian-made affair as big as a full-grown gorilla's jaws. When he had pulled the door open and faced Bile, Jeebleh confessed that he had had no idea there was so much hardware on the door. “I doubt there is anyone in the world who's as clumsy with bolts and chains as I am!”

“I know several people who won't even have locks,” Bile told him, as he walked in, carrying a professionally packed takeout breakfast. “Since arriving in Mogadiscio, Seamus has developed a fad for bolts, heavy-duty locks, and chains. Being from Belfast, he'll tell you that he knows what guns do to people, and that he's seen it all. Which is why he refuses to keep or own guns.”