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Jeebleh observed that after retrieving their baggage, the passengers congregated around the entrance to a lean-to shed, pushing, shoving, and engaged in acrimonious dispute. A minute later, he worked out that the shack was “Immigration,” when he saw some of the passengers handing over their passports, and the men inside receiving the documents and disappearing. If the lean-to was the place to have his passport stamped, who, then, were the men inside, since they had no uniforms? What authority did they represent, given that Somalia had had no central government for several years now, after the collapse of the military regime that had run the country to total ruin?

Turning—because the man spoke again, repeating his remark about guns—Jeebleh saw the stranger's late-afternoon shadow, and decided that he and the man had never met before. If they had, he would have remembered, because this man boasted a mouth that wasn't much of a mouth, with a pair of lips that appeared tucked away, virtually invisible. He was very tall and unnaturally thin. Jeebleh couldn't help wondering to himself whether the man hadn't been looking after himself in the style to which he had once been accustomed, or whether he had always been thin. But seeing his dignified posture and the way he carried himself, Jeebleh couldn't imagine how anyone could survive and prosper in the conditions of Mogadiscio, described to Jeebleh by Somalis in the know as cloak-and-dagger, man-eat-man politics. The man was probably educated, and perhaps had held a high position during the former brutal dictatorial regime, whose popular overthrow had led to the ongoing strife. Or he may have been a well-regarded academic at the National University, now to all intents and purposes defunct.

“What do guns lack?”

The man repeated, “They lack the body of human truths!”

Jeebleh thought: There you are! For it was no accident that the first sentence spoken to him by a stranger began with the word “guns.” This was emblematic of the civil war vocabulary, and times being what they were, he was sure he would have many opportunities to listen to everyone's take on guns and related terms.

He looked away, and his gaze fell on two youths with missing limbs, asking passengers and onlookers alike to take them to an outlying shack where they might make telephone calls, or escort them to a depot not far away where they could get transport to the city. He quickly averted his eyes, turning his full attention back to the man. Jeebleh felt weak, and sensed vaguely that something wasn't right.

“Everyone calls me Af-Laawe,” the man said.

Jeebleh was embarrassed for his lack of manners in not shaking the man's extended hand, and for his own failure to reciprocate and introduce himself.

Af-Laawe continued, “You need not bother yourself, because your reputation precedes you. So let me welcome you home, Jeebleh!”

The sun moved in a dazzle. And as though in a daze, Jeebleh looked about, certain that at a conscious level he was not sufficiently prepared for the shocks in store for him during this visit, his first to Mogadiscio in more than two decades. He would have to adapt to the new situation. He reminded himself that he had felt a strange impulse to come, after an alarming brush with death. He had nearly been run over by a Somali, new to New York and driving a taxi illegally. He hoped that by coming to Mogadiscio, the city of death, he might disorient death. Meanwhile, he had looked forward to linking up with Bile and, he hoped, meeting his very dear friend's niece Raasta, who had lately been abducted.

“How do you know who I am?”

“I'm a friend of Bile's,” the man responded.

“How is Bile doing?”

“It depends on who you talk to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bile has many detractors, people who associate his name with terrible deeds!”

“Are you one of his detractors?”

The question seemed to throw Af-Laawe off balance, and he fell silent. In the meantime, Jeebleh made sure he had his carry-on and his shoulder bag, in which he kept his documents, firmly between his feet. Distrustful of the thin man's motives, he tried a different tack to come to grips with his discomfort about everything since his arrival. “Did Bile know I was on this flight?” he asked.

“Maybe Nairobi rang to alert me.”

“You speak as though ‘Nairobi' were someone's name,” he said, and waited for Af-Laawe, who was proving hard to pin down.

Af-Laawe was clearly happy to steer the conversation away from Bile. “Some of us think of the cities we know very well and where we've lived as intimate friends.”

Jeebleh knew what he meant, knew that in moments of great anxiety, one may mistake the self for the world. But he explicitly checked his precautionary measures, pulling his shoulder bag and carry-on onto his body. He had his few clothes in his shoulder bag. On advice from friends in Kenya, where he had spent a couple of days, he had left a bigger suitcase in Nairobi, depositing it at the left luggage of his hotel. He had brought more books than clothes with him to Mogadiscio, assuming that reading material would be more difficult to come by in a city ruled to ruin by gunrunners.

Now he massaged his right shoulder, which was giving him cause for worry, because one of the bags contained many hardcover books—gifts for Bile, who would appreciate them, he was sure. Jeebleh had stashed away much of his cash, a few thousand U.S. dollars in large denominations, in his wallet. He had to bring his money in cash, as there were no functioning banks here. “Tell me more about Bile's detractors.”

“He still runs The Refuge.”

“What is to criticize about running a refuge?”

“Our country is full of detractors, out to defame the name of anyone ready to do good things,” Af-Laawe responded. “Bile has his fair share of detractors because he is successful at what he's doing. As a people, we have the penchant for envying achievers, whom we try to bring down to where we are, at the bottom.”

“But tell me more about Bile. Why so much detraction?”

“People question the source of the money with which he set up The Refuge.”

“How did he get the money?”

“His detractors speak of murder and robbery.”

“Bile murdering and robbing?”

“Civil wars have a way of making people behave contrary to their own nature,” Af-Laawe said. “You'd be surprised to know what goes on, or what people get up to. At times, it's difficult to tell the good from the bad.”

“Not Bile!”

“You have heard about his niece?” Af-Laawe said. “That she's been abducted, rumor has it, by men related to the people Bile has allegedly murdered and robbed? Supposedly, the kidnappers have said they won't set his niece and her companion free until he has given back the money he stole, or confesses to having committed the murders.” Af-Laawe watched silently as Jeebleh stared at him with so much distrust spreading over his features.

“A lot of what you've told me is news to me,” Jeebleh said, and after a brief pause added, “From what I know, the abductions have a political motive. In fact, I recall reading somewhere that StrongmanSouth, the warlord, is implicated.”

“Where have you read that?”

“In the American press.”

“What do Americans know about things here?”

The man had a valid point, and Jeebleh chose not to challenge him until he knew more. He was silent for a long while, pondering how to continue this conversation. Finally he asked, “Were Raasta and her companion abducted together or separately?”

“Raasta and her playmate, Makka, who has Down's syndrome, shared a room,” Af-Laawe replied. “They were inseparable. You saw one, you saw the other, you thought of one, you thought of the other too.”

“How's Bile taking it?”

“He's devastated.”

Jeebleh shook his head in sorrow, as he remembered reading an article about the abduction in
The New York Times.
The article had described Raasta as a symbol of peace in war-torn Somalia, the stuff of myth, seen by the city's residents as a conduit to a harmonious coexistence. Jeebleh could remember parts of the story word for word: “People believe that they will not come to harm if they are in her vicinity; they feel safe from arbitrary murder, from stray bullets or from the pointless death of a mugging. This is why ordinary people seek shelter at The Refuge, where she resides.”

“If Bile just returns the money, will they be set free?”

“There's no guarantee,” Af-Laawe said.

“Does anyone know who the abductors are?”

But when Jeebleh turned to hear his response, Af-Laawe was gone, and he was face to face with three armed youths. Terror-stricken, he wondered if he had conjured the man, with a little help from a friendly jinni, out of desperate need for a guide to help him navigate the anarchic city.

 

 

WHAT BEASTLY MOTIVE DID THESE ARMED YOUTHS HAVE FOR TAKING UP POSITION so close to where he was standing? Nonplussed by their devil-may-care postures and ragged outfits, Jeebleh supposed they were not acting with the authority of the police, who would have had uniforms and badges. He was certain that even if they had been in uniform, they would hardly have looked the part. And in any case, Somalis would not defer to someone simply because of his uniform: he would still be an armed thug trying to maintain authority.

Jeebleh remembered seeing a German play when he was a student in Italy, a play set in Prussia at the end of World War I, in which an ex-convict, with no papers, dons an officer's uniform. Saluted and deferred to wherever he goes, his every word deemed to contain the voice of authority, he is welcomed everywhere; unlimited credit facilities are extended to him. Somalis never defer to the authority of a uniform in the way the Germans do, Jeebleh thought. We will defer only to the brute force of guns. Maybe the answer lies in the nation's history since the days of colonialism, and later in those of the Dictator, and more recently during the presence of U.S. troops: these treacherous times have disabused us of our faith in uniformed authorities—which have proven to be redundant, corrupt, clannish, insensitive, and unjust.

Then he heard the word “Passport,” and turning, found himself before a man, neither in uniform nor bearing a gun, who seemed to arrogate authority to himself. Jeebleh looked him slowly up and down, questioning the wisdom of surrendering his passport on the say-so of a total stranger. Yet he dared not ask that the man show him proof of his authority to make such a request. Suddenly Af-Laawe was back, and no sooner had Jeebleh opened his mouth to speak than Af-Laawe broke in, his voice low and firm, advising: “Do as the man says. Give him your passport and twenty U.S. dollars cash. He'll stamp the passport and return it to you, together with a receipt.”

Was he being set up? And if so, what should he do? Af-Laawe seemed to wield certain power hereabouts, but could he be trusted? And who were the gunmen? Being from New York, the Metropolis of Mistrust, Jeebleh decided not to part with his American passport. He reached into his shoulder bag and pulled out the Somali document, recently issued by the embassy in Rome, and a crisp twenty-dollar bill. He left his American passport where it was, together with the cash, in his wallet. The man leafed through the pages and demanded, “Why do you give me a Somali passport, not at all used, and with no visas in it?”

Jeebleh turned to Af-Laawe, and with a touch of sarcasm addressed both men: “When has it become necessary for a Somali to require a visa to enter Mogadiscio?”

“Is he taking us for fools?” the man protested.

“Please take the twenty dollars,” Af-Laawe told him, “accept his Somali passport, and return it stamped, with a receipt.
Pronto!
”

For a moment, the man paused, and it seemed he might not be willing to oblige. Af-Laawe pulled him aside and out of Jeebleh's earshot.

Jeebleh's thoughts drifted back more than twenty years, to the last time he had used a Somali passport. It had been at the Mogadiscio international airport, about forty kilometers south of here, and he recalled how a man—not in uniform, and without a gun—had taken his passport and disappeared for an eternity. Jeebleh was on his way to Europe, and he worried that he might be prevented from leaving the country, then under the tyrannical rule of the Dictator. Bile and several others, who had apprenticed themselves to Jeebleh politically, had been picked up by the National Security the night before. There was every possibility that, as their mentor, he too would be arrested. And he was.

He had been driven straight from the airport to prison. He was brought before a kangaroo court and sentenced to death. Several years later, he was mysteriously taken from the prison in a National Security vehicle and driven to the VIP lounge of the same airport, where he changed from his prison rags into a suit. He was handed a passport with a one-year Kenyan visa and put on a plane to Nairobi, all expenses paid. Someone whose name he could no longer remember suggested that he present himself at the U.S. embassy. There he was issued a multiple-entry visa for the United States. He still wondered who had done all this for him, and why.

Now, as he waited for Af-Laawe to return, he held the two contradictory images in his mind. In one, he was dressed in a suit, being roughly handcuffed and taken in a security vehicle, sirens blaring, straight to prison; in the other, he was in rags, being driven back to the airport, to be flown to Nairobi. In one, the officers escorting him to prison were crass; in the other, the officers were the epitome of courtesy. That's dictatorship for you. This is civil war for you!

With every cell in his body responding to his restless caution, he wished he knew where danger lurked, who was a friend and who a foe. He had once been used to the arbitrariness of a dictatorial regime, where one might be thrown into detention on the basis of a rumor. That had been exchanged here for a cruder arbitrariness—a civil anarchy in which one might die at the hands of an armed youth because one belonged to a different clan family from his, if there was even that much reason.