The Orchard of Lost Souls (21 page)

She drinks the tea immediately its heat scorching her throat in a way she finds pleasant. This is the entirety of her breakfast. She has never been taught to cook; her father preferred her to
concentrate on her studies and leave the domestic work to the maids, but now she wishes that she could rustle something up rather than depending on take-out food. Looking around the dark kitchen
and hearing the gurgle of her stomach, Filsan feels like an orphaned child rather than just a motherless one. Back home, her housekeeper Intisaar would have covered the dining table with a vinyl
sheet decorated with small yellow flowers and laid out a flask of black tea, a jug of orange juice, a fruit salad of mangoes, papayas and bananas, a plateful of
laxoox
hidden under a domed
fly guard, and if her father had requested it the night before, scrambled eggs and lamb kidneys.

The other women – there are about fifty all together in the barracks – drift into the kitchen while Filsan nurses her empty cup and gazes at the view beyond the window, a bare yard
crisscrossed by poles and clotheslines in the foreground with the two domes of the central mosque behind. Breezeblocks abandoned when the nearly completed hotel was commandeered by the military
form another kind of barracks for cooing pigeons beneath the window. She ignores her comrades as they ignore her, but what would she say to them if she could? She would tell them that she has never
been good at making friends, that Intisaar’s children had seemed kind but had not been allowed inside the house by her father, that the neighbourhood kids had scorned her, that she found it
easier to talk to her father’s friends, that her face was closed because she didn’t know how to open it. Silence takes the place of all those words and her loneliness remains as dense
and close as a shadow.

She rinses her cup, locks it away and returns to her room to make the bed before departing for the offices of the Mobile Military Court. The scheduled assignment to the Regional Security Council
had vanished the minute she had been thrown out of Haaruun’s car, and instead she was told to investigate returned sailors and café owners suspected of anti-revolutionary activities.
She hears laughter from the kitchen as she turns the handle to her room and knows it is aimed at her; it is hard to tell whether her comrades find it ridiculous that she would reject Haaruun, or if
it were just funny to them that anyone would want her.

As she enters and bends down to pick up a sock, she is overwhelmed by an urge to wail, her blood suddenly darkening with self-loathing, with anger that her life should be so small and
inconsequential, that this two-metre-by-two-metre cell should be the span of her world. Her father had locked her away, had told her she wouldn’t regret the decisions he had made for her,
that she would be a new kind of woman with the same abilities and opportunities as any man, but instead she lives the celibate, sterile, quiet existence of a nun, growing nothing but grey hairs.
All her life she has been left to gather dust, as unseen as a picture on the wall, and to wail and roar and strike out sometimes seems the only way she will ever be heard.

The offices of the Mobile Military Court are in an old colonial complex. The brick chimney jutting out from one of the rooftops is something she had not seen in Mogadishu,
where the weather was never less than sultry; here the wind is so cold and fierce at times that it is not hard to imagine an Englishman dozing by a fire with a long-haired dog at his feet. In her
Spartan office there are just two desks, one for Captain Yasin and a small, scratched one for her, Corporal Adan Ali. They co-ordinate a string of bureaus across north-western Somalia which, since
the fierce NFM rebel attacks on Sheikh and Burao were put down in 1984, have jurisdiction over civilians as well as military personnel. On her desk is a multi-coloured pile of reports, warrants and
court transcripts; her eyes are immediately drawn to the two green documents that represent two more death sentences handed down by Colonel Magan, court prosecutor and judge. The Colonel works in
an adjacent building and rarely visits them, but his brutality comes across clearly in the red-inked words he leaves on the margins of her transcripts: ‘He is a buffoon and liar’;
‘Why haven’t we got rid of this one yet?’; or more commonly ‘Track down his friends’. He has already sent more to their deaths this year than the National Security
Service or Regional Security Council. It is like sitting in the middle of a spider’s web, pulling in tendrils to see where flies have been caught, everyone related by clan or by marriage, one
rebel leading to dozens more and requiring more ink for her typewriter.

She is an office worker within the military, neither noticed nor commended by the gold-braided men above her, and it galls her that despite two years of enlistment in the Women’s Auxiliary
Corps and five years working for the green-uniformed enforcers of the regime, the Victory Pioneers, her chief tasks are still those of a secretary. Had her father been dreaming or lying when he
told her that she would make the ground shake in Hargeisa? Had he been drunk? Or just desperate to remove her from Mogadishu in case the suspicion around him became something more tangible and
sinister? In the notes sent from the agents to her desk she sees how difficult it is to interpret someone’s actions, intentions, words; if she had to create a dossier on her own unknowable
father, where would she even begin? He had shown her both tenderness and contempt, cruelty and honour, a glimpse of the world through the bars of his love. She sees him now pacing the flat roof of
their three-storey villa in Mogadishu, a strip of the Indian Ocean visible between two slender minarets, watching over the neighbourhood with binoculars, scanning east and west for the spies he
believes watch him.

Captain Yasin arrives, tall and elegant in his black beret. With just the two of them in the office she cannot help but watch him all day: his regular strolls around the office and into the
corridor, the private calls he makes on the only telephone line in their department, the menthol cigarette butts slowly filling his dark glass ashtray, the tin of mints he rattles absent-mindedly
when frowning over some problem.

Filsan stands up and salutes him but he smiles and holds up his hands, palms outward.

‘Now don’t get too excited, Miss Corporal, but I spoke to Major Adow a few days ago and he asked me if I could recommend a persuasive graduate to go on a mission to educate those
troublesome nomads at the border. I looked high and low and then I remembered you, crouched over your little desk. Such efficiency! Such honesty!’

Filsan looks up at him with both contempt and desire.

‘To Birjeeh with you, on the double!’ He points dramatically to the door and she laughs despite herself. His eyes track her as she leaves the room with an interest she doesn’t
find unwelcome.

Birjeeh Military HQ has the unexpected presence of an enchanted castle perched on a barren hill, partially hidden behind high crenellated walls with watchtowers; the wide
arched entrance only needs a portcullis and moat to finish the picture. Filsan has escorted prisoners to the concrete armoury that now functions as a detention room, but can imagine long-forgotten
prisoners with scraggly beards hidden in secret underground cells.

The logistics officer, Lieutenant Hashi, ushers her to the Major’s office with a scowl on his tight, fox-like face, already aggravated by something.

The room is crowded with thirty muscular commandos from the locally garrisoned 26th Infantry Division. They stand in a crescent shape around Major Adow, but between their bodies she can see
snatches of the brown, khaki and gold of his jacket, a black pen held between his fingers like a wand.

‘Come closer, Comrades,’ he says before standing up. Filsan notices that his height remains the same.

Lieutenant Hashi unrolls a map and pins its corners to the felt board behind the desk. It shows the north-western region of Somalia in minute detail: waterholes, reservoirs, dry riverbeds, dirt
tracks. There are three blue circles on the map over villages near the Ethiopian border; enclosing the blue circles are red semi-circles.

Major Adow points his pen at each blue circle and names it in turn. ‘Salahley, Baha Dhamal, Ina Guuhaa. We have solid intelligence that NFM rebels are fed, watered and sheltered in these
villages. Ever since the secessionists moved their headquarters from London to Ethiopia they have been getting bolder and bolder, and it is places like these that allow them to think they stand a
chance in hell of defeating us.’

Filsan stands at armpit height to the soldiers; she finds herself enjoying their smell, the musk of their sweat mixed with hair and gun oil.

Lieutenant Hashi catches her gaze, his bloodshot stare intended to intimidate her, but it is nothing in comparison to her father’s.

‘You are charged with demolishing the water reservoirs of Salahley. They have been building one every year for more than ten years now and have given some over to the rebels to use.
Corporal Adan Ali! Where are you, my girl?’ Major Adow shouts.

Filsan pushes forward until she is a metre away from the desk.

‘It is your duty to communicate our anger and ensure that it is understood that further punitive measures can and will be enforced. We need an educated comrade who can articulate the
principles of the revolution. That’s you, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Major,’ replies Filsan quickly.

‘They will have water trucked in monthly and they can use their traditional wells.’

‘I will tell them, sir.’

‘The exact date and time of the operation will be confirmed by Lieutenant Hashi. Baha Dhamal and Ina Guuhaa will be dealt with by the Fourth and Eighteenth Sectors simultaneously. Are
there any questions?’

The soldiers shift nervously but don’t reply. Filsan has an urge to speak but fears appearing too arrogant. She clears her throat and all faces turn to her. ‘Will we be taking
prisoners?’ she almost whispers.

Major Adow smiles broadly, the same kind of smile he would give a dog riding a bicycle. ‘Good question,
Jaalle.
We have yet to confirm that detail but well done for speaking
up.’

Filsan sees the other soldiers smiling condescendingly, even though they were too cowardly to raise their own voices.

Hashi gestures to his watch and Major Adow nods. ‘Comrades, let us end this meeting.’ He raises his fist in the air and bellows, ‘Victory for the Party. Victory for the
National Army. Death and defeat to the rebels.’

Filsan shouts the slogan in unison with the other soldiers, pumping her fist in the air.

Filsan’s eyes snap open. Damp sheets twist themselves around her legs. Fragments of songs circle her mind, love songs that she knows the surface meaning of but not the
deepdown; in the pitch black they sound taunting and nightmarish. The Salahley operation will be her first in the field, the first time she has left Hargeisa since arriving, and excitement prevents
her closing her eyes for long. She is living a soldier’s life while her father sits in front of the television watching Egyptian soap operas.

The call comes two days later. They are scheduled to leave Hargeisa at five in the morning and arrive in Salahley by nine if they drive at full speed. The truck will pick them
up at Birjeeh and then head for the west. Filsan had hoped that her period would wait until after the operation, but as if to spite her it comes early blanching her face and nearly doubling her
over with cramps. She gulps back black tea after black tea and avoids eating anything that might worsen her nausea, but by the morning of the attack she is curled up, sobbing at how diminished she
feels. Taking a deep breath she unfurls her limbs and forces herself through her morning routine. She arrives at Birjeeh before the others, the sky still dark but birds flapping and shaking each
other awake in the branches. The compound looks even more imposing now, its walls blending into the darkness beyond to form a citadel of ether and stone.

The unit of thirty men and Filsan leave Birjeeh in a convoy of four large trucks of the type the locals call ‘the fates’ because of their involvement in dozens of fatal traffic
accidents. Filsan rides in the passenger seat of the first truck, the pain in her abdomen and back lulled by the gentle reverberations of the engine. The driver had held out his arm as she
struggled to clamber into the tall vehicle, but apart from that there is no exchange between them.

‘Morning, Corporal.’ Lieutenant Afrah twists his neck into the cab from the bench behind.

‘Good morning, sir.’ Filsan salutes awkwardly. The Lieutenant has the strange-coloured eyes that some Somalis possess, brown around the pupil with a thick halo of blue as if he is
going blind.

‘Are you nervous?’ He smiles and reveals the sweet gap between his teeth.

‘No, I just want to do a decent job.’

‘It will be easy, in and out before the engine’s even cooled. I have a rifle here for you, an FAL automatic. The recoil isn’t so bad on them, better for you than the
Kalashnikov Major Adow said you have had arms training?’

‘With the Women’s Auxiliary Corps, but that was some time ago. I don’t know . . .’

‘You won’t need it; it will just be a deterrent if there are any troublemakers in the village.’

‘Yes, Lieutenant.’ Filsan takes it from him; the stock is relatively short while the barrel scrapes the roof of the lorry. She holds it across her chest with the strap over her back;
she never hit the targets well during practice in Mogadishu but it feels good to hold a rifle again; a gun makes a soldier even out of a woman.

She presses the cold butt against her stomach and leans back, eavesdropping on the muttered conversation between two commandos just behind her. They are talking about a woman one of them has had
sex with in a way that makes the woman sound like some kind of animal he has caught and killed.

They sail through the last urban checkpoint and leave the messy, compacted town to shrink and disappear in the rear-view mirror. A rim of light is developing all around them, as blotchy and
bright as over-exposed film, the horizon broken up by lopsided pyramids of granite.