The sky was now dazzlingly blue, with not even a hint of cloud. The sand around me was already almost too hot to touch. The sun burnt through my long-sleeved sweatshirt and onto the back of my neck. I felt like I was stuck in a toaster.
Awaale came back with the two blue burqas. Hijabs wouldn’t have worked for us. They’d have left our faces uncovered. I waited for him to get to within a couple of metres of where I was lying. ‘Pass me, keep walking. Don’t look down. Just carry on down into the dip where we can’t be seen.’
He did as he was told. My sweat-soaked clothes were soon caked in sand as I slithered back and followed him. Even the AK was covered with the stuff, from the perspiration on my hands.
Awaale had our purchases over his shoulder. I took off my day sack and boots. My socks would have to stay on. ‘Get your rings and watch off. Have nothing on your hands or your wrist. Old women don’t wear that shit.’
He started licking his rings and pulling them off. Women’s hands in this neck of the woods are every bit as work-worn as men’s, sometimes even more so, but round here they wouldn’t wear decadent jewellery. I thought about how they must feel under their burqas in this heat. Hard-line Islam was alien to most Somali women, especially those in rural areas who worked the land or herded goats, sheep and cattle under the scorching sun. Wearing this shit must make their already difficult lives almost unbearable. And they had to slave away for longer to pay for the fucking things.
My Timberlands went into the day sack. ‘What did you say to the old guy?’
He tucked the bling into his pockets. ‘I said I needed them because my wife and her mother were waiting in my boat, and we had to visit my wife’s sister in town. I told him she is ill and we needed to go to her immediately. I had no time to run around the town.’
I hung the day sack over my chest like a city tourist and we pulled the burqas over our heads.
‘Shoes as well, mate. Shove them in your belt. Get your feet covered in sand and shit.’
He wasn’t convinced, but did as he was told.
‘Just think of the cash, and the war stories you’ll be able to tell next time you’re round the fire.’
I looked through the triangle of blue mesh as I waited for him to sort himself out. I felt my breath against the material, making me hotter and more claustrophobic by the minute. The previous owners deserved a whole lot more than fifty dollars for having to wear this shit.
I knelt and rolled up my jeans so just my socks would be visible if the hem of the burqa rode up.
‘Do the same, mate. Roll them right up so they don’t fall down when we start moving.’
Stooping burqas don’t get a second glance. They meant age, infirmity or illness. No one would want anything to do with a couple of old birds like us.
I slid the AK under my right arm, the butt nice and tight in the pit, the barrel down my side, the magazine cupped in my hand. The metal was so hot it seared my skin.
I turned and started towards the sea. ‘Remember, mate, we’re old women. We walk slow — bend over a little. Never put your head up.’
He looked like a blue pepper-pot. The top of it nodded away at me.
‘Is your mobile off?’
His hand fiddled around beneath the material. ‘Yes, it is, Mr Nick.’
‘Right. If anything goes wrong, do exactly what I say, when I say it. You sure you know the way to the jail?’
The top of the pepper-pot nodded again.
‘OK. We’ll go back and walk along the beach. It’s less exposed. And it’ll get the bottom of these things nice and dusty. Then we’ll move into the town. If anything happens and we get split up, we meet back at the skiff.’
Even under the burqa I could tell he still wasn’t too impressed. And a lot less gung-ho now he didn’t have a weapon.
‘Awaale, I’m not going to do anything to put us in danger. I’m here to rescue them, not get into a fight. I’ll just be looking to see how I can get them out. You take me there, and maybe I won’t need you until we leave. Maybe I can do everything myself — but I won’t know until you get me there and I see where and how they’re being held. You’ll do that for me, yeah?’
The top of the pepper-pot nodded once more. I turned towards the beach. ‘OK, let’s go, then.’
The heat really was unbearable under this thing.
21
We passed skiff after skiff along the shore line. Some bobbed up and down in the waves. Others had been dragged up onto the sand. In the distance, cargo ships and yachts were silhouetted against the horizon.
I moved closer to Awaale. ‘Is one of those the Maria Feodorovna?’
The top of the pepper-pot swivelled. His breath rasped as he laboured to speak. It was like a sauna inside these things.
‘The white one, on the far left.’
‘What happens now? They just sit there?’
‘AS — they will sell them to pirates. They offered it back to Erasto. But why would he want it? He can go and steal another one. They’ll stay here until someone buys them.’
‘Will they?’
‘No.’
‘So they stay there until they rot?’
Awaale didn’t need to answer. He waved an arm. We’d come to an area of rusting hulks and the remnants of boats that had broken up in storms and washed ashore.
Awaale went to move on but I held him. ‘Where is the jail from here?’
‘We stay on the beach for a while. But then we must go into the town. I’ll take you, Mr Nick, and then we leave and you work out how to free them, yes?’
‘Yes. Just as I said — and, yes, you will be paid if you help me get them back to the airport.’
He turned, no doubt relieved.
‘One more thing, mate. Why did Erasto want to know who killed Nadif? Why did it matter to him? It’s not as if you lads worry too much about that shit, is it?’
His voice dropped. ‘Nadif was his brother, Mr Nick. He was family. Erasto will find who killed his brother, and then he will kill him.’
22
Dung fires spilt a sweet, almost herbal smell from the chimneys as we made our way into the town. The main drag was about twenty metres wide. People were already out and about. They’d want to get their business done before the sun was at its fiercest. After midday, they’d bin it until last light — which would just leave the mad dogs and Englishmen to go about their business uninterrupted, with any luck.
Like everybody else, we kept in the shade. All the women were covered up, in one way or another. Most of them carried large empty plastic containers. On the way home they’d be full of water for the day’s washing and cooking.
I caught a glimpse of some al-Shabab hard men in tribal dish-dashes and shemaghs down a side road. Long, wild beards on top; bare feet and sandals beneath. They carried AKs or RPGs. I stooped even further and kept on shuffling.
I thought about the old guy at the house. Fuck knew what he thought about Awaale coming to knock on his door to ask for a couple of burqas. I hoped they weren’t distinctive in any way. I didn’t want one of their mates to come rattling over for a chat.
This looked like the newer part of town. It would have been built at the same time as the Soviets were installing a missile facility at the port of Berbera in the 1970s and transforming Somalia’s 17,000 armed forces into some of the strongest on the continent.
The bottom metre or so of the palm trees had been given a lick of white paint a few years ago. They were all bent away from the sea. The monsoon winds would have done their best to flatten them each year. I could have done with a bit of a breeze today, although I didn’t want our burqas to do a Marilyn Monroe.