The prayer inexplicably protracted, the old man leading it recites longer verses. She can only think that he is doing this because he believes the mission on which the armed escorts, the driver, the plumber, and Cambara are embarking is a dangerous one, and who can tell, maybe it is. For her part, Cambara prepares herself mentally for the return trip to Zaak’s and then a visit to the property, the first in the company of anyone, most importantly armed escorts. She also primes her body for what she ranks to be her new station, in which she need not wear a veil if she is not of a mind to do so.
Now that she judges the veil to be a kind of entrapment, she removes the head scarf when no one is watching. When her eyes meet the driver’s — his lips still astir with his recital of more Koranic verses — she smiles and then feels triumphant when he nods, presumably in approval of what she has done. She struggles to undo the knotted strings of her veil. She cranks down her side of the window, allowing the breeze to circulate more, and she revels in the waves of fresh wind fondling her cheeks and ears. Emboldened, she fiddles afresh with the knots of her head scarf, which now mysteriously slip off most easily. She exposes a bit of her hair, shifts in her seat, and sitting back, takes off the headwear altogether. Only the driver keeps a watchful eye on her doings; all the others, with their backs to her, are paying attention to the Koranic recitation. Her veil removed, she is, in her mind’s eye, wearing a chemise, bought from a Pakistani outlet in Toronto, with a custom-made pair of baggy linen trousers.
Finally, the prayer ended, they all shake hands with the old man who led them through the worship, thanking him; he blesses the armed escorts, who retrieve their weapons and put on their shoes, and the plumber, who gathers his tools. He advises them to be careful. Then he bids farewell to the chef and the waiters, who go their own ways. The driver is the first to get into the car, and as each of the armed escorts finds his own cosy corner in the truck, the plumber is the last to enter, he places his tools at his feet, and slumps in the back. The driver opens the glove compartment and takes out the revolver, tucking it away in his top shirt pocket. Two of the armed escorts are badgering each other with personal questions neither has the desire to answer.
Cambara sits up front, eyes focused ahead of her, conscious of her closeness to the driver, whose hands keep colliding with hers whenever he changes the gears. She cannot tell if he is doing this to elicit some sort of response or if it is coincidental. Infused with self-doubts — she remembers him watching her with keen interest as she doffed her veil, then her headscarf. Maybe he thinks of her as modern, that is to say, game? She backs out, withdrawing into her silent thinking. She pictures finding Zaak or Gudcur in their respective houses, slouched and chewing their midday usual.
She reckons that convincing Zaak of her good intentions, if he happens to be home when she gets there today, with a plumber moving about the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms as well as the kitchen, will perhaps be easier with than coping with Gudcur’s fury. She dares not imagine what he may do once he takes umbrage. After all, running into Gudcur, with a plumber, driver, and armed escorts in tow will bring her face to face with the stickiest of situations, the first of its perilous kind. It will be interesting to see how she holds up against the minor warlord, who, to find out what she is up to, will do his utmost to break down her resistance. Not having met the fellow in the flesh, awake, and not having gathered sufficient information about his character or weaknesses, Cambara can only conjure up the worst of scenarios: shootouts, deaths, and more blood. She imagines Gudcur’s murderous fluids surging up within him, going to his head, spurting and squirting, boiling over and burning everything and everyone in sight. In all likelihood, the man, becoming angrier and therefore deadlier, will raise the stakes the moment he realizes that she has been coming repeatedly to the house, visiting Jiijo and his children, on whom she has been lavishing sweets. He will want her to explain her motives and the purpose of her visits; he will want to know her identity, why she is bringing his wife and children presents, why she is driving around with a plumber to his house, and why she has come with armed escorts from another clan. Gudcur will insist that Cambara tell him what her business with his family and his house are.
It takes the driver several attempts to reverse the vehicle out of a tight spot. He wheels the pre-power-steering model forward and then backward, his gear-changing polished, professional, and fast. However, when the two young escorts share a private joke, burst into laughter, and begin to roll in their seats in stitches, the driver loses his composure, braking just in time before crashing into a tree and then halting crudely before the front of the vehicle collides with the wall to his back. Unspeaking, the plumber is contemplative.
After the vehicle has exited and then eventually picked up moderate speed, heading north, and it hits one of the main subsidiary roads, Cambara prepares to give the driver several leads to help him get them to Zaak’s place. Just then, she observes the driver’s sudden loss of poise, which does not make sense to her until one of the armed escorts talks of his and the driver’s last visit to the northern neighborhoods of the city. In his account, the young man tells her that the visit dates back to a decade ago when he and the driver participated in some of the fiercest skirmishes between former warlords StrongmanNorth and StrongmanSouth.
To keep panic from setting in, Cambara asks the driver questions, all the while struggling not to lose her sangfroid and doing her best to sound convincing and appear unruffled.
“On whose side did you and the driver fight?” she says and then looks away, almost trembling with judicious displeasure.
“We fought alongside StrongmanSouth’s clansmen, who were allied with ours,” replies one of the armed escorts in the back.
When her attempt to will herself into listening to the conversation without making comments proves unsuccessful and she settles on pandering to her curiosity, Cambara creases her features to display her displeasure with this stance. Then she sees herself as a woman with little knowledge of this thing everyone calls “the clan business,” the unruliness of whose politics has brought the nation to ruin. That she is sharing the confined space of a vehicle with four men, three of whom have blood on their hands, makes her question the credentials of people like Kiin, who employ them. She wonders if she will rue her short-sightedness, if she will regret the fact that she has accepted Kiin’s kind offer to lend her a car, a driver, and armed escort; call up a plumber, whom she uses herself; and help her to achieve her aims, whatever these are, since she has not insisted that Cambara tell her. But she thinks she doesn’t want to go there, because in a civil war no one is innocent: men, women, youths, clerics, everyone is an accomplice in the killing and maiming of others, known and unknown. As the motorcar hurtles forward, she turns to the driver and asks him what his profession used to be before the country’s collapse.
“I joined the National Army, now defunct, before taking my secondary-school finals and was sent away to the then Soviet Union on a scholarship to Odessa, where I trained as a tank engineer,” he replies.
Cambara asks the driver, “Do you happen to remember where you were or rather what you were doing when Siyad Barre, the tyrant, fled the city in an army tank?”
“I was one of the few senior-ranking army officers who refused to join the militia that was out to take Mogadiscio, because it was there for the taking,” the driver responds. “We learned soon enough, and especially after the dictator had fled and the presidential palace had fallen into the hands of the nativists, those of us fighting to live up to the ideals of the National Army formed a very small minority, but we were fighting a losing battle.”