“So what did you do?”
“Together with a couple of like-minded military officers,” the driver answers, “I set up a small unit numbering a dozen or so men and representing the clan spectrum of this country. We raised the unit with a view to protecting the members of the clan families of the ‘chased-outs,’ people whose properties had been rendered fair game — taken over, looted — and whose current occupants placed under constant menace, a scenario of ‘You leave, or else the massacre!’ Many departed against their will, becoming displaced or going to refugee camps in one or the other of the neighboring countries.”
“What has become of your unit?”
“You are looking at the remnant of the unit.”
The plumber speaks for the first time, saying, “Take seven, you have a mere three.”
Cambara falls silent. In her vigorous attempt to concentrate, as though fearing that the hour of her failure is at hand, she furrows her forehead, her features a tangled affair. Of course she is sad to admit that a similar fate might be waiting to ambush her honorable intentions. Cambara will agree, if asked, that it is virtually impossible to live up to one’s high ideals in these adverse conditions, but she prays that her effort will not falter or ultimately come to naught. For she plans to construct a counterlife dependent on a few individuals, namely Kiin, maybe Bile and Dajaal, whom she has cast in the likeness of reliable allies.
When the driver parks the vehicle in front of Zaak’s house without needing further guidance, Cambara draws a breath, relaxing, and she looks as if someone has pulled her away from a disturbing view. Both of the armed escorts alight, one of them opening the gate, the other readying for any contingency, including a shootout. The driver looks this way and that before easing his foot off the brake and then engaging the gear. He stops under the shade of a tree, away from the prying eyes of prowlers who might casually spot the car.
Cambara leads the plumber into the house and shows him everything he needs to see: the kitchen, the toilets, the downstairs and the upstairs bathrooms. As he bones up on the overall situation, studying the source of the water, the pipes that have gone rusty, those that are in disrepair, and starts to scribble copious notes, she takes leave of him, suggesting they meet at the car.
Then she goes up to her room to pack two large suitcases. She fills one of them with several items of everyday clothing plus a couple of dresses for special occasions and five thousand U.S. dollars, a quarter of the money she has brought along, in cash. She stuffs the harder of the two large suitcases with books about puppetry, masks, and theater, several of them the size of coffee tables. She opens one, then takes a look at her sketches, her notes, and other relevant material that she has brought along to help her one day produce her play, a pet project at which she has been working on and off for several years, even if on the quiet. When she comes to making a choice of what to wear, she changes her mind several times and tries on different garments, mixing and matching styles before finally settling on a comfortably loose, cotton shirt and baggy trousers. She feels she can afford to do away with the veil and headwear altogether, and combs her hair, letting it down, as if reliving her young days in Mogadiscio. For effect, she wears a garbasaar shawl of the finest silk.
She decides not to ask any of the youths to help her bring down the suitcases to the vehicle and hauls it all on her own. The plumber, who is about to wrap up his note-taking and cross-checking, hears the footfalls of somebody shifting, half pulling, and half heaving a hefty suitcase with wheels down a staircase. It is only after he takes a second and a more concentrated look at the figure humping down the weighty object that he realizes that he is staring at Cambara, who has on a stylish outfit. Amazed at the mutation, he softens the impact on his mind by offering to cart it himself to the truck, only to discover that he cannot even lift it off the ground, let alone drag it the way she has been doing. Then, as if to prove a point, Cambara humps it all by herself all the way to the vehicle, while the plumber goes back into the house to retrieve his tools, measurements, and sketches. She takes notice of the armed escorts amusedly looking from her to the plumber and then calls to the driver to request that he open the boot for her, please.
On rejoining the group, the plumber, to cancel out his mates’ jeers, asks Cambara what is in the suitcase. By way of reply, she points at an airline label with a picture of a porter rubbing a bent back that reads “Very Heavy.” The plumber makes as if he will rephrase his question when the driver says to him, “It is rude to ask a lady what she is carrying in her suitcase.”
Then Cambara looks from the driver to the armed escorts and finally at the plumber, wondering aloud if one of them will please come and give her a hand to bring down a second suitcase. The men exchange equivocal glances, none volunteering to go with her, because they all assume that the second suitcase might be bulkier than the first one. Not even her throwaway, singularly charged and defiantly delivered one word, “Men,” her head raised, eyes audaciously expressive, moves any of the men to follow her.
When she rejoins them, swinging the suitcase, proving that it is much lighter than they have hypothesized, all four look embarrassed. No one, however, says anything for a long while. They get into the vehicle, the driver starts the engine, turns the radio on, maneuvering out of the gate, and then stops at the first intersection. He wants to know their destination. She instructs him where to go in a piecemeal fashion, telling him where to turn left just before they hit a bend, suggesting that he slow down prior to his veering right. Not one of the four men has the slightest idea that they are unwitting abettors, four men aiding a woman in her plot to achieve one of her aims. Nor have they the faintest inkling of their involvement in her dicey attempt to recover her family property.
They are well on their way to Cambara’s family house when, the radio still on, a news item about a street-by-street turf war involving one Gudcur and his men against another militia group attracts everyone’s attention. There is total silence inside as they listen to the latest wire dispatches filed by the Horn Afrique journalists close to the scene: Gudcur and his militiamen have lost several of their number, been pushed back a couple of streets, and have had to improvise the construction of a bunker on which they now rely as defense. According to eyewitness reports, Gudcur and his men’s fighting prowess are under a great deal of strain, given the likelihood of another militia faction to their south, whom they dislodged a year earlier, joining forces with their opponents and attacking them from the rear.
When the news ends Cambara asks the driver, the volume of her twitchy voice drowning out the music, if he knows Gudcur.
The driver switches off the radio and says, “I don’t know him personally, but I think that he is a thorough piece of work, objectionable in every possible way, and deserving of the punishment being dished out to him.”
“Give me the background,” she says, feigning total ignorance of the man and his past and current activities. “What’s the fighting about and why now?”
The driver responds, “The fighting is for control of a checkpoint close to the main intersection to a bridge, which is seen as a lucrative means of exacting charges on the road users.”