She knows it sounds naive even as she formulates the question, but she asks it all the same. She says, “Is it lucrative enough to meet his financial needs?”
“He wouldn’t fight if it were not.”
“How many checkpoints would a man like him control to make enough to feed his fighters and live in grand style?” she asks.
“He is a middle-ranking warlord,” the driver explains, “subordinate to the high-ranking strongmen who have earned the right to occupy center stage in the country’s politics and who are invited to every National Reconciliation conference held to provide our failed state with a central government. Gudcur is an ally of the current incumbent of StrongmanSouth’s hub of operations.”
Then one of the armed escorts joins in, throwing his words of contempt as if the object of his derision, Gudcur, were in the vehicle with them, sitting between Cambara and the driver. He says, “We are happy to hear that he is thrashing around, like a fish caught in a net.”
The other armed escort nods his head vigorously in agreement with his mate. The plumber’s closemouthed stance, however, bothers Cambara, because she has no idea what to make of his reticence, why he is tight-lipped. She assumes that it does not happen often that a professional residing in Mogadiscio does not confer empathy or loathing on the activities of a warlord, especially in a street-by-street battle for the taking of a checkpoint, the control of which allows him to impose a duty on every motor vehicle or good that comes through it.
Cambara says, “I hadn’t realized.”
“What? What hadn’t you realized?”
Her heavy breathing is audible in the confines of the truck as she wears an impish grin on her forehead crossing swords with a tangle of fretfulness. This is because she is sick with worry, fearful that, unbeknownst to the four men, she is taking them to Gudcur’s lair.
Scarcely has she prepared to intimate her deep involvement in Jiijo’s life and her very complex connection to Gudcur than she realizes that they are almost there. Drawing comfort from the fact that she is not likely to meet Gudcur there, Cambara presses ahead and then tells the driver to stop opposite but not too close to the gate. Then she and the plumber alight, leaving the driver and the armed escorts to remain in the vehicle, covering them, in case of problems.
She knocks hard on the gate several times before anyone responds. She says, “It is me,” to Jiijo’s apprehensive “Who is it?”
Cambara is relieved that Jiijo is on her own.
When Cambara asks Jiijo where her husband and his fellow qaat-chewing mates are, Jiijo replies that they are out, attending to some important business without saying what this is. Cambara focuses her watchful eyes now on Jiijo in her vigilant attempt to puzzle out if she is telling the truth and now on the plumber to suss out if he knows about Jiijo being Gudcur’s woman. Cambara infers from her cursory, hastily arrived supposition that neither is privy to other’s secrets or identity.
Then she inquires where the children are, and Jiijo explains that someone has “come for them.” Even though she notes that Jiijo does not elaborate, she does not put her on the spot, quiz her on who has “come for them,” or if she, Jiijo, knows to which refuge the children have been spirited away for their own safety. And why has that “someone” left her to fend for herself alone, in spite of her advanced state of pregnancy? Does it mean that insofar as Gudcur is concerned, she is dispensable? Cambara lets Jiijo’s statement stand without comment or further questioning.
Then Jiijo asks, “Who is this man?” sizing up the plumber to determine whether he is friend or foe. “And why have you brought him here?”
Cambara’s answer calms Jiijo’s nerves. She says, “This gentleman is a plumber, and I’ve brought him along so that he will see to it that the plumbing problems in this house are dealt with before you have your baby. I will pay for his labor and all the alterations and expenses, just to make sure your baby is born in a house with clean water and healthy surrounds. He is here today to assess the conditions here and will give me figures and expenses. He will tell me what he needs to do.”
The two women follow on the heels of the plumber into one room, then another and then another, enabling Cambara to see the entirety of the house for the second time, but more luxuriously and without needing to rush.
Half an hour later, everyone at Maanta offers Cambara a hand to help her lug her two suitcases to her rooms. It takes the determined effort of six men to cart them up the steps, past the mezzanine, where they pause for rest, and then eventually into her living quarters. The air conditioner on full blast, she takes a very, very long shower, which she enjoys immensely.
SEVENTEEN
Cambara draws herself up to her full height after an arduous workout in her rooms, the first serious exercise session since her arrival. When she thinks of it, breathing laboriously and perspiring profusely, she can’t get over the fact that she has not been toning up her body to remain fit, in case she gets into a touch-and-go physical combat and has to karate-kick two or more armed thugs to stave them off — in short, to save her own life. Of late, some of the militiamen, having run out of victims with the wherewithal to pay them large sums of cash, have resorted either to becoming pirates on the high seas or to taking hostages on land and demanding huge ransoms while they keep their prey incommunicado. In such a situation, it is convenient if one is in good trim. She has seen enough of the militiamen to know they are not fighting fit. Even though she is pleased with the way things have gone up to now, she is possessed of understandable worries, many of them to do with her fear that she may not be able to withstand the pressures building up within and without her or may falter and then come apart at the seams at the wrong moment. She believes it prudent to train her mind and, for that matter, tone up her body for the day when she may crack up or when the luck that has sustained her may run out — and then what? She feels that she can be on top of things if, in addition to being strong of body and mind, she manages to impose some order on her activities.
In her effort to reimpose a healthy routine she sweats herself to exhaustion. Lacking a treadmill and the other sports facilities to which she is accustomed at home, and in view of the fact that she cannot imagine jogging down the dirt roads of the potholed city lest she become a shooting target of some gun-crazy youth, she stretches every muscle until she cannot stand the pain anymore. Moreover, to keep abreast of unfolding events, she has the radio on, anxiously expecting to hear the worst news: that Gudcur has prevailed in his campaign against his warring rivals. So far, all indications are that he will be triumphing over his opponents, who are in retreat, vacating territories they conquered and claiming this to be part of their strategic withdrawal.
She is in a sweat, preoccupied that she might be implicating an innocent man, the plumber, and inculpating Kiin’s driver and security guards, who have so far shown her nothing but kindness. It worries her that she is getting Kiin, her newfound friend, involved in her dodgy affairs without leveling with her. A fresh panic sets in when, in a calm moment, she figures out what it will mean for all the parties concerned if in a day or two Gudcur triumphs over his competitors, who are also his clansmen and were at one time close allies, fighting hand in hand and living out of one another’s thieving pockets. A decisive victory will no doubt result in raising Gudcur’s self-confidence, thereby increasing his aplomb and, because of it, furthering his chances of conquering more territories and of extending his reign beyond his current domain. For Cambara, this can only spell insurmountable doom.