“Where do you live?”
“I live in the south.”
“In your own property?”
“No, I’m house-sitting!”
“House-sitting?” Jeebleh had read and heard about questionable dealings when it came to the practice of house-sitting.
“I’ve entered into an arrangement with a family who own a villa and who’ve relocated to Canada since the collapse,” Af-Laawe explained. “An empty villa in civil war Mogadiscio is a liability as well as a temptation. I live in the villa for free and look after it.”
In the local jargon, “house-sitting” meant the taking possession of houses belonging to the members of clan families who had fled, by members of families who had stayed on. Not all house-sitters were squatters, pure and proper. Some lived rent free. Others were paid to look after the properties of people living abroad, who hoped they would find them in good condition to do what they pleased with them once peace had been restored and a central government put in place. Of late, though, there had been a number of cases in which men claiming to be the owners of the properties they were looking after had sold them.
As Jeebleh was about to ask what kind of house-sitter Af-Laawe was, he was gone again, only to reappear with the immigration man in tow. Af-Laawe turned to the man and took the document from him. Then, sounding satisfied, he said, “Let’s see.”
The man bearing his passport wore the pitiful look of a son cut out of a wealthy parent’s will. Maybe he had hoped to receive some baksheesh and was unhappy when he saw he would not. Or maybe there was another reason, indecipherable to Jeebleh. Af-Laawe scrutinized the passport on Jeebleh’s behalf, then handed it to Jeebleh, who put it in his pocket without bothering to open it.
“What about the lift?” Jeebleh asked.
“Give me a few minutes,” said Af-Laawe.
WHILE WAITING, JEEBLEH LOOKED AT THE DISTANT CITY, AND SAW A FINE SEA of sand billowing behind a minaret. He remembered his youth, and how much he had enjoyed living close to the ocean, where he would often go for a swim. Time was, when the city was so peaceful he could take a stroll at any hour of the day or night without being mugged, or harassed in any way. As a youth, before going off to Padua for university — Somalia had none of its own — he and Bile would go to the Gezira nightclub and then walk home at three in the morning, no hassle at all. In those long-gone days, the people of this country were at peace with themselves, comfortable in themselves, happy with who they were.
As one of the most ancient cities in Africa south of the Sahara, Mogadiscio had known centuries of attrition: one army leaving death and destruction in its wake, to be replaced by another and another and yet another, all equally destructive: the Arabs arrived and got some purchase on the peninsula, and after they pushed their commerce and along with it the Islamic faith, they were replaced by the Italians, then the Russians, and more recently the Americans, nervous, trigger-happy, shooting before they were shot at. The city became awash with guns, and the presence of the gun-crazy Americans escalated the conflict to greater heights. Would Mogadiscio ever know peace? Would the city’s inhabitants enjoy this commodity ever again?
From where he stood, the trees were so stunted they looked retarded, and the cacti raised their calluses and thorns in self-surrender, while the shrubs cast only scant shadows. The clouds of dust stirred up by successive armies of destruction eventually settled back to earth, finer than when they went up.
Jeebleh did not look forward to seeing the desolation that he had read and heard about. He was heavy of heart to be visiting his beloved city at a time when sorrow gazed on it as never before. Mogadiscio spread before him, as though within reach of his tremulous hand, a home to people dwelling in terrible misery. A poet might have described Somalia as a ship caught in a great storm without the guiding hand of a wise captain. Another might have portrayed the land as laid to waste, abandoned, the women widowed, the children orphaned, and the sick untended. A third might have depicted it as a tragic country ransacked by madmen driven by insatiable hunger for more wealth and limitless power. So many lives pointlessly cut short, so much futile violence.
“What’s it been like, living in the city?” Jeebleh asked.
Af-Laawe replied with what seemed to Jeebleh a non sequitur. “Danger has a certain odor to it, only there’s very little you can do to avert it between the moment you smell it and the instant death visits.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m smelling danger, that’s what,” Af-Laawe said.
“I don’t understand. Can you smell danger now?” Jeebleh asked.
He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he followed Af-Laawe’s gaze, and saw the three armed youths who had stood guard over him earlier, now in a huddle, mischievously whispering among themselves. And they were also glancing at the stairs of an aircraft being boarded.
“What are they up to?” Jeebleh said.
“I overheard their conversation as I went past them. They were taking bets.”
“What were they betting on?”
“Our city’s armed youths are in the habit of picking a random target at which one of them takes a potshot, then the others aim and shoot, one at a time. It’s a sport to them, a game to play when they are bored. The one who hits the target is the winner.”
“And that’s what they are doing now?”
“I suspect so.”
“Can’t we intervene?”
“I doubt it.”
“What if I talk to them?”
“Why take unnecessary risks?”
“Because somebody has to.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t!”
Before Jeebleh could move, a shot rang out. They heard a woman scream, and then pandemonium. From where Jeebleh stood, it would have been difficult to piece the story together in the correct sequence. Yet it wasn’t long before somebody explained what had happened: the pilot of the Antonov, a Texan, had offered to help the woman, a passenger, carry her plastic containers into the aircraft, and she followed him up the stairs. Perhaps the gunman had aimed at the pilot, who, fortunately for him, stepped out of harm’s way a second before the shot was fired. Or perhaps the woman and her children were going up the steps too slowly and so had become the targets. Whatever the case, the first bullet struck the woman’s elder son. The crowd at the foot of the stairs exploded into panic. Two of the youths trained their guns on anyone who might dare to approach or dare to disarm them. The people cowered, silent, frightened.
The three youths were overjoyed, giving one another high fives, two of them extending congratulations to the marksman. Meanwhile, the woman and her surviving child were screaming so loudly that the heavens might fall. The youths moved slowly, and facing the crowd as if afraid of being shot in the back, clambered into a van, which sped away in a trail of dust. The people moved, as one body, toward the bottom of the stairs where the corpse of the ten-year-old victim lay in a gathering pool of blood.
Was it true, as they said, that in this hellhole of a city, no one did anything for you when you were alive, but when you were dead, everyone would rush to bury you, fast? It was evident from the conversation Jeebleh now overheard that everyone was relieved that the American pilot had not been hit. Jeebleh was shocked that no one in the crowd of people still milling about had been willing to confront the gunmen, to try to stop them from playing their deadly games. And where was Af-Laawe? He had disappeared again. Yes, there he was, climbing the stairs of the aircraft, presumably to help. The woman and her child kept wailing, and Af-Laawe bent over them in an effort to comfort them.