Jeebleh sat upright. Outlandish as it all sounded, he remembered being present when the corpse of the ten-year-old at the airport was transferred into Af-Laawe’s van, and that the young man killed in his hotel room was put in the same van. He remembered how quickly Af-Laawe had acted to move the bodies, and how he had arranged for Jeebleh to ride in another car from the airport, although he had clearly intended to pick him up. Maybe there was some grisly truth in what Shanta was saying?
“Is Bile aware of all this?”
“It’s not in his nature to talk, even if he is.”
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t wish his integrity questioned.”
A latticework of shadows fell on her face, and Shanta’s features made Jeebleh think of an old canvas in the process of being restored. He saw crevices where there were darker shadows, and imagined scars where the shadows were lighter.
“And you think it’s the cartel that has kidnapped the girls?” he asked. “To get them out of the way so there will be no refuge for those fleeing the fighting? Or are Af-Laawe and Caloosha getting at Bile, each for his own reason?”
“Everything is possible.”
“But the cartel, assuming it does exist, won’t allow the girls to come to harm, will it? Especially if, as you say, Caloosha has something to do with it?”
Shanta was no longer in a mood to answer his questions, and her chest exploded into a mournful lament. She managed to say, despite her emotional state, “The cartel is in the service of evil!”
“Have you spoken to Caloosha about your worries?”
“I have.”
“His response?”
“He says he is doing all that he can to have the girls traced. He says they are probably being held in the south of the city, which is not under his — StrongmanNorth’s — jurisdiction, but StrongmanSouth’s. But you know why I think he too won’t help at all? Because the cartel’s source of corpses will dry up if Raasta is back in circulation.”
“Che maledizione!” Jeebleh cursed.
Snuffling more mightily, she trotted off, head down and body trembling, in the direction of a door that he assumed would lead to the toilet, presumably to complete her crying away from his gaze. He heard the boy moving about upstairs and muttering, perhaps entertaining himself with talk. But who was the boy? What was he doing here?
Shanta was away for at least fifteen minutes, and when she returned she sat from across him, not quite recomposed. She crossed and recrossed her legs, reminding him of an agitated mother hen fighting with all her might to save her chicks from the vulture preying on them.
AT JEEBLEH’S SUGGESTION, THEY MOVED OUT TO THE GARDEN, WHERE THEY sat on a bench under a mango tree, its shade as sweet as the fruit itself. Unwatered and ravaged by neglect, the garden was a comfortless witness to the nation’s despair, which was there for all to see.
“Whose house is this?” he asked.
She looked away, first at the mango tree, which had begun to bear fruit, and then at a colorful finch hanging over one of the branches, cheerfully young and full of chirp. “Our own house is in an area that in the days when you lived here was known as Hawl-Wadaag but that has recently been named Bermuda. The neighborhood was destroyed in the fighting between StrongmanSouth and a minor warlord allied with StrongmanNorth. This house belongs to friends of mine who’ve moved to North America.”
“Have you lived here for long?”
“We’ve been very unhappy,” she said.
Jeebleh looked about, distressed.
“Perhaps the deteriorated state of the garden and the house explains why we’ve been unhappy here,” she said.
How unlike one another are unhappy families: Tolstoy?
“We’ve stayed on a collision course, Faahiye and I,” she said, “quarreling a great deal and unnecessarily. We’ve been in the sight of an evil eye, that’s seen much ill!”
“Because of what?”
“Because of the curse of which I’ve spoken.”
“But Bile at least had no choice,” Jeebleh reasoned.
Yet there was no reasoning with her. She said, her voice shaken, “He touched me in ways that he shouldn’t have. And because of this, we’ve earned ourselves a curse, this way harvesting nature’s ill intentions.”
“In his place, what would you have done?”
“In my rational mind, I know that it was a matter of life and death, and he had to make a decision, and voted in favor of life, voted for life. I am alive, and Raasta is a wonder child and, thank God, healthy. You ask what the problem is? Well, the problem is that what’s been done can’t be undone. The problem is that the curse has become part of us, affecting us all.”
Her expression reminded him of the oval face of an owl in the dark, seen from the advantaged position of someone in the light. “Was that part of the curse, what happened between Bile and Faahiye the moment they met?”
“They were at each other’s throats, because of what happened,” she said, “and it fell to me to make peace between them. It’s always fallen to women to forge the peace between all these hot-blooded men, always ready to go to war at the slightest provocation. Faahiye and my brothers are no different from the majority of men who’ve brought Somalia to ruin! Why do men behave the way they do, warring?”
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Maybe because they’ve got no sense of grief?”
He let this pass without comment, and waited for her tears to subside.
“Tell me who the boy in the house is.”
There was smugness in her gaze as she turned in the direction where the boy was playing by himself. “He belongs in The Refuge. He came here to play with Raasta the day she disappeared, and has since refused to go anywhere else until she’s back. He has become a kind of insurance policy, mine, that there will be a child in this house!”
It struck Jeebleh that for his entire visit, she didn’t seem mad at all. Emotionally charged, yes, but that was more than understandable in a woman whose daughter was missing. In fact, she was confident enough to pleasantly offer him a plate of warmed-up food — yesterday’s leftovers — if he had a mind to eat. And she was talking in a straightforward manner and answering his questions, and saying and doing nothing far-fetched or deranged. No one would doubt that she was as sane as he was.
He shifted the conversation: “Whose idea was it, do you know, that dinners at The Refuge should be a communal affair?”
She wasn’t sure specifically, but thought it could only have been a woman’s idea, even if it had come from Bile, who might have relied on the women around him. Women, after all, often ate in this way and knew the benefits accruing from it.
He nodded, remaining silent.
“For one thing, women waste less food,” she said. “For another, eating together from the same plate is more gregarious. Besides, as you well know, we women have always eaten together, after serving our husbands. That women are content with seconds or leftovers suggests that we’re prepared to compromise for the sake of peace. Not so men!”
He let the silence run its full course, and then asked if she had any suggestions about how he could reach the woman who had kept house for his mother. Her stare as hard as stone, she looked ahead of her, as though not aware of him at all. Again her lips moved like a bird feeding. Then her lips stopped and formed an O. “I knew where she lived, in Medina, before the collapse. I haven’t seen her since then, as I had no reason to. But it shouldn’t be difficult to find her if she’s alive and in the city.”