“Caloosha tells me she’s left for Mombasa.”
“Isn’t that what he says about Faahiye too?”
“That’s right.”
“Have you asked Dajaal to look for her?”
He responded that he hadn’t, and she reiterated that Dajaal could find anyone or anything; he was useful that way.
“Bile tells me that, among other things, you’ve come here to honor the memory of your mother,” she said. “I would like to join you in doing so for our mother too. They raised us together as one family. What did you have in mind?”
His prayers for his mother began right away, in his imagining, with the whistle of a red-and-yellow-breasted robin perched on the branch of the mango tree.
He said, “I would like somehow to mark my mother’s passing, perhaps with a day of prayers, a gathering of some sort, most likely at The Refuge. But first I’d like to locate her grave and pay a visit, and then maybe commission the raising of a stone in prayer, in her memory. Nothing extravagant, like a mausoleum, but it would be good if I could in some way reclaim her troubled soul from the purgatory to which Caloosha helped relegate her.”
“The idea of using The Refuge to commemorate her life is wonderful,” she said. “I like it very much, and hope that Raasta is there to celebrate the marking with us.”
She released a long-suppressed snuffle.
He fell silent, ready to ask her pardon and take his leave, as soon as it was decent to do so.
21
WHEN HE RETURNED TO BILE’S, JEEBLEH INSERTED THE KEY IN THE LOCK but had difficulty opening it. The key would turn loosely, without engaging to move the bolt. Then he heard footsteps approaching cautiously, and guessing it might be Seamus, he announced himself: “It’s me, Jeebleh!”
The bolt was released at once, the door opened, and Seamus stood there, broad as his smile.
“Is she off her rocker, as Bile believes?”
Jeebleh didn’t answer, and walked past Seamus into the living room, where he sat down. His friend joined him. When he’d brought Seamus up to speed about his visit with Shanta, Jeebleh fell silent, exhausted from the effort of remembering what he had been through.
“What about the boy?” Seamus wanted to know. “Is he still there at Shanta’s, refusing to leave until Raasta returns home to play with him?”
Jeebleh didn’t reply, because he had other worries on his mind. He wore a sullen expression, his stare unfocused, as if he couldn’t see or hear a thing.
Seamus, disturbed, tried to reach out in sympathy: “Are you okay?”
“I am.”
“But you’ve got the shakes!”
On edge, Jeebleh was getting worse by the second, and looking as if he might have a nervous breakdown right in front of Seamus. He held his stomach and, bending double, made as though he might bring up his worries. A portmanteau of jitters, he was short of breath, his eyes startled, as if his guts were being emptied, to be flown out of the country, as parts. He was showing a passive side to his nature, like someone not responsible for what he was doing. Yes, something was happening to the action man, and he wasn’t able to fight it off. Jeebleh, known for his tough stances and rational behavior, looked unlike anything Seamus could ever have associated with him. “I don’t like what’s happening to me,” he said.
“What’s happening to you?” Seamus asked.
“I’m now part of the story, in that I’ve taken sides, and made choices that might put my life in danger.”
Seamus shook his head in sorrow, as if he knew exactly what Jeebleh meant. “I know too many people who couldn’t help getting too involved, couldn’t avoid becoming part of this nation’s trouble. You need to return to being your usual self — a father to your daughters, a husband to your wife, and a professor to your students. You should leave the country while there’s time.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s time you left,” Seamus said.
“It is, but I won’t leave yet.”
“What’s holding you back?”
“Some unfinished business awaits my attention.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing!” Seamus told him.
In response, Jeebleh took refuge in a Somali wisdom about a man who bit the stronger of two fighting dogs on the ear in anger, because it was molesting the weaker one, torturing it. He added: “I’ve already made a name for myself, haven’t I, standing up to my clan family?”
“For goodness sake,” Seamus pleaded, “they tried to murder you.”
“I won’t risk my life unnecessarily, I promise!”
Seamus ignored the promise. “It makes me sad to think that you’ll not only become part of the civil war story, but get totally lost in it, because the story is much bigger than you, and might prove deadlier than you can imagine. My only advice is that if you won’t quit, you watch out and make sure you aren’t sucked into the vortex.”
“I’ll be very careful,” Jeebleh said.
Seamus tried to steady his look before speaking. His arms folded across his chest, his manner ponderous, he said, “I’ve been there too at the crossroads, where arrivals meet departures, and where self-doubt meets with certainties and self-recrimination. And I’ve avoided becoming part of the story!”
Jeebleh now watched Seamus busy himself with some domestic chore or other, acknowledging silently that he could’ve left without trying to tie the necessary loose ends. Now this was impossible. If he left, he would be walking away from a part of himself — and leaving behind a piece of his history too. He didn’t want to do that.
“For years now,” Seamus was saying, “people have been coming to Somalia, every one of them intending to do their bit and then leave. The Americans came, as their then president put it, to do God’s work! God knows they didn’t do that. But then, did they just leave as they had planned? No, they were drawn into the vortices of clan intrigues, and when they left, they left parts of themselves behind. Making a choice and then acting on that decision and leaving: these are out of our hands before we’re aware of where we are.”
Jeebleh asked, “Why have you stayed?”
“Sometime during my second visit,” Seamus said, “I realized that I’d mislaid something of myself here during my first visit, and I had to return for it. Instead of retrieving it and leaving immediately, I’ve stayed. It’s possible that some of us cannot help losing ourselves in the sorrows of other people’s stories. I can vouch that you’ve changed since your visit to Shanta’s, I can see that. If you asked what Somalia is to me, having stayed, I would respond that it is the Ireland of my exiled neurosis.”
“My story cast in misanthropy!” Jeebleh said.
“You’re doing whatever it is you’re doing out of empathy, not hate,” Seamus suggested. “You feel deep love for justice. I’m moved to hear you tell the story of the man who bit the stronger of the two dogs. After all, there isn’t much of a story in ‘dog bites man,’ because it happens all the time. But when a man bites a dog for reasons to do with justice, it’s a big story, worthy of a newspaper headline. So could you explain to me, in the light of all this, why you’ve returned to your country in its hour of tragedy? I’ve been told that you’ve come to visit your mother’s grave. But you’ve done bugger-all about that! So what made you come?”
Jeebleh reached inside his mind for the strength he sensed he now lacked, and found himself in a corridor as narrow as tunnels are dark. He tried to locate the arrows that might point to an exit, but there were none. His hands in front of him, he fumbled forward, and finally fell back on a version he had rehearsed to himself several times before. Retelling it for Seamus’s benefit, he described his unpleasant brush with death, when a Somali, new to New York and driving a taxi illegally, nearly ran him over. He conjured it all like a film shot on a busy New York street, demonstrating the startled look on the face of the Somali, and revisiting his own days recovering in a hospital. He slowed down to prepare himself for a challenge from Seamus, well aware that his friend could argue that by coming to Mogadiscio, he was not so much thinking about his mortality as seeking out death.