Hiding in Plain Sight (2 page)

When Keith finally arrives, he is accompanied by a man who, like him, is wearing a sky-blue UN uniform and helmet, though the
companion has larger feet, which Aar can make out through the peephole. The men carry themselves with a professionalism that sets them apart from the local ragtag soldiery. Aar deliberately keeps them waiting at the door until, growing restless, the other man draws close to Keith to say something. This affords Aar a glimpse of the man's face.

It's Cadde, Keith's deputy, who once served as a bodyguard to a radical religionist who is now a high-ranking Shabaab figure. Not that Cadde will ever admit to having been close to his former boss, now a wanted terrorist. Cadde is advisedly moderate in his ways, never openly condemning the young Somali women who work in the office and move about with their heads uncovered. He is soft-spoken and unusually polite. But Aar won't be humbugged, no sir.

Keith Neville, on the other hand, is a former bodybuilder gone to fat. When Aar opens the door at last, Keith is the first to enter, with the bearing of a great actor asked to do an uninspiring cameo in a bad movie. Face dotted with liver spots, eyes bulging and as red as beetroot, maybe from illicitly acquired beer and liquor, the Englishman has told Aar that he doesn't want to be in Somalia. A former marine and subsequently a mercenary with Ian Smith's Rhodesian army, lately of Blackwater and their ilk, who have employed him in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, he has done all the dirty work that a dirty man can get away with.

Now he says, “May I look around?”

“Go ahead. Please,” says Aar.

The two men move in opposite directions. Keith enters the bedroom and then presumably the bathroom, and Cadde heads for the kitchen and, finding the door to the balcony locked, asks if Aar has a key and can open it for him. Aar is wise to the fact that many a security breach has resulted from an unlocked balcony. In Nairobi, where he has resided for a number of years, balconies often provide access points to
burglars. Aar elects to lie, saying that he has no idea where the key is and that he has never opened the balcony door for fear that he might forget to lock it.

Back in the living room, Keith's wandering gaze falls on the photographs of Bella in various poses, and he stands there, staring at them. It is as if the man suddenly has no memory of the business that has brought him here. Still, Aar refrains from asking why they have come, his self-restraint greater than even his sense of unease. He has no wish to confront his demons now. But when Keith and Cadde join him in the kitchen, at last Aar asks, “Why are you here?”

Keith looks at Aar and then at Cadde and, smiling solicitously, explains, “My office has received intelligence from an unidentified source suggesting that you've been singled out as a terrorist target. And because of this, we've been asked to call round and talk to you.”

Aar has no way of knowing whether the two of them are fishing for information or know more than they are letting on. He looks at Cadde for a long minute before he responds. “Does your unidentified source say why I've been singled out and in what way?”

Cadde turns away, avoiding Aar's glance, and Aar is struck with a sudden nausea; in fact, he is so panic-stricken that he thinks his knees may give way, forcing him to collapse to the floor. And because he can't bear the thought of that happening in the presence of these men, he makes his way to the chair closest to him and sits down. There is no point in engaging these men in further talk. He trains his eyes on Cadde, in hope of divining something from the man's body language, but when he fails to do so, he turns to Keith: “Can you say who your unidentified source is or how you know that I've been singled out?”

Keith exchanges a furtive glance with Cadde and then answers that he is not at liberty to share any information. That is the moment when Aar indicates that he wants them to leave. And they do.

—

Aar telephones his children again, and again each of their phones rings on and on until at last he gets their voice mail. He leaves them each a second message, his worry gaining in intensity. He paces back and forth as though he were in a cage, which in a sense he is, in this barricaded hotel in his native city, with armed guards roaming inside and outside, and stationed at all entrances.

Until a few hours ago, Aar felt safe here, especially being so close to the airport. All he has to do is pack his one suitcase and leave. And although he hates giving the impression that the mere suggestion of danger in the shape of a threatening letter is enough to make him flee, he is inclined to do just that. After all, he has the children to think of, having been a single parent to them since Valerie vanished.

When he thinks of Valerie, he thinks of their relationship as being like a rug: beautiful when first purchased but gone threadbare over time and then utterly disintegrating. He seldom mentions her in the presence of the children anymore, as he does not know what to tell them, how to explain that their mother evidently valued the love she shared with Padmini over the love she had for them.

The last time he heard from her was when Dahaba, at ten, had her first period. Valerie wrote to him from Pondicherry, where she and Padmini were running a hotel and restaurant, to tell him what to do. As if she could give this sort of advice from such a distance! Or had any right to after failing to remember so many of the children's birthdays with so much as a phone call, let alone a card or a present! When he responded angrily, she wrote back, “As a Muslim man, what do you know about raising a daughter? Your people chop it all off, don't they, and maybe feed it to a waiting cat?” From then on, Aar cut off all communication with her and relayed information only through the
children's English grandmother, with whom he has remained on good terms and who gives him the latest about her daughter in return.

The years that have passed have dulled the edges of his rancor, and recently he has begun to pity Valerie, sensing that she may be regretting the choices she made. The children have lost interest in what their mother is up to. In fact, one of the things he would like to talk to them about is who will take care of them in the event of his death. Given the choice, he would like Bella to have them. Not that he would stand in the way of Valerie making a new bond with her children. After all, she carried them both in her womb for nine months, breast-fed them, cared for them, loved them—until she left. But it won't be easy for Valerie to win them over again, especially if Padmini is still in the picture.

That night, Aar books a flight to Nairobi for the following day. In the morning, he calls in sick—a terrible diarrhea, he says. He learns from his secretary, a Kenyan Somali who has little or no understanding of Mogadiscio's clan-infested politics, that Cadde has not returned to work since he and Keith visited Aar at his apartment, nor has Aar's driver. He tells her he's going to organize a taxi so he can quickly pick up a few documents he needs to work at home.

He leaves his suitcase in the taxi and slips into the office. It isn't files he is after, but a few photos—and not any of Bella's, surprisingly enough. The photos he feels compelled to have are the ones he himself took during that camping trip in the Rift Valley with Gunilla and his children. He is just on his way back out the door with them when Shabaab strikes.

“Like beads unstrung,” Bella says to Marcella.

“What a terrible thing death is!” says Marcella to Bella.

They hug for a long time, the elderly Italian woman holding the younger woman, each wailing louder than the other—their lamentation a survivor's threnody expressive of so huge a loss.

The doors of their respective apartments are open. They sob bitterly in the corridor, neither of them battling to hold back their keening. Some of the neighbors come out of their apartments and stand gawking at the women and exchanging questioning glances.

It is Bella's ill luck that she was one of the last to hear of Aar's death. When he was killed, she was finishing up a photo assignment in Bahia for the German magazine
GEO
. She had just cleared customs at Fiumicino when she came upon the headline in the Italian daily
La Repubblica
. According to witnesses, a suicide bomber blew up a car at the main entrance to the UN compound, then four heavily armed gunmen entered the building and a gun battle lasting more than an hour ensued. In all, twenty people lost their lives, fifteen of them Somalis and five foreigners, Aar among them.

Bella had barely finished the first paragraph when her legs buckled and she collapsed at the feet of a man offering her taxi service. When she came to, a throng of people had crowded around her and a fierce debate had ensued as to what to do with her. The taxi driver, an elderly Sicilian with a broad face sporting at least a week of stubble and a sweet smile showing only a few front teeth, bent down and helped her to sit up. “Signorina, take notice,” he said. “You are in Rome, whose proud citizens frown on public weeping.” He offered her a pile of paper napkins. “Here, dry your tears.”

The taxi driver, a gentleman of rare breeding and charm, led her to his car and they sat together until she came to her senses. Then he drove her home, left his car parked illegally in the street, helped her up the stairway with her luggage, cameras and all, and refused to accept the fare.

On the drive, Bella used her phone to glean further details from the Internet. The attack was remarkable for its ruthlessness, which had attracted intense international attention. The body parts of the dead were found strewn about the outbuildings, so charred and mangled as to be unidentifiable. Aar's head was found far from where the rest of his body fell, although that was according to some of the unreliable Somali websites, which are given to exaggeration and releasing unverified information. Those body parts that were identifiably Somali were buried in a mass grave, and those of a recognizably paler shade were collected and put in containers to be catalogued later before being passed on to their next of kin.

Now, at the sight of her beloved friend and neighbor, who has been listening for her return, Bella is again undone. Marcella holds her until her sobbing ceases, then they retreat into Bella's apartment, still clinging tightly to each other.

Marcella makes her sit. “I'll make you tea with sugar, the way
Somalis like it,” Marcella says. Bella stares back at her, as if she doesn't understand the language or can't comprehend why anyone would have sugar in her tea. “Please,” she says. Too weak to sit up straight and too jet-lagged to keep her eyes open, too exhausted to sleep and much too disoriented to take in all that has happened, Bella is at the point of losing control over her bodily movements.

Marcella sits down opposite her. The old woman has known Bella literally from birth. She remembers the day in 1981 when Hurdo came to have her second child at Mogadiscio's Digfer Hospital. It was a Muslim holiday and the hospital was short-staffed; Marcella, as head of obstetrics, was putting in a long shift, and it fell to her to perform the delivery. My lucky day, Hurdo always said. Hurdo and her husband, Digaaleh, were colleagues of Marcella's husband on the law faculty, and the two couples knew each other well. Hurdo was a much-adored professor of international law, having gained her higher degree from Bologna in the days when a large number of Somalis pursued their professional training in Italy.

There was an additional layer to the intimacy of Marcella's connection with Bella, in that she was among the few who knew of Hurdo's affair with Giorgio Fiori, a Dante scholar on the faculty of letters, and she suspected that Bella was Giorgio's child even before it was confirmed. So she had a certain proprietary feeling about Bella from the beginning, which was rekindled years later, when Marcella and her husband—who had died recently of lymphoma, poor soul—took on the role of surrogate parents to Bella in Rome, helping her to find her apartment opposite their own and watching after it when photography assignments took her far and wide.

Lately, Marcella has been losing more and more of her recall, fading like a cloth losing the brightness of its original dye. Now she is reaching for the memory of the last time she saw Aar, but it is earlier memories
that surface. Aar was twelve years old when Bella was born. From the beginning, he had an older brother's protectiveness and affection for her, buying her toys with his own pocket money and helping with her studies (she was bad at mathematics and science). He'd encouraged her interest in photography; in fact, he bought her first camera and sat for her as she began to master her art. One of Marcella's great joys was to host brother and sister together, delighting in the way they comforted each other, holding hands and hugging at every opportunity. They had a deeper affection for each other than could exist between even the most intimate husband and wife, Marcella thinks. But still she can't retrieve the memory of Aar's last visit.

“When was Aar here last?” she asks.

But the question leads Bella to a dim hall lined with fogged mirrors, where she searches frenziedly for answers and, finding none, weeps some more. Marcella can't think of anything to say that might help, and so she says only, “Let me make the tea.”

“Actually, I would prefer coffee,” says Bella.

“Black or with milk?”

“A latte if possible.”

Marcella knows how to work Bella's espresso machine and goes about feeding the grinder with coffee beans, apologizing for the hideous noise. She regrets that since her husband's death she hasn't been looking after the young woman's apartment as before. In the old days, she would often do the tidying herself or hire a Filipino woman to do it, services that Bella would insist on reimbursing with money and favors in return. Now Marcella notices the dishes in the sink; the books lying open, abandoned like orphans; the drawn curtains; the windows unopened for days on end so that the whole apartment emits a musty odor. This is not clean living, she thinks. In an effort to alleviate the dark mood, she parts the curtains to let in the daylight and opens the
windows. She sets the coffee to brewing while she begins to clear away the clutter then interrupts herself to froth the milk and pour the
latte
into a large mug, worried that Bella might spill it in her state of discomposure.

“Here,” she says, handing it to Bella. “This will do you good.”

Bella receives the mug with both hands and murmurs her thanks. But she doesn't take a sip, not yet; it is too hot. And when she does, she continues to look dazed, her eyes unfocused, her hands trembling as she lifts the mug to her lips and lowers it again, untasted.

Marcella has noticed that the red button of the message machine is blinking. She knows that one of the messages is her own condolence, left earlier in the day, when she was still at work and Bella had not yet returned. But there may be more. She debates whether she should bring the messages to Bella's attention. After all, one or more may be from Aar, or from his colleagues. But Bella is staring ahead of her, looking at nothing, and Marcella decides not to mention it.

Bella looks up into Marcella's eyes, finding comfort in their warmth and familiarity. Then, as if remembering something, she tries to stand but nearly loses her balance before she steadies herself with her hands and sits back down, narrowly missing spilling her latte, which she still has not tasted.

“What do you need done? I'll do it. What?”

Apologetically, Bella says, “Could you please help bring in my camera cases? In my state, I left them outside, in the corridor.”

“Gladly, and you stay put.”

Marcella fetches the bags and asks if she should put them in the spare bedroom, which Bella rightly calls Aar's room, as it is always ready to receive him—the bed made, clean towels in a neat stack, his pile of reading material (much of it novels bought at airports) at bedside, a spare pair of pajamas and hotel slippers, all of it arranged neatly as he liked things kept. Bella has never allowed anyone else to stay
there. So Marcella's question initially strikes her as almost insensitive, but after a moment of thought, she says, “Yes, in the guest room, please.”

Marcella knows all about homage to the dead. She has only recently finished going through her late husband's things, getting rid of all but a handful that she left where he last placed them, cautioning the cleaning lady not to shift them. It is the prerogative of survivors to honor their dead and salute them the best way they can, she thinks.

When Marcella has finished moving the camera cases, Bella says, “Come and sit with me, please.” Marcella obliges, settling at the bottom end of the couch where Bella has indicated she should. Soon enough, though, an uneasy silence descends, and with it, a gnawing feeling of despair. Marcella scans the far wall of the living room, which is lined with Bella's photographs, some of which have made her into one of the fashion industry's most sought-after photographers. Even so, Marcella's favorites are the family portraits, of Aar alone and with Valerie and his children at different ages. Bella has the true artist's knack for showing the ugliness inside those she detests, Marcella thinks, as can be discerned in the photographs she took of Valerie.

In an effort to ease the tension and hardness in Bella, Marcella takes the young woman's feet in her hands and gently massages them until she feels a kind of calmness taking hold both in her own as well as Bella's body. Then she blurts out, “Where is Aar's corpse?”

When Bella does not answer, Marcella persists. “Any idea when and where he will be interred?”

Marcella has always had this tendency to say the unspeakable in public, to ask the unanswerable in private. And before Bella can think what to say, the old woman says, “Will you have time to get there before his burial? I wouldn't go to that dreadful country if I were you—
but I can understand if you choose to do so. But I suppose, knowing them, they will not wait for your arrival.”

Marcella's questions remind Bella how little even educated Europeans know about Islam, let alone about Somalis and their culture. “He'll have been buried before dark the same day he died,” she says.

“Already buried—but where, when? Before dark?” Mercifully, Marcella stops herself before she blunders in deeper, and she stares at Bella in confusion. It is obvious that Marcella is upset with herself for asking inappropriate questions at such an inopportune time, but Bella waits to be certain Marcella is done before she says, “Aar was buried the same day he died.”

“What a way to go!” This time not even Bella's expression of palpable distress is enough to keep Marcella from continuing in this vein. “What a way to end the noble life of a man who served everyone with honor, untainted integrity, and purpose.”

At last, Bella, wincing, takes her first sip of the latte.

“Has anyone been in touch with you officially?”

Bella looks at the blinking answering machine, and Marcella goes to it and presses the button to play back the messages. A woman speaking in perfect English with a Nordic-sounding voice has made several attempts to leave a message. In the most recent, she scarcely gets past Bella's name before she bursts into tears and hangs up; the second time, she says, “Gunilla here,” and then, “There's been terrible, terrible news from Mogadiscio—” She breaks off, then attempts to continue, stuttering, stopping, and weeping copiously before she again hangs up. On the third try, she says her piece, as if she were reading from a script: “Aar lost his life in a terrorist suicide bombing. The Somali authorities have ordered that his corpse and the others will all be interred in a mass grave in Mogadiscio.”

Bella utters an Irish curse, wishing the killers hell and worse in the spirit of all the saints of every faith anywhere. This message is followed by several earlier messages from Aar, who sounded desperate to speak with his sister. At the sound of them, Bella breaks down again. Marcella shushes her, tapping her cheeks and then holding her face in her gentle hands until the weeping ends. And for the first time, Marcella allows herself to wonder to whom the responsibility of informing Aar's children and Valerie will fall.

Aloud she says, “Would you like me to call the children or had you rather do it yourself?”

Of course, Bella insists on being the one to tell her nephew and niece about their father's death. As for Valerie, Bella will start by calling her mother, who will know how to locate her if anyone can.

Bella remembers that the Hausa way of informing a relation living far away about the loss of a parent, a sibling, or another intimate is to send an emissary to deliver the news in person. The emissary dispatched on such a delicate mission does not share the sad news, however, until they are in close proximity to a place where a wide community of friends and relatives are on hand to provide support. A pity, Bella thinks, that whoever it was who called and left the news of Aar's death on the answering machine—or whoever turned it into international headline news—did not take a leaf from the Hausa book of etiquette.

Actually, Bella is not certain from whom she learned about this custom. Perhaps it was Marcella, come to think of it. As a former senior obstetrician at a Vatican-run hospital in one of Rome's poor neighborhoods, she had become deeply familiar with corpses and what becomes of them, depending on the faith of the dead and their relatives. She and Bella had often discussed the Irish and their wakes, the Yoruba and their drawn-out rituals, the Muslims, the Jews, the Zoroastrians, the Hindus, and the Catholics, each in their own way confronting the
moment of death with a rationale that is unique to their culture and belief systems. But Bella suspects that it was not Marcella but her Malian lover who told her of the Hausa's sensitive handling of news of bereavement. And as much as she wishes she could spare Dahaba and Salif the pain of receiving the news in the same boorish way it came to her, she is aware that this is impossible in the age of the Internet and round-the-clock news channels that jabber on and on, forever upsetting one.