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A housefly landed on Bile's forehead: when chased away, it moved to Jeebleh, hesitating above his eyes and nose for a few seconds before finally and decisively alighting on his cheek. Not liking the housefly's noise, the mantis slunk away quietly into hiding.

Now three phones rang all at once, and kept ringing. But Bile wasn't prepared to answer them, not immediately. “I'd like you to move in with us,” he said. “There's room for you. I've already prepared it, Raasta's room.”

“Raasta's?”

Bile looked so pale you would think he was hearing heavy treads on his own tomb. His sad expression caught the sun in its sweep, and Jeebleh stared at the specks of dust, recently stirred up by the restless housefly.

Bile went to answer the one phone that had not stopped ringing, and when he returned, he was in some distress. He spoke to Dajaal on his mobile, suggesting that he come to take Jeebleh back to the hotel.

“We have an emergency!” he told Jeebleh.

“Can I be of help?”

“I must be on my way to the clinic. Please arrange with Dajaal when you wish to be picked up,” Bile said. “Either later today, or tomorrow, or at the latest the day after.”

In less than ten minutes, Dajaal was at the door of the apartment, ready to escort Jeebleh to the hotel. Both Jeebleh and Bile knew that they had a lot more to say to each other, and knew too that they had time on their side.

They embraced for a long time before parting.

IN A DREAM OF THE NIGHT BEFORE, JEEBLEH KNEW WHERE THE CAPTORS were keeping Raasta and her companion—in a mud hut overlooking the noman's-land between the two StrongMen. He was at a disadvantage, though, in that he had no transport of his own, and no one to bring him back to where he was staying, a beach cabin by the ocean. Nor did he have bodyguards to protect him in case he was attacked. Moving about was proving very difficult.

He was in an anteroom of the beach cabin, where a woman, name unknown and face unseen, lay on a mat, screaming her head off, occasionally mumbling to herself the name of the man to whom she addressed her pleas. To Jeebleh, the name sounded very much like “Caloosha.” Another woman, in a nurse's uniform, was restraining the wailing woman and speaking to her in the patronizing tone that medical staff often use when chastising obstreperous patients. It wasn't clear, in the dream, whether the screaming woman had attempted suicide. When he tried to find out the woman's story and why her wrists were bandaged, an armed man in rags sealed his mouth with an asphyxiating gag. Later, after ridding himself of the gag, he tried to push his way past a bouncer with enormous sharp teeth. He was kicked in the groin for attempting to escape, and collapsed backward, in a hapless heap, groaning. He was in so much pain that he couldn't get to his feet, and he wet himself.

AWAKE, JEEBLEH SAW THAT EVEN WITH ITS DISJOINTEDNESS AND LACK OF clarity, the dream had some highly detailed moments. He remembered the woman pleading to “Caloosha,” even though he had seen no sign of the man in the dream. He decided, on the basis of the dream, that he should seek out and solicit Caloosha's help. Perhaps he would intercede with the hostagetakers.

But a few things in the dream raised warning signs, which worried and frightened him. A man had appeared, assigned to be his guide. He had eyes from which billows of smoke issued, and he held several lit cigarettes between his fingers. The man, a dwarf, needed to work out his daytime contradictions, and was now on stilts. He was a praise singer, and claimed that he had been commissioned to compose a panegyric for the boss of Mogadiscio's underworld, “the fire of whose genius was unlike any other, and had no equal anywhere.” Sadly, Jeebleh couldn't remember any of the lines, because the man whose voice reminded him of Af-Laawe had the wrong accent, his syntax was muddled, his diction lacked finesse, and his metaphors were mixed.

There were also marksmen in the dream, who took delight in demonstrating the skill of their shooting; they hit their targets lethally without breaking a bead of sweat. One of them had a mouth with baby lips that blew bubbles. At the center of the tableau was a small girl having her hair braided by her companion.

Despite his misgivings, the dream left Jeebleh with a sense of optimism, and he rose from his bed convinced that Caloosha held the key to the girls' disappearance, and that he or one of his associates, namely Af-Laawe, knew where Raasta and Makka were being held. Quite possibly, Caloosha had helped the captors in a big way. In a moment of elation, Jeebleh believed that he would succeed in recovering the two girls from the clutches of their captors. But first he had to seek an audience with Caloosha. He would show humility, he would openly acknowledge Caloosha's power over them all. To steel himself, Jeebleh recited two lines from a poem in Somali in which a weak man, plotting to kill a much stronger man, humbles himself before his intended victim, pretending he is a friend and no threat at all. But when the opportunity to hit presents itself, he strikes! Jeebleh would do as the poet suggested, and wait in ambush until after the girls' release.

Shaved and showered, he took the piece of ruled paper on which Dajaal had drawn a map with directions to Caloosha's villa. Smoothing the crumpled sheet, he followed the route with his forefinger, memorizing the sequence of turns in the road. He was sure he would find it easily, no trouble at all. He went downstairs and past the reception desk, which was unusually quiet today, to have his coffee. He moved as slowly as a chameleon going uphill.

 

 

WHILE JEEBLEH WAITED FOR HIS COFFEE, THE DAY SEEMED AS DULL-EYED AS a young elephant mourning the death of its family. The sun shone competently, its rays trudging through a thick film of dust. He sat facing the open area where, only the day before, the vultures had gathered. Today there wasn't a single one. There was an Alsatian, though, pregnant by the look of it, and close to her, a crow, lonely-looking, brooding and quiet for much of the time.

Seeking out his tormentor was the last thing Jeebleh wanted to do. The decision to call on Caloosha was not an act of courage—it went against everything Jeebleh stood for and believed in. But the dream had strengthened his trust in the correctness of the decision. He would do all he could to help gain freedom for Raasta and Makka, even at the cost of feeling humiliated by a fool. Then he would figure out how to take vengeance on Caloosha, perhaps with help from Dajaal, to whom he intended to speak.

An only son, Jeebleh had been raised by a strong woman with iron determination. His father was a lowlife; he had sold the house the family lived in and the plot of land he had inherited from his own family to pay off gambling debts. After the divorce, Jeebleh's mother made it her mission in life to ensure that Jeebleh grew up to be very different from his father. She impressed into his memory his uniqueness, repeatedly telling him that he could do anything he put his mind to.

She possessed no more than a brick-and-mud single-room hut, a barn with two cows and a calf tied to poles buried in the earth, an outdoor latrine, and an undying hope in her son's future success. And even though she loved him to excess, she was firm with him. Within half a year of being divorced, she borrowed a few hundred shillings from a woman friend and started a neighborhood stall, selling tomatoes, onions, and matches spread on a cardboard box. Day in and day out, she sat on the very mat where she and her son slept at night.

One morning, two years after she had set up her
warato
stall, she became acquainted with a midwife living in the same neighborhood. The two women got talking, and they entered into a contract from which both would benefit. The midwife kept the oddest of hours, because of her vocation, and was away from home several days and nights at a stretch. Then she would be off work for a few days at a time. Jeebleh's mother agreed to look after the midwife's two sons, Caloosha and Bile, for a monthly fee. The elder of these sons was away at school until early afternoon, while the younger one, more or less Jeebleh's age, had not started school yet.

A bright-eyed, active child, Bile was as adorable as Caloosha, his elder brother, was detestable—Caloosha, who had been born in breech position, almost killing his mother in the process. The two younger boys got along extremely well, and the midwife was pleased that her son had an ally in Jeebleh, who helped deter Caloosha from bullying his younger brother. Jeebleh trained so he could defend himself, and he tried to teach Bile, but with little success.

The midwife paid for the food and the household expenses, and Jeebleh's mother kept Caloosha out of mischief as well as she could, at the same time protecting her son and Bile from his bullying. Raised as brothers in the household efficiently run by Jeebleh's mother, and paid for by Bile's, the two boys became very close.

The world in which Jeebleh and Caloosha would be meeting today, if they met at all, differed greatly from the one in which they had met as children, and from the one in which Jeebleh had been a political prisoner and Caloosha his jailer.

The youth who came with the pot of coffee Jeebleh had ordered also delivered a message: Apparently a few clansmen of Jeebleh's were at the front gate of the hotel, waiting to be let in. The men on sentry duty, the youth explained, wanted to know whether or not Jeebleh was prepared to receive them. When Jeebleh inquired how many there were, he learned that there were half a dozen, eager to speak to him about “family matters.”

Jeebleh told the youth that he wanted to drink his coffee in peace. He had other things on his mind, actually, and was in no mood to entertain a group of elder men who were likely only to bring further clan-related complications into his life. He finished his coffee and left by the back gate.

 

 

THE ROUGHLY DRAWN MAP TO CALOOSHA'S PLACE IN HIS HAND, JEEBLEH walked fast, with the light-footed gait of someone who knew where he was headed. He might have been a thief avoiding an angry mob sent to apprehend him. He wanted to get away from his clansmen, that was all.

He recalled how his mother had done everything possible to make sure that she and her only son would have nothing to do with this clan business. As a young woman, she had been given in marriage to a gambler with no self-honor, because he paid a dozen cows and a donkey as a dowry to her family. She hoped to raise her son in an enlightened way, educate him and make him believe in his own worth as a man. Soon after entering into her contract with the midwife, she bought herself a Singer sewing machine and, for starters, tailored the family's clothes: her own and her son's, and the two other boys' and their mother's as well. Her son was given the nickname “Jeebleh”—“the one with the pockets”—because his shirts, shorts, and trousers had huge pockets.

It was on a day such as this, when his so-called clansmen came around to be received as his blood, that he appreciated what the two inveterate loners had created.

No doubt the clansmen were there to remind him of his responsibility toward his blood community. He remembered how often his mother had warned him against such opportunists, who would turn up at his door with their begging bowls when he was doing well—the very same men and women who would disappear when he was the one in need. She had also warned him against Caloosha, whose cruel behavior was a threat to the continued existence of the family she and the midwife had so carefully held together. “Be your own man,” she would say, “not anyone else's. And beware of your clansmen. They'll prove to be your worst enemies, and they are more likely than not to stab you in broad daylight if you choose to have nothing to do with them.”

He walked purposefully, his heartbeat quickening with each step. There was no authority to dreams if the happenings during one's waking hours did not tally with their thrust, he decided. He prayed himself sick, wishing for success in whatever he was trying to achieve.

A moment's distraction helped him notice a richly woven spiderweb hanging down between the open-ended spaciousness of the morning sun and a mango tree, laden with its seasonal yield. While admiring the bewitching spectacle, he saw an old man in colorful rags hungrily demolishing a mango with the self-abandon of a child. The old man's fingers must have been as sweet as a beehive, and a swarm of eager wasps descended on them, taking off and landing again, following every movement of his hands. A closer look at the man revealed a more disturbing sight: his highly unfocused gaze. The man washed his hands with water from a pitcher, then dried them, and started to speak as the mad do, wisely.

The old man was fascinating to listen to and wonderful to watch, his every gesture theatrical, and his voice a memorable baritone. Soon enough a crowd formed near him, and the space around the tree filled with curious spectators, including Jeebleh. The man spoke on and on, in speech so disjointed that not everything he said made sense to Jeebleh. But he could not tear himself away, and he stood there fascinated. The man behaved as hypnotists do, self-confident, as if aware of where his strengths lay. He seemed to be saying that the trouble with self-isolated communities was that they were “as unhealthy as a child's toenail growing inward.” The crowd around the mango tree listened attentively. At one point, the man fell silent, then looked steadily at Jeebleh, outstaring him. A woman standing near Jeebleh raised her naked son so he might see what she described as “the spectacle.”

The old man was now proposing that a beggar given to spurious changes of mood was a dangerous one. “So beware, my brothers and sisters, of such beggars. Beware too of our politicians who think and behave like beggars— one day, they act normally and ask for donations from the international community, and the next day, they kill the foreigners who've come to help.”

He then asked the crowd, “Are you mad?” When no one responded, he asked, “Am I mad, then?” No one spoke. “Are you mad or are you sane? I want you to separate yourselves into two groups, those who are mad, and those who are sane.”