The Tears of Dark Water (46 page)

Eventually, she saw the minibus and climbed in. “Where are we headed?” she asked.

“To a place near the beach,” Manny replied nebulously. “It’s not far away.”

She frowned. “How did Mahamoud get there? He lives in town.”

“He knows everyone,” Manny replied. “He goes where he likes.”

She sat back and took in her surroundings. The compound was located on a dirt road that circled the airport like a running track. They rounded the end of the runway and passed a graveyard of rusting vehicles, many mutilated by explosives. After a while, they made a turn and climbed a hill through a dense thicket of scrub. When they emerged from the brush, Megan saw the blue of the ocean stretching out before her. A man was standing at the top of the hill, holding two folding chairs. He was tall and imposing with a henna-dyed beard and dark sunglasses.

Manny pulled to a stop. “I will wait here,” he said.

When Megan climbed out, the man with the sunglasses gave her a thin smile. “I am Mahamoud. You did not bring a recording device?”

She shook her head. It was one of the ground rules he had established before the meeting.

“Good, because this conversation is not happening. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. I am only here because of my regard for Ismail and his father.” He held out his hand. “Come. There is a place nearby where we can talk.”

He led her across a scree of rocks and sand to a coral jetty that jutted out into the sea. He opened the folding chairs and gestured for her to take a seat. “If we had met in Mombasa, I could have offered you tea. Here the view will have to do.”

“It’s beautiful,” Megan said, watching the waves crash upon the jetty, sending spray high into the air. “I can’t say I expected it.”

He nodded. “You are American. When you think of Somalia, you think of
Black Hawk Down
and pirates and starving babies and al-Shabaab. Your perspective is incomplete.”

An interesting entrée
, she thought. “What’s missing from the picture?”

Mahamoud looked at her frankly. “We are—the ordinary people of Somalia. And our past. This city was once the jewel of the Indian Ocean. We had restaurants and cinemas and sports facilities and great buildings that stood for hundreds of years. Someday it will be a jewel again.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t mean to be blunt, but it’s hard to see much hope in the news.”

He shifted in his seat. “No, the media only cares when a bomb goes off. They don’t talk about children playing in the streets, teachers training them in English and computer skills, people coming home from the diaspora and starting businesses. Mogadishu is like a phoenix rising from the ashes.”

“I talked with Farah in Minneapolis. He wasn’t so sanguine.”

Mahamoud raised his eyebrows. “Farah has made his home in the United States. He will not build this country’s future. It is people like my brother, Adan, who will build it.”

She made her objection as delicately as she could. “But Adan is dead, killed by the same madmen blowing themselves up in the streets.”

Mahamoud gave her a sagacious look. “Adan took a great risk, but his death was a kind of victory. He said it many times. Evil can’t be defeated until it is brought into the light. The attack on his school unmasked the Shabaab more effectively than any argument he could make.”

Megan grimaced. “I doubt his wife and children see it that way.”

Mahamoud was silent for a while, staring out at the sea. When at last he spoke again, his tone was more personal. “Every victory has a cost. That is the lesson of history. No cause is vindicated without sacrifice. And sometimes—as much as it hurts us—we have to pay the price with blood.”

Megan grimaced.
If you asked the militants who killed Adan, I bet they would say the same thing.
But she kept her thoughts to herself. “Khadija came to you after the attack. What did you tell her?”

“I told her to leave the country immediately. She had cousins in Nairobi. She could stay with them and claim asylum as she and Adan had done when the war began. I also told her not to search for the children. Parents who try to negotiate with the Shabaab almost always end up dead.” He paused. “I never heard from her again. I don’t know what happened to her.”

Megan watched his face as she disclosed the news. “She’s in Kenya. I met with her last month.”

His mouth went slack in astonishment. “Khadija is alive?”

“She’s a nurse in Dadaab,” Megan explained and filled him in on the details.

He held out his hands. “I suppose I’m not surprised. Her father never thought much of me.”

“Did you try to find the children?” Megan asked.

Mahamoud nodded. “Ismail and Yusuf were easy enough to trace. They joined a unit that went south to Kismayo and fought Hizbul Islam for control of the port. After that, the Shabaab massed its troops outside Mogadishu and mounted an offensive during the holy month of Ramadan. Yusuf was killed in the fighting. That’s when Ismail made his escape.”

Megan leaned forward in her chair. “Do you know where he went after that?”

“Yes,” Mahamoud said matter-of-factly. “He came to me.”

She smiled.
I was hoping you would say that.
“Tell me about it.”

He recounted the tale without embellishment. Ismail had come to him in the night, evading his guards and vaulting over the wall around his hotel. Mahamoud had awoken to a soft knock at the door of his cottage. With the fighting going on in the city, he had expected to see his security chief, but instead Ismail had stumbled in, bedraggled, bloodstained, and mumbling incoherently about Yusuf. Mahamoud had cleaned him up, calmed him down, and extracted bits and pieces of the story.

Their unit had made an advance against AMISOM’s position on Maka al Mukarama Road, the artery connecting the airport to the city. They had faced off against tanks armed only with mortars and Kalashnikovs. Ismail had taken shelter behind a jeep, trying to shield Yusuf from the carnage. But one of the tank rounds had landed close to their hiding place. Ismail had blacked out from shock. When he awoke, he found his brother lying beside him, his head nearly gone.

As Megan listened, she tried to keep Ismail’s story separate from her own, but she found it impossible. When she pictured Yusuf, she saw Kyle instead. She turned away from Mahamoud and gazed out at the sea, enraged at a world that devoured children with impunity. She felt a newfound solidarity with Ismail. She embraced the humanity of it even as she saw the risk it posed. To save him from the needle, she had to remain objective. And she would. She would contain her emotions. But she would fight for him like she had never fought before.

“What did you do after you took him in?” she asked.

“He stayed with me three days,” Mahamoud answered. “I told him about his mother and gave him clothes and a cell phone. Then I drove him out of the city. There was only one place I thought would be safe. There is a camp for internally displaced people about twenty kilometers from here run by Dr. Hawa Abdi and her daughters. I left him there with money for a bus ticket to Kenya.”

“Did you hear from him again?”

Mahamoud shook his head slowly. “Not until I received your call.”

For the first time, she heard a false note in his voice. “He never tried to contact you?” she persisted, eyeing him carefully.

His expression remained opaque. “No.”

“Do you have any idea how or why he would have gotten into piracy?”

“When he came to me, he was damaged. I don’t know what was going on in his mind.”

I think you’re lying to me, but I have no way to prove it
. “Is there anyone else who might know?”

Mahamoud shrugged. “Perhaps someone at Hawa Abdi’s place. They have an office in Nairobi. You could call them when you get back.”

Megan took a slow breath, conscious of the gamble she was about to make. “You said the village is only twenty kilometers away. Can you take me there?”

He laughed wryly. “My security team would never agree to it.”

“Why is that?”

He took off his sunglasses and gave her a piercing look. “Ms. Derrick, the revival I told you about is happening only in Mogadishu. The Shabaab still rules the rural areas. If you show your face outside the city, you will have forty-five minutes at most before they come for you.”

Memories cascaded through Megan’s mind—the aid workers captured in Dadaab and the SEAL mission that freed them; the stranger who called her on the plane and interrogated her about her plans; the Internet video she had seen of Nick Berg’s beheading in Iraq. She didn’t doubt that Mahamoud was right about the danger. But she couldn’t go home without the truth. Ismail was rotting in a cell, on trial for capital murder. If he joined the pirates purely for the money, the jury would probably deliver him to the executioner. But if he was lured or coerced in some way, they might show him mercy.

“Is there anyone who can take me there safely?” she asked.

Mahamoud looked at her as if she were insane. “You can’t be serious.”

She didn’t blink, just stared back at him.

Eventually, he sighed. “If you want to go to Afgooye, talk to AMISOM.”

Yasmin

Middle Juba, Somalia

March 21, 2012

Najiib came home on the dusty road two weeks after Fatuma and the baby died. The villagers greeted him with shouts and waves as his technical meandered through the streets, not because they loved him but because they knew what he could do to them if he decided they were subversive. If his men caught them chewing
qat
or smoking cigarettes or listening to Western music or a soccer game on the radio, they would be beaten with a bullwhip. If their wives or mothers or daughters went outside without a head covering, they would be arrested and flogged. If they were accused of adultery or promiscuity, they would be stoned to death. If a spy reported that they had disparaged the Shabaab, they would be executed without trial. If they were caught conspiring with the government, they would be beheaded in public. The villagers cheered Najiib because his power over them was absolute.

Yasmin was in the kitchen preparing lunch when she heard the noise. It was faint at first, a murmur wafting along on the breeze. As the seconds passed, however, it increased in volume and merged with the sound of an engine and squealing brakes.
He’s here
, Yasmin thought, running to her room and putting on her
hijab
and veil. After delivering a plate of rice and chutney to Jamaad, she walked to the gate, reciting the names of God in her mind to ward off the dread:
Allah, Ar-Rahman (the Compassionate), Ar-Rahim (the Merciful), Al-Malik (the Ruler), Al-Quddus (the Pure) . . .

Then he was there, the technical nosing into the yard, his men—four of them this time—in combat fatigues, holding their guns skyward, their faces swaddled with scarves so that only their eyes were showing. Najiib was sitting in the driver’s seat dressed in a crisp white shirt and sunglasses, his scarf as black as the desert on a moonless night. She went around to his door and stood in silence. She never spoke to him unless he initiated the conversation. The one time she had tried he had slapped her for disturbing his thinking, leaving her cheek bruised for a week.

He opened the door and stepped out, undoing his scarf and taking off his sunglasses. He was a handsome man with a hawk nose, thoughtful eyes, and a beard that he trimmed obsessively. “
As-salamu alaykum
,” he said, as his men spilled out of the truck and went about securing the property. He turned to Jamaad, who had abandoned her food and walked halfway into the yard. “Is Fatuma inside?”

Yasmin let Jamaad handle the explanation. She had encouraged her to tell him about Fatuma ahead of time, but Jamaad had disagreed, arguing that he would handle the news better in person.

Jamaad stammered for a moment and then blurted out a half-truth: “There was a problem with the pregnancy. Fiido was here. We did everything we could. We took Fatuma to the hospital in Marere, but she and the baby died.”

For a long time Najiib stood rooted in place. Then he turned away and grabbed his gun from the truck. He walked out the gate, taking the path down to the river. Yasmin didn’t move. She was an expert at reading his moods. She knew that anything she did while he was in such a state would be interpreted as a provocation. Jamaad was not so savvy. She followed in Najiib’s footsteps, recounting in a tearful voice how hard she had tried to save his child.

The burst of gunfire shocked Yasmin like an electrical wire. Still, she didn’t move.
Did he kill her?
she thought.
Could he possibly have murdered his own aunt?
Then she heard the woman shrieking—not in pain but in fright—and let out the breath she was holding. Seconds later, Jamaad ran into the yard again, looking terrified. She brushed by Yasmin and vanished into the house.

It was a while before Najiib reappeared, but Yasmin waited for him submissively, ignoring the heat of the sun and the perspiration collecting on her skin beneath her
abaya
. Eventually, he walked through the gate and stopped before her. “Did it happen as she said?” he asked.