BigBeard asks, “Why are you here?”
“I live here,” replies Dhoorre.
FootSoldier comes out in time to hear this. The eyes of all three keffiyeh-wearing men converge on YoungThing.
TruthTeller asks the boy if this is true.
YoungThing says, “He is a hobo squatting here.”
FootSoldier, who is angry because he had to wait until he almost wet his robes, smacks Dhoorre in the face. “Tell us the truth.”
The sudden upwelling pain overwhelms Dhoorre. “I am telling the truth,” he replies.
TruthTeller, for his part, hits YoungThing, the strike splitting the boy’s lower lip and making it bleed again. He asks, “Is he a hobo squatting here, or does he live here?” When the boy touches his lip, as if to wipe it dry, TruthTeller hits him again, twice.
BigBeard tells TruthTeller to stop pummeling the boy in front of a stranger. He adds, “Can’t you see I am talking to the old man?”
Dhoorre says, “I am a guest, not a drifter.”
“So who lives here?”
“My son,” he replies, “whom I am visiting.”
“What is your son’s name?”
Dhoorre now realizes that he has inadvertently brought his son into focus. All that remains is for him to say his son’s name. Dhoorre has two sons, and neither is in the good books of Shabaab. One of his sons, based in Baidoa, is a minister in the Transitional Federal Government, with which Shabaab is at war; the other son, who served in the National Army, is also a known foe of Shabaab, for he has declared himself a secularist and has often militated against the group in radio interviews. It is the latter, an American citizen living in Virginia, who has been visiting Mogadiscio with his family and is now hosting Dhoorre in this rented house. Too late to invent a false identity, Dhoorre gives his son’s name.
BigBeard’s expression is fluid, like dirty water going down a gutter, habitually moving in a downward direction. Dhoorre is aware that Shabaab would be only too pleased to grace either of his sons with immediate beheading, and that he is not likely to be spared, either.
Even though he is not sure that it will do the young thing any good, Dhoorre hopes that his statement will have in it the vigor of settling a matter in dispute. He says, pointing at YoungThing, “Let me say, for what it is worth, that this young fellow meant no ill to you or your cause. I would appeal to you to spare him. Islam is peace, the promise of justice. Because I may have misled him. Please.”
Dhoorre discerns movement behind him, and from a corner of his eye he spots TruthTeller with his weapon poised, but not yet ready to shoot. He pushes Dhoorre down with the butt of the firearm. Sitting on a chair, the old man feels the harsh metallic coldness of the weapon against his nape.
FootSoldier says to YoungThing, “You’ve proven delinquent in your behavior. Why?”
YoungThing says, “I won’t do it again.”
BigBeard orders YoungThing to get his gun from the carryall. YoungThing does as ordered, without fear or sentiment. As he waits for instructions, he does not plead with any of the men to spare his life or that of the old man.
BigBeard says, “Shoot him.”
Dhoorre says, “Please.”
YoungThing can’t determine if the Old Man is pleading with him not to shoot, or if he is saying, “Go ahead and shoot.” He looks toward BigBeard, who is busy fingering his long, bushy beard, twisting it with the concentration of a philosopher deep in thought.
Dhoorre thinks that it is in such a scene, where violence gains the upper hand, that one can bear testimony to tragedy in all its registers: a country held to ransom, a people subjected to daily humiliation, a nation sadly put to the sword.
FootSoldier says, “What are you waiting for?”
Times passes, as slow as death.
TruthTeller shouts, “Shoot!”
YoungThing might as well pull the trigger and be done with it, he thinks, without a flinch or immediate regret, although he is aware, despite his young age, that his action will ricochet about in his brain and keep him awake at night, disturbed and jittery. He knows, too, that he is only postponing his own death; no sooner will he shoot the old man than one of the keffiyehs will make him pay for the crime of not wasting Dhoorre right away. He wishes he had listened to his older sister, Wiila, a flight attendant, who had offered him financial help if he agreed not to join Shabaab and to go to school instead. Or to his older brother with the alias Marduuf, who tried, without success, to recruit him as a pirate.
YoungThing shoots, using the silencer.
As the bullet strikes Dhoorre in the forehead, YoungThing is certain that he hears a seabird cawing, only he cannot interpret what it is saying, or whether it is foretelling his own imminent death.
Dhoorre falls off his chair, dropping to the floor in an uncoordinated heap of self-reproach; he is sad that he has had no time to alert his son, his daughter-in-law, and his grandchildren to the ambush that awaits them.
From his posture alone, you can’t tell if the old man is dead. He lies on his back, head to one side, eyes not wholly closed, his position suggesting sleep.
The keffiyeh-wearing men sit in the eerie silence that follows the shooting. The ringing of a cell phone startles them out of their immobility. They exchange bothered looks.
YoungThing glances around, as if trying to calculate not if but how soon one of the men will shoot him. The realization that he might die in a matter of minutes concentrates his mind, and he resolves not to be afraid. He walks over to where the old man lies sprawled, his legs splayed, his neck crooked, his hands spread out by his side, his nakedness embarrassing. As a token of his fearlessness, YoungThing straightens the man’s legs and places his hands together across his chest, in the gesture of prayer. He moves back a pace and looks at what he has done, pleased that he has made the old man as comfortable in death as he can be. Then he waits.
BigBeard has anger etched into his features. Impatient, he is looking from FootSoldier to TruthTeller, as though wondering why they have not yet acted on his rage; then, even more furious, he watches YoungThing, as if he were expecting the boy to fall to his knees in terror. He says to YoungThing, “Have you anything to say before you die?”
YoungThing is defiantly silent. He glances from BigBeard to FootSoldier and then focuses his unrelenting stare on TruthTeller.
BigBeard says to TruthTeller, “Will you do us the favor of ridding us of this thing, this vermin?”
FootSoldier says, “I was hoping you’d ask me.”
BigBeard says, “Fear not. You’ll have your turn. But this is TruthTeller’s turn. I’ve never seen him kill a thing before.”
TruthTeller closes his eyes, winces like a child taking bitter medicine, and shoots YoungThing right between the eyes. Then he unscrews the silencer from his gun.
“Well done,” BigBeard says. Then he orders FootSoldier to remove the two corpses, dump them in the garden, and report for duty, in double quick. He adds, “There is a lot of work for us to complete before nightfall. Remember, we have a country to liberate, a people to educate in the proper ways of our faith. Come; be quick about it, you two. What’s holding you?”
TruthTeller volunteers to help FootSoldier, each of them dragging a corpse from the room before rigor mortis sets in.
8
WHEN THEY GET TO CAMBARA AND BILE’S HOUSE AND DAJAAL RINGS the bell, Malik and Jeebleh, to their surprise, hear dogs barking. Since neither remembers anyone mentioning the presence of dogs there, they look at each other and then at Dajaal. Dajaal explains, “The ringing of the bell activates the barking of dogs inside the house. Cambara imported the device from Toronto to scare off potential burglars. It’s most effective because no one keeps dogs as pets or guards in a Muslim country, and virtually everyone is terrified of them.”