Ahl wants to ask why not, but before he can say anything, Warsame is at their table, greeting Ahl and looking from him to Fidno. Fidno scrambles to his feet, almost knocking over his chair and coffee cup. Ahl introduces them.
Then Ahl asks, “Why don’t you come with us?”
“Depends on where you are going.”
Ahl turns to Warsame, “Can he?”
“Of course.”
Fidno asks, “But where are we going?”
“To my home,” Warsame says.
“Come along,” Ahl urges Fidno.
They follow Warsame to the car. When Ahl tries to put the photographs in the pocket of his computer bag, Fidno extends his hand and, grinning, reclaims them from him. Then he walks over to his jalopy, parked across from Warsame’s vehicle, to put them in his glove compartment.
Ahl thinks it will be easier to find out more about Fidno in the company of others. He tells himself that a liar seldom knows how to repeat his lies.
10
JEEBLEH STIRS AND, A LITTLE DAZED, PROPS HIMSELF UP ON HIS elbows, eyes still shut; he is wearing an airline eye-mask against the intense brightness of the hour. His head is aflutter with memories calling, the past revisiting in the shape of a monster, Bile’s older brother Caloosha, a bully unlike any other; and the present raising its war-filled head, in the likeness of BigBeard, hirsute and ugly to the core, messaging vicious viruses, deleting files and baby photographs. Malik is in the other room, which once belonged to Makka and Raasta. As a rank rememberer, Jeebleh recalls his confrontation with Caloosha, which he compares with his vile encounter with BigBeard. This has left him traumatized, like an amputee suffering anew the agony of dismemberment.
Startled by a sudden clamor, source undetermined — the harshness of the noise suggests metal coming into unexpected collision with glass, breaking it — Jeebleh sits up, waits, and listens to the discordant sounds now banking up behind identifiable activities. He picks out what sounds like the wings of a bird flapping. All the same, the disjointed noises raise his sense of worry, almost to the point of fear, and he prepares himself for the worst. What can he do if an intruder tries to enter the apartment from the balcony?
He gets out of bed, ready to confront the trespasser and try to protect himself and Malik from harm. But he is unclear how he is going to achieve this. As he steps out of the room, wielding a broom — how ridiculous he must look, he tells himself — he is of two minds whether to activate the emergency procedure Dajaal instructed him in. But no sooner has he gained the inner security door leading to the balcony than he isolates the sound. It is the agitated squeak of a young bird in a flutter, flapping its wings — a medium-sized black-shouldered kite in mounting distress, caught in a small enclosure, struggling, now lifting its tail, now lowering it with animated vigor. Maybe the bird has erroneously flown in under the eaves, or through a chink in the window frame above the alcove to the left of the balcony.
Aware that his footsteps are heightening the bird’s anxiety, Jeebleh approaches. Little by little, with consummate care, his tread soft and his forward motion purposeful, hands behind his back. He stops and sighs at length when he reaches the limits of the enclosure and then releases the catch, allowing the bird to fly free. Then he returns to the living room.
One reminiscence brings forth another, now replacing it, now supplementing it. He relives a confrontation in a hotel room in Mogadiscio, prostrate and in an eyeball-to-eyeball face-off with a chameleon, the reptile fearlessly making its way from the balcony into the room. The memory leaves him jittery, with anger welling up inside him. He paces back and forth, determined to shake off his rage. Again an ominous memory linked to Caloosha invades. Jeebleh thinks that there is undeniable similarity between Caloosha and BigBeard’s methods, which both claim are in service to higher causes; the late Caloosha asserted his socialist ideals in the same way that BigBeard takes the sanctity of Islam as his mantra, asserts it is the beacon lighting his way to divine authority. Caloosha, in the end, got what he deserved, dying a miserable death. Jeebleh wonders when BigBeard will get his comeuppance, his just desserts.
Time to make tea. Slow in movement, Jeebleh picks up the metal kettle; not bothering to remove the lid, he fills it through its spout. Then he falls under the spell of a pleasant memory, the weekend he took his granddaughter’s photograph, the one that served as Malik’s screen saver until BigBeard deemed it pornographic. Jeebleh regrets that innocence provides no protection against a BigBeard with sex on his mind. Anyhow, it was the weekend before his departure. The whole family drove out to Port Jefferson on Long Island in a rental car. On their way back to the city, they detoured, stopping on the North Shore for lunch. He recalls his granddaughter’s fascination with the beach sand, of which she took mouthfuls, in preference to the food her mother offered her.
He thinks that he should call home, and the thought brings forth another memory: of his first phone conversation with his wife, the last time he was here. A man with a portable machine bigger than a laptop came up to his room. Jeebleh could not figure out how the device worked, what the appliance was called or even how best to describe it. But it allowed him to speak to his wife, and that was what mattered then. He and Malik have so far only briefly texted their respective wives to let them know they have arrived safely, but have avoided speaking to them. Malik is worried that Amran might urge him to leave, if he tells her everything. Moreover, neither has found adequate words with which to describe BigBeard’s depraved logic. No doubt, their guardedness has been intruding on their minds, disturbing their thinking. On the positive side, however, the two have remained at their most harmonious, and that is a great relief.
A quarter of an hour later, Malik emerges from his room, scratching with fury and cursing. The blood vessels around his eyelids have darkened; his eyes are smarting and bloodshot; his skin is torn and oozing in places.
“I itch all over,” he says.
Jeebleh humors him. “It is human to itch.”
“I dreamed I was itching and I woke up itching.”
“Let’s see.” Jeebleh sees no bites or scratches.
Malik says, “I had a rash of dreams, a nightmare of allergies. In my dream, I broke out in eruptions, felt violated, intruded upon, invaded; the more the dreams infringed on my mind, the fiercer I scratched.”
“An allergic reaction to food you’ve eaten?”
“I doubt it.”
“Maybe bedbugs?”
“I turned on the lights and found nothing.”
“Bedbugs strike furtively and hide.”
“I upended the bed,” Malik says. “No bugs.”
Silent, Malik looks away, embarrassed. He touches his arm for bumps, sores, and swellings resulting from bites, but finds little that he can show to Jeebleh as one might show a trophy. He shakes his head in amazement.
“Can it be that Gumaad put it into your head?” Jeebleh asks.
“How is that?”
“Because Gumaad explained the derogatory term Injirray, which Somalis reserve for the Ethiopians. Maybe that is where your obsession with itching springs from.”
Malik asks, “Why do Somalis allude to lice, when it comes to Ethiopia?”
Jeebleh tells him, “You see, the only Ethiopians that Somalis have met in large numbers are the ill-paid, ill-clad barefoot soldiers in the outposts of the Empire, extending down to Somali-speaking Ogaden. Unwashed and wearing the same uniforms for weeks on end, they itched and scratched. Ancient contacts between Somalis and Abyssinians shaped the terms each had for the other. ‘Lice’ defines the Abyssinian/Ethiopian foot soldiers in these outposts, the insect with which Somalis have associated these unwashed, ill-paid soldiers. For their part, the Amhara ethnic group refer to Somalis as ‘ass washers,’ or ‘skirt wearers,’ denigrating descriptors for Muslims who perform ablutions before their prayers, or who, like women, wear skirts. Nothing new in this. After all, the English call the French ‘frogs,’ don’t they? No wonder then that you’ve dreamed of armies of lice invading.”