Qasiir replies, “He is feeling a little better.”
“Well enough to consult a doctor?” Malik asks.
“He doesn’t bother with doctors usually.”
“You can take him to visit Bile,” Malik says. “Remember, he was a medic.”
“Grandpa won’t hear of it.”
At the apartment, Malik takes the envelope with the money for the security detail and hands it to Qasiir, so that Qasiir can dole it out. He checks to make sure he has his tape recorder, then he waves good-bye and says, “Thank you, Qasiir. You’ve been very professional. And please give my best to your grandpa. I hope he feels better soon.”
17
THE NEWS ABOUT THE RAID BY ETHIOPIAN AIRCRAFT ON TWO OF Mogadiscio’s airports comes early in the afternoon of December 26, an hour after an African Union delegation flew out of the country. It spreads like the wildest of fires. One couldn’t help hearing it: the local radios broadcast it; total strangers meeting for the first time stop and chat about its consequences. Malik is in the workroom, licking a piece into shape, and doesn’t hear of it until Dajaal calls him up. He thinks it is a risky action undertaken in broad daylight, by cocky men confident that they would get away with it. Somalis assumed they had in part the military intelligence garnered by the United States from the unmanned drones in the skies to thank for it.
“There were no fatalities as such in either attack,” Dajaal says. “However, I hear that a young goatherd was hurt.”
“What was the herder doing when he was hit?”
“He was pursuing one of his goats, which had strayed off the footpath and gone under the gaps in the airport security fence to graze,” Dajaal explains. “My informant says that the beasts were close to the apron of the runway and he had barely chased the goat back when shrapnel from one of the bombs hit his side. It killed the goat.”
Malik says, “Poor thing.”
“The greatest casualty is neither the goat nor the boy who is hurt, but our national pride,” Dajaal says. “The big mouths from the Courts, from TheSheikh down to the foot soldiers, feel no shame in provoking the bullies next door and exposing our vulnerabilities. Why talk big when you haven’t the means, militarily, to defend the country?”
Malik senses Dajaal’s anger. He prepares for an “I told you so” tirade, but Dajaal spares him that. After all, they are in agreement.
“How are you feeling, anyway?” Malik asks.
“I can’t afford to be sick at such an hour, I am in such a rage,” Dajaal says. “I am the proverbial man who chokes on water and doesn’t know what else to drink. I am murderously annoyed with the men from the Courts and woeful, albeit homicidal, when I think about the raid.”
Malik is of two minds whether to repeat Fee-Jigan’s incrimination of Gumaad as an intelligence officer posing as a journalist when Dajaal inquires how his interview went. He thinks better of it, deciding that it no longer matters what Gumaad does for a job, since he won’t excel at it. Malik will remain cordial but distant. He doesn’t wish to make an enemy of Gumaad unnecessarily, since Gumaad can cause him much harm; all he has to do is heighten BigBeard’s sense of paranoia and denounce Malik as an agent of the U.S. imperialists pretending to be a journalist. A journalist covering Somalia and holding a foreign passport must be careful what he wishes for.
He wishes Jeebleh were here. Neither he nor Ahl has responded to Malik’s recent messages.
He channel-surfs, watching the news on the BBC and CNN in English; on Al Jazeera in Arabic; the BBC in Somali; then back to Al Jazeera, and finishing on the BBC. Apparently, between the time Jeebleh left and the bombing of the runway by the Ethiopian jets, a high-powered Arab League delegation on a fact-finding mission had taken off, and less than an hour later, a ten-man delegation from the Courts had returned from Eritrea. Local print and radio journalists had reportedly gone to the airport to interview the Arab League envoy before he departed for Cairo, and then waited on the tarmac to put their questions to the two most quotable members of the Courts delegation. Eritrea, Ethiopia’s number-one enemy, is the principal ally of the Courts and the supplier of its weapons.
In his desire to know more, Malik tries Fee-Jigan, Gumaad, and several others. All to no avail, because their mobile phones are either busy or unavailable.
Cambara, who probably knows less than he does, is the first to call him — not to give him news, but to say that he is welcome to call or come whenever he is down, when he wants to reconnect, or when he is too tired to eat his own cooking, and to share a gossip or a laugh.
Sweetness, on occasion, brings out the bitterness in one. Malik starts to whine. “Everyone’s phone is busy, or they do not answer.”
“How has your day been otherwise?”
Malik gives her a rundown of his unsuccessful encounter with Ma-Gabadeh and then mentions that he has learned of the attack on the airports from Dajaal. Malik adds, “Gumaad claims he is to be appointed as the Courts’ spokesman, and intimated he was off to meet up with TheSheikh, and to prepare a strongly worded statement about Ethiopia’s moves along the border.”
“Rather too late for that, I should think.”
“Still, there is a need for a communiqué.”
She asks, “Has Gumaad been of any use to you?”
Malik says, “Every bee with honey on its tongue has a sting in its tail and therefore its numerous uses. But not as much as I hoped.”
“What are you saying?” she asks.
Then he tells her about his encounter with Fee-Jigan and repeats the journalist’s incrimination of Gumaad as an intelligence officer. “I can’t, I won’t trust him anymore.”
Cambara says, “It could be that because Dajaal, Bile, and I focused on Robleh, the snake in our midst, we missed the venomous spider. Have you shared this with Dajaal?”
“I thought he might take it badly.”
“Anyhow, I don’t think you need to worry anymore,” Cambara says. “My suspicion is that TheSheikh and all the Courts’ big shots, including TheOtherSheikh, will be fleeing the city in advance of the invading Ethiopians. Not one of them will relish falling into enemy hands or being taken prisoner and flown to Guantánamo for interrogation.”
“I wish I could interview TheSheikh now.”
Cambara, who is in a no-love-lost mood about the Courts, says, “TheSheikh won’t be in any mood to chat to a nephew. I bet he won’t stick around a second longer than necessary.”
Malik imagines the robed men on the run as night falls, alive to the fact that defeat exposes them to ridicule, that their fair-weather friends will leave them to their own devices the second they lose power. Refuge will be difficult to find. One doesn’t need to have read Machiavelli to know the tight spot the men of the Courts are in when or if the Ethiopians occupy Mogadiscio.
He asks Cambara, “How’s Bile taking it?”
“To date, he is not aware of what has happened.”
Malik, in his head, titles his article, “Sheikhs on the Run.” Then he itches most furiously, as if a battalion of lice is advancing on him. He is so itchy he is tempted to suggest that they talk later.
But Cambara goes on. “This isn’t an ideal country for someone on the run, especially if they are planning to stage a comeback, guerrilla style. There are no forests thick enough to hide a contingent of fighters preparing a hit-and-run attack, except in Lower Juba. TheSheikh won’t dare cross into Kenya.”
“Why not?”
“The Kenyans will hand him over to you-know-who.”
“Why not take to the sea?”
She says, “You’d be surprised to know that even many coastal Somalis, born and bred in cities and towns on the sea, never learn to swim, or eat fish.”