In a rehearsed voice, Malik says, “That death comes early and snatches away our best is a wisdom that many of us do not appreciate until someone dear dies. Of course, it is worse if he is murdered.”
Waiting for him to finish, with her hands outstretched, maybe to embrace him, Cambara has the look of someone with fog in her eyes and who can’t therefore see more than two feet ahead of her. For an instant, Malik stands so still that it feels as if bits of him have stopped functioning.
Cambara puts life back into him, saying, “Yes!”
Malik goes on. “I’ve known Dajaal for a short time, yet I will miss him. His death makes me think, What if I die when I have less than a page left to write? Dajaal had plenty of work to do, and some evil person cut his life short.”
Just when he had said his say and they are at last ready to embrace, she pricks up her ears and pauses in mid-movement, like a ballerina stopping before completing a pirouette — and backs off. Instead she takes his hand and together they walk forward, she leading, he keeping pace.
“No doubt a difficult man to please, at times harder on himself than on others, Dajaal was a man of such high principles. He was loyal, truthful; he was reliable. We’ll miss him terribly. He is our story, Bile’s and mine. He made our world go around a lot of the time, making our living together easier, even though occasionally he came in between us, causing mild frictions between Bile and me. But I was fond of him, very fond.”
Malik says, “I often think how, in fiction, death serves a purpose. I wish I knew the objective of such a real-life death.”
Cambara makes two tall drinks and a short one, adds a drop of something to one of the tall glasses — Malik is unsure what, maybe a drop of medicine, for Bile? She gives him one of the tall ones and raises her short one, saying, “To your health.”
He asks, “How’s Bile been?”
“He is coming down shortly,” she announces.
And soon enough, Bile joins them. He is looking much better, if a little nervous; his index and middle fingers rub against his thumb in rhythm with his slow tread, his every step bringing him closer to his goal — a soft chair with a hard back set between Cambara’s and Malik’s seats. They can’t help but be conscious of his gradual progress, but neither wants to focus on it. Malik rises to his feet to offer him a hug.
Cambara offers him the untouched tall drink and she says to him, kissing him on the forehead and then on the lips, “Your drink, my dear, with a drop of your medicine in it.”
He holds the edge of the glass to his lower lip and takes a sip, his Adam’s apple visibly moving, then another thirsty swallow.
Just then a single rocket falls close by. The house trembles slightly, the windowpanes shaking in their frames, the bulbs of the chandelier lightly knocking against one another with a tinkling sound that, to Malik, distantly recalls one of his daughter’s windup toys.
“Well, what do you say to that?” Malik says.
Bile, who obsessively keeps abreast of news of the fighting by listening to HornAfrik, has heard that some of the rockets are aimed in the general direction of the villa where the Ethiopians and the interim president are based. “Earlier, we could feel one of them flying overhead. Some of those interviewed on the radio talked of being able to identify the house where the insurgents firing the rockets were holed up.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then they heard the response coming from the direction of the presidential villa, with the Ethiopians employing heavier bombs, deadlier and causing more damage.”
“I’ve known rockets to miss their targets in the wars I’ve covered,” Malik offers. “And as a consequence there are civilian casualties.”
“Here neither of the warring parties cares,” Bile says. “The Ethiopians delight in causing more Somali deaths, and the insurgents, as religionists, by their very nature, are equally unpardonably brutal.”
“According to the radio reports, many of the bombs did in fact miss their intended destination,” Cambara says. “They cause enormous civilian casualties.”
“I am sure that it will interest Malik to visit some of the homes destroyed, and learn about the people whose lives are cut short,” Bile says.
“Shabaab assassinated Dajaal,” Cambara says.
“And the Ethiopians bomb and kill civilians.”
Cambara then adds, “Indiscriminately.”
Meanwhile, Bile, adjusting in his seat, unwittingly pushes away one of his slippers and then his feet search blindly for them, only to kick them farther, rather than bring them nearer. Malik is quick to get up and help recover the slipper slithering out of Bile’s reach.
Bile says, “Thanks.”
Malik offers his condolences for Dajaal, and Bile stammers a few almost inaudible words in reply, nearly spilling his drink as he says them. “Here I am useless and living, and there he was very useful — and dead. We have the tendency to self-destruct as a people.”
“He was wonderful to me, generous,” Malik says.
Bile inquires about Malik’s writing, the research and interviews, and if Qasiir is working out well so far. Malik’s positive replies delight Bile, and he drinks to everyone’s health.
“We want you to move into our house,” Bile says, “now that the two-room flat is empty of its troubled occupant.”
“What’s become of Robleh?” Malik asks.
Cambara answers. “He’s gone.”
“I’d say good riddance,” Bile says.
“He’ll get his just desserts,” she says.
“He was nothing but trouble,” Malik says.
Bile says, “Yet Cambara wouldn’t throw him out.”
Malik is thinking about changing the subject, when they hear another bomb exploding in the vicinity that makes the house shake. But Bile won’t leave the topic alone. He pursues it with vengeful venom. Malik thinks they are living on edge, amid all the bombs falling, and because Dajaal’s death has brought their own mortality home to them.
Bile says, “Robleh had the habit of bringing home neophytes from the mosques, and of telling them right in our presence that he has frequently advised us to ‘take the vow.’ A lie like any other, one he couldn’t say to us alone and, what’s more, didn’t. I would have killed the fool if I could.”
For a moment, Cambara resembles a cat in the gaze of a snake and she makes a hissing sound. Then, finding things to do in the kitchen, she departs, visibly annoyed. Malik is convinced that it won’t be the end of the stories about Robleh. He has a mind to pursue a tangentially related theme: Somalis with foreign passports leaving the country in the wake of the Ethiopian invasion. He wants to write an article about how they are treated at the Kenyan border, and he is sad that he has to give the topic a wide berth for now. Maybe Qasiir can find him someone to interview.
Cambara serves them a light repast of clear lemongrass soup and prawns. They eat right where they are, balancing their plates in their laps — Bile’s on a tray, so that he does not have to move, as his knees are bothering him. They sip their soup with hardly a sound, not even the clink of a spoon against a bowl. Malik has a worry knocking about in his head.