So far so good. Not a hitch or an overlong pause. Then Ahl pluckily plunges into Shabaab-infested waters, asking Taxliil to name the names of his minders and tell exactly when and where he met them.
“What was the name of the chief of the camp?”
Taxliil repeats the same response he has given several times before. “We never knew the real names of the instructors. Nor did we get to know the names of our minders, or those to whom we handed over our passports.”
“Do you recall anything else about any of them?”
“Our instructor had a northern accent, and yelled at us a lot, and wouldn’t tolerate any back talk; he was quite a taskmaster.” Then half-laughing and half-serious, he tries to imitate his instructor. “‘We are not part of history. We are making history, living history! We are not liberators, fellows,’ he would chant. ‘We are martyrs, through the expression of our fury, through our ambition in action, to lead this nation away from self-ruin.’ Then he’d resume his chorus. ‘We are not part of history. We are making history, living history!’ We nicknamed him Taariikh, ‘History.’ It is hilarious when I look back,” Taxliil says, relaxed for the moment.
“What did your training comprise?”
“It was like boot camp,” Taxliil says. “A run before dawn prayer, oatmeal for breakfast, more physical training, bomb-construction training. Lunch, prayer, a half-hour break, then back at it until nightfall, no break except for prayer times.” He is on a roll now, and he goes on without any prompting from Ahl. “The boy I knew from Jefferson asked to be taught not only how to build bombs but how to defuse them.”
“What reaction did he get?”
“A tongue-lashing. The instructor called him a softie. He explained that Shabaab was not in the business of defusing bombs, but in the business of making them and causing as much destruction as possible, until we gained power and set up an Islamic state, the first true Islamic state not only on the continent but in the whole world. An example to others, a model and a beacon to other Muslims.”
“So how did you fare there?”
“It was all fun at first.”
“And then?”
Taxliil seems bewildered, as if he has gotten lost on his way to the answer. What is it that upsets him? What are the subjects about which he is not yet prepared to speak?
Ahl asks, “Did you make any friends?”
Taxliil said, “I knew I could trust Ali-Kaboole. He was more or less my age, but went to Roosevelt High, very bright, kind, always solicitous about me, generous to a fault. I found a friend in him, he was reliable. He reminded me of Samir.”
“What’s become of Kaboole?”
“Kaboole died — blown up by one of our own.”
Ahl asks for an explanation.
Taxliil says, “One of the clan-based factions fighting Shabaab for control of the coastal city of Kismayo killed him in a clash that claimed the lives of several of our best.”
“Did you take part in the fighting yourself?”
“I’ve never taken part in any fighting.”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t fight; I had no spectacles.”
“How did you cope?”
“Funny you should ask. Before he died, Kaboole took part in a fire-fight in Kismayo, and found a pair on the battlefield, a pair thick as the bottom of a bottle. They belonged to an old man, from the enemy side, killed by one of ours. Kaboole brought them to me, thinking spectacles are spectacles, and any pair would do. This became our joke.”
“Nonetheless, you used them?”
“I used them. I had nothing else.”
“Then what?”
“I was assigned ‘civilian’ duty, and after a while I proved useful as a computer programmer. I was transferred to the publications division and soon promoted. My job was mujahid liaison. I was an interpreter for the foreign contingents training the cadre in bomb building and in explosives.”
“It doesn’t seem that was very harsh.”
Taxliil is quick to disagree. “Life was harsh. No TV. No fun. No games. It felt easy at first. But later, it felt like tasting a piece of hell served daily, along with your meals. We often heard the term shahid, martyr. When we joined, we believed in everything we heard about paradise and the houris in heaven. But eventually we realized it meant the one whose turn it is to die.”
Ahl doesn’t know if Taxliil’s initial enthusiasm to join Shabaab is now entirely replaced by the hostile attitude he displays at present, even though this is to be expected. But will he continue vacillating between several contradictory positions until they get to Djibouti and then feel much worse at his grilling by the U.S. authorities?
“Any idea what became of your passports?”
“We heard stories. That is all.”
“What kind of stories?”
“The stories contradicted one another,” Taxliil says. “We heard that our American passports were being used to bring foreign fighters into Somalia, but knew this couldn’t be true, because all the foreign fighters were older than us. Then we heard that some of the Shabaab leaders used them to get their sons into America,” he says. “I don’t know if this is true or not. I don’t know.”
Ahl has a glimpse, and not for the first time, of the immense difficulties Somalis are certain to face in America in the future.
“So how did you end up in the desert camp where Saifullah offered to martyr himself?” Ahl asks.
“After I got into trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“My instructor History, you see, had me teach English to his daughter — but only orally, as I couldn’t read to her, given I had no spectacles. Then she became pregnant.”
“You mean you made her pregnant?”
“I did no such thing, Dad.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then History had me ‘marry’ her.”
Ahl is furious. “He forced you to marry his daughter, even though the baby wasn’t yours?”
“That’s right, Dad.”
Wait until Yusur hears this part, Ahl thinks. “And then what?”
“Then he had me transferred to the fighting corps.”
“Do you think he wanted you out of the way, dead?”
Taxliil stares at Ahl without answering.
“What was his motive if he didn’t want you killed?”
“That’s what one of my friends thought.”
“What did you think?”
“I was too afraid to think.”
There is a pause. Then Taxliil says, “Dad I’m too tired to answer any more questions today.”
“Just a couple more and then we’re done.”
Somewhere close by, a muezzin is calling the faithful to prayer. Taxliil seems agitated, as if debating whether to get up and answer the call or to stay seated and answer the remaining questions.
Ahl asks, “Do you remember the name of the travel agency that booked your flights?”
“I do not know the name of the travel agency that arranged our flights, or who paid for the tickets,” Taxliil replies.
“Did you collect the tickets yourselves?”
“We picked them up at different airports, when we presented ourselves with our passports,” Taxliil says. “They were e-tickets, every single one of them, from our starting points in the States all the way to our final destination. We did not all meet until Lamu, and then traveled together by boat.”
Ahl is about to resume his questioning when he observes that Taxliil has once again retreated into the private world of which he is king.
They take a break, and Ahl tries to reach Malik to apprise him of the fresh developments. But he can only reach Malik’s voice mail and doesn’t bother to leave a message.
When they resume, Ahl explains that they’ll be leaving for Djibouti the next day.