Marveling at her courage, he kisses her wrist.
His phone rings: Cambara reporting that they are in Nairobi, stuck in traffic between the airport and the hospital. She promises to telephone him later with the Nairobi clinic number.
When it is time for Ahl to leave for the airport as well, Taxliil is there, flaunting a Lakers cap worn backward, and dark glasses, tennis shoes, no socks, a pair of baggy trousers, and, in place of a belt, a string round his waist. Faai comes out to see them off.
At the airstrip, they remain in the car with Xalan, the air conditioner on, no one talking. Taxliil hasn’t spoken a word since getting into the car.
A man in a police uniform comes up, and he and Xalan exchange family news. He mentions that Warsame has called him from Garowe and has requested that he help. Xalan hands over the two passports. The man ambles away, dragging his boots on the ground and raising a cloud of dust.
Xalan asks Taxliil if he knows who he is, what his new name is in the passport that will take him to Djibouti, and where he is supposed to have been born. Taxliil has no answers to any of these questions, because he hasn’t bothered to open the passport. She asks if he prefers to stay behind, in Bosaso. He shakes his head no. She asks him why not? He has nothing to say to her.
Meanwhile, the officer in uniform returns with both passports duly stamped and hands them over to Xalan, who in exchange gives him a fat envelope stuffed with Somali shillings. He toddles away quickly, and Xalan hands back the passports, giving Ahl his, and giving to Taxliil a Somali passport with an exit visa. But Taxliil is not interested in learning his new name or birthplace, even though she spells it out for him. Nothing of what she does and nothing that she says are of interest to him. Finally she puts the passport into Ahl’s dependable hands. He’ll keep it with his own passport until they get to Djibouti; she can rely on him to do that.
Before the passengers are to board the plane, Xalan writes down the name of a hotel in Djibouti where they can stay in the event they make it past immigration. She also copies the home telephone and mobile numbers of a very good friend of hers there, a radio journalist who, depending on how they fare, will meet them and take them to the hotel at least for the first night.
29
FOR THE ENTIRE FLIGHT, TAXLIIL AVOIDS MAKING EYE CONTACT with Ahl, from whom he sits as far away as possible. He acts disdainful of Ahl’s suggestion, whispered in English, that he open the passport and get to know his presumed identity.
There is order in Djibouti, when they land and when they disembark. Uniformed ground personnel shepherd the passengers from the aircraft on foot to the arrivals hall. The security is competently vigilant, but without a show of naked authority. There is confidence in the organized efficiency of state power, whose trappings are evident. Given the size of the country, there are numerous aircraft on the tarmac and on the runway, with the flags of many nations on them.
Their flight has landed near the hour when many a Djiboutian loves to enjoy a sit-down chew, and a fearful slowness ensues. Ahl senses that the immigration officers on duty are eager to rush the passengers through the formalities. He is relieved not only because they are now beyond Shabaab’s reach but because he derives comfort from the sense of order everywhere around them. He likes to know where he is with authority; he loves it when he can challenge the rightness or the wrongness of the actions ascribed to the state. In Bosaso, state authority was so diffuse he could not tell who was in charge. He fills in the entry forms, stating the purpose of his visit and estimating the duration of his and his son’s stay at a week maximum.
He is still worried about Taxliil’s mood, though, and whether he is harboring a desire to get caught, deported, or denied entry. Is Taxliil martyring himself belatedly, to make up for a previous failure? Does he, like many misguided youths, place an exalted value on obduracy? Impervious to Ahl’s mild admonishments, expostulations, and appeals to get on with it, Taxliil doodles at the top and bottom of the entry form. Two different immigration officers ask Taxliil and then eventually Ahl what the problem is, and Ahl says to both, “The difficulties with teenagers.”
He does his utmost not to lose his temper, and with his teeth clenched in frustration, takes the form from Taxliil’s clutch and says, “Let me fill it in.”
Taxliil says, “There is a problem, though.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I don’t like something about this passport,” Taxliil says.
“What don’t you like about it?” Ahl asks.
“It makes me a year older. I don’t like any of my aliases, either.”
Who says that there is no life after death? Ahl remembers a line from Auden: that “proper names are poetry in the raw.” Ahl reads the run of names to which Taxliil is supposed to answer — Mohammed Mahmoud Mohammed — and cannot help agreeing that, taken together, they sound like a made-up name. So in a moment of rare sympathy, Ahl pats him on the back and fills in the forms when Taxliil raises no objections.
They form their own line, being the only passengers left. As they approach the immigration counter, Ahl says sternly in muttered English, “Let me do the talking, if you don’t mind.”
Mercifully, Taxliil nods his head.
Since none of their names match and since Ahl is traveling on an American passport, which has in it a Djiboutian exit and entry stamp from less than a fortnight ago, and since Taxliil bears a Somali passport, issued a year earlier but not used up to now, they will need to give some explanation to smooth out the apparent discrepancies. Ahl feels more confident that going to the immigration counter together offers him a better chance to explain the discrepancies between the names. After all, it is not unusual in this part of the world for parents and children to bear different surnames. Besides, with any luck on their side, the immigration officer may have no way of knowing about the phoniness of Taxliil’s travel document.
The immigration officer is very courteous; he welcomes them both to Djibouti. He takes a long time studying in turn the passports and their details, then looks from Ahl to Taxliil and back, and detects no family resemblance in the faces or in the sameness of the nationalities of the passports.
Ahl can see that Taxliil is nervous. He has the temperament of someone with an impulse to barrel up the stairway and run for it, or to blurt out something incriminating. Ahl volunteers, “He is my stepson,” and leaves it at that.
Taxliil says, “No way will I return to Bosaso.”
As with toothpaste out of the tube, no attempt to put it back in will work, despite Ahl’s attempt to dismiss the disclosure as no more than a teenager’s gaffe. When Ahl tries to explain, Taxliil won’t let him, speaking petulantly and saying, “Leave me alone.” The immigration officer takes his unrushed time to study the passports some more and to scrutinize the forms several times more. He doesn’t say anything to either of them. He picks up the telephone and whispers a mere two words into the mouthpiece, in French.
Another officer, senior to the one at the desk, arrives inside a minute. He, too, peruses the passports and takes in Ahl and Taxliil’s faces, as if searching for a clue. He makes a one-word phone call. A third officer, senior to both, joins them.
Ahl and Taxliil are escorted to a cubicle within the airport structure. They are put in separate rooms and are asked questions about their identities, where they were born, where they have come from, and about their final destination. New forms. New questions. Their addresses, home phone numbers, relationship, and workplace or name of school in Minneapolis. They are provided with new forms to fill in. Same questions, different officers, their conversations taped, and their fingerprints taken.