Now he says, “May I look around?”
“Go ahead. Please,” says Aar.
The two men move in opposite directions. Keith enters the bedroom and then presumably the bathroom, and Cadde heads for the kitchen and, finding the door to the balcony locked, asks if Aar has a key and can open it for him. Aar is wise to the fact that many a security breach has resulted from an unlocked balcony. In Nairobi, where he has resided for a number of years, balconies often provide access points to burglars. Aar elects to lie, saying that he has no idea where the key is and that he has never opened the balcony door for fear that he might forget to lock it.
Back in the living room, Keith’s wandering gaze falls on the photographs of Bella in various poses, and he stands there, staring at them. It is as if the man suddenly has no memory of the business that has brought him here. Still, Aar refrains from asking why they have come, his self-restraint greater than even his sense of unease. He has no wish to confront his demons now. But when Keith and Cadde join him in the kitchen, at last Aar asks, “Why are you here?”
Keith looks at Aar and then at Cadde and, smiling solicitously, explains, “My office has received intelligence from an unidentified source suggesting that you’ve been singled out as a terrorist target. And because of this, we’ve been asked to call round and talk to you.”
Aar has no way of knowing whether the two of them are fishing for information or know more than they are letting on. He looks at Cadde for a long minute before he responds. “Does your unidentified source say why I’ve been singled out and in what way?”
Cadde turns away, avoiding Aar’s glance, and Aar is struck with a sudden nausea; in fact, he is so panic-stricken that he thinks his knees may give way, forcing him to collapse to the floor. And because he can’t bear the thought of that happening in the presence of these men, he makes his way to the chair closest to him and sits down. There is no point in engaging these men in further talk. He trains his eyes on Cadde, in hope of divining something from the man’s body language, but when he fails to do so, he turns to Keith: “Can you say who your unidentified source is or how you know that I’ve been singled out?”
Keith exchanges a furtive glance with Cadde and then answers that he is not at liberty to share any information. That is the moment when Aar indicates that he wants them to leave. And they do.
—
Aar telephones his children again, and again each of their phones rings on and on until at last he gets their voice mail. He leaves them each a second message, his worry gaining in intensity. He paces back and forth as though he were in a cage, which in a sense he is, in this barricaded hotel in his native city, with armed guards roaming inside and outside, and stationed at all entrances.
Until a few hours ago, Aar felt safe here, especially being so close to the airport. All he has to do is pack his one suitcase and leave. And although he hates giving the impression that the mere suggestion of danger in the shape of a threatening letter is enough to make him flee, he is inclined to do just that. After all, he has the children to think of, having been a single parent to them since Valerie vanished.
When he thinks of Valerie, he thinks of their relationship as being like a rug: beautiful when first purchased but gone threadbare over time and then utterly disintegrating. He seldom mentions her in the presence of the children anymore, as he does not know what to tell them, how to explain that their mother evidently valued the love she shared with Padmini over the love she had for them.
The last time he heard from her was when Dahaba, at ten, had her first period. Valerie wrote to him from Pondicherry, where she and Padmini were running a hotel and restaurant, to tell him what to do. As if she could give this sort of advice from such a distance! Or had any right to after failing to remember so many of the children’s birthdays with so much as a phone call, let alone a card or a present! When he responded angrily, she wrote back, “As a Muslim man, what do you know about raising a daughter? Your people chop it all off, don’t they, and maybe feed it to a waiting cat?” From then on, Aar cut off all communication with her and relayed information only through the children’s English grandmother, with whom he has remained on good terms and who gives him the latest about her daughter in return.
The years that have passed have dulled the edges of his rancor, and recently he has begun to pity Valerie, sensing that she may be regretting the choices she made. The children have lost interest in what their mother is up to. In fact, one of the things he would like to talk to them about is who will take care of them in the event of his death. Given the choice, he would like Bella to have them. Not that he would stand in the way of Valerie making a new bond with her children. After all, she carried them both in her womb for nine months, breast-fed them, cared for them, loved them — until she left. But it won’t be easy for Valerie to win them over again, especially if Padmini is still in the picture.
That night, Aar books a flight to Nairobi for the following day. In the morning, he calls in sick — a terrible diarrhea, he says. He learns from his secretary, a Kenyan Somali who has little or no understanding of Mogadiscio’s clan-infested politics, that Cadde has not returned to work since he and Keith visited Aar at his apartment, nor has Aar’s driver. He tells her he’s going to organize a taxi so he can quickly pick up a few documents he needs to work at home.
He leaves his suitcase in the taxi and slips into the office. It isn’t files he is after, but a few photos — and not any of Bella’s, surprisingly enough. The photos he feels compelled to have are the ones he himself took during that camping trip in the Rift Valley with Gunilla and his children. He is just on his way back out the door with them when Shabaab strikes.
1
“Like beads unstrung,” Bella says to Marcella.
“What a terrible thing death is!” says Marcella to Bella.
They hug for a long time, the elderly Italian woman holding the younger woman, each wailing louder than the other — their lamentation a survivor’s threnody expressive of so huge a loss.
The doors of their respective apartments are open. They sob bitterly in the corridor, neither of them battling to hold back their keening. Some of the neighbors come out of their apartments and stand gawking at the women and exchanging questioning glances.
It is Bella’s ill luck that she was one of the last to hear of Aar’s death. When he was killed, she was finishing up a photo assignment in Bahia for the German magazine GEO. She had just cleared customs at Fiumicino when she came upon the headline in the Italian daily La Repubblica. According to witnesses, a suicide bomber blew up a car at the main entrance to the UN compound, then four heavily armed gunmen entered the building and a gun battle lasting more than an hour ensued. In all, twenty people lost their lives, fifteen of them Somalis and five foreigners, Aar among them.
Bella had barely finished the first paragraph when her legs buckled and she collapsed at the feet of a man offering her taxi service. When she came to, a throng of people had crowded around her and a fierce debate had ensued as to what to do with her. The taxi driver, an elderly Sicilian with a broad face sporting at least a week of stubble and a sweet smile showing only a few front teeth, bent down and helped her to sit up. “Signorina, take notice,” he said. “You are in Rome, whose proud citizens frown on public weeping.” He offered her a pile of paper napkins. “Here, dry your tears.”