“I would like to eat,” Jeebleh said.
“What do you want?” the youth replied. “There’s a restaurant close by.”
“What’s available?”
“Steak, other types of meat, spaghetti.”
“Spaghetti and salad?” Jeebleh doubted very much that he would eat more than a mouthful or two: he was worried that his stomach might act up, something it was prone to do. Not wanting to trust the runner with a large U.S. banknote, he lied, saying, “But I don’t have cash.”
“Don’t worry. You can pay later.” And without waiting for further instructions or Jeebleh’s confirmation, the youth ran off.
Alone in the courtyard, Jeebleh was struck by the night’s beauty, and gave himself time to admire its starry quality. His gaze fell on a tree in the distance, silhouetted by moonlight, and he was startled to notice a human figure wrapped in a subdued gray, sitting under the tree. The shape seemed detached from both time and space, reminding him of a well-trodden floor and a tableau vivant. He assumed he was looking at a woman, age indeterminate. Somehow, the woman’s figure evoked in him a funereal sorrow. Moving closer, he realized that there were in fact two women, sitting so close to each other that their veils merged and became one. They were so still for such a long time, neither speaking, that he thought of two cows sharing a scratching post. He had never examined these veils closely. They were less elaborate than the ones commonly worn by Yemeni women when he had lived in Mogadiscio.
Then he heard a man’s voice. When he turned around, the manager was standing in front of him. “A breathtaking sight, isn’t it?” Ali said. “Just look at how beautiful the night can be in a place that’s otherwise dreadful!”
And Jeebleh looked back up at the sky, which lay solemn in the placidity of its own composure, the stars a-scatter like maize kernels thrown into greedy disarray by two hens quarreling. He agreed: “The sky is divine!”
“I wouldn’t put it past StrongmanSouth to get it into his head that it’s time he owned the skies too,” the manager said. “Then we’ll all be in deeper trouble.”
In the pause that followed, Jeebleh was unable to say much, still shaken by the image of two women merging into one. He and Ali walked back to a table surrounded by chairs. Jeebleh asked, “What manner of veils do Somali women wear these days?”
“A lot has changed since you were last here.”
“I don’t remember these.”
The manager explained that the influence came from the heartland of Islamic fundamentalism, from societies such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, where knowledge about the faith was essentialist, or Saudi Arabia, where the people were traditionalist. He described how the “robes” were made from two widths of black material sewn together into a kind of a sack, with sleeves that were equal in width to the length of the gown. They had a face veil, consisting of a long strip of poplinette that concealed the whole face except for the eyes. The robe covered the woman from the tip of her forehead to her ankles.
“Well, I never!” Jeebleh said.
“How long have you been away?” the manager asked.
“Far too many years.”
The manager looked away, stared down at his hands, and said nothing.
Peace was a luxury expressed in an evening’s beauty, Jeebleh thought, in the calm into which a cricket chirps, into which the owl hoots.
“Has there been much fighting lately?” he asked.
“Every now and then,” Ali said. “When there is fighting, our evenings become very ugly and we hear nothing, not even the heart of our fear.”
“And the point to the fighting?”
“I don’t see any point to much of it.”
“But the entire nation is held for ransom,” Jeebleh said, mostly to himself and the quiet night.
Then he heard a scuttle coming from behind them: two geckos bickering over supremacy or rats, he couldn’t tell. He looked at the wall behind him, at the space ahead of him. Alas, he couldn’t make out who or what had made the sound, no matter how hard he tried. To a frightened man, he thought, everything appears strange, and every noise poses some threat.
The youth arrived, carrying two aluminum plates, one on top of the other, together containing a runny meal. Jeebleh had no idea why the youth had brought him a steak, or why it was drowned in the sauce it had been cooked in. He hoped it was freshly cooked, not warmed up several times over. The fried potatoes were soggy and inedible, and the steak tougher than the hoof of the cow slaughtered to produce it. The manager sat forward, and made as though he might launch into a lengthy explanation. Jeebleh waited, his fork raised, mouth in a grimace. He took a bite of a sodden potato, then a tougherthan-thou bite of steak. It was possible that his grim countenance dampened the manager’s intentions.
“Do you know the driver with whom I came from the airport?” Jeebleh asked.
“He was no driver in the ordinary sense of the term,” said the manager.
“What’re you saying?”
“Don’t be fooled.”
Jeebleh was thoroughly confused. He took a mouthful of potatoes and helped himself to a generous cut of rubbery steak, which he eventually swallowed.
“What is he, then, if he’s not a driver?”
“He was once a top civilian aide to the Dictator,” the manager said. “Now he is second man to an armed militia that enjoys the backing of Ethiopia. You want my advice: Don’t be deceived!”
Jeebleh wasn’t sure how to react to the information. He stared at Ali in the hope that he might continue with this line of advice. No one likes to be taken for an easy ride. Was he being fed falsehoods? A driver who was not a driver! Once a diplomat in the Somali chancellery in Rome; then a top aide to the Dictator; now a driver. Where was the truth in all this? Then there was Af-Laawe, otherwise known as Marabou, who presented himself as a friend of Bile’s but at the same time badmouthed him. Someone had sent him to the airport to meet his flight, but Jeebleh was damned if he knew who.
“How did you come to meet your ‘driver’?” Ali asked.
“Af-Laawe arranged a lift for me with him.”
“A night has two faces,” the manager commented.
“What does that mean?”
“Simply that a night has a face that’s visible in the light,” the manager said, “and a face that’s ensconced in the mystery of the unexplored.”
Jeebleh could see that the manager was enjoying himself, probably repeating something he had rehearsed previously in front of other clients like him. In repose, the manager’s taut face put him in mind of a tree cut before its time. Although he couldn’t wipe the agitation off his own face, Jeebleh remained silent; he would have to find out if there was a profitable purpose to the lies.
The manager sat in an unkempt huddle, his arms folded across his heaving chest. “Don’t be deceived!” he repeated.
Jeebleh pushed away the inedible food, wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, and asked if there was a way to make a telephone call to America. The manager informed him, to his surprise, that this was possible. And when Jeebleh asserted that he hadn’t seen a phone in his room, the manager said, “There’s a one-man telephone company I can send for.”
“A what?”
“A one-man telephone company!”
Jeebleh remembered that until the late eighties it had been impossible to call Somalia from anywhere because the country boasted the worst telephone network on the entire continent. You just couldn’t get through to anyone living here. So how it was possible in civil war Mogadiscio for a one-man telephone company to allow him speak to his wife?