Then the same receptionist gave him an envelope. This was thin and contained a one-page message in Somali, written on lined paper torn out of a child’s exercise book. At first he thought that a child had penned it — an obviously shaky hand, some of the letters small, others large. At the bottom of the message were six thumbprint signatures and three printed names, difficult to decipher. His hand trembled as he held it, and he thought of it as a souvenir that would benefit from being framed — ideally on the walls of an adult literacy class. The message informed him that his clan elders wanted to discuss with him matters of family importance.
He took his time showering, then tried to make the mobile phone work. Being inexperienced, he pressed buttons at random and inaccurately, and got cut off or reached busy signals or wrong numbers. Just when he thought he had succeeded, Bile’s number was off his screen.
He felt it was time for his Yemeni coffee. Downstairs, he asked a runner to get him a pot of coffee and to prepare several pots of tea, milk, lots and lots of biscuits, and half a kilo of sugar, and to bring these to his table. When the runner returned, he told a bellboy to show the clan elders in.
THE MEN FORMED A LINE AND GREETED JEEBLEH ONE AT A TIME, EACH OF them respectfully taking his hand in both of theirs. Then they sat down at a table, three to the right of him, six to his left, he at the head. Before anyone uttered a word beyond the greetings, Jeebleh pointed to the nine teapots, one for each of them, the biscuits still wrapped, and the bowls filled to the brim with sugar. He suggested they help themselves.
They got down to the business of pouring out their tea with the clumsiness of four-year-olds. And even though their cups were full, they poured milk, then added several spoonfuls of sugar, so that the tea spilled over the sides. They did this with such devotion you might have thought they would depart as soon as each had attended to his sweet tooth. The table was soon as messy as a toddler’s birthday party would have made it. The crackling of biscuit wrappings mixed with the loud chorus of tea slurping. A host of flies arrived to feast on the sugary surfaces of cups and saucers.
The first elder to speak had biscuit crumbs on his chin and a bit of sugar on his cheek. He was of small build and looked healthy for his age. He explained that he and several other elders had come previously to greet and welcome Jeebleh, but they were informed that he had gone out. “Now we’re very pleased to return with a different lot of elders who’ve shown interest in meeting our son, and to welcome him back into the bosom of his immediate clan.” The old man requested that each of the other elders speak, but confine their remarks to a few words, because, he said, “your son is a very busy man and doesn’t have a lot of time to waste.” After they had done so, he invited each of them to recite from the Koran, in praise of Allah, who had brought their son back from “his worldly wanderings.” Their lips astir and their voices low, each man mouthed a few verses.
Jeebleh bowed to each of them in turn, greeting them with a ritual nod, but said nothing. Then he poured himself more coffee and sipped at it leisurely. One of the men passed him the sugar bowl. He nodded his thanks as he took the proffered bowl, and watched the consternation on the men’s faces as he put it aside without helping himself. Why was he drinking his coffee bitter, with so much sweetness available?
The spokesman of the elders now discussed Jeebleh’s importance and the positive, commendable role he could play in the politics of the clan. Jeebleh lapsed into a private mood, a man in his own space. He did his utmost not to display unease at the thought of privileging blood over ideology. The idea of nine self-appointed clansmen making a claim on him was anathema. Of course, he meant not to anger them unnecessarily. But he changed his mind when the spokesman alluded to his mother without mentioning his father. “As it happens, we’re from your mother’s side of the bah!”
By invoking his mother’s name, not his father’s, the men from his mother’s subclan were explicitly distancing themselves from his father, the gambler. The elders failed to mention that they had blamed his mother for her husband’s wild ways, accusing her of driving him first to gambling and then to the bottle, when this wasn’t the case, according to his mother’s version. Some of these very men may have been present when family members had resolved to deny her a hearing — one of them was for sure, the especially ancien-looking sort with the thick glasses, whom Jeebleh thought of as FourEyes. So where was the clan when Jeebleh’s mother sang her sorrow, a single mother raising him, and later a widow isolated from the subclan? Where were these men then? The first time a member of his subclan ever visited him was when he returned from Italy, with a university degree. When he incurred the Dictator’s wrath and for his pains was thrown into prison and sentenced to death, they had all deserted him, hadn’t they? He knew that clan elders were self-serving men, high on selective memory and devoid of dignity.
“I am insulted by the way you’ve formulated my identity,” Jeebleh said. “Why do I feel I am being insulted? Why do you continue referring to me as the son of my mother without ever bothering to mention my father by name? Don’t I have a father? Am I illegitimate? We know what he was like and what kind of man he was, but still, he was my father and I bear his name, not my mother’s! How dare you address me in a way that questions my being the legitimate son of my own father?”
The gathering was thrown into a state of noisy confusion, as all the elders tried to assure him that they did not mean to insult him, or to offend his parents’ memories. He was elated that their cynical ploy had worked to his advantage, remembering how, earlier, he had restrained himself from losing his temper with Caloosha. The elders were now too shocked to speak. He had them where he wanted them.
“Why have you come, then?” he asked the bespectacled man to his right, and not the spokesman, farther to his left, who, rendered speechless, covered his mouth with his hand. The men’s evasive looks now converged on the face of the spokesman. He removed his hand from his mouth and shook his head regretfully: he was not going to speak, either on his own behalf or on anyone else’s.
There was vigor in his voice when FourEyes now spoke. He came to the point: “Unlike other bahs of the clan, ours hasn’t been able to raise a strong fighting militia. We do not have sufficient funds to take our rightful place among the subclans equal in number to or even smaller than ours. We’ve come to appeal to you for money so we may repair our only two battlewagons.”
Jeebleh addressed himself to the gathering: “I’m busy with other concerns, and as you can imagine, I’ve not brought along with me more cash than I need for my daily expenses. So I suggest you wait until I return home and consult my wife and daughters, and I’ll come back to you with my response.”
There was absolute silence as the meaning of Jeebleh’s words registered with the elders. Then, as if on cue, the mobile phone on Jeebleh’s lap squealed. He answered it and told the gathering, “This is an important call, and I must take it in private. Please forgive me.” And he walked away.
“Are we to wait for you?” FourEyes called after him.
“You needn’t,” Jeebleh answered. “I’ll be in touch!”
The men argued among themselves, some suggesting that they should wait, others insisting that the earlier command to wait had been addressed to the caller. When he walked farther away, and they heard him ask one of the runners to show them out, they said in a chorus, “This is an insult!”
Jeebleh waved to them from the reception area, and shouted: “Go well!” And before they had a chance to say anything, he himself was gone.