“How’s that?”
“Or rather, I should say that Raasta brought her mother here, as a prelude to her being born. And then guess what? Dajaal met Shanta here, again by chance.”
“I won’t ask what Dajaal was doing here either.”
“He was in charge of the force holding the district.”
“Go back to Shanta, or how Raasta brought her here.”
“It’s all fascinating and complicated,” Bile said, and paused. “Shanta was very pregnant with Raasta, eight months or so. She had gone to an appointment with an obstetrician, but because of the fierce fighting between the clan militia and the Tyrant’s forces, the doctor wasn’t there. Shanta had walked a great distance, all the way from Digfar hospital. The fighting between the clan militiamen and the regime was very fierce, bombs were falling everywhere. But at no time, Shanta would tell me later, did she fear for her own life or her baby’s.”
A handheld radio on Bile’s desk came to life, and the static in the room made him silent. They listened as two women talked about provisions for The Refuge, which one of them was supposed to obtain.
When they signed off, Bile continued: “It was probably Shanta’s weighty bladder that brought her here. She was in need of a toilet, tired, so she found a bed and fell asleep. Sometime later, after it had gotten dark, Dajaal, who was in command of the group fighting against the Tyrant’s forces in the district, woke her up. He went to get her husband, who helped find a midwife. Then Dajaal led me to her, in time to deliver Raasta into the world. So we’re all connected to this place!”
DINNER AT THE REFUGE PROVED TO BE AN EYE-OPENER.
Jeebleh had to sit on a mat on the floor. If he needed a reminder that he was physically out of shape, then here it was, drilling pain into his knees, his upper thighs, even his heels. He could not tuck his feet under his body, as the others all managed to do with ease. Even though he ached terribly, he remained in a crouch, and kept changing position. Finally he squatted, balancing himself on the tips of his toes.
“Who are these children, and why them?” he asked.
“In the main, there are periods when there is little or no fighting, and periods when the strife is more intense,” Bile replied. “The bulk of the children, those who form the core group, we refer to as ‘inmates.’ A third of the children you see qualify as ‘tourists’—they’ve fled the fighting in their villages, but they plan to go back when the fighting dies down.”
The refectory was noisy. There were younger children, numbering about thirty, and adults supervising their eating. There were teenagers and young men. They sat on the floor, close to where Jeebleh and Bile were sharing a large plate with Dajaal and the driver. There were nine massive plates in all, with seven or eight people to each one.
“We’ve resorted to the traditional method of eating together daily from the same mayida,” Bile said, “in the belief that we create a camaraderie and we’ll all trust one another. Some might consider hogwash the idea that those who look one another in the eye as they eat together are bound closely to one another. But our experiment bears it out — anyone meaning to do harm to a fellow sharer of the mayida will not dare look him, or anyone else, in the eye. Around here we say that many people prefer staying away to coming and sharing the mayida when there is bad blood. And when we share the mayida, there can be no bad blood.”
“A brilliant idea,” Jeebleh agreed.
15
“YOU MUST TELL ME ABOUT RAASTA AND MAKKA,” JEEBLEH SAID.
“I’ll be very pleased to,” Bile replied.
They were now back in the apartment, the light in Bile’s eyes suggesting sorrow coming home. For his part, Jeebleh was restless again. They sat on the balcony, a touch of salt in the early-evening breeze.
Jeebleh told Bile that for his own belated benefit, he wanted to know better what had happened on the day the two girls disappeared.
“We’ve been able to piece together, from talking to two women who work at The Refuge, that Makka was the first to go missing,” Bile said. “This is because something unusual occurred earlier that day. A girl around six or seven years old probably, arrived at the gate, dressed in an outfit made up of colorful beads, similar to the kind that bare-breasted Zulu maidens wear. She stood where she was for a good while, but wouldn’t come into the compound. Neither of the two women knew who she was, where she came from, who had dropped her at the gate, or picked her up when she eventually left, about twenty minutes later, walking north, vanishing into the mystery that had brought her forth. Makka saw the girl at the same time as the two women did, and soon afterward started acting like she was under some sort of spell, shaking. The two women agree that our Makka was so taken with the girl’s beads that she followed her when they were called away to attend to some problem.”
“And then what happened?”
“Makka returned, alone,” Bile said. “And a short time later, Makka went out again, apparently in search of the beaded girl. The two women remember Makka saying that she had come for Raasta, so they could go ‘play beads’ with the other girl, or something like that. And she said something about a man and a woman. Many things are not clear.”
“And Raasta?”
“Raasta was very agitated to learn that Makka had gone off on her own. And she went in search of her.”
“Then?” Jeebleh asked.
“The women saw a fancy car with tinted windows, engine running, parked at a road to the south of ours. By the time we mounted a search in the neighborhood, we couldn’t find any sign of the car. A neighbor claims to have seen one of the men. He had shades on, the kind often worn by gangsters in American films.”
Jeebleh mused aloud, as though to himself, “I wouldn’t have thought that fancy vehicles would be commonly seen in the potholed streets of civil war Mogadiscio.”
“There is such a fleet, which once belonged to the now collapsed state,” Bile said.
“Is this why everyone assumes that a warlord is behind the disappearance of the two girls?”
Bile picked his words with caution: “To spare her from worrying too much unnecessarily, we haven’t told Shanta everything we know. Only the two women and I know about the fancy car.”
A long, long silence followed.
“TELL ME MORE,” JEEBLEH SAID.
“They’re so unalike, it’s incredible,” Bile said. “But they have become completely dependent on each other, and are beginning to look alike, in their own fashion. You know the story, when a man and his wife have lived together for many years, they begin to sound alike. In fact, Raasta and Makka do sound alike, to a certain degree.” Bile paused, perhaps suddenly conscious of his natural use of the present tense, a sign of his belief that the girls were well and unharmed.
Jeebleh remained silent. He did not mention that he had spoken to Caloosha about the girls, because he wished neither to raise Bile’s hopes nor to dash them.
“Except for the day of their disappearance, neither girl does anything or goes anywhere without the other knowing about it,” Bile continued. “They’re like Siamese twins, neither makes a move without the other being there.”
“So whoever separated them on the day they went missing knew what they were doing — lure one away and you get the other,” Jeebleh guessed. “Could it have been an inside job?”
Bile wasn’t ready for speculation. “Where Raasta intimates care, Makka communicates boundless, generous love. No one knows exactly how old Makka is, or how she came to be sleeping in that room at The Dormer where I found her. She’s given to kissing, to touching, and to trusting people. There’s a smile forever on her lips, and she displays joy at every opportunity, seldom crying, rarely showing any depression, which other children in similar circumstances might. Often I tell myself that she’s held together within the framework of a narrative not yet known to us, that she’s an untold story. Her every word points to so many unasked questions needing answers. At The Refuge, she is treated with great affection, because of her special qualities. Everyone is kind to her. She smiles crying, and cries earnestly, laughing. Compared with her, I feel a great lack.”