She lapsed into a reflective mood, and withdrew into a private space he was in no position to reach. Jeebleh imagined her to be tough in the self-protective way of a tortoise withdrawing its softer head and legs. Was she thinking through her troubled thoughts? It would be unwise to push her, to try to make her speak. He should give her time, so that the trauma of being held prisoner might melt away. He would let her find peace in her silence, if that was what she was after. He said, “Everything will be all right.”
“I am beginning to think so too,” she replied, eagerly but absently, as tears appeared in her eyes.
Like all exceptional persons, no matter what their age or disposition, she was as prepared to show her strengths and perseverance as she was willing to demonstrate her weaknesses. And so when it came to weeping, she did so discreetly and undemonstratively, as a mother might in the presence of her child. This grown-up behavior too impressed Jeebleh.
“Shall we go?” she said.
“Where?”
“Home.”
Jeebleh didn’t know what answer to give. He was not sure whether Faahiye had up-to-the-minute instructions as to what he might or might not do, and did not know what their fates would be if they tried to leave. Nor had he any idea with whom Faahiye dealt, whether communications were by mobile phone, in dribs and drabs, on a need-to-know basis, or in person, direct from the head of the conspiracy. “Let’s ask your daddy,” he suggested.
“Let’s,” she said, and was just about to shout and ask whether it was okay to go home, back to her mother, Uncle Bile, and Uncle Seamus, when a ruckus was raised outside.
It was the kind of sound that might have been created by a rutting he-donkey chasing a she-donkey up and down a stone-filled alleyway. It ranked with the hideous racket Jeebleh remembered Italian youths making on their motorcycles through the streets of Padua at siesta time. How were the two girls coping? Raasta, out of sympathy, went to Makka’s play corner to hold her in a comforting embrace, to assure her that all would be well, not to worry. When Faahiye asked what on earth was going on, Jeebleh, because he had a firearm, volunteered to find out. He stood beside a window, weapon in hand, ready to put it to use.
Faahiye stayed behind with the girls.
Glancing up the stairs to the second floor, Jeebleh heard that the television had just been switched off. He was tempted to ask who was there, but he chose instead to devote what energy he had to discovering the cause of the ruckus, which showed no signs of letting up.
But he was relieved now to see who was making the noise — Qasiir, armed and Stetsoned, in a car with three of his mates, two of them armed, the other at the wheel. The car was a collectible Ford, a flivver most likely left behind by an American or a European seconded to UNOSOM. Tied to the back, dragging along behind, were several empty tin cans. As soon as Qasiir spotted Jeebleh, who was on the porch, waving, the car stopped, and so did the unearthly noise. “It’s only me and my friends,” Qasiir said. “This is fun — but maybe not as much as you’re having. Look at your haircut — cool! Are you all right? How are the girls?”
Again, Clint Eastwood to the rescue. “What a delightful young man,” Jeebleh told Faahiye, who had joined him. He put the firearm away, smiling, and noticed the stale sweat staining the armpits of Faahiye’s dark shirt. Jeebleh’s face was now daubed with relief.
He waited for Qasiir and his friends to get out of the car before asking how they had traced them to the house. Qasiir and another of the youths were busy untying the cans from the car, when two more vehicles came into view. Jeebleh assumed he and Faahiye were now in trouble; here was the head of the conspiracy come to put an end to the insurgency, they wouldn’t be allowed to leave with the girls. Hope drained out of him. But Qasiir called out: “No need to worry. It’s only Grandpa, our backup!”
The first car contained Dajaal and a driver. In the second, a battlewagon, were some seven or eight youths with machine guns and rocket launchers. Kaahin was up front, next to the youth at the wheel. Dajaal and Kaahin got out of their respective vehicles and remained where they were, poised to deal with any problem that might come up the road.
Jeebleh’s script had called for no fighting, for please-no-guns peace. Accordingly, he went over to Dajaal and gave the revolver back to him, with a whispered “Thank you.” Then he lapsed into confusion, as in the script, and paying no attention to the humorous remarks about his fashionable hairstyle, he walked with Raasta and Makka at either side to the warmed vehicle and got in.
They moved in convoy, the car carrying Jeebleh and the girls safely between the battlewagon, now carrying Dajaal, and the Ford. Only when they got to The Refuge did Jeebleh realize that Faahiye had not come.
He wondered why.
But this did not deter him from taking pride in their achievement, the recovery of the girls without a gunfight. Everything would be revealed when Raasta, once she was out of her trauma, relaxed into telling her story.
PART 4
Thus we descended on the right hand side.
(CANTO XVII)
29
THE STORY OF HOW DAJAAL AND THE OTHERS HAD TRACKED JEEBLEH TO the house where he met the girls was a lot less complicated than the one about how the girls had been taken as captives. After supper, with Makka asleep in The Refuge, Raasta showed herself stronger than anyone had imagined. She was ready to speak of her ordeals. Even though he didn’t always follow what was being said, Seamus stuck around to listen, and was satisfied with the summaries he was given — but sorry that, in her trauma, Raasta had forgotten how to string together a sentence in English.
Her story disagreed with the version circulated earlier on one major point: the nature of the car in which they had been driven away. Raasta described it as a black four-door no fancier than Uncle Bile’s sedan. In it were four men wearing shades. When pushed into it from behind, she saw Makka lying on the floor in the back, not moving a muscle. The car traveled at frightening speed, a dilapidated battlewagon leading the way. When Raasta resisted, a muscular man held her down to stop her from screaming; he injected her with a hypodermic syringe with a clear solution, which knocked her out.
She came to later in the day, in a dark room draped with heavy curtains. The windows were boarded up, and the only light came from a naked bulb in the corridor. There were people in the house: a dozen men and women, talking all day long, sitting around on the carpeted floor of an adjacent room, chewing qaat and watching satellite TV, sometimes in Arabic, sometimes in languages that Raasta couldn’t identify. The girls slept on mattresses on a tiled floor, and felt the chill in their bones. The food was not bad, though.
Every now and then, they would be offered special treats: fruits flown in fresh from elsewhere, like apples and large white grapes of the kind not grown locally; cherry tomatoes, because Raasta loved them; lots of sweets, because Makka craved them; ninja toys, because both missed theirs. Only once, however, were they given fresh clothes — and this in the early days of their captivity. The treats coincided with occasional visits from the fat man. He never showed his face to them, but Raasta concluded that he was the head of the visiting entourage; he would waddle past their room, unfailingly surrounded by bodyguards. Would she recognize him if she saw him? She couldn’t identify him in a lineup, but she might recognize his voice, which, she said, dripped as if with undigested fat.