Born of War (7 page)

T
he convoy of white Land Rovers bounced across the path through the desert heading east. The vehicles tossed and turned like small dinghies in a violent storm. Some seemed, at times, to come close to flipping over. The roads of east Africa could barely be called roads. They were more like paths occasionally passing through outcrops of sandy rocks. Each of the trucks was marked with the logo of the MSF. Doctors Without Borders had another encampment somewhere farther southwest, near Dolo. But this encampment was far more remote.

The rains had started to come to east Africa, and with the rains, the danger of roads becoming torrents of water. When the ruts dried out, the mud and potholes full of water remained for several days. With the water came the mosquitoes. Sleep required a net or skin so toughened by a life in this wilderness that it was difficult for the insects to penetrate their prey's skin. In all likelihood, many would get malaria and there was not enough medicine for all.

Karen Stewart tried to concentrate on the vehicle in front of her. It seemed to make the vertigo less painful if she watched the vehicle ahead. They were a fleet of ships at sea. She held on to her backpack in her lap. She was in a rear seat with the security guard sitting directly in front of her in the passenger seat. He held his AK-47 out of the window. It had a rope as a sling. He had big white teeth in contrast to his dark face and a smile that helped put her at ease, but she had never been this close to a weapon before.

As they passed through a village, the children and women would stare at the run of vehicles. Sometimes the children would hop onto the running boards and ride until they either got bored and jumped to the ground or were shaken off by a particularly bad bump in the road.

Karen didn't feel well. She knew it was a mistake but she drank some of the camel milk that the women carried on the top of their heads in large plastic jugs. It was intended to be a special treat. She could tell from their eyes as they pulled a jug down and offered to pour the warm liquid out into a steel cup. It tasted oddly sweet and did not sit well.

The malaria pills didn't help either. Her stubbornness did not let the thought of turning back enter her mind. “I warned you!” Dr. Pierre DuBose shook his head at her. He was sitting in the seat next to her. A veteran of this part of Africa, this was his third tour with MSF and he had learned from his many mistakes.

“Okay.” She tried to lean her head against the truck's brace but every time she did, another thump would knock her about.

“It will be better when we get to Ferfer.” He was in his mid-thirties, a surgeon from Paris, and on his last tour. This was not his first tour to the eastern village next to the Shebelle River. The mud huts that formed the small circle on the rise next to the river had been in the same location for well over a thousand years.

“The Shebelle has a cruel heart.” DuBose spoke above the noise of the truck as everything not tied down rattled. Occasionally, they had to stop when they noticed that something had fallen off onto the side of the road.

“Really?”

“It is only a cut in the rocks and the sand. When the rain starts it becomes a viper.” DuBose had a flair for the dramatic. “It will spread like a plague.”

“Beyond its banks?”

“Yes, it has swallowed up many children who got too close.”

“Oh.” She wiped her face with the once-blue-and-orange blouse. It now had a tint of red from the constant dust that clung to everything. The rivers turned red and the water that they drank, even after filtering, had a red tint.

“How far to the border?” She knew that the Somali frontier was close.

“Probably a hundred meters or so. They don't have borders out here unless they want to.”

The neighboring countries knew more by tribes or villages what was and what was not Somalia. It was not like the United States and Mexico.

“When will we see patients?”

DuBose let out a big laugh.

“Yes, you are a rookie!” There would be no shortage of patients. The children had scars on their faces from smallpox and other diseases that they had survived. Some would limp in from the west of Somalia with poorly bandaged wounds from random fighting they had innocently stepped into. Many sought the refuge of the remote village of Ferfer simply because it was far from anything that should matter.

The MSF camp was on a flat area amid a round of rocks that overlooked the valley and the riverbed. The village of Ferfer was just beyond. When the doctors opened up for business, the line of patients wandered up the hillside to the gathering of white tents. She had her wish granted. There was plenty to do. She had no shortage of patients in the encampment.

 

 

After unloading the vehicles, Dr. Stewart fell asleep in her new tent for several hours. As the sun began to set, the chill of the desert set in and with it she awoke in near darkness. She leaned forward in her bunk and got a face full of net as her mind recognized where she was. It was a hard sleep. Her face was wet. She felt her pillow and it was also wet. The days of travel and riding in seats that didn't recline had taken their toll. Stewart pulled the net back, turned to put her feet on the ground, and then felt for her boots. She had already learned to hit her boots together to make sure there were no scorpions that had climbed into the warmth of the boots. Like all the insect and animal life on this continent, the scorpions had a bite that was far worse than just being painful. She had brought a small LED flashlight with her, and with it she dug through her backpack until she found a Polartec jacket. As she left the tent, a cold still night air struck her. She pulled a scarf over her head for both warmth and as respect for this new world. She had learned already that a woman must wear a scarf or covering at all times.

It was the evening prayer. Stewart stopped as the song of words echoed off the rocks. She could hear the call from the village below. Stewart climbed onto a flat rock that let her look out over the valley and beyond.

She smelled smoke from the other side of the MSF encampment. There were a dozen white rectangular tents all with the markings of Médecins Sans Frontières. Below each sign there was another: a red machine gun in a circle with a line through it. It was meant to signal they were an unarmed encampment. The tents were not in any particular line or row.

I will remember where everything is.
More important, she noted the latrine, which was outside the tent and behind one large rock.

She followed the smoke to a small campfire where the guard and Dr. DuBose were sitting. They were speaking in the guard's native tongue.

“Hello!” She pulled up a campstool near the fire.

“There is our rookie!”

DuBose was comfortable in this setting.

“Hello, Pierre.”

“Please call me Peter. I did my residency at Presbyterian in New York.”

“Yes, okay.”

They had traveled for two days together in an odd combination of small airplanes and Land Rovers but hadn't had the chance to really talk.

“Shaata wants you to meet someone. Do you feel up to it?”

“Sure, I guess so.”

“We will go meet the village leader.”

She followed the guide and DuBose down a path to the outskirts of the village where one clay-and-mud structure stood apart from the rest. To the side of the entrance a curtain was drawn over the opening. The guide called out some words and a young villager pulled the curtain aside.

An old man with a large curved nose, a scarred face, and little hair waved his hand to signal they were allowed to enter.

 

 

“
Al-salamu alaykum
.”

The greeting was returned.

“
Wa alaykum s-salam
.”

She saw a group of women in the back of the room, sitting in the darkness. On that nervous edge of not wanting to offend another culture, Stewart pulled her scarf tighter to her face with only her eyes and nose poking through.

“Don't worry.” Peter pointed to a spot near the fire where she was to sit down. “He knows you are a Westerner.”

It was, however, slightly odd that her spot was just behind the inner circle where the men sat cross-legged.

The village leader began to talk and as he did, Peter started to interpret what he was saying. She looked into the old man's eyes and watched as he waved the smoke from the fire on occasion. Soon she forgot that Peter was the translator and listened as the old man's words were quickly interpreted.

“Have you been to our world before?”

“No, this is my first time to Ferfer and to Africa.”

The old man smiled.

“Good, let me tell you about my people.” The old man lived in a mud-and-clay hut in the center of the village. He enjoyed the chance to tell a stranger the story of his people. His smile, lit by the flicker of the fire, showed a pride that continued the story for thousands of years.

“We were not always so poor. We were once a people of the sea. Great traders.”

Stewart twisted her legs so as to be more comfortable.

“Have you heard of our trades with the Roman Empire?”

“No.” She knew that Rome touched everything in this part of the world. Its power was absolute and its arm extended across the civilized world.

“Rome would come to our ports. For a thousand years they would trade with us for the spices that came from India. We brought them over in our little boats.”

She had known from the stories of the pirates that they would go well beyond the horizon in small boats to take on the giant ships. A boat in the Gulf of Aden was, however, far from the coast of India. India required a crossing of thousands of miles or the following of the coastline for months. The journey would have taken a year to complete.

“India was the home to colorful cloths and spices.”

Peter leaned back on his hands as he continued to interpret the man's words. Occasionally, he would stop and use his hands to try and grasp what the old man was saying. And then he would resume the interpretation.

“India held the spices but their men were poor sailors.”

It sounded like cultural pride, but she continued to listen.

“We would sail to India and buy their spices with gold from the Romans. To this date, the Roman coins have been found in India . . . but Rome was never there.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But when cinnamon was brought back from India my people told the Romans that it came from the interior of our land. The Romans thought that the cinnamon came from places like this village. They would send out patrols, but they never found anything.” He laughed at the mental image of a Roman patrol centuries ago walking into the village of Ferfer going from house to house. He pointed to the four walls.

“A Roman came into this house when your Christ walked this earth.”

Stewart listened intently.

“But there was no cinnamon. The Romans never solved the mystery. Not one soul here spoke the truth. Everyone kept his or her lips sealed. The cinnamon had come from across the sea.”

“You mean Somalia sold the cinnamon as their own but none actually came from here?” Stewart asked the question.

“Yes, that is right. No one knew for centuries.”

“Wow.” She thought of the scale of the lie.

“Never underestimate a people's determination.” DuBose inserted his own comment. “Well, tomorrow you get to see some sick ones. Are you ready to hit the rack?”

The story had caused her to forget how tired she was.

“Yes, please. Thank him.”

“Don't leave our village,” said the old man. It was a warning. Not so much to scare her as to protect her.

“No, I won't.”

“We are a land of lions and baboons.” He continued to talk.

“He is right, you know,” DuBose added. “Besides the war, there are other dangers. The ants can cover you in your sleep in a moment. You will see some die just from the ants here.”

“They told me of some of this.”

“We are not just dirt and desert.” The old man spoke the words as he waved his hand. “We are also danger.”

“H
e was a member of that church.” The senior FBI agent was sitting in the operation center that had been set up in Atlanta's regional office.

“Omar was?” The chief of operations was at the end of the table being briefed in a meeting that included a PowerPoint presentation on the subject. “He killed people he had been to church with?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did he go from being a perfect student to being a killer?”

“How do any of them do what they do?”

The question of the American jihadist was broader than just this one target. There were many such men and more seemed to be showing up each day.

“He had a tie to Islam from his father. An uncle was in prison in Syria for more than a decade. We know he traveled there on several occasions and spent time with the uncle.”

“But one person converting an American to be a killer?” It was as if the chief thought that birth in America automatically meant unlimited loyalty to the United States.

“He was always on the fringes. First, he started to attend a mosque in Mobile and then he returned to Syria. We understand that he tried to leave Syria to head to Yemen when he was in high school.”

“So where is he now?”

“Our guess is that he is in North Africa and probably heading to Somalia or Yemen.”

“Sir, we just got this in.” Another, younger agent brought in several copies of a printout of a Web page. “This is Musa. He is with security for Al Shabaab. They are taking credit for the bombing in Mobile.”

“So Omar has tagged in with Musa and Al Shabaab?”

“It seems so.”

“How many does that make now from America?”

“As of 2012, we've tracked at least forty,” Smith read from a report.

“Why?”

“They see this civil war in Somalia as the holy war. The jihadist believes he will be a martyr if he dies for the cause. It's an express ticket to heaven.”

“Where do they get their money from?”

“Much comes from the Saudis, Iran, some sources in Libya and Egypt. Oh, and Al Shabaab is famous for killing thousands of elephants for the ivory. They don't mind killing the rangers as well.”

“Damn. Okay, we need to put him on the Most Wanted list. Very high up. And see if there are any other possibilities of recruits connected to him.”

“Toronto is the place to watch. It is a community up there.” Agent Smith was summarizing what everyone else thought. “We need to coordinate with Mounties' intelligence.”

Omar was in Cairo but they were correct in their guess that he was on the move. He would not be there for long.