Jeebleh, listening to Af-Laawe, realized that he himself was infested with more venom toward Caloosha and anyone associated with him than he had thought possible, despite his years of exile.
“Do you wish to know the name of the cynic I was with?” Af-Laawe said. When Jeebleh nodded, he asked, “Have you ever met Faahiye?”
“I know Raasta's father,” Jeebleh said.
“He's the cynic I was with on the fourth of October.”
Jeebleh was relieved that they had changed the subject when they did, even though he doubted very much that Faahiye had said any of the terrible things ascribed to him. “Where is Faahiye?” he asked.
“A cynic, who's angry at the world,” Af-Laawe said.
“No stonewalling. Where is he?”
“Faahiye hates being an appendage.”
“An appendage of whom?”
“Faahiye looks forward to the day when he is his own man, not an appendage,” Af-Laawe explained, “not to be referred to as Raasta's father, or as Bile's brother-in-law.”
“Where is he?”
“He was headed for a refugee camp on the outskirts of Mombasa when I last heard about him,” Af-Laawe said. “They say he was thin, as we all are, and the worse for wear, as we all are.” After a pause he added, “He was troubled like a rutting he-dog, not knowing what to do, where to turn, because he is terribly excited.” Pleased with his private joke, Af-Laawe graced his lips with a grin. Jeebleh waited, expecting Af-Laawe's exculpatory defense of his own behavior, after he had been accused of such insensitivity, but Af-Laawe did no such thing.
Now, why did the story about the marabou storks following the progress of the American Ranger disturb Jeebleh so? Before he had time to answer, a bellboy called him to the telephone. He asked who it was who wanted him on the phone, expecting it to be Bile. The boy said, “The name sounds like BaajaâI don't know.”
Af-Laawe stepped in helpfully. “He means Dajaal.”
“Who's Dajaal?”
“Bile's man Friday.”
Jeebleh got to his feet, hurting and clumsy, and nearly toppled the plastic table. “Sorry!” he said, with guilt on his face, and he rushed off, passing the gathering of the carrion birds, their presence of no apparent concern to him.
On the phone, Dajaal said he would come shortly to take him to Bile.
7.
THE ROADS MOVED: NOW FAST, NOW SLOW.
From where he sat in the back of the car, Jeebleh saw vultures everywhere he turned: in the sky and among the clouds, in the trees, of which there were many, and on top of buildings. There were a host of other carrion-feeders too, marabous, and a handful of crows. Death was on his mind, subtly and perilously courting his interest, tempting him.
He remembered with renewed shock how he and Af-Laawe had come to their falling-out earlier. Perhaps he wasn't as exempt as he had believed from the contagion that was of a piece with civil wars as he had believed; perhaps he was beginning to catch the madness from the food he had eaten, the water he had drunk, the company he had kept. He doubted that he would knowingly take an active part in the commission of a crime, even if he were open to being convinced that society would benefit from ridding itself of vermin. He knew he was capable of pulling the trigger if it came to that. His hand went to his shirt pocket, where he had his cash and his U.S. passport. He meant to leave these in Bile's apartment, where they would be safer than in his toiletry bag.
Dajaal was in front beside the driver, and Jeebleh had the back to himself. The ride was bumpy, because of the deep ruts in the road. In fact there wasn't much of a road to speak of, and the car slowed every now and then, at times stopping altogether, as the driver avoided dropping into potholes as deep as trenches.
Looking at Bile's man Friday, Jeebleh thought that Dajaal must once have been a high-ranking officer in the National Army. He deduced this from his military posture, from the care with which he spoke, and from his general demeanor. He suspected that Dajaal was armed: one of his hands was out of sight, hidden, and the other stayed close to the glove compartment, as though meaning to spring it open in the event of need. Getting into the vehicle, Jeebleh had seen a machine gun lying casually on the floor, looking as innocuous as a child's toy gun. The butt of the gun rested on Dajaal's bare right footâmaybe to make it easier to kick up into the air, catch with his hands, aim, and shoot. You're dead, militiaman!
What Jeebleh had seen of the city so far marked it as a place of sorrow. Many houses had no roofs, and bullets scarred nearly every wall. In contrast to the rundown ghetto of an American city, where the windows might be boarded up, here the window frames were simply empty. The streets were eerily, ominously quiet. They saw no pedestrians on the roads, and met no other vehicles. Jeebleh felt a tremor, imagining that the residents had been slaughtered “in one another's blood,” as Virgil had it. He would like to know whether, in this civil war, both those violated and the violators suffered from a huge deficiencyâthe inability to remain in touch with their inner selves or to remember who they were before the slaughter began. Could this be the case in Rwanda or Liberia? Not that one could make sense of this war on an intellectual levelâonly on an emotional level. Here, self-preservation helped one to understand.
“Why is ours the only car on the road?” Jeebleh asked.
“We're headed south, maybe that's why,” Dajaal replied.
“The roads were crowded on your way north?”
“We're taking a different route from the one we took coming.”
“Why?”
“It's the thing most drivers do.” Dajaal waited for the driver to confirm what he had said with a nod. Then he continued, “They believe that taking a different route from the one they used earlier will minimize the chance of driving into an ambush.”
“This is a much longer route, isn't it?”
“It is.”
The driver, in a whispered aside, commented to Dajaal that he thought Jeebleh had arrived in the country only a day earlier.
Jeebleh's eyes fell on a bullet-scarred, mortar-struck, machine-gunshowered three-story building leaning every which way, as if in homage to the towering idea of a Pisa. He was surprised that it didn't cave in as they drove pastâand relieved, for there were people moving about in the upper story, minding their business.
He asked Dajaal, “Have you participated in any of the fighting?”
“I've never been a member of a clan-based militia.”
“So what fighting did you take part in?”
“Let's say that I got dragged into one when the American in charge of the United Nations operation ordered his forces to attack a house where I was attending a meeting.”
“The American-in-charge.” Jeebleh strung the words together, at first hyphenating them in his mind, to capture Dajaal's enunciation, then abbreviating them: AIC. Jeebleh had heard that that was how he was known in certain circles.
“This was the first American attack on StrongmanSouth, in July 1993,” Dajaal went on. “I was at a gathering of my clan family's intellectuals, military leaders, traditional elders, and other opinion makers. It was our aim to find a peaceful way out of the impasse between the American in charge of the UN Blue Helmets, and StrongmanSouth and
his
militiamen. The July gathering has since become famous, because it led eventually to the October-third slaughter. It was the viciousness of what occurred in July, when helicopters attacked our gathering, that decided me to dig up my weapons from where I had buried them after the Dictator fled the city.”
“I presume you know StrongmanSouth?”
“I served under him,” Dajaal replied. “He was my immediate commander, during the Ogaden War. We didn't get on well for much of the time, which was why I declined to be his deputy when he set up the clan militia. I knew him well enough
not
to want to be near him if I could help it. The man is determined to become president, and he'll use foul means or fair to get what he wants.”
The driver made a left turn, and as far as Jeebleh could tell, headed back the way they had come. He slowed down, as if to allow Dajaal time in which to gather his harried thoughts.
“I remember that Cobra and Black Hawk helicopters attacked us in the house where we were having our meeting,” Dajaal continued. “Once the attack began, it was so fierce I felt hell was paying us a visit. The skies fell on us, the earth shook down to its separate grains of sand.”
Jeebleh listened intently and remained still.
Dajaal went on: “I felt each explosion of the missiles, followed by an inferno of smoke so black I thought a total eclipse had descended on my mind. And the shrapnel, the spurting blood I saw, the men lying so still between one living moment and a dead instant, the moaningâI was unprepared for the shock. I remember thinking, âHere's an apocalypse of the new order.' It's very worrying to see a man you're talking to blown away to dust by laser-guided death, deceptive in its stealth. We all lost our sense of direction, like ants fleeing head-on into tongues of flame, and not knowing what killed them.”
Jeebleh dared not speak.
Dajaal's voice had in it a good mix of rawness and rage. “Coming out the door of the house, I tripped on a pile of shoes. But I walked on, barefoot, shaking with fury, until I found myself in another compound, my eyes still smarting from the black smoke. You could say I came to only after the helicopters left. I knew then that I was still alive. But I couldn't make sense of what had happened, even as the crowds gathered in front of the target villa. I learned that many of my friends had died, and that a number had been taken prisoner, in handcuffs, and treated as common criminals.
“It was a hell of a day.” Dajaal was close to tears, reliving the scene, and angry too. But Jeebleh couldn't tell at whom. Dajaal resumed: “The cattle, terrorized, ran off mad, the donkeys brayed and brayed, and the hens didn't lay eggs for several weeks. Our women noted a change in their monthly cycles, and their psyches were irreparably damaged. No time to mourn, our dead were buried the same day.”
“Provoked in July,” Jeebleh said. “So you dug up your gun and were ready for the October confrontation, determined to take vengeance?”
Dajaal's expression, or what Jeebleh could see of it, was a touch sadder, as he nodded. Sorrow pervaded his voice. Jeebleh understood from what he had heard that badness had names and faces: those of StrongmanSouth, and of the AIC. And of course Caloosha and the Dictator too.
“Were you opposed to the Americans' coming in the first place?”
“We welcomed their coming, we did,” Dajaal said.
“What happened then?”
“They were just crass, that is what happened.”
“Tell me more.”
Dajaal said, “My grandson Qasiir was among half a dozen unarmed boys at the international airport, then closed, doing what youths of his age do. They were fooling around, some smoking, others lounging or sleeping in abandoned vehicles. Then the Marines landed at the beach. And what was the first thing they did? They handcuffed my grandson and several others with belts, electrical cords, whatever else was handy. They humiliated them for no reason, intimidated them, and arrested them. The boys were doing no harm to anyone. Then July happened, and I was in it, as close to death as I've ever known, many of my clansmen killed or wounded, or carted off to some prison island off the coast. Then in October, my granddaughter, my son's youngest, was blown away in a helicopter's uprush of air and confusion.”
Jeebleh spoke in a whisper and with the caution of someone avoiding a mine. “You were never in support of StrongmanSouth yourself?”
“Hell no, I wasn't.”
Again Jeebleh spoke tentatively: “Someone must have been, for there were always crowds everywhere he went, women screaming supportively, and used as shields?”
“I can name a large number of my clansmen who wanted peace,” Dajaal said, “which, in fact, was why we were holding the meeting. We didn't like where the American-in-Charge and StrongmanSouth were taking us, and we didn't approve of their confrontational styles. We thought they were so alike, the two of them, and wished they'd fight their own fight, in a duelâbang, bang, one of them dead!”
“How's your granddaughter doing, the one who was caught up in the helicopter's wake?” Jeebleh asked.
“She hasn't spoken since that day.”
“How old is she?”
“She started to vegetate so early in her infancy,” Dajaal said, “that we don't think about her age anymore. She startles easily, and the slightest noise causes her to burst into tears, and nothing will calm her. There's nothing wrong with her motor mechanism. Dr. Bile has been of tremendous help, thank God, but I doubt if she'll ever grow to be normal.”
“What about the mother?”
“What harm did the mother do to
them
?” Dajaal raged.
In his mind, Jeebleh saw a knight on horseback, sword in hand, ready to take vengeance and die in the service of justice. “What about the mother?” he repeated.
“To calm her down, they handcuffed her. Why?”
Bile was very lucky to have Dajaal as his man Friday, Jeebleh thought. The man struck him as upright, straightforward, and honorably courageous. Yet he couldn't decide how far Dajaal's loyalty would extend to him. He watched the road ahead in silent intensity, worried, like an insect focusing all it had in the way of wiliness to avoid being hurt.
The car suddenly stopped, and the driver and Dajaal exchanged a nod. Fear can make a man sit slightly off balance, as though he were hard of hearing, listening for an ominous sound, shoulders hunched, ears pricked. Jeebleh's whole body went stiff, as he stared at the solitary Coke bottle that stood majestically in the center of the road. He didn't know what to make of it. In a coordinated manner, the driver moved in the direction of the glove compartment at the same time that Dajaal lifted the machine gun off the floor with his feet, flinging it up and catching it just as Jeebleh had imagined earlier. He had agile feet, Dajaal did, and he deployed them more adeptly than some use their hands. A minute passed. Nothing happened. Then Dajaal and the driver spoke in low whispers. Jeebleh broke the grief: “Are we at the green line?”