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His hands on his lap, Jeebleh was a study in concentration. He was totally taken with Bucktooth, who seemed intent on outstaring him and the driver—until they conceded defeat, and showed their hands, palms forward. In fact, Jeebleh probably would have felt bothered and offended if he had been treated differently from anyone else.

As the gates opened fully to let the vehicle through, Jeebleh was touched by an instant of remorse as the minute hands of his destiny gathered the hours of his emotion. He looked forward eagerly to calling his wife and daughters in New York, to assure them that all was well with him so far; he felt a surge of anticipatory elation.

The driver parked under the glow of a fluorescent tube with a crowd of moths around it. Jeebleh got out, and took two steps before tottering to an unsteady stop: his toes had curled up in an awful cramp. While he was stretching his legs and retraining his feet to walk, two youths, presumably bellboys, not in uniforms but in sarongs, grabbed hold of his bags, and went ahead inside.

He bid the driver farewell and, even though he didn't think he would ever get around to calling him, wrote down his telephone number and thanked him profusely. Then he followed the youths, into an enclosed area where there were tables and chairs. He could not be absolutely certain, but it was possible that he took leave of his senses for a few exhausted seconds, during which he may not have known who he was, where he was, or what on earth he was doing there.

 

 

COMING TO, HE CAST ABOUT FOR A SOLID ANCHOR AND SOON SPOTTED A rather rotund man, with a cuddly look about him, struggling to heave himself out of a threadbare chair. He was tempted to offer the man a hand, but thought better of it when he saw him extricating himself from the deep chair and straightening up, then coming forward, his right hand outstretched. He was not the handsomest of men: his mouth protruded, boasting teeth that might have been molded out of soapstone, and his lower lip curved in the unlikely shape of a kilt of clouds covering the southern half of a full moon. The man introduced himself as the manager. Jeebleh was comforted when he shook the man's fleshy palm. “Welcome,” the manager said. “I hope everything has been smooth and comfortable since your arrival.”

The accumulated horrors of the scene at the airport, the stress of meeting so many strangers in a city virtually alien, and now the necessity of staying in a hotel—these were taking their toll on Jeebleh, unnerving him, and making him lose his general equilibrium. Lest he should speak impulsively and say whatever came into his mind, he remained silent.

“Welcome home, our bitter home!” said the man, reading into Jeebleh's silence. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his baggy trousers, in which you could hear the jingle of colliding coins. (Jeebleh wondered what manner of coins these might be, and assumed they were not Somali, considering the high rate of inflation: a dollar was exchanging nowadays for thousands of shillings; when he had left for the United States, it had been worth six.) “I am Ali!”

Ali offered a belated smile, as if now remembering that he had been trained to please his customers. “In an earlier life, in long-ago peacetime Somalia, I used to be the favorite of gossip columnists and the envy of other hotel managers,” he told Jeebleh. “I was appreciably more adept than any other hotel manager at getting the best of jobs. In my day, I played host to several kings of the petrodollar variety, not to mention a handful of African presidents on visits to Mogadiscio, and the secretaries-general of the UN, the Organization of African Unity and the Arab League too. And even though I am suitably qualified to run hotels anywhere in the world, having taken a degree in hotel management in England, I've chosen to stay. We are the sons of the land, to which we belong, you and I. I feel no regrets, though, none whatsoever.”

Jeebleh suspected he knew what Ali meant when he said, “We are the sons of the land.” He understood the manager's “we” to be inclusive: Jeebleh, Ali, and many other known but unnamed clansmen of theirs, united in blood. But was he right to interpret it this way?

“Why have you chosen to stay?” he asked.

“I have a bedridden mother to look after.”

And here he was, Jeebleh, come to pacify his mother's troubled spirits. Yet he couldn't and wouldn't be able to say, No regrets, none whatsoever.

“Anyway,” the manager continued, “we've been alerted to your coming, and we are at your service, to offer you our best.”

“Who alerted you to my coming?”

“A good friend of yours.”

“A good friend of mine?”

“Af-Laawe.”

Jeebleh let this pass unchallenged. Moreover, he purposefully radiated a false sense of confidence, if only to prove to the manager that he was on top of things. He thrust his chin forward and asked, “Where are my bags?”

For a moment, because he had no idea where the bags had ended up, the manager cut an undignified posture; but he was quick in setting things right. He summoned the tallest of the bellboys and inquired what had become of the gentleman's bags. Another bellboy in a sarong informed them that he had taken the gentleman's bags to “the suite.”

“Now for the formalities, if you don't mind.” The personification of courtesy, Ali placed a pen on top of some forms and pushed them toward Jeebleh.

“Would you like to see my passport?” Jeebleh asked.

“There's no need.”

Jeebleh completed the forms in haste. The words for date and place of birth, sex, marital status, and permanent address were in Italian, and spelled incorrectly; the paper was so dry it felt to Jeebleh as if it would break if he tried to fold it; and some of the spaces he was supposed to fill in already bore pencil markings. When he had finished, and was preparing to go up to his suite, he heard Ali say, “Please do not judge us too harshly!”

“But of course not,” Jeebleh replied.

“Times were”—Ali gestured out toward the gates, toward OneArm and Bucktooth—“when you knew who was bad and who was good. Such distinctions are now blurred. We are at best good badmen, or bad badmen.”

Because he wanted to create a small measure of trust, Jeebleh blundered forward. “Do you know Bile?” he said.

“He's a good man.”

“What's the latest about Raasta?”

“Nothing, so far that I've heard.”

As Jeebleh took his leave politely, half nodding, the manager asked, “Would you like to get in touch with Bile?”

“There's time for everything,” Jeebleh answered.

A bellboy escorted him to his suite.

 

 

“SUITE” WAS A MISNOMER, GIVEN THE ROOM'S SIZE AND ITS AMENITIES. AND now that Jeebleh was alone, the demons were back. His agitation was due, in part, to a lack of clarity in his mind—how to define himself here. His difficulty lay elsewhere, in his ability to choose whom he would associate himself with. He was somehow sure that Ali knew that Bile was his childhood friend, but not a fellow clansman. Jeebleh revisited his earlier exchanges with the Major, a barking dog penned in a kennel with many others like him, helplessly damned. It had been one thing talking to the Major, who thought of him as an outsider; it was altogether another to be in the company of the manager, with his inclusive “we”! What was he to do? Spurn Ali, who wished to relate to him, or welcome the inclusion, and yet keep a discreet distance, for his life might in the end depend on it?

He thought of how it was characteristic of civil wars to produce a multiplicity of pronominal affiliations, of first-person singulars tucked away in the plural, of third-person plurals meant to separate one group from another. The confusion pointed to the weakness of the exclusive claims made by first-person plurals, as understood implicitly in the singled-out singular. He remembered a saying, “Never trust a self-definer, because an ‘I' spoken by a self-definer is less trustworthy than a she-goat in the habit of sucking her own teats,” and it made good sense when he thought about how Somalis drove him crazy with their abuse of pronouns, now inclusive, now exclusive.

Pronouns aside, he felt alienated from himself, as though he had become another person, when he witnessed the brutal murder of the ten-year-old boy earlier. Thank God, that sense of alienation lasted a mere moment or two, making him wonder whether he was not the he who had left Nairobi earlier that day. Why were the demons making him engage in a discourse of the mad, a discourse marked by pronominal detours?

He was ill at ease with the kind of discourse drawn from the obsession with pronouns. Take that inclusive “we.” Assume, he told himself, that Ali, presumably a clansman of his, kills someone. Wouldn't the family whose son had been murdered take vengeance and murder, for instance, Jeebleh? Was he, as a member of a clan family, responsible for the murders committed in the name of a shared “we”? And what of the claim that violence is cathartic, capable of making people get to know one another in a deeper way, just as a person comes closer to knowing others in times of disaster?

He was sure that he did not love Somalia the way he used to love it many years before, because it had changed. Maybe love did not enter into one's relationship with one's country? Maybe nostalgic patriotism demanded its own brand of flag-waving? Was he back in the country to refurbish his emotions about Somalia with fresher affections? Can one continue to love a land one does not recognize anymore? He had never asked himself whether he loved America. He loved his wife and daughters, and through them, he was engaged with America.

He took an intent look around the room in search of a secret place where he might hide his valuables, certain—although he hadn't asked—that the hotel had no working safe. The room contained the minimum essentials: a single bed, evidently hastily made; a bedspread covering it, color discreet indigo; a bedside table with a lamp; a washstand with a jug below. Also, a threadbare facecloth, a bidet to the right of the stand, and near it, a plastic kettle. The kettle reminded him that he was back in an Islamic country, where one performed the rite of ablution several times a day.

He thought ahead, imagining that a hotel employee had stolen his valuables. Caught and found guilty, the thief would lose his hands. Jeebleh was distressed, because he didn't want to confront the hard realities of today's Somalia—where the limbs of the small fry are amputated, while the warlords are treated with deference. He pulled out the wallet holding his cash, and felt the freshness of the dollar bills between his fingers. His whole body shook at the thought of receiving an amputated hand as compensation. He replaced the cash in his wallet, and pulled out his toiletry bag.

Because he hadn't expected to find a safe in a Mogadiscio hotel, he had resorted to making his own, in the safety of his hotel in Nairobi. He was a needle-and-thread man, and seldom traveled anywhere without a sewing kit. He had picked up the habit of darning during his years in jail. In fact, his study at home in New York was replete with all kinds of threads—cotton, silk, nylon and other synthetics, and a sewing machine, an ancient Singer, received as a Christmas present from his mother-in-law. With a reel of nylon thread, a pair of scissors, and a needle, he had made a false bottom for his toiletry bag, covering the visible part with waterproof material. He now had a space big enough to hide things in once he arrived in Mogadiscio.

He unloaded his toiletries onto the bed, and made sure the inner flap of the bag had been strengthened sufficiently. He was pleased with what he had done in Nairobi. Now he peeled off enough cash for his immediate needs, and put the remainder and his U.S. passport in the envelope into the false bottom of the bag. Then he replaced the toiletries in it, and left it conspicuously unzipped and in full view on the washstand, in the hope that no thief would suspect the bag to contain anything of value. As part of his strategy of deception, he triple-locked the closets, which contained nothing but his few clothes; he hoped to mislead any intruder.

He took a bucket shower quickly and methodically. Then he went out, in search of something to eat.

 

 

SEVERAL YOUTHS IN SARONGS WERE STANDING AROUND THE LOBBY. BEHIND the counter at the reception desk was an older man, more formally dressed; he appeared to be in charge of the desk. Jeebleh didn't think the man was familiar with the etiquette of hotel business. He was crude, picking his nose and speaking rather loudly to the young men. When he made no move to ask whether he might be of some assistance, Jeebleh assumed that he was a relation of the hotel owner, newly arrived from the rural areas. Eventually a youth who described himself as a runner came forward and offered his help, saying, “We run errands for the guests. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I would like to eat,” Jeebleh said.

“What do you want?” the youth replied. “There's a restaurant close by.”

“What's available?”

“Steak, other types of meat, spaghetti.”

“Spaghetti and salad?” Jeebleh doubted very much that he would eat more than a mouthful or two: he was worried that his stomach might act up, something it was prone to do. Not wanting to trust the runner with a large U.S. banknote, he lied, saying, “But I don't have cash.”

“Don't worry. You can pay later.” And without waiting for further instructions or Jeebleh's confirmation, the youth ran off.

Alone in the courtyard, Jeebleh was struck by the night's beauty, and gave himself time to admire its starry quality. His gaze fell on a tree in the distance, silhouetted by moonlight, and he was startled to notice a human figure wrapped in a subdued gray, sitting under the tree. The shape seemed detached from both time and space, reminding him of a well-trodden floor and a tableau vivant. He assumed he was looking at a woman, age indeterminate. Somehow, the woman's figure evoked in him a funereal sorrow. Moving closer, he realized that there were in fact two women, sitting so close to each other that their veils merged and became one. They were so still for such a long time, neither speaking, that he thought of two cows sharing a scratching post. He had never examined these veils closely. They were less elaborate than the ones commonly worn by Yemeni women when he had lived in Mogadiscio.