Let's Go Swimming on Doomsday, page 19
Her face is plastered with a too-big, isn’t-that-awesome smile. “It’s going to be great! They’re a really nice Kenyan-Somali family with a bunch of kids. There’s even a boy your age. They live in Eastleigh, where there are lots of other Somalis, and you’ll be going to one of the best public schools in Sangui.”
“But I— Already?”
Sam’s smile falters. “Abdi, finding a family to take you in was the plan the whole time, remember? Staying with me was only supposed to be temporary. We’re really lucky we found such a good placement.”
I don’t reply, afraid of how my voice will sound. The world passes by my window. “When?”
“Sunday.”
I swallow once, twice, trying to work the sandpaper feeling down my throat.
Sam’s still watching me. “I like having you stay with me, Abdi. You’re a great kid. It’s just that the whole arrangement is unprofessional. You’re my client. Living with a family makes a whole lot more sense.”
She starts to list all the ways it’s going to be fantastic—new school, stable family with a mom and dad and siblings, my own community—but the more she talks, the worse I feel. I turn away, so her words grow faint in my bad ear. I don’t want a new family. I’ve got a family. Even if they’re, well . . . What’s so wrong with staying with Sam? Why is it that now, just when I start to feel comfortable, just when everything settles down, it all gets snatched away? Things are fine how they are. Maybe it’s unprofessional, but so what?
“Abdi? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, facing the window.
I feel like my seat belt is the only thing keeping me stuck to the earth. Like if I unbuckled it, I’d float up and out the cracked window, disappearing like a wisp of smoke.
* * *
• • •
“SOMETHING’S UP with your boyfriend, Muna,” Alice says.
My voice is a growl. “I’m not her boyfriend.” I flick through the pages of my book, seeing nothing. I’m supposed to be working on my report on Things Fall Apart. But the sun glaring off the white pages is giving me a headache.
“Shh,” Muna says to both of us. “Is everything okay, Abdi?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?” I glower at what I’ve written so far:
Things Fall Apart is a book about
From the corner of my eye, I see the two girls glance at each other. A flush creeps up my neck. Half of me wants to spit out that this is my last day at Maisha, but the rest of me worries that then I’ll do something horrifying like cry. I slap my book closed, startling Muna.
“This is pointless,” I say.
“No it’s not,” she says, frowning. “It’s a good book, and you’ll get in trouble if you don’t finish your essay. You won’t have time to do it after school. We’ve got swim lessons and—”
“Swim lessons are over,” I interrupt. Immediately I want to take it back. Where did that come from?
Alice blinks. “What? Why?”
“Because I’m tired of giving them,” I say, feeling an ugly twinge of satisfaction at the expression on Muna’s face.
“Since when?”
I curl my lip. “Since always. Since I realized you’re both lost causes. It’s pathetic, actually, watching you try.”
Both of the girls are staring at me like I’ve just slapped them across their faces. Part of me is staring at myself, astonished at what an asshole I’m being. But that part of me can’t seem to make the rest stop. I’m full of something red hot and boiling. I mime splashing around like I’m drowning. “Watch me, I’m so graceful! I’m practically a mermaid!”
Muna’s shock turns to anger. “What’s wrong with you? You’re being a jerk.”
I expect Alice to be twice as furious as Muna, but she simply looks surprised, hurt even. “You know the field trip to Paradise Island is tomorrow. We still need to practice, or we won’t pass the swim test.”
I swipe up my book and papers, shoving them into my backpack, relishing the sound of things crumpling. I have the sudden urge to pull them back out and rip every single page from the books’ spines. “Who says I give a shit about your field trip? I wish you’d shut up about it already.” I stand, sling the pack around my shoulders. “I’m out of here.”
As soon as I’m upright, I find myself desperate for one of them to tell me to stop, sit down, I’m being stupid. But neither speaks. And that makes me angrier still. But so what? What does it matter if they think I’m a jerk? I don’t need this. I don’t need them, or Sam. I was just fine before Sam and Maisha and algebra class and goddamned swimming lessons.
I’ll decide when I leave. Me.
I see something in the grass where I was sitting. The yo-yo Sam gave me has fallen out of my pocket. I pick it up. Stupid kids’ toy. I cock back and throw it as hard as I can toward the end of the garden. It’s a streak of neon yellow and then it disappears over the wall.
A vicious sort of exhilaration, blinding and burning, rich and ripe, sweeps over me. It carries me across the yard, down the driveway, and right out the front gate.
THIRTY-FOUR
THEN: OCTOBER 2
MERKA, SOMALIA
When we get down to the street, a Boy comes to help Scarface, taking his pack and gun from me. I follow them toward the charcoal lot, keeping an eye out for Khalid and Bashir. Boys mill through the alleys, checking the dead and wounded.
“Hey you, 106, Come here!” I turn to see Nur yelling at me. “Get that side,” he says, a dead AMISOM soldier’s wrist in his hand. He wants me to help drag him.
All my adrenaline flushes from my system, just like that.
“Wait,” Nur says, and his knife flashes. He cuts off the guy’s name badge, “MAINA,” and stuffs it into his pocket. He grins at me. “Souvenir.” Then he grabs the soldier’s wrist again. “Come on!” he says, when I don’t move. “Don’t be a pussy. We’ve got to get all the AMISOM bodies back to the trucks. Commander Rashid’s orders.”
So I take the dead man’s hand in mine, and I start to pull.
I think of nothing, I see nothing but the street ahead of me. The hand is cool, squishy. My brain flickers a question: Did I kill this man? But I stamp it out as quickly as I can. No no no no no no no no no no. I will think of nothing. Not this man, not his fingers brushing my skin. My eye finds a single sandal, abandoned in the dust ahead, and I focus on that. I think of nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
We deposit the body by our technicals, next to four others. They are covered in dust, none of them looking quite dead, just as if they are taking very dirty naps on the ground.
“Kaalay, kid. Come on,” Nur says.
I force myself into motion and follow. It’s only then that I notice the crowd.
Hundreds of civilians are gathered around our trucks in the charcoal yard. The bright scarves of the women and white koofi caps of the men stand out starkly against the Al Shabaab soldiers in drab green who surround them, guns at the ready. The black charcoal mountain looms overhead.
With a wash of relief I see Khalid, Bashir, Toothless and a couple of the other guys from my unit. Their scarves cover their noses and mouths, but I recognize them. Nur nudges me again, and I pull my keffiyeh over my face too, fumbling at it like my hands aren’t working right. It doesn’t matter; no one is looking at me. The civilians’ eyes are all fixed on the man standing above the crowd in the back of a truck bed.
It’s the General. When did he get here?
His voice thunders, “Shame! Shame on you, people of Merka! You have let the infidels and traitors walk in your midst! They have plotted and schemed while you turned your heads! Don’t tell me you were frightened of them. Why would you ever be frightened of them? Look! Look at how pathetic they are now!”
The crowd jostles to peer at what the General, the Butcher, gestures to at his feet. I can’t see anything; the crowd is too thick. Just then Commander Rashid’s voice rumbles low in my ear, “Go line up on that side, soldiers. Keep this crowd in order.”
As I move around the civilians, I feel eyes swivel to me. I get too close to a little boy and he bursts into tears, stuffing his face into the folds of his mother’s skirt. She quickly shushes him, looks at me like I’m about to snatch him away from her. I’ve never seen anyone look at me like that.
We frighten them.
I frighten them.
I stumble away. General Idris’s voice rings clear, seeming to come from everywhere at once. “Take heed!” he shouts. “Look at what happens to you when you choose the wrong path, the path of death and evil!” He nudges a bundle of rags on the back of the truck with his toe.
And now I can see better. It’s not rags. The bundle has a face.
“There is no hiding from God!” the Butcher says, shaking a finger at the crowd. “God sees everything! ‘And they thought that their fortresses would defend them from God! But God’s torment reached them from a place whereof they expected it not, and He cast terror into their hearts!’”
I haven’t heard the General talk like this before. Usually he leaves the preaching to the Doctor. I see a few in the front of the crowd nod their heads and mutter their agreement. Most of the faces stay carefully still.
“We are Harakadka Mujahidinta Al Shabaab!” the General shouts.
The Boys around me cheer. I force myself to shake my gun in the air with them, but can’t find my voice.
“And we fight for freedom from tyranny!” he goes on. “Freedom from the likes of these men! Today we held Merka and did not let it fall into their hands, because God is on our side! God is great!”
Murmurs echo again from the crowd, but apparently they are not enough.
“God is great!” the General shouts at the people before him, demanding a response.
“Allahu Akbar!” the crowd echoes, with as much gusto as it can manage. I see a woman pull her scarf over her face, her shoulders trembling.
“Many of the AMISOM dogs are already burning in hell.” He turns to a cluster of civilian men being corralled at gunpoint to one side. “But these collaborators will have time to think about their sins before they join them. Take them to the vehicles!”
As the Boys prod the men, I realize one of them is the old man who was repairing the wall under my sniper post. A black line of dried blood runs from one nostril. My pulse quickens. I know he was helping the AMISOM soldiers, but . . . this is all wrong. He’s just an old man. Can’t the General see that? His arms in their shackles look like dried-out old twigs.
My keffiyeh suddenly feels like it’s strangling me. I claw at it, tear it from my mouth so I can breathe. I’m exposing my face, but I don’t care anymore.
The General shouts, “Today you will thank God for the freedom—”
He’s interrupted by a shout and a swelling of movement in the mass of people just in front of me.
He tries again. “. . . The freedom we have bled and died for—”
But a woman’s voice pierces the air. “Nooo!”
General Idris, having lost the crowd’s attention, squints at the commotion. Two men are trying to calm a woman who is straining on her toes, trying to pull herself from their grasp. I hear the men’s furtive, pleading voices. They glance back at us nervously.
“No! Let me go!” The woman jerks free. She is well dressed, and has the furious look of someone rich and important who isn’t used to being kept quiet. “Where are you taking my father? He is an oday here! How dare you? You cannot have him, you devil! He is an old, sick man!”
I feel my knees go weak. All of the prisoners are looking at her except one. The old mason has turned away, his clenched jaw quivering.
“This is not God’s will!” she spits at the General. “God is merciful! You are the evil one! You are the Butcher! Slaughtering children! Beating old men! Making endless war. You have ruined our country!”
The General’s face darkens. “Take her out of here.”
“No!” she screams. “Leave my father! Have pity! Take me!”
The men are still pleading with her. They take hold of her arms again. They want to get her out of here. They know what can happen to her. But she isn’t making it easy. She squirms free.
“Take me!” She turns on the Boys guarding the crowd. For a second she locks eyes with me, maybe because I’m the only one whose face is exposed. “You and your devils can rape me until I’m a bloody corpse, you filthy—”
The gun butt comes out of nowhere. A soldier has come up quietly and smashed the side of her face.
For a moment all is still. The woman’s body slumps sideways like a doll.
“Fadumo!” her father shouts, suddenly alive and struggling against his guards. It’s a wonder his wrists don’t snap with the effort.
I’m frozen to the spot as the people around the woman roar at the soldier. The woman’s limp form is lifted and carried away, rushed to safety through a break in the line of Boys. I feel myself being jolted from side to side. I watch Boys wade in to pull the soldier back out of the hands of snarling civilians. His keffiyeh falls away from his face.
It’s Nur.
My vision is tunneling to black. I grind my teeth, trying to keep from losing control. This is crazy. Someone stop it. Where is Khalid? Does he see this? Nur is pulled out of harm’s way. His face is scratched, his frightened eyes big as coins. Boys next to me point their guns at the crowd, screaming for order. I shake myself, turn to face the sea of faces. I grip my gun, and with a jolt find that I am relieved to have it.
The eyes turned to meet me blaze with hate. Blaze at me. Accuse me of bloodying their elders and beating their daughters.
No, I want to tell them, I’m not one of them! This isn’t me! I’m not like them!
But I don’t. My feet don’t move me to their side. My hands don’t drop my gun in disgust. I stand beside my brothers. I help shield Nur from their wrath. The crowd surges like an angry sea, and for a second I think they’re going to rush us, guns or no guns.
But then the Butcher raises his gun in the air and fires it off in an ear-shattering volley. The people, almost as one, crouch, cover their heads. I hear dampened screams.
In the silence that follows, the General yells, “Everyone back to work, back to your homes!”
The air is deafeningly quiet. The spark of rebellion is gone, a silly dream. Already the crowd has broken from one angry, powerful mass into little clusters that quickly melt away, disappearing into a warren of streets between bone-white buildings. They only glance back to make sure they’re not being pursued.
And then we’re alone. And that’s it. It’s over.
We wrap the bodies of Samir and the other Boys in cloth and put them in the technicals. The prisoners are loaded into another truck. The old man fumbles—it’s too hard to climb in, and he has to be lifted. I stare at the tufts of white hair on the back of his head.
“Get in the truck, kid,” Scarface says softly. “Before anyone sees you standing around.”
And somehow I do. I get in the truck. And we drive away.
Everything is over.
And nothing is the same.
THIRTY-FIVE
THEN: OCTOBER 2
THE FORT, SOMALIA
The truck shudders to a stop inside the gates of the Fort. I drag myself out and help to shoulder the shrouded body of Samir. At Commander Rashid’s instruction, we take him to C-block, where he’ll be washed and made ready for burial first thing in the morning. We were lucky. Only one 106 was killed. The 104s follow us, carrying two of their own dead.
We lay the Boys on tables and wordlessly turn toward the barracks, ready to collapse onto our mats. I barely knew Samir, but I can’t stop seeing him fall on the street below my sniper perch. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing his face in my dreams. If I ever sleep again. My body is exhausted, but my brain spins endlessly through blood and dust and bullets.
The Fort is on the edge of dark. The stars have just begun to emerge, and bats swoop through the half-light. I’m pretty sure we’ve missed dinner, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry.
“Hey,” Bashir says as we fall into step together. “You okay?”
It seems like too hard of a question to answer, so I just say, “Yeah.”
We walk in silence, and before we get to the barracks, he turns for the kitchens.
“You’re not going to bed?” I ask.
“I’m going to go see Safiya first,” he says.
“Oh. Okay.”
I watch him lope away, wondering how weird it would be if I ran after him and asked if I could hang out too. Being with the other guys and pretending to be okay right now just seems like too much. I’ve opened my mouth to yell after him when I hear my name.
I turn to find Khalid standing with the Doctor near the entrance to his quarters. A jolt goes through me. I barely saw Khalid at all in Merka. Does the Doctor know what happened there? Has anyone told him about taking that old man prisoner? Is that what they’re talking about? I lost track of our captives when we left the city, and now I don’t see them. Maybe they were taken to some other place entirely. Khalid would know. I hurry over and salute.
“Da’ud,” the Doctor says. He looks me up and down like he’s trying to figure something out before he goes on. “I heard you did well in Merka.”
Despite everything, I feel pride swelling in my chest—even though I know what he’s saying is that I did a good job killing people. I feel proud and I feel sick, all at once. “Thank you, sir,” I manage to say.
“Commander Khalid has a job for you.”
A job? I stand up straighter. Something to do with the attack?
The Doctor tells Khalid, “See that it’s done properly. I will ask the General to assemble the others.”
Once he’s gone, I turn back to my brother, wanting to ask him about the old man, but stop when I see his face. He looks worn out, even more than me.
