Let's Go Swimming on Doomsday, page 6
I have to think about it. “You know CSI: Miami?”
She shakes her head.
“It’s a TV show, not a movie. I’ve seen all of seasons one through five. One hundred and twenty-one episodes.”
“Wow. That’s . . . a lot of TV.”
“Yeah.”
I’m not sure it’s my favorite, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind. I thought a lot about CSI: Miami those first few nights after I got to Sangui, when I didn’t sleep, when I just sat in that doorway and tried to look mean so nobody would mess with me. It helped calm the jangling in my head, picturing those clean laboratories, the officers’ careful cataloging of evidence. Each tiny hair or fiber examined, cherished like a jewel. Every fragment a critical clue, leading to a rational conclusion. And unlike in the real world, after forty-five minutes there was always a clear picture of what had happened and a bad guy in handcuffs. Sunglasses on, roll credits.
I realize I’m staring off into space again. I shake myself, scrape at the last of my porridge. “You’ve never seen it?”
Sam takes my empty bowl and dumps it and our mugs into the kitchen sink. “Let’s hit the road. I’m going to be late for work.” She comes back to the table and starts shoving files into her satchel. I think she hasn’t heard my question, but then she says, “I didn’t start watching TV until I was an adult. I don’t know about all sorts of pop culture things.”
I nod, even though I’m not exactly sure what she’s talking about.
“All set?”
I look down at myself. I have nothing to grab, no books, no bag, nothing. It’s just me, the clothes on my back, my sandals. The closest thing I have to possessions is the near-empty wallet in my pocket. I could disappear off the face of the earth and barely cause a ripple.
“Sure,” I say, and follow her out the door.
ELEVEN
THEN: AUGUST 17
30 KM SOUTHWEST OF MOGADISHU, SOMALIA
A truck, rattling like death over the sand and through dry riverbeds.
A bargain made.
Zip ties around my wrists.
A promise.
Stopping only once to let me piss into the sand. Sand sucks it up like me and my water never happened.
We’re there. Wherever there is. Out of the truck, into the police station, into another cell, meant for two, holding ten.
Don’t scratch the scab. If you pick the chip out, we’ll never find you again.
From now, fourteen hours.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Sun falls and rises.
No one talks to you. You could be a spy, after all.
An explosion on the north wall. Gunshots. Get ready.
They will come, they will be fast, they will scream and beat you. They will ask if you are a spy. Are you a spy?
No, I am only Dahir’s brother.
Say it again.
Only Dahir’s brother.
(Chances they’ll kill you: 50-50.)
You must ask for your brother by name. It might save your life.
His name, our lineage: Dahir, his father, his father’s father, on and on . . . Dahir-Mohamed-Abdullahi-Kulane . . . Only his brother would know all the names.
Don’t scratch the scab.
Don’t worry if you look frightened.
You’re supposed to be frightened.
Blindfolded (again), tossed in a truck (again), taken to the Fort, tossed in a cell (again). Beaten (again).
Keep the faces of your family in your head, in the place where the fists can’t follow.
Hooyo, Ayeyo, Hafsa, Faisal, Zahra
Are you ready?
Dahir-Mohamed-Abdullahi-Kulane
Are you ready, Abdiweli?
It’s time.
TWELVE
NOW: NOVEMBER 5
SANGUI CITY, KENYA
Sam drives us in her own car through Sangui’s morning traffic. I spend most of the ride glued to the window. I can’t seem to shake the instinct to keep vigilant, as if I’m still riding around through the scrub in the back of a technical—one of those armored pickup trucks all the militia groups in Somalia use.
Back there we were on watch for an ambush: herders paying too much attention could be lookouts for the Somali army. A bend in the road or high brush could hide soldiers. But we also had to check the sandy road itself. Disturbed ground might be nothing but an animal scratching around looking for grubs. Or it could be a buried bomb, powerful enough to take out our vehicle. If it was a particularly bad day, you could get both the bomb and the ambush. Blow up the technical, sweep in and take out the survivors. A boom and bag.
But today we’re driving through a leafy green neighborhood, the Ring, where all the rich people of Sangui City live. There are no roadside bombs in the Ring. No one is hiding in the bush, ready to shoot up Sam’s car. The Ring is as safe as Sangui gets. Here, at eight in the morning, there are only air-conditioned cars driving kids in uniform to private schools, houses like castles that I glimpse behind walls topped with electrified barbed wire.
The asphalt of the road we zoom down is as smooth as a river, and the medians are full of neat rows of flowers. Occasionally the ocean glints through the trees. Unlike most of the rest of Sangui, everything in the Ring is clean, orderly. Women in green jumpsuits sweep the curbs with grass brooms. Billboards advertise body lotion and new housing estates.
I wonder if parts of Mogadishu would look like this if the fighting had never started. My dad loved to remind us that our hometown was once called the White Pearl, that tourists came from all over the world just to stroll on our beaches and broad, tree-lined boulevards. That you could sip cappuccinos and mango juice under umbrellas in cafes, or go listen to the greats like Sahra Dawo crooning about love and medicine at Al Uruba Hotel. He’d take me out in his boat and point at the coral-block buildings that hugged the beaches. “Squint and imagine, Abdi. Repair the facades, re-glass the windows, stucco the walls and paint them pearl white and shell pink. It will be beautiful again one day.”
Sam pulls into a driveway almost hidden in a cascade of purple bougainvillea, and honks. Through a small window in the metal gate a guard’s face appears. When he sees it’s Sam, he smiles and lets us in.
“Habari za asubuhi!” Sam calls good morning to him in Swahili as we drive into a dark tunnel of fig and palm trees. The wheels of the car crunch over white gravel and shells.
Sam parks in front of the biggest house I’ve ever seen. This is a girls’ center? It looks more like a movie star’s mansion. Walls and columns sprawling, it seems to go on forever, red-tiled rooflines disappearing one after the other, windows like eyes on a spider—too many to count. Another guard greets us with a smart little salute from the edge of a yard filled with flowers. Hibiscus glows gem-red, and iridescent sunbirds dart between the trees.
We’re met on the path to the house by a sturdy-looking Kenyan woman. She holds a clipboard authoritatively against one hip, a pudgy baby on the other.
“Abdi,” Sam says, “meet Maisha’s director, Mama Lisa. Like Mona Lisa! But with a better smile.”
“Who?” I ask, confused.
Mama Lisa looks like someone’s grandmother, soft around the middle, with kind, crinkly eyes, and coils of gray at her temples. She wears a simple T-shirt and slacks with a well-worn apron on top. “As-salamu alaykum. Welcome, Abdi. I hear you will be staying with us today.”
“Wa-alaykum salam. Yes, madam.” I’m surprised. I haven’t been greeted with a salam by someone who’s obviously not Muslim since I came to Kenya. But Mama Lisa doesn’t give me much time to think about it.
“How are you with children?” she asks briskly.
“Excuse me, madam?”
Without warning she deposits the baby she’s holding into my arms. I stare at it in horror. “Madam?!”
She smiles. “You’ll be fine, Abdi. Just hold her like you are carrying a sack of posho. On your hip. Not that tight. Good.”
Mama Lisa and Sam smile at me as I try to get a better grip on the baby’s warm squishiness. They don’t even seem to care that my hand is only half useful in its bandage. I can’t remember the last time I held a baby. Maybe when I was a kid, dragging Hafsa and my twin siblings around. The baby smiles at me and crams her fist into her mouth.
“She likes you! So. Do you know about this place, our Maisha Girls’ Center?” Mama Lisa speaks swiftly, like she has a long list of things on her clipboard to accomplish today. I start to wonder if maybe she’s not so soft and grandmotherly after all.
“No, madam,” I say, trying to talk around the slobbery fingers the baby’s taken out of her mouth and shoved into mine. I taste mashed peas and try not to gag.
Mama Lisa does not come to my rescue; instead she puts the clipboard behind her back and rocks on her heels, inspecting me. I shift the baby a little, trying to stand up straighter without risking dropping her.
“Mmm-hmm,” she says. “Well then, come. I’ll show you around.”
Not knowing what else to do, I follow her to the veranda, where three girls sit at a table in the shade. They’re doing something with a big bag of fabric. Two are wearing Western clothes. They’re probably South Sudanese, but the other girl wears a modest dress and a headscarf and looks Somali. They all look at me and then the baby in my arms, and I feel my face go warm. Why did this woman give me this child? Why give it to me, the boy, and not these girls? I scowl at the baby. She laughs, clapping my face between her hands. My frown slips. She does look sort of like my sister Hafsa when she was little.
“Here.”
I look up and freeze. The Somali girl is right in front of me, holding her hands out for the baby. I can now see that she’s ridiculously beautiful, like a girl in a movie, with smooth high cheeks and liquid black eyes surrounded by lashes like fine lace. The kind of girl who doesn’t give guys like me a second glance.
“You look confused,” she says.
My cheeks grow hotter. “I’m fine,” I say.
The girl gives me a hint of an amused smile. To my dismay she withdraws her arms and crosses them over her chest. “Fine.”
It’s only now that I notice her pregnant stomach, and like an idiot I find myself doing a cartoonish double take. She notices and immediately her expression goes dark, like shutters being slammed shut on a window. She returns to the table, fluffs her dress over her belly and attacks her work again without a second glance at me.
“This is beautiful, Muna,” Sam says to the pregnant girl, picking up a red-and-blue tie-dyed scarf out of the bag. “Will you save it for me?”
“Of course, Madam Sam. Maybe you need two? One for a friend?”
Sam laughs. “Ever the entrepreneur! Fine, save me two.”
“Our girls are getting their wares ready for sale,” Mama Lisa tells me. “They make the scarves here, and the co-ops in town sell them to tourists.”
Sam starts asking Muna how she’s feeling. I am sort of listening, but most of me is now concerned that my ear is going to be ripped from my head by a chubby claw. Seriously, this baby is much stronger than she looks. As I wince, I feel the weight shift in my arms and my eyes pop open in terror, thinking I’m letting her slip. But it’s just one of the other girls taking the baby from me. She doesn’t look at me or get any closer than she has to. As soon as she has the baby, she’s back on the far side of the table again.
“Come,” Mama Lisa says, and Sam and I follow.
I glance back at the little baby, but she only has eyes for the girl who has her now. Traitor. My gaze shifts to the Somali girl, but she’s still ignoring me.
Mama Lisa leads us into the dark foyer of the home. There must be a dozen rooms I can see just from here. Polished mahogany floors sprawl.
“The house was donated to our organization by the Swedish royal family,” Mama Lisa says, watching me gape at my surroundings. “And the girls who stay here are refugees. Most are from Congo, Somalia and Ethiopia. You are from Somalia too?”
A group of girls with books in their arms pass by. Some of them stare at me and giggle, but most act like I don’t exist. Starting to sweat, I try to remember the last time I was around this many girls. I forgot how they move in packs. I forgot how good they smell, like gum and perfume. I forgot how utterly terrifying they can be. Give me a dozen militia Boys over a whispering, giggling cluster of girls any day of the week. Forget bullets. Girls can rip you to shreds with nothing more than a raised eyebrow.
“Yes,” I say, finding my voice. “I’m Somali. The girls don’t stay with their families?”
Mama Lisa leads us down a hall into a bright kitchen. A woman is scrubbing pots from breakfast, humming loudly along with the radio, but otherwise it’s empty. The windows look out onto gardens and a play area for children. I can hear girls’ chatter and laughter from one of the rooms nearby, and a teacher telling them to settle down, get out their books and turn to page ninety-three.
“Most of the girls don’t have families here in Sangui City,” Mama Lisa says, to my question. “Or they can’t stay with them.”
“They’ve been in difficult situations, Abdi,” Sam says, in a pointed way that brings the Somali girl’s full belly to mind.
Mama Lisa begins to make tea for us, stirring milk in a saucepan on the stove. “The places they come from are war torn, dangerous. Well, you probably know, don’t you? Some of them were kept as soldier’s wives and escaped. Or they were sold. Sometimes by their own families.” She cocks her head. “Do you understand me?”
I swallow and nod. I understand. Better than I’d like to.
She adds tea to the milk and stirs it. Beyond the woman scrubbing pots at the sink, in the garden, two girls are bringing a dozen small children into the yard. The kids waddle toward the brightly colored slides and swings.
“They are survivors,” Mama Lisa goes on. “They want to go to school and get jobs and take care of their children. Those are their babies out there. But most of them are still children themselves. Bring mugs, please,” she says, nodding to a cabinet above my head.
I pull three mugs down, fumbling a little with my bandaged hand.
“What I’m explaining is not for you to repeat,” Mama Lisa says. “It’s not so you can ask the girls questions. I’m telling you because I want you to understand that you need to be on your best behavior here. A gentleman. Men, boys, are not normally allowed at Maisha. But Sam has assured me that you will be respectful and bring us no trouble.” She cuts her eyes at Sam, who shifts, looking a little like a schoolgirl being warned by her teacher. “Sawa sawa? We understand each other?”
“Sawa, madam,” I agree quickly.
Looking at Mama Lisa’s serious face, it suddenly hits me that she and Sam don’t know what they’re asking. They’re telling me to be good as if that is the most logical, possible thing in the world. I almost want to laugh. Sam barely knows me; she doesn’t understand what she’s promised Mama Lisa. She has no clue who I’ve been, what I’ve done. She can’t see all my old sins, the ones I wear around my neck like an anchor.
But what if . . .
A tingling feeling starts in my chest.
. . . What if I wasn’t that boy?
What if I was someone else entirely? Or, better yet, what if I was only Abdi? No one else, ever again.
Maybe it doesn’t have to be complicated. Maybe I can just start over. Am I crazy? Could it be that easy? No here one knows me. No one knows that other kid who’s been walking around in my skin for the last few months, doing those things. I don’t have to be him anymore. All I have to be is good. When I say it to myself like that, it seems so simple.
The feeling grows and stretches out tentatively, like something new and green straining for sunlight.
Just Abdi.
“All right, then,” Mama Lisa says. The milk is hot enough for her to pour into mugs. “Drink your tea and then we shall have a look at that hand. And afterward, you will start classes with the girls.”
THIRTEEN
THEN: AUGUST 20
THE FORT, SOMALIA
Roosters are crowing when the Al Shabaab Boy opens the door to my cell.
For a while he just stands there looking at me. Finally he waves a hand over his nose. “Eh, you smell like a crusty asshole.”
I want to tell him that there’s no stinking toilet in the cell they’ve locked me in, so what’s it supposed to smell like? Jasmine and sunshine? But I’m too tired. I am one big bruise on top of a bruise. And besides, I’m used to the smell after a full day and night.
“Stand up,” the Boy says, and holds out a scarf that he wants to put over my eyes. I catch a quick glimpse of a broad, sandy compound dotted with acacias. The Boy himself is short and dark and skinny, but that’s all I see before the fabric is over my eyes. It smells faintly of gasoline.
“Are you Al Shabaab?” I ask. “Is my brother here? Dahir?”
“No questions. Shut up. Go.”
It takes me a second, but I stumble out and he turns me in the direction I’m supposed to walk. I feel a sting on my calves and realize the boy is switching me with a stick like he’s driving sheep. Maybe it’s better than the gun butts and electric wires I’ve been getting hit with lately, but still. It kindles what little anger I have left. I am sick and tired of being beaten by strangers.
Everything happened like Mr. Jones said it would. The Boys rolled up on the AMISOM outpost in their technicals. The guards scattered. After pulling us all out of the cells, they killed two prisoners. For no apparent reason they shot the guy beside me. Maybe just to scare the shit out of the rest of us. Mission accomplished.
The Boys knew Dahir’s name when I was shouting, “Don’t shoot! I’m Dahir’s brother! Dahir Mohamed Abdullahi Kulane . . .” etc., etc., naming my father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great, and on and on like I’d been practicing for hours, names dredged up from my memories of when Aabo used to make me repeat them, our whole lineage, all the way back to the first Somali brothers God put on the earth. Of course, the Boys didn’t know if I had them right or not, but maybe it helped. Test me, I was telling them. I am who I say I am. I held my hands up over my head, shouting like a madman as I waited for the bullets to slice me up.
