Pay attention even at unextraordinary times, be of the present. To be anywhere else is “to paint eyeballs on chaos.”
It was Lily’s voice. A tingling rippled across my scalp and traveled down both arms. Though I thought of Lily often, it had been a while since I’d talked to her or felt her sitting on my shoulder.
Nearby, a picture hung on a cinderblock wall. It was a large portrait, at least four feet by six, of a thin, unsmiling face with wide-set eyes and a threatening crease between dark eyebrows. Black hair crowned a high forehead of brown skin. Siad Barre.
How can you see what’s coming if you close your eyes?
I stared at the portrait. To live in Somalia meant living with a dictator and a dictator’s army. It meant living in a place where no one dared smile. Where no one had reason to. I thought of Hamidou’s smile, Adiza and Fati’s laughter, the chatter of the village women in Upper Volta. Dori was a harsh place, but its people had always found reasons to be joyful. Somehow, the joy had been leeched from Somalia.
After thirty minutes of shifting my weight from one foot to the other, the portrait watching my every move, I faced a second, younger man. He stood with his back rigid and his mouth grim.
“Visa!” he snapped and held out his hand. He flipped through the pages of my passport, then looked me in the eyes. I looked back with a neutral expression.
“How long will you stay in Mogadishu?”
“Four days.”
He stamped the visa and pointed to a glass door. “Go in there.” His voice was flat, empty.
I crossed the cement floor, pushed open the door, and entered a stifling room with low ceilings. This room held a stronger smell—sour and sharp. Sweat drenched the insides of my arms. I pulled away the hair that plastered the back of my neck and felt Jack’s gold chain. As I stopped at the back of another line, I pressed the crescent moon and star that hung beneath my shirt to my chest, praying for enough luck to get me through customs.
Ensha’allah.
An old man sat on the floor near the far wall, waiting for someone or begging. He wore a dirty turban with its tail end draped over a bony shoulder. He had the face of the
marabou
, the old medicine man I had met my first month in Dori, sitting in his shade under the thorn bush, blowing on a string.
At the back of my neck, I tucked the chain well beneath the neckline of my shirt, out of sight. It was my string, my protection.
Two men and two women stood behind low tables, opening suitcases and untying bundles. Tension hung so thick in the room it fogged the windows. Passengers hovered in front of open bags, answering questions in hushed voices. The customs agents, in a seemingly random manner, sent some of the passengers into a side room with their bags, or waved others to freedom by chalking a white X on the outside of their luggage. In the fifteen minutes I stood waiting, eight people were shuffled into the side room, their faces drooping. None of them came out. The sweat in my armpits grew from a trickle to a stream.
When I finally stepped before the woman agent, sweat had soaked the armpits and back of my shirt. Wisps of hair feathered the agent’s smooth forehead from beneath her cap. Black, almond-shaped eyes followed delicate fingers as she unzipped the pockets of my backpack. Out came my books, notepads, a brush, my plane ticket. The man next to me slunk into the side room, clutching a camera with a telephoto lens. I congratulated myself on leaving my camera with Tricia in Kenya.
The agent continued to rifle through my pack. Her mouth puckered at my dresses, bottle of shampoo, the tattered seams of my cotton underwear. She found a bottle of aspirin, opened it, then ran her hands over the canvas, searching for hidden pouches. I held my breath. She closed the flap and chalked an X on the outside. I picked up my pack and walked quickly to the exit door, praying that fresh air and Don waited on the other side.
There he was, his bald head glowing in the shade of a flamboyant tree. I heaved a sigh of relief.
“Well!” He stood to greet me. “I see you successfully avoided the dreaded ‘side room.’ Congratulations.” He grinned.
Good old Don. It was so good to see him I almost cried. I dropped my pack and hugged him. “Thanks for the free ticket.”
“My pleasure.” He picked up my pack. “Come on. I’ll show you around our lovely city.”
I followed him down a crumbling sidewalk and across an empty street to a car. We drove past the airport terminal and turned onto Makha Road. I rolled down the window and sniffed the dust, wood smoke, and salt air. We passed two-story buildings of stone and timber with pitched, red-tile roofs. Verandahs opened onto unkempt yards. Here were traces of a once beautiful city, now neglected and sagging.
“A long time ago, Mogadishu was a thriving port town.” Don nodded at the windshield. “Arab and European ships traded all along the African coast as far south as Mozambique until the Portuguese discovered an easier way to India via the Cape of Good Hope.”
I imagined a time when flamboyant and jacaranda trees shaded tiled patios hung with silks.
“How long ago?”
“About four hundred years.” Don turned left, then right onto another wide street. “After that, the Europeans left this area to the clans and their feuds until the 1800s, when Britain and Italy ‘bought the land’”—he hooked two fingers of his right hand and etched quotation marks into the air—“from the Emperor of Ethiopia.”
I shifted in my seat and peered out the window. The streets were empty. I flashed on the crowded streets of Ouaga. “Where is everybody?”
“Staying at home where it’s safe.” Don glanced at me. “People here are much more cautious than in Upper Volta. How is everyone there?”
“About the same. Though, Djelal softened a bit toward the end of my stay. Adiza got married and everybody had babies, including Luanne.”
Don laughed.
“What’s it like here?”
His smile faded. “It’s not as peaceful as Dori. The Somali clans have been feuding over land, water, and grazing rights for hundreds of years.” He shook his head. “And no one forgets or forgives anyone else.”
“What about Barre?”
“It’s complicated. The clans seem to accept whoever has the most power at any one time. There’s a local story that sheds a lot of light on why things are they way they are here.” He turned a corner, then grinned at me. “Once upon a time there was a lion, a jackal, a wolf, and a hyena.”
I looked over at Don and saw Drabo, his beret cocked to one side, a twinkle in his eye.
There was once a tortoise who discovered that all the birds had been invited to a feast in the sky.
“The lion, the jackal, the wolf, and the hyena had a meeting and agreed that they would hunt together and share what they caught equally among themselves.” Don paused a moment, checking the rearview mirror. “So, they all went out and killed a camel. As they began to divide the meat, the lion said, ‘Whoever divides the meat must know how to count.’
“The wolf said, ‘Indeed, I know how to count.’ So, the wolf divided the meat into four equal portions and placed one before each hunter.
“The lion said angrily, ‘Is this the way to count?’ And he struck the wolf across the eyes with his great paw. The wolf’s eyes swelled and he could not see.
“The jackal said, ‘The wolf does not know how to count. I will divide the meat.’
The jackal cut three pieces that were small and a fourth piece that was very large. He placed a small piece before the hyena, the wolf, and himself. Then he put the larger piece in front of the lion. The lion took his meat and went away.
“‘Why did you give the lion such a large piece?!’ the hyena said. ‘We agreed to divide the meat equally. Where did you learn to divide?’
“The jackal replied, ‘From the wolf.’”
I laughed, but at the same time felt myself sinking. “So, Barre’s the lion.”
“No, he’s the jackal. The lion has always been one of the superpowers. Today, it’s the United States.” Don turned the car east onto 5th October Avenue. “Barre was backed by the Russians until the Ogaden War when they decided Ethiopia was a better strategic ally. So, in the late seventies, the U.S. took the opportunity to get a foothold in the Horn of Africa. Now
we
supply all the rifles and the tanks and have opened the market to Western arms dealers.” He shook his head. “Guns are everywhere. You have to be careful, even on the streets. Don’t go out by yourself after dark.”
No wonder the streets were deserted. I suddenly had a really bad headache. I was glad Philip wasn’t in the car. He would have been sneering at me, shaking my shoulders.
I want you to wake up!
One of these days, the U.S. was going to fall from its place in the sky and break into a thousand pieces. Who would be around to glue us back together?
He who stirs up a wasp’s nest must be sure that he is able to run.
“Wow, what a difference we’ve made in Somalia.”
Don looked over at me. “Nothing happens without both good and bad consequences. If you’re going to work overseas, you have to learn to understand and accept all the negative we have done, then try to do as much positive as possible.”
He patted my arm. “So, we do what we can. There’s a drought in the north, and refugees are coming in from Ethiopia with no food. There’s no government plan to deal with them. The infant mortality rate up there is close to fifty percent.”
One out of every two babies born, dying.
“So, water, agriculture, and health projects?”
Don nodded. “CARE is doing most of the refugee feeding programs.”
I looked out the window. A few people mingled around some market stalls. That was what Rob had done, before Cameroon, before meeting the old girlfriend. He had worked for CARE in Chad, feeding refugees.
“Save the Children’s work is with refugee resettlement near Coreoli. To help them get started again. We’ll be going there tomorrow.”
We turned north and drove along the coast. A strip of white sand rimmed the ocean, reaching north and curving out of sight.
“The beaches are beautiful. Can we go swimming?”
Don laughed and pointed. “See those shacks over there?”
A line of squat stalls straddled the edge where dirt and grasses met sand.
“Those are
abattoirs
.”
The stench of dried blood drifted into the car. My stomach tilted.
“Slaughterhouses on the beach?”
Don nodded. “They dump all those delicious guts into the ocean. Sharks come from miles out for a daily buffet. Lots of sharks.”
Holy shit. The hairs raised off the back of my neck. Forget the swimming. No cooling off in blue water.
“We would have given anything for a beach like that in Dori. What a waste.”
“Well, every country can’t have its Club Med, now, can it?” Don raised his eyebrows at me.
I turned my attention to the crumbling buildings, the empty streets.
That night, Don took me to a gathering of the expat community in Mogadishu. I perused several interesting looking men. One was married, one too young. The other turned out to be a very East Coast La La Preppie. What was I thinking anyway? That my dream man would somehow appear on the streets of Mogadishu? Yeah, the way Rob had shown up in Monrovia. The way Drabo had been stationed in Dori. That had all worked out so well. Why not do it again? I knew better. Even Abena had learned her lesson after her Prince Charming had turned into that nasty python. The parents of the maids the python had eaten came to the river and killed that snake.
Thin and wan, Abena climbed from the python’s hole and collapsed weeping on the bank. No one had the heart to blame her so they carried her back to the village.
Abena warned the young girls that the seemingly perfect man often shed his skin. Beware of outward charm, she told them, shaking her finger, for beneath a glittery appearance lay dark holes and suffering.
I had redefined my idea of the perfect man, and he had nothing to do with rogue Cossacks or relationships of convenience.
If you come home, you’ll find one. Somebody you can sleep with who you actually love for a change and it’d be OK if you got pregnant.
I drank my beer and wondered how Tricia and Bob were doing on the shark-free beaches of Lamu. I stayed up too late and drank too much, unable to shake an empty, sad feeling.
Over the next two days, we visited projects in Coreoli. So many displaced people on the edge of so much conflict. So much work to do. But everyone talked about massive government corruption and how difficult it made the work. One step forward, twenty steps back. So much suffering—women and children, the few elderly. The weakest were always the collateral damage of greed, politics, and war. Here was where Death became the Devil, an evil creature who lurked in every doorway, feasting on the tragedies made by man. Somalia was a morass of despair. How could anyone make a difference in this chaos? I thought of Lily.
Somalia was so much worse than Upper Volta, so much harder.
Every place you go is just as good and just as bad as the last place you left.
Tricia had been wrong on the train. Some places were a lot worse than others.
Back in Mogadishu, the director, a guy named Lance, sat me down and offered me a six-month deputy director position. I could even go home, he said, take a break, and come back in October. My professional head argued fiercely.
Yes! Take the job. Don’t give up just because you’re tired!
Wasn’t it better than going home unemployed? And deputy director! A good career move.
But my heart, my poor heart begged.
No, no, please don’t.
My intestines and my body’s overworked temperature regulator took sides with my heart.
I’m sorry, Lily, I’m not strong enough to cater to elephants.
Dust blew across the blacktop of the runway and in through the glass doors of the terminal lounge. I hoisted my backpack and faced Don. Jet engines drowned out conversation inside the room. The plane passed, did a 360-degree turn, and stopped. The engines whined down.
“Thanks for the tour of Mogadishu, Don. I hope I haven’t disappointed you too much.”