Before long, she saw a silver Toyota Yaris turn into the hotel entrance. The man behind the wheel was too large for the subcompact automobile. He had to climb out in stages, bending his head, extricating his legs, and rolling forward before standing. He was at least a foot taller than she was—six and a half feet, she guessed. His face was almond brown, his eyes dark and thoughtful, and his goatee a frame for a mouth that didn’t look like it smiled often.
“Ms. Derrick, I am Farah,” he said, his words as stark as the look he gave her. “There is a place we can talk not far from here.”
She slipped into the passenger seat and watched him fold his body back into the car. Finding him had been easy enough. One contact had led to another until five degrees of separation reduced to one—a friend who taught at the Elliott School of International Affairs; the Senior Somalia Desk Officer at the State Department; an imam at a prominent mosque in Minneapolis; and, finally, a relative from Farah’s sub-clan who lived on his street. The challenge had been to convince him that the Ismail Adan Ibrahim she represented was actually his sister’s son. He denied it resolutely until, with Ismail’s help, she named his patrilineal ancestors going back four generations. At that point, his resistance dissolved and he agreed to meet with her.
“Is it always this cold?” she asked, warming her hands on the dashboard vents.
He pulled out onto the street. “The winter is hard, but it is a good place to raise a family.”
“How many children do you have?” she inquired, making conversation.
“Three. And you?”
“I’ve never had kids.” She spoke the admission easily after years of practice, but still she felt the weight of it in her heart. It hadn’t been a conscious decision as much as a consequence of the life she had chosen—the work that never ended, like an express train with no stops; the cases and clients that piled up, every one a person, a family, a company in need; and the men she had dated and the one she had finally married, all equally yoked to their professions. Sometimes when she saw a mother cuddling a baby or pushing a child on the swings, she wished for a moment that she could take her place. But then she remembered the mountain of her responsibilities, the people who were depending on her, the lives hanging in the balance, and the moment always passed—though the ache never quite disappeared.
When Farah lapsed into silence, Megan sat back and watched the city pass by. Soon skyscrapers gave way to apartment buildings, strip malls, and residential neighborhoods—the placeless fingerprint of suburbia. After a while, Farah pulled up to a parking gate outside a building with glass storefronts. He waved to the attendant and found a spot in the busy lot.
“This is a Somali mall,” Farah said. “There are a few in the city. I own this one.”
She surveyed the mall and the many customers milling about in shops and restaurants. “Looks like a good investment.”
“It was,” he affirmed without inflection.
After extracting himself from the car, he led her into a hallway lined with stalls—a mall within the mall. All manner of goods and services were on display, some Western, some Somali: fabrics, shoes, electronics, mobile phones, accountant advice, travel assistance, and a wide variety of food. The air was redolent of cooking oil, grilled meat, and spices. She followed him into a café with a handful of tables along the wall. He greeted the young Somali vendor with a gregarious grin.
“The samosas are excellent here,” he said. “As is the tea. It is my treat.”
“Thank you,” she replied, unzipping her parka.
A few minutes later, they took seats at a table in the back with a plate of deep-fried pastries and mugs of Somali tea. Farah waved at the food. “Please eat. I will talk.”
She nodded and took a bite of a samosa. It was piping hot and delicious.
“I wasn’t prepared to receive your call,” he began, his tone flat. “I saw the news reports about the hijacking, but I didn’t follow the story. My clan has never been involved in piracy.” He spoke the word with distaste, revealing the wound to his pride. “Ismail is the firstborn son of my younger sister, Khadija. I knew him when he was a boy—when his family lived in Nairobi—but I haven’t seen him since they returned to Somalia. I was certain he was dead. That is why I didn’t believe you when you called. It is still hard to believe.”
“Why did you think he was dead?” Megan asked softly.
Farah glanced at the vendor, who was talking on his mobile phone. He lowered his voice and asked a question of his own. “What did he tell you about the Shabaab?”
Megan’s pulse quickened. She had asked Ismail a dozen different ways about his association with the Islamists, but he had declined to elaborate. “As his lawyer, I can’t tell you what he’s said. But I’d be very grateful if you would tell me what you know.”
Farah’s nose twitched. “The story has many dimensions.”
“Take as long as you want,” Megan said, picking up another samosa.
Farah fixed his expressionless eyes on her. “There are many who deserve blame for what happened, but Adan, his father, is the first. He was foolish to take his family back to Mogadishu. If they had stayed in Kenya, Ismail and Yasmin would be at university, and Yusuf would be graduating from secondary school. They could have been doctors, lawyers, business people. But Adan had this silly dream. He wanted to open a school in Mogadishu. He wanted to be a part of the rebirth of Somalia.”
Yasmin, Yusuf
, Megan thought, taking out a pad and pen.
Where are they now?
Farah looked away from her, as if remembering. “To understand what I’m about to tell you, you need context. In the year 2000, the world powers created the first transitional government in Mogadishu. Many Somalis believed that change was in the wind. I did not. The warlords still ruled the streets. I advised Khadija to stay with the children in Nairobi. But Adan wouldn’t allow it. He knew the new president. He was convinced the war was about to end.” Farah’s eyes clouded further. “People have been saying that for twenty years, and still the war goes on.”
Megan nodded. She had spent much of the past month struggling to make sense of the internecine bloodshed, political machinations, and international interventions that had defined Somalia since the fall of the nation’s long-standing dictator, Siad Barre, in 1991. It was like trying to disentangle the knot of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The grievances were so numerous and entrenched in a past so complex that every time she felt she was about to unlock the mystery of it, the key slipped through her hands and she found herself suspended again in a fog of incomprehension.
“They got a house in Bulo Hubey, not far from the airport,” Farah went on. “It was the safest neighborhood in the city—always under government control. But Adan’s school was in Medina, where there was fighting. To his credit, he had formidable friends. His brother, Mahamoud, is a man of great influence in Mogadishu. For years his friends were a shield around him. But then the Shabaab came and defeated the warlords. They ignored the old rules—the bribes and favors that made Mogadishu work. Their goal was domination. Even Mahamoud couldn’t control them.”
Mahamoud
, Megan wrote on her pad.
I need to talk to him.
Farah sipped his tea. “It was remarkable to see how quickly the Shabaab gained ground. We Somalis have always been moderate in our religious views. Extremism is not native to our soil. It is an import from Arabia and Afghanistan. The Islamists exploited the dislocation caused by the war. They did what the government failed to do: they brought law and order to the streets and gave businesses a chance to flourish again.” He held out his hands. “The people were tired of the fighting. They gave the Shabaab what they wanted—power. That was when they took off the mask. They started punishing women for going outside without a headscarf. They amputated the hands of thieves, stoned people accused of adultery, recruited soldiers by force and bribery, and silenced dissent with the gun. Adan was one of the dissenters. He continued to teach English and science in his school. I admire that about him. What I don’t admire is the way he exposed his family to reprisal.”
When Megan finished off the last of the samosas, Farah said: “Would you like more?”
“No, thank you,” she said. “I enjoyed them, though.”
Farah glanced at the boy behind the counter again and then folded his hands on the table. “I saw it coming even here,” he continued. “The Shabaab put pressure on the transitional government until the Ethiopians who were propping it up grew weary and left the country. That was early 2009. The African Union stayed behind, but they were weak. I talked to Khadija every week. I told her to take the children back to Nairobi. But she wouldn’t leave without Adan, and Adan refused to leave.”
Farah took a breath, and for the first time Megan saw a flicker of emotion in his eyes. “It didn’t take the Shabaab long to control most of Mogadishu. That spring, they attacked Adan’s school. They shot him in front of the children and took the older students away to fight with them. Ismail, Yasmin, and Yusuf were among them. My sister worked as a nurse at Medina Hospital. She was there when it happened. I talked to her the next day. She was beside herself. She’d spoken to Mahamoud, and he said there was nothing he could do. The Shabaab was a black hole.”
Megan sat back in her chair, spellbound by Ismail’s story.
They murdered his father in front of him? They kidnapped him?
The memories from her own childhood came to her unbidden—the explosion of the gun in Kyle’s hands, her father crumpling to the floor, the wall behind him spattered with blood, the cordite hanging in the air, her mother’s screams. She forced them out of her mind.
“What happened after that?” she asked quietly.
Farah blinked. “My sister escaped from the city. She went to my father’s house in Merca, but it wasn’t safe. He found her transport to the Kenyan border. She walked the rest of the way to Dadaab.”
Suddenly, Megan’s horror became astonishment. “You mean his mother is
alive
?”
Farah nodded. “I talked to her yesterday.”
My God
, Megan thought. She had pressed Ismail about why he was so certain that Khadija was dead, but as on so many other points he had refused to give his reasons. She searched Farah’s face and saw a hint of moisture in his eyes. “Is there a way I can speak to her?”
Farah put out his hand. “If you give me your pen, I will write down her number. She works as a nurse in the Dagahaley refugee camp.”
Megan made no attempt to hide her elation. After he scrawled out the digits on her pad, she asked: “Did you ever find out what happened to Yasmin and Yusuf?”
“Yusuf was killed in the fighting,” Farah answered. “I don’t know what happened to Yasmin.” He was quiet for a long moment, and then changed the subject. “When is Ismail’s trial?”
“It’s scheduled for June,” she said. “Will you testify? The jury needs to hear your story.”
He looked down at the table. “I will have to think about that.”
She understood his reticence. To make public his association with Ismail would bring his family into disrepute. Still, she urged him on. “Please do. He needs your help.”
“There are things I do not understand,” Farah said in a voice just above a whisper. “He escaped from the Shabaab, but he didn’t flee the country. Why did he stay? And why did he get involved in piracy? It flies in the face of everything Adan and Khadija raised him to believe.”
Megan spoke carefully. “To be honest, I don’t understand it either.”
Farah gave her a pointed look. “So he didn’t tell you.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “There is a saying in Somalia that a person is like a bush. It looks safe on the outside, but on the inside it’s home to snakes and scorpions. I suppose that is a kind of explanation.”
I’m not so sure
, Megan thought but didn’t say.
I think he had another agenda. He still does.
Ismail
Chesapeake, Virginia
February 3, 2012
Longfellow’s voice rang out in the empty gymnasium where Ismail was playing basketball: “Your lawyer is on her way up. She says it’s important.” When Ismail gave him a crestfallen look, the jailer grinned. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your time.”
Ismail nodded and took a final shot. The ball bounced off the backboard and rattled around the rim before falling through the net. Every prisoner in the maximum-security block got an hour of free time at some point during the day, and Ismail had developed a regimen that gave him a little bit of everything—ten minutes of pushups, sit-ups and calisthenics, ten minutes of shooting hoops, ten minutes for a shower, and thirty minutes for reading the newspaper, searching for stories about Africa and the Middle East. He relished the daily ritual and was loath to lose a minute of it.
He met Longfellow at the door and put his hands out, wrists flush, and his feet shoulder-width apart, allowing the jailer to cuff him. Seconds later, Richie buzzed the cellblock door, and Longfellow led him down the hall to the conference room. After the jailer removed his handcuffs again, Ismail sat down at the table and waited nervously for Megan to appear.
He had been dreading this visit for two weeks, ever since their conversation at the courthouse. He was sure it had to do with Farah. He felt the butterflies in his stomach, the cord of shame around his neck, weakening his resolve. For three years, he had had no contact with his family, apart from Mahamoud. In that time he had committed crimes that his relatives would never understand. His hands were covered in blood, his heart choked by it. Yet he was a part of them, joined by the bonds of clan and kin. He couldn’t dismiss them even if he wanted to.