The circumcision was the problem, Yasmin knew, just as it was for many Somali mothers. It was an ancient practice, handed down from the Egyptians to the modern day because the culture demanded it. At once a purification ritual and a prophylaxis against fornication, nearly every Somali girl underwent the procedure in pre-adolescence, spreading her legs on a table in a clinic or on a rock in the bush, feeling the fire of the blade as it pared away her intimate flesh, and then the piercing of the needle—or the thorns if no needle was handy—as the circumciser sewed together her vagina, leaving a hole no larger than a pen for urine and menstrual discharge.
Yasmin was a rarity in Somalia—she had never been cut. But she had seen pictures of an infibulated vagina in her mother’s medical books. In her mind, the cruelty of the practice was matched only by its senselessness. Circumcision offered no medicinal value to women. Yet its dangers were manifold—hemorrhaging, infection, septicemia, urinary blockage, complications with menstruation—and its consequences for society were devastating. It made childbirth a greater risk to a woman’s health than war. After seventeen years in her mother’s house, Yasmin hated the practice almost as much as Khadija, but not quite—Khadija had been circumcised.
When the sun rose above the windowsills, coloring the grim scene in the living room, Yasmin gathered the courage to confront Jamaad. “She needs a doctor,” she said, trying to maintain a respectful tone. “The baby is stuck in the birth canal.”
Jamaad frowned with displeasure. “What do you know about giving birth? I’ve had four children, all of them in my own house. Why are you worrying when you should be praying? You are behaving like a
kafir
—an unbeliever.”
Yasmin bristled. Nothing irritated her more than ignorance masquerading as wisdom. “Why do we live in a house if not to keep out the heat and the wind? Why do we lock our gate if not to keep out thieves? God doesn’t do these things for us. He gives us minds so we can do them for ourselves.”
“Silence, foolish girl!” Jamaad ordered. “You speak of what you do not understand.”
Yasmin turned to Fiido and saw the fear in the midwife’s eyes. Jamaad was like queen mother in the village. But Yasmin was Najiib’s wife, and that gave her a privilege that Fiido didn’t have. She glanced at Fatuma lying pitifully on the bloody mattress and her anger boiled over.
“She needs medical attention!” she exclaimed. “It has been nearly three days, and the baby is not coming. This is
Najiib’s
child. What will he think when I tell him you let his wife and son suffer?”
Now Yasmin’s words struck home. Jamaad blinked once and her expression became obsequious. “There is no need for that. We will take care of Fatuma,
inshallah
.” She turned to Fiido. “Call Geelle. We will take her to the hospital at Marere. I will pay him for petrol.”
The midwife nodded and took out her phone. Ten minutes later, Geelle—the only villager prosperous enough to own an SUV—pulled his battered Land Cruiser into the courtyard and opened the hatch while Jamaad, Fiido, and Yasmin lifted Fatuma on her mattress and carried her to the truck. Jamaad slid into the front seat, and Fiido and Yasmin climbed into the back with the water canister and a handful of towels.
The 120-kilometer drive to Marere was nearly as interminable as the labor itself. The road was little better than a camel track, and without air conditioning the Land Cruiser turned into a furnace in the sun. Yasmin helped Fiido blot the girl’s skin, her lips moving in the silent rhythm of prayer:
Oh God who grants laughter and tears, who created male and female, who has promised a second creation, a resurrection of the faithful, please give Fatuma and the baby life and not death this day
.
But her ministrations didn’t seem to help. By the time they crossed the river a few kilometers north of the town of Jilib, she could barely detect Fatuma’s pulse. The girl’s eyes were closed, her fingers as limp as wilted flowers. Fiido told Geelle to speed up, but he could only go so fast without risking an accident. In desperation, Yasmin stretched herself out on the floor and held the girl’s hand as the truck jounced along, reciting the words of the Quran into her ear and willing her to live. But Fatuma didn’t respond. She just lay there like a rag doll, lifeless, unbreathing.
At long last, they pulled up in front of the hospital. Jamaad jumped out and ran into the building, returning a minute later with a Somali woman in an orange
abaya
and eyeglasses—one of the doctors, Yasmin guessed. Geelle threw open the hatch of the SUV, and all of them lifted Fatuma’s mattress and carried it into the hospital. The doctor summoned a few nurses and moved Fatuma onto a gurney, pushing her quickly into the operating room. Jamaad tried to accompany them, but a nurse stepped into her path and directed her to a waiting room down the hall.
Yasmin followed her with Fiido and Geelle, the bitter taste of dread in her mouth. She knew what was going to happen. It was inevitable now. She was furious with Jamaad for her pride and superstitions and with Fiido for her fear. Both of them were complicit in Fatuma’s fate, as was the circumciser who had cut her as a child. But Yasmin wasn’t as concerned about assigning blame as she was about Najiib. He was coming home any day now, expecting to meet his firstborn son. It would have been difficult enough to introduce him to a daughter—a possibility he had refused to consider. But to bring him a stillborn child? It would drive him mad with rage. He would give Jamaad a tongue-lashing, but she wouldn’t bear the brunt of his fury—Yasmin would.
Before long, the doctor appeared again, her eyes liquid with sorrow. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “The girl didn’t make it. Her baby also is dead.”
Jamaad began to wail, and Yasmin buried her head in her hands. She had spent the past three years in relative peace and safety, protected from the war by the remoteness of the village and from the famine by Najiib’s largesse. She had concentrated on surviving, holding out hope that Ismail would come for her. Her safety, however, had always been contingent on Najiib’s favor. She had disappointed him once—by failing to give him a son—but her beauty and Fatuma’s pregnancy had shielded her from the fallout. Now with Fatuma and the child gone, she was completely exposed. All she had left to offer him was her body. It was a threadbare covering. He would tire of her eventually, and then he would discard her. Or perhaps he would remember how much he had hated her father, and he would kill her.
No
, Yasmin told herself.
I won’t let him. There is another way.
The time had come to take matters into her own hands. Even if the risk was great, she had to find a way to escape.
Paul
Washington, D.C.
March 11, 2012
The United Airlines flight from London touched down at Dulles airport a few minutes ahead of schedule. Derrick gathered his duffel bag and backpack and shuffled off the plane, following the crowd of passengers to the immigration hall. He passed through passport control and customs without delay and hailed a taxi to Arlington. It was the first time he had been back on American soil since December.
The negotiation to secure the release of the American aid workers had been grueling, but the Somali kidnappers—some had taken to calling them “land-based pirates,” though Derrick considered the term an oxymoron—had played by the book. The cat-and-mouse game of demands, delays, threats, and obfuscation had ground ahead with the momentum of a millstone, slow but inexorable. There had been no surprises, no handoff to the Shabaab. The deal would have been done and the ransom delivered but for the last-minute decision by the authorities in Washington that the older of the hostages was suffering from a heart condition and required immediate medical attention.
Just like that, Derrick and his team of negotiators had been pulled off the case and the job turned over to a squadron of Navy SEALs—the golden boys of DEVGRU, Derrick was sure, though he couldn’t confirm it. The SEALs had planned and executed the raid with extraordinary precision. They had parachuted into Somalia under the cover of darkness, converged on the bush camp where the aid workers were being held, killed a dozen pirates in a shootout, and carried the hostages to a Blackhawk helicopter for the trip back to Kenya. The operation had confirmed two things for Derrick: first, that the SEALs were masters at what they were trained to do, and, second, that even the masters require favorable conditions for a successful mission, conditions that were never present during the
Renaissance
hijacking.
Four months had passed since the shooting on the sailboat, but Derrick had never stopped thinking about Ismail and the Parkers. In his flights of fancy, he imagined himself walking in Megan’s footsteps, reading her case file, sitting in on her interviews, and attending every hearing from start to finish. But he couldn’t do that. The dictates of law and professionalism required that the barrier between them remain impregnable. Derrick was a government agent and a material witness. Megan was the government’s nemesis and bound by the rules of confidentiality. To avoid a conflict of interest, their spheres had to remain separate until the jury delivered its verdict.
The taxi dropped Derrick off outside his apartment building—a brick and glass high-rise without a hint of personality. He lugged his bags into the lobby and took the elevator to the tenth floor. His apartment was at the end of the hall. He stopped on the threshold, struck by the thought:
Is this really where I live?
It was a typical Beltway flat—efficient but soulless, with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. Its crowning feature was a miniature terrace with a view of the Kennedy Center across the Potomac River. He heard Megan’s words echoing in his head:
This place is a dump.
He shrugged.
Fair enough, but what other option do I have?
He tossed his bags on the couch and went to the piano by the window, sitting down on the bench and closing his eyes. Usually when he did this a song came to him: Gershwin if he was cheerful, Billy Joel if he was nostalgic, Chopin if he was melancholy, and so on. This time, however, he drew a blank. It wasn’t that the moment lacked a soundtrack, rather that he was too distracted to think of one.
He had something in his duffel bag that he had to deliver, something the Bureau’s legal attaché in Nairobi had given him before he left Kenya. He had almost refused, inventing an excuse to avoid seeing her again, but his mouth hadn’t formed the words. Before he knew it, the wooden chest was in his hands and the memory of Vanessa’s face seared on his conscience.
Better to get it over with
, he thought.
It’s not going to get any easier
.
He extracted the chest from his bag and took the elevator to the garage. His Audi A5 coupe was in his parking space, just as he’d left it. He climbed in and punched her address into the GPS system, then sped out of the lot and onto the George Washington Parkway. It was a Sunday afternoon and the roads were blissfully free of gridlock. He took the Arland Williams Memorial Bridge into D.C. and headed east, crossing the Anacostia River and merging onto Interstate 295 to Maryland. His navigation system said the drive to Annapolis would take forty minutes.
He planned to make it in thirty.
Half an hour later, he turned onto Norwood Road and counted mailboxes. He found her house at the end of the street and pulled up beside a row of Tuscan pines.
Now this is a home
, he thought, taking in the stately Cape Cod and the verdant grounds all around. He locked his car and walked down the cobblestone drive to the grape arbor and the front porch, carrying the chest in one hand. The sun was bright in a sky the color of blue-jay feathers, and the air carried the first hint of spring.
He knocked twice and prepared himself for an awkward greeting. He hoped the visit would be brief, but he wasn’t about to control the conversation. He was at her mercy. He had failed her and her family in a spectacular way. It was a debt he could never repay.
He heard the deadbolt retract, watched the door swing open, and then she was there, staring back at him. She was wearing white jeans and a turquoise top that brought out the green in her eyes.
“Paul,” she said quizzically, leaving the obvious unstated:
What are you doing here?
A golden retriever skittered around her feet, its tail wagging. He knelt down and scratched the dog behind the ears, grateful for the distraction.
“That’s Skipper,” she explained, a touch softer. “He’s everybody’s friend.”
“I should have called first,” he said, standing up again. “I just got back into the country.” He looked into her eyes. “I have something that belongs to you.”
When he held out the chest, she inhaled sharply. “Is that . . .?”
He nodded. “It was Daniel’s.”
She took it from him and turned it over slowly, rubbing her thumb across the brass engraving plate. Derrick knew the inscription by heart. It read:
To my son, Daniel, who grew up dreaming of life on the Golden Hinde. May you find fair wind and following seas. Bon voyage. ~ Dad
.
“It’s from Zanzibar,” she explained. “His father gave it to him before they cast off.”
She lifted the lid with trepidation, as if she were opening Daniel’s casket. A stack of blank paper and a pen were on the bottom beneath handwritten pages folded and standing on edge. Derrick hadn’t read them out of respect, but he was sure the FBI agents who had combed over the
Renaissance
had examined them thoroughly before declaring them immaterial to the investigation.