She was about to start walking again when she heard a faint sound in the sky, fading in and out. She looked up at the patches of blue and scudding clouds, searching for an explanation. The sound grew louder and more consistent.
That’s not natural
, she thought.
That’s a motor.
At first, she guessed it was an airplane, but she saw no sign of one. Then she recalled a conversation she had had with her father and brother not long before the school attack.
“They sound like an insect,” Ismail had said. “The targets don’t see them until it’s too late.”
“Do you think the Americans will use them here?” she asked.
“If they do, they’ll invite a backlash,” Adan replied. “The Shabaab will use them as a recruiting tool just like al-Qaeda has done in Afghanistan and Yemen. Remember Newton’s third law. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It’s as true in war as it is in science.”
Yasmin felt a stab of fear.
It’s a drone.
She scoured the sky for a reflection, anything that might give away its flight path, but she came up empty. She looked east toward the trees and the village—
It was then she saw the fireball.
It flared orange-red like the rising sun, then quickly turned black with smoke, as the sound of an explosion rolled across the land. She watched in disbelief.
Najiib
, she thought.
The Americans came for him.
Then her shock turned into dread.
How many others are dead?
She had no idea what to think or do in that moment. She just stood there, unmoving, until the rumble died away and all was still again.
When at last her brain reengaged, she realized the uncanny timing of her escape. Only hours ago she had been asleep in her bed. Now her bedroom and the house around it were almost certainly gone. She recalled Ismail’s words.
There is something you must do
. . .
You must hide your phone in his truck . . . Go tonight. There is no time to waste.
Somehow the phone was linked to the drone strike.
Blood rushed to her head, and she fell to her knees in horror. She thought of Jamaad and the families that lived beyond the walls. It was likely that dozens of villagers had been in the blast radius. She tried to stand up, but her legs were too wobbly to hold her. She crossed them instead, sitting on the dirt and struggling with the question that defied all explanation.
Why, Ismail? Why did you make me do it?
The longer she puzzled over it, the less sense it made. Her brother was a twenty-year-old Somali refugee in Kenya. How could he have been involved in an American drone strike? Yet the timing was too coincidental. She mulled over her last exchange with him. He had asked her to hide the phone in Najiib’s truck. Why the truck? Why not the house? And why had he specified that she conceal it? Did he think Najiib would search for the phone? The answer came to her in a flash.
He knew Najiib would come looking for me.
This changed everything. If Najiib had been driving when the missile hit, he and his men might have been the only casualties. She held on to this theory like a lifeline. It had to be true. Ismail had asked her to trust him. Whatever he had gotten into, he would not have used her to murder innocent people. She buried her face in her hands and wept with relief. At long last, her captivity was over. Najiib would never kill or rape again. Adan’s assassination was avenged. She was finally free.
She lifted herself to her feet and threw her sack and jug over her shoulder, looking into the brightness of the dawn. The desert was alive with new grass and flowers. She had food for most of the journey, and water for a couple of days at least. The rains would sustain her. She had strong legs and a stronger heart. She would survive,
inshallah
.
With God’s help, she would make it to Dadaab.
Ismail
Chesapeake, Virginia
April 28, 2012
The drone strike made headlines in the United States the day after it happened. When Ismail finished his exercises, he took the newspaper off the rack and sat down at a table in the common area. He had twenty-eight minutes to read before Longfellow took him back to his cell. He saw the words on the front page below the fold, and his heart did a backflip in his chest. “
U.S. DRONE STRIKE IN SOMALIA KILLS AL-SHABAAB LEADER
.” He flew through the story as fast as his mind could process it.
Sources within the militant group al-Shabaab say that a missile fired by an American drone killed a key leader in the group’s intelligence unit, the Amniyat, outside a remote village in the Middle Juba province of Somalia on Friday. Hagi Abdulaziz, a commander in the Shabaab, said that the target of the attack, Mohamed Abdullah al-Noor, was a close friend and advisor of the Shabaab emir, Ahmed Abdi Godane.
Known by many as “Azrael,” the Angel of Death, al-Noor has long been accused by international authorities of orchestrating a brutal campaign of assassination, targeting moderates within the Somali government and business community who oppose the Shabaab’s agenda. Abdulaziz reported that two other fighters were killed with al-Noor when a missile destroyed the truck they were driving in.
A U.S. Defense Department spokesman confirmed the attack but offered no further details. Somalia’s president called the killing a “serious blow” to the forces of extremism and instability that have dragged the nation’s civil war into its third decade.
Al-Shabaab has been losing ground in Somalia ever since African Union troops drove it out of Mogadishu in 2011. In January, the group made its alliance with al-Qaeda official when Godane appeared in a video with Ayman al Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda. Though ousted from Mogadishu, the Shabaab remains in control of much of southern Somalia.
Ismail tossed the paper on the table and smiled grimly. He hated the drone war. Raining death from the skies was neither honorable nor infallible, and often led to collateral damage. But this time he made an exception. The strike had been righteous. The Amniyat had been decapitated, and Najiib had been judged. A verse from the Quran came to him:
And you will see the sinners on that day bound in fetters, their garments made of pitch and their faces covered with fire.
Najiib was in Allah’s hands now.
Ismail stood up again and walked to the telephone mounted on the wall. He motioned to Longfellow. “I need to make a call.”
“It’s your time,” the jailer replied.
He dialed Megan’s mobile number. It was a weekend, but he didn’t mind disturbing her.
“Ismail,” she said. “I imagine you saw the story.”
“Have you heard from Bob?” he asked. “Does he know where she is?”
“I just spoke to him. Yasmin escaped. They got a visual of her in the desert. They’ve made contact with your mother. The wheels are turning to get them green cards and authorize the reward. I’ve never seen the government move this quickly. They’re clearly motivated.”
Ismail leaned his head against the wall. “Now she just has to get there.”
Megan took a reflective breath. “They’re going to keep tabs on her.”
More eyes in the sky
, he thought. “I don’t see why they can’t just go out and get her.”
“I know,” Megan said. “I pushed Bob on it, but he wouldn’t budge.”
“Okay,” he said resignedly. “Then we wait.”
“Keep your chin up,” she encouraged him. “She’s made it this far.”
“Yes, she has.” He placed the phone back in its cradle.
Hooyo
, he thought.
She’s coming to you. I’ve done what I promised to do.
Yasmin
Lower Juba, Somalia
Early May, 2012
The vultures started to follow her after the third day. They flew high in the sky, making lazy circles in the air and occasionally descending to take a closer look. To a superstitious person, they might have been troubling, but Yasmin didn’t believe in portents. The birds were just curious. She must have been a strange sight to them—a solitary figure robed in black trekking across the expanse, sometimes at night when the land was flat and denuded of foliage, sometimes during the day when she had to traverse a patch of forest. In a way, she welcomed the birds’ company. It meant she wasn’t alone.
She tried hard to walk a straight path just south of west, but there were times she had to detour to avoid attracting attention. Of the many dangers in the wilderness, it was the people that scared her most. Every time she came across a road, she hid behind a tree and watched it for half an hour before crossing it. Whenever she saw signs of human activity—ashes from a fire, recently chewed grass in a meadow, fresh hoof prints in the dirt—she concealed herself in the bush and listened carefully, waiting to see if anyone was nearby. The nomads were less of a concern. Most were kind, and the few that weren’t she could outrun because they wouldn’t leave their herds. The bandits, however, terrified her, as did the village people, for they were under the sway of the Shabaab.
During the day, she maintained a steady pace, brisk enough to cover ground but not enough to enervate her. The weather made no difference to her progress. She walked whether the sky was bright or wet with rain. But whenever a shower came, she took time to refresh her water supply, catching the raindrops in her
hijab
and funneling them into her jug. At night, she adopted a slower gait, walking carefully across the uneven terrain to minimize the risk of injury.
Every so often, she stopped to rest, curling up beneath a shade tree in the daytime or on a spot of open ground at night. It took her body a few days to adjust to her new sleep schedule, but after that she didn’t notice the difference. She rationed her meals, eating a handful of dates and nuts in the morning and two strips of dried meat in the evening. She knew she was burning far more calories than she was taking in, but she didn’t have to do it forever. Her mother was out there waiting for her.
As she walked, she allowed her mind to drift and spoke her thoughts out loud. She had never talked to herself, but she found the exercise cathartic, an antidote to the loneliness of the journey. When she grew tired of reminiscing and reflecting, she imagined herself conversing with her family. She talked to her father about religion and duty, to her mother about poetry and love, to Ismail about science and music, and to Yusuf about the birds, bugs, and lizards she had seen.
On the sixth day, in a land of forest and low hills, she heard the sound of engines. She crouched down behind a
galool
tree and listened. As the seconds passed, the noise increased until the earth began to vibrate. She looked around, transfixed by dread. She had to be near a road, but the forest was too dense for her to make it out. She pulled her sack and jug closer, her nerves as taut as razor wire.
Then she saw it—a caravan of technicals about fifty meters away. The trucks were crammed with soldiers in green tunics brandishing AK-47s. Most had their heads uncovered, but a few were wearing black headscarves—the signature of the Shabaab. Two thoughts struck her at the same time:
This must be the road to Afmadow
. And:
They’re just like the ones that came for Aabbe in the schoolyard.
Suddenly, the trucks braked to a stop. Yasmin watched in horror as the soldiers jumped out, slung their rifles over their shoulders, and spread out into the trees, chatting amiably.
Of all the places to take a rest stop
, she thought, tightening herself into a ball. The shade around her was deep, thanks to the canopy of the tree and the halo of sun-drenched dirt around it, but she felt hopelessly exposed.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to see how close they were. She heard their footsteps on the earth, the bark of their male banter, the rustle of their belts when they unhooked them, and the splatter of their urine as they relieved themselves.
Allah, make me invisible
, she prayed.
Please don’t let them see me
.
For a while they stood around making jokes and denouncing the apostates in the government and the infidels in the African Union. Then she heard a shout, and they began to move again, returning to their vehicles. She sat motionless until the trucks departed, waiting for the sounds of the forest—the birdsong and the quiet breeze—to swallow the last detestable remnants of the engines.
When she was alone again, she opened her sack and ate a few nuts and a date. Then she examined her feet for cuts. Her once smooth skin was a patchwork of blisters, but they weren’t an immediate concern. Only open wounds could invite an infection. Satisfied, she took a swig of water and stood up, ignoring the persistent ache in her joints and muscles. She had walked a great distance, but she was only halfway there. She heard Ismail’s voice in her head:
Go now. There’s no time to waste.
“I’m going, Madaxa,” she said quietly, touching the bark of the
galool
tree in gratitude. “I don’t know where you are or what you have done, but I trust you.”
Step by step, Yasmin turned the minutes into miles, boosting her pace as much as her weary body could sustain. It was fear as much as determination that drove her forward. Each day that passed increased her chances of being seen. In time, the trees thinned out and the hills flattened into a grassy plain, allowing her to walk in the moonlight as well as the day. Mornings were usually clear, but every afternoon clouds gathered overhead and poured out the blessing of fresh water. Occasionally, she came across a watering hole and gave it a wide berth. Twice, she heard the gong of a camel bell, but she didn’t see the animals or their herdsmen.