Open Writing

Chapter 15
‘You Shall not Covet ....’

A mouse that goes hungry in
a groundnut store
has only itself to blame.
(Bas-Congo proverb)

The fact that I can recount this story is only a matter of luck
and the coincidence of Nimrod’s presence on the Hobyo quayside
when I arrived as a captive of al-Rashid.

I possess few reserves of cunning, or the sort of raw, elementary
instincts which one might normally associate with someone who
successfully stays on the run. I readily acknowledge that a sharpened
sense of savoir faire, of plain judiciousness, would not have gone
amiss at the time I found myself in trouble with the Somali regime.

On the night Nimrod and his friends rescued us I could scarcely
believe it when eventually they told us we were heading for the
dragon’s den – Mogadishu itself. My status was very clearly that of a
fugitive. The capital would be very different from remote Hobyo. I
believed it would still be swarming with army and police personnel.

As we drifted south on the Indian Ocean currents, Nimrod tried to
assure me that even if it was, the authorities would have forgotten all
about me by then. They would have much else on their mind – rebellion!

‘But why even take the risk of going there?’

‘We have a little business to conduct, that is all. While we are
there, we can make some enquiries about your parents, eh?’

I wanted that, of course. In spite of all that had happened to me
during those dreadful months, I had never stopped thinking about
them. I ached for good news. And what about Uncle Jama? I now
imagined he might have been forced to flee like us, in spite of his
more tenuous blood associations with Mursal?

We sailed into Mogadishu harbour in the late morning sunshine. I
alone retained a sense of nervousness but accepted that slipping in
at night might have aroused unwelcome attention, if spotted. The
tactic paid off. Our arrival caused not the slightest interest from
those milling around the port. We were just another dhow in the milieu
of daily comings and goings. There wasn’t a soldier in sight, nor
any security.

Nimrod gave his crew an instruction to unload the heavy crates
which had been taken on board in Hobyo. His right hand man, Joseph
Lekuton, was sent to find the buyer. Ayanna and the two girls
wanted to leave our company at this point but Nimrod knew their
predicament and cautioned them to stay on board for one more
hour. He did not say what was on his mind.

‘Meanwhile Amina, let’s go ashore and make some enquiries
about your parents. Don’t worry. We can be discreet. Where would
be a good place to start?’

I supposed there could be no danger in walking the short distance
to my father’s house. Ayanna’s lent me her head scarf which I
slipped over my hair in the traditional style. It would help me avoid
recognition, I thought. It took less than fifteen minutes to reach
home. When we got there and rapped on the door, I could hear muffled
voices within. My spirits soared immediately for it seemed clear
that Papa and mother must have been released. I smiled my relief at
Nimrod.

Footsteps approached along our tiled hallway inside and I prepared
myself to give Papa the biggest hug of his life. The heavy door
opened. Standing at the threshold was Uncle Jama. Without thinking
and before he could speak I greeted him a little breathlessly with a
kiss on each cheek. There was so much to talk about. But I detected
a stiffness in his demeanour. I stepped back and looked at him. Understandably
there was shock and surprise in his eyes. More than
that, there appeared to be fear and suspicion as well.

‘What are you doing here, Amina?’

‘How do you mean Uncle? I have come home. To see my family.
And you as well.’

‘It is not safe. Who is this foreigner?’ he asked, pointing a finger
unashamedly towards my friend.

‘I am Nimrod Changeywo,’ he announced, almost royally. ‘I come
from Oldoinyo le Engai.30’

Instead of the warm homecoming I expected, my uncle ignored
Nimrod and spat out all sorts of questions with the rapidity of a
machine gun. Where had I been hiding; why was I in the company of
a lunatic wearing a long gabardine raincoat during the heat of the
day; where was the Mercedes; what was wrong with my tooth?

He
bore almost a contemptuous look when he told me I looked and
smelled as if I hadn’t bathed for weeks.

‘Well,’ I replied indignantly, ‘I have been rather ill-disposed. Perhaps
I will take a bath now. Once I have paid due respect to my parents.’

Only when he barred my entrance did the penny drop that they
were not there. I began to fight with him on the doorstep.

‘Let me in,’ I screamed at him. Passers by stopped and stared at
the commotion. Finally I pushed past and invited Nimrod to follow
me inside. Uncle Jama it seemed, was entertaining in our house! Several
guests were about to sit down to lunch, and had paused only because
they heard what was going on outside. My uncle’s servants
were also in evidence.

‘Who are all these people?’ I demanded. ‘What are they doing in
my house, Uncle? In fact, what are you doing in it.’

‘I have moved here.’

‘I can see that. Why?’ I could feel my voice rising to an almost
hysterical pitch.

‘Calm down, Amina. Better that a member of the family stay and
protect the house.’

‘From what, Uncle? It is you who appears to have taken it from
under our noses.’

Uncle Jama’s guests were beginning to show signs of embarrassment
and had moved out to the inner courtyard while he and I continued
our discourse. Nimrod stood at my side, supportively.

‘You had better sit down Amina. What I have to tell you is very
grave news.’

‘What? Tell me! Is it Papa? Tell me for goodness sake!’ What have
they done with him?’

‘I’m sorry, Amina. After Mursal .....’

He left his words hanging as if he had provided enough by way
of explanation. Uncle Jama wouldn’t look me in the face.

Theatrically,
he steadied himself against the dining table, set with the family’s
best dinner service.

‘When Mursal killed those soldiers the President declared the
three of you co-conspirators. Your Papa and your Mama were tried
and sent to the gallows last week. I have collected their bodies and
paid for their funerals.’

His words were so cold and delivered in heartless fashion. How
could my own uncle tell me this dreadful news so devoid of emotion.

Yet I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t cry or react as you might expect.
That would come later. Somehow my uncle’s words froze my
soul. Perhaps deep within I had already prepared myself to hear the
worst. I looked hard at my father’s brother. Now the questions were
mine. My voice was close to breaking. Each word caught at the back
of my throat as my mind spun with the images of my parents being
hauled off to their untimely death at the end of a rope.

‘That night you called us. How did you know it was Mursal who
had shot the soldiers?’

My uncle looked behind him to make sure none of his guests had
come back into the room. He lowered his voice to a whisper.

‘Because Mursal told me he was going to do it!’ he rasped.

‘What! Why didn’t you try to stop him?’ I was whispering too, but
choking out the words. ‘Why didn’t you tell Papa? We would have
stopped him. This mess, his death, it seems are partly of your making.
Why didn’t you act like a man, uncle. Why?’

I felt tear drops pooling in my eyes but wiped them away, determinedly.

‘Why? I asked again, forcing him to speak.

‘I owed him a lot of money. I borrowed heavily from him and
needed more to keep my boat afloat. He told me if I mentioned his
plan to you or your father, he would demand everything back and
put me out of my house.’

‘That doesn’t sound like my brother at all.’

‘He was serious.’

‘No, there must have been more. You’re hiding something. Even
you wouldn’t have put our family in such danger if there wasn’t some
other motivation. What was it? Tell me, or so help me I will ask my
friend here to slit your throat.’

I had heard so much of the language of ruffians and criminals
over the last months, I realised with a start, that I had begun to think
and even speak like one. Uncle Jama looked shocked that his niece
could utter such words and then turned fearfully towards Nimrod
who had obligingly stepped forward with an intimidating expression
on his face.

‘I loved that boy as if he was my own. He was so hot headed. So
determined. I could not dissuade him. He said if anything went
wrong I would be free of my debt.’

‘Are you saying you allowed greed to overcome your love for
him? And your duty to the rest of the family to protect him against
his own foolishness?’

‘Greed. Ambition. These are normal human frailties, Amina,’ he
replied, head down, apparently now ashamed.

Suddenly there was someone else in the room. Someone whom
my chaotically spinning brain told me I recognised. He was somehow
incongruous in the family home. I hadn’t noticed his presence
when we first entered the house. It was Muse Hassan Ali, my erstwhile
boss at the Ministry of External Affairs. I wondered how
much he had overheard.

‘Well, well, Amina. You have returned to us at last, though not
quite I see, in your normally beautiful condition, or it seems to the
full embrace of your heroic uncle.’

I was emboldened now, hardened by the harshness of my time
away, no longer feeling the need to be subservient to Hassan. I
looked towards Uncle Jama who obviously hoped that I hadn’t
picked up the scrap of information. But he saw in my eyes that it
had registered. He looked away.

‘Heroic? What do you mean?’ I asked, my eyes flashing between
the two men.

‘Your uncle is too modest, my dear. Has he not told you how he
foiled your brother’s plot to murder half a battalion? How he directed
our dutiful Red Berets to the Olympic Hotel in order to put
an end to it? Our President looks upon Jama highly. Unlike the rest
of your stinking Isaaq clan, he is loyal; a man worthy of our trust.
Worthy indeed of reward.’

As Hassan uttered those last words, he spread his hands in a gesture
which meant ‘all this,’ that is to say, my father’s house. Now my
uncle’s treachery was laid bare. He had betrayed rather than worked
to dissuade Mursal, cancelled his personal debts to my brother, and
plotted to oust us from a home which obviously he had long coveted.

‘You must go now. Leave everything.’ Those were the words he had
used urging our family to retreat from this home that we loved so
much. Hassan spoke again:

‘Since you were such a good girl, Amina, while in my employ, I
am going to give you and this strange looking tribesman, a chance to
leave us unhindered. I have already rung the police. They are, almost
by tradition, as slow as snails. But they will be here before long. Make
haste.’

‘We are leaving. I hope it gives you a perverted pleasure Minister (I
sneered) to persecute innocent people. Though perhaps I shouldn’t
have expected more from a dolt who could not write his own
speeches.’

‘As for you,’ I said, turning to my uncle, ‘things have a habit of
turning out as you least expect them.’