Let's Go Swimming on Doomsday, page 10
Day four since Sam picked me up from the police station and guess what? I’m still homeless. Shocking, right?
Sam says it’s not because people don’t want me, it’s just that they’re scared. It’s a weird time right now in Sangui City. I know what she means. People are jumpy about terrorists after Al Shabaab hit that resort up the coast near the Somali border a few weeks ago. Three Kenyans and a tourist died. A Somali kid with no history and no family and exactly the right age to be trouble? Who might have seen and done things you wouldn’t want to expose your family to? People think teenagers are trouble regardless, just like Mama Lisa said. You throw terrorism into the mix? I wouldn’t want to take me in either.
Nights at Sam’s are quiet. It’s actually pretty nice. I do my homework. She does the work she brings home. We eat takeout in front of the TV.
When they flash pictures of Al Shabaab on the seven o’clock news before Survivor, my heart stops for a second. But you can’t tell who anyone is—everyone’s face is covered with keffiyehs, and anyway the footage looks old. The news anchor says that the number of Al Shabaab recruits is up, that there may be close to a thousand members now in Somalia and northern Kenya.
“Three thousand,” I correct.
Dammit, Abdi. Keep your mouth shut.
Sam looks up. “You think?”
We’re on separate ends of the couch, and she’s typing on her laptop while I stare at my yet-to-be-started algebra homework. She’s changed out of her work clothes and is wearing her at-home uniform: an old blue T-shirt with the UN logo on it and men’s trousers. Her feet are bare, and her hair hangs down around her shoulders like fraying ribbons. It’s so different from how my mother would dress to feel comfortable, and for the first couple of days Sam’s bare feet and loose hair made me sort of uncomfortable, but it got normal fast. We’ve settled into a routine of sitting here on the couch at the end of the day, feeling the breeze grow cooler as it comes in through the open balcony doors, listening to nightjars call and geckos bark, bathed in the comforting light of the television.
“That’s what I heard.” I lean over my book, studying question number one hard enough to burn a hole in the paper.
“Did you ever run into them in Mogadishu?”
“Um, no. They were around, but I stayed inside most of the time.”
She seems like she wants to ask more questions, so I say, “Do you know how to solve linear equations?” and she says, “Sure, let’s see,” and turns off the TV even though Survivor is just about to start, which is kind of a bummer because I wanted to see if Tammy, the evil white girl with dreadlocks, or Marcus, the guy who can actually build a fire, is going to get voted off at the tribal council. But no Survivor is better than being asked more questions about Al Shabaab, so I let her explain how to solve for x.
“You’re a better teacher than Mrs. Bota,” I say, after she lays it all out in really simple terms. “I didn’t understand at all this morning in class.”
“Thanks. Try solving the next one.”
“Were you good at math in school?” I start reassembling the equation like she showed me. I like how she explained it; it’s all about balance.
“Uh, yeah,” she says. “I was pretty good, but I wasn’t at a school.”
I look up.
“My mom taught me algebra,” she explains. “I was homeschooled. In the United States, parents can keep their kids at home and teach them if they want.”
“Why? Did your school close or something?” I ask, thinking of those long months when Hooyo would teach us at home while gun battles raged in the streets.
She picks at a spot on the sofa cushion. “We never went to public school. My parents wanted to supervise what we learned.” She pauses, like she’s considering something, then adds, “And to give us more religious instruction.”
“Like, Christianity? The Bible and stuff?”
Sam shifts. Her eyes dart to the calendar with the puppies on the wall. “Yeah, Bible study, and listening to recorded sermons from my parents’ church.”
“Oh. That part sounds kind of like duqsi.”
“What’s duqsi?”
“Quranic class,” I say. “I mean, all the kids in my neighborhood went to learn the Quran, but some of the kids in my neighborhood only went to duqsi—if their parents were really religious, or they couldn’t afford school fees or something. Are your parents really religious?”
“Yeah . . . My mom is.”
I start to ask about her dad, but then I see the look on her face. She isn’t sad, exactly; it’s like she’s got the same numb feeling I get sometimes. Like she could just keep picking that spot on the couch forever. Like maybe that’s what she would be doing if I weren’t sitting here watching her.
She clears her throat and nods at the question in my textbook. “Do you see how to solve it?”
I look back down. “Yeah, you subtract three from this side first, right?”
“Mmm-hmm. And then?”
When I’m finished solving the problem, she says, “Keep going. I’ll check your answers with you.”
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear absently, then gets up and goes to the kitchen. I roll my pencil between my three fingers, trying to figure out how to hold it in a way that doesn’t make my hand cramp. The stumps wave like little blind things, trying to help. Stupid fingers. They don’t seem to understand they’re not there anymore.
From the kitchen Sam says, “Speaking of family, remember what I was saying about tracing yours? I tried today at work through the Red Cross registry.”
I freeze. “You did?”
She peeks around the corner. “Nothing came up,” she says, her eyes soft. “I’m sorry.”
I look down at my homework, feeling both relieved and crushingly disappointed. Nothing. Of course she didn’t. You gave her fake names, dummy. What did you expect? It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but now I’m not so sure. What would she find with their real names?
“Sometimes it just takes a while,” Sam goes on. “I’ll keep checking. Hey, how about some ice cream?”
“Yes, please,” I say, after a second. Then, “Thank you. For trying.”
I put my pencil down, totally unable to care what x equals. I turn the TV back on. Sam comes to the kitchen doorway, looks over like she wants to maybe say something about finishing my homework. But then she doesn’t. Instead she hands me a bowl and sits down. We watch Survivor and eat ice cream.
NINETEEN
FIVE YEARS AGO
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA
The day before Aabo left for Saudi, he took Dahir and me out in his boat. He was selling it that evening, and he wanted to sail one last time. We set off from the beach taking all the normal fishing nets and gear, but when we were far enough out, Dad didn’t cast them. He didn’t use the motor that day, just the sail, and when we were out past the breakers, he let the sheet luff. We sat looking back at the buildings that rose from the white sand. From there, Al Uruba Hotel was as pretty as a wedding cake sitting on the point. The cafes and restaurants were too far away to see the cracks and broken plaster. It looked like what it had been: the White Pearl.
“Why can’t you stay, Aabo?” I’d asked. “I don’t have to go to school. I’ll help you fish.”
I was eleven then, Dahir fourteen. He punched me. “Don’t,” he warned. I must have asked that question a thousand times over the past week, enough so that the night before, I’d overheard my parents whispering that maybe Aabo should have just slipped away in the night without goodbyes. Maybe it would have been easier.
“It’s okay,” my father had told Dahir, and reached out to rub my hair with his callused hand. “And of course you have to go to school. Your mother would kill me.” His eyes crinkled and he sighed. “You know how much I wish I could stay, boys.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Dahir was bent over a net, knotting it back together where it had frayed apart. “Because there are no more fish,” he said, plucking viciously at a thread.
I looked to Aabo. How could there be no more fish? He came home with fish every day.
He frowned, but after a moment nodded in agreement. “Not enough,” he said. “Not enough to send you kids to school so you won’t be out here like me when you’re my age.”
“But why are there no more fish?”
“Because the damn Chinese have stolen them all,” Dahir said, scowling.
“Son.”
“Sorry, Aabo, but it’s true! That’s what everyone says. The Chinese, the Europeans, all of them.”
“Really, Aabo?” I asked. “That’s not fair.”
A little smile tickled Aabo’s lips. “No, it’s not.” He looked from us out to the sea, like he could read answers in the rippling waves. “Dahir’s right. It used to be that there were so many fish that they’d be bumping shoulders just to swim.” He mimed a fish, blowing his lips out big and knocking into me to get a laugh. “They’d jump out of the water and into your hands, saying, ‘Just take me already, I can’t stand how crowded it is down there!’”
I giggled, but Dahir said, “And now you barely catch enough for us to eat.”
I looked from my father’s rough hands to the ragged hems of his trousers. He was sea worn but strong from years of hauling nets. He’d never wanted to be a fisherman like his father. He’d gone to university and had a degree in history. But by the time he’d graduated, there were no jobs for history majors, and he had a new family to provide for.
“We should blow them all out of the water,” Dahir said. “That would be fair.” In a barely audible mutter he added, “Then you wouldn’t have to go.”
Aabo’s smile slipped away. He turned from the shore to look at each of us in turn. Dahir kept his eyes stubbornly fixed on his net, even though now he was just picking at the threads, ripping them, making things worse. Maybe he realized that it didn’t matter what shape the nets were in anymore. Aabo reached out and stilled his hand.
“I want you boys to listen to me, okay?”
Dahir’s mouth was a hard twist. He didn’t look up.
“One day all of this will be different, Inshallah,” he said. “Things will get better for the city and for us. I have to go tomorrow, but I won’t be gone forever. A year, eighteen months at the most.”
Our father put his hands on both of our shoulders and pulled us toward him, so that all of our foreheads bumped as the boat bobbed in the waves. It hurt a little, but Aabo didn’t let us go. “While I’m gone, you have to be brave, okay? And strong, and smart. Especially smart. Help your mother. Protect the little ones. And stay away from the men with guns, hear me? Soldiers, warlords, pirates, all of them. It might sound like a good idea right now to blow them all out of the water, but that way of thinking is what’s had us all fighting each other for thirty years. Don’t get caught in that trap.”
Dahir’s mouth pinched, and Aabo squeezed his shoulder. “Promise me?”
“Promise,” I said quickly.
Dahir took a little longer to reply, but when he did, I could tell that unlike me, he’d actually thought about it. “I promise,” he told our father.
Aabo smiled. “You’re good boys. I’m proud of you.”
He turned back to look at the shoreline again. We looked at it too, and pretended we never saw him swipe water from his eyes.
TWENTY
THEN: AUGUST
THE FORT, SOMALIA
No one’s got a watch. Instead everything’s organized around prayers.
I try to be a good Muslim, pray five times a day and all that, but if I’m being honest, I probably average more like two or three. And I’ve never been one to pray Fajr. Never been one for anything that happens before dawn, but rolling over, thinking about praying, and then deciding to go back to sleep and make up for it later at Dhur just doesn’t fly here.
The days go like this:
Still Dark: Get shoved awake to pray Fajr.
Try to get my head right for Fajr. Intentions are important, our unit commander, Yusuf, reminds us.
Fall asleep standing up in Fajr.
Get slapped on the back of the head by Commander Yusuf for falling asleep during Fajr.
Dawn: Push-ups and a 5k bush run, presided over by Commander Yusuf, who is going to give himself hemorrhoids from screaming at us so much. Highlights of the run: thorny bushes, scorpions, snakes, mongoose and territorial, grumpy-as-hell, cute-sounding-but-seriously-misnamed honey badgers.
Sunup: Porridge and chai for breakfast. Nurse scorpion stings and blisters.
Too Soon: “Tactical”—jumping in and out of holes, climbing over piles of rocks, rolling on the ground, crawling between strings of razor wire. (Try not to be like that kid Jalil, who got it in the face from a carpet viper and died within hours when all his insides turned to mush.)
Sun-Boil, or, a Couple of Hours after Too Soon: Religious studies. (DVDs played on a laptop powered by a generator—mostly in Arabic, so no one really gets it, but is anyone going to admit it? Please. We’re just glad to be sitting down in the shade.)
Midday: Better intentions to pray properly. Pray Dhur. (Hope praying Dhur covers the sound of stomach growling.)
Second-Best Time of Day: Lunch. Canjeero and lentils or mystery meat stew. Pasta if we’re lucky.
Sweaty-Balls O’Clock: Passing out for an hour after lunch because even Commander Yusuf can’t move in this heat.
Too Soon Part Two: Commander Yusuf shouting us awake. Marching and jumping jacks, more scrambling around in the dirt. Learning fast that if you don’t get up quick enough, you get latrine duty.
Best Time of Day: Ocean time. Guys who can’t swim get lessons from a kid named Liban. The rest of us swim to the point and back. Turns out I’m one of the best swimmers. Way better than Liban. After a couple of days I start teaching lessons to my unit and the 102s.
Afternoon: Pray Asr.
Post-Asr: Weapons training: AK-47s, RPGs, MP5s (mostly without ammo since they can’t spare the expense, so how we’re supposed to know if we can actually hit anything is beyond me). Sometimes driving instruction, which is pretty cool.
Pre-Maghrib: Confession time. Before we pray, we’re supposed to come up with three sins we committed that day. There’s plenty to choose from: thinking impure thoughts, losing focus during prayers, slacking during exercises, and so on. One by one we confess to Commander Yusuf, promising ourselves that tomorrow we won’t have to include “impure thoughts” again, like we have every day this week, which all of us know means jerking off in the latrine or behind D-block. He tells us to do better, and to pray for strength at Maghrib. Note: I think I’m getting an ulcer from holding in my real sins: lying, betrayal, doubt.
Pray Maghrib: Pray to do better. Pray for strength.
Dinner
Pray Isha
Sleep
Wake Up
Pray Fajr
Repeat . . .
TWENTY-ONE
NOW: NOVEMBER 11
SANGUI CITY, KENYA
“Um, no. It is not possible to learn how to swim without getting wet.”
Alice folds her muscular arms over her chest and gives me a look like I’m just being difficult.
I’m standing knee-deep in gentle turquoise waves, waiting for Muna and Alice to join me. Neither seems ready to accept the fact that swimming involves, you know, water.
“Are you sure there are no sharks?” Muna asks, not for the first time.
She’s fully dressed, like she’s ready to go to school. Alice is wearing a skirt and a T-shirt over her swimsuit. When we got to the beach and I took off my shirt and they took off nothing, it took me a second to get it that they were going to swim in all their clothes. It’s weird, but I’ve never really thought about how girls—even Alice, who’s not Muslim—have all these modesty rules that mean they can’t wear whatever they want. It’s actually kind of a problem. And come on, I’m not worried about it because I’m desperate to see them half naked. It’s because clothes get in the way. They’re heavy when they’re wet and can tangle and drag you down. Of course, it doesn’t look like either girl is going to be getting in deep enough for that to even remotely matter.
“Well, there are some sharks, but they’re out deep.”
Alice backs up two paces.
“Sharks are more scared of you than you are of them,” I say, echoing what my father told me when he taught me how to swim when I was a kid. “And most of them are tiny.”
“How do you know? You’ve never swum here!” Alice protests.
“It’s the same ocean,” I say, waving up the coast. “Somalia’s just right there. I swam all the time! How different can it be?”
I decide not to mention that Mogadishu is notorious for its shark population because there used to be a camel slaughterhouse up the coast. Some trivia is best saved for dry land.
“Come on, it’s nice!” I say, splashing warm water at them.
“Don’t!” Muna squeals, which actually makes Alice come closer, just to scowl and kick water back at me.
“That’s it!” I say, grinning at Alice.
Behind Muna and Alice, Maisha girls are sitting on kangas they’ve spread out on the sand. The bright colors of the cloth look like slices of rainbow. The afternoon sun is roasting. A few girls are in the water too, but most just watch us, or lean their heads together to gossip. Mama Lisa has volunteered to accompany the girls to the beach today, and I’m almost sure it’s because she knew I was coming. She sits talking with another teacher, relaxed but keeping a eye on me. Yesterday, when I asked her if I could give Muna and Alice swim lessons, she acted all suspicious, like I was going to kidnap one of her girls. “You know you need to keep a healthy distance, right, Abdi?” she said. “You’ll be leaving here soon, don’t forget.”
