Free Links by Nuruddin Farah

Jeebleh said.
    â€œHow long have you been away?” the manager asked.
    â€œFar too many years.”
    The manager looked away, stared down at his hands, and said nothing.
    Peace was a luxury expressed in an evening’s beauty, Jeebleh thought, in the calm into which a cricket chirps, into which the owl hoots.
    â€œHas there been much fighting lately?” he asked.
    â€œEvery now and then,” Ali said. “When there is fighting, our evenings become very ugly and we hear nothing, not even the heart of our fear.”
    â€œAnd the point to the fighting?”
    â€œI don’t see any point to much of it.”
    â€œBut the entire nation is held for ransom,” Jeebleh said, mostly to himself and the quiet night.
    Then he heard a scuttle coming from behind them: two geckos bickering over supremacy or rats, he couldn’t tell. He looked at the wall behind him, at the space ahead of him. Alas, he couldn’t make out who or what had made the sound, no matter how hard he tried. To a frightened man, he thought, everything appears strange, and every noise poses some threat.
    The youth arrived, carrying two aluminum plates, one on top of the other, together containing a runny meal. Jeebleh had no idea why the youth had brought him a steak, or why it was drowned in the sauce it had been cooked in. He hoped it was freshly cooked, not warmed up several times over. The fried potatoes were soggy and inedible, and the steak tougher than the hoof of the cow slaughtered to produce it. The manager sat forward, and made as though he might launch into a lengthy explanation. Jeebleh waited, his fork raised, mouth in a grimace. He took a bite of a sodden potato, then a tougherthan-thou bite of steak. It was possible that his grim countenance dampened the manager’s intentions.
    â€œDo you know the driver with whom I came from the airport?” Jeebleh asked.
    â€œHe was no driver in the ordinary sense of the term,” said the manager.
    â€œWhat’re you saying?”
    â€œDon’t be fooled.”
    Jeebleh was thoroughly confused. He took a mouthful of potatoes and helped himself to a generous cut of rubbery steak, which he eventually swallowed.
    â€œWhat is he, then, if he’s not a driver?”
    â€œHe was once a top civilian aide to the Dictator,” the manager said. “Now he is second man to an armed militia that enjoys the backing of Ethiopia. You want my advice: Don’t be deceived!”
    Jeebleh wasn’t sure how to react to the information. He stared at Ali in the hope that he might continue with this line of advice. No one likes to be taken for an easy ride. Was he being fed falsehoods? A driver who was not a driver! Once a diplomat in the Somali chancellery in Rome; then a top aide to the Dictator; now a driver. Where was the truth in all this? Then there was Af-Laawe, otherwise known as Marabou, who presented himself as a friend of Bile’s but at the same time badmouthed him. Someone had sent him to the airport to meet his flight, but Jeebleh was damned if he knew who.
    â€œHow did you come to meet your ‘driver’?” Ali asked.
    â€œAf-Laawe arranged a lift for me with him.”
    â€œA night has two faces,” the manager commented.
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œSimply that a night has a face that’s visible in the light,” the manager said, “and a face that’s ensconced in the mystery of the unexplored.”
    Jeebleh could see that the manager was enjoying himself, probably repeating something he had rehearsed previously in front of other clients like him. In repose, the manager’s taut face put him in mind of a tree cut before its time. Although he couldn’t wipe the agitation off his own face, Jeebleh remained silent; he would have to find out if there was a profitable purpose to the lies.
    The manager sat in an unkempt huddle, his arms folded across his heaving chest. “Don’t be