Free Links by Nuruddin Farah Page A

deceived!” he repeated.
    Jeebleh pushed away the inedible food, wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, and asked if there was a way to make a telephone call to America. The manager informed him, to his surprise, that this was possible. And when Jeebleh asserted that he hadn’t seen a phone in his room, the manager said, “There’s a one-man telephone company I can send for.”
    â€œA what?”
    â€œA one-man telephone company!”
    Jeebleh remembered that until the late eighties it had been impossible to call Somalia from anywhere because the country boasted the worst telephone network on the entire continent. You just couldn’t get through to anyone living here. So how it was possible in civil war Mogadiscio for a one-man telephone company to allow him speak to his wife?
    â€œIt will cost you four dollars a minute. Shall I send for him?” the manager asked.
    â€œYes, please!”
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    HALF AN HOUR LATER, A MAN CAME TO JEEBLEH’S ROOM WITH A BRIEFCASE full of gadgets, including a telephone linked to a satellite long-distance service. Jeebleh called his wife at work, and gave her a sanitized version of what had happened so far. Lest she beg him to return at once, he omitted any mention of death or tensions. As far as he could remember, this was the first time that he had deliberately kept things from his wife.
    And he realized, when he was once again alone in his room, that he wouldn’t hesitate to lie if he believed that by doing so he might serve a higher purpose: that of justice.

5.
    BILE SAT UP, STARTLED, CALLING OUT JEEBLEH’S NAME, HIS VOICE HOARSE and his thinking addled. He was shaking all over, shivering fitfully one instant, perspiring heavily the next.
    In a dream, a young woman in search of a physician had come for him, to tell him about a neighbor’s horse that had broken loose and, in the process of bolting blindly, trampled her elderly husband underfoot, wounding him badly. Hysterical, the woman had appealed to Bile to help her. And she kept repeating her plea, “Save me from becoming a widow. Have pity on me and my unborn child. You must save him from becoming an orphan.” She repeated the same sentences again and again, until the words merged one into another and he couldn’t separate them.
    Bile sat up in the darkness of his nightmare, disturbed that he was unsure whether he had ever met the young woman, or known of her. In his discomfiture, he couldn’t resolve whether the dream had called on him for a reason as yet unclear, whether it had any bearing on his life or the lives of those who mattered to him.
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    THE NIGHT SOFTENED INTO DAWN, AND STILL RESTLESS, BILE GOT UP TO MAKE a pot of coffee the way he liked it: black, strong, no sugar. In his pajamas and dressing gown, and still a little shaken, he moved around in the apartment in which he had lived alone for a week now, half listening for the kettle to call when the water had boiled. He felt a chill of fluster in his bones, and a deep fear surged in him. Jeebleh, his friend, who was in Mogadiscio now, and Seamus, a close Irish friend, who was away in Europe, were of the view that he was in the habit of going into silent depressions, avoiding confrontations, or putting things off. He had never grieved enough, or been able to work through his rage at Caloosha for all the damage his half brother had done to him. Bile would retort that if he hadn’t acted on the deep-felt hurt, it was because he was a man of peace.
    He returned to the kitchen in jitters, his hands trembling as he picked up the singing kettle. He poured the boiled water into the pot and, missing his target by a few inches, emptied much of the water on the flames, thus extinguishing the fire. He became even more agitated thinking about what Jeebleh might ask when he saw him. He was likely to ask whether Bile had done anything about Caloosha, and if so, precisely what. If Bile’s reply was in the