cross-legged on the carpet. He recognised him as Yusuf Mohamud al-Afghani, a forward commander ofal-Qaeda in Somalia: thickset for a Somali, but with the usual Somali vanity, the hair crimped and made to shine like a songbird, like a jazz singer, the beard short and smoothed with ointments and dyed with henna, so that its underside was ginger.
Hair was the quality of the Pakistanis sat on either side of Yusuf: it curled and spilled astrakhan-like from their faces and shoulders and down their forearms and wrists and knuckles and piled in a greasy sheen under their headscarves.
He counted a dozen others in the room, most were Somali boys with very white teeth. Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers were stacked against one wall, sacks of frankincense piled high against another. Some of the men sat on crates of ammunition. A cheap Chinese clock with a picture of the Grand Mosque in Mecca on its dial hung over the door.
On the wall behind Yusuf was a framed page of the Koran, a newspaper cutting of Osama bin Laden before his submergence, and a poster of the French footballer Thierry Henry playing for Arsenal. There were rat droppings. There was litter. A teakettle simmered on a low paraffin flame in the centre. Beside it were bowls, a pot of steaming rice, sacks of chickpeas, sweets, and sultanas brought by boat from Karachi. It was a badger sett: close, mephitic and possessing the threat of danger, Netherlandish brushstrokes painting the faces with depths and shadows.
The ardent young Saudi who had stood over him on the beach and fired his gun into the air and covered him in his headscarf breathed in close and fed him sultanas one at a time: Saif was there. Saif the gap-toothed, who was also known as Haidar, the lion, because he was a suicide bomber who had done all that was asked of him: whose vest had not exploded, and so was between the living and the dead, invincible, a martyr who went among them still.
Saif’s smile was misleading; he was calibrated, in this other respect a detonation waiting to happen, prone to violent moodswings and other reversals. He had memorised scenes from Pink Panther films, poured sweet tea for the poor, slit the throat of a student in Jeddah, and without regret threw a grenade into a video shack in Mogadishu, killing those inside for the crime of watching a Bollywood film.
Yusuf picked up mobiles at random and texted orders to the battle lines. When he finished he scooped rice into his mouth with his fingers and sipped tea. He ate in silence. He stood up and stepped over the legs of his men with care and courtesy. He paused over James, read aloud the words on the Englishman’s T-shirt, and continued out into the starry night.
A wind blew in off the sea. The courtyard of the mosque was sifted with sand. Yusuf washed his hands and feet and entered the mosque. He carried a lamp into the dark and knelt behind a pillar in the back and prayed. The jihad had been hard. His men had fought Ethiopian soldiers, African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi, and the Somali Transitional Government troops and its allied militias. At one time in Mogadishu the Ethiopians fired in phosphorous shells with a petroleum-jelly-like napalm which ignited and burned through shacks and stuck to the flesh of his men and smouldered through them. There was another offensive where they had to scrape together the pieces of the boys who had been directly hit by mortars and gather them for a funeral. He had resorted to the methods of Iraq, hiding among the poor, using them as decoys, placing improvised explosives in the marketplaces, and training suicide brigades for attacks on Crusader targets.
On the day they made love for the first time, she spoke to him about her work. They were sitting by the table in her room. Her papers andphotocopies were stacked at one end. The filing cards were loosely arranged at the other. In the centre of the table was a glass ashtray. She pulled from among her papers an aerial photograph
Hair was the quality of the Pakistanis sat on either side of Yusuf: it curled and spilled astrakhan-like from their faces and shoulders and down their forearms and wrists and knuckles and piled in a greasy sheen under their headscarves.
He counted a dozen others in the room, most were Somali boys with very white teeth. Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers were stacked against one wall, sacks of frankincense piled high against another. Some of the men sat on crates of ammunition. A cheap Chinese clock with a picture of the Grand Mosque in Mecca on its dial hung over the door.
On the wall behind Yusuf was a framed page of the Koran, a newspaper cutting of Osama bin Laden before his submergence, and a poster of the French footballer Thierry Henry playing for Arsenal. There were rat droppings. There was litter. A teakettle simmered on a low paraffin flame in the centre. Beside it were bowls, a pot of steaming rice, sacks of chickpeas, sweets, and sultanas brought by boat from Karachi. It was a badger sett: close, mephitic and possessing the threat of danger, Netherlandish brushstrokes painting the faces with depths and shadows.
The ardent young Saudi who had stood over him on the beach and fired his gun into the air and covered him in his headscarf breathed in close and fed him sultanas one at a time: Saif was there. Saif the gap-toothed, who was also known as Haidar, the lion, because he was a suicide bomber who had done all that was asked of him: whose vest had not exploded, and so was between the living and the dead, invincible, a martyr who went among them still.
Saif’s smile was misleading; he was calibrated, in this other respect a detonation waiting to happen, prone to violent moodswings and other reversals. He had memorised scenes from Pink Panther films, poured sweet tea for the poor, slit the throat of a student in Jeddah, and without regret threw a grenade into a video shack in Mogadishu, killing those inside for the crime of watching a Bollywood film.
Yusuf picked up mobiles at random and texted orders to the battle lines. When he finished he scooped rice into his mouth with his fingers and sipped tea. He ate in silence. He stood up and stepped over the legs of his men with care and courtesy. He paused over James, read aloud the words on the Englishman’s T-shirt, and continued out into the starry night.
A wind blew in off the sea. The courtyard of the mosque was sifted with sand. Yusuf washed his hands and feet and entered the mosque. He carried a lamp into the dark and knelt behind a pillar in the back and prayed. The jihad had been hard. His men had fought Ethiopian soldiers, African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi, and the Somali Transitional Government troops and its allied militias. At one time in Mogadishu the Ethiopians fired in phosphorous shells with a petroleum-jelly-like napalm which ignited and burned through shacks and stuck to the flesh of his men and smouldered through them. There was another offensive where they had to scrape together the pieces of the boys who had been directly hit by mortars and gather them for a funeral. He had resorted to the methods of Iraq, hiding among the poor, using them as decoys, placing improvised explosives in the marketplaces, and training suicide brigades for attacks on Crusader targets.
On the day they made love for the first time, she spoke to him about her work. They were sitting by the table in her room. Her papers andphotocopies were stacked at one end. The filing cards were loosely arranged at the other. In the centre of the table was a glass ashtray. She pulled from among her papers an aerial photograph
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