I wake up in Maine a grown man, but in my nightmares I am still a boy in Mogadishu after the basketball finished. What happened after the basketball is never in the past, it lives again every night in my sleep, and sometimes when I am awake.
Finally one day the fighters arrive, looting the shops and firing the first bullets of the bloody civil war. At night I hear bullets hitting the neem tree and the birds flying off in all directions. The next morning I wake up to see mattresses, beds, food, basketballs, and Dad’s basketball trophies all packed outside. Dad is carrying the most important things in a gunnysack with one hand and a mattress in the other hand. Left behind are the jiimbaar and the wooden shelves that Mom uses to keep Dad’s clothes clean and pressed. Sacks of flour, rice, and corn must be abandoned. Mom carries our clothes, our sister’s formula, milk, and a few cooking utensils, plus Nima on her back, wrapped in a big scarf the African way. She is also pregnant with her fourth child. Hassan and I are trailing behind our parents on a dusty, scorching day with bullets and smoke all over the city.
After we walk just a few yards, I start crying to be carried. Mom ignores me, reciting verses from the Koran, looking on both sides of the streets before we cross. I can hear gun and rocket fire in the distance; what I can see is looting and destruction. As we walk, I see huge padlocks on the gates of houses I know in the neighborhood; people have already fled. The locks mean they are hoping to return; maybe this will all blow over in a few weeks. Everywhere I see moms holding the hands of other kids my age, standing on the side of the road in shock. I hear screams and crying children. The small restaurant where I used to go with Dad, named for its owner, Hashi, is being looted. The food goes quickly; then two thin ragged men try to take the iron gate for their own house. Hashi belongs to the tribe of President Siad Barre, who has been ousted by these rebels, and Mom is worried about his whereabouts. There is a crowd gathered a short distance from the restaurant where a dead body is lying facedown—the first corpse I would see. It turned out to be Hashi’s body. Rebels in civilian dress are laughing and throwing their arms in the air in triumph, smashing the windows of shops with their rifle butts before racing each other to collect the most valuable pickings. Most of them wear a macawis, which is worn mainly in the bush. That’s how we know the rebels are not city people; they have come into town from the outlands and are probably seeing shops and restaurants for the first time, just as my parents had several years before.
When there is nothing left to loot from the shops, I see people being robbed at gunpoint. On every street, buildings are on fire. A rebel in a pickup truck is passing guns to a group of teenagers. One fires off his gun by accident, causing his comrades to scatter into porches and behind cars. They are spilling out of Toyota Land Cruisers with the roofs sawed off. The drivers honk and wave in victory as soldiers in the open cab shake their rifles in the air and dance. Some jump out and run after us, holding a gun in one hand while holding up their loose pants and macawis. Apparently, they have not yet looted belts. All of them are very black-skinned, much darker and thinner than the Mogadishans who have skin more the color of the supermodel Iman, also from Mogadishu. They call themselves nicknames based on their features, like gangsters I would see in Hollywood movies. Names I can hear are Daga Weyne (Long-Eared), Afdheere (Long Mouth), Ileey (One-Eyed), Gacmeey (One-Handed). The pro Siad Barre slogans on the streets are gone. Now the signs call him “Big Mouth” and “The Brutal One.” The word Jaalle has been changed to Faqash, which means “Killer.” The Hawiye militias are killing anyone who says Jaalle. You better say Faqash. Dad and Mom practice the new word and are ready to say it.
“They are giving guns out like sweets!” Dad says. “Who is in charge of these people?”
With the civil war spreading into the city, some people manage to escape by boats, airplanes, ships, and even cars crossing into neighboring countries. Most of these people who escape worked for the government. Some of my dad’s own teammates got helped by their tribal affiliation to get to America, Canada, or the United Kingdom. No one has even contacted my dad. The country is divided by clans and tribes, and people help only people they are related to by those groups. My dad’s Rahanweyn clan are the farmers and nomads who cannot help him escape. So my parents must use their nomad skills to try to save us. What nomads do is walk. We will walk to safety.
And so we embark on a walk that I will never forget. For years we called it the walk of death.
Seven miles of walking and we arrive at the house of our relative Mumin, who is a general in the Somali army. Mumin is my dad’s cousin, he’s the only man in our extended family to be in the army’s highest ranks. He is educated, having studied at Lafoole University in Mogadishu before deciding to join the army. His house is behind a wall with a gate. Mumin appears at the gate not in his usual uniform but in a red T-shirt and black trousers, his hands nervously scratching at his mustache. The blue Somali flag is still flying over his house. “There’s no one who can stop the fighting,” he says. “No one is talking to anyone else, just fighting.” He looks at the flag and shakes his head. He mentions that the government is still holding on to the airport, but President Siad Barre has already fled. The rebels seem unstoppable, and a general would be a certain target. “I must leave with my family because it’s everyone for himself,” he says. “I hope that you will be safe here.” He wipes his fingers on my face and Hassan’s, but our tears run harder.
“We’ll be all right here,” Dad tells Mumin. “We’ll stay the night and move on in the morning.”
So we are to sleep in the home of a general in the defeated army, while rebels shoot their way across the city looking for government officials to slaughter. It does not seem very safe. The rooms of the house are all packed with neighbors and Rahanweyn from all over the city, mostly women and children, so we must sleep outside. We lay our mattresses on the grass in the courtyard while Dad remains near the gate. I can hear the Rahanweyn dialect. People are scared; men like my dad are pacing back and forth thinking of what to do. He puts his hairy hands in his pockets searching for the last remnant of qat leaves to chew. My dad believes his thinking is better while he chews qat. No one is interested in him, no one is paying attention to the popular Nur Dhere, the handsome and famous basketball player. People are too worried for their lives.
It is an uncomfortable night of blasts and mosquito bites. The back side of Mumin’s house borders on the largest Somali hospital, Madinah Hospital. Same name as Mom. That night the militias are busy looting the hospital, grabbing anything valuable to sell. We can hear the looting and shouting; they kick down doors and break glass, even tearing off the roof. We rise early to find bullet holes in the gate of Mumin’s house, and we slip away quietly.
The road south runs along the sea. Out on the waves, white ships like whales move slowly in the distance. Later I find out these ships are evacuating government officials. On the land, cows, donkeys, stray dogs, and chickens move aimlessly through the crowds of people. A thin man is painting the letters USC—United Somali Congress, the main militia group of Aidid—in white on every wall. Someone else draws a rough face with a big mouth and labels it “Siad Barre.”
Dad tells us to go back and stay at Mumin’s and that he will go try to find Siciid, who maybe still has his truck and can take us to Baidoa, 150 miles from Mogadishu. So we go back to Mumin’s house, again dodging bullets. While we were gone, the militias had come after emptying the hospital and looted everything in the house. Even the Somali flag is gone, lying in the dust in the street, torn through with bullet holes.
Three hours later, Siciid’s black truck, stuffed with belongings, kids, and women, appears at the house—Dad sitting on the back side of the truck, the wind blowing his shirt, and so covered with dust I can hardly recognize his face.
We squeeze in, Mom crouching, holding Nima and me, Dad holding Hassan. We are off to Baidoa. Dad turns to Siciid and asks, “Do you have a couple leaves?” He’s all out of qat. Siciid draws out a handful of leaves and hands them to Dad. He shovels them all in his mouth and chews like a goat as we drive on.
In about five hundred yards a group of rebels appears in front of us, ordering the truck to stop. One wavy-haired, thin, and dark man points his gun at Siciid. The gunman can barely talk with his mouth full of qat leaves as well. The cigarette in his hand is burning fast in the wind, the ashes flying into the eyes of Siciid. His accent is from Galgaduud region; he is talking fast and looking sideways with the gun on Siciid’s head. Three others are pulling things out of the back. They take all the mattresses right away. My dad watches them take his basketball medals. My mom’s eyes well with tears when they find her necklace of black wenge beads and other jewelry. The basketballs bounce down the road and end up as target practice for young rebels. Finally one of them picks out the red Somalia national basketball shirt and throws it down with the other possessions. My dad just sits there watching his career destroyed in front of his eyes.
“Who are you people? What is your clan?” asks a gunman.
“We are Rahanweyn,” says Mom. Maybe they will let us go.
“Come out of the truck, all of you!”
Under her shawl Mom is concealing her bag, which contains money and almost everything else my family has left.
“What is under your garment?” he demands.
“Cosmetics,” says Mom.
“Give it to me!” he yells, holding his gun to my head. Mostly I’m scared by how tight the gunman is holding me and how skinny his legs are. And because I’m just a little boy, what also scares me is seeing my mom cry. Never have I seen her cry so hard. He takes the money from her bag, throws it aside, and with a shake of his gun yells, “Be gone!” As a nomad girl, my mom heard stories of the end of the world. “This is what it looks like,” she is thinking. The day the world ends, the sun rises west and sets east. Chaos starts, people kill each other, children get harassed. A scary creature appears. She is thinking the militia leader Aidid must be that creature. But she wonders why the sun is still headed the right way, toward the west.
With nothing left for anyone to steal, we leave Mogadishu on a thin belt of tarmac cutting through a landscape of red sand dotted with thornbushes. The road is crowded, and all of the traffic is in one direction: out of the city. Parked at the side of the road at intervals are more pickup trucks with teenagers dressed in tattered vests sitting in the beds. Many of them have thin cloth scarves wrapped around their heads. They are smoking cigarettes, some with their guns pointing toward the sky, others with them on their laps pointing at the vehicles passing by. Some are in groups celebrating, clapping, cheering, and singing songs. Some of the pickup trucks are already equipped with mounted machine guns on the beds. They are called “technicals” and would become very familiar to me. I watch one truck. The driver must be new behind the wheel because he pushes the gas too hard and everyone in the bed falls backward. They get up laughing, then shove and taunt each other like schoolboys. Sometimes I see them pointing their guns at each other and yelling in strange accents. It’s like a game to them.
These are militias of the Hawiye clan loyal to Aidid. His forces are the ones looting the government buildings in the city and killing anyone they can find who is loyal to the government or a member of the Darod clan. They arrived at Mogadishu only a day earlier to participate in the uprising. My dad is famous in Mogadishu, and someone from the city who watched him playing basketball wouldn’t deal with him like that. Siciid says he recognizes many of the rebels from his truck journeys around Somalia. They are the faces of nomads who used to lead camels, as my parents once did, but not from the peaceful Rahanweyn lands. These militias come from central Somalia, a place where nomads carry guns to guard their camels. Now they are driving technicals in Mogadishu.
“How did they get these trucks?” Mom whispers. “By selling milk from their goats?” I don’t think she is being serious. As we continue, I see more vehicles being stopped by the militias. I see someone on the ground being kicked in the head; then I see a corpse. I start to see piles of corpses. One youth is showing another how to shoot a gun. The novice then turns to face a hostage and casually sprays him with bullets as if he were a signpost. Nearby I see a line of about twenty people standing, awaiting execution. I peep my head out of the truck to watch militiamen pushing more people to the line; then two skinny men shoot them all. Their terrible fate is our good luck: the rebels are too busy shooting the people they have pulled out of other cars to stop my family, and we move on. My mom is murmuring passages from the Koran.
Eventually, we are stopped at another checkpoint manned by about a hundred militiamen, where the air is thick with smoke from tires they are burning at the roadside. A gunman in the road fires across the truck; as Siciid lurches to a stop, they come from all directions, running toward us and climbing onto the back. Nima is crying, Hassan tries to hide behind the jerry can of water, I duck my head, avoiding the guns of rebels jumping into the back of the truck. They drag Dad and Siciid out of the truck and push them facedown in the sand. My dad’s dark sunglasses are beside him; a rebel stoops and picks them up, blows the dust off the lenses, and puts them on his thin face. He shows his militia friends and smiles.
Dad looks toward us, widening his eyes and giving a small nod of his head to tell us to stay calm. The guy who took the sunglasses now sees my dad’s watch and jerks it from his wrist. He runs toward another group of rebels, proudly holding up the glasses as they watch in boastful celebration. A woman who is not armed jumps into the driver’s seat, where another lady and her kids are hiding. “You left a lady and kids here!” she shouts to the thugs; then she searches under the driver’s seat of Siciid’s truck but finds only a flashlight and a flare. Not satisfied, she turns to the mom of the kids and searches her roughly. She removes her scarf and puts her hand under her guntiino, but she can’t find anything. “You just poor people,” she says with a sour face and slips away from the truck, nothing to steal. She is a middle-aged lady, wearing a long, formal dirac dress with a military cap on her head—an odd combination, I am thinking. She disappears into the crowd of militiamen.
One of the younger fighters, who looks about sixteen, holds his gun to Siciid’s head. “Let’s kill them.”
“No,” says an older man. “Our fight is with the Darod clan.”
The fighters turn their backs on us to argue our fate. Then they pull us up from the back of the truck and tell us to sit by the road. They grab Dad and Siciid and start to drag them away. Dad whispers, “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” After twenty minutes under the hot sun, the militiamen tell us to go, but first they empty the truck of the rest of our few possessions.
Dad and Siciid appear from an alley and are kicked roughly toward the truck by rebels. They must have been beaten in the alley. Blood is trickling down Siciid’s face, and Dad is also battered, but they manage to climb back into the truck, Siciid in the driver’s seat, Dad in the back. “Are you aboard?” asks Siciid without looking behind.
“Yes, move on,” says Dad.
Mom is sobbing. “Next time we won’t make it! We will all die! I’m scared for the children, if we don’t make it and they are still alive—they don’t know anything. Where will they go? They’ll die in the desert. Better to die in the city than on this road. Turn around!”
Siciid is unmoved. “The city is burning and there are more guns there than where we are going.”
“We’ll make it to Baidoa if Allah wills,” says Dad, “so stay calm.” Mom keeps reciting the Koran with a loud voice and keeps telling us that with her reciting we will be fine. She is wishing she had never lived in Mogadishu. We should have stayed in the bush. Better to contend with the drought and the wild animals than this. It is torture for her to watch my strong dad begging for his life in front of a guy half his size.
My dad is expecting death anytime. “I’m not afraid of dying,” he tells himself, but he is worried for us and our mom. He too thinks this is the apocalypse.
Miles out of Mogadishu, there are no more roadblocks, just blowing sand, thornbushes, and lines of stones by the roadside. Later we turn off onto a dirt track and reach a bank of greenery—mango trees, banana palms, watermelon, and long grass—as the road reaches a river. A troop of blue monkeys descends from the trees onto the truck, looking for food; they are always stealing food from people. Their silver faces and blank orange eyes terrify me. Of course we have no food, and no one is interested in the monkeys except me. I look at their swollen cheeks and long fangs and realize I am more afraid of monkeys than guns. Every time the monkeys open their jaws wide, I picture myself getting swallowed. I clutch my mom’s clothes tight, but my parents act like the monkeys are not even there.
We catch up with a family from our old neighborhood, a short lady with a round face and her three kids, all of them in tears. Dad peeps his head out of the truck; Siciid slows down and asks what happened. The lady says her husband has been taken at the checkpoint. He was a government soldier, and he was recognized by one of the militiamen. Dad and Siciid try to console her, but it only makes her cry more. She is sitting under a thick, tall acacia tree with storks on their nests on top, brushing her tears with her shawl. I am just watching the monkeys run around.
We reach the edge of the town of Afgooye, its small houses of whitewashed mud bricks with corrugated-iron roofs appearing from beyond the muddy Afgooye River. When my dad played basketball, he traveled this same road at least once every week. He and his teammates would stop by Afgooye to grab some fresh sweet papayas and mangoes. Crowds would build around my dad, curious about his basketball uniform, and he would wave. Today he is struggling to stand on his feet.
Siciid stops the truck along the roadside for us to relieve ourselves. My mom accompanies Hassan and me down near the river. As I pee, I keep looking around for monkeys that might snatch me from the ground and eat me. There is a woman celebrating the fall of the government, dressed in black and with her head covered; she chatters as we pee. The land all around is a farm. The trees are full of ripe mangoes and bananas. On the ground, fat round watermelons shine beneath a tangle of vines and leaves. The war has not yet engulfed Afgooye, but soon these abundant crops will be destroyed. The lady who is celebrating claims this is her land and says we may not eat her crops. I grab Mom, and as she looks down with her worn face, I touch my belly to show her I am hungry. She says she cannot do anything, but she fetches some water from the muddy river. It seems dirty to me, but I am thirsty, so I drink until my belly fills up.
The lady in black says government troops have regrouped in a town fifty miles away and are rumored to be heading toward Afgooye. She is anxiously awaiting USC militias before the government soldiers come. The atmosphere is tense.
The road continues along the side of the river. “Look at the crocodiles! Look, look!” Mom cries. Hassan and I have never seen crocs before.
One of them crawls back into the water, and to my surprise there is a man standing in the water close to it, his macawis tucked into his belt to keep it above the water. “What is he doing there?” I cry. “He’ll be eaten!”
“They won’t eat him. He is a bahaar,” says Mom, “someone who has a special friendship with them. He can ride on their backs if he wants, and they will visit his house by the river; sometimes they will stay at his house all night. But other people are not welcomed by the crocodiles; if anyone else comes close to them, they will be killed and eaten. If he stays among the crocodiles now, he’ll be safe from the rebels.” I wish we could stay with the crocodiles, but it is time to move on.
The dirt track joins the tarmac road again. The scorching sun cools slowly as it slips beneath the dusty horizon. It’s not long before our truck reaches another checkpoint. Burning tires and boulders are in the road to stop the traffic. One of a group of soldiers wearing government military uniforms holds up his hand to stop the car. They still wear the badge of the government’s Supreme Revolutionary Council, with President Siad Barre’s image. They are not rebels! Dad jumps down confidently to meet them. War songs blast out of their cars, with lyrics encouraging the soldiers not to give up but to fight and recapture Mogadishu.
“We are displaced to Baidoa by the rebels,” Dad says. The soldiers wave him back into the truck to continue the journey. On the way we see another truck carrying displaced people, stalled by the side of the road. The passengers wave and beg to board our truck, but Siciid moves on. He can’t take the risk of bringing people who might be from rival tribes and cause trouble at roadblocks.
Another half an hour and we see a military vehicle blocking the road ahead—another checkpoint by soldiers loyal to President Siad Barre, with their flag still flying. They have tanks and heavy trucks with machine guns, also bazookas and ground-to-air missiles. Some shots ring out and we turn to see a group of half a dozen people fall to the ground, their bodies trembling as blood pours onto the sand. “These soldiers are the Marehan,” Siciid murmurs to Mom. She knows what that means: The Marehan are the same tribe of the Darod clan as the president, but they are not regular army like the last soldiers we saw. They are the diehards loyal to their tribe, unlike many soldiers who burned their uniforms and disappeared into the bush when the rebels came. They don’t care about the government, they are just seeking revenge against the tribes who kicked them out of the city. There are so many sides in this war, and I am too young to understand it.
Siciid turns the truck suddenly, but guns are now aimed at us from all directions. A bullet shatters the wing mirror close to me, almost deafening my left ear. Siciid stops the truck. Three soldiers run up; one strikes Siciid’s head with the butt of his gun and drags him onto the ground. All three are hitting Siciid with their rifle butts. Mom pushes us down to keep us safe from the bullets. One man in a military shirt and hat but civilian trousers comes to the window where I am hiding. He looks down and with his dirty hands pulls my head to see me, but I hold hard. “Stupid child!” he says, then walks away.
Dad remains motionless, hidden behind the jerry can. A soldier looks at us. “Who are you?”
“We are a poor family,” Mom pleads. “We are displaced to Baidoa by the fighting.”
“Where is your husband?”
“I have no husband. He disappeared. They have killed many people, and the bodies of the innocents are all along the road.” I look at the soldier’s eyes and wonder why he wants to kill us. What did I do?
“Come down from the truck, woman, and bring your children down as well!”
“We will not! We have done nothing, we are just a woman and her children; why do you want to kill us?”
“Asalaamu aleikum!”—Peace be upon you!
It is my dad’s voice. Dad decides to show himself, brave as always. “These are my kids and wife, I am taking them to the safety of the bush.” But before he finishes what he wants to say, the butt of a gun smashes into his head. I watch in despair as the blood of my tall, strong, proud dad soaks into his shirt. Now he is on his knees in front of a tiny, dark militiaman.
Then a voice calls out from the group of fighters. “Nur Dhere!”—Tall Nur! A man runs over to Dad. In joy they shake hands and hug each other. My mom cannot hold back her tears.
“Ahmed, Ahmed!” Dad says. Ahmed is a traffic officer from Mogadishu and a friend of my dad’s. He is as tall as Dad, with thick glasses and a large mustache. They start talking about their time during the peace together and remembering the games Ahmed attended, games that Dad won for the national team. Ahmed thanks Dad for a time when my dad gave him money. The soldiers, noticing this exchange, turn to the truck behind us. Siciid, still crumpled on the ground, utters prayers of thanks. The soldiers storm the next truck, and another one behind it. Ahmed and Dad are still talking. Ahmed asks Dad what he saw on the road and if the Hawiye militias are advancing south to Afgooye. For a moment we feel safe and unharmed, but we can hear the cries of the women being beaten in the next truck and imagine it happening to us.
Siciid joins Dad and Ahmed, who reaches into his pocket for a cigarette to share. They talk a few more minutes while Dad and Siciid take turns puffing on the smoke. Mom sits on the ground helping Nima pee. Behind us, soldiers are dragging people from the trucks and shooting them. Whenever the soldiers fire, I flinch and duck behind my mom. Ahmed keeps talking to my dad and Siciid while his fellow soldiers shoot and beat families in the trucks behind us. My poor mom watches with her hand on her head.
After a few minutes the cigarette is finished and we leave. Mom’s face is shining wet with tears of joy. “We’ve survived again!” she cries to Siciid when we speed off. “We have another day to live!” The road ahead is safer, and we are close to Baidoa. Ahmed had promised his soldiers would not attack Baidoa; he said they were going back to recapture Mogadishu and that the war would never reach Baidoa. My parents have smiles on their faces for the first time in days, but they should not have trusted Ahmed. Troops from his tribe would soon attack Baidoa and kill Rahanweyn people indiscriminately. Ahmed would carry a gun for another four years until being killed by Aidid’s militias in a shoot-out in Mogadishu.
The only noises I can hear, apart from the humming of the truck’s engine, are the braying of donkeys, the moos of cows, the bleats of goats, and the rhythmic sounds of the bells around the necks of camels returning from grazing. Our headlights reveal houses made of sticks and dung, between which there is just enough room for the truck to continue its journey. From inside a few of the houses I can see the dim light of kerosene lanterns. Dad is walking in front of the truck now, constantly stooping to move branches to the side of the track. Mom sniffs the dung and animal urine in the air and says, “I swear this is Baidoa.” She starts humming songs for her animals, she’s so excited to be home. She points out the termite mounds by the roadside. “When I was a little girl, we used to play on those,” she says.
I hear a strange sound coming from close to the truck. “Aeeyy! Aeeyy! Aeeyy!” I am afraid, but Dad, Mom, and Siciid are not startled. I can’t understand why my parents don’t care about the sound until I realize it is being made by herdsmen leading their camels into a corral. An old man with a long stick appears behind the truck and walks slowly along the side. Soon Dad catches up with him to talk about the camels. The old man pays no attention to our truck, he keeps saying “Aeeyy!” as he chats with Dad in the Maay dialect. He has a low fading voice; Dad knows the man has no idea about the fall of President Siad Barre and the invasion that is coming to Baidoa. Siciid does not know the Maay dialect, and he struggles to understand through their hand gestures.
We are so hungry. Thankfully, the man follows nomad custom by feeding us all with the fresh milk from his camel. Mom, Siciid, and Dad help with the milking. Mom puts a bowl on her knee as she stands on one leg. She uses both her hands to milk the camel, squeezing the camel’s teats in her fingers. Dad gently strokes the camel’s legs as Hassan and I watch the camel’s face in wonder. We have never been so close to a camel. Its neck seems too large to be real, and it is chewing something, its fuzzy lips moving back and forth against crooked amber teeth. I think of the rebels with their brown teeth, chewing qat and biting on cigarettes, and I shiver.
The truck is almost out of gas, says Siciid, and there is no gas anywhere to buy, even if we had money. We lumber up to a fence built of thorns, and Siciid shuts off the truck. Dad gets out and knocks at the fence post repeatedly, but there is no reply. Finally he steps back, runs hard like he’s making a layup shot, and jumps over the thorn fence.
“Who are you?” comes a deep voice from inside the wall in Maay.
“It is me, Nur,” says Dad.
“Allah be praised! Where have you come from on this dark night?”
As the gate of thorns swings open, I am surprised to see that the voice belongs to a woman. It is Aseey, my dad’s aunt. She is tall and strong, gap-toothed, and has protruding eyes. She is holding on to a big stick because she says the lion Fareey’s pride is still active at night. She hugs us all in turn and pushes us down on a mat in the courtyard. Soon we are cross-legged and devouring white maize with beans. She says the Somali Patriotic Movement, a group of Darod tribesmen led by Omar Jess, a defector from the Siad Barre government, are on their way to attack Baidoa. They want possession of the fertile lands around the city and to occupy its strategic position in central Somalia. These militiamen were once loyal soldiers of the Somali government but have now formed their own faction. Most men are fleeing the city, because they are the main targets. Women fear rape. For the first time my parents understand that the conflict they thought existed only in Mogadishu is in fact everywhere. They don’t know where to go from Baidoa.
Dad rises to his feet, looking at each of us in turn. He is smiling, but there is fear in his eyes. “If we wait until morning, all the roads out of Baidoa will be blocked and there will be no escape. Siciid and I must leave straightaway. Don’t worry, we’re all going to be okay.” Dad is leaving to save us. He knows his presence with us could kill us all, because the militias are terminating men with their families all together. But they might spare kids with moms. The close calls we had on our trip from Mogadishu were enough to explain what would happen.
Dad and Siciid talk about what to do. Dad knows the bushlands well and Siciid knows the roads, a good combination. But they decide it is best to split up when they get out of town, making it harder to see them. They will walk into the bush, away from the gunfire. That is their only plan. Dad kisses each of us on the forehead, then leaves, pausing outside the gate to wave and force a smile. He returns in a second to grab a stick to fend off hyenas and lions, then walks out and down the road with Siciid, past the truck and its empty gas tank. I watch my tall dad disappear into the dark night.