Links by Nuruddin Farah

ellipsis: “A nightmare of loyalties!”
    Jeebleh refused to be taken in by anyone’s antics, least of all Af-Laawe’s. With a straight face, he replied, “Would you like to join me for coffee?”
    â€œYes, I would.”
    They sat outdoors at a plastic table with three chairs around it. The breakfast boy brought Jeebleh his Yemeni coffee in an aluminum pot, which proved difficult to hold or pour; but he managed it, then pushed the sugar bowl toward Af-Laawe, who helped himself generously.
    â€œHow was your first night back?” Af-Laawe asked.
    â€œThank you for arranging the lift and the hotel.”
    â€œI hope the manager is treating you well.”
    â€œHe is, considering the circumstances.”
    â€œThe room is all right?”
    â€œI can’t ask for more,” Jeebleh said.
    And then all that the driver had said about Af-Laawe returned to Jeebleh in a flash. His lips were touched with a knowing grin, in anticipation of learning more about Af-Laawe’s link to Caloosha’s world of deceits, conspiracies, and killings. Jeebleh replaced the features of the driver with an identikit that might have been a cross between Af-Laawe and Caloosha; he superimposed this on the face of a hardened criminal wanted for a series of robberies worth millions of dollars.
    â€œI’m glad you’re having a good time,” Af-Laawe said.
    All around the courtyard, Jeebleh noticed vultures gathering. They arrived soundlessly, working to a precise timetable, one every half-minute, like airplanes landing. There were no fewer than a dozen, the largest the size of a Fiat Cinquecento, heads down, wings folded, beaks held dramatically in mid-motion. One particular bird disappeared every now and again, only to reappear a few minutes later as several more birds joined the gathering. Jeebleh found it strange to see vultures alighting in the courtyard of a four-star hotel. Where was the carrion to be had?
    He fell under the spell of the spectacle. He couldn’t take his eyes off the vultures, now dividing themselves into two groups, on what basis he couldn’t tell. The huge vulture went back and forth between the groups, then took off quietly, and was gone for a good while. He returned with a companion of similar size and comparable build, but with a beak of a different color. The two birds went back and forth between the two groups as if ferrying urgent messages.
    â€œVultures, crows, and marabous have been our constant companions these past few years,” Af-Laawe said. “There’ve been so many corpses abandoned, unburied. You will see that crows are no longer afraid if you try to shoo them away. At the height of the four-month war between the militiamen of StrongmanSouth and StrongmanNorth, the crows and the vultures were so used to being on the ground foraging, they were like tourist pigeons in a Florentine piazza. These scavengers have been well served by the civil war.”
    â€œWhy the nickname ‘Marabou’?” Jeebleh asked.
    â€œSomebody has been telling you things.”
    â€œAnd why ‘Funeral with a Difference’?”
    Af-Laawe said, “I started the funeral service when sorrow felt like something emitting a bad odor that was forever there, as though it had been smeared on the inside of my nostrils. After the mosques were raided and the women seeking refuge in God’s house taken out and raped, I set up an NGO to take care of the dead.”
    â€œWhere did you get the funds to set it up?”
    â€œI raised them myself,” he said.
    Was Af-Laawe, as he told it, a lone do-gooder in the style of the folk heroes one read about as a child? Jeebleh wondered what good a single person could do in a place where the bad outnumbered the virtuous. Maybe one must do what one can, the best one can.
    Af-Laawe continued, “At least I am in the privileged position of choosing what I want to do and how I go about it. Not everyone is in this