The Sleeper by Christopher Dickey

legs were rusted by pools of sweat. Some of the sick were on the floor, crowded inside because of the rains. The girl was curled up on a stained mattress, wrapped in a coarse wool blanket. She had a high forehead, delicate features, and large, warm black eyes that seemed to see us, but not to follow us. The air near her was stale with sickness. She smiled when Cathleen spoke, but did not lift her head. Cathleen ran the back of her hand over the girl’s cheek and said something else to her in a language I did not understand.
    Outside the clinic a tall man with midnight-black skin stood beneath the eaves clutching a stick. He looked into the distance like a sentry and his jaw was set, whether in pain or anger was hard to tell. Faridoon approached him and spoke a few words, but the man said nothing. He just nodded his head slowly, almost rhythmically, the way some athletes do when they’re about to sprint out of the blocks. But there was nowhere for this man to go, nothing for him to do.
    â€œThat was the girl’s father,” said Faridoon as we drove back toward the compound.
    â€œThat little girl is his only child,” said Cathleen. “Her mother’s dead. But after something like this, some men in these parts might walk away from the shame, you know. Not him. I think he really is a good man.”
    â€œWhat did he do before he came here?” said Faridoon. “He doesn’t look like a farmer.”
    â€œShifta,” said Cathleen. “Ivory poacher back in the old days.”
    â€œAh,” said Faridoon.
    â€œAh, Mother of God!” said Cathleen. “It just breaks your heart. You won’t find tougher people than these in the whole world. Too tough for their own good. And so proud, and so completely fucking hopeless.” She turned on me. “Do you have any idea what that girl has been through?”
    â€œI saw women who were raped in Bosnia,” I said. “I have an idea.”
    Cathleen shook her head. “In Somalia, girls are mutilated already when they are six or seven years old. Did you know that? All of their genitals are cut away with a knife or a razor blade and they are sewed almost shut.”
    â€œWhy the hell would they do that?”
    â€œ Women do it to them—the mothers to the daughters—because that’s what the men expect. So when a little girl like that is raped, the sheer physical damage to her, and the pain, is almost beyond belief. She is lucky, very lucky, she did not die. And she still might. And we don’t even have tests here to see if she’s been infected with HIV, which she might well be. And I ask myself what kind of men would do that to her. And I can’t get over the idea that this is part of some sick goddamned game by the people across the way.”
    â€œYou don’t know that,” said Faridoon.
    â€œI see what’s happening,” said Cathleen.
    â€œDo you hear any names?” I said.
    â€œAbu Zubayr is the name I heard,” she said.
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    Early in the afternoon, as soon as there was a break in the weather, I drove Faridoon back to the airport. “See what we can do here,” he said as we pulled the blocks out from under the tires of the Cessna. “Develop an action plan. But don’t cross the border under any circumstances.”
    â€œIf you say so.”
    â€œI do say so.” He climbed into the pilot’s seat but left the door open to talk. He looked over the controls. “You’re going to be tempted to talk to Abu Zubayr, but that could be a trap—and almost certainly will be.”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    â€œI know him. And so do you.”
    â€œI do?”
    â€œI’m sure you met him in Bosnia. Very quiet. That was before he lost the sight in his eye. In those days he was called Salah.”
    â€œThe Salah who used to sleep in the Ansar house? The one who sat next to Osama when he came.”
    â€œThat’s the