You turn to White Beard and say, ‘All right. If you think it’s Allah’s will, then I’ll stay. I hope I can be useful to you, sir.’
You even make a little bow, hoping you aren’t overdoing it, but White Beard seems pleased.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Very good. I’ll get the men to bring you some dinner.’
He rises and leaves the room. You hear a click as he locks the door behind him.
Hours later, your two kidnappers bring you a plate of goat stew and rice.
‘Can I use the bathroom, please?’ you ask.
You’re hoping to get out of your room, see more of the house and look for a way to escape. Perhaps you’ll even be able to break out of the bathroom. But instead, they bring you a bucket.
‘Use that,’ the driver says and throws it at you. The door locks again.
You think while you eat the spicy, meaty stew. What can you use to help you? You have a plate, but no cutlery – you’re eating with your fingers, like usual. You have a bucket, a mattress, the picture on the wall and, of course, your secret pen.
You have an idea! You use the sharp nib of the pen to stab a little crack into the bottom of the bucket. Then you gobble the rest of your meal and wee into the bucket. As you’d hoped, it starts leaking. Then, for good and stinky measure, you stick your fingers down your throat and vomit into the bucket too. It’s a shame to chuck up that goat stew, but you want to make a really awful mess.
You shout at the top of your voice: ‘Help! The bucket’s leaking!’ Just before one of your captors comes to the door, you think to grab a handful of vomit and smear it over your chest. Then as the door opens, you cry out, ‘Oh, my stomach! It must have been that stew!’
Standing in the doorway, Sunglasses looks horror-struck. ‘Disgusting!’ he shouts. The room has a thick, rancid smell to it now, and he gags a little.
You push the bucket towards him and cry, ‘Please, take it to the toilet!’
He pushes it back at you angrily and shouts, ‘I’m not touching that! Take it to the toilet yourself – and wash yourself while you’re in there!’
The bathroom is tacked onto the side of the house, and luckily it has no ceiling at all – it’s a pit in the ground enclosed by concrete walls. You splash a little water onto your face and vomit-covered shirt. You’d better be quick, before they come and check on you.
By standing on the upside-down bucket, you’re tall enough to hook your fingers over the top of the wall and scrabble up. You sit astride the wall and scan the area. There’s a stray dog lurking below, but no other signs of life. How will you keep that dog distracted? You can’t have it barking and alerting everyone.
You scramble back down into the bathroom, lift up the overturned bucket, and grab a handful of your vomit from the ground beneath it, feeling nauseous. This is so disgusting that it just might work.
Using only one hand, you scramble back up the wall; then you toss the sloppy handful of vomit down to the ground. The dog runs over and starts gobbling it up as if it’s the yummiest thing it’s seen all week. Regurgitated goat. You shudder and wipe your hand on your shorts, and then you leap.
Your feet pound the ground. You wait for the shouts of your captors, but all you can hear are cats fighting, the muffled cry of a cranky baby inside a nearby house, and your own urgent, rhythmic breaths. You run as hard as you can, picking directions at random, just trying to put distance between you and the al-Shabaab house.
Unwanted images flash through your mind. The bomb inside the backpack. Qasim’s face as he spat on you. The red hijab at the window.
You begin to stumble. Running so fast right after you’ve vomited is making you feel wobbly. You slow to a jog, keeping to the shadows, looking for a landmark you recognise. It is a moonlit night. The buildings tower over you like craggy cliffs. Every building is riddled with bullet holes, which tonight look like black shadowy pits on the buildings’ ghostly faces.
I’ll be leaving you soon, Mogadishu, you think. You don’t know how, but you’ll have to take Jamilah and go somewhere else – somewhere you can’t be found. You’re broken and dangerous, you think, but I’ll still miss you.
This city is the only home you’ve ever known. You’ll miss the colourful displays of fruit in the grocery shop at the front of your house; the orange curtains and the rumble of the ocean. You’ll miss the minarets of the beautiful mosques, which poke the skyline, and the singsong call to prayer that rings from them five times a day.
You wish that you’d seen Mogadishu in its glory days, long before the civil war began, when it was one of the most profitable and cosmopolitan trading ports in the world.
People flocked here to buy and sell cloth, spices, paper from Egypt and gold from Sudan, says Rahama’s voice, the echo of a memory. Sailing ships plied the harbour, and every night was filled with feasting and music.
You stop. You can hear your breath heaving in and out, but there is a second rhythm behind it – the crashing breath of the ocean. Waves!
You follow the sound, and there, silhouetted against the silver sea, is the ruined theatre. You know where you are! With a new burst of energy, you sprint the rest of the way home.
To read a fact file on religious extremism click here, then go to scene 10 to continue with the story.
To continue with the story now, go to scene 10.
