Links by Nuruddin Farah Page A

heat-flattened, sunburned landscapes, and see these shantytowns, witness what’s become of our city.”
    When he had finished speaking, Jeebleh relished the quiet drive, the silence of the hour, the fact that there was no fighting, no guns firing, no traffic in the roads. He could hear voices, but they weren’t threatening or frightening. The night they were plunging into extended a hand of welcome. Would that he could challenge his demons of despair, if these got in touch. On this trip, his life felt like it was on a mezzanine suspended between a floor marked “Ennui” and another marked “Hope.” While he knew that anything could happen, he was determined to do his utmost not to end up in a body bag, or in an overpriced coffin addressed to his wife and daughters, care of a funeral agency with a zip code in Queens, New York.
    The driver said, “I’ll give you my telephone number so you can call me when you need to. And please don’t hesitate to get in touch if there’s anything I can do to help.”
    â€œIt’s very kind of you.”
    The vehicle stopped in front of a hotel gate. The driver applied the hand-brake, turned to Jeebleh, and announced, “Here we are!”

4.
    JEEBLEH TOOK NOTE THAT THE GROUNDS OF THE HOTEL WERE MARKED off from the street by a large sign, handwritten in Somali, Arabic, English, and Italian, warning that no one bearing firearms would be allowed onto the premises.
    At the sound of the horn, the gate opened slowly, and his gaze settled on two men, neither, evidently, with a gun. One of the men appeared to have only one arm, while the other was distinguished by an enormous pair of buckteeth, bright white against an otherwise obscure face.
    Above the gate, up in the heavens, the sky was soaked in the blood of sacrifice: it reminded Jeebleh of the Somali myth in which the sun is fed daily, at dusk, on a slaughtered beast. He remembered being told, as a child, that the routine of feeding the sun daily at the same hour made her return for food the following day. Now that he had gained his adulthood and come back to this fragmented land, he lamented the tragic absence of a hero worthy of elevation to solar eminence. He might have been at the gate of prehistory, because the quickening darkness of the hour dyed the visible world with the dim color of yet other uncertainties. Would he be safe at this hotel? Did it have running water? How intermittent was its electricity?
    Of the two men at the gate, OneArm advanced with the wariness of a chameleon, once all the militiamen had gotten down from the roof of the vehicle. He was so dark he might have been woven out of the night. He moved around the vehicle in the stylized goose-step of a sentry on duty. “No guns, please,” he told the driver, who assured him that neither he nor Jeebleh was armed.
    Bucktooth stayed behind, focused with reptilian attentiveness on every possible movement, his right hand in his pocket—maybe because a firearm was hidden there. The gate firmly in his grip, he kept half of his body out of immediate danger in the event of a shoot-out.
    His hands on his lap, Jeebleh was a study in concentration. He was totally taken with Bucktooth, who seemed intent on outstaring him and the driver—until they conceded defeat, and showed their hands, palms forward. In fact, Jeebleh probably would have felt bothered and offended if he had been treated differently from anyone else.
    As the gates opened fully to let the vehicle through, Jeebleh was touched by an instant of remorse as the minute hands of his destiny gathered the hours of his emotion. He looked forward eagerly to calling his wife and daughters in New York, to assure them that all was well with him so far; he felt a surge of anticipatory elation.
    The driver parked under the glow of a fluorescent tube with a crowd of moths around it. Jeebleh got out, and took two steps before tottering to an unsteady stop: his toes had