The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [59]
This was one of the nicest houses I had yet seen in Somalia, and I paid Momman the compliment. He was quick to correct me. “This is not my house.” he said. “It belongs to my wife and kids.” I felt like a tax agent investigating the assets of a mafia don.
Colonel Omar, dressed in his usual striped tracksuit, stocking cap, and scarf, lay staring at the ceiling on the divan across from me. He cradled his AK across his chest, almost caressing it. He was still khat sober: fifty days and counting. On the ground, the smaller Omar reclined against the cushion propped beneath the Colonel’s legs. To his left sat his driver, a blithe, lanky man named Mahad.
Momman settled at the head of the gathering, leaning on the floor against a bolster. Behind his head on the divan lay a loaded Belgian semi-automatic pistol—the little brother, around these parts, to the AK-47. Momman was flanked on either side by two of his former foot soldiers, Mohamed and Abdirahman (not their real names), who casually lounged, fastidiously picking at khat stems.
Momman, like Boyah, looked to be in his early forties, with broad shoulders that gave him an air of great physical strength. But in place of Boyah’s free-flowing goat’s tuft and traditional elder’s garb were a meticulously trimmed goatee and an equally dapper combo of striped red dress shirt and olive slacks. His face was hard, his eyes old and almost fatigued, their gaze producing the impression—impossible to feign—that he did not care at all what I thought of him. He studied me intently, his eyes tracking over my face, and I found it difficult to meet them. His rare smiles slipped by with obvious reluctance, as if his facial muscles had briefly triumphed over his brain for control of his expression.
His austere gaze remained unchanged even when I produced the copious bags of khat I had brought with me. We dropped the black plastic bags in the centre of the carpet and clustered around them, like children around a campfire, an atmosphere that was instantly dashed when Momman rose and threw open the drapes, flooding the room with daylight. I settled back against the cushions, letting my ma’awis cascade comfortably over my folded legs, and picked apart the binding of a bundle. Selecting a stalk, I stripped away the tough, leathery leaves until only the soft shoots remained. As I lifted it to my mouth, the hint of bitterness hitting my nostrils carried with it a vision of the day to come: the stomach pains, the nervous chain-smoking, the tossing and turning until the early hours of the morning. Time itself doesn’t seem quite real when you’re chewing khat; the activity is perfectly in tune with Somalia—the slow, lethargic chewing keeps pace with the plodding of the days, lives measured out in pulpy mouthfuls. “Khat days” are endless, and there was no rush to begin the interview. I relaxed and waited for tongues to loosen.
In the meantime, I produced my backgammon set and played a few games with my interpreter Omar. Mohamed and Abdirahman glanced over as we played and asked some idle questions, but before long Colonel Omar descended from his perch on the divan and snatched the board away from his cousin, pulling it close to him where the others were unable to see it. He pointed aggressively at my chest, indicating a challenge.
The Colonel’s militaristic philosophy on life was nowhere better expressed than in his backgammon game. He hit checkers in a mad frenzy whenever it was possible to do so, bellowing in victory each time. I tried to explain through Omar why restraint was necessary, but my interpreter lacked the translational nuance to properly convey backgammon strategy. I did what I could, uttering the Somali word for “dangerous”—khatar—after each ill-advised move, but it was of little use. After each inevitable