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target at which one of them takes a potshot, then the others aim and shoot, one at a time. It’s a sport to them, a game to play when they are bored. The one who hits the target is the winner.”
    â€œAnd that’s what they are doing now?”
    â€œI suspect so.”
    â€œCan’t we intervene?”
    â€œI doubt it.”
    â€œWhat if I talk to them?”
    â€œWhy take unnecessary risks?”
    â€œBecause somebody has to.”
    â€œIf I were you, I wouldn’t!”
    Before Jeebleh could move, a shot rang out. They heard a woman scream, and then pandemonium. From where Jeebleh stood, it would have been difficult to piece the story together in the correct sequence. Yet it wasn’t long before somebody explained what had happened: the pilot of the Antonov, a Texan, had offered to help the woman, a passenger, carry her plastic containers into the aircraft, and she followed him up the stairs. Perhaps the gunman had aimed at the pilot, who, fortunately for him, stepped out of harm’s way a second before the shot was fired. Or perhaps the woman and her children were going up the steps too slowly and so had become the targets. Whatever the case, the first bullet struck the woman’s elder son. The crowd at the foot of the stairs exploded into panic. Two of the youths trained their guns on anyone who might dare to approach or dare to disarm them. The people cowered, silent, frightened.
    The three youths were overjoyed, giving one another high fives, two of them extending congratulations to the marksman. Meanwhile, the woman and her surviving child were screaming so loudly that the heavens might fall. The youths moved slowly, and facing the crowd as if afraid of being shot in the back, clambered into a van, which sped away in a trail of dust. The people moved, as one body, toward the bottom of the stairs where the corpse of the ten-year-old victim lay in a gathering pool of blood.
    Was it true, as they said, that in this hellhole of a city, no one did anything for you when you were alive, but when you were dead, everyone would rush to bury you, fast? It was evident from the conversation Jeebleh now overheard that everyone was relieved that the American pilot had not been hit. Jeebleh was shocked that no one in the crowd of people still milling about had been willing to confront the gunmen, to try to stop them from playing their deadly games. And where was Af-Laawe? He had disappeared again. Yes, there he was, climbing the stairs of the aircraft, presumably to help. The woman and her child kept wailing, and Af-Laawe bent over them in an effort to comfort them.
    Maybe there was more to Af-Laawe than met the eye. He was shrewd enough, all right, and was resourceful, and courageous too. But was he trustworthy? Was he his own man, or a vassal to one or the other of the Strongmen? It would be atypical, Jeebleh thought, to find in Mogadiscio a man not solely devoted to serving his blood community, but working in pursuit of his own ideals.
    An instant later, Jeebleh looked up and saw the first carrion-eaters—strong-headed, keen-eyed, with deadly claws capable of tearing into two disparate halves the surrounding cosmos.
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    â€œNO BODY BAGS, PLEASE!”
    Those had been the parting words of Jeebleh’s elder daughter as she implored him to take good care of himself. His wife’s advice was simply that he should trust no one. In different circumstances, Jeebleh and Af-Laawe might have struck up an immediate friendship, exchanging telephone numbers, promising to look each other up. Here, however, things were far more complicated. And now this: A ten-year-old boy killed just for fun!
    Jeebleh knew it would be unwise to talk about any of this to his wife and daughters, who would ask him to return home immediately. And if he tried to discuss his shock at the crowd’s inaction, his wife would reflexively refer to “the Somalis’ lack of moral courage,” even though,