Once A Warrior (Mustafa And Adem) Read Online Free Page A

ear against the wood, try to make out the gist of it. Something about honor. Something about going back. Something about his mother refusing to worry like that again.
    The words gave him shivers. He remembered his father, years ago, like the hip-hop stars on TV. A thug, but an admired man. Adem would give him that. Those other hard men dropping in and out all night when Adem should have been asleep. He couldn't sleep with that noise, so he would do what he did at the front door—press an ear against the wall, close his eyes, and listen to his father tell the other men to do terrible things, all for money. No, not even money. All for "brotherhood". Whatever.
    Of course childhood memories were always cloudy, but Adem realized at some point things were changing. He was in high school when it happened, after that concert with the gunshots in the parking lot. His dad went out one day, came back home with a red polo, bullseye insignia, much to his mother's amusement. Or delight. The man who had virtually ignored his son all those years started driving him harder at school. Warned him about the street gangs, the drugs, the lowered expectations. Pressed him to aim high in college. Still not a TV dad like Dr. Huxtable, but not absent either. He was...fine.
    Mention the troubles Adem found himself in several years ago, though, and you would have seen a different side of Mustafa. Quiet rage. He wouldn't shut you up but he refused to talk about it. If you kept trying you'd find yourself on the losing end of his fists. Several men had died helping Mustafa find Adem in Somalia on his last "pilgrimage," including one of Mustafa's closest cousins, and a white cop who gave Adem a chance to escape when he should've been the one condemning him to death. So to now tell his father that regardless of what he had told the authorities, his college professors, his mother, and Mustafa that the first trip wasn't finished with him yet, of course that had to have been a huge blow.
    Or, Adem thought, let's really stab this in its heart: Sufia wasn't finished with him yet. The woman he had left behind, scarred forever with battery acid only because he had fallen for her. He had to find her one more time.
    He couldn't tell you when it happened, exactly, but after being banned from the internet by the Feds until they agreed to waive it for school reasons, Adem typed in a search : "Mr. Mohammed" "Somalia" "Pirates"
    The persona he had created when his friend, Jibriil, appealed to the group's leader to let Adem participate in a different way than just being a young warrior. Since a number of Somali pirates funneled their ransom money back into the terror cell coffers, it was decided Adem's talents would best be used interpreting and negotiating for the rag-tag kids hijacking the ships. It kept him alive. It allowed him to live in comfort at the port city of Bosaso. It gave him a chance to draft Sufia as his assistant, where he grew closer to her while she began to pull away. In the end, she suffered dearly for his arrogance at the hand of Jibriil.
    But something strange had happened after the whole operation fell down when his dad and the white cop came for him, took him back to Mogadishu so they could face Jibriil one more time and try to find Sufia. Somehow, Mr. Mohammed became a folk hero. His legend grew by leaps and bounds so much that by the time they arrived on the outskirts of Mogadishu, all of the soldiers wanted their photos taken with Mr. Mohammed. They mobbed him like a movie star. They reached out to touch his hands, his suit, his shaved head.
    And then he and his dad had barely escaped the city with their lives. They returned home to long debriefings, interrogations, and threats. But they found a way to deal their way out of trouble. For nearly a year, Adem pushed the thoughts of that trip into the back of his mind.
    Until that web search.
    The legend was now global. Mr. Mohammed sightings all over. He had become like a holy man for the pirates