Ellipsis Piece for 15th June 2006

Alex shuddered involuntarily under the heavy blanket. A few of the brightest stars were still visible in the lightening predawn sky above the town of Garowe. He liked sleeping under the stars. It felt good. You could breathe. This would be the last full day of his project visits. He was tired and he would not be sorry to be flying out the next morning.

Others stirred in the line of sleeping soldiers. Such an armed guard was deemed necessary for this visit. These were risky times since somewhere, two days drive to the south, the United States Army was embroiling itself in a misadventurous and soon to be humiliating occupation of Mogadhishu. Alex’s two female colleagues had been forced to sleep indoors in a stuffy airless storeroom. Offending Islamic sensibilities was not worth the risk here. Another early start had been suggested since the project site was some hours away just across the notional border in Somaliland. And so, after the ubiquitous breakfast of camel liver and onions, mopped up with weevily bread, the two landcruisers set off.

The day was both hot and extremely busy. The village not far from Las Anod was the site of a much used well for the watering of nomads and their vast herds of camels. The project workers and community members were putting the final touches to the installation of a solar powered pump and were finishing off a large concrete storage tank and long animal drinking troughs. The whole community was buzzing with activity and excitement and a visit by three foreigners, two of them women, was an added attraction. Alex’s job was to talk with community elders and to get as many decent photographs as possible to keep his fundraising department happy. He found this latter task was the most enjoyable part. He wandered around catching for posterity countless images of camels drinking, villagers labouring, elders conferring under spreading acacia trees and smiling raggedy children and elegant women enjoying themselves in the festive atmosphere of an almost completed water project. The visitors were duty-bound to accept invitations for lunch and of course this meant a delay while a goat was slaughtered and prepared. It was late afternoon before they were able to get away. Alex had reminded the Project Director, Ahmed, how often he himself had advised against travelling at night in such lawless countryside. But perhaps the second vehicle packed with our community-provided militiamen had given Ahmed a false sense of security.

The jeeps were only halfway back to Garowe when night fell and Alex and the two women dozed fitfully in the back of the leading vehicle. The soldiers on the other hand, more used to the discomforts of the road, dozed totally in the back-up vehicle. Alex was jolted awake when the car suddenly slowed and as it pulled over he noticed a line of rocks had been placed across the road ahead. Ahmed and the driver got out and a lot of shouting ensued as we stirred impatiently in the back of the car. But suddenly the shouting turned to shooting. Without thinking Alex ducked down behind the seat onto the floor of the jeep in a blinding fit of fear and panic. Any protective instinct he might have felt toward his female colleagues evaporated immediately. Making himself as small as he possibly could, all he could think was, "Fuck! They’re going to shoot me." The pop-popping gunfire and ricocheting bullets under the car seemed to surround them and the momentary paralysis was only broken by Alex’s futile attempt to wedge himself even ly closer to the floor and under the bodies of his colleagues. When the shooting stopped, a Somali with a pistol climbed into the car but then realised there were passengers still in the back. He barked something at them in Somali and waved his gun. Alex wanted out first and pushed himself frantically out over the front seat clutching his small red backpack. As he stepped out onto the roadside he came face to face with a Somali pointing an AK47 at him. Instinctively he put his hands out and screamed, "Don’t shoot me, please don’t shoot me". Another gunman snatched his backpack and from behind the gunmen Alex heard Ahmed shouting, "Walk! Walk away. Back to the second car. Don’t run, just walk away." Alex did as he was told. The second jeep was perhaps only a hundred yards behind and the frantic guards ushered the two women and Alex into it. With a crashing of gears the driver roared off, pulling a tight turn and plummeting headlightless into the desert away from the ambushers. They heard more shooting but Alex wasn’t looking back. Fortunately the driver spoke some Arabic and Alex was able to keep him calm and focused on not crashing the car but on putting as much distance between them and the robbers as possible. Once out of sight and earshot the driver slowed down and Alex debated with him what to do. They needed to get back to Garowe and warn the others that Ahmed, the project staff and the guards had been left behind and might well have been killed.

A long circular detour took them back across the main road and skirted round the village from which the attackers had most likely come. They rejoined the Garowe road a long way further on and arrived back in Garowe still numb with shock.

The Garowe elders immediately despatched a truck and reinforcements and Alex tried to convince himself all they could do was wait for their return. The numbness soon wore off and Alex started shaking. He sat on his own with a blanket around his shoulders hugging himself trying to let the relief of being alive slowly stop him juddering.

It was almost dawn when the others returned. No one had been seriously wounded, only bruised and beaten. The guards at least had seen fit not to shoot for fear of the foreigners being caught in the crossfire. Hugs of relief all round, sweet tea and a chance to recount the tale, helped everyone calm their nerves and focus on preparing for their return to Djibouti the following day.

A month or so later a relative of Ahmed’s dropped by Alex’s office in London and delivered a small expected package. It was Alex’s red backpack with his old Pentax still intact. His favourite Swiss Army knife had disappeared for ever along with the novel he had been reading but he didn’t care. Ahmed had called him from Djibouti two weeks before to tell him the bag and camera had been retrieved. After the ambush, the bush radio networks had been busy and as the attackers fled into the Ogaden, Ahmed’s clan relatives had in turn ambushed the ambushers. The jeep had been destroyed and all three of the robbers killed in the shootout Ahmed had claimed. Alex sent off the film from his camera hoping that perhaps some of his project shots had survived. Three days later when the slides arrived, Alex slotted them all into a carousel and sat in the darkened meeting room to look at them. The first few were of camels, smiling children and gushing water, camels, labouring workers and yet more bloody camels. And then there were a series of blurry images of unrecognised figures smiling roughly. Slowly it dawned on Alex that the robbers had been taking each other’s photographs, posing perhaps as they lay up somewhere in the bush before driving on into the Ogaden during the hours of darkness. The last slide dropped into the glare of the projector and Alex crumpled. Three badly beaten Somalis knelt beside the wrecked project jeep. Their blurry, beseeching eyes clearly at the point of facing death. Alex shivered. "I will never, ever go back to fucking Somalia."

Doug Soutar

1315 words