Duguf was grinning too. “He likes your boots,” he said. Aweys was nodding violently. The boys in the courtyard were snickering. For a second I contemplated slipping them off and giving them to the man the United States wanted dead—if for no other reason than I was so relieved. I started to laugh. Aweys laughed. Pete snapped a picture. I bowed my head and put my hand to my chest in an awkward goodbye, then quickly marched those Blundstones out of there.
WITH SHEIKH SHARIF SHEIKH AHMED, the soft-spoken teacher turned political leader of the ICU, agreeing to see us next, we managed to interview the leadership of the organization in less than twenty-four hours. Duguf would later call us the luckiest journalists he had ever worked with.
We met Sharif at Villa Somalia, the guarded presidential compound the ICU had commandeered. He sat in a room that looked as if a Saudi prince and California surfer had collaborated on the decor. The wood was polished, and burgundy drapes with gold stitching covered the windows. From the ceiling hung streamers, deflated balloons and beach balls bearing Fanta, Pepsi, 7Up and Coke logos. More than a dozen men lounged on cushions along the walls murmuring into their constantly ringing cellphones. Sharif nodded to me but did not offer his hand to shake.
Like Aweys, Sharif was happy to talk, but revealed little. He described the chaos that had reigned before the ICU took over and spoke of his newfound optimism for peace. “People were not anticipating there would be light at the end of the tunnel,” he said, with a grandiose sweep of his arms.
Sharif may have comported himself like a politician, but he was born into a family of Sufi scholars, not powerbrokers. Sharif left Somalia in his twenties to study civil and Sharia law in Libya and Sudan. But when he returned to southern Somalia in 2002 and tried to set up an Islamic court, he faced bitter disagreements with a warlord from his own clan. He accepted the setback and returned to Mogadishu, where he gave up law and became a primary school teacher. One of his twelve-year-old students was kidnapped for ransom in the crime-prone city, and Sharif, along with the school principal, managed to negotiate the boy’s rescue. That kidnapping became a defining moment in Sharif’s life. He had brought about change in this one case; he could do it for his country. Believing that Islamic law was the only way to overcome clan differences, this time he focused on Mogadishu, with a goal of eventually uniting all the existing courts in the country. He had no following of his own, but aligned himself with Aweys. Though diplomatic in nature, Sharif was no pacifist, and his first step was to get rid of what stood in his way—the embattled UN-endorsed government. He found support among Somalis fed up with the cruelty of the warlords, some of whom were reportedly backed by the CIA. This foreign support for marauding militias only made the Somali-run courts more attractive.
Sharif became frustrated when I mentioned comparisons between the ICU and the Taliban during our interview. He also denied claims that foreign fighters were training recruits at ICU camps and said he had nothing to do with the recent audio statements by al Qaeda leaders about their “brothers” in Somalia. It was what we expected him to say and it was clear he would offer little else.
As we left Sharif’s compound, Duguf suggested we see a remnant of one of the downed Black Hawk helicopters. Pete thought it could be a good photo and I was curious to see the site that Mark Bowden had described so vividly in his book Black Hawk Down, the scene that forever haunted my friend Paul Watson. As our convoy stopped on an empty street, a woman emerged from her home and a young girl with tassels hanging from her red hijab like a fringe of bangs stared at us. Duguf showed us an overgrown thorny bush decorated like a Christmas tree with bits of garbage. A piece of the wreck was supposed to be under there. But before we could look further, suddenly, people were shouting, the woman’s hands were flailing and Duguf looked annoyed. Within seconds, the once empty street was packed. I got back in the Jeep as Pete went to get Duguf, who was arguing with the woman.
Dozens of men pressed up against the window and started yelling “American,” laughing and banging the glass, trying to rock the Jeep. I smiled weakly, mouthing “Nooo . . . Cann-ehhh-di-ann,” which made their jeers louder. Hmm. What had those British sas guys taught me to do in a situation like this?
The crowd didn’t believe me, or understand, or care if I was Canadian or American or Bhutanese, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. So I just sat there smiling and pressing my blue passport against the window like a shield while Pete yelled at Duguf outside the Jeep. His lips looked like they were saying: “Time to go!” Once they made their way through the crowd back to our car, the convoy finally inched forward and then took off at high speed when in the clear. Duguf seemed calm but was shaking his head in disbelief.
“She wanted us to pay!” he finally said. The woman, who lived nearby and we later learned was called the “Black Hawk Lady,” had wanted us to pay a fee to see the piece of helicopter. She wanted about $5, something we would have gladly paid for a “museum” fee, considering we had already paid $250 for a “visa.” But Duguf was indignant. He considered us guests and was furious we were being taken advantage of. But it appeared few were on Duguf’s side.
AS THE SUN SANK below the roof of the Peace Hotel that night, the clanking of plates and mewing of scrawny cats heralded the end of that day’s Ramadan fast. Ali Sharmarke swirled his decaffeinated coffee slowly, cradling one cellphone to his ear while another jumped closer to the table’s edge with each vibration. Hotel owner Bashir Yusuf Osman was famous for treating his foreign guests to lobster dinner on the roof, but on this night we sat under a tree in front of the hotel with a simple but delicious dinner of fish and rice. Business was booming at the Peace Hotel, where the generator rarely failed, with humanitarian workers, foreign journalists and businessmen tentatively coming back into the country. There were no vacancies when we arrived, but Bashir’s younger brother kindly gave me his room and Pete found space with a couple of generous Japanese photographers.
“They just closed our station in Kismayo,” Ali said, hanging up the phone. Earlier in the day, his HornAfrik reporters had covered an all-female protest against the ICU in the southern town. The ICU retaliated by shutting down the station. When I had asked Professor Addou about a free press earlier in the day, he had agreed wholeheartedly about its importance. But he added that journalists must work “with restrictions.” In fact, there were thirteen. Rule 13: “The media must not employ the terms which infidels use to refer to Muslims, such as ‘terrorist,’ ‘extremists,’ etc.” Journalists were not allowed to create “conflict” with their stories. “It’s so arbitrary,” Ali said, shaking his head.
As we discussed these problems, the heavy tin door to the hotel compound was in constant motion, opening to let in visitors like a curtain sliding back between acts of a play. We were afforded glimpses of the darkened street, where men strolled arm in arm or children ran alongside the odd goat. The evening’s soundtrack that night was a murmur of voices and laughs, not the gunshots that Somalis had grown accustomed to.
Farah Muke could barely contain his excitement as he ran through the doors and up to our table, pumping my hand furiously. Farah was Canadian and like many of Toronto’s Somali diaspora lived in the Rexdale neighbourhood north of the city. Also like many Somalia-born Canadians, Farah was a diehard patriot. “If I see any Canadians here, I have to meet them,” he said, explaining that word had reached him that journalists from the Star were in town. “I love the Toronto Star!” Farah had returned to Mogadishu four months ago but missed his Canadian home and planned to return soon. “I fly a Canadian flag from my home and people are always asking why I do that, and I say, ‘Because I like Canada so much!’” He asked if we could come see his flag, maybe take a picture the following day?
Throughout the night, visitors came to the hotel to see us: a Somali poet, other Canadians, curious neighbours of the hotel. And while this easy flow of people may not have seemed remarkable to us, Ali assured us that it was. Most people stayed home after dark in Mogadishu.
But Ali was still worried about the ICU’s radical element. Young, bloodthirsty fighters like Sheikh Indha’adde and Sheikh Mukhtar Robbow, also known as Abu Mansour, were jockeying for power. There were frightening stories about how ICU members dispensed their own perverted sense of justice. Would these factions overwhelm Sheikh Sharif? What about Aweys, whom no one trusted?
But