Crossbones

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A YANKEES-CAP-AND-RAY-BAN-WEARING BOY OF INDETERMINATE AGE gets out of a car that has just stopped. He climbs out gingerly, like a spider creeping up a crevice. He retrieves a carryall from the trunk of the car without help from the two men sitting in the front. The men are old army hands, and although they haven’t said anything to him, he knows that they do not think highly of him.

The boy slings the carryall over his shoulder, nodding his thanks to the two men in the vehicle. They look away with obvious disdain; they do not wish to acknowledge his gratitude. He smiles with youthful bravado, betraying none of his trepidation. He does not want to fail; he cannot afford to fail. He is aware of the huge difference between martyring oneself and making a blunder of things and getting killed. Of course, he does not wish to die, not unless he has fulfilled his dream.

He is small in stature, huge in ambition. On his first day as a draftee into Shabaab, the instructor, upset with him, had pulled him up by the scruff of his neck, shouting in Somali, “Waxyahow yar!”—“You young thing!” The sobriquet stuck, and he answers to it now. The car reverses and he moves forward on the dirt road, his breathing heavy under the load he carries.

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