Badeed realized at last why Robleh had come. It was a security matter.

“Who did it?” he said.

“I assumed it was al-Shabaab, but then I went to the camp this morning and started asking around.”

Robleh explained the history of the couple who’d married outside their clans and the actions of the bride’s brother.

“Spilling blood in the well was excessive,” said Badeed, “but they deserved to be punished. I am not certain that this concerns us.”

“It was Masaska,” said Robleh.

It was the same man who’d stolen the medicines bound for the very clinic they were standing in.

Badeed looked at his friend.

“Then I’m afraid the time for diya has passed.”

FIFTY-NINE

IT WAS LATE afternoon in the Yaaqshiid district of eastern Mogadishu and maybe a dozen people were on the street—a few men chewing qat and a handful of homeless children looking for scraps of food among the dust and litter that blew across the road.

The auto shop in the middle of the block was little more than a rollup garage door and a single repair bay. Inside was a pickup truck that had started making noise after striking something the prior day.

It was a Darood neighborhood, and the garage’s owner, mechanic, and sole employee was Darood, but he wasn’t the reason the truck filled with Hawiye gunmen had stopped at the end of the block.

They were there for the other man, the driver of the pickup. They’d been searching for him since Badeed had put the word on the street that the attack on the Hawiye refugee camp in Afgooye would be avenged. A few hours later an enterprising Bajaj driver had spotted the olive drab pickup with the dented front fender and reported its location to his cousin, a fighter in the Hawiye militia. The cousin had told his commander and the commander had called Badeed.

The gunmen jumped down from their truck. They asked no questions. They entertained no pleas.

They opened fire.

The Hawiye raked the garage with bullets, killing its owner and the owner of the pickup truck. The gunmen kept firing with their automatic weapons until the fuel leaking from the pickup’s tank ignited.

Filled with greasy rags, a barrel of motor oil, and several cans of gasoline and diesel fuel, the garage erupted in flames. Fire leapt from the open door, rising into the air above the building. The flames ignited a rats’ nest of power lines that were strung overhead and sparks flew and lines crackled as they fell to the street. Thick black smoke filled the air.

Their mission complete, the Hawiye were returning to their vehicles when four teenage boys ran onto the street. They were part of the neighborhood Darood militia, paid by Yaxaas in drugs and food but mostly threats. They were outnumbered and outmatched, but they had their orders, and those orders were to repel the Hawiye.