The Devil's Waters

CHAPTER 32





On board CMA CGN Valnea

Gulf of Aden

“What is that?”

Yusuf spun his cousin by the shoulder, quickly, before the shade disappeared.

“Where?”

“There.” Yusuf pointed over the rail, up and toward the stern. “See? The stars black out. Something floating away.”

“Yes, I think. Yes.”

A piece of the night twisted around itself as though in agony, then was gone. Yusuf brought up his flashlight, too late.

“What was it?”

Suleiman put fingers into his beard before he spoke. Yusuf scanned the sky east for more dark swirls. Now he had blood on the boat, ghosts in the air.

Suleiman dropped the hand from his beard, keeping his gaze skyward. He waited, measuring what he had seen.

He asked, “Have you been to Qardho?”

The town lay on the road south to Eyl, in a bleached riverbed.

“I’ve been through it.”

“Did you visit the stone hole?”

“No. I don’t know what that is.”

“Outside town, in a limestone hill, the rock is split wide enough for a man to walk. Inside, where the stone is cool, there is a pit so deep the locals say it reaches hell. At night, jinn appear above the pit. Sometimes they are like beasts, hairy and hideous. Or they take the shape of ostriches and run into the desert.”

“Have you been there?”

“Yes. Many times.”

“Have you seen this?”

Suleiman sighed, the indulgent manner of an older kinsman. “What does it matter that I have not seen a jinn when the Qu’ran says they exist?”

Suleiman eyed the night where the black flutter had been and disappeared.

“They are real. They are ayat.” Miracles. “So was that.”

In the tales Yusuf’s mother told, the spirits were always beautiful. They looked like men, they loved or hated men. Even the evil jinn in her tales were never horrible to behold, not like the beasts and ostriches Suleiman described. She schooled him as a child that jinn could be killed with a date or a plum stone shot from a sling. He had none of these.

In the east where the moon would rise, a pearly blush crept along the horizon. Time did not pause to worry over Yusuf or to recall the stories of his mother. Another minute of silence carried him closer to whatever this long night was going to be.

He said, “They will not send regular soldiers to take this ship back. There will be killing.”

Suleiman held his gaze into the stars. “The jinn has come to watch.”

“This is what the signs say? That the soldiers are coming?”

“No, cousin.” Suleiman lowered his eyes to the ship. He shrugged his Kalashnikov into his hands. “They are not coming. They are here.”

Yusuf leveled his own rifle to the dark corridor at the base of the bloodstained steps.

Behind his gun, Suleiman whispered, “I should like to see a jinn before I die.”

Yusuf would not ignore his cousin’s portents or the memory of his mother’s tales. But he let Suleiman watch for signs.

Yusuf watched for men.