Guban by Abdi Latif Ega (reading an ebook txt) 📕

knocker, then again, he quickly changed his mind, brushing past the servant in a haste of fury to answer the door himself.“Who is it, don’t you have any sense at all? I just can’t understand how a mature person can be so inconsiderate.”
As he opened the door with a forceful jerk with one hand, he was confronted by the khaki brown color of a soldier’s uniform. Hoag- saday simultaneously heard,“Are you the rich guy from overseas, we have orders from my commander, to arrest you, Hoagsaday. Come with us now,” almost barking,“Get in the truck.”


6 GUBAN
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Hoagsaday saw a military truck behind his vehicle in the driveway full of non- descript beige berets, hunched in the back. In a flash of second, Hoagsaday went through a montage in his mind in search of anything that might shed some light on why the military wanted him. The thought of this event at his home at this hour when most people were resting in the privacy of their homes was surreal. Since noth- ing was amiss, Hoagsaday grew more and more agitated with these lower ranking enforcers that dared to show up like this. Momentarily regaining his stature as a prominent businessman from one of larger clans, he stood barreling his chest, now returning the bark, “What in the name of God makes you think you can come to my home, at this time, and under such pretentious allegations, and barge into my compound and ask to take me, Hoagsaday, an upstanding member of this city, to the station just like a common and habitual criminal?” By this time, his children, wife, and a number of his relatives both visiting and staying with him were all shocked out of sleep. They were all heading outside towards the fracas on the veranda, alongside
the official intruders.
“Hear this bigmouth? Come along quietly before we drag you by the scruff of your neck in front of your wife, children, and your entire family.”
Hoagsaday had by now gone from disbelief to belief in the reality that these goons meant business.There was no doubt in his mind now: this madness was real. It was futile at this point to plead with rocks, and he made a split second decision to acquiesce which was heavily influ- enced by the gradual milling on the veranda of more and more male family members as they woke up to what was going on.
Abukar, a male cousin just arrived from the hinterland, started an abrasive verbal assault on the soldiers,“What kind of animals are you? Has the government stopped recruiting humans into the military? How dare you come here with this nonsense? What great balls are these you come with? Do guns have brains? This is not a govern- ment matter. When you come here like this, you don’t come here as a government, but as a clan. Everyone has a clan too, and you will reckon with Hoagsaday’s.We see you behind the clan camouflage of your uniform.”

THE ARREST 7


With that, Abukar was descended upon by two soldiers who had come for Hoagsaday. The berets were now quickly unloading from the truck, all heading to the veranda to help subdue Abukar who was by now pinned to the ground with two soldiers on top of him, engaging in the scuffle as best he could from beneath the two sol­ diers. He continued to harangue the soldiers with open threats, as other males decided to join in on the now potential melee.
One of the soldiers shouted a command, while the loud cocking of several machine guns was simultaneously heard, launching the all too well known severity in the air, a severity that garnered instant access to obedience. Precisely at this moment, Hoagsaday stated loudly, mainly for the benefit of his family and to calm the soldiers, that he would obey though he requested to go back into the house and change out of his ma'wiss, a long sarong worn by males used both privately in the city and regularly in the hinterland. In a brave posture, he reassured his family and went outside onto the back of the truck, whereAbukar was already lying prone on the floor,bloody at the soldiers' boots.
The truck drove fast speeding through the empty roads of siesta time, making its way to a non-descript and heavily guarded isolated building. Both men were manhandled off the truck, barely making the distance between the flatbed of the truck and the ground on their feet because the soldiers were all busy thumping them with their boots and rifle butts.Abukar was given extra rations of hurt for his earlier infraction and continued defiant disposition.
They were separated at the entrance of what looked like a front greeting area office, taken down steps leading to a dark underground, and then lead into a holding cell that had no bars but a thick metal door that was promptly shut behind when Hoagsaday was inside. He sat down in a grand stupor, sitting on the floor of this small rectangle enclosure with nothing - no furniture or even a mat to help you brace the concrete floor. It was a concrete slab of drab nothingness. Hoagsaday was on the floor wondering if what had just transpired was real. If so, who was involved? How does one go from a rou­ tine day to some underground holding concrete pit? He started to get out of the haziness of blurred thoughts, slowly thinking about

8 GUBAN
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Abukar, Twosmo, his young wife whom he had just left hysterically crying, along with his children, during the fiasco.
He was not so certain anymore whether he could get the ear of someone, anyone. What had just transpired had all the makings of quite a serious problem.There was nothing he knew. He knew abso- lutely nothing, not even a mere inkling of what he was up against. He now tried in his mind to go back to that earlier montage of events in recent memory to somehow put some feet on why the government had interrupted his life today.
Hoagsaday was not in the government. He was a private business man not engaged in anything even remotely breaching any law of the land. He paid his taxes regularly, never borrowed from the gov- ernment, nor was he engaged in any way with those who were part of the government, in any partnerships, neither did he solicit any official of the government for powerful whispers on behalf of his company even though this was quite common. Hoagsaday was sim- ply a man who had worked hard for several years to acquire what minimal capital he could as seed money, to start a business and buy a home in the city.
He was slightly reassured by the thought that someone from his clan was probably already inquiring on his whereabouts in the hope of finding his location, and on who needed to be talked to in order to gain his release.As things were in Somal,there would be a hodgepodge of government in the western sense, the traditional pastoral ways of adjudication,and with a large dose of clannishness.
In the meantime, his eyes wandered around this hot dungeon of sorts, the cracked concrete wall full of graffiti, left by those who had had the dubious privilege of passing through this bare and dirty place. This was quite a change from the normal day for Hoagsaday, who had until this point worked himself into the psyche of the city dwell- ers, known as an ambitious and innovative hard working man. He had within no time established an operational business that quickly blossomed into many other ones.With prominence came the multi- tudes of the envious, of course in varying degrees. Some said he dug in toilets, others said he had done a lot of common street begging when he was abroad in the Middle East.

THE ARREST 9


Still others said he beat a hasty retreat after a long career as a thief in the Middle East when his gang made a final career ending score. The rest of his gang were reputed to be non-Somals and prominent in their countries as he was here.
This adventurous mystique was created around the person of Hoagsaday sort of like a modern day version of the famous Ali Baba fable. But one did not need to look far to find the origin of these rumors.They were generated by rival business men and the collec­ tive of idle naysayer who had witnessed Hoagsaday's quick ascen­ dancy to the parapets ofbusiness circles in the city and who had been astonished at his conscientious efficiency. There was that, and then there were the others who wielded power in the government and used their high positions as a means to public and private coffers.
Hoagsaday, having spent a significant amount of time overseas, had
indeed dwelled in nostalgia. Ideas heavily flavored by a hybrid exis­ tence in the Middle East at the confluence of many cultures. He cultivated some ideas from the West, the Middle East, as though he was somewhat delusional about the reality of life where he had left. For reasons unknown he somehow did not configure in his hybrid ideas about the very spot he came from.The things he had left were now worse! In this way, one could say he was quite delusional. Hoag­ saday, was hunched in a cell