“Ali Abdi!”
“Yes, Mary, what is it today?”
“The generator just went off. Someone reported seeing lights in the hospital last night and now we’ve run out of power during the day—in the middle of surgery. This cannot happen Ali! You are in charge of the fuel. We need to check the level now!”
In one swift motion, Ali reaches under his shirt and raises a handgun to my face.
“You, come with me,” he orders.
I have no choice but to follow him, hoping to devise a plan on our way to some undisclosed location. He keeps his weapon hidden as we pass people in the hall. Soon we are outside the hospital and walking toward the small outbuilding that he makes his personal living quarters.
My mind races thinking of the brutal rapes committed against some nurses from Irish Concern, a small relief organization from Ireland. I also remember the stories from MSF of some Somali women they treated, who were raped. I was told that the rapist opened their circumcisions with a knife then doused the women in diesel and set them ablaze. Death, I decide, is preferable to Somali-style rape.
The private entrance to his tiny home is unbolted, and the door stands open a few inches. Several pairs of large dark hands gesture rapidly and voices belt out forceful Somali words. Through this narrow opening I also see handguns lying on the floor beside their owners. Ali Abdi opens the door, and two automatic weapons come into view.
“Get inside,” he commands, nudging me with his handgun.
He closes the door behind us and engages the bolt.
This is it, I think. I will either be brutally raped or die trying to escape.
We step over a pile of flip-flops discarded by the men in bare feet sitting cross-legged on the floor. Their macaawises are hiked up around their knees as they sit in a circle drinking from thick juice glasses. In the center of the circle, like a statue, stands an antiquated Sixties-style Osterizer blender half-full of a creamy white concoction. My eyes follow the electrical cord powering the appliance to the persistent humming of Ali's private generator, running on fuel stolen from the surgical suite.
I stand frozen like a block of ice in this brief moment of indecision.
Ali Abdi’s home is meager by Western standards, but by Somali standards, it is a luxury apartment. The walls are lined with shelves stocked with canned food and bundles of khat. In the corner next to his bed is a tangled mound of metal hospital equipment that he will most likely use to trade for additional luxuries.
Slowly my foot eases toward one of the handguns, and I start to scoot it in my direction.
Abdi grabs my arm with a jerk. “Sit down.”
Just before I sit, the barefoot man next to me in a white koofiyad grabs the gun I was trying to conceal.
What now?
“Mary, do you want a milkshake?” Ali says, stuffing his own gun into the waist of his macaawis and covers it under his untucked shirt.
“Uh, okay.” Perhaps this is some perverted ritual performed as a prelude to violent rape.
As I scan the rest of the men in the room they nod friendly smiles and slightly raise their drinks toward me. Ali reaches for a can of Nestlé’s Nido whole milk powder sitting open on the shelf above the huddle of men. He sprinkles powder into the blender and adds some unfiltered water. The blender buzzes to life and the milk powder mixes with water laden with unhealthy organisms, which seems of little consequence at this point. He pours a glass and hands it to me.