The Vulture Has Landed
Ayaan had made a hiding place for her nine-year-old sister in the attic of their house. She filled up most of the space with rusty bicycles, old tires, and worn out clothes, leaving barely enough room to open and close the door itself. In the back of that mess, she had left a small space for a mattress with two blankets and a pillow. At the entrance, finally, she hung a bloodstained women’s cloth to conceal the door.
When she finished, she called her sister from the living room where Caataye, Ayaan’s husband of two months, had been tutoring her, into the kitchen. Ayaan held her sister’s hands apart and pulled her toward her. “My precious sister,” she said to the young girl leaning against her chest, “listen very carefully to what I am telling you and promise you will do what I tell you to do. You do know a promise must be kept, don’t you?”
“Yes, my sister,” said Amran, with her arms around her sister’s waist. “I know that if you promise something you should live up to it, and I promise to do what you asked me to do.”
“Then listen, dear girl. I have finished fixing up the place for you. From now on, you are going to sleep there every night. I have already shown you how to go in and out of it. If there’s anything else you need, let me know and if we can afford it, I will bring it to you. Are you listening to me, my dear?”
Amran lifted her head from her sister’s chest and stared at the floor. “Yes, Sister.”
Ayaan looked away for a second, then peered back at her sister, trying to lift the child’s gaze to hers. She knew that Amran was smarter and more mature than most children of her age; but she had to make sure that Amran understood and remembered exactly what she had to say.
“Now, sweetie,” she said, “I am going to teach you some code words that only you, Caataye, and I will know about. Any time I say, ‘The vulture has landed,’ it means it’s time for you to hide. So if you are not already in your hiding place, you must run as fast as you can to get there. And you must not come out until you hear Caataye or me saying, ‘It is a bright morning.’”
Amran was so scared. She raised her hands, rested them on her sister’s shoulders and looked up at her. “Ayaan, what is going on? Is the militia looking for us?”
Fearful that they may be attacked in the middle of the night, Ayaan said, “You see, last week, the rebel movement cost the dictator Barre’s army some casualties. They broke into an NSS prison and freed three high-ranking officers, all from the north, who had been sentenced to death by hanging. One of them was Cilmi, Caataye’s best friend.”
Ayaan did not want to explain the situation in details or show her distress to her little sister. But she had to let her know a bit about the danger they were in. She was actually more afraid for her sister than she was for herself and Caataye, knowing that the militia was callously capable of raping her, and for that matter Ayaan herself right in front of her husband as well as her younger sister, before wasting them all. She vowed to herself that by the grace of God she was going to keep her sister from harm, no matter what.