Mumina didn’t go back to work that afternoon, after talking with Jama. Her stomach was rolling and she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. She told her supervisor she was sick and headed for home but she first took a detour to the market downtown to pick up a dirac Zaynab had left at a tailor’s and asked her to pick up.
The nightmares Mumina had been having about the boat accident and the children drowning were replaced by dreams of the police accusing her of blowing up the boat. “Murderer! Murderer!” people screamed at her trial and she saw her parents in the back rows, weeping that they were better off when they thought she had died. Piles of money fell from the sky like rain, drowning her and then there were gunshots.
Mumina returned from the lunch break she still took beside the ocean, even though the wind coming off the water was hotter and seemed to steam across the rocks. She splashed water on her face from her cleaning bucket, gathered her supplies and wandered toward the dehydration ward, wondering how Jama was doing.
The boat captain, Mustafa, watched Mumina’s coming and going from a shady, secluded area behind a khat stand across the street from Zaynab’s apartment. While he waited, he chewed and guzzled Coke. He was furious with himself for taking so long to find the cooler and now the girl had it. Long enough to let her discover and take the money, the gun, the passport. He needed a plan, had to find out what she had done with it.
Everyday at lunch, when she went to the ocean, Mumina checked that no one was watching, then thrust her hand into the hole to feel for the bag. Usually she was alone at midday in the heat at the shoreline but one day she noticed a man squatting beside the wall of the Saudi Arabian embassy. He wore a macwiis and had a cloth over his nose and mouth to keep dust out. His hair was wrapped in a small turban and he looked like he was sleeping but Mumina thought she saw his eyes open when she walked past.
by Luula Jama 
by Luula Jama
