A dozen years after his last visit, Jeebleh returns to his beloved Mogadiscio to
see old friends. He is accompanied by his son-in-law, Malik, a journalist inten
t on covering the region's ongoing turmoil. What greets them at first is not the
chaos Jeebleh remembers, however, but an eerie calm enforced by ubiquitous whit
e-robed figures bearing whips.
Meanwhile, Malik's brother, Ahl, has arrived i
n Puntland, the region notorious as a pirates' base. Ahl is searching for his st
epson, Taxliil, who has vanished from Minneapolis, apparently recruited by an im
am allied to Somalia's rising religious insurgency. The brothers' efforts draw t
hem closer to Taxliil and deeper into the fabric of the country, even as Somalis
brace themselves for an Ethiopian invasion.
