Remembering my trip to Berbera in 2016. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

We drove back through the desert, past cinderblocks of half-constructed future villas and hotels scattered along the road. Our vehicle took a jeering right turn onto the beach and Mo’ picked up speed. With a wad of khat wadded discreetly in his cheek, his calloused fingers inched the volume up on the SUV’s stereo. A USB stick plugged into a cigarette lighter adaptor fed blaring traditional Somali lute classics over the worn speakers.

The rhythm of the ood music and the degradation of the roads into the sandy beach made me think of the whirling dervishes. There was a strong Sufi culture in Somaliland before it became Salafi and maybe, beneath it all, it still is.

Mo’ pushed a sandaled toe on the accelerator and drove in an S pattern through power lines and past an old lighthouse. The view from beyond his windshield shifted back and forth from desert landscape to ocean as the music progressively grew louder. Donny gripped the panic bar overhead and stared out at the horizon, wincing as we absorbed the bumps of the sand that drifted into lumps over the cracked tarmac .

Amit sat calmly in the front passenger seat, poised as if he were at a desk in a corporate office. Periodically, he would put his phone to his ear and shout into it over the blaring ood. At one point he cranked his neck toward Donny and I in the back.

“We were racing to intercept the fishing boat before it makes its way to the harbor,” he yelled to us.

We drove and drove through the beating sun, grateful for the air conditioned vehicle. As more time passed drowsiness began to take its hold on me. Camels dreamily appeared to jeer on the side of the road only to disappear again into a cloud of dust. Then finally, a structure could be seen, at first faded in from the distance. It was a silhouette against the glaring sun, wavering like a mirage in the bands of heat that rose up from the beach. We got closer. Mo’ stopped, too abruptly it seemed, and jumped out of the vehicle. Amit got out the other side to confer with the security team who were following us. Donny and I stirred groggily in the back seat.