Jessica Hatcher-Moore is an award-winning journalist based in North Wales. Prior to Wales, she lived in Nairobi. Design updated in Sequined head scarves and dangling earrings shimmered as young people twisted and stomped to a hip-hop beat. One woman carried a large Somali flagβa sky blue background stamped with a single white starβthat she waved in time to music emanating from the stage, or what passed for one: a corrugated metal canopy held up by wooden poles.
Rappers and singers performed sets, some in Somali, others in English. Turn up the volume , was the mimed directive. The sound guy demurred; he knew better. Until a year and a half prior, Mogadishu had been largely controlled by the Islamist extremist group al-Shabaab, which made playing music punishable by flogging or even death. But the extremists maintained a network of supporters who carried out suicide bombings and other targeted attacks.
Concert organizers had received a barrage of death threats. His name was Bill Brookman, and while reporting on the historic concert, I found myself following him closely because he was a curious, quixotic figure. Brookman was a professional clown. He was 57 and white, with a pink face drenched in sweat that plastered locks of curly gray hair to his forehead.
Despite how the guards referred to him, he had a childlike demeanor, jocular and spontaneous. He wore black and white striped pants, bright red boots, an orange T-shirt with tasseled sleeves, and a green cravat embellished with silver charms. Black eyeliner had seeped into the creases beneath his eyes.
In his hands were a plastic bottle of kerosene, a box of matches, and three Kevlar sticks β all the materials he would need to breathe fire. But where? He looked up at the concrete walls. They stood about ten feet high. The show had been airing live on local television for two hours already; any half-decent jihadi, Brookman decided, would have identified the location and be on his way over, if not already lying in wait outside the venue. Drawing comfort from the weight of the flak jacket and helmet he wore over his kooky getup, Brookman prepared to climb.
