| it didn’t appear to me that Pompeo was willing to risk the questions that would come if the president were to fire me by tweet. At the end of the difficult conversation, I got the second piece of good news. Sullivan insisted, We want to treat you respectfully, honorably. Although that ship had sailed a long time ago, it appeared to me that Sullivan at least meant it, and he asked me to talk to Carol about my next assignment. It obviously wasn’t going to be another ambassadorship, but I was relieved that I would have another job and that I wouldn’t have to worry about a paycheck. Of course, this wasn’t altruism. The president could strip me of an ambassadorship, but the department couldn’t fire me from the Foreign Service without cause, and Sullivan had repeatedly stated there was no cause. But for the administration there was a silver lining to my continued employment in the department: I couldn’t talk to the press without permission, and I couldn’t talk to Congress without permission. I could be controlled. Better to keep me inside the tent. Once again I realized that I was being managed. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I was crying throughout the conversation. I had spent the past three months compartmentalizing, pretending that the baseless attacks didn’t really matter—that everyone would eventually see them for what they were and everything would return to normal. But Sullivan was telling me that principle would not prevail. I was being |
from home. Even at sunrise the dry heat seemed to make every color starker: the hot yellow sun, the cloudless blue sky hanging over the darker blue ocean, the flamboyant pink bougainvillea growing wild on the streets. Above all there were endless shades of white—fading whitewashed walls, the dirty white of the desert sand reclaiming the dusty and barely paved roads, and the hospital white of the traditional sarong-like clothing many Somali men wore. When the city awakened, a cacophony of sounds arose with it. Many sounded surprisingly rural for a metropolis of about one million: roosters crowing; goats and sheep bleating as they ambled off to graze; donkeys, mules, and horses braying; and the occasional camel bellowing as it carried its cargo. But there were city sounds too: the hum of conversation mixed with the din of buses and cars in various stages of disrepair, struggling to keep going as drivers leaned on their horns to warn people and livestock to move out of the way. The smells were no less overwhelming. Animal odors mingled with the stench of burning garbage, the only way most people could get rid of their refuse. Countering those unwelcome fumes were the sweet smells of breakfast emanating from open-air kitchens and the ever-present scent of frankincense, used to freshen up clothing in a place where water was at a premium and washing clothes was an all-day chore. It was a vibrant but completely foreign landscape for me, alien except for one sensation |
