Cooking for freedom

A few days before I met Ahmed Jama in Mogadishu, three Islamist gunmen from Al Shabaab — al-Qa’eda’s Somali branch — burst into his new restaurant wearing suicide bomb jackets. They sprayed the place with bullets and then detonated themselves.

One bomber set himself off in the dining room itself, killing 20 of Ahmed’s customers. Standing in that room, watching Ahmed’s workmen clean up, I realised what the term ‘pink mist’ really means. The bomber’s solid body had expanded outwards into an aerosol cloud of human particles that now covered every square inch of ceiling, walls and floor. The workmen were using trowels and shovels to clean up.

‘They’re scrubbing it, to get rid of the blood and human remains. When they’ve done that they’ll put on four or five coats of white paint,’ said Ahmed.

He seemed remarkably uncowed by the horror, but then Ahmed Jama is an unusual man. He’s Somali-born, but for years he’s been a British citizen living in London. He’s a talented chef who runs a successful restaurant: the Village on Fulham Palace Road, which is much-loved and patronised by famous types. Even Bruce Willis loves Ahmed’s date cake. So why on earth would he come back to Mogadishu and open another restaurant here?

The answer, it turns out, is to show solidarity with the suffering Somalis; to play his part in what he hopes will be the last push against Al Shabaab. At the height of their power here Al Shabaab went mad, outlawing anything they saw as western, or infidel: football, music and moustaches. Restaurants were frowned on, western food forbidden. Even samosas were outlawed as blasphemous after some mullah decided their three corners might represent the trinity.

Now, after a concerted effort by UN-backed African armies, Al Shabaab are on the back foot. They were forced out of Mog-adishu last year and two months ago left their financial hub in Kismayo port.