I always had an image of him conducting his interviews in an expensive room in a huge white castle. I went with him once to a place called the Alibi in Baidoa. He made me wait opposite the entrance but I went and peeked inside through a crack in the wooden door at the back. The front door faced the corner of the main street, across from a deli and discount store in a part of town that was then unfamiliar to me. Both sides of the Alibi building had signs bearing the bar's name in peeling yellow paint accompanied by a faded blue elephant logo with the shape of the African continent in bold. The building's three storeys looked noticeably worn, with chipped blue-and-green paint and barred or boarded-up windows. The chalkboard outside touted the air conditioning but there was no mention of the bare, peeling mud-coloured walls, layers of grime everywhere or the bar stools that were held together by duct tape. The Alibi was about 250 kilometres from the war zone in Mogadishu. I had heard my father and some of his teacher friends say it was the only decent secret bar left in Baidoa.
