A Long Walk Home: One Woman's Story of Kidnap, Hostage, Loss - and Survival (17 page)

My charm offensive began with regular smiles in his direction whenever I passed, smiles he fixedly didn’t return. I would often see him washing his clothes in the yard, just as all the pirates had to in this compound, deprived of Amina’s laundering services. But the Fifth Man did this chore with some rigour: he always wore short-sleeved white shirts, and seemed to want them pristine. I’d walk by him purposely at these times, offering compliments on his ‘very good’ scrubbing, which fell, again, on deaf ears.

One afternoon, though, I observed him attempting to hang up his newly washed grey jersey shorts on the compound’s washing line: a forlorn task, as the shorts were heavily soaked and kept slipping down onto the sand. After a few goes he gave up and slouched off to the African House. I had an idea. I shouted for the toilet, gathered up the clothes pegs I had ‘borrowed’ from the Big House, went out and pegged up the Fifth Man’s shorts securely. How he would react to my intervention seemed to me a test: a make-or-break moment. When I came back out from the loo I saw the Fifth Man standing pensively under his pegged shorts. He turned to me – and offered a smile and a thumbs-up. Later, when his shorts had dried he came in and returned my pegs, with an air of civility quite new to our relations.

I had for a while been mulling over the thought that none of the pirates ever seemed to refer to each other by name – at least
not that I had heard. Possibly this was a form of criminal self-discipline. Certainly I had accepted it until now. But I wondered what it would cost me to make an enquiry or two. When the Navigator looked in on me one afternoon I decided to make the obvious start with him.

‘You know, I’ve been wondering – what is your name?’

He looked at me warily, then whispered, ‘Ali.’

‘Ali! I see. And what is your second name?’

He frowned, paused. Had I overstepped the mark? ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Is that wrong? Not allowed?’

He whispered again, ‘Mohammed. After my father.’ But he glanced at the door, furtively, as he said it. I thought I might as well try to press the advantage.

‘I’d really like to know the names of other pirates. How do I ask them what their name is, in Somali?’

‘In Somali, “What is your name?” is “
Magacaa?
”’

‘Right, and if I wanted to say, “My name is Jude. What is your name?”’

‘
Magacay waa Jude. Magacaa?
’

This seemed to me like quite a breakthrough, and it was underlined when Ali took it on himself to name for me one or two other members of the group. His friend, who I thought of as ‘Marvin’, was in fact Abdullah; and ‘Smiley Boy’ was Mohammed.

Now when pirates looked in on me or crossed my path outside I took to asking them to tell me their names. Some of them merely laughed at me. But others answered my request. I had hopes in respect of the Fifth Man, having laboured to earn his respect; and when I asked him for his name and pointed to my book, he nodded, took up the pen and inscribed
IBRAHIM
.

My renewed forays over the language barrier yielded another bonus: Kufiya Man came back to the Horrible House after a visit to his family, bringing with him a little printed
A
4 booklet from home which – he explained through Ali – was for me. The booklet was titled
Al-Imrah
and inside it offered a series of ‘lessons’, paragraph-length dialogues in Somali and English, suitable for a language class. As ever I was grateful for anything to divert me, and for something to read in particular. The first thing about the booklet that really struck me was that handwritten on the back cover were several runs of digits that looked to me like telephone numbers, and also a name:
JAMAL
.

The next time Kufiya Man visited my room I decided this was a moment to extend the intelligence-gathering operation I had been conducting in the field of names.

‘Is your name Jamal?’ I asked him.

He was visibly taken aback. ‘No, no,’ he muttered and hastened out again.

I wasn’t to be denied, though. When Ali next called on me I tried him out. ‘The man with the beard and no hair, who wears the
kufiya
? Is he called Jamal?’

‘Yes,’ Ali nodded. ‘And the big man who eats a lot? He is Gerwaine.’ I smiled politely in thanks, exulting inwardly at this bumper yield of fresh data.

When next I saw ‘Hungry Man’ I addressed him clearly. ‘
Mahadsanid
, Gerwaine …’ He looked askance, shook his head, said, ‘No, no’, and stomped away. I wasn’t sure I hadn’t taken a step too far in my curiosity. Quite possibly the pirates were phobic about disclosure of their real names, and if I was armed with this identifying information then, arguably, it gave them reason to be leery of granting me my freedom down the line. But on balance I thought it was worth that risk to keep building on my efforts at ‘rapport’.

As for Jamal’s
Al-Imrah
booklet, browsing some of these lessons did indeed prove diverting, if at times also a little disturbing. One, for example, was presented as a conversation between two boys about the ethics of international aid and development, and was set out roughly like this:

Other lessons treated other kinds of issues, albeit with a similarly decided line emerging from the to-and-fro. ‘What do you think of breastfeeding?’ was one topic, from which it was established that mothers were obliged to nurse so that their boys grow up big, healthy and strong. Nothing was said on the matter in relation to girls, but then I had the sense, as often before, that the culture wasn’t much bothered with girls anyway.

Not, then, the most engaging reading matter, but at least it was something. One evening as I sat on the mattress and browsed the book, Bambi sidled into the room, and sat down next to me silently, as was his way. I put the booklet down beside me, wondering what might happen. I smiled at Bambi. He smiled back. Then he picked up the book and started to read, seemingly without the need for my torch. I shone some light on the page for him and made to give it to him but he just shook his head, cheerfully, and refocused on the ‘lesson’ before him.

If ever it slipped my mind that I was among pious Muslims, with a strong attachment to rituals and customs, and very vehemently held ideas about purity and defilement, it was usually brought back to my attention in emphatic fashion – and most often by Vain Man, though he was by no means the most conspicuously devout member of the group.

As always, when I walked the twenty steps to the toilet, I had to get myself fully clothed and modestly covered, and then back in my pit of a room I took most of it off again. I hated the headdress: the more times I put it on, the less ‘me’ I became, the less of a woman I felt, the more I was reduced to a faceless captive. Under the headscarf my hair was horribly matted and ill-smelling. Worse, Amina’s grey-pink
jilbab
had got so filthy and malodorous from daily wear that one day I had to surrender and put on my going-away outfit. I knew I had to carry on complying with headwear regulations. But doing something you absolutely loathe, being forced into that mould, is bitter medicine to swallow.

I ran into further difficulties to do with water.

In the compound of Horrible House I had noticed a very big plastic bucket filled with water from the well. It sat in the open without any obviously special significance, and so one day as I was coming back from the toilet I blithely washed my hands in the bucket. This was observed by Vain Man, who flew into a rage, shouted at me, and kicked the bucket over, sending the water everywhere.

I had no idea what my offence was, but Ali came forward, muttering smartly, ‘This is very bad, very bad.’

I said, ‘Well, please tell him I am sorry, I didn’t know.’

But Vain Man continued to glare at me, as more water was fetched, this bucket now clearly
verboten
to the Western female.

I well understood the particular sanitary routine by which I had to treat hand-washing water differently from body-washing water, the former being safe to fling out into the compound, the latter calling for disposal down the toilet. In the Big House I had observed the distinction scrupulously – in part, because I had first to step out onto the terrace in order to perform either action. In Horrible House, though, the compound was just outside my door. And one day I tipped my body-wash water out of the door – an act that, once again, was observed and occasioned pirate uproar, with Vain Man once again the most clearly lividly incensed, and Ali once more delegated to caution me.

‘You must not do that,’ he barked. ‘Very bad.’

‘But the water’s just soaking into the ground,’ I said. ‘What’s so bad about that?’

‘You must put in toilet, you must! We Muslim, we keep our water separate! You must apologise!’

There was nothing else for it, and so of course I expressed my regret. But their concern for purity seemed to me to go beyond the fastidious, even the doctrinal. In the case of that bucket of common well water, it was hard for me not to feel that they were especially concerned to share nothing of their own with me. Even in these most unhygienic circumstances it was as if I was considered to be the chief contaminating presence. It seemed to me telling, somehow, that I was never given anything from anyone’s hands, other than by Amina – an exception that, on reflection, appeared to fit.

One night I had a strange and curiously satisfying dream in which I found myself walking through the village with Amina and her daughter and realised that, very calmly and reassuringly, they were helping me to escape. They took me to a house where there was another young woman, and together they sewed and
chatted and laughed together, and I shared their company. Outside the house was a beautiful garden with a vegetable patch, where we walked. Then Amina left me with the other woman, who fed me, then gave me a
burka
to put on so that I was entirely covered and concealed but for my eyes. The woman and I then wandered out together, to a market place, where we shopped for food and I was at liberty in my voluminous, cloaking black garments. I was free at last.

It was a brutal thing to wake from such pleasant real-seeming dreams, and to wake in such a place as Horrible House: the feeling of desolation was quite overwhelming. I had to take a deep breath, near to tears, knowing I had dreamed and wishing to dream again, as soon as possible. Even to walk awhile outside the walls of my gaol would have been a huge blessing to me. For that I would have willingly donned a
burka
.

Probably the worst aspect of my predicament was to have no contact with the Negotiator, no visits, no idea what was going on. I had my unshakeable faith in Ollie, but I could only hope the wheels were turning, since on the pirates’ side I had very reduced grounds for confidence. At times I felt there was a dilatoriness, a lack of urgency, as if they were toying with my situation while having other fish to fry, so that I could languish.

I would often ask Ali if the Negotiator actually knew I was here. He told me the Negotiator ‘not come any more’, that he had ‘gone away’, was ‘busy working on boat’.

Oh god, no
, I thought.
He is the only hope I have that things can work at this end. And now that system’s breaking down?

‘So who is Ollie going to talk to, if not him?’

‘Your son, he talk to another man, different man.’

‘What do you mean? Who?’

‘Big Man not happy. Ollie not dealing with him, not picking up phone. He talking to other man, dealing with that man now.’

Incoherent as it sounded, still it felt like terrible news. I lost faith, yet again, in the story with which I was sustaining myself. The Big Man – the Fat Controller, as I’d come to think of him – was in evidence at times. I glimpsed him in the compound, conferring with one or other members of the Triumvirate. I had got used to seeing him in big tent-shaped shirts, but now he seemed to have abandoned button-up shirts in favour of tunics in garish colours – one was red, green and yellow in black-lined shapes like crazy paving. He would have been ridiculous to me were it not for the implicit threat he carried around with him. But in one unguarded moment I let slip my private nomenclature to Ali.

‘Big Man coming tomorrow,’ he told me.

‘The Fat Controller? Oh, right …’

I had said this without thinking, but Ali snorted. ‘You call him … Fat Controller?’

‘Well, yes. Because he controls you, and he’s fat.’

Ali was mildly amused by this. My sense was that he wouldn’t be reporting me to the Fat Controller.

Although I no longer had the Negotiator’s updates Ali would pass on to me scraps of information he claimed to have heard from the Fat Controller. It was never positive, but nor was it ever entirely convincing and, sometimes, blatantly bogus.

One such occasion was when Ali said to me, ‘Big Man speak to Ollie and Ollie say there is no money. He give up, can’t get money. Big Man say you will be here for one, two year.’

‘You go back and tell Big Man that’s a load of cobblers,’ I snapped back to his grave face. ‘That will never happen. He’s lying to you. My son’s not going to give up on me. You can bet
your life he’s working his hardest to get me out of here. And I can guarantee you – he will come up with the money.’

Of course I still had not the slightest clue what sort of price was on my head, but then neither did any of the pirates in subordinate positions – a realisation that came over me gradually, since at first I had imagined them to be ‘thick as thieves’ over all the fine details of the ransom demand. But the truth became clear to me one evening as Ali sat on my bed fiddling with the sim card from his phone. Abruptly he said to me, as if I would know, ‘How much money we get?’