A Long Walk Home: One Woman's Story of Kidnap, Hostage, Loss - and Survival (21 page)

‘Yeah, you’re right …’ he murmured. That, at least, had the ring of honesty about it.

That night, after I had completed my washing and dressing for bed, Gerwaine surprised me by entering in haste as if he had something he needed me to see, concealed between his cupped hands. He opened them to reveal a dragonfly that he had nabbed by its wings. It had bright red eyes and a large triangular face, and he raised it up right before my eyes. I was mildly curious but
I didn’t react especially. Part of me, I felt, was becoming shut off from sensation the longer I was made to endure my confinement.

‘Ah yes …’ I said. What else could I say?

He gestured for me to put my hand out. I did, and he set the dragonfly down there. I felt its little legs in my palm for a moment then off it flew. Gerwaine and I looked at each other as if in perplexity. All I felt was an envy of the insect. At least it could escape.

I was used to the pirates puffing away on their cigarettes but one afternoon I found myself staring at Ali’s empty red-and-white packet of Sportsman-brand fags as he held it in his hand. I realised that for my Countries/Capitals game the packet would make a better cover-up than the back of my hand, so I asked Ali if I could have it, and I used it in just that manner for a couple of days.

Then, a eureka moment: it occurred to me that if I dissected the empty packet I could make tags, on which I could write out my countries and capitals, and so make a proper displayable, three-dimensional, cross-referable game. It would be a long task, a project, to produce three hundred and fifty or so tags. But time was what I had. So I asked Ali if he would make a point of saving his empty fag packets for me.

I needed more donors, and Tall Man was another smoker who seemed affable, so I got Ali to ask him on my behalf, and he too began to bring in empty Sportsman packs. (I thanked Tall Man in Somali, which he seemed to appreciate, and one day he brought me a packet of biscuits, a stunning consideration on his part.) Then other guards started to take an interest: I began to get donations in twos and threes. I took apart the cigarette
packets: one of the top panels was the perfect size for my requirements, and I prevailed on Ibrahim to take the compound scissors, use that panel as a template, and cut the packs up into tiny little tags. Then I began to create my matched pairs.

It was a long endeavour for a fairly rudimentary product, but I was terrifically pleased with myself for having devised and designed it, and I had a schoolgirl-like immersion in it once it was done. I made it a routine that on a Monday morning I laid the two sets of tickets out from A to Z, and tried to match cities to the countries. On Tuesdays I did it vice versa. (Initially I found this consumed a whole morning.) When I was done I stashed the cards safely away in empty tissue packets. One or two pirates seemed to find my efforts nearly as absorbing as I did, Gerwaine being particularly interested. But anything that helped me get through the day was to be prized and clung to, and my Fag Packet Nations of the World Game was incredibly effective in that regard.

There were multiple ways in which I could keep my mind keen. My body, however, seemed to me less and less manageable. The long months of poor hygiene were taking a special toll. I complained to Ali that I stank, felt horrible. My bedding had gone unwashed for months. I was still not permitted to wash my clothes, and no one washed them for me. Meanwhile the pirates groomed themselves and each other and emerged each afternoon, laundered and fragrant. The Leader must have got wind of my grievances, for one morning he came in with a red-topped glass bottle of men’s cologne for me, its brand name ‘Maliki Star’. There wasn’t much in it, and it wasn’t my preferred fragrance, but I sprayed myself and my clothes as best I could.

There was, though, no masking the terrible physical condition I was in. My feet were blistered and bloodied from walking, and by the end of each day they had swollen, freakishly so, as if pumped full of water, the skin smooth but strangely ‘cushioned’. My scarred ankles and toes ached. The swelling would recede somewhat overnight, but in the morning my feet had the look of Gorgonzola cheese, veins awfully prominent, so that I could trace them, dark blue and risen just as they were on my hands and arms – a frightening sight. As my hair began to come out in handfuls, my fears heightened and rattled me.

The night wash became a more alarming experience by increments. If I lay down flat and gingerly palpated myself I could feel my internal organs beneath my increasingly wraith-like skin: gut, bowel, bladder. There was not an ounce of fat on me, and I couldn’t kid myself about the scariness of my weight loss. My hip bones jutted out, I could feel my sternum and ribs. I was emaciated; my body was subsisting on itself. And I suspected it would only get worse. In the shock of realisation I knew I was going to have to rethink my strategy about keeping fit. I ceased all exercise apart from the walks, for the simple fear that I would damage myself.

I was still walking home, though. Home was still there and I had to walk to it, had to carry on. Part of me knew I wasn’t being too clever – indeed, bloody silly, on some level. I understood things could yet get a good deal more painful. But walking was so essential to my state of mind that I was going to have to make mind triumph over matter.

Monday, 19 December 2011 was, by my reckoning, my hundredth day in captivity: a gloomy milestone, compounded by the knowledge that I hadn’t seen the Negotiator for quite some time. If
Ali said he was coming, and with news for me, it wasn’t worth being hopeful. Still, I usually knew if he had been in the compound – I could smell his aftershave – but I had come to accept he was rarely there to see me. And then I saw him by chance.

I was returning from the toilets, early in the morning, and he had stepped out of Room 4, ‘Pirate HQ’. He wore his sarong and vest, and I wondered if he had in fact slept overnight in the compound. His expression was dark, and yet I didn’t think I could afford not to engage him.

‘Good morning, how are you?’ I said as I drew near.

‘
Three hundred!
’ he shouted at me in reply. ‘Your son say three hundred! Three hundred not enough!’

I was taken aback. ‘Why are you shouting at me? I can’t do anything about that. Only Ollie can tell you about money, and what we can get.’

‘Is not enough,’ he snapped, convincingly irate.

I retreated to my room, thoroughly spooked. I was sitting down a little later, anxious and confused, when the Negotiator entered with the Fat Controller, who planted himself against the wall, Sidekick in tow. There was an air of the heavy mob, and the Negotiator looked hard at me.

‘We are having problems getting the money. You have to think of some way to help your son get more. Do you have another bank account? Any other money that he not know about?’

I shook my head. ‘We’re not rich …’

‘Yeah, yeah, we hear that,’ he snapped dismissively.

‘Well, it’s true,’ I said wearily. ‘So if it’s a problem for you it’s a problem for me. But I don’t know what I can do.’

The Negotiator jerked a thumb at the Fat Controller. ‘This man is getting tired, he get no money. You have to know, it make him very upset. Very angry.’

‘I know, he wants this to end. I do too.’

‘He is fed up. He could decide to sell you, to another pirate group, other Somalis.’

That idea rattled me, without doubt. The Negotiator saw as much. He leaned closer, his voice menacingly controlled.

‘You know, in Somalia, anything can happen. You understand? There is no government here, no police … Do you realise, how easily you could disappear? This man could
make
you disappear. And no one would know.’

I felt as if I was being assaulted with low blows that I was too weakened to resist. It felt as if they were determined to drive me to submission, surrender.

‘So, you must think’, the Negotiator said, ‘how you can get us more money.’

‘What if I can’t?’ I blurted. ‘Has it crossed your mind that whatever Ollie’s offered is as much as he can possibly get?’

The Negotiator relayed that to the Fat Controller, who erupted from his slouching position, gesturing angrily, spitting. The Negotiator stood, calmly.

‘He say if it’s that, then we are done with you. We shoot you.’

And he followed the Fat Controller out of the door.

I had heard a similar threat once before. But that seemed a long time ago, when I’d believed we were much closer to a resolution of my plight. The passing of time had made that feel further away than ever. And now the antipathy, the contempt on the faces of these men made me feel worthless, like nothing – made me believe, indeed, that they could prefer to cut their losses rather than spend a single penny holding on to my tired bones.

I couldn’t stop it: I lost all control of my thoughts. Turmoil ensued. In my head I saw them shoving me against a wall, pushing
my blindfolded head into the dirt. I heard a rifle cocked and fired, at me, point blank. The end, of everything.

I don’t know how long these images assailed me, but I stumbled backwards, retreated to the furthest corner of the room, diagonally opposite the door. I hugged my knees as the darkness came down. And the whole room began to seem to me a cavern in which I was being crushed, buried. I fought for my breath.

Gradually, through the gloom, I could make out a figure on the floor mere yards from where I sat: a person, lying prone, but not alone. From the shadows emerged a committee of scavengers, bald-headed, sharp-beaked birds – vultures – that clustered around the fallen figure. I could hear their cruel deriding caws. And I could see the stricken figure was wearing my pink-silver
jilbab
– because the figure was me. These vultures began to pick over my corpse, pulling and tearing at the dress with their beaks, until strips of fabric tore away, and then strips of flesh. A frail hand was raised and reached out to me for help. And there was nothing I could do.

I couldn’t move from my corner – too scared, traumatised. But in my head I felt I had to. I had to rescue myself, to fight off the vultures, to save this body from desecration. Even if there were no hope, her dignity had to be preserved – my dignity. Otherwise how would Ollie recognise the corpse as his mother?

Somehow I did. In my head I hauled myself forwards, inch by inch, as if through mud, an odious sensation. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t shout. But as I drew nearer the vultures scattered.

Clarity of mind returned to me slowly, in patches. Gradually I regained awareness of the body I felt I’d lost. It had been a profoundly disorienting experience, unprecedented, and I was chilled to the bone. As soon as I felt able I told myself, urgently, incessantly:
They won’t shoot you. They want you for money. You
can’t panic. You can’t let your imagination take control. That’s how you lose your mind, and then you’re gone for ever.

I convinced myself. But for some time afterwards I was drained and exhausted, disturbed by the experience, the awareness that my mind could go somewhere so terminally bleak.

The Negotiator came back to me the next day, and no death sentence was mentioned. Instead he told me I was going to speak to Ollie, and told me again, tersely, that I had to tell him to get more money, had to help him find a way …

I looked at him as evenly as I could. ‘This is hard. There has to be a compromise. I don’t know if we can raise the amount you want. I don’t know how much that is. Will you tell me?’

‘Ask your son,’ he said dismissively, and left. When he returned he told me Ollie wasn’t answering his phone. If this was their version of negotiation it seemed to have entered a rocky, fractious, precarious stage.

Amid the general dolour, incongruously, Christmas was drawing near. Ali told me I could expect to have a Christmas-morning phone call with Ollie. But I didn’t bank anything on that pledge. Then he began to try out on me a renewed version of his well-worn ‘I have news’ routine.

‘Mohammed tell me he heard Big Man organise plane, for January – you go with two Americans, two hostages, in January.’

‘Are they close by then, these Americans?’

‘I don’t know. But you go home on plane.’

More bullshit
, I decided. After the excitement of early December, followed by the fall from a height of two truly hopeful weeks, I wasn’t going to buy Ali’s nonsense again.

‘Ali,’ I said carefully, ‘you keep telling me I’m going, but it never turns out I am. But I’m sure when everything’s settled and I really am going then the Negotiator will tell me, and I’ll speak to Ollie about it. But from now on the only person I believe is Ollie. So don’t tell me anything about any plans any more, OK? I don’t want to know …’

I wasn’t sure he believed me or would abide by my wishes, but he seemed to see my point.

Come Christmas morning there was no phone call with Ollie, and no one could have been less surprised than me, much as I would have loved to have been proved wrong. But in the afternoon Ali came in.

‘Negotiator speak to Ollie. Ollie ringing back tomorrow.’

Boxing Day it would have to be then. But Ali lingered, vidently with other things he had to impart.

‘You must tell Ollie you are in the forest. And you are very ill –
very
ill. But there is no hospital, no doctor …’

I groaned inwardly: another threat, to force another pretence, and yet one more attempted fraud.

‘… so you tell him, your leg is cut, very bad, wound it not heal, so you need hospital. And you no get food, things bad for you …’

I didn’t need to think this over. ‘No, Ali. I’m not doing that.’

Ali looked most unhappy at this. I felt I had to explain.

‘I will tell Ollie things are bad, that I’m in the forest, that the pirates want their money. But you tell them I am not going to say to my son that I’m “wounded” or I need hospital or anything else like that. Because then he will worry, and I can’t have that.’

‘Why not? Why not? What is the problem?’ Ali barked at me, gesturing angrily, in – to my eyes – a highly uncharacteristic
manner. I was so startled I had to step away from him, from the sudden vehemence, which truly surprised me. He glowered still.