A Long Walk Home: One Woman's Story of Kidnap, Hostage, Loss - and Survival (23 page)

I had another reason to look kindly on Amina’s daughter: for, like her mother, she brought me very occasional treats – in particular, slices of melon, deliciously juicy and sweet. The pirates always got melon too, of course, and they would toss the rinds carelessly into the dust of the compound yard. Invariably little birds, the size of starlings, would hop down from nowhere, feed on the scraps of rind and pick the pulpy fruit utterly clean. Despite my fears around birds originating from that childhood trauma at the aviary, I felt no threat from the ‘starlings’, and was always pleased to see them and the agreeable distraction they made as they tussled over scraps.

So pleased, indeed, that I started to place my melon rinds outside my door to see if I could lure some of the passing trade. One such afternoon I was lying on the filthy mattress, my head propped
up on my hand, peering out from under the curtain to see what I could see. Abruptly a bird hopped into view, tentatively, larger than the ‘starlings’ I’d seen previously, and beautiful, its head an azure blue, its breast yellow. I held my breath, so keen was I not to frighten the bird away. It pecked hither and thither for a bit, then took off and flew out of my field of vision. I dearly wanted to see more, and so I got up and flipped the curtain over the top of the door, ready to be reprimanded by the nearest pirate, but no one was in sight and nothing happened. So I sat up on the mattress, with my back to the wall, and caught sight of the bird, which had alighted on a branch of the tree in the yard, and was looking about it with quick darting movements of the head. Then it took wing again and flew down to the rind of melon it had abandoned. When it opened its wings the effect was briefly dazzling, rainbow-like.

I was so delighted by this spectacle that on the rare occasions when I had melon I made sure to save the rind for inducement purposes, and I was usually successful in luring the blue bird down to my door. A few other times I experimented by sacrificing a bit of my morning potato and leaving it outside my door. Sadly, it transpired that the staple of my diet wasn’t fit for the birds, as there were never any takers.

This innocent little enjoyment was brought to an end by a familiar culprit. I had set out the melon rind and the blue bird had flown down to peck at it. As I watched, Kaalim came out of the African House, saw the bird and then me, barked ‘No’ and stomped over. The bird flew off, and Kaalim picked up the rind and tossed it away over the wall.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, 25 January, I listened loyally to the
Strand
arts show on the World Service, and the focus of the
day’s programme was a grand and remarkable-sounding exhibition about to open at the British Museum, entitled
Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam.
The presenter, wandering around the exhibits and talking to the curator about the themes, spoke of a global upsurge of interest in Islamic art, old and new, in New York and Paris just as in London. The centrepiece of the exhibition concerned the famous pilgrimage to Mecca, which, I learned, every able-bodied Muslim is expected to make at least once in a lifetime. The curator spoke intriguingly of how the exhibition tried to offer some insight into the collective spiritual experience of the great crowds at Mecca by using moving images right along the walls of the corridor through which visitors entered the Museum, enhanced by ambient sound: the desired effect being to make people feel they were moving together in the throng, sharing in the quest.

Increasingly fascinated, I listened to further descriptions of the content of the exhibition: rare and beautiful artefacts from holy Islamic sites around the world, but also contemporary artworks, intended to point up both the cultural specificities of Islam but also its interactions with different cultures, and certain subtle transformations that occurred in these meetings.

What gripped me above all, I think, was the notion of a world of art and cultural richness emanating from and informed by Islam. And I was keen to acquaint myself with it. I was perfectly familiar with the psychological phenomenon of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ – whereby prisoners slowly come to identify with and share the values of their captors – and I knew very well that nothing of that sort was motivating me now. What I wanted, rather, was to discover something about Islam beyond the simple rote of prayer and strict ritual that I had witnessed daily out here in the Somali desert. Hankering after the exhibition was one
more inner expression of my desire to roam free, regain my old life, break out of the shackles that sat so heavily on me in captivity.

So I said to myself that, yes, I would love to pay a visit to
Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam
– and according to
The Strand
I had until mid-April to try to get myself there. That was one more prospective date to mark in the diary, one more aspiration.

The following afternoon the radio brought dramatic news, and the moment I heard it I knew it was going to impact on my own predicament. The World Service bulletin reported that two foreign-aid workers kidnapped by Somali pirates three months earlier – an American woman, Jessica Buchanan, and a Danish man by the name of Poul Hagen Thisted – had now been sprung from captivity following a raid by US Navy SEALs dropped into Somalia by parachute under cover of darkness. These
special-forces
soldiers had entered the kidnappers’ camp on foot, apparently intended to take prisoners, but a gunfight ensued in which nine Somali pirates had been killed. I was stunned by the violence of it, but hugely glad to hear the hostages had made it out unscathed; and it emerged from the news that Jessica Buchanan had been in ailing health and worsening, a factor that hastened the US decision to attempt an armed rescue.

As I listened, my memory stirred. In the midst of Ali’s occasional reports on all the nations of the world who had citizens held hostage somewhere in Somalia, I was sure he had mentioned at least one American … And I could only imagine that Jessica Buchanan and her family – and also the American government and people – were elated that this high-stakes operation had been a success. As for the group of pirates who
had taken her and Mr Thisted for money, they had been made to pay the highest price.

That night I awoke to familiar commotion around me, Ali by the bed with the black bag … and I couldn’t say I was surprised. Ali, Bambi and Ibrahim had settled down to sleep in the room with me but now it was ‘action stations’ and we were packing up to go.

I decided to ask Ali direct, since I was sure there could be only one answer. ‘You know what is this all about?’

He nodded. ‘You hear BBC yesterday?’

‘I did. So it’s about the two people who were rescued?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Big Man not want people in the village to know where you are.’

I wondered then if I was about to be removed some distance from the village, somewhere new, and perhaps more daunting. I was driven past the Big House and out of the village but very quickly, and glumly, I knew we were headed back to Horrible House.

It was clear to me that something about the rescue of Jessica Buchanan, not least the swift and startling manner of its execution, had rattled the pirates. Their communal addiction to their phones had been so pronounced that I couldn’t fail to notice, the following day, that they were all now deprived of handsets. When I questioned him on this Ali confirmed there had been a mass confiscation by the leadership: I assumed it had to be a security issue, to do with data and the risk of being traced.

‘What happens if anything goes wrong here?’ I asked. ‘Surely you need one phone to be able to contact somebody?’

He shrugged. I felt sure there had to be a phone stashed somewhere, even if it was turned off and its sim card removed.

‘This doesn’t make sense to me,’ I pressed Ali. ‘At the Big House there were twenty guards, high walls, iron gates – if anyone were to try to rescue me there it would be a tall order. Here it’s so much more vulnerable …’

‘Big Man fed up,’ said Ali, quite shortly. ‘He fed up of paying for you to be here. Ollie must get money …’

That was disconcerting. I had been on the sparsest rations for so long, I was slowly wasting away. The idea that some austerity drive was about to be applied to the costs of ‘looking after me’ gave me a queasy feeling. It also seemed to me that the pirates, too, had good reason to be anxious.

‘How would you feel, do you think, if soldiers came in here, with guns, and rescued me? Some of you might be killed, if that happened. Does that not worry you?’

Ali only shrugged his bony shoulders and smiled. ‘No happen.’

You’re all too comfortable
, I thought,
and too cocky
. Still, I wasn’t allowing myself any daydreams of the SAS parachuting into Horrible House armed to the teeth. In fact the very thought rather chilled me. If I could have sent out a message to the authorities it would have been, ‘Don’t rescue me. Leave me here and I’ll stay the course. I can cope.’

It wasn’t that I had such fervent hopes of an imminent release for myself. I remained utterly certain Ollie would do it, but in terms of timings, things had gone worryingly quiet again. I hadn’t seen the Negotiator for some time.

Moreover, I was unreservedly pleased for Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted, especially since the American woman’s medical situation had sounded quite dire. This rescue had worked, after clearly immense efforts, with great credit to the
doubtless crack team of Navy SEALs who had put their lives on the line. But the risks still seemed to me enormous, and clearly an element of luck was needed too. Surely things could always go horribly wrong: sending armed men into a bolt-hole of more armed men made me think how easily people could die – the kidnappers, their victims, the rescuers, innocent bystanders, all.

And I didn’t want my kidnappers dead. Some of them were just young boys – foolish and corrupted, for sure, but boys none the less. David had been killed: that terrible act had wrecked my life and my son’s life. But if these criminals were killed in turn, it wouldn’t affect only them – their families too, their children, if children they had. I was well aware, sitting in my squalid cell of a room, that perhaps I was ‘too soft’. I was certainly clear that for these pirates there had to be consequences for their actions. I wanted them caught, made to face trial and punishment – but not capital punishment. I didn’t want an eye for an eye. I couldn’t stomach any more death.

My fears of a new austerity were very quickly borne out. In every respect this new phase of captivity was a bare-bones operation. Only four pirates were guarding me, and just one of them armed with the big tripod-mounted gun. Provisions, too, were shrunk. Rather than the routine of deliveries into the compound, at 5 p.m. each night Gerwaine would wash, put on a jacket and an Arab headdress over his shoulder, splash cologne on his cheeks – clearly an effort to appear ‘presentable’ – and would head out of the compound in the direction of the village. He usually returned around 7 p.m. I was served one meal a day, an evening meal, of which I immediately learned to save a little for the following morning. But these were starvation measures.

My guards’ diet, as far as I could see, had changed too. All they appeared to eat now was unleavened bread and tins of an unappetising-looking cheese.

I was tired, weak and hungry more or less constantly. I wondered if my walking structure would be at all feasible. But before I arrived at a firm decision it was taken out of my hands.

On my second evening of this stint in Horrible House I felt cramps in my stomach, so painful that I had to take to my bed. But I couldn’t sleep for the stabbing pains, and I tossed and turned in misery. In the morning Ali saw my pallor clearly, and knew very well how much I had suffered through the night. But he and the other guards simply retreated to the little African round house, and I was left alone again, forlornly listening to the radio from a prone position on the mattress. The pains were going nowhere, and their gnawing consistency reduced me to tears. I was still weeping, curled in a foetal position, vainly seeking some relief, when Ali entered with Gerwaine behind him.

‘What the matter? Bad stomach … ?’

He tried to convince me to lie out flat but I simply couldn’t. I had a headache and a temperature, sweat was running off me. After tutting a little they left me again and the dark slowly came down, with me unable to turn off my tears. But when they returned they had a tablet for me, a white capsule.

‘Make you better,’ Ali said. I swallowed it, in hope. But it had no immediate effect – and no gradual one, either.

For the next day and the next I was gripped with pain, my stomach rock hard, periodically reduced to retching. I was so weak that in the toilet I had no choice but to use the protruding branch to pull myself up, knowing I’d come away with bugs on my hand. Nor could I wash myself, as I hadn’t the strength to
carry the bucket. I was wretchedly ill, and in possibly the worst imaginable place to be so utterly debilitated.

On the third day I told Ali I had to be taken to a hospital. I really feared for how bad I was and how much worse I might get. Hospital was, as I guessed, not an option. But this time I received two sets of tablets, white and red/black, with
pharmacy-written
instructions scrawled on a piece of paper. Ali explained I was to take the whites every three hours, the red and black at night. I actually believed these pills would work: there was something about the touch of extra care in the prescription. And they did.

The gradual improvement in my health was of much less interest to my guards, though, than the restoration of their beloved mobile phones, an occasion for joy followed by hours of adolescent-like absorption in those small screens. For me, the hopes I had of a little more restful sleep now that my pains were receding were dashed: once again I had to lie awake past 1 a.m. as Ali, Gerwaine and Jamal continued to download and trade pictures, phones aglow in the dark.