A Long Walk Home: One Woman's Story of Kidnap, Hostage, Loss - and Survival (26 page)

That Ollie was in Nairobi made my deliverance seem
stunningly
close at hand. The details he gave were so precise, so long wished for, that I almost had to catch my breath.

‘Now did you write that name, Mum? Tell me what I just said …?’

I read everything back to him as I was told, and he was satisfied.

‘One more thing, Mum. At the airport, or when you’re taken there, if anyone says they want to interview you, don’t say
anything
, don’t answer any questions.’

‘OK, I understand.’

‘Right. So with a bit of luck I will see you tomorrow, we’ll be together.’

Those simple, familiar words, ‘see you tomorrow’, had never been so full of promise.

‘OK. I love you very much. And, Mum, don’t forget, if it doesn’t happen tomorrow, for whatever reason, don’t worry, we’re still going to get you out.’

‘I understand, Ollie. I trust you, I know you’ll do it.’

The line went dead, the phone was taken from me and I was left alone. But part of me just wanted to skip around, laugh, jump in the air and shout ‘Hallelujah’. I restrained myself, I listened to a logical inner voice that said:
Remember, it all hinges
on the pirates honouring whatever deal’s been made. So keep it calm, don’t get excited, and maybe – maybe – this time tomorrow you’ll be homeward bound …

Ali came back in, grinning, both thumbs aloft. ‘You go
tomorrow
, me go, we go together!’

‘You’re sure that’s true?’

‘Yeah, yeah! You go.’

The Negotiator joined us, looking smug. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘I told you: Twenty-one. You go tomorrow.’

‘But am I going home tomorrow?’ I felt that I needed to hear the word from the horse’s mouth, as it were.

‘Yeah,’ he shrugged. ‘Different pirates. But you go …’

That sent a shiver up my spine. Did he mean I was going to be taken out only to be handed over to a different pirate group? That old threat of the Fat Controller’s, to sell me on, cut his losses?

‘What do you mean? You’re not making yourself clear.’

‘I tell you, you go home, find yourself another husband.’

‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘No more husband for me.’

‘Sure you get husband. You go home, you have big story to tell …’

And with that he strutted off, unassailable in his arrogant delusion. I felt a bit deflated. Was I being over-cautious,
looking
to pick holes in the apparent good news? Maybe so. But I knew for sure that as of now I just had to give myself up to the unfolding of events. And so I started another walk, not letting myself think that it might be the last, that home was in sight on the horizon …

I was soon conscious that outside in the compound there was a lot of activity, things being tidied up, the usual augury of a move. Amina’s daughter came in with a piece of melon for me. She smiled, gave me a big hug, and waved as she went out, as if in farewell. Shortly thereafter the Beautiful Woman paid me a visit too, taking my hand in both of hers, shaking it gently and bowing her head. Then she touched my face, with a smile, and walked out. Together these felt an awful lot like last goodbyes.

Then Ali came back. ‘We go, we all go. We all leave tonight,’ he said. ‘To town. But first you sleep. I wake you up, like before. You get your things ready.’

I didn’t need telling twice. Into my black binliner I packed my exercise books and pens, my tissues with concealed descriptions, my fag-packet game. Into the cardboard box that normally housed my water bottles I placed various things – my torch, the clothes pegs from the Big House, a thorn toothpick wrapped in tissue, my tube of toothpaste (utterly flattened) and toothbrush (bristles ragged). Pride of place, though, was my ‘going-away outfit’, folded up in its very own binbag. All the signs were telling me that its moment had finally come. I put the black binliner on
top of the box, ready for the off. I walked, washed my hair, and was under the sheet as usual by nine o’clock.

My bed rattled beneath me. I woke straight away.
God, it’s going to happen
, I thought. The usual hushed flurry of activity went on about me, Ali and Kaalim taking charge of clearing the room. I checked my watch. It was 11 p.m. Impulsively I asked Ali if it might be possible for me to say goodbye to Amina. He hastened out.

I saw that my black binbag was no longer sitting on top of my box but had been shifted back to the floor – clearly it had been interfered with while I slept. My heart sank. I checked inside, and knew straight away that something was amiss. My writing books were gone: someone had rummaged in the bag and removed them. The fag-packet game was gone, too – after all my labours in its making. I was certain Gerwaine had helped himself to that: certainly he had coveted it. And the English–Somali school workbook Jamal had given me had also been reclaimed, though I wasn’t surprised, for I’d noticed it had phone numbers written on the back cover. But my books were a bitter loss. They represented such a vital part of my life over six months: so much had gone into them, and they held a great deal of
meaning
for me. I didn’t query the loss, not wanting to draw attention to my feelings on the matter. But as the pirates’ clearing went on around me I made a token search, even using the torch to peer under the bed. It was hopeless, however. I was a bit crushed, but I told myself:
They’re only books, Jude. So you’ll just have to rely on your memory. Get your head on straight – you’re leaving.
What I still had, vitally to me, was my set of written descriptions of the pirates and compounds, safely secreted in a packet of tissues. I
resolved now to keep that packet held tightly in my hand: there was no way I would allow them to get it from me.

Then, to my delight, Amina came in. I hadn’t seen her pleasant face for months, and she looked fantastic in a bright red
jilbab
. She laughed and hugged me tightly, big as ever on human
contact
, the simple thing that I’d appreciated above all in her. She patted my head and my shoulder, said, ‘You go, you go’, beaming at me. I tried to let her know I had been grateful for the kindness she’d shown me. And then she was gone.

Ali tapped my shoulder. ‘My watch? I need from you.’

I unstrapped the black plastic Casio he’d loaned me all those months ago – a little ruefully, as it was one more item of evidence I had hoped to smuggle out, and had been playing dumb about in hope. But now I had to return what was his.

I put my black bag inside my box, lifted it in my arms – and then I realised, for a moment at least, that I had been left alone. All the pirates were now outside, busily and hastily dismantling things. The curtain had been detached from over the doorway and I could see flashes of illumination from phone screens flitting about the darkened yard as the pirates lit their way in the usual improvised manner. I felt a cool breeze about me, as I turned and surveyed the room: the mosquito net and mattress were gone, as indeed was any trace that I had been the tenant in this place. I looked about, and felt myself briefly suffused by the strangest sense of leave-taking that I had ever experienced.

Was I really leaving, though? It still felt to me, rather, that I was awaiting an uncertain fate.

Ali came in, smiling broadly. ‘We go now,’ he said.

‘But where?’

He simply took the box from my hands. I saw now that Kaalim was outside, beckoning me through the door. Even he
looked to be in cheery spirits. We passed out through the narrow gate of Tall Man’s compound. The moon shone above and I realised that there were a lot of bodies milling around: all the pirates were in attendance, including some faces I hadn’t seen for months. I remembered Ali’s words: ‘We all go. We all leave tonight.’

Three cars were parked in close formation and I was directed into the middle vehicle. To my surprise the Leader was at the wheel, Chair Man riding shotgun. I climbed into the middle of the back seat, clutching my black bag. And I sat there,
unattended
, in silence, while all the cars were loaded up with goods and chattels. I craned my head round and saw that my box was stacked in the trunk of this car. It was nestled amid full boxes of water, black binbags stuffed with clothing, assorted pieces of weaponry, and my green bowl and water containers.

A sudden terror overtook me:
I shouldn’t need that bowl any more – unless I’m not going, unless they’re taking me to new pirates, trading me in, so I have to start all over again, in a strange place with strangers
… I could feel my hand slipping from the tiller of composure, and I struggled in myself to wrest back control.
Come on, think positive, they’ve just emptied the place so as to leave no evidence
…Of course, everything pointed to this being my best chance of deliverance yet. It was only that I had been taken to the edge before, could not bear to be let down – had grown frightened of hoping.

Ali, Jamal and Mohammed joined me in the back of the vehicle, and I saw Gerwaine locking up the gate of Tall Man’s House. Then we pulled away, taking a route out of the village that was new to me. I saw a pharmacy, with a light on, and someone sitting in its doorway. A donkey was tied up at the right-hand side. But the car’s headlights were turned off, as ever,
and through the windows the darkness of the night was
profound
. Yet I had the strangest sense that I was emerging at last from the depths of a dungeon, stepping into the light.

We travelled in convoy formation, with ‘my’ car in the middle. Once we passed into desert, we quickly picked up speed. The car in front zoomed off into the distance. Chair Man muttered something to the Leader, who stepped on the accelerator and starting gaining ground. The lead changed hands several times as we travelled over hard sand and defined tracks, but rocky areas slowed us down, requiring the Leader to make some sharp swerves. The surrounding countryside was treeless, but with lots of low thorny shrubs. We drove through the night, with occasional stops for someone to relieve himself. In the back I had to twist and use my elbows to make space. Even so, Jamal’s
AK
47 poked into my arm, and then my ribs, for some hours.

As we sped onward – the mood in the car tense, restrained and silent, the vehicle’s headlights revealing precious little of the pitch black all around us – I couldn’t help starting to feel that, rather than being ferried towards light, I was being taken down a dark and endless tunnel, towards a perilous unknown.

And then from out of the relentlessly arid landscape came a surrealistic wonder. We approached an old bus at the side of the track with three men standing by it as if it had broken down. It was painted in the brightest, near-psychedelic, colours – red, yellow, turquoise, like something one might see in Bangalore – and was further festooned with plastic flowers. Our convoy pulled in behind it, the Leader climbed out, and I had a sickening feeling that we had reached a spot where I was to be traded to some new pirate group. I sat in the back, clenched inside,
awaiting
my summons. The Leader returned, evidently from one more
‘rest-room break’, and we were off again, leaving that magic bus behind us in the Somali scrubland.

The sun was creeping up as I felt the car slow down, and through the windshield I seemed to see a man lying supine under a
blanket
by the side of a desert track, as if he’d made his bed there the night before. The Leader parked up beside him. I wasn’t
permitted
to get out, but the others all did, and they greeted the desert pilgrim in friendly fashion, shaking hands, chatting. We dallied there for twenty minutes or so, until the car behind joined us, at which point the pirates all set about their prayers. I sat and watched, nearly boiling over with impatience, with nothing else to look at but the flat countryside all around beneath the rising sun. I knew I would have no peace today until I was sitting on that plane.

Pieties completed, the pirates all piled back into the cars and we pushed off again. The Leader produced his phone and tried to make a call, unsuccessfully, seeming to struggle for a signal. He barked at Chair Man and Jamal and they both made similar efforts, to no greater effect. At last the Leader got through and had a short, sharp conversation. For me this was a kind of déjà vu, reminding of all the tortuous calling required to get me onto dry land after I was taken up the Somali coastline in the skiff.

It was around 7 a.m. when we pulled into a sparsely wooded area, and there we waited. In the silence Ali nudged me. ‘They wait for the men from the town to come and get you,’ he said helpfully. But nothing was putting me entirely at ease yet.

The Leader took another phone call, and as soon as it was done we drove on just a little further, into a clearing marked out by four big mature trees set out almost in a square, hemmed by
lots of tall shrubbery. Here, the pirate convoy had gathered. We seemed to have reached our destination. The pirates got out and mingled. From my back-seat berth I counted bodies and nearly all of them seemed to be in attendance: Kaalim, Gerwaine, Abdullah, Tall Man, Money, Bambi, Chair Man, Limping Man, Scary Man, Ibrahim – the whole contingent, the rogues’ gallery in full.

Then came a new arrival: a cream-beige car pulled into view, announced by a cloud of dust. A well-dressed man got out,
sporting
reflective aviator sunglasses, attended by a mini-entourage of two more smartly dressed men. ‘Aviator’ greeted and hugged Gerwaine, then strode past ‘my’ car and conferred with Chair Man, whose big muscular swagger seemed to evaporate before this new man’s notable self-assurance. Chair Man instantly turned gofer, and went round to lift open the boot of my car. As of now my panicked thought was: these are the new pirates, I’m about to be exchanged. But to my surprise Chair Man pulled out my box and brought it to Aviator, who issued a fresh instruction, whereupon Chair Man upended the box and tipped the contents out onto the sand.

‘What are you doing?’ I shouted from my sedentary position. ‘Leave my stuff alone!’ It was a moment of madness, I think. They ignored me, Aviator impassive with his arms folded while Chair Man took my torch apart then shook out my black
binliner
so my carefully folded going-away outfit joined the other items in the dirt. Ali and Abdullah were looking on, they too in seeming deference to the new authority. And then it was over. Chair Man shoved everything back into the box and returned it to the car boot.

This no longer felt like an exchange to me. What was perturbing was the demeanour of some of ‘my’ pirates. They
appeared newly nervous and edgy, and bristling with guns. I saw Kaalim, ribbons of bullets criss-crossing his body, run off with a big machine-gun and assume a position at a distance. Limping Man took up a mirroring position, while Scary Man got set up with his tripod-mounted weapon. Other pirates dotted
themselves
about, guns at the ready, visibly in anticipation of
something
big being about to happen. Gerwaine and Jamal, usually smiling, appeared fraught. I was unutterably tense. When Ali then climbed back in beside me, I leapt at him for information.

‘Why did he just do that with my box? What’s going on?’

‘He just check,’ Ali shrugged.

‘For what?’

‘Don’t worry, everything OK.’

‘So what happens now?

‘You stay here, we wait. I wait with you. Men come, then you get in other car. We go …’

As I logged this information I was conscious of the extreme peculiarity of my situation: here I sat, in conference with the modest kidnapper who was first to show me a morsel of
consideration
on the night I was taken. It felt like a full circle, and a surpassingly strange sort of private moment we were sharing. Beyond my window there was palpable tension: newcomers on new turf had taken charge, seemed to be calling the shots. But Ali and I, ensconced in the back of the car, carried on in the manner we had established, running down the clock on our forced association.

‘I not see you again after today,’ he said finally.

‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s a good thing. Will you be happy to see your wife and son?’

‘Very happy,’ he smiled. ‘I give him big hug.’

‘Right. What about your wife, though?’

‘She will make me good food,’ he said, his priorities clear. ‘And you?’

‘I’m looking forward to seeing my son,’ I murmured.

‘Yes. Say hello to Oliver for me.’

Not on your nelly,
I thought. But by now I was peering through the window fixedly. Another beige Toyota Land Cruiser had pulled into the clearing, and from the back of this vehicle stepped the Fat Controller and the Negotiator. The Leader hastened forwards to greet them, and the Fat Controller, visibly agitated, took his
kufiya
headscarf and fastened it under his chin, in the manner of a northern English housewife, looking as disgruntled as ever and yet more ridiculous. The Leader, inexplicably, did likewise. Then the Fat Controller got onto his phone and began a heated conversation, with lots of gesticulations and wandering about in small circles. The Negotiator, near by, was wearing his little blue spectacles and a patterned silk shirt. At intervals the Fat Controller would confer with him and he would make an agitated call of his own, pacing up and down the sand. Ali slipped out of the car and left me to my thoughts.

And then, all of a sudden, we had more company. A sleek black vehicle with mirrored windows pulled up, and some more well-dressed men climbed out. I was seized by anxiety: they looked very much to me like some new pirate clan, albeit a much more upscale operation. Again I feared I was about to be bartered, passed on, a new and higher price put on my life. The principal figure in the new party was a man in a blue linen suit who strode up to the Fat Controller with every sign of expecting a respectful reception – which was what he was given.

Meanwhile another vehicle came into view: a big truck with an open back packed full of soldiers – on closer inspection all very young men in camouflage uniforms, led by one older,
bearded man, all of them with rifles. As it parked up, I could see some of ‘my’ pirates welcoming the previous newcomers with hugs and pats on the back. Yet there was a visible distinction between the two groups, like that between city slickers and country folk, the authority evident in the clothes of the new men. They were spick and span, well groomed, their clothes newly bought, their shoes Western. By comparison the Fat Controller’s men had a jumbled, ill-fitting, rag-tag charity-shop demeanour about them.

There were more huddles and conversations punctuated by gestures and pacing. I had begun to fear that they were throwing dice for me, after a fashion. Then, in an instant, something had changed. Suddenly everyone was happy, shaking hands and hugging again, tramping off towards their respective vehicles. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing: I hadn’t noticed any sort of exchange of money – to my mind the crux of the matter, if I was really to go free.

The Negotiator came over to the car I was in and indicated that I should wind down the window. For some deep-seated personal reason I chose not to, leaving him to make himself understood through the glass.

‘Ten thirty,’ he shouted.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Airport ten thirty. Your flight ten thirty.’

‘So I
am
going today?’

‘You released today,’ he said coolly. ‘You released …’

A flush went through me. My heart pounded. Now Ali was coming back. He opened the car door and leaned in.

‘I say goodbye to you now. We go.’

‘So everything is fine? Has the money been exchanged?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but we go now, into bush. You go town. You get out of car.’

‘I don’t want to,’ I heard myself say. For whatever reason, the thought of exiting the car filled me with a profound dread of the unknown.

‘You must,’ Ali insisted, surprised. ‘You go with good people, they take you to town, then you go airport. You see
Oliver
today.’

He beckoned me out and at last I complied. He handed me my box from the boot, and I found myself standing in a pool of shade beside a bush, feeling strange to be outside, with the wind on my face, weary of mind and body. I still felt fearful and confused: whatever the good news, I had an obstinate feeling that this final stretch of my journey home might be the most precarious.

A young man in a red T-shirt sidled up to me. He was
clean-shaven
, short, quite handsome. He was flanked by another young guy whose T-shirt was blue, and who took my box from my hands.

‘Where are you taking that?’ I snapped. It was just a tatty old cardboard container of rubbish, and yet it was mine.

‘I’m just going to put it in the car,’ he replied in calm,
mellifluous
English. ‘Then we’ll go to town.’ Still, I watched him all the way to see he did as he said.

Mr Red told me he was a freelance journalist, and could I talk to him? But I remembered Ollie’s directive on this matter.

‘I don’t want to say anything,’ I said.

‘Can I take your photograph?’

‘I can’t stop you but I’m not saying anything.’

And so Mr Red trained a little video camera on me. He even asked me to walk around a little. I flat refused to play the circus act for him, and stood there, looking away from his lens, but for an occasional glare.

Mr Blue then stepped forward. ‘We’ll go in this car now,’ he said.

And I realised that everybody was doing just that all around the clearing – making as to depart en masse. ‘My’ pirates were getting back into the fleet of three vehicles, an uncomfortable squash of five or six bodies per car.

‘Where am I going?’

‘Just up the road, to town. You’ll have something to eat. You can rest before you get on the plane. Now would you like to come this way …?’

The courtesy was pronounced: no more tugging on my sleeve or prodding at me with a gun barrel. And yet, crazily, some part of me still found assurance in the devil I knew rather than the one I didn’t. These young men might have had unarguably better manners, but I wasn’t fully persuaded of their intentions for me.

But I walked – rather, hobbled – and allowed myself to be guided into the back of their four-wheel-drive. A third young man had joined us, wearing a white polo shirt; he was mixed race, with rather European features. As everyone buckled in, Mr Red, at my side, introduced himself properly as Ahmed. Then we were approached by one of the soldiers from the truck – turbaned, with a full beard, and conspicuously older than the others. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to me, then turned tail back to his truck, managing to seem not so much reassuring as enigmatic, even a little scary.

This car inched forward, and then stopped, as if to observe formally the passing out from the square of ‘my’ pirates. The car in which I’d been driven here was wheeling around and away. Ali and Limping Man were in the vehicle behind, and they rolled down their window and waved at me. I found myself raising a hand in response – since it was the familiar, strangely enough, that I was leaving behind. I could see the Fat Controller waddling off
too, followed by the Negotiator, who also saw me and waved. To him, though, I didn’t respond in kind. Now ahead of us the black vehicle with mirrored windows was heading off in the direction opposite to the pirates. The truck of soldiers moved off behind it, and our car followed. I didn’t look back.

We crossed flat barren desert, while, despite my earlier refusal, Ahmed hadn’t given up his efforts to question me, and I
continued
to disappoint him. Abruptly we hit a tarmac road –
pockmarked
by huge potholes, but indisputably tarmac. I thought,
My god, civilisation!
We turned right and didn’t drive far until we passed a sign:
WELCOME TO ADADO
.