Fractured: International Hostage Thriller

by Clàr NÕ Chonghaile

  A glimmer of hope flared in my brain, so strong I feared they might see a cartoon lightbulb flashing above my head. I struggled to stifle it. This guy did not sound like an Al-Shabaab leader. Besides, I was still alive. I was not being beaten or tortured. If he belonged to Al-Shabaab, he would not be talking politely to an infidel, a kaffir, a Western journalist. Al-Shabaab would drag me to a dank room, seat me in front of a cheap video camera and film me begging the powers that be to free their brothers, withdraw African troops from Somalia, and let them turn this land into a country-sized, Taliban-style prison. I had seen these videos from Somalia and elsewhere. I wanted to look away, to turn from this humiliation, but the desperate eyes always seem to beg the viewer to stay. As if witnesses, even virtual, could somehow prevent the worst.

  “I’m at a disadvantage here,” I said slowly, savouring this opportunity to speak. “You know me, but who are you?”

  Brown, khat-stained teeth flashed again as his face split into what passed for his smile.

  “You are not a journalist now. No more questions,” he said. “That part of your time here in Somalia is over.”

  He nodded his head to one of the yes-men and I was prodded across the dusty yard to the brick shed, scattering the chickens. My guard pushed me inside, as though I had any resistance left, or anywhere else to go. I almost laughed at this clichéd gesture. Sometimes, I think we have all watched so many movies that we have no originality left. We mimic the screen, while we think it mimics us. He locked the door and left me to my trivial thoughts.

  In this new room, I have a little light from a small, square hole high up in the back wall, a glassless, barred window on the shrunken world. At night, when moonlight shines through the thick bars, this hole looks like the mouth of a fiendish spirit. It leers at me, filling my dreams with horror until I wake, drenched in sweat but shivering in the night chill. For a moment, I am terrified, until I realise it was a dream, then I remember reality, and I am terrified again.

  I have a mattress now. Thin, stained and itchy. The same blanket. Another bucket. And another mat on a bare concrete floor in front of a wooden door shot through with rusty studs. The dust and the mosquitoes torment me but it is a small price to pay for the light.

  I am trying to structure my days. If I cannot control my fate, I can at least put my mark on what happens inside these four walls. When the sun sends its delicious rays through my devil’s mouth, I turn to the light and lie on my bed for a while. This is my time to think of my parents, of Paris, my school friends, my cousins. I actively recreate each person, quizzing myself on exact hair colour, shape of eyes. I pretend I have to write a character sketch of each individual. I think of good times and bad times. I tally my findings.

  And I think of Michelle. Of what she must be feeling now. I am putting her through so much, and this is only the tip of the iceberg. If I am killed, it will be but the beginning of my betrayal. I do not, I cannot dwell on this. When I think of Michelle, I must acknowledge what she does not know, all of it, and these thoughts flay my mind. When I can no longer stand it – and this is another betrayal, I know – I move to the red mat and sit cross-legged.

  This is where I think of my situation. In my mind, it’s really My Situation. I prefer to think of it in capitals, like a crosshead, one of those partial headlines that journalists use ostensibly to keep our readers going beyond the first four paragraphs, but mainly to help our editors get through the article. If what is happening is but a crosshead, then surely it must end so that we can progress to the next section. My Release? My Recovery? Or, in my more gloomy moments, I think, My Death.

  After sitting on the mat for a while, I do some exercises. Push-ups, squats and some jogging on the spot. I have always hated exercise, and I am too floppy for a 30-year-old, although my height makes me look slender. It’s another optical illusion. You see a handsome man and you think he is an interesting man, a man with something to say. Isn’t it what we do all the time? Don’t good-looking people always benefit from a beauty handicap when they speak? Their every utterance sounds more weighty, more captivating. We mistake our eyes for our ears. Like I said, an optical illusion.

  These daily exercises take a long time. But time is the one thing I have a lot of right now. That’s the irony. I have hour after hour of inactivity and endless thought until I feel like I am going mad. But always the fear, the fear that someone, somewhere, has a pair of scissors poised over the fabric of my existence.

  A little later, my food comes. The skinny teenager brings it. He is back, like a guardian angel. Or a talisman. Now we talk a little. It happened on my second day here. I finished my stew, mopping the greasy dregs with hard, mouldy bread, and he offered me a cigarette again. I didn’t speak while I smoked. I needed to feel each puff. My daily smoke makes me high now. The way your first cigarette makes you wonderfully sick to your stomach and delightfully giddy. A guilt-and-nicotine rush.

  Maybe it was the nicotine racing through my blood that dared me to speak after I had crushed the miniscule butt on the concrete floor.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Mahadsanid.”

  His eyes remained fixed on mine. He shifted his feet, large and knobbly and coated with dust. He wore cheap red flip flops. He was sitting on the mattress, his gun across his legs.

  “What is your name, friend?” I asked. I didn’t really expect him to answer. He probably didn’t speak English.

  “Abdi, my name is Abdi.”

  He picked up the tin bowl and the spoon and left.

  Abdi? Many of the men I met over the years in Somalia called themselves Abdi. If I were Somali, and brave or foolhardy enough to talk to a foreign journalist, I would probably call myself Abdi.

  Last time I visited, I asked Guled about this. He had been my paper’s fixer and occasional stringer for three years, and at fifty-five was a tough, cautious survivor, who found humour in the blackest of situations.

  Guled smiled. He always smiled, whatever I asked him. A smile did not necessarily mean he knew the answer. Neither did it necessarily mean he was amused.

  “Abdi means servant. It is a very common name here, very common,” he said, chuckling and flicking ash from his cigarette out of the car window as he drove at breakneck speed through Mogadishu’s ‘green zone’, the few blocks of deconstructed buildings held by the transitional government and the AMISOM peacekeepers at the time. I was on my way to interview the minister for information and was hunkered low in the back seat.

  I could see Guled’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. One cloudy, one clear. He had cataracts and could barely see out of his right eye.

  “But do you think it’s always the person’s real name?” I persisted.

  He laughed uproariously, tipping his head back so that all I saw was the henna-orange beard covering his chin and the wrinkles on his neck.

  “Ah, Peter. What do I always tell you? Never trust a Somali. We cannot be trusted.”

  His shoulders shook.

  “And what is a name, my friend? I would still be your friend whether my name was Guled or Abdi. Maybe my name is Omar. What do you care? If I am your friend, I am your friend. At least as long as I want to be. If I am not your friend, the question of my name is irrelevant.”

  I laughed with him.

  Guled was my friend. He trusted me as much as he trusted anyone. He didn’t see that I was a human vortex, sucking lives and hopes and dreams into my own personal void. What does it mean to be the friend of a man who cannot care, or who will not care? One day I will ask the others. For Guled, I will never know, but I bet he would have answered with a laugh.

  CHAPTER TWO

  PETER

  This is what happened. This is my mind-movie and it plays on a loop in this dark, cinema cell. I came to Somalia on July 23rd. A lot of journalists don’t travel here – it’s too dangerous, too expensive, and really who cares? But the International Post is based in Washington, and Somalia was hot then because of the links between Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda. Congress was about to
hold another hearing on the radicalisation of American Muslims, and Somalia was hovering near the top of the domestic policy agenda. A rarity.

  “I want a solid piece on what this is about, today. Why are these young guys going? Where exactly are they going? And who is paying them?” Don Struddle, the Post’s foreign editor, barked down the phone from the paper’s offices in a dour brown-and-cream building overlooking McPherson Square on 15th Street.

  Don is a thirty-year veteran of the news-today-fishwrapper-tomorrow world. He is spherical, balding, bearded and red-faced from his whiskey nipping. His fuse is as short as his sentences.

  “The Homeland Security Committee is going to zero in on Al-Shabaab at the end of the month. I want a solid piece before that. No expense spared.”

  He permitted himself a chuckle.

  “I say that, but remember this is a dying industry.”

  “It’s not going to be easy, Don,” I said, thinking mournfully of the hassle involved in getting into Mogadishu. It’s not that I didn’t want to go on another trip, but this was no walk-in-the-park assignment, and I wanted to be sure my editor understood that. I’ve found that diminishing expectations is key to delivering acceptable results.

  “I get it,” he said rapidly, like a man running out of time, or more likely patience.

  “I’m not asking for the moon. Do your best. Be careful. But get me something meaty. And play up the terrorism angle. If Al-Shabaab wasn’t chopping off hands and feet, banning football, bras and samosas shaped like the Holy Trinity, plus threatening global jihad, this would just be another African basket case. I need you to tell us why we care.”

  “It’s going to be pretty complicated for your average reader,” I cautioned.

  “There’s way more going on than just bad guys versus good guys. You’ve got your warlords, your venal politicians and your aid-swiping militias. Somalia is a witch’s cauldron – think of anything that can complicate life in a country, throw it in, and stir it around.”

  I paused because I could see Michelle chopping tomatoes. I could tell she was listening, and not happily. I shrugged my shoulders apologetically in the general direction of her furrowed brow, and left our ‘bijou’ kitchen. For Don, the pause was as good as an invitation.

  “I may be old but I’m not stupid, Peter. I know it’s your patch but I read the wires too. I get all that. But the paper cares today because of domestic politics. Keep that in mind.”

  From across the Atlantic, I could hear his heavy breathing. I knew he wasn’t worked up. That was just how Don always breathed, as if he was offended that he had to, as if it was an imposition on his precious time.

  “And give me some solutions. I don’t want another whiny piece about how desperate it is. I know the food situation is dire. They’re even starting to mention the F-word. But get me some answers on what needs to be done. Throw it forward.”

  “Forwards or backwards, it’s always about money, Don,” I said. Now that I was out of range of Michelle’s silent rage, I was getting into my stride and enjoying the chance to pontificate on a subject I had studied for months.

  “Why are so many young kids joining Al-Shabaab, both locals and foreigners? Yes, some of them are kidnapped or coerced, but that’s not the whole story. The name Al-Shabaab might mean ‘the youth’ but the hard core’s perverted version of Islam has nothing to do with the joy of youth. It’s all about control, power and money. Always money.”

  Don laughed.

  “Preaching to the converted, Peter. Save it for the paper. I know you get it. Now go get me the story. Good lad.”

  Don hung up, leaving me fired up and smiling. He’s a clever operator. No wonder my mother liked him. She had known him in the field. I could only imagine what Don’s passion was like then, when he took on stories face-to-face before he was promoted to long-distance nannying.

  Michelle was furious. We were supposed to go away the following weekend to the Loire Valley. She had spent weeks searching for the perfect hotel, finally booking an overpriced, over-chintzed room with an elaborate four-poster bed.

  She had taken the Friday off work and I had agreed reluctantly. Sure, it would be fun, and the Loire Valley is stunning in an over-the-top, Louis XIVth way, but it seemed like a lot of hard work, and hard cash, essentially for something I could get at home.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out to hug her. She stepped back, shaking her head.

  “You know how it is. I can’t say no. This is my job, Michelle.”

  She didn’t bother answering, and she didn’t speak much over the next few days. There was nothing to say. When the taxi hooted in the pre-dawn dark on the day I left Paris, her kiss was closed, dry and abrupt. I didn’t blame her, but neither did I blame myself.

  By the time I got to Charles de Gaulle airport, slaloming through a freakishly heavy summer downpour, I was already gone from her, or rather she had been swirled down a time tunnel to the limbo-land where I store my erratic personal life while on assignment. She was no longer on my mind. I boarded the flight to London where I would catch a connection to Nairobi. My biggest worry was that the rain might delay the plane.

  Sitting here now, I don’t blame Don. I knew the risks. Most journalists travel into Somalia with the African Union peacekeepers. There’s a misnomer. There’s no peace to keep, and the underpaid, ill-equipped Burundians and Ugandans who make up most of the force would not be the ones to keep it if there were. Instead, they hole up at the airport and around the presidential palace, trying to keep the transitional government safe, lobbing the occasional mortar towards Al-Shabaab and obliterating civilians along the way. Collateral damage is a whole class of people in Mogadishu, a ghost town where young, red-eyed, angry zombies spook the streets.

  As I stood smoking outside Heathrow’s Terminal Four, I remembered my first visit to Somalia two years ago. Then I sped through the streets in a Casspir, one of the armoured personnel carriers used by the peacekeepers. The plastic seat coverings were ripped and the felt on the underside of the ceiling was coming off, but there was a dried yellow flower hanging beside the windscreen. Behind me, two red-eyed jittery gunners stood on the seats, their heads and shoulders rising out of the roof hatch as they swept the streets with machine guns.

  We rushed to the frontline between the Al-Shabaab-controlled south of the city and the government-run mini-state. We ran along abandoned trenches, occasionally spotting the covered heads of the rebel fighters just yards away. We ducked behind walls peppered with bullet holes.

  When they called my flight, I picked up my computer bag with a sigh. I was anxious, but also eager to be back in that Boy’s Own world where every emotion was heightened, where even boredom had an edge.

  This time I didn’t want to have anything to do with AMISOM. I don’t like people looking over my shoulder and I don’t like going where I’m told, even in Somalia. It might smack of arrogance, and maybe there is a bit of that, but I prefer to call it being professionally savvy. I couldn’t do this story with a babysitter. It wasn’t my first time in Mogadishu and I felt like I knew the city, or the bits of it that I had been permitted to see. Guled would see me safe and I knew too that he, like all Somalis, had friends with guns. As long as I was willing to pay, it should all be fine. As I headed to the gate, I nervously tapped the bundle of dollars inside my jacket.

  It was dark when we landed in Nairobi, a schizophrenic city locked in an erratic orbit between the gutter and the stars. I lived in the Kenyan capital for six months after getting my journalism degree from City University in 2002. I scraped a living from small-fry freelancing and kept hunger at bay by drinking a lot of Tusker, my beer of choice. I lived in a seedy hostel that reeked of cooked cabbage and mould, smoked cheap bhang on the roof, and had uncomplicated sex with curvy Kenyans who knew what they were doing, and earnest aid workers who didn’t, in bed or out.

  I still knew a few people from those iridescent days, and from more sober work trips since, and I decided to risk rush-hour mayhem to see them. O
ver mojitos at the Havana bar in brassy, sassy Westlands, we distilled the years into snappy stories, and then spilled onto the throbbing street to smoke and watch the city’s beautiful people: girls in preposterously high heels and sequined, low-cut tops, stepping delicately around taxis and puddles, shouting in sheng to men swaggering in chinos and untied trainers, mobile phones at the ready.

  Next day, I drove through the city before the sun’s rays brought the daily gridlock to life, and caught a small plane from Wilson Airport to Mogadishu. We flew in over the limpid, deceitful Indian Ocean, and dived sharply onto the pitted tarmac. Outside, the air remoulded our features, sheening them with sweat as the wind cheekily tugged at the scarves the women on my flight had hastily pulled over their hair.

  The crashing of the waves filled my ears, making thought impossible. The squat airport building sat low in the heat, as if reluctant to be here. Clustered outside were men in loud shirts and louder sunglasses. There was backslapping, handshakes and loud bellows of laughter. You’ll find the same characters everywhere, but in Mogadishu, there is something extra. Inside the terminal, AMISOM troops in full battle gear watched the doors, the stone in their faces reflected in the way they held their sub-machine guns.

  Guled was leaning against the hood of his brown Toyota Corolla outside the terminal’s main gate. When he saw me, he straightened slowly, threw down his cigarette, and came forward, arms outstretched. A laugh ran before him like an unruly page boy.

  “Salaam alaikum, Peter. You can’t stay away. Good to see you, man!”

  “Salaam alaikum, Guled. How are you? How is the family?”

  “They are well, surviving,” he said, taking my bag and throwing it into the boot. He laughed again.

  “Come on, let’s not talk here.”

  I got into the back of the car. Guled had hired some armed men for the journey to his home. We would travel down Maka al Mukarama, an uneasy trip along a stretch of fragmented tarmac. The road ran from the airport to the presidential palace and it was the government’s lifeline, its link to the planes that could get the elite out of Somalia and into the relative safety and sanity of Nairobi.