The Sea and the Sand

by Finn Óg

  A whisper came to them, a ricochet off the corridor wall. Habid relaxed. Their foe was human. He had feared the feral dogs used in the prisons. He called out.

  “Who is there?”

  “Help us, please. They have locked us up. We have children here. Please!”

  The voice was a woman’s and she was immediately hushed. He heard a whimper of a child and then a man’s voice.

  “Whoever is there, please release the women and children. They have done nothing wrong.”

  The logic of what was happening appeared to Habid like an epiphany – his intellect so keen that he moved immediately to cash in. A fast turn with a raised elbow rattled the prisoner’s hanging jaw unnecessarily ensuring his silence. He reattached a cuff to one wrist and dragged the mute man into the darkness.

  “I have a man here, a filthy dog,” he called, willing his instincts to be correct but hedging his bets. If he’d got it wrong, he’d require some wriggle room.

  He edged closer to the noises and eventually came to a cage door. It was hard to make out but there were a dozen shapes inside, some huddled, some tensed, all utterly contained.

  “Who are you?” said Habid.

  A man stepped forward from the gloom.

  “We are ordinary families taken from our homes by Gaddafi’s men. They beat us and brought us here. We do not know why.”

  Habid’s instincts had been correct. He’d stumbled upon payday.

  “What men?” He sought confirmation.

  “From the regime.”

  Habid’s eyes narrowed in knowing suspicion. “If that is true, then why were you not released when the others escaped?”

  Even in the gloom the man could be seen to shift uneasily. “They are like a pack of rats,” was all he managed.

  “Why would they leave you here? You and women and children? Why would they not take you in the excitement of the Spring? What is different about you?”

  The man stood silent while others turned away. That was enough for Habid. All the pieces fitted.

  “You were of the regime,” Habid stated, “but Gaddafi turned against you.”

  The man in the cage came to the bars and stared at him, a silent confirmation.

  Habid pressed on. “Now you have enemies everywhere.”

  “How can you say that?” asked the man.

  Another adult stepped forward as if to hush their spokesman but the man held his arm behind him, his palm flat to stop the advance.

  Habid sneered. “Because I have found your papers in the yard outside. I have read what people like you did.”

  The second man in the cell could hold his tongue no longer.

  “So what did we do? What is it that we have done to justify this? We have not eaten in days. We have been tortured, beaten.”

  “That is what Gaddafi has always done to informers – you must have known that.”

  The first man held his stare, the second turned away.

  Habid secured his position. “I have read arrest papers,” he riffed, speaking to the second man’s back. “Information to the Americans.” He tutted, mock scolding as a teacher might a child.

  The man rounded, incensed. “Shut your face, you do not know what you are speaking of!”

  A woman whimpered and Habid suddenly realised that his confirmed suspicions had come as news to some in the cell. The prisoners’ families had been unaware of their menfolk’s offences.

  The first man held up his hands again, appealing for calm. “What we did, we did for Libya,” he said, uneasily. “We needed free of the leader. He was destroying our country.”

  “What you did was pass on information for airstrike targets,” said Habid. “Little wonder the other prisoners had no sympathy for you. Little wonder they left you here to die. It is one thing to depose a leader, it is quite another to work for America and direct the slaughter of civilians.”

  Habid’s tone was pragmatic rather than critical, which the first man sensed. He tried to appeal to Habid’s better nature.

  “So what would you do with us, with our families?”

  “You were well placed in the regime once upon a time,” said Habid – not quite a statement but not quite a question either.

  “Yes,” the man said.

  “So you have money?”

  “Not in Libya but, yes, we have money.”

  “And you must have had a plan to escape if you got caught?”

  “We had prepared but we have no way of leaving. Not any longer. Now the tribes have taken over they will see us as people of the regime and will kill us. They will hang us in the streets and leave our bodies to rot.”

  A woman behind him wailed at the description.

  “There are others?” asked Habid.

  “Many more,” said the man.

  “Where is the money?”

  The man stayed silent until a woman behind him rasped orders. “Tell him. Pay him. Get us out of here.”

  The man took his gaze to a distant nothing and began to speak.

  “The money is everywhere – Europe, Uganda, Egypt. We spread it to keep it safe.”

  “How can you access it?”

  “Not from Libya, but outside, yes. From a bank.”

  “So,” Habid said with a little bow, “I can help you. I shall become your travel agent. Your very expensive travel agent.”

  Fifteen

  They needed a plan – they couldn’t just keep sailing west. They needed to know where they were headed to plot a course according to the weather forecast and get there before their food ran out. Feeding four wasn’t like feeding two, and Sam couldn’t afford another Sicilian escapade. There would be no unnecessary stops because under no circumstances could he afford to be boarded by customs. He was wary that a radio call may well have been issued seeking a yacht carrying migrants intent on depositing them somewhere in Europe. He knew any such alert would include critical information – the length and type of boat they were sailing, the description of the adults and children, the fact he was Irish.

  Sam set the autohelm and began banging around the cupboards and bilges recovering every tin and packet they had stowed. He drew up an inventory and checked the water maker. Twelve days, he reckoned, of iron rations. He sat at the chart and realised how tight the whole thing would be. Although he hadn’t yet acknowledged it to himself, he knew where they were going. He needed people he could rely upon, not nutters and strange priests – trustworthy as he felt Father Luca to be.

  He plotted a worst-case scenario based on the wind forecasts. As usual the breeze looked to be funnelling straight towards them from the Strait of Gibraltar where the Med met the Atlantic. It was a place he loved and hated passing through. On the way into the Mediterranean it often meant build-up and preparation for something dangerous; on the way out it represented a return home, to his family, to Ireland.

  Eight days. Assuming they hit no seriously bad weather. He snapped a pencil in frustration, realising he had stabbed the needles of the navigation dividers right through the chart and impaled it on the table. They would be forced to sail through any storm – he couldn’t put into port and risk them all being sent to jail. When it was just Isla and him bobbing about, he’d avoided any and all foul weather. They simply found a harbour or marina and rocked it out tied up behind some breakwater. His anger at having to place her in a precarious situation grew, and he thought yet again about how his decisions had led him to a place where Isla’s level of safety, not just his own, was reduced.

  The worst of it was that they needed to sail two full days into the Atlantic before they would get fair enough weather and wind direction to turn for Ireland. Three hundred nautical miles, he reckoned, of hard, brutal, bow-banging graft. Then they could bear north for an endurance run of nearly nine hundred miles with the breeze on the beam, sailing fast but rolling – a further six days.

  It was no way to treat children – he didn’t want this for Isla. He wanted to cruise slowly off the coast of Europe, tying up every night, eating fresh fis
h not tinned curry. He wanted to hug the coast of Portugal, to throw down the anchor and row ashore and explore. To give Isla time to swim off sandy beaches, to savour every moment with her. He wanted a short dart across the English Channel to the Scilly Isles, a meal on Tresco, a last night in blue water and then a hop past the Tusker Rock and a spin up to Dublin. Instead they’d have to battle past the Bay of Biscay with its notorious seas and storms and rattle every bone in his little girl’s body. On current stocks they’d have to aim for Cork – Crosshaven probably, Kilmore Quay at best.

  And the children would get sick out there in the Atlantic. The swell and the need to keep them below decks so much would take its toll, he was sure. So Sam was pissed off – angry at the world, at the weather, at their rations, at Alea for being angry with him, but most of all with himself for taking Isla and hiding her away, for not ignoring the screams in the water, for headbutting the cops, for not leaving the woman to the care of the Italians.

  But he knew somewhere in the back of his conscience he had done what Shannon would have done. Despite his frustration and irritation there was that whisper in his ear.

  It will be ok. You’re doing the right thing.

  Habid had poured through his beautiful papers every chance he got. They were a fascinating, beautiful, intriguing and beguiling mix of information: who had done what, their confessions, their misdemeanours, their betrayal. It was all leverage. To a man like Habid it was cash.

  He’d laid them out on the floor of an office in the prison while he worked out what he would do. He’d calculated that the safest place in Benghazi was the jail because nobody would want to return there, and the establishment of civic control was a short age away. He guessed this from the noise beyond the walls – the gunfire, the screaming vehicles, the shouting. There would be no prisoners, he concluded, not for a long time. Enemies of the new reckless and lawless state would be contained in the ground not the jail.

  Gradually he built up

  a picture by laying the rap sheet of the most senior at the top and cascading to the lowliest. It was quite a network. Among those working for the Americans were some of Gaddafi’s most senior men in security, in finance and, of course, in resources: oil. What the west was really interested in. The papers revealed how each informer had been recruited – some through blackmail, some with cash, all with the promise of a life outside Libya when the time came. Ohio, Florida, San Francisco were all listed in their interrogations as places they’d been promised homes for their families with an education and a solid job; the Americans had offered a life in the soft sun far from the desert sands.

  And then something curious. The revelation that one man kept appearing in the accounts of the informers. An Englishman. Careful, precise and polite, this man was consistently present at debriefings where information was downloaded into the minds of the American handlers and fresh promises made or cash handed out. Not that these men required cash – they were at the very top of the regime, well paid and living comfortable lives.

  How had they been caught? The question preoccupied Habid. There was no reference in the documentation – but of course there wouldn’t be. Gaddafi’s interrogators knew how they’d been caught and the prisoners were unlikely to dwell upon such matters, not while their dangly bits were wired to a twelve volt battery. It intrigued Habid because it was a key part of his research. If he was to become rich as a result of his discovery, he would need to avoid similar pitfalls. He had no intention of ending up in prison. And so he marched back down the black corridors of the jail to demand answers. What he was told was more than a little unnerving.

  “Africa,” she said slowly, in awe, mesmerised by the view.

  Alea hadn’t seen land for several days. She’d spent most of her time with the girls below deck, playing, drawing and creating. Isla literally looked up to her, eyes like saucers, captivated. Sam wondered what was going on in his daughter’s head, whether she viewed Alea as a mother figure or more of a teacher-type. He had dark moments where he imagined Isla might be jealous of Sadiqah because she had a mother instead of a father. He was under no illusions, given the choice a little girl would opt to keep her mum. It was natural. He’d have chosen the same. If he could swap places with Shannon, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

  Alea emerged on deck just as the sun rose to reveal one of the planet’s most beautiful sights.

  “Turn around,” said Sam, curious to see how she would react. “Look what’s on the other side.”

  Alea did as she was bid and rotated gently. “Europe?” she gasped. “We are leaving Mediterranean?”

  “We’re going to take you to our country.”

  “Ireland?”

  “Ireland,” he repeated, savouring the thought.

  “Why Ireland?”

  “Because, to be blunt, nobody else wants you, and I have a friend there who may be able to help, and because I don’t know what else to do.”

  Her face darkened. “Your friend will send us back.”

  “Maybe,” he said honestly, “but she will do her level best not to.”

  “Level best?”

  “This woman will do everything she can to help you.”

  His certainty on the matter made her thoughtful.

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what she does. She helps people. People who have been, well … treated like you have been treated.”

  Alea smarted and stood more erect. “How you think I been treated?”

  Sam took a deep breath. It was plain that Alea was about to get contrary again and he didn’t feel comfortable with the way the conversation looked likely to head. He’d just shown her the Strait of Gibraltar on a haze-free day at sunrise and she was already preparing to bust his bollocks.

  “Eh?” she pressed. “Tell me how I been treated.”

  He hadn’t the energy. “I don’t know.”

  “You think you know,” she said dismissively, “but you refuse-ed to say.”

  Sam couldn’t help but rise to the bait. He was tired, irritable and the weather front ahead was making him anxious. “Well, I know how women are treated where you come from.”

  “You think you know,” she said again.

  Sam struggled with her hostility. Here he was trying to show some empathy and she was goading him.

  “I know how women are treated in some Islamic countries,” he conceded.

  “What Muslim countries have you been?” She shot him a look, piercing, probing, accusatory.

  “Afghan, Iraq, Palestine, Saudi, Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan,” he said, trailing off.

  “Libya,” she poked.

  “Libya,” he agreed, “I already told you that.”

  “For why you are really going there? Not for fighting for oppress-ed women.”

  Sarcasm had never impressed Sam.

  “No,” he said.

  “Then what?”

  “I told you. My job,” he said firmly, attempting to finish the conversation.

  “Is strange job if navy takes you to dry and dirty places far from sea.”

  “All of those countries have a coast,” he said.

  “Not Afghanistan.”

  “No,” he admitted. “But that was a different job.”

  “Is no need for imaginings what you doing there.”

  “How about we talk about what you were doing in the sea then? Or why you were running away from Libya?”

  She stared hard at him. Sam sulked a little, hurt by what he felt was her ingratitude. He loathed the childishness of his emotions and tried to bring himself round but failed. His exhaustion poured out of his mouth before he had time to think it through.

  “You know what I don’t get, Alea? Why you are so consumed with my old job. Like …” he paused searching for words in his sleep-deprived mind, “all I’ve done since we lifted you out of the tide is try to help you and all you’ve done is fire me flack.”

  “Fire me flack, I do not know.”

  “Give me grief. You’re hostile. You’re ang
ry. You hate the British and the Americans. I get that. They blew up your home. But I didn’t. Isla didn’t. We saved you and your kid and you’re just giving me shit all the time. I don’t get it.”

  “You were army.”

  “I was not bloody army, but put it like this, if the roles were reversed – if you were Taliban, I’d still have rescued you.”

  Sam thought about this statement and wondered whether it was true.

  “Rescue me so you could change me – make-d me like Western women?” she said, still nipping at him.

  “Rescue you because life is the most important thing,” he said, thinking aloud. “Anything can happen if there is life. If you’re alive, you make up for your mistakes. If you’re dead, there’s nothing you can do about anything.”

  “You are speaking of you, not me, I think,” Alea said.

  Sam couldn’t disagree. But then she pressed too far.

  “What mistakes you are guilty? You save us to make-ing up for mistake, perhaps. To feel better?” Her lip curled in a snarl.

  Sam’s heartbeat rose with his voice. “I get that you’re grieving, Alea, I really do. Your husband is dead, but, seriously, I didn’t know he was in the sea beside us because you didn’t tell me. And, for what it’s worth, I know what grief is. I’ve probably seen just as much death and violence as you, and I live with it, I sleep with it, I eat it for fucking breakfast every day. Now why don’t you go below and leave me alone until you’re able to hold a civil conversation.”

  Alea stared up at Sam, the hardness draining from her. The admonishment had been unexpected. He realised she had wanted him to repent, to apologise for bombings he’d had no part in. He hadn’t tried to justify events in Libya – that would have made her fight back harder, seizing an advantage to keep him on the back foot. Instead, she’d been told to shape up. They were what they were – products of their respective places. That wasn’t going to change in the confines of a cockpit in the middle of an ocean. They just had to get on with it.