by Nick Lake
I shook my head slightly to dislodge these thoughts. The air was strained, so I cracked my knuckles.
— She will go far, I said to Felipe. And you will be there to see her do it. Besides, you’ve gone far yourself.
— I’m a cook, he said.
I held his eyes, winked.
— A cook in Somalia, I said.
Felipe laughed.
— Yes, he said. It is a long way to have come.
We were looking down at the sea by the diving platform, when one of the younger pirates came over. My guts clenched, thinking something was wrong. But he sort of shyly sidled closer to us and pointed to the box in which the diving stuff was stored, with the masks and snorkels, too.
— Can I lend? he asked. He pointed to a snorkel.
— You want to borrow that? I mimed swimming. You want to swim with it?
— Please, he said. He sounded very young. He had a thin covering of stubble, dark eyes. He was quite handsome, actually.
— You like snorkelling? asked Felipe, sounding surprised.
— Yes. But we don’t have . . . He pointed to the snorkel again. These.
— What about Ahmed? I asked.
The pirate looked at the other guard on duty, who nodded.
— Ahmed busy, he said.
Then Felipe turned to me with a strange sort of smile.
— You want to go snorkelling, Amy? he said.
— We can’t go with them, I said.
— Of course we can, said Felipe. He turned to the guard. Hey, Jamal, he said. He pointed to the snorkelling stuff. We come, too?
The guard grinned.
— OK, Felipe.
For a moment I was speechless.
— What the – I started.
— Coffee, said Felipe. I make it for them. Properly. And pasta.
Ah. Now he mentioned it, I wondered when was the last time I’d seen the pirates with their gross big pot of food. Felipe was cooking for them, that was why. He was cooking for them, and he was cooking for us.
— Does Dad know? I said. Damian? Tony?
Felipe put a finger to his lips.
— They have power and money, he said. I have food. Maybe the pirates will remember my food, and they won’t want to kill me.
I smiled, looking at the sea.
— Come on, said Felipe. Come snorkelling.
I thought of when Dad and the stepmother asked me to go snorkelling in the Red Sea, and how I said no and listened to music instead. I discovered that when I thought of the person who did that, it was like I was beginning to picture a different girl. Not me, just someone who looked like me. A doppelgänger, isn’t that the word?
Then I thought, hey, all of us might be about to die on this yacht. We might never see home again. This was meant to be a holiday. So I went over to the box with Felipe and we took out three sets of snorkelling gear, the flippers, too – the pirate didn’t know the purpose of them, but he picked it up quick when we showed him.
We sat at the end of the diving platform and tumbled in. The water was like a blessing, like an embrace. It was warmer than the air, silky, and a strange thought crossed my mind when I entered it, which was that I understood, in that moment, what baptism was all about. Oh good, I thought. At least if I die I’ll have had this.
We were close to shore, so there were coral reefs right by the yacht. We swam over them for what felt like hours, just drifting, watching all the colours, the fish, all of them teeming around us, some of them nibbling at my fingers when I held them out.
After a while, the guards swapped over, exchanged the snorkelling gear they were using, but I didn’t really pay attention to that. The fact that they were guards, that one of them had to stay on deck at all times, a gun in his hand, seemed colossally irrelevant.
At one point, I felt something touch me on the leg, and Felipe gestured up with his thumb, for me to break water. When I did, he pointed down the beach.
— There’s a turtle, he said, over there.
Then he went under again. I followed him, his flippers making explosions of bubbles in the water ahead of me, shimmering in the light, constellations. The colours of the coral below me, the little black and white fish darting, the parrotfish constantly gulping, it was all amazing. But when we hit the end of the reef and it sloped away steeply below us, the water suddenly darker and colder, fading to black in the near distance, that was when my breath stopped in my lungs, snorkel or no snorkel.
There, seeming to hang suspended in the water ahead of us, was a giant turtle. Its flippers were moving gently, and it was sort of drifting, its head higher than its tail. I don’t know if it was feeding or what. It was beautiful. It was like a visitation from something that didn’t belong in our world, a message, like on that beach in Mexico. From something sacred.
Then, with a very slow kick of its rear flipper, it began to turn, before swimming gracefully out into the blackness, and finally disappearing.
I broke the surface, and so did Felipe.
— Wow, I said. Which seemed like kind of a ridiculous understatement, but what else can you say?
— Yeah, said Felipe. Wow.
That was the good part of that second day. The bad part was that I was thinking about Farouz all the time, about how I’d thought he understood me, thought there was something real between us, and now he’d sold us down the river by revealing that it was Dad who had all the money. It made me furious.
At the time, though, I was just angry – not hurt.
That was about to change.
I was lying there that night, with my eyes closed, waiting to fall asleep. Dad and the stepmother were whispering to each other, revoltingly, in the dark. Tony was muttering to himself.
Then, adding to their soft voices, a beat, and music.
I sat up. I could make out Tony in the gloom, doing the same.
— What’s that? asked Dad.
— Music, said Tony, with his talent for stating the obvious.
— Live music, I said.
I could tell – the sound has a different tone, a different fullness, when it’s coming from instruments in real time.
— Let’s check it out, said Tony.
I’ll say one thing for Tony – he was brave. Getting shot didn’t slow him down at all – he was like a Duracell bunny. And he was happy to sit at that negotiating table, staring down the pirates, just like he was happy to investigate anything weird.
— I’m staying here, said the stepmother.
— Of course you are, said Tony.
And he could have meant that she would be mad to come, that she’d be safer here, or it could have been a dig at her, at her cowardice. I thought it was the latter, but the way he said it, the ambiguity remained, so it wasn’t like my dad could call him on it. That made me like Tony even more.
— I’m coming, I said. Because I already had an idea of what I was listening to and I wanted to make sure, even though there was a knot in the pit of my stomach.
Tony opened the door, and Dad and I followed him, after he peered down the corridor and saw that there was no guard. Damian would have come, too, I’m sure, but he was asleep, and snoring loudly.
The music was coming from the rear of the yacht – the stern, I think it’s called? So we turned that way and crept along. We probably didn’t need to – it wasn’t like the pirates were going to hear us. In the dining room, we stopped and looked out of the portholes on to the rear deck, where the deck lights were on. An incongruous image flickered into life in my head: busybodies on an English street, peering out from between their curtains to see what their neighbours are up to.
Outside, there was a party going on. Bottles from the bar – some clear, some dark – were lying around on the deck.
— I thought Muslims didn’t drink, said Dad.
— I bet they’re not meant to chew that khat stuff, either, said Tony.
But I wasn’t listening to Dad and Tony – I was watching Farouz.
He was sitting on an u
pturned crate of some kind and his oud was in his hands. The way he was holding it, it was like it was alive, like a baby, or a lover. It looked how he’d said, a bit like a banjo or a guitar, only with a fat belly and a thin neck. His eyes were closed. His hands were moving very fast, but also softly. Not carefully, though – more . . . instinctively. Like he couldn’t hit the wrong notes even if he wanted to because the oud was part of him.
He’s good, was my stupid thought, a thought floating on all the anger and jealousy and pain.
Most of the other pirates were drumming, smacking their palms on whatever was to hand – coffee cans, the deck, their knees. Ahmed, though, was singing, his voice running over the music like water over a stream-bed, clear, flowing. Looking at him, you wouldn’t have thought a sound like that could come out of him – it was like opening an Argos box and finding a Tiffany’s ring inside.
Dad and Tony were whispering to each other, but I was watching and listening to the music. It was amazing. The scale was different from Western stuff – pentatonic, in a minor key, laid over complicated rhythms. It was a bit like blues, I thought, and then I told myself I was being dumb, because of course blues came from music like this in the first place, created by African slaves, its rhythms hummed low by work gangs in America, then sung out a hundred years later. There didn’t seem to be a structure of verse and chorus – it was more like a free-flowing improvisation around set melodies, which reminded me of jazz.
And all the time, Farouz’s fingers were moving over the strings of his instrument so fast, like the articulated parts of a programmed machine. It might sound strange, but that was the thing that really hurt me.
I had thought that Farouz, I don’t know, needed me in some way. That he was a bit like me, that he didn’t belong with the others. But here he was, smiling, playing his oud, while Ahmed sang, and if you wanted to create a scene that showed the concept of belonging, you couldn’t do much better than the one I was looking at. There was an open bottle of what looked like whisky at Farouz’s feet, the pirates were laughing, and there was such an atmosphere of bonhomie, of happiness rising from all of them, so thick you could almost see it, like mist.
I couldn’t tear my eyes off him.
You’re not like me, I realised with a painful jolt. You are one of them, even if you’re smart. Even if you’re sensitive. You have a family, and they’re sitting with you on that deck. You have a place. You have your music.
And also: you lied to me. You made me feel like you were someone different, like you had to do this to save your brother, though maybe that was true, a little bit.
Looking at Farouz, his oud in his hand in the warm night air, I understood something I’d been trying to deny to myself: he loved this life. He loved being a pirate.
I hated him in that moment. Really, really hated him.
One of the pirates turned, as if to look at us, and Dad grabbed my arm, pulling me down. We stayed like that, breathing hard, crouching below the porthole. We were just waiting for the music to stop, for footsteps to come. The pirates had been drinking – might they lose control in a situation like that? Might someone get killed? That was what we were all thinking.
But the music didn’t stop. In fact, it swelled, got louder, more raucous, spiralling out into the night.
If those northern coast guards turned up now, I thought, they could kill them all and take the yacht in minutes. Part of me even wished they would.
Tony was doing some kind of counting thing with his fingers, moving them around, as if remembering the positions of things.
— There’s an AK lying by the door, he said. If we could –
— No, Dad whispered back.
— They’re drunk, said Tony, and I realised that this was why he had wanted to sneak out and see what was happening. They won’t be expecting it.
— I said no, Dad said. Are you mad? The kid still has his gun on his waist. The others can grab theirs, too.
This was true: the pirates were drinking, but their guns were lying beside them, within reach. I’d noticed that.
— We could take them, Tony said sullenly.
— We could, said Dad. But we would get killed, guaranteed.
— Amy can go back to the cinema room, and then –
— NO, said Dad, breaking out of his whisper, so that I flinched, thinking the pirates must have heard. In his voice was the old authority I’d heard when he was on work calls, on his BlackBerry. It was the trick of a charming person – the sudden shift into power, into fierceness, that shocks the other person into backing down.
And it worked – Tony held up his hands.
— It was only an idea, he said.
I was relieved, but also a bit disappointed. There was another me inside me who would have quite liked to see it happen. To see the tables turned, and the guns pointing at the pirates. I would have supported Tony, even, but I didn’t want my dad getting hurt – as much as he pissed me off, he was my dad.
Could Tony and I have done it on our own? Made a break for the AK? Maybe. But that was never going to happen – if my dad was going to use his sudden-power thing on Tony for even suggesting the two of them did it, I couldn’t imagine what he’d break out if I said I’d do it.
— It is a shame, though, said Tony, as we sneaked back to the cinema room. It’s the best chance we’re going to get.
— Sometimes the best isn’t good enough, said Dad.
And wasn’t that true.
The next morning, I went to my cabin. I was trying to watch a DVD, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept turning to look at the violin, lying there in the wardrobe. I remembered what Farouz had said about it, and suddenly I wanted to hurt him or hurt the violin, or whatever was closest.
I picked up the instrument and walked down the corridor to the front deck, because generally people hung out on the rear one, and that was where the pirates ate the endless rounds of pasta that I now knew Felipe cooked for them. The sun was rising over the Indian Ocean, huge over the ever-shifting sea. On the other side of the yacht was the shore. It was weird how we were so close and so far away at the same time. It was just there, Somalia, almost within touching distance. The sun visited it every evening, lowered itself into the land, and then left again in the morning, but I had never set foot on it.
As I watched, a camel wandered past. A camel! I’d seen a couple of them from the yacht, like we were on some kind of really weird and slightly sick safari tour.
I watched until the camel disappeared behind a dune, then I just stood there. I thought of the sky camel, Farouz pointing out the stars. Then my mind went empty. I looked at this gnarled tree that stood near the shoreline. Every day, that tree was there, just being. It was strange how you got used to things like that. I mean, even now, I can picture that tree. I can safely say that if the whole world got blasted to smithereens by some alien invasion, and I was floating through space on some bit of rock and that tree floated past me, I would recognise it instantly.
But, as far as I knew, I would never touch it.
So I stood there for a while, thinking dumb thoughts like that. I was pretty much alone, though I could see a guard above me, in the bridge. There were always guards around, of course.
I looked down at the water and I thought about the turtle. I hefted the violin in my hand. It felt heavy and light at the same time. It felt, even after all these months of not playing it, like something special. Like an offering.
I held the violin out over the sea and got ready to drop it.
— Don’t do that, said Farouz from behind me.
I turned my head.
— Why not? I asked. It doesn’t matter anyway. And don’t act like you care.
— I’m sorry, he said. I have upset you again. I’m sorry.
— You’re sorry? This is our lives. We could die.
— No. Your father will have to pay more money. That is all.
— Oh, that’s all, is it? I asked, my voice dripping bitterness. So you’ll just get an extra mill
ion or so, right? Poor you.
I didn’t tell him about watching him play the oud, about how left out it had made me feel, about how it had made me realise he didn’t need me. I knew it would sound crazy and jealous, and that would give him an extra advantage.
Farouz took a step back. He raised his hands, seemed about to say something, but then Ahmed’s voice came from inside, calling his name.
— Farouz! Farouz!
— Oh, yeah, I said. You should go to your boss. Go and see what he wants, make sure he’s OK. Same way you went and told him about my dad.
Farouz sighed.
— You lied, too, he said. About the owners of the yacht.
— It’s not the same! I said. You took us hostage. And then, just when I was liking you again, you told your fucking boss – who’s in charge of a load of men with guns, including, oh, YOU – that my dad had lied to him.
— I had to, he said.
— Oh, you had to. For your precious brother.
He blew out a thin stream of smoke.
— No. It was Ahmed. I was checking the computer, to get the go plan that the navy were sending. He saw the word owner. He reads enough English to know that word. He made me translate the rest.
— And you did it.
— Of course I did it! What do you expect?
I hugged my knees up to my chest.
— It’s just coincidence that this way you get more money? I said.
— This way I get to stay alive, he said, more angry than I had ever heard him. What happens if I lie when I translate? What happens if Ahmed asks Nyesh to read the email instead? I don’t get fined. I die.
— Oh, I said, my voice all small.
— Please, said Farouz, just don’t throw the violin, OK? I will explain everything. You will understand, I promise. Meet me here tonight, where I told you about the stars. About the camel. OK?
— I can’t, I said. My dad.
— You can sneak, he said. When he’s asleep. It will be all right, I promise.
