by Tom Saric
Rat-tat-tat-at!
Bullets ricocheted through the metal framework of the platform. Sami fell backwards down the four steps and onto his back. He rolled as soon as he hit the deck and scurried for cover behind a support beam. Then the gunfire stopped.
“Where is he?” Sami mouthed to Ali, who had also taken several steps back.
Ali pointed up and to the right.
Sami looked down at his body. How had he not been hit? He looked over at Ali, who was staring at Sami, his mouth half-open, as if asking the same question.
Sami refocused. There was one gun, definitely not two. The man had been waiting for them to enter his trap the entire time. They had to secure the bridge soon, before a distress signal could be radioed in. But there was no way they could get up this way without both of them dying.
Sami looked up through the perforations in the metal platform above him, trying to visualize his assailant. A shadow, a figure, anything. Surprisingly, the man hadn’t moved. Paralyzed by fear? Or lying in wait?
Sami turned gradually, mindful of being silent despite the intermittent siren blaring. There was a second ladder ten yards from his position that connected the platform they were on to the bridge. Their assailant couldn’t cover both entries.
Ali had noticed the second ladder at the same time and motioned that he was moving there. Sami walked back to the foot of the first ladder. Ali peered upwards through the floor and motioned to Sami, ‘All clear.’
Sami took several deep breaths and waited until the siren blared and stepped right under the manhole cover and fired off several rounds up the hole in the platform. Ali seized the opportunity that the assailant was distracted and ran up the back stairs. A series of rounds went off above and Sami waited for the call from Ali.
He waited.
Nothing.
He heard footsteps and grunting above him and felt the blood return to his brain. He looked up. A body fell through the hole. Sami initially convinced himself that it was a stranger. But no, the fatigues. The dark skin.
Sami grabbed Ali and held his head on his lap. Sami felt his clothing soak wet. Blood oozed from somewhere in his nephew’s chest. Why did he bring Ali with him? He was too young, too inexperienced.
Ali opened his eyes. His breaths were short and choking. “Uncle, we almost made it.”
“No, it is okay; we will put pressure on it. Come with me.”
Sami slung Ali’s arm over his back and they climbed down the stairs to the deck. He dragged Ali behind a stack of crates. He tore Ali’s shirt open and ran his fingers across his chest. There were two bullet holes on the right side of his chest and another hole in his back.
Sami took his own shirt off and pressed it under Ali’s back. A small amount of air flowed in and out of the wound. Untreated, his lung would collapse, causing death in minutes.
“Ali, you have two shots, one is still inside your chest.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle.” Tears formed in his eyes.
“No, we will get a doctor.”
Sami removed the adhesive tape on the handle of his machete and tore a small square. He placed it around the exit hole and pressed it on three sides, creating a one-way valve.
“You will breathe better. But I must get this ship under control.”
Sami knew Ali was lucky the bullets hit the right side of his chest, but without medical attention soon, he would certainly die. He had to get ashore.
Sami poked his head out from behind the crates to see if he could see the hostile crewman on the well-lit bridge. Just as he turned, a figure stepped in front of the light and bullets screamed past his ear.
Sami crawled towards a pile of ropes beside the crates. He tied a length of rope to the handle on one of the crates and then moved back behind the ropes. He removed his handgun and loaded it. Sami pulled on the rope, pulling a crate over. As he expected, a barrage of bullets reduced the wooden crate to splinters. Sami popped out from behind the ropes and saw the assailant’s shadow on the bridge. He took aim and fired off two rounds. The dark figure collapsed to the ground.
Sami emerged from his position and walked up the stairs. Meanwhile, his men were lining up the crewmen on deck, hands bound by plasticuffs.
A young Slavic man crouched with his mouth gaping. Sami came up from behind, grabbed his collar, and lifted him.
“You’re Andriy?”
Andriy did not respond.
“Are you Andriy?”
“Yes.”
“Put these on,” Sami handed him the plasticuffs.
“No one was supposed to be harmed,” Andriy put them around his hands and fastened them with his teeth.
“That’s correct. And maybe if you had stopped this fat man from shooting at us, that would be the case. You will be lucky if you survive yourself.” Sami raised his gun and put it to Andriy’s forehead. “You will go and sit with your crew, and maybe you will live.”
Fluorescent Shorts led Andriy below deck.
Sami and another one of his men entered the navigation room on the bridge.
Sami ordered, “Take this ship to Bosaso.”
3
Bosaso, Autonomous Republic of the Puntland, Somalia
The first shipment of foreign aid to reach the Puntland in nearly six weeks arrived the next morning. A lone military truck pulled up in a dusty clearing, off the main highway, on the outskirts of the city of Bosaso. Word that a convoy had passed into Somalia from Eritrea had spread quickly amongst the foreign aid workers in the region, and a large group congregated at the usual drop spot hours before the truck pulled in. In a half-dozen different languages, they engaged in the usual chatter about lack of supplies, experiences with the militias, and about what they hoped would come on the truck, be it medical supplies, food, books, computers, or plumbing equipment.
Before the flatbed truck came to a complete stop, the crowd converged at the truck’s heels, rubbing elbows, hoping to be first in line. A tall Somali holding a machine gun stood guard at the edge of the truck to deter any overenthusiastic workers from jumping on.
It wasn’t only that few supplies made it through to Somalia, past checkpoints where cargo would be combed through and anything of value taken as “toll” by the multitudes of militia controlling every region. It was that even the aid that did get through and into the hands of the aid workers was still in jeopardy. They were all aware of the potential for a Jeep packed with militia to have followed the convoy truck and declare the shipment property of (insert clan name here). Or, even if they were handed their boxes of supplies and loaded them into their own vehicles, they still had to drive through Bosaso, through any number of checks where the supplies could be taken as toll.
While the crowd tightened up around the truck, one man stood several meters back. He put his fourth cigarette of the morning out underneath his foot. He stuck out from the rest of the crowd, partly because he barely spoke a word to anyone for the forty-three minutes he was standing there, and partly because of the scowl that seemed tattooed to his face.
The guard walked to the edge of the flatbed and pointed at the man. “Doctor Alban,” he yelled and motioned for the man to come forward.
Dr. Alban nodded, weaved through the crowd, and stopped in front of the guard. He ignored the looks of indignation on the faces of a few of the workers. They thought being first in line meant something.
“What have you got for me this time?” He said.
“Two boxes. What will you give me for them?”
The doctor rolled his eyes. “I have a gun, you know.”
“A gun is no good if you can’t pull the trigger,” the guard laughed.
“I can’t help it if I’m a pacifist.”
“You know what they call a pacifist in Somali? A chicken.”
“Just give me the boxes before I really get pissed off.” The doctor smiled and took the two boxes the guard passed down to him and walked back through the crowd.
Paul was one of a handful of physicians in the Puntland region of Soma
lia. Most came for a short stint and then went back home, thanking everyone for the wonderful experiences, and leaving with a backpack full of souvenirs and five gigabytes of photographs. They all said they would come back the second they got the chance, but that ‘chance’ never seemed to materialize.
But it was because of that very reason that all of the other workers, while polite and orderly, had to look on as Paul was the first to hold his medical supplies. Seniority.
Paul crossed the clearing and piled the cardboard boxes into the trunk of his dusty, forest-green Jeep. He leaned against the bumper and flicked the keys in his hand. He looked across the parking lot, trying to catch Ellen’s eye, but she was immersed in conversation with a Kenyan nurse who worked in a clinic on the opposite side of Bosaso. Her hands waved as she was in full storytelling mode. Paul guessed she was telling her about her recent adventure home to Montreal, where she was interrogated at a stopover by customs at JFK airport. Having an Arabic last name and living in Somalia tended to raise eyebrows with Homeland Security. Or maybe customs officers couldn’t fathom how a beautiful, exotic young woman could possibly be traveling alone without her partner. What kind of man would let her out of his sights? He considered closing the trunk, firing up the engine, and slowly pulling away until she chased after him, but he thought better of it. It wasn’t worth the argument.
Instead, he turned and opened an X-ACTO knife from the breast pocket of his khaki vest and cut the tape on one of the boxes. He rummaged through its contents—saline bags, syringes, IVs, bags of penicillin, packs of gauze, suture trays—and then folded the box back up. Paul heard that less than ten percent of all aid actually reached its desired recipients, and he realized long ago that was a generous estimate. Everyone took their cut. The portion that made it onto a ship and arrived in a destabilized region would be rummaged through by the powers that be, leaving the scraps for the people for whom it was intended in the first place. That is, of the shipments that weren’t blocked by pirates, and in Somalia, the pirates were taking more and more.
Paul glanced again at Ellen, who hadn’t noticed him waiting by the Jeep and kept on with her conversation.
He picked up the other box and gave it a shake, until he heard the jangling of glass against glass. He cut open the box, dug through the bottles of chloroquine—the treatment for malaria, almost everyone who came into the clinic, whether it was for pneumonia, delivering a baby, or a headache was first treated for malaria—and then found what he was looking for. Forty-eight vials, each containing ten milligrams of morphine. Paul let out a deep breath and swirled a vial between his fingers.
He looked behind him. Ellen hugged the other worker and walked toward the Jeep. She smiled apologetically.
He didn’t smile back. Instead, he turned back to the morphine vials and stuffed a handful of the vials inside each pocket of his vest. He put the remaining vials back into the box and shut it, just before Ellen was at the Jeep.
“Sorry about that. You know how blabby I get,” she said, touching his shoulder. “Did we get anything worthwhile today?”
“Not great.” he waved his hand towards the boxes. “Bandages, sutures, casts, IVs, antibiotics—”
“That is great.” she smiled and her dark brown eyes met his. She wasn’t kidding, he could tell that from the way she bit the corner of her lip whenever her mind worked. She was already thinking about all the patients at the clinic she could treat, the leg ulcers she could debride, the pneumonia she could eradicate, the broken bones she could repair.
Ellen Al-Hamadi had arrived in Somalia two years ago as a locum physician. Paul had initially dismissed her as another wide-eyed humanitarian, out to save the world. But Ellen was different.
He had ignored her for days after she had arrived at the clinic, until Ellen confronted him in front of a dying patient.
Do you totally not care, or do you just act that way?
Excuse me?
I’ve been here eight days and you haven’t acknowledged me. I’m here to learn, but I can’t if you don’t teach me. And I can’t help anyone if you don’t let me.
Who are you going to help? He pointed at the patient. This man? He’s dying.
Her mouth opened, at a loss. She gathered herself. Help isn’t all about saving lives, you know.
You can’t change the world.
But maybe if I try, it will mean the world to him.
It was the look in her eye. She wasn’t in Africa to collect pictures to show her friends.
He had seen that look many times since. It was that same look in her eye at that moment, while she picked through the first medical supplies they had received in weeks.
They hopped in the Jeep and started up the barren dirt road toward the city. The Jeep rattled as it rolled over the bumpy, potholed road. On either side of the road, empty desert punctuated by dry shrubs stretched far into the distance.
Bosaso sprawled out ahead of them. They were headed for the clinic, on the far end of the city, and Paul considered cutting through the eastern district, but remembered that a roadblock had been put up there several days earlier, so he elected to drive straight through the city center. It was a slower route, and traffic would be heavier, but a roadblock could take hours.
The air conditioner in the Jeep had conked out the week earlier, so they had the windows rolled down, but it did little to cool. Ellen turned on the radio and Bob Dylan’s Forever Young played.
“I love this song.” She turned the volume up.
“American rock classics in the Puntland, what’s next?”
“This song reminds me of my childhood. My dad sang to it all the time.”
“A Syrian immigrant singing Bob Dylan,” he laughed. “That makes for a great visual.”
She smacked his shoulder.
Ahead was a rusted pickup truck parked sideways across the road, blocking traffic going either way. There was just enough space for a vehicle to pass by without slipping into the ditch, but truck tires were stacked in that space, making it impossible to pass. Four men, none who could have been a day over sixteen, who wore shorts and military boots, patrolled the area, each holding a semi-automatic.
“Ah, damn,” Paul said at the sight of the blockade.
“These checkpoints are getting ridiculous.” Ellen leaned her head against the half-opened window.
One of the soldiers approached the Jeep with a machine gun cradled in his hands. He was chewing on a leafy substance, khat. The active ingredient in the leaves was an amphetamine, and many soldiers used it. Not only did it keep them awake and suppress their appetites, but it reduced fear. Judging by the size of his pupils, he had been chewing a lot of it. The soldier took a quick look at Paul and Ellen, and then leaned in the window scanning the backseats. He held out his hand. “Identification.”
Paul handed the man — although technically, he was still a boy, but perhaps manning a road blockade with a machine gun qualified as a rite of passage to manhood — his passport and ID. The boy examined it carefully, but Paul was pretty sure he couldn’t read a lick of Somali, let alone English or French.
“It’s Frontier Doctors International,” Paul said, doing little to disguise the annoyance in his voice.
“Doctor?”
“Yeah, I’m a doctor. Can I get through?”
The boy stared at Paul blankly for a moment before he looked at Ellen, scanning her up and down slowly, resting momentarily on her breasts.
“Very nice, doctor,” the boy said.
“Just keep your eyes on my ID.”
The boy flicked the ID in his hand momentarily before he turned and walked to the truck. He spoke to someone through the window, pointing at the ID.
Paul reached across Ellen’s lap into the glove compartment and grabbed his pack of cigarettes. Hold-ups like this could take a while. I probably shouldn’t have given the kid attitude, Paul thought.
“Smoking will kill you, you know,” Ellen piped in.
“So will living in Somalia.”
; The truck door opened and a tall heavyset man wearing military fatigues and a beret came towards Paul’s Jeep. A handgun was holstered on his hip. He was at least twice the age of the other soldiers, likely a sergeant of some sort. He handed back Paul’s identification and passport.
“How are you, Doctor Paul? I am Colonel Sayyid.”
“I’m doing well, Colonel. Just trying to get back to the clinic.” He put his cigarette out in the ashtray.
“Of course. I’m running this security point today.” He leaned on the windowsill. “What were you doing in the eastern quarter?”
Paul hesitated only a brief second, but the Colonel noticed. “Picking up supplies. A shipment.”
The man smiled, showing his missing teeth. “Hello, Dr. Ellen.”
Ellen lifted her hand, barely a wave.
“Okay, doctor, you can pass.” He motioned to his men to move the tires blocking the path. Paul put the Jeep into gear. “But first, I need to check the shipment for contraband.”
“It’s in the back,” Paul sighed and got out of the car. He motioned for Ellen to stay quiet. She had a habit of exploding in situations like these. The colonel, of course, was not checking for contraband at all, he wanted to see whether there was anything of value in the medical shipment. In particular, he was hoping for narcotics. More powerful than a pound of khat and worth more than a kilo. But Paul doubted these boys were interested in selling it—they likely wanted a downer to balance out the stimulant they had in their systems.
They walked around the car and Paul opened the trunk. He opened the box, rummaged through the contents, and handed the man a vial of morphine.
“There are four of us, doctor.”
“You know, that’s getting greedy,” Paul whispered.
“It’s a toll.”
“It’s fucking blackmail.” He handed him three more vials. He looked up at Ellen, still staring ahead, listening to the radio.
