Following the advice of people who knew these waters well, however, we elected to go inside Socotra. It had been a long time since there had actually been an attack there. We timed our arrival so we could slip through in darkness and be well clear by morning. We drew near late in the afternoon, catching only the haziest glimpse of Socotra’s small neighbouring islands before darkness fell. Our nerves were jangling as we approached this infamous place.
The wind, surprisingly, died down completely, forcing us to motor. Earlier that day, however, the pump feeding cooling water to the engine had failed, causing the engine to overheat. Herbert had quickly replaced it with a spare, but within a few miles of Socotra we discovered that the spare pump had developed a significant leak. This meant we were pumping seawater directly into our engine room. We didn’t discover it until the steady spray of water had filled the huge aft bilge and risen right to the bottom of our engine. This was not the place to mess around with a further repair, which would have left us floundering around in the water in this most dangerous of places like a wounded duck. We decided to leave the leaky pump in place. For the rest of the passage, as long as the motor was on, we had to remember to empty the bilge every thirty minutes.
As darkness fell, and our twin anxieties about pirates and water leaks rose, we discovered a small visitor on board. It was a tiny grey and white wagtail, an endearing swallow-like bird with a long tail. The jaunty little bird landed on our deck and proceeded to give the entire boat a walking inspection, ignoring our presence and boldly marching right over our bare feet. Then it flew inside and did the same, tip-tip-tipping around and checking out each room.
We called our new friend Popeye. His presence was very welcome, a vote of confidence. If rats desert a sinking ship, surely a little bird throwing in his lot with us at our point of maximum danger had to be a good sign.
Soon, Popeye was landing right on top of our heads, walking along our arms and onto our outstretched hands. We couldn’t get him to eat – not bread, nor fruit, nor even the little squid and flying fish we collected for him on deck. He wanted insects, but we were all out of those, so he settled for a sip of water. Popeye kept us entertained for hours before darkness fell and he chose a spot to sleep for the night. It was in Michael’s berth, which we used as a navigation station on passage, on the floor beside the ladder leading into the cockpit. Our little feathered friend slept very trustingly with his head tucked under his wing, oblivious to us entirely.
That night, we permitted no lights at all inside the boat – no reading in bed, no games, only brief use of a flashlight for the brushing of teeth. We didn’t want to chance betraying our presence with as much as a glimmer of light.
As Jon fell asleep, he suddenly had an urgent request: “Mom, could you take the CD out of Biggie [our big computer]?”
“Why, love?” I asked, puzzled.
“Because I was playing Baldur’s Gate, the one Grandpa bought us, and I love that game so much. I just remembered that I left the CD inside Biggie. If the pirates come tonight and take Biggie, at least I don’t want to lose that game.”
At around midnight, we passed Socotra less than ten miles to our starboard. Like a thief in the night we tiptoed through, masked in darkness. When morning’s golden light illuminated the sea, there was no land in sight. Popeye, our guardian angel, woke up late, and after a further inspection of the boat, including a walking tour over my sleeping body, he flew off. We never saw our dear little friend again.
The closer we got to Aden, the more shipping traffic we encountered on their way to and from the Suez Canal. Huge tankers, container ships, and ocean-going cargo ships of every kind were charging up and down the Gulf of Aden as it narrowed into the southern neck of the Red Sea. We were an insect in comparison, doodling along at the outer edge of the shipping lanes. We kept strict watch. At night, this was particularly important, because we still weren’t using lights. Just because we were getting close to our goal didn’t mean the danger of piracy was over. Not long before, an Australian yacht had received machine-gun fire and been boarded by pirates just four miles from the Yemen shore.
Two days away from Aden, in the middle of a stinky-hot, inky-black night, a large tanker was one of several converging on us from the west, once again on a collision course. Our radar had enabled me to see this coming, and I was slowly moving us out of the tanker’s way. At the point at which the ship passed us, only a quarter of a mile away, suddenly its searchlights burst on. Just as before, the spotlight settled upon us, illuminating us as if on a stage. Our VHF radio sprang to life.
“Put on your lights!” roared someone on that ship. “You should not be travelling without navigation lights! Put on your lights! Put on your lights!”
I switched on our lights, but did not answer. I didn’t know who might be listening to the radio. My preoccupation was still invisibility. Yes, if we were inattentive, we might be run over and killed. That was our responsibility, but also a risk we could at least control. Against pirates, invisibility was our only hope.
As soon as the angry tanker was out of sight, I turned our lights off again and we continued on our way, dark as the Arabian Sea night. We only turned on our lights the final night, with the glow of Aden already in view. We arrived in Yemen after thirteen and a half nerve-racking days at sea. It had been, for me, the most frightening passage of our trip.
While we’d been on the passage, the Middle East tinderbox had exploded into flames. On September 28, just a few days before we landed in Yemen, a provocative visit by Ariel Sharon to Jerusalem’s holiest Muslim site had sparked a renewal of the intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation of their homeland. Riots erupted across the West Bank and Gaza. Israel responded with deadly force. Over the next weeks, hundreds of Palestinians would be killed. A new wave of violence had engulfed the Middle East, and displaced Palestinians all over the Arab world rose up in anger. Suicide bombers in terrorist training camps sharpened their skills. One of the places many of these Palestinians and terrorists were centred was Yemen.
But we knew none of this when we landed. Everything I knew about Yemen had come from collecting exotic stamps as a twelve-year-old. We saw dusty brown buildings crowded between the sea and tall, craggy volcanic peaks in hues of faded pink, mauve, or sepia, depending on the time of day. No plant life found a foothold on these steep, inhospitable slopes; it was not hard to imagine that Lawrence of Arabia might appear out of the desert at any time, galloping at the head of a bunch of sword-swinging brigands.
Upon going ashore to go through the immigration formalities, Herbert was met by a helpful taxi driver named Salem, who drove him around in an old jalopy to the various offices and even lent him local currency to buy the necessary stamps. Salem, a cheerful father of two in his late thirties, had a more African-looking face than most of the hawk-nosed Arabs who filled the streets, but he was dressed as they were, with a checkered turban wound loosely around his head and a wrap-around skirt.
We grew to love Salem, another one of those special people we seemed to come across so often in our travels. He had waved off Herbert’s attempts to pay him that first day, saying there was no rush, that it would all be straightened out later. The next day, after spending the whole afternoon driving us around, he again refused to discuss payment, saying it was entirely up to us.
“And if we say we want to pay you nothing?” I asked.
“Then that’s fine, too!” he said. “I just want to help. Smile, you’re in Yemen!”
Salem became our constant companion, driving us everywhere, running errands, finding us the freshest bread, the cheapest and most delicious fresh orange juice (ten cents a glass), the meanest-looking ornamental daggers, the most beautiful antique silver jewellery.
Salem took us in his steaming-hot car to Arab Town, where cart-pulling camels competed with cars in the narrow streets. As we walked around, we tried not to stare at the Yemeni men, whose cheeks were puffed out like a squirrel’s with the mild narcotic leaf cal
led qat, the national addiction. I was fascinated by the women, the very modern ones daring to show their faces underneath black head coverings and head-to-toe black robes, but most of them revealing nothing but dark eyes peering through a narrow slit. The very modest ones showed not an inch of skin, even in forty-degree heat, with semi-transparent veils over their eyes, black gloves covering their hands, and opaque black stockings covering their feet. I didn’t go so far as to cover my face, but I did make a point of wearing long skirts and full-length sleeves whenever I left the boat.
When Salem brought us to an air-conditioned ice cream parlour, we ate in the men’s room at the front. I was the only woman. Tucked away at the back, behind a curtain, was the women’s room, where ladies with black robes and henna-died hands could take off their veils and eat without fear that a man might glimpse their faces.
Everywhere we went, we attracted hordes of curious people and smiling admirers, as well as beggars. These were mostly poor Somali refugees, women who looked at us imploringly through the tiny slits in their veils with sad, long-lashed eyes. Aden was full of these ghostly figures, clad from head to toe in black. Sometimes, it seemed there were outstretched hands facing us everywhere we turned. Michael in particular really hated that. I wanted to take pictures of the veiled women, but they were shy of the camera. I offered to pay some of the beggar women for permission to take their photo, but most of them shook their heads and moved away.
As we drove around Aden, we twice came across large mobs of marching, demonstrating men. It was hard to tell whether the hundred or so men were violent or happy – sometimes it looked like a party, sometimes like the beginning of a brawl. We learned they were Palestinians, but since we knew nothing about the renewal of the intifada, or the growing hostility towards Israel and its Western allies, or about someone named Osama Bin Laden telling his followers it was their duty to kill Americans wherever they might find them, we viewed these demonstrations with innocent curiosity.
Two days later, on October 12, 2000, we were walking up a dusty brown mountain with Salem, exploring a five-hundred-year-old fortress. Christopher was walking beside Salem, holding his hand as we climbed and chatted with him non-stop – those two had developed a mutual adoration society. Michael and Jonathan had brought their laser tag game with them and had been noisily playing shoot-’em-up among the ruins, running in and out of dungeons and dark chambers, scattering bats, and raising sweat in the thirty-five-degree heat. We were just heading up to the highest ruin when we heard an enormous explosion.
“What’s that?” we asked, wondering whether the civil war might have started up again. It sounded just like the mortar fire we had heard a few months before on a mountaintop in war-torn Sri Lanka.
“It’s nothing.… Smile, you’re in Yemen!” But Salem’s own smile was uncertain.
When we returned to the harbour two hours later, it was full of uniformed men. Several soldiers armed with machine guns blocked our way. By then we had heard that there had been some kind of explosion on an American ship, but that’s all we knew. Salem had heard it was some kind of internal malfunction.
We stood there in confusion, with our three hungry, tired children and an armful of baguettes. “We have to go to our boat,” we said over and over again to the nervous young soldiers, who spoke no English but were determined not to let us through. Finally, after fifteen or twenty minutes, someone more senior let us pass. But no sooner had we climbed into our dinghy than two more soldiers confronted us. They made it extremely clear, even without benefit of a common language, that we were not to proceed.
“That is my boat! I have to go back to my boat!” Herbert kept repeating. But we dared not leave without permission, not when our antagonists were carrying machine guns. After five or ten minutes more, the stand-off ended and to our relief we were waved through.
A container ship was filling up with fuel beside us, partly blocking our view of the rest of the harbour. We were curious to see the ship involved in the explosion. Michael shinnied up the main mast and from the spreaders reported that he could see a large grey warship with a huge blackened hole in its hull. We didn’t know more until some hours later when we received a surprising e-mail by satellite from my parents. “Are you OK?” the e-mail said. “There’s been an explosion.”
We couldn’t imagine how my parents had heard about the blast. It was only in Dad’s next e-mail early the following morning that we learned what had happened. The name of the American ship was USS Cole. Two suicide bombers in a dinghy had come alongside as though they were harbour employees, taken the Cole’s mooring lines, stood to attention beside the ship, saluted, and blown themselves up. Seventeen American sailors had died. Yemen, this strange and exotic backwater, had just been forced onto the world stage. There were, of course, no reporters there yet, no TV cameras, no CNN. We had no reliable source of news other than Salem, and my father.
At that time, we had never heard the name Osama Bin Laden, who is widely accepted to have been responsible for this attack. But bin Laden’s path and ours had just crossed, for his bombers had gone right past Northern Magic in order to destroy the Cole. They might, in fact, have used the very same dock at which Northern Magic Junior had been tied.
Early the next morning, Michael and I set out in Junior to get a better view of the damage. The ship that had earlier blocked our view had moved, and we could now see the Cole clearly, only a few hundred metres away. A giant hole, nine by twelve metres, was blasted through the hull, extending well below the waterline. The ship’s pumps were working hard to eject water as quickly as it was pouring in; water was streaming out of an outlet beside the hole at a tremendous rate, like an open city water main. The ship was listing to one side. To us, it looked like a mortal wound. We learned later that the Cole had, in fact, been in imminent danger of sinking.
We stopped at a nearby sailboat and spoke to her Swiss captain, who had been on deck the morning before and had a clear view of the huge billowing cloud of black smoke that had risen into the air right after the blast. Although he hadn’t seen the suicide bombers, he did watch in puzzlement as three large pieces of an inflatable Zodiac dinghy had floated by our boats, perhaps the remains of the dinghy used in the attack. He pointed the pieces out to me. Through my binoculars I could see them on the beach.
I decided to radio the Cole and ask for permission to approach it to take photographs and possibly interview crewmembers for the Citizen. “I don’t think you’ll get permission anytime soon,” the radio officer answered. “But I’ll ask my Charlie Oscar.”
I called back later and asked again for permission to approach. It was denied, the officer said, because divers were at that moment working underwater to assess the damage. We spent the rest of the day listening to our VHF radio as the Cole communicated with other arriving naval vessels. Another two warships, USS Donald Cook and HMS Marlborough, which was either Australian or British, judging from its name and the accent of its radio officer, were circling in the harbour entrance. For security reasons, they didn’t come inside the harbour.
The Donald Cook and the Marlborough began assisting the Cole, sending boatloads of crew carrying huge awnings to cover the Cole’s open deck. With all electrical, water, and air-conditioning systems down, the Cole’s crew had to abandon their cabins and sleep in the open. They were still fighting hard to save their ship from sinking. We could see lots of activity and what looked like many bundles lying on the huge aft deck of the ship. We watched them hold some kind of service or ceremony.
We continued to eavesdrop shamelessly on VHF radio, listening to the Cole coordinate repair efforts. The internal damage was tremendous. They seemed to have few electrical systems still operating, problems feeding and housing their remaining crew, and a big struggle to keep the water level from rising. Day after day, we heard them ordering supplies: hose connectors, batteries, flashlights, laundry bags, paper cups, food, water, ice, and – oh, yes – duct tape. They were coordinating the sending of e-mails to the families
of crew. Most of the ship’s computers had been destroyed or rendered non-functional by the blast.
At the end of the afternoon, still with no permission from the Cole to approach, I returned with Jonathan to the spot from where Michael and I had taken photographs and videos earlier in the day. The big container ship that had partially obscured the view from our own boat was now gone, and the tarpaulin covering the blast site had blown aside, revealing the extent of the damage. We wanted to get a bit closer, to get a better view.
We had scrambled up on a huge mooring buoy. I had snapped but a single shot when we were approached by a fast-moving pilot boat. “No photos,” they said. “Not allowed. Police are coming. Go away now!” They continued on to Northern Magic and yelled at Herbert that I should stop taking pictures, that I was crazy and would be taken away to jail. With their hands, they pantomimed handcuffs.
Jon and I nervously scrambled back into the dinghy and returned to Northern Magic. A motorboat driven by a single Yemeni naval officer in a sparkling white uniform passed us. I waved gaily to him, for lack of anything better to do. Fortunately, he just waved back and didn’t confiscate my camera, put me under arrest, or worse.
We didn’t venture forth to take any more photos. Herbert was now looking particularly grey and stressed about my journalistic exuberance. My first-hand report on the incident did, however, play on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen and was reprinted across the United States on the Associated Press wire service.
We had intended to go that night to a dancing demonstration, but news that the British Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, had also been bombed, and that threats had been made against all Westerners in Yemen, made us change those plans. A close associate of bin Laden was urging Muslims worldwide to attack U.S. and Israeli targets wherever they might find them. As North Americans, we no longer felt welcome, or safe. The Canadian department of foreign affairs contacted my family and told them to advise us to leave immediately, that we were at high risk of being kidnapped.
The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey Page 31