The Desert and the Sea
Page 40
* Polytheists, infidels.
* Captain Kidd was hanged as a pirate, but historians have disagreed about his business in Madagascar.
* “The place that receives them is chiefly Madagascar, where they must touch both coming and going,” wrote New York governor Richard Coote, earl of Bellomont, in 1697. “All the ships that are now out are from New England, except Tew from New York and Want from Carolina. They build their ships in New England, but come out under pretense of trading from island to island. . . . When they come back they have no place to go but Providence [in the Bahamas], Carolina, New York, New England and Rhode Island, where they have all along been kindly received.”
* Maybe a pen name for Daniel Defoe; in any case, the author of A General History of the Pyrates.
* “Thank you.”
* So possibly a joke from my subconscious.
* Whatever ransom had sprung Rolly and Marc a year earlier would also have set expectations for mine.
* The Sa’ad are a subclan of the Habar Gidir, who in turn are a subdivision of the Hawiye.
* See The Road to Hell, by Michael Maren.
* Full name Xalane Ma’lin Dare, though he tried to go by “Mohammed.”
* “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth” (Ecclesiastes 7:4). Not that I felt wise.
* Seen two years later in Eye in the Sky, a fictional thriller about an American drone strike in Eastleigh, the Somali neighborhood of Nairobi.
* Pronounced dersi.
* Pronounced hero.
* From Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number.
* Now the Hostage Support Partnership, not part of the U.N.
* Hassan Sheikh Mohamud became president of the Federal Republic of Somalia in 2012.
* The Pirate Princeling.
* Pronounced taleeya, meaning “commander.”
* Probably one hundred thousand dollars, for about ten guards.
* Special Air Service, a special forces unit of the British military.
* Without yelling.
* Named by the American and German agents in Nairobi as Ali Qoryare, aka Nuur Jareer—the man in charge of my kidnapping. Neither name helped me place him, and other pirates used the name “Abdi Yare.” But the man in this story was a top boss in my case.
* Bakayle’s brother.
* Different from another man called Farhaan, a midranking boss, who may have been present, too.
* “Seek not for events to happen as you wish, but wish for events to happen as they do,” Epictetus said, “and your life will go smoothly and serenely.”
* Four Thai hostages from the fishing vessel Prantalay 12 were held two months longer.
* The retired British colonel who had helped my mother find Derek, the pilot. He’d also hired the second Somali driver on the day of my release. Steed helped with many long-term pirate cases in Somalia.
* But Taso returned to Taiwan a few days later, and there was no lack of patriotic and emotional stories.