The next day, Abdi came in earlier than usual. He had no food this time.
“They are coming for you. Tomorrow, they will take you.”
And then he was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
ABDI
This is nearly over. Yusuf will pay me. I will join my mother in Mogadishu and we will leave. The prisoner will probably be killed. I don’t know what is happening with the ransom, but that will now be their problem. The Sheikh told me they are sending a Somali-born mujahid who came here recently from Britain. He will be in charge of the operation. Maybe the prisoner can talk to him.
The Sheikh would not be pleased if he knew we were talking. I am curious though. I don’t understand why the prisoner came to Somalia. But I like to hear him talk. I am learning. I feel more at ease with him than with Yusuf or his men. I do not want any extra contact with them. They are dangerous, or maybe just bad, they are men like those who stole Nadif from me. I want to be out of here. The prisoner is not dangerous. And he will not be here long. It is like talking to a ghost. A dead man. I can talk to him because the words he hears will die with him.
My mother must call today. She should have called earlier this week but there has been heavy fighting in Mogadishu. They say Al-Shabaab is retreating. Maybe she hasn’t been able to buy credit. She does not keep her phone on because there is often no power. I must wait for her to ring me. I will go outside and sit under the acacia tree, and then she will call.
I sit on a flat stone in the shade and close my eyes. I almost sleep. I do this easily now. This job is all about waiting. My life is about waiting. I wait for it to restart.
“Abdi, come!”
Yusuf is calling. I get up and walk past the scrawny chickens pecking in the dust, through the dazzling sunshine. He is standing in the door of the main house. His face is in shadow. He walks in before me, turning his back too quickly. He takes me to the main room. Some of his men are sprawled by the walls, chewing khat. I have never joined them. I am saving my money for our journey.
“Please Abdi, sit down.”
Something is wrong. Yusuf is agitated. His fingers fumble with his scarf. He is not looking at me. I remember this happening before.
“What’s wrong? What has happened?”
I don’t really want to know but I recognise, once again, that I am not in control of this part of my story.
“It’s Faduma. She is dead.”
I hear the words. They mean everything, and nothing.
“Abdi, have you heard me? Faduma has gone to Allah.”
There are moments in life when time does stand still. This is the third time for me. Maybe this time, it will not start again. I would like that. Yusuf’s words echo in my head. I am silent because they are screaming. Let them roar out their evil inside my head. Let me keep those words inside, on repeat. Let us not speak them again, and if we do not say them, they cannot exist.
“I am sorry, Abdi. I have just been told. She has been dead for some days.”
I sink to the ground, crouching at the feet of the dead-eyed men along the wall.
Yusuf said my mother had got cholera. She couldn’t leave the house because Al-Shabaab had tightened its hold on the neighbourhood. When a friend found her, she was dying. Neighbours took her to the hospital, but there was nothing they could do.
I felt like screaming at him to stop. Stop making it real with your words, Yusuf! Be silent! Be silent and this will slip away. As though it was never here.
I walked back outside and sat again under the spiky, stunted tree. I watched those dinosaur chickens and the sun falling in the sky, dropping lower through air that shimmered like steam above a cooking pot.
Eventually I closed my eyes. There was nothing behind them except the sun shadows burnt onto my retina. I looked at them too, filling my mind with their forms. I opened my eyes, looked at the main house, at its tin roof and mud walls. They needed redoing in places. Yusuf’s Land Cruiser was parked in a corner. I looked at the prisoner’s shack. Nothing to see but bricks and a closed door.
It is quiet here. A dirt track leads to our compound from the main road two kilometres away. There is nothing around. Bare, hard earth, hills that are really just mounds of dust waiting for a giant to blow them away. This place looks like nothing and nowhere. It is a good place for me now.
Later, I took the prisoner’s meal to him. He was lying on his mattress and did not sit up immediately, but he was not asleep. I placed the food on the mat and sat there.
The stew was cold. I was late to collect it but nobody said anything. The prisoner rose and sat in front of me.
“I’m not hungry,” he said. “But please, may I have a cigarette?”
He has lost hope, I thought. I know that voice. The voice of someone who does not now, or ever, expect things to get better. The voice of someone who has lost too much, seen too much, heard too much and smelt too much. It is my voice.
“Thank you,” he said when I gave him the cigarette. I smoked with him.
“I want to ask a favour.”
He spoke without looking at me. He was tracing the mat’s woven pattern with a dirty fingernail.
“You said they are coming tomorrow. I need to write a letter to my mother. I have things to say, and not the things they will make me say. You know what I mean. Can you get me paper and a pen? Can I leave the letter with you?”
He looked at me then. I saw a broken man, a condemned man, and I saw that he knew all these things. He wanted me to help him. But I, too, am those things. And who will help me? Who will send my letter? Who will say goodbye to my mother for me?
“I cannot help you.”
“Please, Abdi. You know how this will go. They will make me say things I do not believe. They will film me. I don’t want that to be my last message. I have other things to say to my mother. Please, Abdi. It is all I ask.”
“Why should I help you?”
The prisoner put his head in his hands. He began to rock back and forth. He was muttering.
“Just one more fucking story. Give me one more story to write myself, please. One more.”
He looked up, eyes like broken windows in an abandoned house.
“I don’t have anyone else to ask. What do you have to lose? I’ll be gone tomorrow.”
He would be gone tomorrow. I would be gone tomorrow. This room, these talks would belong in the past. Like my parents, my brother, my home, my life. We would leave this compound and nothing would remain.
If I were to vanish tonight, to be plucked out of my bed by a djinn and turned to air, what difference would it make? None to me. I feel I could disappear. I feel I am fading away. Whatever holds us on this earth is letting go of me. I am dead already. I am a dead prisoner. Just like this man.
I bring him the paper and pen and promise to come back in an hour to get the letter. Nobody bothers me. I am protected today by grief. I am unlucky, maybe even contagious. The prisoner grabs my hand but I shake him off. Nobody will touch me now.
“Thank you,” he says.
His voice is cracking. I feel tired. I go outside to sit in the shade again and watch the chickens.
It is dark now. Yusuf came and sat with me for a while. He told me to eat. He said I could stay here with him, or head for the border. It makes no difference to me. I don’t want to do anything.
It is cool now. There are stars and a half-moon. The moon is the malicious grin of a malicious god, leering at me, at all of us stuck here in this hot land. The stars do not banish the dark. They just let us see exactly how black the sky is.
The prisoner gave me his letter. He said nothing, just handed me the four pages I tore from a school exercise book I found in the main house. His writing is untidy, but I could read it. I read it here in my bed in this outhouse where I have slept for weeks. Reading by torchlight like we used to do, lying on our stomachs on a mattress in the basement. Nadif would read, I would whine that I could not see the pictures, and then he would turn the book around. Down there, you could he
ar the distant pounding of the mortars. It was hot, and sticky, and dark, but it was safe. We should have stayed in that basement.
Mum,
All that writing and I can’t find the words that matter now. I don’t know when you will get this, or even if you will get this. This letter has no context, no place in time.
I am sorry. I am sorry for putting you through this. They say Al-Shabaab is coming to take me tomorrow. So, I doubt I will be able to write again. There is a young guy taking care of me here. His name is Abdi. He feeds me and gives me cigarettes. He is going to take the letter. I hope it gets to you somehow.
I’m sorry too for everything before this. I am sorry for cutting you out of my life for so long. I just didn’t know how to deal with it. I knew you and Dad had problems, but even with the divorce, you were still my parents. Until you told me what happened in Liberia.
I don’t want to overanalyse or make excuses, but when you told me that Dad was not my father, I was angry. I was lost too. Maybe, it shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything about the love I feel for Dad, it doesn’t take away the things he did for me. But it changes everything. I am not who I thought I was. And I never had a good grip on myself anyway. You know that better than anyone. I have never committed to being me. I have been the job, or the man my woman wanted, or your son, or Dad’s son. I have been what other people wanted me to be.
I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I don’t want to start all that up again. I wish I had asked you more questions. You said his name was Shaun Ridge. He was a journalist. I wish I had found out more. If you were here now, in this small room, sitting on this mat with me, I would ask you: Why did you do it? Didn’t you love Dad anymore? What was Shaun like? Would you have left Dad if he had lived? Did it make you feel any different about me? Did this ruin your life? Did it ruin Dad’s?
These are rhetorical questions now, and maybe they were always irrelevant. Or maybe they are the wrong ones. I try not to think about dying. In a way, I don’t even mind dying. I feel I might have died already. Remember that ghost story you read to me when I was about eight? It was in that book Aunt Bernadette gave us? It was about a woman who died, but didn’t notice. She went about her day and then, there was that awful moment when she realised she was dead. I can’t remember what triggered her realisation. Was it a story in a newspaper? Anyway, I feel a bit like that now. I don’t want to suffer though. That scares me. That makes me want to curl up now, stop breathing and go. Just so I don’t have to live this. I wish I didn’t have to live this.
I’m running out of paper. Please Mum, can you look out for Godwin and Esther? They are still in Monrovia. I didn’t mean for that to happen like it did. I tried to do right. I have given Esther money every month. You’ll find the Western Union details in the drawer of the desk in my office at home. The key is in the carved box you brought me from Iraq. Maybe you could go and see them one day? Godwin is your grandson. Maybe you can be a better grandmother than I have been a father.
I should give you a message for Esther. I should say something to Godwin. You can tell them I am sorry. For failing to be there. For leaving them. For being a bastard. I didn’t know how to start loving them. I didn’t give myself a chance. I was afraid. Afraid of not loving them enough, afraid of leaving Michelle, afraid of changing. Please look out for them, Mum. Tell Michelle I love her. I do, I’m just not sure if my love is enough. I’m not sure I am capable of loving anyone enough, or maybe I just don’t know what it means.
And Dad, tell him I miss him. I want him to make this right like he did so many times in the past. I want him to put me on his knee and tell me it’s all going to be all right. He is a wonderful father.
If the worst happens, know that I will have you all in my heart even at that time. I will keep you with me. I love you,
Peter
This is a sad letter. I do not understand all of it but I understand the pain. I wish I had had time to write to my mother. I would also have said sorry. For leaving, for not protecting her, for not knowing how to save Nadif. Sorry for this life, this country.
It is too late. For her, for me, for this place. I will not stay here with Yusuf. I will leave tomorrow. I will leave once the prisoner is gone. Our story can end together. For me, at least, there will be no other story. I have lived. What happens next is just how I die.
CHAPTER SIX
NINA
I’ve taken the phone off the hook and switched off my mobile. Just for half an hour, to give me a bit of a break. They haven’t stopped ringing since he was taken. Everyone wants to know how I feel, or how I am coping. That is the word they use. Coping. As if I have a bad cold or a sore back. But then, there probably isn’t a tactful way of asking a mother how she is dealing with having her only son kidnapped in Somalia. My friends are at sea. I feel as though I am putting them out by making them face things they don’t want to. And then there is the irony of being at the receiving end of calls from the press after so many years in the business.
In the silence, I question myself. Did Peter become a journalist because I was one? Does he have some sort of personality defect, a thirst for danger, for risk, because of me? How deep does my responsibility lie? These thoughts have tormented me every night since I heard. My face is grey with fatigue, even though I didn’t sleep much before. It’s one of the ironies of old age that just when it’s so hard to fill the hours with anything useful or interesting, the days get longer as sleep gives up on you too.
Don Struddle called earlier today. He said the kidnappers had contacted the Post, and asked for a ransom of one million dollars. My Peter, the million-dollar man.
“So, what next?” I asked, grateful that my friend had the good grace not to ask me how I was doing.
“We’ve hired a kidnap response expert. He’s based in London and his firm works for a bunch of shipping companies. They’ve had a fair bit of experience dealing with Somali pirates. He is going to fly to Mogadishu for us on Thursday. We’re hoping he’ll be able to set up a handover on the ground.”
Don paused. I could sense his frustration. How helpless my feisty, never-say-die friend must be feeling. I had seen it before. Don had been with me in Liberia in 1980, covering Samuel Doe’s coup and the killings that followed. Baby Liberia’s first steps into madness. Don is one of a handful of people who know what happened there. He was among the first to realise. Tim found out later, but Don saw it all, and guessed even more.
“Is this expert confident the kidnappers will release Peter?”
I was struggling to keep my voice steady. I knew Don wouldn’t hold it against me if I cried – we had been through a lot together and I wasn’t afraid of appearing weak before him – but I guessed he was also trying to hold it together for my sake. He and Peter were close.
“Yes,” Don said, his voice blowing on the wrong side of bluster.
“He reckons the men who have taken Peter are just bandits. They don’t seem like ideologues. So that’s a good thing. If they just want money, that’s a lot easier to deal with. Of course, this has to be kept quiet. The British government will not sanction talks with terrorists, nor will the US authorities. Officially. But the paper is ready to put up the money. That’s what insurance is for.”
“Will the kidnappers sell him on?”
I had to ask. I might be retired now but I still follow the news. Whenever Peter is away, I embark on my own little home-study course to keep up with whatever’s happening where he is. I have little else to do since I stopped working a few years ago. Now, at least, I don’t have to search for his byline to find out where he is. He tells me.
I used to do the same kind of research to track Tim when we were first married and he was travelling. I suppose I was trying to feel closer to him. That unrelenting need you have in those first months. I can just about remember it. It comes to me like a faint fragrance on a country lane that yanks your brain into reverse. In those days, there was no Internet, no Google Maps with their see-all satellites. Now, I lap up e
verything that technology offers, sitting here at my computer with the high-pitched chatter of Parisians slinking through my open windows, and my stern Senufo masks staring down from the walls, daring me to forget.
“Frankly, Nina, I don’t know. And the expert doesn’t know either,” Don said. “We’ll just have to play it by ear. Even if Peter does get handed on to Al-Shabaab, they have never publicly killed a Western hostage in Somalia before. African soldiers yes, but never a foreign civilian. My hunch is it’s all about the money.”
He hesitated.
“But, things are changing fast. There are hundreds of foreign fighters in Somalia now, and with the internal splits in Al-Shabaab, and the threat of a new offensive by AMISOM… I don’t want to be morbid but it is a tricky situation. And I know you know that, Nina.”
“Where is the expert flying from?” I asked.
“London to Nairobi and then onto Mog. I know what you are thinking, Nina, and it’s a bad idea. What will you be able to do in Mogadishu? You’ll just be putting yourself in danger, you might make things worse.”
“I can’t sit here, Don. I just can’t.”
Don sighed again. I could imagine him running his big, hairy hands over his egg-like head. I remember him doing the same thing with his hands that awful day in Monrovia, thirty years ago, when he came to my room to comfort me.
“Let me talk to our local stringer in Nairobi. I’ll get her to contact AMISOM to see if we can get you onto their base at the airport in Mogadishu. But I’m not promising anything, Nina. You can’t just go dashing off like we did before. We are the old ones now. The ones who wait. That’s our role.”
“I know, I know.”
Now, it was my turn to sigh.
“And I’ve been doing really well with that until now, Don. But not this time. Peter is there, and I’m damned if I am not going to be there for him when he gets out. I owe him that.”
And so much more, I thought. And now the tears came, filling my eyes so that I had to move the phone to wipe them away.
Fractured: International Hostage Thriller Page 6