The Englishman is staring at me. I stare back, not defiantly, but I want to meet his gaze with something. I will not hang my head in front of him. I have nothing to be ashamed of. At least not here.
“They told me you have spoken to your mother. They say she lives in Paris. It is a beautiful city. I have been a few times. You have come a long way, Peter Maguire. And it wasn’t the wisest of journeys.”
He pauses, waiting for a reaction. I will not respond to his fake familiarity, even if his accent, his very nature is stirring faint hopes. This man is like me. He speaks like me. He has seen what I have seen. Maybe I could talk to him?
“But you know that now,” he smiles. “You are obviously a man of courage. I have read about you. I like to do my research and, in fact, I almost became a journalist myself. I have read your stories from Africa, Iraq and elsewhere. You write well.”
We could’ve been outside that café in Soho. I feel dizzy. I need to be alone again.
One of the fighters coughs. Another shuffles his feet. The Englishman smiles, almost apologetically.
“They are right. It is time for me to go. We will take you this evening. It is better at night. This has just been a staging post, Peter. It is time now for you to come with us. I think you know what’s coming. You are a British spy in Somalia. Our Somalia. I won’t insult you with the usual diatribe. You know how this works but don’t worry, it won’t last much longer.”
He leaves quickly, his rapid step a throwback to life in a jam-packed city with dodgem-style pavements and colliding umbrellas. His pace marks him out from the others too. They walk slowly, silently with their heads down. Abdi leaves last and I can hear him locking the door. I try to catch his eye before he turns, for no other reason than to make a connection. But he does not look at me. Something has happened to him. And again, I think that Abdi may be as much a prisoner as I am.
The Englishman came back a few hours later. It was mid afternoon. Abdi had left my food earlier in the day, but he did not speak to me. Maybe there is nothing left to say. The Englishman had removed his headscarf and opened the top buttons of his shirt. He looked even younger, like a teenager going through a military, camo phase.
He held out his hand.
“My name is Burhan.”
And with those few words, I began to hope again. Here was a name, not just an institution or an ideology. My fate was no longer on some cosmic roulette table where my job, colour and nationality had decided the outcome before I even spun the wheel. Here was an individual. I could work with that. Maybe.
Burhan didn’t seem to have a gun. I felt slightly offended by his nonchalance and I did not offer my hand. He shrugged and eased gracefully onto the mattress, his back to the wall. I sat on the mat, my fingers nervously pulling at loose strands. My hands looked thinner, the veins more prominent. My body was sloughing me off, getting ready for the next phase.
As I twisted the prickly red threads, I thought of a Frida Kahlo painting I had seen years ago in the Petit Palais in Paris. The Two Fridas showed her holding hands with herself, blood ribbons connecting to two figures, their two hearts. One Frida had cut the end of the scarlet filament with a scissors. Red drops stained her white dress. I held a red strand over my dirty white robe. If only I had scissors.
“Why did you come to Somalia?” Burhan asked.
Fury washed over me, heating my face. My rage had nothing to do with his innocuous question, and everything to do with the answer. Because the answer was never going to be enough. Not for me, not for Guled, not for Michelle, not for my mother, not for Esther, and not for Godwin.
“Why did you?” I retorted. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to be a field study for some wannabe journalist-turned-jihadi.”
The Englishman smiled.
“A reporter to the end.”
He stressed the last words, laughing again to see me flinch.
He began tracing shapes with his slim fingers on the mattress. Squares and circles, and circles within squares.
“But let me humour you. I guess you have a right to know a little about your executioner. You will not understand because you cannot. I can give you the facts and you will make assumptions as all media do, and you will think you know my story. I was born in Mogadishu in 1985. My father was an academic but we fled when Siad Barre fell in 1991. He may have been a dictator but my parents could see that what would replace him would be worse. They made their way to the camp at Dadaab in Kenya. I don’t remember much of that time, but my father told me he paid for a ride to the border, and then bribed his way across. We were not your typical refugees, Peter. You wouldn’t have written about us then.”
A mocking smile.
“Eventually, we were offered asylum in the UK. My father was a mathematician, a good one. He taught at the Somali National University in Mogadishu, and when we moved to England, he became a second-level maths teacher in Ealing. Have you been there, Peter?”
I shook my head. I might be half-British but London was just a destination to me, a nice place for a weekend away. Paris is where I learned to write, read, ride a bike along the cobblestones, fall in love with unattainable girls, drink too much tongue-blasting Beaujolais once a year, party too long, and where I have tried to love. London has always been for visiting, like Cork, like Abidjan, like Monrovia. And yet Paris was still foreign to me. Still an exotic place where I could revel in my difference. I was always someone special in Paris. I think that’s why I stayed there so long.
I said nothing of this to Burhan. This was his conversation, his show, his indulgence. I couldn’t figure out if he was trying to befriend me, scare me, annoy me or if he was just bored, this urbane Londoner stuck in a Somali backwater with big-toed jihadis and silent country boys for company.
“I guess you think you know the rest. I have read the articles – these so-called exclusives that purport to know about foreign fighters coming here to join the war. They always portray us as confused, stupid youngsters who don’t realise how lucky we are to live in the West.”
He stopped, he was breathing harder now. This smooth boy-man commander had his own trigger points. Everyone has them. Tender bruises under the skin that are almost invisible but change the way you move, imperceptibly.
“You’ve read the stories. Maybe you’ve even written them. About the preachers in the mosques. The radical imans who proselytise and persuade young men to come here. Some of it is true, I suppose. There is a lot of that in the States, in Minneapolis, in Canada. But it was not like that for me. I am not a follower. I make up my own mind. That is why I have become a leader here.”
He waved his hand at the room, seeming not to notice the irony of the gesture.
“I studied at the London School of Economics. I have a degree in International Relations.”
He laughed. It was almost a giggle.
“I came because I wanted to defend my country. And I am fed up with how your Western countries are treating Muslims around the world.”
His voice was lower now, fiercer but these were practiced phrases. Rehearsed through repetition. Maybe there is no unique way to express these sentiments.
“You cannot imagine what it is like as a Muslim to watch the news every night. To see how we are ground down, unable to practise our religion freely, condemned by your oppressive systems. September 11th was one of the happiest days of my life because we were finally fighting back. When the towers came down, I had tears in my eyes, Peter. Tears of joy because I knew things had changed for ever. You, and your people, and your systems, and your arrogant governments were finally afraid.”
“They are not my systems,” I said slowly.
I did not want to engage with him, but something about the glibness of his diatribe, coupled with his obvious youth, annoyed me.
If I was going to die, I would not go quietly. I would fight back. I would force this man, and the others, to at least look over the edge, to acknowledge that their reality was just that, their reality. What others considered one of my gre
atest failings, my lack of ideology, would be my weapon here in this no man’s land between life and death.
“What good are you doing here?” I sneered. “You’re just a pawn. Out of place, out of your depth. Just like me. You’re being played by Al-Shabaab’s local leaders. This is their country, not yours. Global jihad? What good is it going to do? For you? For this country? Al-Shabaab is hated here. Your kind is hated here even more than Al-Shabaab. You, and every other foreign fighter who has come here looking for some kind of hippie self-realisation through war games. You won’t change anything. You’ll be killed here sooner or later, and nothing will change. You had a chance. Your parents gave you a chance. And you’ve thrown it away.”
It was a relief to finally let my frustration out.
The Englishman was glaring at me.
“You know nothing. You, all you journalists, are just part of the machine. You parrot the lies of the Jews and the infidels.”
“You can’t seriously believe that,” I replied. The words were tumbling out now, faster than I could stop them. “I thought you said you studied at the LSE? The preachers did a good job on you, that’s for sure.”
The Englishman got up abruptly, his face flushed. I stood too. I towered over him and knew that I could easily overpower this man. I could take him, I thought, trying to keep the elation off my face.
“I could knock you out right now and walk out this door.”
The Englishman laughed. The shot of anger that had propelled him off the mattress was gone. His eyes were lazy and insolent again. He could see through my bluffing. Could see that what I thought were options were really just illusions.
“So do it. You won’t take two steps beyond that door.”
“What do I care?” I said. “I’m a dead man walking. Kill me.”
A flash just below my line of sight, and out of nowhere, there was a knife in his hand. The blade was thin and the shaft was ornate. Where had this student in international relations got this elaborate knife? Did they give it to him when he got here? As I took two steps back, my mind whispered uselessly, there’s a story in that knife.
“We won’t kill you. Even if you overpower me, even if you get past me, the men outside the door will shoot you. Not to kill, but to bring you down. And then I will come and use this on you. I will cut out your right eye first. And then I will cut off your fingers. We can still put you in front of the cameras. You will still be alive, but only just, and the worst will be to come.”
He was inching towards me now.
“The trouble is, you always underestimate us. Just because we kill, just because we are different from you, we are not stupid. It’s your choice now.”
His tone floored me. I knew he was right. My knees buckled and I sank onto the mat. As I crouched there, heaving with shame and despair, he walked slowly to the door, shouted something in Somali, and again the footsteps came, and the room was full. He crouched down and hissed into my ear.
“You see, you do not understand me at all, Peter Maguire. You think you do. You have already profiled me to meet your expectations. Bored, monied Somali student, looking for a cause, chooses jihad. But what if I like being here for other reasons too? What if I enjoy what I do? Not all jihadis are just jihadis. You, of all people, should know how complex humans can be. Or have you learnt nothing?”
He grabbed my hair roughly, forcing my face to within inches of his own.
“You will see what I am capable of very soon. And I will enjoy breaking down your prejudices and preconceptions. Do you see now? You really don’t know anything. And that is the problem with all of you.”
He flung my head away but I had seen it. The repressed rage, the hatred, and a coldness that turned my stomach. He would cut off my head. He would enjoy it and not necessarily because of the ideology. Or at least not just because of that.
When he was gone, I got up slowly and lay on my mattress, my face to the wall again. I was terrified, but my adrenaline was pumping. The Englishman had shifted the balance somewhere deep inside me, in that dark place where our prejudices, and stereotypes, and unvoiced fears, and hatreds slither over each other. I didn’t want to die, not at his hands. I didn’t want to die before, but I had felt the weight of circumstance against me. I felt like a nameless victim of politics and forces beyond my control that really had nothing to do with who I was, and everything to do with what I was. What I am. Now I could put a face to my enemy, and a story, and a character and I would not be his victim.
I also had a face I thought could be a friend. I needed to talk to Abdi again. We both needed to get out of here. He had a life to live and I had things to do, mistakes to correct, a life to relive.
As the hours crept by, as the sun sank outside my window, I became a living sea, swaying, undulating, sweeping in and out. I was ecstatic, I would escape, I would make it. And then the wave would break, at its peak, the water turning to soapsud foam that floated away, and could not be made solid again.
I was doomed, I was going to die, horribly. There was nothing I could do. I curled on the mattress, enduring every second as a curse and yet grateful for each infinitesimal gift. More time, but no time to do anything, to stop the clock. I could hardly breathe. I could hardly think. It was getting late.
My sliver of sky had lost its cut-glass brilliance and was fading to a softer blue as the sun set, like a mother heading home and dragging her diamond-bright children with her, removing the colour and the noisy light. I waited for Burhan and his men to come, my breathing shallow, my back to the room, my face almost touching the wall.
I must have slept a little in the end. I heard footsteps and sat up, waiting for the door to open, but there was silence. Then came a rustling and footsteps again, but going away this time. I strained my ears to hear the world beyond my gasping breaths and my hammering heart. I thought I could hear voices. A faint crackling, maybe a fire outside. And otherwise, just the sounds of dusk: the banshee cry of some nocturnal bird, a faint whispering of wind, a wordless shout answered by another.
There was something beside the door. I crept towards it on my hands and knees. Someone had slipped a note underneath the door. I grabbed the single sheet of lined paper and crawled across the floor to where there was still a little light from the window.
The transport has been delayed. I will come for you later. We will leave tonight. Be ready.
It could only be Abdi. The page had been torn from the same book as the pages he gave me to write my letter. He had written in black biro in a small, tight script. Tiny letters that looked like they hardly had the strength to carry this dangerous message.
I huddled in the corner furthest from the door with questions thundering through my head. Why was he helping me? How would we do it? And because these questions could not be answered, I went further. Would we survive? And what then? Abdi was little more than a child. And I wasn’t fit or brave, or in any way useful. I was a writer and a watcher, not a doer. I crawled back to my mattress. Be ready. But was Abdi ready?
CHAPTER NINE
ABDI
I am not a hero and I am not a martyr. I am barely a man. I don’t know why I am doing this. Maybe it is because there is nothing else to do, nothing that matters. Since I found out about my mother, I have been ready to die. There is nothing left for me now in Somalia. I will either die here or leave, and if I leave, it may be like dying anyway. I could try to find my mother’s brother in Dadaab. I remember him a little, a tall man with my mother’s curved lips, my lips, but none of her humour. He used to visit our house when my father was alive. He stopped coming around the time that Nadif became one of them. I cannot say we are close. I am not sure I have ever said more than a handful of words to him, but he is my mother’s brother, I am of his clan, and he will have to help me.
I thought about this as I sat outside yesterday, waiting for the foreigner to arrive. It’s a plan, maybe even a good plan. But I am tired of being helped. I am tired of owing my life and my future to other people. Yusuf would like
me to stay here but he will help me get to the border if that is what I want. But then I am just running away, a child again, running from danger, from decisions, from myself.
I am sick of fleeing and hiding, and what is the point of running when you don’t know where you are going? It would be different if I had a reason to live. If my mother was coming with me. But without her, my life feels like a burden.
Not like the prisoner. I think he is hungry for life. He is a man with a past, and with a past, you can dream of a future. I have no past left. The future means nothing to me, and that’s how I know this is over.
I do not like the Al-Shabaab foreigner. He scares me. Not just because of who he is, but because his presence has reawakened all my questions about Nadif. I want to remember Nadif as my brother, in the time before them. But he has brought Nadif the martyr back to life. Would Nadif have become like him? Would his eyes have been that cold? This Somali who is not Somali angers me with his very presence. He reminds me of them, the bearded men who pulled the strings of our lives to make them smaller, who took Nadif and turned him into a hater, killers like those who took my father from me.
These men have destroyed my life and this killer-leader with his strange Somali and his strong boots embodies the evil that has cursed my life. He has given me a new purpose. He makes me live, fuelling the hatred that is the only thing that can move me. Until now I did not know I craved revenge. But I do. It came to me when the foreigner clapped his hand on my shoulder, and said, “So this is Abdi. I have heard about your brother. A martyr for jihad. May Allah rest his soul in peace.”
Fractured: International Hostage Thriller Page 10