A House in the Sky (21 page)

Kidnappings happened, my parents were told, but they also ended.

This was meant as reassurance. So was another point the agents made, offering a first bit of hard comfort in what would turn into months of it: Nigel and I were now commodities. The kidnappers had spent money to catch us and keep us. They’d made an investment, which meant that it was in their best interest to keep us alive. If they killed us, it would be their loss, too.

*

In the tin-roofed house in Somalia, of course, we knew none of this. I spent the first day and night of captivity vacillating between panic and something that amounted to faith, a certainty that our ordeal would end quickly if only we could hit upon the right strategy for talking to the men holding us.

Early on the second morning, Adam came into our room, accompanied by Ali, Yahya, and Ahmed, and announced that they had come up with a plan. He would be calling our families shortly to demand a ransom payment. They would be given one day to pay. If no money came, we’d be killed.

Immediately, I started to argue. I said, “Our families don’t have money. They can’t pay ransom. And besides that, it’s Sunday, and so even if they could, all the banks are closed, anyway.”

Adam was unmoved. When Nigel asked why they were holding us, he smiled and said something about our governments being at war with Islam. “You have bad governments,” he said, as if suggesting that we shouldn’t take anything personally. He added that they didn’t want money from our families. “If we are going to kill you in twenty-four hours, your governments will find a way to pay,” he said. I could see he was missing one of his top front teeth.

I said, “How much are you asking for?”

“Ah!” said Adam, as if I’d hit upon something he’d forgotten to mention. “We are not yet certain.” He eyed us as if trying to evaluate our worth. “Maybe one million dollars,” he said, shrugging lightly, “maybe two.”

Nigel and I sat in stunned silence while the four men filed back out the door. A few minutes later, we heard a car leaving the compound.

We were starting to understand, somewhat, the power structure in the group holding us hostage. Adam and Ahmed appeared to be the leaders, with Yahya, the older military man, and Ali serving as deputies, overseeing the foot soldiers, the eight or so long-legged young men—the boys, we started calling them—drifting around the courtyard with their guns. The leaders came and went in the Suzuki; it seemed they were staying at a different place, possibly back in Mogadishu. Yahya seemed to be directly in charge of the boys, ordering them around in Somali, sending one or two out to fetch thermoses of sweet tea or bags of cooked spaghetti from some unseen market on the other side of the walls.

Ali appeared to be in charge of us. Without his commanders around, he kicked into high gear, barging in and out of the room with a jumpy sort of ferocity. “If your governments don’t pay, you will die,” he said at one point, looking down at us from the doorway. He dragged a finger dramatically across his own neck to indicate that we would be beheaded. Clearly enjoying the moment, he leaned in close. His voice was high-pitched for a man’s. “How does it feel,” he said, “knowing you will soon die?”

The morning passed minute by minute. Every few hours, we could hear a muezzin call from a mosque and then the shuffle and murmur of prayer outside our door. Nigel lay on his mat, crying softly, keeping one elbow crooked over his face as if he couldn’t bear to look at his surroundings. On the previous day, Ali had given us each a brand-new piece of fabric, a large square of lightweight cotton. Nigel’s was red, and he was wearing it instead of his jeans, wrapped like a skirt around his waist to give his body more air, which was how we’d seen some of our captors dressed. I was sweltering, still in head scarf and abaya with my jeans and tank top beneath, knowing I had no choice but to stay
fully cloaked. I’d taken my sheet, which was covered with delicate blue and white flowers, and spread it out to put a layer between me and the moldy floor mat.

I made the calculations. Somalia was in a time zone nine hours ahead of the Canadian Rockies. I wondered, Was my family sleeping? Would the kidnappers call them in the middle of the night? I fought off tears. We were behind high walls, outnumbered by men with guns, and with no sense of where we were on the map. Our helplessness seemed complete.

Ali stuck his head through our door again. “How does it feel,” he said, “to know you have twenty hours to live?” He made the beheading motion with his finger, this time adding a sound effect—a swift scraping hiss. Then he left again.

I tried unsuccessfully to barricade myself off from his words, to push what I knew from my mind: Our captors were fundamentalists. And fundamentalists really did behead people. In Iraq, I’d gone out one day to do a TV story and had visited a field at the outskirts of Sadr City. The place had become a dumping ground for the bodies of people killed in the fighting between Shiite and Sunni militias. A man’s decomposing corpse, lying on the ground amid piles of garbage, caught my eye. His hair was matted and his eyes were open, brown and blank. It took me a few seconds to assemble the picture, to realize what it was that I was seeing. The man’s head had been partially severed from his body, the top vertebrae of his spine flashing white like whalebones in the sun.

It was a lesson the world had already taught me and was teaching me still. You don’t know what’s possible until you actually see it.

*

With time ticking down, we were novelties, Nigel and I. With a now-or-never bravado, two of the soldier boys entered our room with lunch and lingered awkwardly in the doorway. They were keen to practice their English.

One of them, I would actually come to like. Jamal, his name was. He spoke only a small amount of English but compensated with an
eagerness to engage. He sat on the floor cross-legged, in a navy blue T-shirt and a pair of tan dress slacks with cuffs that rode high over his skinny dark ankles, and smiled at us in a genuine way. He was a teenager—eighteen years old, he said—a clear work in progress, with long spindly legs and narrow shoulders that sloped forward, as if he were trying to shed some of his considerable height. He had bright eyes and dark curly hair cut close to his skull. On his chin, he had a few sprouting hairs, the very beginnings of a beard. I could smell his cologne, fruity and cheap. I remembered Jamal from the day before. He’d been the gunman who first appeared at my window. His eyes were unforgettably big and frightened in a way that broadcast his inexperience. Though his face had been wrapped, the scarf had fallen partly open, and I’d seen enough that I could recognize him now.

He came to our room with another boy, Abdullah, who was more heavily built and somber-seeming. Abdullah had carried our meals—two more bags of greasy spaghetti—and dropped them quickly into our hands using only the outer edges of two fingertips, as if we might bite.

Jamal, though, was openly curious, only a little bit bashful, averting his eyes when he asked us questions, smiling at the ground as he heard our answers. Where did we live? Were we married? What did we think of Somalia? Did we own cars? Abdullah sat down as well, but he made me uneasy. In a flat voice, he said that he also was eighteen and fighting the jihad.

“Soldier,” he said, touching his chest with evident pride. I could feel him looking at me as he said it, even as I avoided meeting his gaze.

Both Nigel and I left our food untouched. To eat in front of them felt like putting a weakness on display.

Jamal, it turned out, had just gotten engaged to be married.

I said, “Is she a beautiful girl?”

He dipped his head sheepishly, the grin irrepressible. “Yes, beautiful.”

“When are you getting married?”

Jamal said, “After now.”

“You mean soon?”

“Yes,” he said. “
Inshallah.
” Searching for the words, he added, “The married party is . . .” He rubbed two fingers together.

“Expensive? A wedding is expensive?”

“Yes.” He seemed to beam relief, having made himself understood.

What he meant by “after now,” I realized, was “once this kidnapping is over.” It occurred to me that for Jamal, this wasn’t so much about jihad. He was waiting for his payout so he could go home, throw a wedding, and marry his girl.

*

“You have seventeen hours until you die,” Ali said after we’d made a late-day trip to the outhouse and resettled ourselves on our mats. Nigel was lying on his side, facing the wall. I found myself hoping Ali would leave and Jamal would come back, bringing his comparative cheer. Nigel had closed himself off. He hadn’t managed to say one reassuring or hopeful thing all day.

Ali said, sounding angry, “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“You will soon die.”

My hips were sore from the pressure of the concrete beneath my thin mat. I was feeling drained by the heat. I was sick of his nastiness. “Well,” I said, knowing I was being flippant, “if that’s how Allah wants it . . .”

Ali’s rage was instantaneous. He took a few steps closer, as if to strike me. “You,” he seethed. “You think this is a joke? If you are ready to die, then say so. I will kill you now.”

I cowered. “No, no, no, I’m sorry,” I said, switching my tone to reflect how I felt. Fear, sustained over a number of hours, feels like something you can drown in. I’d been paddling in it all day.

Nigel had quietly rolled over on his mat and was listening.

I said, “I don’t think this is a joke, my brother. I don’t want to die.” I bowed my head. “But if it’s my time, then there is nothing I can do about it. That’s all I was trying to say.”

When I looked up again, Ali seemed to be regarding me carefully. His anger had subsided a little. I regretted saying it. To mock the Muslim
belief in predestiny—the idea that Allah had planned our fates carefully and there was little we could do to swerve from them—was sacrilege, a hot-button move if there ever were one.

An idea came to me then, a possibility. “If I’m going to die,” I said to Ali as calmly as I could, “I would like to speak with an imam first.”

I saw him cock his head in surprise. “No,” he said after a beat. “That is reserved only for the Muslims.”

There were a lot of things only for the Muslims in Somalia. Because everybody, more or less, was Muslim.

“Well,” I said, thinking maybe it would extend us past twenty-four hours, “maybe I want to become a Muslim before I die.”

*

That night they loaded us back into Ahmed’s Suzuki. In a repeat of the initial kidnapping, Nigel and I were pushed in with a bunch of masked men, a few of whom we recognized. I could identify Ahmed, Adam, Ali, and Yahya. Their guns clattered, knocking against the rounds of bullets they wore draped over their shoulders. Adam drove the car. Abdullah, Jamal’s angry-seeming friend, rode in back with his AK-47 pointed at our heads.

Ahmed, who had come to fetch us from the room an hour earlier, had given his usual sunny smile and spoken with the unflappable politeness of a five-star hospitality professional.

“Is everything okay?” I’d said.

“Oh yeah, very good,” he’d replied.

“But what about the twenty-four hours?”

He almost looked surprised. “Oh, we will give you more time. No problem! We will take you to a nicer house. I am sorry for these poor beds that you must sleep on.”

It was impossible to know whether we should believe him. The car slid through the village, spraying sand. Nigel and I held hands tightly. Out the window, I could see no clues to where we were, just walls and low bushes. Adam, in his Ben Franklin glasses, spun the wheel back and forth, revving the engine to get traction.

I asked Adam, “Have you spoken to our families?”

“Ah, yes, I have,” he said. He looked over his shoulder at Nigel. “I talked with your sister.” His face broke into a smile, showing the gap of his missing front tooth. “She is . . . what is the word for it? Panicked.”

The thought tightened my throat. “My parents?” I said.

“Your mother, she is good, very good,” Adam said nonchalantly. He offered nothing more.

O
ur new house was close to the old house. After a ten-minute drive, we were dropped in front of another high-walled compound and escorted through a small metal doorway, the group of us filing in like ducks, the boys angling their AK-47s to fit through the door. On the other side was a sand yard and, across it, a single-story house with a wide patio. Someone had strung a few drooping clotheslines across the porch. Inside, it was not much of an upgrade over where we’d come from, though this place had electric lights and a small indoor bathroom with a bucket-flush toilet. A couple of the boys, wordlessly clutching their guns, led us down a hallway and to a damp-feeling bedroom with two stained mattresses on the floor.

A forest of black crystallized mold branched across the back wall, running the width of the room. Left on our own, Nigel and I silently pulled the mattresses as far away from it as possible, each picking a different side of the room.

Adam carried in several plastic bags, thrusting them in our direction with what I read to be pride, gesturing for us to open them. Nigel was given a couple of new sets of shirts and pants, folded tidily. I got a pair of men’s jeans and two men’s dress shirts, along with a brown sequined skirt that looked small enough to fit a child. All were brand-new. Adam had bought me a notebook and a pen, a bottle of Head & Shoulders two-in-one shampoo/conditioner, some perfume, a bar of
soap, a toothbrush, and a family-sized toothpaste. He looked pleased by his own thoughtfulness. When I glanced over at Nigel, I saw that he was holding an identically huge log of toothpaste.

It seemed they weren’t planning to kill us right away. I felt a tide of relief, followed by instant exhaustion.
Jesus,
I thought, holding my toothpaste,
how long are they planning to keep us here?
To Adam, I said, “Wow, this is a lot of stuff.”

He seemed flattered. “Oh, well,” he said, lifting his hands, “you are our brother and sister. And you can see that it is the real brand, the Crest toothpaste . . .”