Djibouti (5 page)

D
ARA WAS OUT ON
the
Buster
twenty-seven days.

She caught a ride on a supply plane off the carrier
Dwight D. Eisenhower
and was back in Djibouti three days before Xavier arrived on the
Buster.
It gave her time to put together a rough cut with the beginning of an idea, a theme.

 

S
HE WAS IN HER
suite at the Kempinski Palace again looking at happy-pirate footage on her seventeen-inch MacBook Pro. She had Idris Mohammed in his Mercedes trailing dust in the moonlight. She had Idris at the tiller of a Yahama-powered skiff trailing a high wake; Idris in sunglasses, a yellow scarf around his head; Idris and his Coast Guard boys going out to hijack a ship.

She liked the rhythm of the edit: pirate skiffs getting a beat going with quick cuts to faces she thought of as rimshots coming in a flow of action and gone. She cut much of the shipping footage: cargo ships and tankers in extreme long shots, too far away
to tell if they were moving. She kept most of the navy ships and helicopters, the few she had: a dozen countries out patrolling the Gulf of Aden, but try to find them. She did have the light plane attempting to drop bags of ransom on the deck of an oil tanker, and missing. Several pirates drowned trying to retrieve the loot. One washed ashore with $153,000 tied in his shirt. There were clips that had too much lead she'd trim to get in and get out. An excess of scenery to cut: long shots of villages on the Somali coast. She'd keep Eyl, Eyl was the stuff, drama developing that she hadn't expected.

Dara thought of a place for the cooch dancers shaking their pongee bums at blinding speed. If she were to take them out of the Djibouti sequence, show pirate faces in a moving skiff, eyes half-closed in the wind, a wad of khat in their jaws, and cut to the cooch dancers?

She thought, Aren't you clever? Lose the poetic fucking around and keep the girls where they belong, in Djibouti.

Xavier had brought several bouquets of khat aboard in dry ice. He told her it was
ghat
in Yemen,
jaad
sometimes in Somalia, Kenya shipping twenty tons of khat to Somalia every day. In a population of seven or eight million—women and children not chewing or getting much of a chance—that left a million males with wads in their cheeks. How much was that, two pounds a day each? Ask Xavier.

She had questioned his bringing a pistol aboard. She said, “None of the freighters are armed. It's international law.”

“But if they had guns,” Xavier said, “they wouldn't get hijacked, would they? Nobody's gonna take the
Buster
from us.”

She worked at a dining table the hotel brought in and watched the entire twelve hours of footage on her laptop while she waited for Xavier. She would edit it down to their first two weeks at sea: to Idris's party at his home in Eyl; the fun-loving pirates turning
against them, not so loving anymore; and finally, meeting Jama, the African American al Qaeda Muslim who becomes a one-man gang. Most of Jama would come later.

By the time she finished editing, still not sure now what the documentary was about, she had a feeling she could make it work. It was alive, it was about what was going on right now in the Middle East. She would look at footage with Xavier and hear his ideas, what he thought could be the theme. He'd say it looked like two different stories. What did she have to hold the whole thing together? What was it about?

She had spent four weeks with Xavier in a thirty-foot boat. Apart only three days and she couldn't wait to see him again; he'd become part of her life. If he were thirty-seven years younger she might even be in love with him. Maybe. She thought about a young version of Xavier.

When the hotel phone rang she picked up and said, “Xavier?”

“Miss Dara? Yeah, this is Xavier. How you doin?”

“Not bad,” Dara said. “Yeah, I remember you now, the tall colored man? Why don't you stop by for a drink?”

“I could do that,” Xavier said, “it don't put you out none.”

“Where are you?”

“Still at the dock. A man's been waitin here to search
Buster.
Now he wants me to go to the U.S. Embassy with him. I could be a while.”

“Tell them whatever he wants to know,” Dara said. “I did. I worked three whole days, got through all twelve hours and now I'm taking the rest of the day off, drinking champagne in my underwear.”

“Do I get to see that?”

She said, “It's too bad you're an old man.”

“You either cheeky or horny,” Xavier said, “talkin to me like that. I get to the hotel, you want to make a bet on what happens?”

 

X
AVIER ARRIVED WITH EVERYTHING
they had on the boat. They talked, having fun getting back together. Once they got around to sitting next to each other, the laptop on the dining table, Dara in her bra and shorts, they watched
Buster
leaving Djibouti on the way to the gulf. Dara had shot this from the concrete pier.

“For now, this is how we open.”

“You got the boys swimmin for the loot drowned?”

“It comes later.”

“Wouldn't be a bad way to open. Droppin the money bags and missin the deck. You got your audience glued to the screen.”

“We could open on the cooch dancers,” Dara said, “you want to get creative. We see it as we shot it, leaving Djibouti, and decide how to move scenes around.”

Now they were watching Dara aboard, shooting straight ahead from the deck,
Buster
's bow in the foreground rising as the sea rolled beneath her to come down in the trough.

“The first couple of days,” Dara said, “I expected the next wave would swamp us.”

“You didn't get sick.”

“You saw how I looked.”

“Till you learned
Buster
's ways. Lookit how you held the camera steady.” Xavier said, “Where's Billy Wynn? You kept him in the picture, didn't you?”

“He's coming up abaft. Here,
Pegaso
blowing past us, a hundred yards off our port bow.”

“Man, you the little sailor, ain't you?”

They watched the sailboat on the screen coursing past them.

“You don't have him comin about, goin back to Djibouti?”

“We don't see Helene,” Dara said. “We thought he'd left her.”

“Then changed his mind,” Xavier said, “and was goin back to get her.”

“I could speculate in voice-over why he turned around,” Dara said, “but Billy's not what this is about. Or Helene.”

“You mean what you thought at the time,” Xavier said. “We don't see them again till comin on two weeks.”

“Ten days,” Dara said. “Billy with his elephant gun.”

“Man, he put on a show, didn't he?”

“That's when Idris joined us on the
Buster
.”

“I like all that,” Xavier said. “Things happenin.”

“We leave Billy flying past—”

“We don't see him come about?”

“Forget Billy, he's somewhere ahead of us now. I'll say
Pegaso
is vulnerable in a hostile sea and we hope to run into Billy again sometime soon.”

“I see Billy comin on as star of the movie.”

“What about Jama?”

“He's good, but he's the bad guy.”

“Jama shot five people at one time, but I don't have it on film. None of the things he did.”

“Girl, he's still the bad guy.”

“I don't know how I'm going to work that.”

“We see the bodies comin out of the house,” Xavier said. “Then cut to us in our deck chairs sippin wine and chewin on khat. I noticed you favor it.”

“I'd like it a lot better,” Dara said, “if there was another way to do it. Chewing leaves to get a buzz—”

“Fucked with your sensibilities, didn't it? You been thinkin, what if you crumbled up the leaves and smoked it. Would that work?”

“Would it?” Dara said.

 

T
HE FOOTAGE ON THE
screen showed pinpoints of light dotting the Somali coast. Dusk now, a lamp hung from the foremast to throw a dreary light on the open deck, the
Buster
plowing ahead.

“What you gonna talk about here?”

“Hoping we run into pirates. I'll list the countries with warships out here hoping the same thing, and cut to…Here it is, the guided missile cruiser, CG-66, coming up on us with that blinding spotlight.”

“Like it's gonna eat us up,” Xavier said, “or want to board us. Man, it's big. All that gray metal risin over us. You tell who you are and ask 'em over for a drink.”

“First I got on the bullhorn,” Dara said, “and told them to identify themselves.”

“They got a kick out of that, the
Buster
givin 'em orders. You tell who you are and the captain knows you from your films. He called them ‘docs.' A word you never use.”

“I don't care for ‘docs.' I think we were delaying the ship from being somewhere. I like the clip, though, tracking over the sailors looking down at us.”

“Close on six hundred feet of cruiser slidin alongside. They want to know what we doin,” Xavier said. “You tell 'em through the bullhorn, ‘We makin a movie about pirates.' What you think we doin. I thought the PA voice would say somethin about the task force out here in harm's way to protect shipping and run off the pirates. They love to use ‘harm's way.' You see the steward mates? They wonderin what's this tall-ass nigga doin with that hot white chick? Out in the middle of the ocean. I bet they still talkin about it. ‘Man, he's got the deal.'”

 

X
AVIER WOULD PLAY WITH
the Sony, the big camcorder, the days nothing they wanted appeared on the sea, the
Buster
still bearing east, Xavier shooting life aboard the
Buster.
Dara frying fish would look up to see Xavier with the Sony on her. He'd say for home movies he'd watch on his TV. Dara on deck in a canvas chair against the wheelhouse, the boat drifting, it didn't matter, Dara looking fine in her shorts and T-shirt that said
Laissez les bons temps rouler
across the front. Blond hair curling out of her do-rag, a cowboy bandana. She'd look up at him through her shades and shake her head.

He said, “You documentin pirates—we ever see any—and I'm documentin Dara Barr makin herself famous. They gonna say, ‘Why, this Dara Barr's just a girl,' I show anybody my footage. I shoot you starin at me and lookin away. Certain times.” Xavier sitting with his back against the foremast, long brown legs stretching out of his trunks, no supporter, sometimes seeing the shape of his donkey lying beneath shiny green satin. Xavier LeBo believed was he ten years younger, they'd be letting good times roll all over this boat. See if they could manage in the hammock.

They watched themselves on the
Buster
now.

“Four-hour watches,” Xavier said, “means the one on deck can look at the hammock but not get in it. You can't see all the way around the way the hammock curls up on you.” Xavier slept on deck during her watch to see if she stayed awake. Dara would say to him—Xavier sneaking over to see if her eyes were open—“Jesus, will you go to sleep.”

So Xavier tried sleeping below when he was off and would lie awake waiting to hear Dara scream at a shape coming out of the dark. When she did yell into the hatch, “Boats coming up on us…”

Xavier, in the bow, jumped up ducking his head.

“They in sight?”

“Not yet. I hear them, three boats.”

 

W
HEN
X
AVIER WOULD WATCH
Women of Bosnia
with Dara and look over to see her staring at her work on the screen, she'd be chewing gum in time to the women speaking. On the beat. No hurry. Waiting and picking it up again. She said one time, after, still in her seat, “Fuck.”

“What's wrong?”

“I stayed too long on their hands. Like I've never seen hands before.”

Xavier, working on
Katrina,
would try all kinds of weird angles, shooting down on a scene, or zoom in for a smash close-up, his favorite. Dara would say to him, “We're telling a story: the way hurricanes leave people and what they do. That's drama enough.”

Xavier would hear her quiet voice in his head. This nice woman he kept thinking was a fox. Dara keeping some other part of her under wraps.

This time she told him she heard three boats coming.

 

T
HEY WATCHED TWO OF
the pirate boats swerve in close to cut their speed and have a look at them on the
Buster
before veering off after the first boat, going for a cargo ship in the distance, Dara waving and yelling to them, “Stop by on your way back,” as loud as she could.

Xavier remembered shooting Dara but didn't see her in the footage on the screen.

“They comin like wild dogs and you cut it?”

“I like ‘coming like dogs,'” Dara said, “but we don't need that girl showing off, that ‘Stop on your way back.' Did you see Idris?”

“Those Arabs tend to look alike to me.”

“He was in the lead boat, the guy in the yellow kaffiyeh. We're meeting him tomorrow,” Dara said. “Today he's occupied.”

“Takin care of business,” Xavier said. “You guessed there were three boats comin.” He waited and said, “Didn't you?”

“At first I thought there were four,” Dara said. “It turns out Idris had two Yamahas on his.”

Was this nice girl having fun with him? Xavier could never be sure.

T
HEY WERE CLOSER NOW
to the cargo ships and tankers on the screen, Dara using a Super Telephoto lens, the big Sony mounted on sticks to keep the camera steady while she brought the ships even closer: as many as five or six spread over the screen at one time, merchant ships and now and then a warship riding shotgun.

“Most of this was filmed during our third week,” Dara said. “I slipped it in here to get something going.”

“You know how many times I shot you punchin up news stories on your Mac? Where's that footage?”

“I'm using the information.”

“But you don't show how you gettin it way out here, waitin for somethin to happen.”

“I'm showing what the news story's about. Here, the U.S. missile cruiser…”

“What I don't see,” Xavier said, “is any documentary stuff goin on. Where the people this is about, the poor Somalis havin
to hijack ships. The only one I've seen was drivin a tricked-out Mercedes.”

“It's coming up,” Dara said. “The logline is they've gone after a hundred and eleven ships, hijacked forty-two and collected fines that come to over thirty million, for trespassing.”

“You can say that with a straight face, huh?”

Dara said, “Shut up, please, and watch.” She said, “Eight ships are still in the hands of the hijackers. They're negotiating. What we want to find out is who all's involved.”

Now they were looking at the guided missile cruiser USS
Vella Gulf
on the screen. “Flagship,” Dara said, “of Combined Task Force 151. A search and seizure crew from the cruiser—the guys in the inflatable boat—are rounding up the pirates in their skiff. I'll say something about the seven guys with their hands in the air.”

“No match for the U.S. Navy.”

“I'll say they're being taken to the cruiser, where they'll be identified by the crew from
Polaris,
a ship registered in the Marshall Islands. I'll say the Somali rights activists have been thwarted in their attempt to seize the
Polaris
and levy a fine. Cut to the cruiser's Seahawk helicopter firing at them. Or I might call it the cruiser's gunship.”

“I like ‘thwarted,'” Xavier said. “You make the cruiser the bad guy.”

“All that U.S. Navy firepower against seven guys in a skiff with an outboard motor.”

“Seven guys with machine guns, RPGs, and twin Yamahas.”

Dara said, “I requested permission to come aboard to interview the suspects—”

“I know—where is it?”

“I trashed it. My request denied over the PA system. We're
having no luck with our navy. I find out on the Internet the
Vella Gulf
transferred the prisoners to the
Lewis and Clark,
a navy supply ship. Now they're being held down in the cargo hold, where we used to chain slaves.”

“You makin the
Lewis and Clark
a slave ship?”

“You know what I mean. In the hold, guarded by marines.”

“I know how you makin it sound.”

“Here,” Dara said, “a different boatload of nine freedom fighters, hands in the air. I got this from CNN. Caught in the act by a French frigate. I'll say, ‘The French navy is said to have taken fifty-seven pirates in seven patrol operations.' I think the frigate's name is
Le Floreal
.”

“What'd they do with them, the nine guys?”

“Watch. We cut to the Italian destroyer. You remember the name?”

“Luigi Durand de la Penne.”

“Named for an Italian officer during the second war, served as a demolition team member. I don't like that. What is he?”

“He's an underwater demolition man.”

“Responsible for blowing up two British warships in Egypt. I guess Cairo. Here they are. The reason the crew's laughing, they thought I was English, and Luigi was blowing up English ships.”

“I got it,” Xavier said.

“It's a good clip. We learned it's helicopters that make the difference. They can fly five times beyond the ships' radar and—CNN said—‘deter pirates.' Captain Fabrizio Simoncini of the
Penne
said, ‘My priority is to protect merchant shipping, not give chase to pirates.' Voice-over will say you chase them down and then what? Free them? Let them escape? Or hand these poor men to Kenya for trial?”

“By poor you don't mean they broke.”

“CNN calls it a game of maritime cat and mouse. The
mouse getting bolder, more sophisticated. While the cat, well-intentioned but largely declawed, isn't nearly as scary as he was imagined.”

“You gonna tell it like that?”

“I'm not sure I'll keep the Italian captain, or get into what happens to the pirates. No, I don't have to use the CNN stuff. But now here comes a spokesman for the U.S. Navy I got off CNN.”

The man on the screen—a navy commander in uniform—is saying, “We're making headway against the robbers. With the agreement of the countries that have ships in harm's way—”

“There, he said it. I knew somebody would.”

“The ships' owners have agreed to bring these criminals to trial, then put them in a prison in the country of the owner or ship them off to Kenya.”

Dara said, “They've made thirty million hijacking ships, but lost out on a three-hundred-million-dollar market when they had to stop fishing. Toxic waste dumped in their seas, while foreign fishing companies have come from as far away as Japan. And the commander says, ‘If everybody else can make a living fishing here, why can't the Somalis?'”

She said to Xavier, “I don't have an answer to that.”

“Girl, they don't care about fishin. They stumble onto piracy,” Xavier said, “and can't believe it. They havin fun and gettin rich. They flyin out to take a ship, one of 'em stands up to piss over the side, bottle of Heineken in his hand, drunk as he wants to be—it's part of bein a pirate—drunk and mellowed some by the khat in his jaw, the man dreamin of Ethiopian pussy. Who's gonna stop him? This what you want to film, what these guys are doin? They enjoyin every minute of it. Gonna keep takin ships till it gets dangerous. A bunch of 'em will quit. The ones stick it out become as dangerous as the gunboats after 'em. Be more navies out here. Won't be long the pirates will come out shootin
and your gunboats'll blow 'em out of the sea. I expect some will keep comin, not knowin anything else.”

Dara was quiet lighting a cigarette, thinking of what she'd say. “I want to show why the Somalis became pirates.”

“To get rich,” Xavier said. “You stuck with the idea these rascals are good guys. It's like you made a picture called
Men of Bosnia
and left out all the women they raped. How they had children from guys, a line waitin to have their turn. The woman never knows which one's the father.”

“The pirates aren't vicious,” Dara said. “They don't rape and kill.”

“That you know of.
Katrina
you show guys bustin into stores, comin out with TV sets. 'Cause they poor and can't afford to buy one? No, 'cause they bad dudes, they breakin the law and you say it, tell how it was. The pirates haven't taken and raped any women 'cause there no women on the ships they hijack. Maybe an old Filipina in the galley. They hit a cruise ship you gonna see what happens. Find some good-lookin young women among the old people they settle for robbin? Why these cruise ships are puttin their passengers off at Djibouti, fly 'em to Dubai and pick 'em up again. They gonna do it till they start goin broke.”

On the computer screen now they were looking at
Le Ponant,
a 290-foot, three-masted sailing cruise ship.

Dara said, “You remember
Le Ponant
? Hijacked in the gulf on its way to the Mediterranean for summer cruises. No passengers aboard, but a crew of thirty young people, seven of them women. You remember that?” Dara said, “I read it to you off the computer.”

“Now I do, yeah. The women hid.”

“In a forward storage area for most of two days,” Dara said. “All they had to eat were nuts and raisins, and helped themselves to the wine stored there. The seven ladies had to go to the bath
room in a metal bucket. The rest of the crew, meanwhile, were allowed to have meals prepared by their chef. The pirates brought their own food, spaghetti,” Dara said. “The women finally came out of the storage locker—for all they knew the rest of the crew were dead. Three of the women's boyfriends were crew members, so they were worried sick. They had no idea the crew was treated quite well. The women came out and the pirate leader, Ahmed, asked the captain, ‘Why did you hide them?' Very indignant. ‘You thought my men would take them to bed?'”

Xavier said, “Was more like, ‘You thought we gonna get some ass off these women? Shame on you.' Was his tone.”

“The point is,” Dara said, “Ahmed addressed the captain with indignation for thinking he had to protect the women.”

“His khat-suckin guys grinnin at the girls, not even mindin all the warships layin out around them.”

“Look,” Dara said, “as long as the pirates were underdogs and behaved themselves, didn't shoot anybody, they're the good guys. All they're doing is getting back at the shipping companies, and ‘getting back' seems acceptable in their world.”

“You gonna explain that in your voice-over?”

“Or,” Dara said, “we show the pirates are being used by unscrupulous middlemen in London, in Dubai, Nairobi—this was on the BBC—who contact the shipping companies, work out ransom negotiations and take their cut.”

“I'll ask you again,” Xavier said, “you gonna explain all that in the movie?”

“If I have to.”

Xavier said, “You gettin into somethin over your head. Where the dudes climbed up on the
Buster,
boarded us on the high seas? You trash that episode?”

“It's next,” Dara said. “I'm still thinking of a way to use it.”