Hostage Three (11 page)

— Well, said Tony. At least we can hope that they'll give themselves heart attacks from a caffeine overdose.

They didn't, of course. But they did drink a massive bowlful of that stuff every day. You never saw a pirate who wasn't smoking or chewing khat or drinking their so-called coffee. The corridors and decks became spotted with splats of black hawked up by the chewers, as if some birds that shat blackness instead of white guano had infested the place.

The smell of smoke was everywhere, too. Even Farouz was very rarely without a fag in his lips, smoke drifting from his nostrils. Which, in fact, is perhaps how I remember him the most vividly.

I didn't mean to see the stars.

I couldn't sleep, that's all. It's not like we were totally under lock and key, even now that we were moored by Eyl. We were free to come and go as we pleased, though not to leave the boat, of course. If we did, what were we going to do? Swim to the Somali coast? The idea was absurd.

So they didn't watch us every moment of every day, is what I'm saying.

One night, soon after we reached the coast, I left the cinema room and went out on to the front deck. I thought maybe the fresh air would make me sleepier. It was stupid of me, really. I'd spent so many months not looking up at the sky, not even thinking about what was up there when the sun went down, deliberately not thinking about it to spite my mother with her stupid stardust reference and her belief that I could see her in the stars, that you'd think I would have been more careful. I suppose that's what getting kidnapped does to your concentration.

There were three sunloungers on the deck. They seemed ludicrous now, out of place, like a swimming pool in a war zone. I stood by one and looked down at the dark sea.

Except it wasn't dark.

Below me, the water was on fire, glowing with blue phosphorescence. At that moment I split exactly in two, like a walnut out of its shell, and one half of me was silently gasping at the beauty of it, while the other half of me thought, even when I look down I'm seeing goddamn stars.

I turned around, dizzy, and lay on a sunlounger, stretched out on my back, eyes closed, so as not to look up. I sighed.

There was a noise, the kind of noise you can't describe, but that you know is a person moving. I sat up a bit and turned. Then a shadow to the right peeled away from the darkness and came towards me.

It was the young one, the English speaker, Farouz. He stood a little way away from me. I could see the silhouette of his gun. He lit a cigarette, and the cherry sparked, a little star on the yacht, though not as bright as the ones above. Smoke drifted up, and his cheek curved just so. My mind took a snapshot – the way minds sometimes do – that I can call back and picture even now: the precise angle of his head, the curlicues of smoke.

— You like the stars? he said. His voice was soft.

He couldn't have known that this was a difficult question. Actually, I was feeling pretty choked up about Mom and really didn't want to speak to him. I had an urge to get up and leave, but – my manners kicking in – I was worried that would be rude. I was aware, at the same time, of the preposterousness of this. Of worrying about offending a pirate, someone who was holding me hostage, basically threatening to kill me if he didn't get money.

Also, I was scared that if I didn't speak to him, he might hurt me. So . . .

— I wasn't looking at the stars. I was just sitting, I said.

— Look, then, he told me. He pointed up.

I was a tiger, trapped by spears on all sides. I looked down, mumbled:

— No, sorry, I . . .

He smiled at me.

— I won't hurt you, he said. Please, look. They are beautiful.

What could I do?

I looked up.

Above me, glittering, were billions of stars. I had never seen anything like it in my whole entire life; it must have been the lack of light pollution, I suppose. Part of me wanted to go back inside, to leave the young pirate there with no explanation at all, to hide from the pain that was lighting into flame inside me; and part of me couldn't move a muscle, was locked there, on the sunlounger, staring.

There were stars I had never even imagined existed – in between the stars that I was used to, the ones I used to look at with Mom, sitting in our back garden, a blanket wrapped around us. I could see the Milky Way, not like a pale splash on the sky, but like I'd seen it in a slide show of space photography: a great white cloud, flecked with blue, billowing with fire, stretching across the heavens. All around it, in the blackness, sparkled the universe.

Mom taught me all the stars. So from the deck of the
Daisy May
, sitting on that sunlounger, I could see Ursa Major, of course – you see it all year in the northern hemisphere, which just about still included us. But also Aquarius, Capricorn, Pisces – the autumn constellations.

For a moment, I couldn't speak. I was afraid the words would break apart in my mouth, like a Communion wafer, and tell him from the crumbling of my voice what I was feeling.

Then.

— There are more here than where I live, I said finally.

— No, he replied. There is the same number. But you see fewer at home because of the street lights.

His English was very precise, like he was reading from a book. Maybe it wasn't exactly like I'm saying it, maybe he wasn't so grammatical and he sometimes had to search for a word, but I'm not going to apologise for that. If I said his words like he sounded them, it would make it seem like he was simple, someone you could feel condescending about. But he wasn't, and you can't. He was smart – much smarter than me.

— Yes, I know that, I said, a little bit annoyed. I'm not an idiot, I added. Then I
felt
like an idiot for saying something so childish.

I saw him shrug. He took a drag on his cigarette.

— I have heard, he said after a moment, that sailors used to navigate by reading the stars. I wonder how they did it.

— You don't know? But you're a sailor.

— Why a sailor?

I didn't really understand him.

— You have boats, I said. You're on a boat now.

He laughed.

— You are on a boat. Do you know how to sail it?

— Well, no, but –

— But? I went to school in Mogadishu and in Puntland. To high school, you understand. I read books. I was going to be a professor, like my father. I don't know about boats.

— So why did you become a pirate?

He stepped a little closer to me, and I could see his features now, in the gloom.

— Are you joking? he said. I think you are joking.

— No, I –

— There is no school any more. There are no professors. There is no father. The rebels came and took most of it away. Then the Muslim fundamentalists took the rest. The Al-Shabaab.

— You're not Muslim?

Another laugh.

— Of course I am, but not like them. People like that . . . Do you remember 9/11? When those buildings were destroyed in New York?

You have no idea, I thought. But I just nodded.

— There were people here who celebrated when that happened, Farouz said. Laughing in the street. They said it was the start of a war between Islam and the West. They were happy about that. Me, I was afraid. Because I thought they were right. It was the start of a war. But now . . . Now the war is not just against the West. They kill their own people, the Al-Shabaab.

I don't know why, but I felt sorry for him then and I wanted to show him something, like my mom used to show me. I pointed up at the stars from where I sat on the sunlounger.

— See the Plough? I said. Ursa Major, it's also called. Follow the right-hand side of it upward. Trace a straight line. Above it, that single star, the bright one? That's the North Star. Wherever you are, if you aim at that star, you're going north.

He followed my eyes and my finger, then he smiled broadly; I could see his teeth white in the darkness. I noticed that he had long eyelashes – longer than mine, and I'm a girl. He stubbed out his cigarette butt against the wall of the dining area.

— Thank you, he said. That is good to know. You are wrong, though. It is not the Plough. It is the Camel.

— Camel? I don't see . . .

— No?

Then he was sitting on the sunlounger next to me, kind of perching on the edge of it. His skin was hot; I could feel it, like a furnace in the night. My heart lurched at the sudden closeness. He raised his own finger, traced a line.

— See? That is the rump. The hump. And the head at the other end.

I saw it. A camel, sitting down. Maybe not very obvious, but who says that the Plough really looks like a plough? Or a bear, like the Greeks thought?

— Oh, right, I said. But it hasn't got a tail.

— No, he said. The tail was pulled off. He said this like it was the most normal thing to say, ever.

— The tail was pulled off? By who?

— By a hungry man.

I sat up properly. This was a weird conversation when it started, and it was getting weirder.

— What do you mean, by a hungry man?

He put his gun down on the cushion beside us, still attached by its string. For half a moment, I thought maybe I could pick it up, turn it on him. But what would I do then? No way would I pull the trigger. For all I knew the safety was on, anyway, and I wouldn't know how to turn it off. And there were others like him inside, ready to kill Dad and the stepmother. I didn't want that. I didn't want anyone else to die.

When I looked up from the gun to his face, he was holding my gaze with his – and that was what it felt like, a hold, like I couldn't turn away even if I wanted to. He glanced at the gun and back at me. Then he smiled, and I didn't know what it meant, that smile, whether he was indulging my little fantasy, amused by it, or whether he was telling me that I wouldn't have a chance, that I would be dead before I could pick it up. For the sake of my sanity, I decided to assume the former.

— All our stories are about hunger, he said.

— Er, right, I said. Why? I still wanted to go inside, but there was something about him, something about the quiet measured way he spoke, that made me stay where I was.

— It's a desert country, he said. There has always been famine.

— I see, I said. So because of that, someone pulled off the tail of the camel in the sky? I caught the sarcasm in my own voice and felt a little ashamed. It's not like famine is a big joke; it was just that he kept saying these things that sounded like a pretentious voice-over on a documentary in his overly correct English. There has always been famine – like that, you know?

— It's not that simple, he said. You want me to tell you, really?

No, I wanted to say. No, I want you to leave me alone. But he seemed quite gentle, surprisingly, and it wasn't like I had anywhere else to go.

— Er . . . yeah, all right, I said.

— OK, he said. The sky camel. He indicated the constellation again with his hand. So, this was the fault of the Warsangheli tribe. There was a terrible famine, and kids were dying, old people, too. This happened all the time, but this particular famine was bad. There was no rain, never. The cattle died. Men hunted hyenas and ate them. I don't know if . . . Is there an animal in your country that is dirty to eat?

— Some people don't eat pigs.

— I don't eat pigs. I am Muslim, remember? But the hyena, it's more of a bad creature. A pig is just a pig – it doesn't care about you. We don't eat them because Allah says not to. But a hyena, it's a cruel animal. We call them all sorts of names: the night walker, the corpse eater, the unfaithful, the child stealer.

— Child stealer?

— Yes. They used to attack children if the children were on their own. At night.

— Oh, I said.

I wondered what that must be like, to live in a place where there were animals that could kill you. I'd never really thought about it before.

— It must have been terrifying, I said. But that was a long time ago? I added. It's safe now, right?

He stared at me without speaking for a long moment, his brow furrowed. I didn't know where to look; I felt embarrassed, though I didn't know why. I understand now what his silence was saying, but he didn't say it out loud, not then. He was saying that there are other things that can take away your children, even now that the hyenas are mostly gone:

Other people.

Then, though, I just looked back, oblivious, and eventually he turned again to the Camel in the night sky.

— The people ate the hyenas, he said, which, if you were from here, you would know is a sign of their starvation. Everywhere the beirda trees were stripped of fruit. Hungry parents fed on the flesh of their dead children. And so the Warsangheli held a clan meeting. They asked for people to suggest a way to save the clan. One old man stood up. He said that they had eaten all the cattle and the zebras and the hyenas. But there were animals that were untouched – the animals that live in the sky, like the great camel.