Hostage Three (15 page)

— Wow, the nine-year-old me said.

— And when our star dies, she said – the sun, I mean – when it goes supernova, we'll all be broken down to carbon again, and we'll go floating around the universe. Then everyone who ever lived will be together, just drifting, in little pieces. And eventually, they might form a new star. You and I, even if our bodies die, we might end up in the same star together, one day.

I wasn't really paying attention to that then.

— The sun's going to
die
? I said. When?

I was scared now. Looking back, it was pretty messed up, what my mom was saying to me; it wasn't the kind of thing parents are meant to tell their young children. And it should have set off all kinds of alarm bells. But I was a kid; if I heard bells, I didn't know they were alarm bells. I was like a Blitz baby who thinks that an air-raid siren is a nightly lullaby.

— No, baby, sorry, she said. I didn't mean to scare you. The sun won't die for a long time, like a billion years from now.

— Oh, OK.

— But the point is, when we die, it won't be the end. The atoms live for ever. You and I, we could be made of bits of dinosaur.

— Dinosaur?

— Yeah. You and me, we could have the same T-rex in us.

I put my hands up, bared my teeth, roared. Mom fake-squealed. I chased her down the beach, giggling, giving out my roar.

 

*

Back in my room, six years later
, after I found the note, I sat down on the bed, my head swimming.

I knew what she was trying to say. That the two of us would end up in a star together, one day.

How dare she? I thought.

That night, and my dad never asked why, I took down all the little glow-in-the-dark stars from my room and I took them into the back garden and I fucking doused them in lighter fluid and I fucking burned them.

— Tell me about your family
.

— I don't have a family. Only Abdirashid. My brother.

— OK, tell me about your brother.

— I have already told you. He is in prison.

— I know that! I mean, tell me about before. About growing up.

Farouz pursed his lips. We were sitting on a sunlounger. Me with my iPod and earphones on my lap, so I could say I'd been listening to music, if anyone asked.

— I went to school because of an imam, he said.

— An imam?

— Like a priest. Of Islam.

— Oh, OK.

— This imam, he was the head teacher of a charity school, in Galkayo. That is where my brother and I ended up, after my parents were killed.

— Your parents were –

— That is a different story, he said, cutting me off. Galkayo is in Puntland. We are not from Puntland, my brother and I. We are from Mogadishu. So it was difficult for us at first. The dialect is different. The people did not like refugees. The first year, we lived on the street. We begged for food. We walked to get water from wells. Sometimes, we caught rats.

— Jesus, I said.

He shrugged.

— A rat is better than dying. My brother, too, used to go off places. I don't know what he did. Maybe I do know what he did, actually. But, anyway, he went away, and when he came back he would have small amounts of money, and we would eat well for a day or two. That was good. Always, when my brother left me, it was the same place I had to wait for him, a little shop that sold fruit and snacks. Now, that same shop sends supplies to pirates here in Eyl. I know the owner – he is quite a rich man.

Farouz paused, seeming to examine the sea. I could hear it tap, tap, tapping against the yacht.

— Every day I waited at that shop for my brother, he said. Until one day, I stood up and walked away. I don't remember thinking, I can't bear this any more. Nothing like that. It was just something I did. I walked around Galkayo for many hours. In those days there were no big houses, because the piracy had not really started, or it had not started being so profitable. And no big cars on the road. Just shacks, mainly, and mosques, and some small houses.

After a while, I came to a low building and heard the voices of children from inside, chanting. I looked in the window. They were sitting there, with textbooks in front of them. It was a school! I had not realised until that moment that I missed school. I know Abdirashid didn't. He was always in trouble when we went to school in Mogadishu. His grades were terrible. My parents were always saying to him, why can't you be more like Farouz? And I thought that was funny because I wanted to be more like Abdirashid.

— So the school, I said, they let you in?

— Not just like that! he laughed. The first day, I merely peered in the window. And when I came back to the little shop, Abdirashid beat me and told me never to run away again. But of course I did, the very next day. I went back to the little school every day, and I stood by the window, listening to what was being said inside.

— And then the imam saw you and asked you to come in?

— No!

Farouz lit a cigarette, drew in a deep breath of smoke, and it was like the stars were burning up into vapour, then entering his lungs; like he was sucking the stars from the sky.

— No? I asked.

— No, of course not. What happened was, I knew what Abdirashid was doing by then. So the next time I saw the imam, the one who taught the class with the window by which I would stand, I went up to him on the street. I told him that I would go to bed with him if I could enter his lessons. I told him I would do whatever he wanted.

— Fuck, I said.

— Yes, that, too.

I met his eyes. There was no indication at all that he was joking.

— Jesus, Farouz, I said.

I wanted to make this conversation stop, but it was like a car whose brakes have gone. I looked down.

— What happened with the imam? I asked eventually. What did he say? Did you . . . did you go to bed with him?

— No. The imam did not want to, said Farouz.

I smiled.

— Does this make you happy? You should not be. Instead I had to be that man's slave. I had to clean his house, cook his food, every day. And of course Abdirashid beat me when he found out, except by then I was going to school, so it was too late to stop me.

— Cleaning for the imam doesn't sound as bad as –

— As going to bed with him? No, that would have been easier. Have you ever scrubbed floors until your hands bleed?

I thought of Mom doing just that, and for no good reason.

— No, I said.

— No. So you cannot understand. And then . . . Well, I went to school. It is not a very interesting part of the story, though I enjoyed learning. Abdirashid made friends with some coast guards. He went to bars with them, drank, took drugs. He even went on a mission once. But something went wrong, I don't know what. An argument with another pirate, maybe. Or maybe he hurt someone. Anyway, he never went again.

— So how did you end up with them? I asked.

— They came to my school, said Farouz, when I was sixteen. Not my brother's friends. Different ones. To look for people like me. Crazy, isn't it?

— And the imam let them?

— Oh, they said they had reformed. They came to talk about how children should not get into piracy. They asked which of us was clever, which of us could speak English, and they made it sound like they were just interested in the school, like they wanted to donate some of their money to help the imam. They did, in fact – I think Amir, who is now our sponsor, actually gave them a hundred thousand dollars. Then Amir stood at the front of the class. He is tall. He is handsome. People like him. He said, if something is dirty, wash it. If something is filthy, wash it with bleach. I am filthy, Allah, he said. Wash me with bleach. Forgive me for my sins.

— Wow, I said.

— Yes. The imams do not like pirates, but they like it when we ask for forgiveness. So the imam and the other people from the school, they loved Amir when he said this. Anyway, afterwards, when I was leaving the school, the pirates stopped me – the coast guards, I mean. They knew that I was the best at English because the imam had told them about a prize I had won. We know how you can make millions, they said to me when the imam was gone. How to get you and your brother a house.

You know my brother? I asked.

We know everyone, they said. So that was it – that was how I joined the South Central Coast Guard. For a few years it was OK. I mean, I was just a guard. I didn't make much money, but it was better than before. Then my brother got arrested, and I was stuck with them. I had to earn the money for them, to get him out.

— Wait, I said, catching the allusion in his voice. Are you saying the South Central Coast Guard arrested him?

— No. The police did. But did they pay the police to do it? Of course.

— Wow, I said, sounding like a moron because that was the second time I had said that word in as many minutes. So you're working to free your brother, and the people who put your brother in prison in the first place are the people you're working for?

Farouz thought for a moment.

— Yes, he said.

Then he dropped his cigarette, crushed it under his heel, and the darkness rushed in at us, like hyenas.

People like Carrie and Esme
asked me, after the Event: were there any signs? With my mom, I mean. And I wanted to say to them: well, of course there were signs. She was depressed. She had OCD. But I know that's not quite what they meant. They wanted to know whether there was anything that, in the words of the counsellor I saw briefly at school,
made manifest her intentions
.

There was, of course, the phone call. The one where she told me. But I didn't talk to anyone about that. Instead I told them about this other time.

It was the summer holidays one year Before. Dad was working, as usual, but Mom wanted to go away, so she got some complementary tickets from her magazine, review tickets, for a new luxury eco-hotel on the east coast of Mexico. The idea was, we'd go and see some Mayan temples, hang out on the beach, and then Mom would write an article about it when we got back.

— Let your father miss out, said Mom. We'll have fun, just me and my Amy.

And we did do that. We had a great time, actually: the hotel was all little wooden huts by the sea, no electric lights, no TV, so it was just us and the palm trees, the birds, the shushing of the waves. Pretty magical, really. We had massages, swam, read books.

We took the bus to Chichen Itza and saw the pyramid there, where people used to have their hearts cut out on top and then their bodies got thrown down the steps. We clapped our hands at the face of it, and the sound came back, hissing and chattering – like a rattlesnake, the guide told us, like the snake god carved on to the sides of the pyramid.

Most evenings, we ate in our room. But there was also this restaurant right on the sea, ten minutes' walk down the beach from our hotel. One night, we had both finished the books we were reading and were at kind of a loose end. We went to the lobby of the hotel, and there was this mom and kid that we had sort of made friends with, though I don't remember their names.

Anyway, the mom said to us:

— Why don't you come turtle watching? They're supposed to be laying this time of year.

— Laying? said Mom.

— Their eggs, on the beach.

— Oh, yeah, Mom, we should totally do that! I said. I'd watched a documentary with the giant turtles crawling up on to the sand to bury their eggs. I thought it would be amazing to see that in real life.

— You're going now? asked Mom.

— No, said the kid, who was about ten – cute, with freckles and an encyclopedia or something always in his hand. We're having dinner first, he said. Then the turtle watching starts at midnight. It's the best time.

— Till what time? I asked.

The boy shrugged.

— Till we see one.

— 3 a.m., said the mom. That's when they give up, apparently, if no turtles have come.

— And we have to remember where they put the eggs, said the boy, so that people can dig them up and put them in a safe place to hatch. Otherwise robbers steal them.

— They're valuable in Chinese medicine, said the woman, who had a few piercings in her ears and a little tattoo of a fat Buddha on her inner arm.

Mom looked at me.

— We'll pass, she said. Sounds fun, though!

What she meant by this was: it sounds absolutely godawful, and I'd rather eat my own sick than sit on a beach doing nothing until three in the morning. Mom was all about physics and stars; she didn't have a lot of patience for anything that involved animals – she used to talk about how crazy the British were, with their sanctuaries for donkeys, when it was people in need who deserved sanctuary. She could get pretty evangelical about it. I told the mom and her boy that it sounded really nice, but we had planned to go out for dinner instead, so I could get Mom out of there quickly, before she said anything embarrassing about wasting time on digging up turtle eggs, when there were people being blown up in Baghdad, or whatever.