The Other Joseph

The author wishes to thank Lee Boudreaux, Megan Lynch, Janie Yoon, and everyone at Ecco/HarperCollins and House of Anansi Press. My deepest appreciation also to Kimberly Witherspoon, David Forrer, and the team at Inkwell Management, as well as to the Stanford University Creative Writing Program, Florida State University, Auburn University, the University of New Orleans, Halawakee H.L., and the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San José State University.

In addition, thank you to the following individuals: Molly Antopol, Lyndsey Blessing, Eavan Boland, Steven Boriack, Suet Yee Chong, Meredith Dees, Gabriella Doob, Jim Gavin, Lauren Groff, Dan Halpern, Scott Hutchins, Adam Johnson, Jamie Kornegay, Eleanor Kriseman, Sarah MacLachlan, Tom McGuane, Michael McKenzie, Emily Mockler, Ted O'Brien, Allison Saltzman, Jack Shoemaker, Pauls Toutonghi, David Vann, Greg Villepique, Ryan Willard, Charlie Winton, Tobias Wolff, and Craig Young.

This book never would have been possible without the knowledge and guidance of my cousin John Burnham, retired U.S. Navy captain and SEAL, as well as that of my old friend Avis Bourg and Bobby St. Pierre of Offshore Marine Contractors, Inc. in Cut Off, Louisiana. A huge debt of inspiration also to Andrew Holzhalb and my brother Matt Horack, who both left us too soon. Finally, as always, my deepest thanks to my parents, family, and friends—and most of all to Sylvia, my amazing wife, for always shining so bright.

For our family

And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh.

—G
ENESIS
37:19

On Christmas Day in 2008 two men, one Australian, the other Nigerian, watched a ponytailed American, my little brother Roy, leap from an oil rig into the Gulf of Guinea. Christmas Day—but, to the third- and fourth-century pagan Romans, as our father taught us as boys, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti. The Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.

Nearly three years after Roy made his jump, a woman named Margaret Mokwelu drove from Newark to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. That was in the second month of my unlocking, back when I—Thomas Joseph, the lost and kidnapped Navy SEAL, free after two decades of imprisonment—was still making headlines. During Roy's own disappearance Margaret had been working in the citizen services office at the U.S. consulate in Lagos. A duffel bag of my brother's effects came into her possession, but attempts to locate any next of kin in the States were unsuccessful. His few things were eventually recycled and released into the world's endless river of need, and even today, somewhere in Nigeria, there is likely an African man wearing his jacket, a child who sleeps in his T-shirt.

But, and bless her for this, there was one item Margaret took an interest in and kept for herself: a three-ring binder containing
pages and pages of looping script. Roy's binder sat inside Margaret's desk in Lagos for a year because those reminiscences of his, they touched and haunted her, and she brought it with her when she immigrated to America. Finally Margaret, and that thick gray binder, came to me.

Margaret's former boss in Nigeria is now a D.C. lobbyist, and through his connections she was able to arrange a visit with me at Walter Reed. I had been there a week, awaiting a surgery to remove the inch of knife blade an Arab fisherman had broken off in my hip in January of '91. And although I suspected Margaret might be an intelligence officer, a mind trick designed to ferret out any inconsistencies in my account of the time I'd spent off the grid, after she presented me with Roy's binder my only thoughts were of him. I was twenty and he was twelve when I saw him last. I'm forty-one years old now. If not for Margaret, I might never have met my brother as a man.

I play a part in the story you are about to read, but I already know this won't be the manuscript New York, or anyone, wants from me. You want to read of how I was taken by the sea and coughed up by the sea, sold by fishermen, then Bedouin, before being smuggled out of Saudi Arabia on a night plane and encaged for over twenty years as the private, hidden-away curiosity of a wealthy madman. You want the story of my Arab Spring liberation and of my journey through the desert. I understand. That story will be told one day, but for now, another story. The story of my brother and his search for my daughter. Roy comes first. I owe him that much, as it was on my behalf, or at least in my memory, that he set off on
his
journey. The journey that began with an e-mail from California. The journey that ended with his dive into the Gulf of Guinea.

A confession: I might very well be betraying Roy by letting the world know his secrets, and if that is the case I hope he will forgive me. My only defense is that I believe his trials and
tribulations are worth sharing. There is a lot to be learned from the life of Roy Joseph, and this is the best way I can think of to honor him.

So Margaret Mokwelu, thank you. And thank you as well to those who have begun helping me organize and polish Roy's disjointed, untitled “notes” into a book. Also, although a few names must be changed for anonymity, this endeavor never would be possible without the graciousness of the many who have agreed to be identified in these pages. Otherwise, except for my dedication and the occasional epigraph, the words that follow will be his. Speak, Roy.

Thomas M. Joseph
New York City
February 22, 2012

Along with all the other frailties of the average man—his carelessness, his prankishness, his tobacco habit, his cola habit, his inclination to rest once in a while and chat with his neighbor—there must also be expected one more: his natural human proclivity for sticking his head in mysterious openings, putting his fingers in front of fan blades, and pulling wires and pins on strange mechanical objects which he finds.

—A
RTHUR
L
ARSON
,
The Law of Workmen
'
s Compensation