The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [101]
Nor were the Romanian crew members the only victims of the hijackers’ seemingly compulsive desire to thieve. “One pirate stole the Somali cook’s mobile phone,” said Mihai. Wondering where it had gone, the cook did the first logical thing in such a situation: he called his telephone from another line. “The phone rang in the thief’s pocket,” said Mihai, laughing aloud. Punishment was swift; the pirates tied up the transgressor and sent him to shore, only receiving him back about two weeks later. “That was a unique case,” he said.
Not surprisingly, fights involving khat were much more common. “When one of them had greener stuff, and the other had drier stuff, they would fight,” said Mihai, throwing a few shadow boxing jabs in my direction.
Unlike his younger shipmate, the Chief had never felt the desire to experiment with khat, and seemed more shocked by the pirates’ lack of fiscal responsibility than anything else. “Thirty-eight dollars per kilogram they paid for that stuff,” he said. “My God!” Yet, despite their khat-fuelled antics, the Chief had no objections to the majority of his captors. “The three leaders were the worst,” he said. “The others were okay.”
Nevertheless, the crew and the pirates always ate separately, said Mihai, relating how he spurned the one invitation he received to the pirates’ dinner table, extended by the pirates’ cook. “They used their hands to eat, and they added a hot green pepper to their food,” he said, disgusted. “My God! If I had eaten that I would have had to run right to the toilet.”
In a sign of improving relations between hostages and captors, the pirates began to bring goats on board for the crew during the final three or four weeks of their imprisonment. “Small ones, eight or nine kilograms,” said the Chief. They had to slaughter the goats themselves, but the meat was a welcome complement to their previous meals, which had been based around potatoes, onions, and flour—as well as an endless supply of rice from the Victoria’s ten-thousand-tonne hold, as my translator Teddy lightheartedly pointed out. “Yeah!” Mihai exclaimed. “I told my wife on the telephone: ‘Honey, I’m coming home. No rice, please, no rice!’ ” wagging his finger in mock consternation.
The Chief’s loving warning to his wife had occurred during one of only three or four opportunities the crew were given to speak to their families on the Victoria’s satellite phone, each call lasting only a few minutes. The exception was Levenescu, once again thanks to the kindness of the Somali cook, who risked his colleagues’ wrath by secretly allowing Levenescu to contact his family on his mobile phone.
In addition to the predictable assurances of their well-being, the crew members also urged their loved ones to help bring them home. “We told our families to protest, to talk to the media—anything that could help put pressure on the German company,” said Mihai.
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The German owners had warned the pirates that no ransom would be agreed upon unless the Victoria had enough fuel remaining to reach international waters—twelve nautical miles from the Somali coast—under her own power; in response, the pirates immediately shut down the main engine in order to conserve bunker fuel. The endless circles the vessel had been performing in Eyl’s harbour for almost two weeks had taken a toll on its reserves. According to Mihai, the ship had consumed 146 tonnes of oil, leaving a mere 28 tonnes, enough for only a day and a half on the open sea. There was another problem: the heating system used to warm the main engine prior to ignition was diesel-powered, and the Victoria’s diesel stores had long since been depleted. Consequently, the pirates began a mass importation of diesel, bringing on board four tonnes, in increments of thirty- and forty-litre drums,