The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [48]
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Up to this point, Boyah had been the only member of the gathering to answer my questions, while the others nodded along complacently as he talked. “Boyah speaks for all of us,” Momman responded, when I commented on this fact. In an attempt to engage with someone other than Boyah, I directed my questions to Ahmed, who was atypically dressed in a glaringly bright yellow soccer jersey. Beyond his attire, Ahmed also stuck out in another way: he was from the Hawiye clan, whereas all the others assembled were Darod. Originally from the southern city of Baidoa, he had emigrated to Eyl in 2002 and become a successful fisherman. Despite the historical animosity between the Hawiye and the Darod—which came to a head with the brutal clan pogroms of the early 1990s—history seemed to have been forgotten amongst this group of friends. “We pirates have no clans,” said Boyah. “We fight together as Somalis.”
At my urging, Ahmed began to relate his story. “I was happy with my life,” he said. “One day, we were fishing some distance away from shore when we were attacked by some big fishing ships, who stole all our fish.” This event was repeated, he said, at least ten times. “They had big guns, and we would be forced to jump overboard. Sometimes, they would destroy our boats and we would have to swim all the way back to shore.” According to Ahmed, the culprits were most often Thai or Korean fishing vessels. In what was by now a common story, Ahmed had banded together with similarly aggrieved fishermen along the length of the Puntland coast and beyond to fight illegal fishing.
Groups like these resembled troops of revolutionaries more than criminal gangs, yet Western media sources invariably associated Somali pirates with a glamorous lifestyle akin to that of gangster rap stars, replete with lavish parties, mansions, luxury cars, drugs, alcohol, and beautiful women. But other than their habitual khat binges, little evidence of this stereotype was to be seen in the sedate, stoic (and now resurgently pious) figures of Boyah and his men. Each of them, as far as I had been able to discover, had but one wife. So what was to be said for the stories of “pirate wenches”?
“There are some women like that … the drug addicts, the bad ones,” said Boyah. “The ones interested in money.” These pirate women, according to Boyah, were not local, but came from outside Puntland. Indeed, a roadhouse on the outskirts of Garowe—one that I had passed many times—had reportedly served in the past as a major transit hub for transporting women to Puntland’s coastal areas. But in Boyah’s estimation, the women were more than able to find their own way. “They follow the money,” he said.
Mohammad turned to Boyah with a quizzical look. “I haven’t even seen the women you’re talking about,” he said.
The same incredulity greeted my question about pirates and alcohol consumption, and generated a round of unmistakably hostile murmurs and head shakes.
“We’re Muslims, so we don’t do that,” came the answer.
“Some of them do—the young guys.” Boyah clarified. “They try it because it’s something new that they haven’t experienced before.”
Such may have been the case on board a Russian-crewed hostage vessel, on which the pirates reportedly drank the ship’s entire store of vodka, stunning even the Russians with their debauchery. When I brought up this rumour, I again witnessed a round of shaking heads.
“No, no. They drank a little bit, but not to that extent,” said Boyah. “They had a job to do. If they had gotten drunk, do you think they would have done it? Anyone who gets drunk, they kick off the ship.”
Colonel Omar, lying on his back apart from the main circle, suddenly chimed in with