The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [60]
Ignoring our game, Momman remained fixated on the television set, which was showing the latest Somali Broadcasting Corporation footage of Mogadishu in flames, the result of yet another Al-Shabaab suicide bombing. The conversation somehow turned to the multiple foreign journalists who had been kidnapped in Puntland, some by their own guards. “Here, in the Nugaal valley, we don’t kidnap people who are working with us,” Momman said, smiling at me for the first time. “It’s not our culture.”
Someone produced a tall thermos containing the saccharine tea that traditionally accompanies khat to counteract its bitter taste, and I poured a small helping into a cup. Every so often, Momman’s wife wandered into the room, arranging the already tidy chairs or checking the placement of the immaculately stowed chinaware.
Momman picked up his handgun and absently began to toy with it. Bored and anxious to develop some kind of rapport, I nonchalantly requested to see it. He removed the clip and passed it through an assembly line of hands until it reached me. I fiddled with the safety for a few seconds and examined the barrel, then cocked the hammer a few times for good measure, nodding approvingly.
An hour and a half on, heaps of discarded khat stalks joined cigarette butts in mounting piles next to half-drained teacups. Attention turned to the TV as a procession of images of Somalia’s past leaders began to scroll across the screen. Abdirahman and Mohamed excitedly named each one for me as his photo appeared. Momman sat in silence, watching the television and chewing ponderously.
Enough time had passed for the khat to take effect, so I decided to ask Momman some questions. The tale he began to recount was by now familiar to my ears. “Boyah and I used to fish together,” he said. “At first, we operated together in the same group, but later we split into different ones. There were a lot of independent groups … around fifteen of them. We used to only go after illegal fishing ships,” he explained. It wasn’t until 1999, according to Momman, that Boyah attacked his first commercial ship. “We started attacking them when we realized we couldn’t fight against fishing ships anymore,” owing to the improved state of their armament. “Commercial ships go into our waters, and they don’t pay any fees.”
Momman’s success soon elevated him, as with Boyah, to the position of financier: “I was the one who bought everything for the missions,” he explained, sometimes for his own group, but also for others. “We helped each other out.”
Boyah had taken credit for hijacking dozens of ships, but when asked for his own tally, Momman hesitated. “I can’t tell you that,” he said, “it’s a secret.” He paused, musing. “I got a lot of good ones.”
I decided to change tack. Boyah told me that his favourite ship was the Golden Nori, I said, referring to the Japanese chemical tanker he had steered into Bossaso port, What’s yours? The attempt met defeat against Momman’s hard eyes.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” he answered. “I’m ashamed of what I did.”
I pressed further, desperate for any scraps of information he could give me about the ships: the nationalities of the crew, their cargos or destinations.
“No, I won’t give you any of those details,” Momman said, “because you’ll be able to figure out the names of the ships later on.”
“He’s not stupid,” Omar interjected.
Momman invariably hijacked any question aimed at illuminating his buccaneering past and steered it back to the topic of his redemption. “I want to have a good career, and not have it ruined by my past deeds,” he said. “I want to be another man.” He gave April 20 as marking the beginning of this new life, which he insisted was before the redemption movement had come into fashion. “I renounced piracy before the Sheikh [Abdulkhadar] started taking people to mosque and making them swear off piracy. I made the decision on my own.
“I know it’s bad to be a pirate, but at least pirates never kill anyone,” he said. “What warships