The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [84]
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I rose early the next morning to find that a few empty oil containers, fashioned into makeshift wash buckets, had been filled with water from the courtyard well. I emptied a bucket over my head and felt the water begin to melt yesterday’s layer of sandy paste off my skin. Grabbing Said and Abdirashid, I exited the compound for a stroll along the deserted beach. The sand was blinding under the early sun; the wind was just awakening, whipping a fresh onslaught of fine grains into the grooves of my camera lens. A few hundred metres away, a fresh cohort of young pirate stevedores had picked up where the night shift had left off; they were loading several fishing skiffs beached near the edge of the surf, outboard motors attached. A lone goat stood tethered to the side of a boat, and a maroon 4×4 was parked on the sand nearby.
Whenever I glanced out to sea, the Victoria’s distance from shore appeared to fluctuate, at times so close that I could make out the colour of the deck cranes, other times so far to sea that she was almost lost to the horizon. Whether the ship was adrift and being swept in and out with the tide, or whether it was an optical illusion, I was unable to discern. I was told that the pirates on board had ordered the Victoria’s crew to keep the vessel in constant motion, in order to prevent US frogmen or submarines from latching cables onto its hull. The pirates erroneously believed US naval forces had employed these tactics during the Maersk Alabama incident to tow the ship’s doomed hijackers into sniper range.
In town, Omar, the Colonel, and I ate breakfast in a small lean-to, reclining in bare feet on woven mats. Abdirizak, Eyl’s “sheriff,” told me that a special meal had been planned in honour of my arrival, a fish caught especially for me late the previous night, when the wind was calm enough for a skiff to manage. A tray containing a single bony fish was brought out, which the four of us proceeded to attack with our injera bread. “This is the worst fish,” Abdirizak said apologetically. “The good ones all stay away during the hagaa. You should come back in December, which is the best time for fishing.”
Following our breakfast, I met with the townspeople of Eyl outdoors, on the sprawling veranda of a general store. Seated directly in front of me on plastic lawn chairs were Abdirizak, Abdul, Abdi Hersi, and a new man by the name of Aaul Mohammad, who introduced himself as the head of Eyl’s “public relations department.” The place of honour was reserved for a withered, silver-haired man said to be the oldest fisherman in the town. For the duration of the meeting, the old man remained placidly rooted to his seat, staring vacantly into space. On the other end of the age spectrum, a large crowd of young men and women formed a ring of spectators around us; their only contribution to the conversation was the intermittent ringing of their mobile phones, as loud as stereo speakers.
Aiming to strike a sympathetic tone, I began with a question about the town’s troubles with illegal fishing.
“In 1991, after the government collapsed, ships from all different countries started coming here,” said Abdirizak.
“Italians, Taiwanese, Japanese, Koreans, everyone comes here,” added Aaul Mohammad. “The trawlers come as close as one mile. Illegal fishing vessels were around here last night, not very far away; we saw their lights. But no one can get close to them, they carry such heavy weapons.”
“They use drag nets made of hard metal, and they pull everything off the bottom,” added Abdirizak. The result, he said, had been the destruction of the local lobster population.