The Pirates of Somalia_ Inside Their Hidden World - Jay Bahadur [88]
I met with Hersi in the courtyard of the compound in which I was staying for a leisurely day of khat chewing on the veranda. His local reputation was so unsavoury that my guards, Said and Abdirashid, only begrudgingly allowed him into the compound, and then decided to throw him out about fifteen minutes later; it was only through a combination of cajoling and threatening that I was able to persuade them to allow him to stay. Said’s distaste for Hersi came from personal experience: several months before, he had been summoned to help restrain a violently raving, high-out-of-his-mind Hersi, who repeatedly punched Said in the face for his troubles. Said called him a dhqancelis, the closest English translation of which is “one who is in need of cultural healing.” After spending most of the last twenty years in Ohio and Montreal, Hersi had returned to Somalia two years ago, allegedly (if Said is to be believed) to cure himself of his drug addiction through the purifying power of the local culture.
As Said and Abdirashid watched warily, Hersi and I unrolled a prayer mat onto the whitewashed floor of a westward-facing enclave tucked into the side of the principal residence, as far out of the path of the raking wind as possible. Even so, powerful gusts briefly turned our dirin into a billowing sail, upending our 7-Up bottles and sending our stainless-steel water cups clanging down the steps of the veranda. We finally managed to pin a variety of weights onto the corners of the dirin, and, pouring cups of sweet tea, we started to chew the khat. A few minutes later, feeling out of place in my jeans, I excused myself and changed into my only ma’awis, a cheap piece of fraying yellow and green cloth I had picked up in Bossaso.
When I returned, Hersi was the first to fire off a question. “Is it all right if I borrow a hundred dollars from you, man?” he asked. “I’ll send it back to you in a few days, through Dahabshiil,” referring to Somalia’s largest hawala (money transfer) company. I informed him that I would be making a trip to a Dahabshiil branch later in the afternoon to pick up some much-needed cash, and would be happy to give it to him then. He smiled, stuffing another khat stalk into his mouth. Hersi had been spending most of his recent days in Eyl, chewing khat and waiting, quite literally, for his cousins’ ransom to fall from the sky. To his credit, he did not wish to remain a welfare case, but was looking for gainful employment as a pirate interpreter—the man responsible for communicating with the crew on board a captive vessel, and often for negotiating with the shipping company. Unfortunately, it was the wrong season for hiring new pirate help; the Victoria hijackers had been grounded, along with all other pirate groups, since the monsoons began. That fact, however, had not stopped Hersi from anxiously monitoring the international news in the hopes of catching wind of a hijacking—a ship he could call his own.
Though the Victoria remained in captivity, Hersi had temporarily returned to Garowe. Since our encounter in Eyl, he had been calling two or three times daily with one of two invariable themes: arranging a time to chew khat together (at my expense), or asking for a $900 video camera with which to shoot a documentary about pirates. While the latter desire remained beyond my ability or inclination to fulfil, I gladly obliged Hersi’s request for a khat picnic. Since my attempts to get aboard the Victoria during my visit to Eyl had been rebuffed by Computer—the gang’s leader—as the machinations of a CIA spy, Hersi was likely the furthest I would get in my attempts to infiltrate the organization. “They’re my cousins,” he explained. “I can hang out with them, and nobody can touch me.”
Hersi had already succeeded where I had failed. A few days after I returned to Garowe from Eyl, he had called me at three o’clock in the morning from on board the Victoria, obviously high on khat. “I need a video camera, man, so I can film what’s going on here,