They had slaughtered the goat that afternoon. Taban had seen countless animals killed before, but he had been disgusted by the zeal with which these new men in the camp had despatched the little creature. One held the struggling animal while another slashed its neck with a knife. As blood gushed from the scrawny throat and the body twitched, cries of delight went up from the group.
Now Taban was tending the big pot, using an enormous wooden spoon to stir the cut-up chunks of meat that were bubbling together with red beans and tamaandho. On a brazier next to the pot, flatbreads cooked over the driftwood fire.
They were only seven miles from Mogadishu, but it could have been seven thousand. Their camp sat on a spit of sand behind a dune, overlooking the Indian Ocean. The nearest dwellings were half a mile away, the rundown shacks of an almost abandoned fishing village.
He knew the village well; he had grown up there with his father and an elder brother. He couldn’t remember his mother – she had died of a wasting disease when he was just two – so he had never missed her, and his childhood had been happy. He had gone to school some of the time, but more often he’d helped his father fish; he knew the local waters inside out before he was ten. In the early morning they would cast off in their little boat, its bow stuffed with nets, and by midday, if they were lucky, they would chug back laden with anchovies, sardines and mackerel, sometimes a tuna, and very occasionally a shark. They would cart their catch to the broken-concrete highway, where the lorry bound for Mogadishu would stop and the driver get down to haggle with their father over the price of their haul.
It had been a life of hard labour and long hours, but the coast was beautiful, the waters calm, and the fish plentiful. They did not want for anything that mattered.
One day men had come, armed with automatic rifles. They had wanted to borrow the skiff but his father had said no. They went away, but a week later they were back. Again the men asked for the use of his father’s boat, and again his father refused.
Then they shot his father.
For a while, Taban and his brother had struggled on, borrowing a skiff from neighbours when they could and continuing to fish, though without their father there the lorry driver cheated them when they tried to sell their catch. Precarious as their new life was, they survived. Until one day his brother went to Mogadishu, looking for a cousin of theirs who might be able to help them. He had not come back, and after three months Taban assumed he must be dead, for why else would he not have returned?
Taban had tried to make a go of it alone, but he was still too small to handle the nets himself, and he could not catch enough fish on lines to make a living. He hoped for a while to be taken on by another fisherman, but the catches were growing poorer every day, and there was no money for extra hands. Soon only a few fishermen remained in the hamlet, trying their luck in the shallow shoals that had once been fertile fishing grounds; occasionally a band of strangers would come and commandeer several of the abandoned shacks, using them as a temporary base before moving on.
When Khalid and his gang had arrived they’d built a compound of their own. They began with a high perimeter wall, built of boulders and salvaged bricks. Taban had walked over there one morning after he’d failed for the fifth successive day to catch any fish. There were roughly thirty men under Khalid’s command, and none of them were fishermen. But when Khalid learned that Taban knew the coastline his eyes had lit up, and soon the boy was not only lugging water buckets to the men building the wall and serving Khalid his meals of kebabs cooked over the fire, he was also going out to sea with them. He hadn’t understood at first what they were doing; they were not interested in fishing but wanted to understand the tides and currents for some purpose of their own. It was later, when they brought groups of foreigners in lorries from further down the coast, that he realised these men were pirates, carrying out raids on the big ships that sailed the shipping lanes far out to sea, and that the foreigners were their prisoners.
All the men were afraid of Khalid. He had a house they had built for him inside the compound, a bare-walled structure constructed of breeze-blocks, but inside it seemed the height of luxury to Taban, equipped with electricity from a generator, an enormous television that received hundreds of programmes through a dish on the roof, a refrigerator full of food, even alcohol stored in a rack. Khalid was not cruel to Taban, but the boy worked hard merely for his food and a place to sleep, no wages. And he was never allowed to leave the compound on his own.
Now, as Taban leaned forward to stir the stew again, a large hand suddenly gripped his wrist. It was the Tall One, the name Taban had given to the leader of a new band of men who had arrived in the camp some weeks ago and taken it over. He was a massive figure, well over six feet tall, with a long ragged beard. He and his gang had come under cover of darkness, in jeeps. Their only luggage had been weapons – AK-47s, two grenade launchers, and quantities of sidearms.
Khalid had not resisted this challenge to his authority. When they insisted Taban should act as their factotum – which meant cook for the most part – Khalid had just nodded. The men kept to themselves, and treated Taban with suspicion when they were not ignoring him altogether. He noticed that they spent much of their time at prayer, kneeling or stretching out on small rugs they laid on the sand; the rest of the time they conducted classes among themselves, each of them taking turns to be the ‘teacher’ of the group. He had heard enough words he recognised, even when spoken in their strange dialect, to realise these men were not simple pirates. But then what were they doing here? He had wanted to ask Khalid, but fear held him back.
Now the Tall One let go of Taban’s wrist and looked down at the stew, inspecting it closely. Then he stared at the boy with a penetrating gaze; the young Somali felt as if the man’s eyes were boring into his brain. At last, the Tall One nodded at him with a grunt. He spoke sharply and his comrades came over and began to serve themselves, while Taban stood back, waiting. At one point the Tall One gestured towards the boy, and the other men looked at him, then muttered to each other. Taban knew they were talking about him.
They were on edge – he could tell that. More than a week ago seven of them had gone out in a skiff almost as far as the shipping lanes, taking Taban with them. In sign language he had explained the tidal currents, which were notoriously tricky here, and pointed out the treacherous outcrop of rock almost a mile from shore, which had been the downfall of more than one unsuspecting craft. When, the following day, the same men had set out again, he had expected to go with them, but the Tall One had summoned him back with a threatening wave of his AK-47.
Those men had not returned and Taban was sure that something had gone wrong.
The Tall One and his men went and sat down again on the sand to eat, while Taban examined the vast iron pot. He was glad to see there was enough left to feed the prisoners, even if the visitors had eaten most of the meat. He lined up baaquli, rough wooden bowls, and filled them one by one, setting them on a tray he had fashioned from some short planks.
He had put the last bowl on his tray, ready to walk across the compound to the hostages’ pen, when Khalid suddenly appeared. He had taken to wearing a sidearm and was dressed this evening in fatigues. He gestured towards the Tall One and his men, who were squatting down as they ate, and said to Taban, ‘They want to know if you left the compound today.’
The boy looked at Khalid, aghast. ‘Of course not. I would never do that without your permission.’
Khalid nodded grimly. ‘That is what I told them. But be careful – these men don’t trust anyone, and that includes you.’ Then he walked off to talk with the guards he posted each night on the perimeter of the compound.
Picking up his tray, Taban headed for the makeshift jail. He was shaken by what Khalid had said to him. Taban sensed these men would happily kill him without a moment’s thought, and he was very afraid. What had scared him even more was the look in Khalid’s eyes. He was frightened too.