It was boredom Richard Luckhurst felt, far more than fear.
His best friend at school was a boy whose father had been in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. A retiring man, he had only once spoken in Richard’s hearing about his wartime experiences, when his son had asked, ‘Dad, what was it like being a prisoner-of-war?’ His taciturn father had pursed his lips, and said simply, ‘Boring.’
Luckhurst now understood what the man had meant. Their hijackers had not allowed them to bring anything off the ship with them, and he craved something to read. Anything would have done. All he had was an old Times Saturday crossword that he had torn out of the paper and put in his trouser pocket weeks ago, to do later. When the pirates had searched him before they’d taken him off the ship, they hadn’t bothered with it and so he still had it. He had nothing to write with but even completing it in his head had occupied him for only a few hours. And now it was done, and he’d read the advertisements for the London theatres that were on the back of the page over and over again, and imagined himself sitting in the stalls in a cool air-conditioned theatre, wearing a clean shirt and a suit. What he would give for a book, any book, the longer the better.
Sitting here in this bizarre Somalian compound, he kept replaying the hijacking in his mind. One moment he was in charge, on the bridge of the SS Myrmidon, the world’s seventeenth-largest oil tanker; the next moment, a young African was pointing an AK-47 at his head. Then another five pirates had swarmed in, armed to the teeth. There wasn’t anything to be done: the ship’s sole firearm was an old 12-bore shotgun which had belonged to Luckhurst’s father, and which the crew used to shoot clay pigeons off the stern, to pass the time on long voyages.
Of course he had known that hijacking was a possibility, but he’d received no warning of any imminent attack from the naval vessels that were supposed to be patrolling the area, so he did not have his crew on alert. His instructions were not to resist if hijackers boarded and so he had followed the commands of their leader, brought his ship into the coast off Mogadishu and meekly allowed himself and his crew to be taken ashore. From then on his main responsibility had been to calm his crew and to try to make sure they did nothing to excite or alarm their young captors.
The crew were a polyglot bunch from all over the world, who liked to view Captain Luckhurst as typically English. So he had played to the stereotype, adopting a stiff upper lip and a ready smile, keeping his own worries about their safety strictly to himself. It wouldn’t have done to let them know how alarmed he’d been when they’d been taken off the ship at gun point, ferried ashore, and herded into this cattle pen.
He knew he could not complain about the treatment they were receiving. There would have been no point. The man Khalid, who had led the raiding party and seemed to be in charge, called their holding pen his ‘Guantanamo’, and like its Cuban counterpart this place was primitive: built of wooden posts with wire sheep fencing strung between them. Thank God for the fact that at one end of the pen there was a rough roof of plywood boards covered by tar paper, with a raised shelf under it for sitting and sleeping; this gave them some protection against the sun, which blazed for over ten hours a day, raising the temperature to 40 degrees Centigrade. They were let out each morning for an hour’s exercise in the middle of the compound, and by the time they returned to the pen were desperate for relief from the blistering heat and the wind – a dry scorching wind which blew all day, driving sand relentlessly into their mouths and eyes.
At least the nights were cool. Then Luckhurst would sit on his bit of the wooden platform, wrapped in one of the thin blankets which the guards had grudgingly distributed, staring out at the sky. Up there, he thought, among all those stars is a satellite looking at us. They know where we are. But they’re not going to intervene. We just have to wait for the ransom negotiations. Get on with it, he’d implore the unknown negotiators. Get us out of here.
The biggest frustration for him lay in not knowing what was going on. The hostages had no contact with any of the men in the camp except for the young boy, Taban, who brought them their food. Luckhurst smiled at the thought of the young Somali. Even in the bleakest circumstances the kindness of an individual could stand out, and he could tell Taban was a gentle soul adrift in a situation beyond his control. The boy reminded him of his own son, George, his youngest, who despite the utterly different worlds they inhabited, had the same kind of sweetness as this African youth. At first there had been no communication between the Captain and the Somali boy, but in time Luckhurst had found that his smattering of Arabic, Taban’s few words of English and a burgeoning use of sign language meant they could make their respective meanings clear.
One day, almost two weeks before, the boy had seemed very agitated. Luckhurst had gathered from him that new men had arrived in the camp, though he had not seen them himself. ‘Arab,’ Taban had said, lowering his voice and looking over his shoulder at the guards by the gate. ‘One… you.’ And he’d pointed at Luckhurst.
‘One like me? White?’ asked Luckhurst, pointing at his own face and hands.
Taban had shaken his head. ‘No white. English.’
An Englishman? But not white. Someone speaking English, perhaps. Could it be another hostage? But if so, why wasn’t he in the pen?
Over the next few evenings, intrigued by the idea of another Englishman living so close to him, Luckhurst had tried to learn more, but Taban was not forthcoming. Then, a week ago, when he’d brought the supper: ‘Men gone. English gone,’ he’d said, waving an arm towards the sea.
Now Luckhurst heard the clink of keys, and the sound of the door of the pen swinging open on its creaking hinges. Supper, he thought, visualising the guards letting Taban in with the food bowls. He wanted to learn more about the men who had gone to sea and not come back.
‘OK, Taban?’ asked Luckhurst now as the boy handed him his bowl of stew. Taban nodded but he looked scared.
Suddenly Khalid appeared behind him with a holstered pistol on his hip. This was new; Luckhurst hoped it didn’t mean things had taken a turn for the worse. But the man was grinning as he strode up to the Captain.
‘I have some news for you, Commander. Good news.’
‘Yes?’ This announcement had been made before, and had turned out merely to be that there was fruit with their dinner of stew.
‘Your owners have seen sense at last – the ransom has been paid. You are clearly worth a lot to them.’
Luckhurst knew better – it was the ship the owners wanted back, not the crew, but there was no point in telling Khalid that. ‘What happens next?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Next? We drive you to a collection point outside Mogadishu. A representative of your company will be there to collect you.’
It took only minutes for the Captain and his crew to get ready. They had nothing to pack. As they walked towards the dusty lorry, Luckhurst looked for Taban to say goodbye, but there was no sign of him. In the excitement of his release the Captain soon forgot about the boy.