A Long Walk Home: One Woman's Story of Kidnap, Hostage, Loss - and Survival (11 page)

That was enough to drain the amusement factor from the experience. Abruptly I pulled the
khimar
off and over my head. Amina and the Navigator looked puzzled.

‘Me no Somali, me English,’ I explained. Then, thinking better of an argument about cultural identity, I waved a fanning hand before my face. ‘Too hot, yes? Too hot to wear on my head.’

They seemed to accept that point. Inside, though, I was seething at Hungry Man, and how I must have looked in his eyes.
You’re not getting used to seeing me like that
, I thought.
That is not who I am.
But the apparently simple act of a change of
clothes felt to me like a stealthy confirmation that I had somehow ceased to be Jude Tebbutt – wife, mother, social worker. Amina’s clothes stripped me of that, reduced me to a cipher, to mere chattel: ‘Woman/Prisoner, in Somalia’. And it frightened me to think how swiftly my true identity could be erased. I had the same basic interest in my appearance – in expressing a little of myself through how I looked – as most other Western women, and so I shrank from this concealing, homogenising religious uniform.

I could live with the
jilbab
dress, plus the stricture of the headscarf: given the heat, the long days and the amount I was losing in perspiration, any change of clothes had to be welcomed. And so Amina’s
jilbab
became my new day wear. The clothes I’d taken off – my first prison-issue dress in splodges of red and black – I decided would be my ‘going-away outfit’. I wanted to be presentable when I saw David and Ollie, and I wouldn’t mind them seeing me in that dress, whereas the
jilbab
felt unnatural to me.

I had spied Hungry Man washing his own clothes out in the compound, with sudsy water in a big stainless-steel dish, a box of washing powder at his side bearing the brand name ‘Omo’. I now asked the Navigator if I could have a cup of Omo, and he brought it for me, though he seemed oddly hesitant. I did the job, using the bucket water that was brought for washing my body. Then I hung my laundry to dry over one of the plastic chairs. Even in the heat this took hours, but when it was done I put the dress in a black binliner. My room had recently acquired a new furnishing, somewhat superfluous to requirements: a coat-stand, burgundy coloured with bright gold knobs. But now I had something worth hanging on it.

Looking for more ways to refresh my physical-exercise routine, I had another thought that seemed to me rather inspired, whatever anyone else might think: a ‘virtual hula hoop’. I started to practise a series of hip rotations that I felt would be sufficient to keep an imaginary hoop (red-and-white-striped, as I pictured it) twirling around my waist for at least five times at a go. I would then reverse the motion, and try five times in the other direction. I was quickly absorbed in the process, mentally as well as physically, though I called a halt whenever I reached fifty spins in all.

I had grown accustomed to the daily afternoon commotion that seemed to herald the pirates taking delivery of their
khat
leaves, from Kenya – the highlight of their day, it seemed, for they tumbled out of their various rooms, some dashing in from positions outside the compound. One day I decided to take a better look and made a toilet visit as they all huddled under the covered walkway. I realised there was a dealer at the centre of the hubbub, a man with lots of Afro-perm-like curly hair, toting two blue plastic bags bulging with
khat
. Vain Man appeared to be in charge of a process of bartering with him, trying to cut a bargain, weighing one clump of wilted leaves in his hand then another, finally deciding on a favourite, while the others chattered keenly. And then he took it on himself to dish out portions. Once the excitement receded and the
khat
man left, the pirates retreated to start chewing. I was inclined to look and see which of them took no interest, and I could see that the Triumvirate never chewed, nor Smiley Boy (who never prayed either). But for the others
khat
seemed to make them chatty, lively. The Navigator told me he chewed so as to stay awake until nine o’clock at night, whereupon he retired to sleep in Room 3.
Khat
, then, was both a perk and a necessary stimulant. I could see why they resorted to it, though I remained resolutely untempted.

I would have dearly liked some regular daily treat of my own, but I had nothing. My lack of interest in Somali tea drew attention, after Hungry Man came in one evening bearing the usual flask of hot water and paused to check my yellow packet of tea, looking puzzled by why it was still so full. He summoned the Navigator, who pressed me to explain that I just couldn’t drink the stuff. He and Hungry Man shook their heads sadly, and took the flask and the packet of tea away. Inevitably, nothing else came back in its place.

I kept on trying to ‘think positive’. But at times, in passages, this just couldn’t be sustained – not when I was alone in a dark room on a plastic chair, so hot and claustral that I felt as though I were sitting fully clothed in a sauna. Sweat ran down me. The discomfort was such that at times I sat on the floor with my back to the wall, seeking its coolness, despite the curtain in the way.

While I persevered with efforts at ‘meaningful interaction’ with the pirates, it was hard going amid the strangeness of this alien environment, where I recognised precisely nothing, found nothing familiar or comforting. Listening to these men, my gaolers, laughing and conversing outside my door – and not in some semi-familiar language where a foreigner might pick up on the odd word or two, but in a truly indecipherable tongue – I really felt I was lost to the world.

I could take nothing for granted, had to keep on guard against giving offence. In the course of one short traipse over to the toilet my headscarf came undone and slipped from my head. Limping Man happened to be close by. At the sight of my hair he went ballistic, raising an angry din that sent the Navigator darting to my side, and not in sympathy. ‘Hair, hair!’ he shouted.
For goodness’ sake
, I thought,
what is
wrong
with you men?

Not long afterwards the Navigator and Hungry Man deemed it necessary to come to my room and tell me again, sternly, that I was never, not even for a moment, to go bareheaded around the place. After that I decided to keep the peace, take the
khimar
from where I’d hung it on the coat-stand and throw it onto my head for visits to the toilet. However, often in the rush I threw it on back to front.

I could suffer it all, every indignity and discomfort, for the belief that my ordeal couldn’t last. But in my loneliness I could only run and re-run through my head the tale of what I hoped was happening a thousand miles away: David and Ollie, in Nairobi, working with the Consulate, bargaining with the Negotiator for my freedom. I didn’t like to think about how they were feeling; nor about my family back in England, and how on earth they were coping.

A bit of me, I knew, was still in shock, and also rueful. How could this have happened to us? Why? Why the bloody hell did we go to Kiwayu? Why didn’t we pick Zanzibar, as we’d meant to in the beginning? Why hadn’t I stood my ground on that choice? To imagine where we could be if we’d only done things differently was more than I could bear. I had to dig deep, stay in the here and now, keep my mind on the next hour ahead – rather than falling back into self-pity and wishful thinking, those twin traps, from which nothing useful could come.

It was a Saturday, 1 October, early afternoon, and I was sitting on a chair facing the door, a walk just completed. The Navigator rushed into the room waving a phone – and not his usual black handset but a flashy red number. At his back just about every other pirate in the compound came piling in, an invasion, and
the crowd in the room was two or three deep with me at the airless centre.

‘What on earth’s going on?’ I asked the Navigator.

He grinned and thrust the phone at me. I pressed it to my ear and heard the Negotiator.

‘I have your son on the phone.’

It was, as they say, as if my heart had missed a beat.

‘Hello? Ollie, hello?’

But the line went dead. Breath bated, I handed the phone back to the Navigator, gesturing forlornly. ‘Dead.’ His brow furrowed, he darted from the room.

I was left looking at the throng of expectant pirates who clearly intended to share in whatever conversation I might be about to enjoy. My stomach churned in hope. The Navigator returned, pressed the phone upon me. Again the voice on the line was the Negotiator’s.

‘OK, it is your son. You have three minutes, no more.’

The line clicked and buzzed.

‘Hello? Ollie, is that you?’

‘Mum, yes, it’s Ollie …’

To hear my son’s dear voice, after all these dreadful weeks, had my heart pressing hard against my chest. There was so much to say – and yet I could barely speak. But Ollie sounded full of urgency.

‘Listen to me, Mum. I can’t speak for long, this has to be short, and there are some things I have to ask you. Are you ill? Do you need medical attention?’

‘No, darling, I’m OK, I’m being treated well.’

‘Have they given you bottled water?’

‘I’ve got that, yes.’

‘Have you got a pen and paper, Mum?’

‘No, they haven’t given me that …’ It sounded as if Ollie were working his way down a pre-prepared list of things he had to verify. He had a system: evidently he had taken advice.

‘Do you have a routine, something you do every day?’

‘I do, yes, I’m walking round the room every hour.’

‘That’s good, Mum, stick to the routine, routines are good. Keep walking – you’re walking to freedom.’

I had to smile at that lovely, spirit-lifting thought.

‘Now listen, Mum, we’re trying to get you home. The family is doing all we can, and we will get you home, you’re just going to have to be strong …’

Then I heard the line cut out, and ‘That’s it, over.’ The Negotiator was back. I could feel myself trembling.

‘OK, now negotiations will start. Then I will come back and see you.’

He hung up. The Navigator reclaimed the phone from me and I saw him pass it to the Leader, who pocketed it. The pirates trooped out of the room, the show was over, but the Navigator grinned at me. ‘Your son! He phone you!’ For the moment I wasn’t interested in his pleasantries. I wanted to get my thoughts in order.

Alone again, back to my walking, I replayed my and Ollie’s brief exchanges in my head, incessantly. He had sounded so much in control, focused and mature, as if he were directing the effort to ‘get me home’. But where was David? Our conversation had been incredibly rushed but, still, I was kicking myself for not squeezing in a question to Ollie about how his dad was doing. And Ollie hadn’t mentioned him, which was, on reflection, strange.

My secret fear reasserted itself. What if David was languishing in hospital somewhere, still injured from the night of my kidnap? What if he had been struck too hard? His skull could have been
fractured. This dark scenario mushroomed in my head: if David were incapacitated, and Ollie was in charge of things, having to rely on ‘the family’ – my family, in Cumbria – then there would be no quick fix. My family had no money to spare, and nothing to prepare them for this experience. I could be stuck here for a long time, not weeks but months.

I had no idea when Ollie and I would speak next, but I had to take the Negotiator’s word that ‘dialogue’ had opened and I would hear from him soon. I felt my very sanity depending on it.

Later that day I saw Ollie’s close questioning – as monitored by the Negotiator – yielding immediate results, when Smiley Boy entered my room bearing a little assemblage of items for me: a thick exercise book, a pen, a packet of tissues, and a slim
battery-powered
torch. In my straitened circumstances this was quite a care package, and my spirits were raised again.

The book covers were patterned with red roses on a yellow background, bound in cellophane. Inside the front cover the days of the week were given in English, along with a blank timetable grid: ‘Lesson 1’, ‘Lesson 2’, etc. Inside the back was the same formula in Somali. The pages were ruled, like any good
schoolbook
, and there were 170 of them. The thought did occur to me, how many of them I would use up before I was free.

I planned to put this to good use. My first thought was not to bother with any sort of diary – my days were too similar – but just to take advantage of a chance to employ my mind and occupy my time. My days were busy enough, after all, with walking and thinking. Writing, then, could be my evening pursuit. I decided not to open the book until after evening mealtime, between the third and fourth
muezzin
wails.

The torch was another godsend. During the day I could just about cope with the gloom made by the closed, curtained shutters in my room. The pitch black of night was a different order. I needed to feel strong, and sitting alone in blackness after 6 p.m. was not conducive to strength. But now I had a means to light the dark.

Once night had come down I flicked on the torch and sat over the book. I decided to number each page as I wrote, and then I began with gusto, simply writing out trivial lists of things: girls’ and boys’ names, A–Z, as many as I could think of. Without reading glasses I struggled to see well in front of me: it would have to be close work, the torch’s narrow beam trained hard on the spot directly before my nose. But I scribbled away with my face nearly on the page, like some Dickensian clerk squinting over a ledger by the light of a guttering candle. No matter the challenge, I was determined to get some words down on paper.

For the day’s final walk I experimented with my new torch. While my battery lantern shed a bit of light there were a couple of corners of the room that remained steeped in darkness – and I didn’t want to go there, almost superstitiously. On a base level, I was worried about treading on too many cockroaches. But I found that if I moved the lantern to the corner opposite the door, and pointed the torch to the opposite corner of the room, the illumination levels improved slightly. I knew I would be stepping on fewer bugs in any event, since they began to inch from out of their dark hiding places towards the room’s new light source.