The Tears of Dark Water (65 page)

Mas:
I don’t care what you say! I’m not releasing the hostages until we’re on the beach.

Ismail:
If we break the deal, they’ll never let us go. I’ll get them to ground the helicopter. Then we go ashore. I checked the boat. The gas tank is full.

Liban:
Listen to Afyareh. He got the Navy to ground their planes.

Guray:
I agree. Afyareh can handle this.

Mas:
Fuck all of you!

Megan moved closer to him. “Did you convince the Navy to ground the helicopter?”

Ismail nodded. “I did. But they took too long putting it away.”

“What do you mean?”

Ismail turned in his chair and told the jurors about the beginning of the mutiny.

Mas:
It’s going to be dark soon. They can shoot us in the dark.

Ismail:
Shut up, Mas!

Mas:
What proof do you have that they’re going to let us go? They want us to trust them, but they shot Garaad’s men in the head. They’re going to do that to us.

Ismail:
You’re crazy!

Mas:
The ship is too close. Don’t you see? It’s closer than it was before. They’re going to kill us all.

Osman:
He’s right. The ship is too close.

Guray:
They moved the ship!

Mas:
There’s no way I’m releasing the hostages until the ship goes away.

Dhuuban:
They’re going to shoot us!

Ismail:
There are seven of us. They don’t have seven snipers.

Mas:
He’s making that up! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!

Ismail:
We break the deal and all bets are off.

Sondare:
The ship is too close!

Osman:
They need to move it back!

Ismail:
They’ll never do it.

Mas:
They’ll do it if we shoot someone.

Ismail:
You’re a lunatic!

Mas:
Watch me.

Ismail:
Stop! I’ll get them to move the ship.

When he finished speaking, Megan waited a moment before asking: “When Paul called you and told you the helicopter was inside the ship, were you in command of your crew?”

“No,” he replied. “The men were listening to Mas. I was afraid for the Captain and Quentin. I knew the Navy wouldn’t move the ship. But I had to try. I gave them five minutes to comply.”

“What happened then?” Megan inquired.

Ismail felt the noose around his neck. “That’s when my men found out what I had done.”

Mas:
It isn’t working! We need to call my uncle. He’ll know what to do.

Ismail:
We’re not going to call anyone. We’re sticking to the plan.

Mas:
Call him! He could send us another ship!

Ismail:
Why would he do that? He’d be putting himself at risk.

Mas:
Call him or I’m going to shoot the Captain!

Ismail:
I can’t call him.

Mas:
Why not?

Ismail:
Gedef didn’t have authority to negotiate with the family.

[Everyone shouting at once]

Mas:
You betrayed us, you son of a whore! You are fakash—fucking Sa’ad!

Ismail:
It was the only way! The Navy wasn’t going to let us go! Look at this money! You can each have 250,000 dollars! Take it to Nairobi! Start a business! Do whatever you want!

Mas:
You’re trying to get us killed! My relatives will never let us go!

Ismail:
Think, Mas! Use your brain for once! This is the chance of a lifetime!

Mas:
You’re a fucking liar! I’m not listening anymore!

“What did the other pirates think of your proposal?” Megan asked.

“All of them sided with Mas,” Ismail replied, covering for Liban who had stayed loyal until the end. “They knew the money belonged to Gedef’s family.”

Megan looked at him somberly. “When Paul offered to move the ship in exchange for Quentin’s release, how did your men react?”

Ismail shook his head. “They had poison in their minds. Everyone was yelling. It was madness.”

“How did it end?” Megan inquired softly.

Ismail faced the jury, meeting their eyes one by one. Their expressions were as diverse as human emotion—disgust, contempt, grief, loathing, skepticism, horror, sorrow, and pain. He knew then that he would accept their decision without question, even if they voted to put him to death. They were the instruments of God—the arbitrators of his judgment.

“It happened just as Quentin told you,” he replied. “I pulled the trigger twice, aiming away from his head and heart, and prayed he wouldn’t die.” He looked at Vanessa and saw her anguish. “I wish every day I could change it. But I can’t. Everything that happened is my responsibility. I am so sorry.”

Megan waited a while, allowing the jury to absorb his apology. Then she asked: “What became of your mother and sister?”

Ismail blinked once and blotted an eye with his sleeve. “Yasmin escaped from Somalia and found my mother. They’re safe now. That is my only consolation.”

Megan nodded. “I have nothing further.”

When Clyde Barrington stood to cross-examine him, Ismail could see that the wind of conviction had left his sails. He looked worn and agitated, but he didn’t give up without a fight.

“Daniel Parker died nine months ago,” he began. “For nine months you have said
nothing
about Mas,
nothing
about a mutiny,
nothing
about losing control of your men and being forced to shoot Quentin Parker. What
possibly
compelled you to hold out until now?”

Ismail delivered his reply slowly. “I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“What are you talking about?” Barrington demanded.

For an instant, Ismail glanced away from the prosecutor and looked toward the corner of the courtroom. The man in the blue-checkered shirt hadn’t returned, but another Somali had taken his place. He had a professorial face with oval glasses and a rotund frame.

“When the small boat died in the water, Mas shouted something to the Navy,” Ismail said. “He accused me of being Shabaab. He also said something else, something in Somali. He ordered the men to say that I shot the hostages. He threatened their families.”

Barrington’s eyes widened. “How would he—?” At once, the prosecutor swiveled on his feet and glanced at the man in the back. “Mas was Gedef’s cousin, correct?”

Ismail nodded. “His father is Gedef’s father’s younger brother.”

“And Gedef’s father was with the Somali security service under Siad Barre?”

“Yes,” Ismail replied, gratified to see Barrington making the connections.

“What exactly are you saying?” the prosecutor asked.

Ismail fixed his eyes on the rotund man. “I’m saying that none of my men knew what I was doing when I turned the sailboat toward Mogadishu. None of them intended to steal money from Gedef’s family. It was my plan, and only my plan. But Mas threatened to tell his uncle otherwise if the men didn’t testify against me.”

Again, whispers broke out in the gallery, and the judge silenced them with her gavel.

Barrington looked stricken. “Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

Ismail held out his hands. “I had to let them go through with it. If I challenged them, their story would have fallen apart. Who knows what Mas would have done?”

Ismail watched the prosecutor carefully, sensing the struggle inside of him, the deep wound to his pride. He was a powerful man, but he had been played like a chess piece in a game he still didn’t understand. Ismail remembered a line from Gaarriye. He offered it by way of explanation.

“There is a Somali poem called ‘Aadmi.’ In it the poet says that whatever things may look like, the meaning is always deeper. When I was a boy, my father told me to look for the deeper meaning in everything. What I have told you is the deeper meaning.”

For a long moment, Barrington just stared at him. Then he turned around and walked away.

The next morning, Judge McKenzie dismissed the jury to deliberate. They returned a verdict in under an hour. Ismail watched the jurors file in and take their seats. A few of them glanced at him; most did not. The jury foreman—an older man with graying hair—handed an envelope to the bailiff who passed it up to the judge. The judge opened the envelope and read its contents.

“The verdict appears to be in order,” she said. “Will the defendant please rise?”

Ismail stood up beside Megan and Kiley and the rest of their team, clasping his hands behind his back. He looked at the judge without fear. He had done everything he set out to do. Yasmin was safe with Khadija. He had made his confession and delivered his apology. The rest was in God’s hands.

“Ismail Adan Ibrahim,” the judge intoned, looking at the sheet in front of her, “on the charge of piracy under the law of nations, the jury finds you guilty. On the charge of conspiracy to commit hostage taking resulting in death, the jury finds you guilty. On the charge of hostage taking resulting in death, the jury finds you guilty. On the charge of conspiracy to commit kidnapping resulting in death, the jury finds you guilty. On the charge of kidnapping resulting in death . . .”

As the verdict was read, Ismail thought back to the day when it all began. He remembered the way the schoolyard looked in the morning light. He recalled the sound of the students’ laughter in the hallways. He remembered the sadness that filled his father’s eyes when the technicals pulled up to the gate and the men poured out with their guns. He recalled the way they dragged Adan into the yard and forced him to his knees. “You are an enemy of Islam!” they shouted. “You are guilty of spreading falsehoods and promoting immorality. Repent!” But his father didn’t repent. Instead, he looked at his children and waited for the end to come. Ismail remembered the sound of gunfire, the
rat-tat-tat
of the AK-47s, as they cut Adan down. He recalled the way his father fell to the earth, his blood mixing with the yellow dirt.
If only they had left us alone
, he thought
. But they didn’t leave us alone.

Judge McKenzie’s voice interrupted his reverie. “On the charge of using, carrying, brandishing, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence resulting in death, the jury finds you guilty. On the charge of assault with a dangerous weapon on federal officers and employees, the jury finds you guilty.”

Suddenly, the judge looked up, gazing at Ismail through her glasses. “On the charge of murder within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, the jury finds you
not guilty
.”

Ismail closed his eyes and felt relief down deep in his bones. If the jurors had asked him to bear the condemnation of another, he would have done it. But they had seen the truth.

“On the charge of attempted murder within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,” the judge went on, “the jury finds you
not guilty
.”

And there it was—the judgment of man and God. Guilty and not guilty at the same time. He turned to Megan and accepted her embrace.

“If they didn’t blame you for the shooting,” she said, “they won’t give you the death penalty.”

He knew it was true, but it didn’t matter as much as the knowledge that his father would have approved. “Thank you for believing in me,” he replied. “I know it wasn’t easy.”

Megan smiled in a way that wove joy and sadness together. “I almost never get to say this. But today I will. The system worked. Justice was served.”

Yasmin

Minneapolis, Minnesota

September, 2012

For Yasmin, coming to America was a gloriously disorienting experience. She had lived most of her life in a world without regular plumbing and a reliable power grid and well-paved roads and supermarkets and high-speed Internet and air-conditioning. When she gained access to all of these things at once, she felt almost paralyzed by the possibilities. She had to retrain her mind to get water from the tap instead of the cistern or the river, to flip a wall switch to chase away the darkness instead of lighting a lantern, to walk to the store for milk instead of getting it from the cow or a neighbor with a herd of goats.

There were things she missed about Somalia—the frogs and the night birds and the sky full of stars. But they were a small sacrifice to make in comparison to the manifold blessings of living in Minneapolis—greeting her mother every morning, owning an apartment with nice furniture and rugs and a new television and computer, having Farah’s family nearby, worshiping at a beautiful mosque, and receiving a generous monthly income that the State Department said would last for fifty years.