The Tears of Dark Water (8 page)

Daniel sat down heavily. He felt as if he had been put through a meat-grinder. He spoke his question gingerly: “And if I don’t agree?”

Quentin shook his head. “If you go back, I’m not going with you.”

Daniel turned away and watched the sun dip its golden toe into the sea. He replayed Quentin’s words in his head and thought of all the miles they had covered, all the days and nights they had spent together on the deep, all the laughter and conversations and unforgettable experiences they had put between them and the past. It seemed almost sacrilegious to step foot on an airplane when they had come so far. Yet the threat remained, as did his vow.
To Hell with it
, he thought.
You only live once.

“Okay,” Daniel exhaled, hope and dread entwined in his heart.

Quentin pumped his fist in jubilation. “Sweet!”

“But there’s only one way to do it. We go tonight under power with sails stowed and lights and AIS off. We stand two-hour watches. By the time the sun rises, we’ll be past the attack site. By sunset tomorrow, we’ll be across the tenth parallel and out of the High Risk Area.”

Quentin gave Daniel the look of intrigue and curiosity he had inherited from Vanessa. “You keep surprising me,” he said. “I never used to think of you as brave.”

Tears welled in Daniel’s eyes. The compliment filled a void that was as old as he was. How many times he had longed for his father to affirm him in this way. But Curtis had only pointed out his flaws. He put a hand on his son’s shoulder.

“You know what? Neither did I.”

Ismail

The Indian Ocean

08°25´25˝S, 56°23´24˝E

November 8, 2011

Ismail sat in back of the skiff, one hand on the tiller, watching the sun sink into the sea. His men were huddled around him, their eyes glazed, their forms motionless. The ocean was calm, like a giant lake without beginning or end. At just under six knots, the skiff plowed across the surface with barely a bump, creating a headwind as languid as human breath.

When the sun disappeared and the sky began to darken, Ismail searched the heavens for the first stars of the night. He saw
al-Nasr
high in the west, then
Dhanab
and
al-Waqi
to the north. The moon hung round and full in the east. He felt no fear of the coming night. Dark was nothing more than the absence of day. His equanimity was the result of experience—the numberless nights he had spent in the Shabaab camps stretched out on the hard ground beside Yusuf; the weeks he had spent at sea, sleeping beneath the wheeling constellations, many of which his father had taught him to name.

His companions, however, were terrified of night. The same waves they scoffed at under the sun, they treated like monsters in the dark. Ismail prepared himself. Tonight would be worse than other nights. All of them were weary and hungry and conscious of their massive misfortune. Along with losing the
Jade Dolphin
and Gedef and the Omani dhow, they had lost one of their water jugs in an afternoon squall. The storm had blown with the malevolence of a
djinn
, coming within a hair’s breadth of capsizing the skiff and leaving them battered, waterlogged, and foul-tempered.

According to Ismail’s GPS unit, they had covered a distance of fifty-two miles in nine hours. At this rate, Mahé was still two days away, but already his men were showing signs of strain. Osman and Guray had been grumbling about their empty stomachs, and Mas had fanned the flames with a false alarm about another cargo ship. Looking at the shape through the binoculars, Ismail had declared it to be a cloud left over from the storm. But Mas had waved his gun around and forced them to chase the phantom. In a way, Ismail was grateful for the mistake—it had reduced Mas’s standing among the men. But he had been careful not to gloat. He had to keep them together to maintain command.

When the light began to fade from the horizon, Ismail cut off the motor, and the skiff slowed to a stop. He found a flashlight in the bottom of the boat and turned it on, spreading his fingers across the lens to diffuse the glow.

“I know you’re hungry,” he said. “I am, too. We should pray the
Maghrib
like we were home. We need Allah’s help to stay alive.”

Sondare, the most pious of the group, agreed first. The others soon followed. Their religious commitment was dubious—especially Osman and Guray, whose pastimes on land were drinking liquor, chewing
qat
, and fornicating. But all of them had been raised Muslim, and they knew the prayers.

“Who will lead us?” Mas inquired, speaking the question as a challenge.

Ismail opened his hands in invitation. “How about you? You know the
takbir
.”

Mas’s eyes reflected his surprise, along with a hint of fear.

“No, no,” Liban said. “You should lead us. You know the entire Quran.”

“Liban is right,” Guray chimed in. “Allah will listen to Afyareh more than any of us.”

Ismail waited until the vote was unanimous. Then he pointed north. “Mecca is that way. There is not enough room to stand or kneel, but we can bow our heads.”

As the skiff rocked on the gentle swells, he closed his eyes and pictured his father, Adan, as he was in the world before—the handsome, angular face, accentuated by a traditional moustache and beard; the intense brown eyes veiled by rimless spectacles; the smiles that came so unexpectedly and disappeared so suddenly that you missed them if you weren’t paying attention. He heard the echo of his father’s voice, the way Adan had taught them the suras. Ismail remembered the smell of frankincense burning in the dining room, the way his mother, Khadija, had created a haven of peace in a city torn apart by violence. It was there in that small house overlooking the Mogadishu airport and the sea that Adan had first permitted Ismail to lead the prayers. He was fifteen—in his father’s estimation “a man becoming.” Ismail had been ready then, as he was now.

He began to recite the
takbir
in a low, even tone. “
Allah-hu-akbar 
. . . God is Great. I bear witness that there is no god but God. I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.”

His men recited the words with him, their voices blending together in a harmony of half-whispers. When they reached the
sadja
where they would normally prostrate themselves, they bent at the waist and lowered their foreheads as far as they were able.

“Glorified is my Lord, the Highest,” they said, repeating the refrain twice more and then sitting straight again. “I ask Allah, my Lord, to cover up my sins, and unto him I turn repentant.”

In time, Ismail spoke the peace
and brought the
Maghrib
to a close. He opened his eyes and saw the effect the prayers had on the group. The men’s bodies were relaxed, their faces serene. It was the result Ismail had hoped for. Unity, his father had taught him, was fostered by brotherhood, and no brotherhood was more durable than the community of faith.

“We’ve made good progress today,” Ismail said, taking advantage of the moment. “But we still have forty hours of travel time left. We need to keep moving.”

The men began to murmur their discontent. They would never admit they were afraid, but Ismail could see the anxiety written in the shadow lines around their eyes. It wasn’t just the sea that scared them; it was the prospect of navigating by the GPS unit none of them knew how to use. Ismail used their fear to his advantage.

“I’ll stand the night watch,” he said. “But I need one of you to keep me awake.”

“I’ll do it,” Liban volunteered. “We can talk.”

“Good,” Ismail replied. “The rest of you get some sleep. But have your guns ready. With the moon so bright, we might see a ship.”

The hours of darkness crept by on the quiet ocean. The stars in the west set and the moon rose behind them, silvering the water and painting the skiff and its sleeping bodies with a ghostly light. Ismail and Liban talked until they grew tired of their own voices. Then they lapsed into silence and listened to the steady drone of the engine as it converted petrol into miles.

Just before midnight, the skiff glided across a patch of bioluminescence. For minutes, the sea sparked and glowed a mesmerizing green. Ismail let off the throttle and dipped his hand in the brilliant water. Liban watched him carefully—his superstition plain—until he saw that Ismail’s hand was still whole. Then he joined Ismail on the transom and stirred the phosphorescent water with his toes.

“This is amazing,” Liban said in wonderment.

“It’s beautiful,” Ismail replied.

After a while, they set off again. Ismail turned on the GPS unit and fixed their position. Then he found the constellation Cassiopeia and aimed the skiff just west of the brightest star. A verse came to him from the Quran:
He makes the stars as lights for you, that you may guide yourselves through the dark spaces of land and sea.
He took some comfort in the words, but not much. His throat was parched and he felt the ache of exhaustion in every muscle. He wanted nothing more than to lie down and dream of Yasmin and the day he would take her back from the hands that stole her.

He grabbed the water jug and touched it to his lips. The feeling of refreshment was exquisite but fleeting, and it wasn’t long before he began to drift. He blinked his eyes and looked at Liban, hoping to start another conversation, but his friend had fallen asleep.

To keep himself awake, Ismail began to work mathematics equations in his head—first multiplication, then division. His exertions only delayed the inevitable. Weariness encircled him and laid its siege, waiting until at last his eyelids fell and his internal defenses crumbled before overtaking him and drawing him into sleep.

It was a while before he woke again. He was on the bench beside Liban, his head resting on a piece of tarpaulin. The motor was off and the skiff adrift, its bow pointed north. He didn’t recall pushing the kill switch or lying down, but he must have done it. He stood up and took a deep breath to clear away the cobwebs in his mind. His companions were still slumbering—most were curled up on the bottom of the boat. The moon was well past its zenith, the air cooler and still clear.

Ismail powered on the GPS unit. The clock on the display informed him that it was just after 01:20, local time. He fixed their position and found that the current had driven them two and a half miles to the west and two tenths of a mile closer to Mahé. His back was sore and his mouth sticky with thirst. He took a swig from the water jug. Then he picked up the binoculars and swept the horizon. The GPS unit, which he’d bought secondhand in Galkayo, offered almost no detail about the ocean. There could be shoals or even an island nearby, and the display wouldn’t show it.

It took his brain a moment to register the anomaly. The sea to the west was a patchwork of reflected moonlight. There were dark lines between the glistening waves, but there was something else—a void of some kind. He examined it carefully and saw it resolve into a shape. His heartbeat quickened. The shape was actually a silhouette with a pole on top.
Is that a sailboat?
he wondered.
But where are the sails?
His thoughts went into overdrive when he saw the boom extending from the base of the mast.
They’re under power and running without lights
.
They’re trying not to be seen.

He watched the sailboat motor across the silver sea. It was a small craft with a single mast—not a valuable prize, but a prize nonetheless. In the midst of his elation, he felt a pang of shame. He knew that what he was about to do was
haram
, forbidden by God. He remembered the lessons his father had taught him about divine justice and the wronging of the soul. Allah was merciful, but men by their evil acts delivered themselves to ruin.

For a brief moment, Ismail considered letting the boat go. Better to suffer the agonies of death, Adan had said, than to become a companion of the eternal fire. But his father was gone, cut down by the men whose teachings he had decried. His mother was gone, too, and probably dead. Of their family only Yasmin remained, and she had been taken by the Devil himself. In the nightmare of the present, the rules of conscience no longer apply. There was only one way forward—the way of the gun.

“
Astagfirullah
,” he said quietly, begging Allah’s forgiveness. Then he shook Liban’s shoulder. “Get up! I see a ship.”

Liban grunted and squinted at him through sleep-laden eyes. “What? Where?”

“There!” Ismail replied, pointing west.

Liban took the binoculars and stared into the distance. “It’s a sailboat,” he said, tensing visibly.

“Help me wake the others,” Ismail said, prodding Osman and Dhuuban.

The men struggled into the sitting position, shaking their heads as if casting off the cords of sleep. They passed the binoculars around, and their eyes grew wide when they sighted the boat. They began to whisper excitedly among themselves.

“A ship!” they exulted. “We’re saved!”

“Quiet!” Ismail hissed. “Get your weapons ready. But do not shoot unless I give the order. No one is going to die tonight—neither you nor the sailors on that boat. Is that clear?”