Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Desert and the Sea
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1969
WEBSITE: http://www.radiofreemike.net/
CITY: Berlin
STATE:
COUNTRY: Germany
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2003044852
LC classification: PS3613.O5656
Personal name heading:
Moore, Michael Scott
Found in: Moore, Michael Scott. Too much of nothing, 2003: CIP t.p.
(Michael Scott Moore) pub. info. (lives in San
Francisco; reporter and chief stage critic for SF
Weekly; has written for Salon.com, San Francisco
magazine, Keith Botsford's Bostonia magazine, and the
New York times; also runs a website at
radiofreemike.com)
================================================================================
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Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Born 1969, in Los Angeles, CA; son of Marlis Saunders.
EDUCATION:University of California San Diego, B.A., 1991.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist, novelist. Former reporter and chief stage critic for SF Weekly; staff and a freelance editor for Spiegel Online International, 2005-10; Miller-McCune columnist for, 2009-2012.
AVOCATIONS:Surfing.
AWARDS:Fulbright fellow in Germany, 2006-07; Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting grant, 2012.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to Guardian, New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, Los Angeles Times .and other periodicals and journals. Also author of blog, Radio Free Mike.
SIDELIGHTS
Michael Scott Moore is an American author and journalist who also holds German citizenship through his German mother. Moore is the author of three books. His debut novel, the 2003 Too Much of Nothing, is a teenager’s tale told by the ghost of said teen. Moore, an avid surfer, turned to the popularity of that sport for his second work, the 2010 Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, with Some Unexpected Results, a history of surfing. In 2018, he published The Desert and the Sea : 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast, a memoir of his more than two-and-a-half years as a captive to Somali pirates demanding $20 million for his release.
A graduate of the University of California San Diego, Moore worked as a journalist in San Francisco, California, before moving to Germany in 2005, where he worked for Der Speigel and also traveled the globe researching his second book. In 2012, while researching a book on Somali piracy, Moore was abducted. Both German and American officials, as well as Moore’s mother, were involved in negotiations that ultimately led to his eventual release on September 22, 2014, after a payment of $1.6 million.
Too Much of Nothing
Moore’s first book, Too Much of Nothing, is set in Southern California and is the tale of the friendship of two teens during the 1980s. This story, however, is narrated by the ghost of one of the boys, Eric, who died fifteen years ago but did not go to heaven. Instead, he wanders about Los Angeles and beach communities telling the sad story of his death at the hands of friend, Tom, a rebellious youth. The reader learns about the final months in the life of Eric, as he and Tom become obsessed with Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange and discover cocaine, the Dead Kennedys musical group, and boogie boards. But after Eric is seduced by Tom’s girlfriend, Rachel, and after the drowning of Tom’s father, Tom spirals downward, ultimately taking his friend’s life in flash of anger.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer had praise for Too Much of Nothing, noting that thought, at times there is too much, “philosophical and political baggage, it remains a satisfying bildungsroman, combining a wry but heartfelt take on teen passions with a serious ethical concern for the fine line between freedom and nihilism.” A Kirkus Reviews critic termed this a “first novel that deserved hardcovers,” and further commented that this is a “prosperous beginning” for Moore. Similarly, Booklist contributor Roberta Johnson concluded, “The hundred details of friendship, music, snacks, pop culture, sex, and so forth in a teenager’s daily life confirm this odd novel’s success.”
Sweetness and Blood
In Sweetness and Blood, Moore traces the growth of an obscure tribal sport in Hawaii to its worldwide popularity. Surfing had avid participation in the Sandwich Islands, as the islands were known in precolonial times; however, Christian missionaries almost eliminated the activity. The sport of surfing spread, as the book’s subtitle suggests, to California and then across the globe. Moore’s book is full of historical facts about the spread of the sport as well as profiles of surfers and surfing conditions from Israel and the Gaza Strip, to West Africa, Great Britain, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Cuba, Morocco, Siberia, Ireland, and other places where waves hit the shore.
Reviewing Sweetness and Blood in the New York Times Book Review Online, Andy Martin noted: “I’m not sure there is such a thing as surf literature. But if there is, it has moved well beyond the self-mockery of Mark Twain …, the hyperbole of Jack London and the snazzy pop-anthropology of Tom Wolfe. … Moore’s … history is a thing of shreds and patches, casually, almost randomly, assembled. But what he has done, subtly and beguilingly, is write a book about surfing that often is not really about surfing but about simply being alive (and, in some cases, dead).” An Economist Online writer observed: “The book is diverting but there is room for more on the sublime, childlike thrill of catching a wave—the momentary mastering of a frightening thing, the drop down its face and the swoop along its length to keep ahead of the white water. And about the beauty of the shoreline when seen from a buoyant lump of foam and fibreglass, while you get your breath back and wait for the next wave to come.” NPR.org reviewer Sara Richards noted that Moore “travels to some surprising surf locations in his book, including the beaches of Tel Aviv, Indonesia, Japan, and the North Sea Island of Sylt. He even surfs the river waves of the Eisbach in Munich, which has become something of a tourist destination.”
The Desert and the Sea
Moore secured a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting in order to research a book on piracy. In the event, he got much more research than he wanted, abducted by a gang of Somali pirates on January 2012 in the town of Galkayo, and held for 977 days. He relates the specifics of this horrifying experience in The Desert and the Sea.” “Although [Moore] found himself praying for the first time in years, the self-described lapsed Catholic said it was letting go of hope that helped him make it through two years of solitary confinement,” noted online Beach Reporter writer David Rosenfeld. “Before that he was held for months on a hijacked fishing boat anchored off the coast with a group of other captives.” Moore’s detailed account takes readers into the mind of such a hostage and into the motivations of the pirates, many of them young men with few prospects. When a ransom–largely organized by Moore’s mother–was delivered, the pirates fell out among themselves in a deadly argument. Moore also writes of the psychological toll his captivity took on him and his efforts at trying to readjust to liberty.
Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books website, Tristan McConnell commented: “Moore did not die for his story, but he suffered deeply and helplessly. Yet the book Moore has written, while clearly not the one he would’ve chosen, provides rare insight into Somali piracy and is an important addition to that most traumatic and illuminating genre of nonfiction, the hostage memoir.” A Kirkus Reviews critic also had praise, terming The Desert and the Sea a “deftly constructed and tautly told rejoinder to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, sympathetic but also sharp-edged.” Similarly, Booklist Online reviewer Emily Dziuban observed: “Moore’s account of his captivity in Somalia is a fascinating page-turner. … Having faced an experience no one ever should, Moore constructs a narrative that makes readers’ hearts beat faster and with purpose.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
All Things Considered, July 24, 2018, Ari Shapiro, “What It’s Like to Be Held Hostage by Somali Pirates for 2 1/2 Years,” author interview.
Booklist, August, 2003, Roberta Johnson, review of Too Much of Nothing, p. 1956.
CBS This Morning, September 22, 2018, Dana Jacobson, “Shocking Twist of Fate That Brought a Journalist Way Too Close to His Story,” author interview.
Fresh Air, July 30, 2018, Dave Davies, “Journalist Held Captive by Pirates Says Focus and Forgiveness Were Crucial,” author interview.
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2003, review of Too Much of Nothing, p. 1094; June 1, 2018, review of The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast.
Publishers Weekly, September 8, 2003, review of Too Much of Nothing, p. 55.
Washington Post, September 23, 2014, Adam Goldman, “Journalist Freed after Being Held Captive in Somalia for More than 2 Years.”
ONLINE
Beach Reporter, http://tbrnews.com/ (July 20, 2018), David Rosenfeld, “Journalist Michael Scott Moore on Giving up Hope at the Hands of Somali Pirates.”
Booklist Online, https://www.booklistonline.com/ (June 1, 2018), Emily Dziuban, review of The Desert and the Sea.
Economist Online, https://www.economist.com/ (July 8, 2010), review of Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, With Some Unexpected Results.
GQ, https://www.gq.com/ (July 24, 2018), Alex Reside, “This Is What It’s Like to Be Kidnapped by Pirates.”
Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (June 2, 2015), Michael Scott Moore, “My 977 Days Held Hostage by Somali Pirates.”
Los Angeles Review of Books, https://lareviewofbooks.org/ (July 24, 2018), Tristan McConnell, “Almost Dying for the Story: On Michael Scott Moore’s The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast.”
New York Times Book Review Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (June 17, 2010), Andy Martin, review of Sweetness and Blood.
NPR.org, https://www.npr.org/ (August 10, 2010), Sara Richards, review of Sweetness and Blood; (July 30, 2018), Dave Davies, “Journalist Held Captive by Pirates Says Focus and Forgiveness Were Crucial.”
Pulitzer Center, https://pulitzercenter.org/ (October 5, 2018), “Michael Scott Moore.”
Radio Free Mike, http://www.radiofreemike.net/ (October 5, 2018), “Michael Scott Moore.”
Michael Scott Moore
Born 1969
Los Angeles, California
Occupation Author, journalist
Language English, German
Nationality American
Citizenship US, Germany
Alma mater University of California, San Diego
Genre non-fiction, fiction
Website
http://www.radiofreemike.net/home/
Michael Scott Moore reads at Politics & Prose bookstore, July 28, 2018
Michael Scott Moore reads at Politics & Prose bookstore, July 28, 2018
Michael Scott Moore (born 1969, Los Angeles, California) is an American journalist and novelist, notably the author of a well regarded history of surfing, Sweetness and Blood (2010) and a memoir about his captivity in Somalia The Desert and the Sea.
Moore graduated from University of California, San Diego in 1991 with a degree in German Literature. He lives in Berlin and also holds German citizenship. In January 2012, he was abducted in Galkayo, Somalia while researching a book about piracy.[1] Moore was held captive for over two and a half years, and released September 22, 2014.[2]
Contents
1 Abduction
2 Career
3 Works
4 References
Abduction
Moore (right) with fellow hostage Rolly Tambara at a reunion in Seychelles in 2018
Moore traveled to Somalia on a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting to research a book on piracy. He was abducted by a local gang of pirates in January 2012 in the town of Galkayo. Several days later, two aid workers, Jessica Buchanan and Poul Thisted, also being held by Somali pirates, were rescued by a Navy SEAL operation. The gang holding Moore subsequently demanded $20 million.[3]
American officials and the German Foreign Ministry collaborated on negotiations with the pirates, until Moore was freed September 22, 2014. It took 977 days for Moore to be released by the pirates after 1.6 million dollars was paid.[4]
Career
Moore has published three books, including the novel Too Much of Nothing,[5] published by Carroll & Graf; and the nonfiction history of surfing Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, with Some Unexpected Results, published by Rodale in 2010.[6] Sweetness and Blood was named a Best Book of 2010 by The Economist[7] and Popmatters.com.[8] The Desert and the Sea, his third book, became a Nielsen besteller in August 2018, shortly after its publication on July 24, 2018
Moore worked as the theater columnist for SF Weekly,[9] until he moved to Berlin, Germany in 2005. In Germany he worked as both a staff and a freelance editor for Spiegel Online International. In 2010-11 he covered a trial of ten Somali pirates in Hamburg who were charged with trying to hijack the MV Taipan.[10]
His journalism has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and the Los Angeles Times. From 2009-2012 he also wrote a weekly column for Miller-McCune (now Pacific Standard) on trans-Atlantic issues, including the NATO effort against Somali pirates.[11] In 2009, for the column, he sailed on a NATO frigate charged with catching pirates in the Gulf of Aden.[12]
Works
Too Much of Nothing New York : Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003. ISBN 9780786711963, OCLC 52460026
Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, with Some Unexpected Results. New York, NY : Rodale, 2010. ISBN 9781605294278, OCLC 922046069
The Desert and the Sea : 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast, New York, NY : Harper Wave, 2018. ISBN 9780062449177, OCLC 967079760
This is Michael Scott Moore, who edits Radio Free Mike. His website went dark while he was a hostage in Somalia, a brutal ordeal which lasted two and a half years. We’re happy to announce that the site is live again.
The title of this website is a sly reference to Radio Free Europe, a Cold-War institution and an REM song. “Radio Free Mike” is not some kind of nickname or handle.
His actual handles on social media — @MichaelSctMoore on Twitter, or @michaelscottmoore1 on Instagram — are of course excellent ways to keep up.
Mike is an novelist and journalist from California who lived in Berlin for twelve years, from 2005 till 2017. He went to Somalia in 2012 to research — among other topics — a gang of ten pirates on trial in Hamburg for trying to hijack the MV Taipan, a German cargo vessel.
His book about the hostage ordeal has been published by Harper Wave. He's also been known to speak in public about Somalia, sometimes to support Hostage US, where he's a member of the board.
Mike’s first book is is not autobiographical. Too Much of Nothing is a satirical L.A. novel narrated by a ghost, featuring a lot of exaggerated drug use and ridiculous misbehavior. The fictional town of Calaveras Beach might remind readers of Mark Twain. But the book has nothing to do with mining towns or jumping frogs. The Spanish word calavera simply means skeleton, or skull.
Here’s a calavera:
“Happy Dance and Wild Party of All the Skeletons,” by José Guadalupe Posada
José Posada drew hundreds of these lively-skeleton cartoons to illustrate satirical sheets written around the Day of the Dead. These broadsheets — also called calaveras — made fun of editors, politicians, society matrons, musicians: people high and low who forgot they were going to die.
The blog symbol on this website samples a little-known image of Berlin’s TV tower. The tower itself is a big TV & radio broadcast antenna, in the center of Berlin, that outlived the East German regime which put it up. The artwork belongs to a now-ridiculous, but still arresting, canvas of German socialist fantasy:
Musiklehrhaft, 2. Klasse, 1969 (from an East German classroom music book, 2nd grade, 1969)
Our editor holds two passports. His mom’s German; his dad was American. His paternal grandfather was a mechanic from Cape Breton, Canada, named Daniel John Moore, and the grim simple dignity of those three names pleases him.
His friends just call him Mike.
All of us here at Radio Free Mike would like to thank the good people in the U.S. and Europe who worked for his release.
Michael Scott Moore is a literary journalist and a novelist, author of a comic novel about L.A., Too Much of Nothing, as well as a travel book about surfing, Sweetness and Blood, which was named a best book of 2010 by The Economist and Popmatters. He was kidnapped in 2012 on a reporting trip to Somalia and held hostage for two and a half years. The Desert and the Sea, a memoir about that ordeal, is out now from HarperCollins.
Journalist Held Captive By Pirates Says Focus And Forgiveness Were Crucial
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July 30, 20182:49 PM ET
Heard on Fresh Air
Dave Davies
Fresh Air
Michael Scott Moore was captured by pirates after traveling to Somalia to write a book about the history of piracy in the Horn of Africa.
Chris Pizzello/AP
Kidnapped by Somali pirates, journalist Michael Scott Moore spent two and half years in captivity. At times he was held on land, other times at sea. Once, when he was on a 160-foot tuna boat, he tried to escape by jumping over the side at night.
"It was, like, a 20 foot leap off the deck of the ship, and I was just exultant at first," Moore says.
Moore had hoped the pirates would leave him behind in the water. "The engine wasn't in terrific shape, so I didn't think there was a way to turn around the ship," he says.
Instead, the captain cut the engine and let the boat drift towards him. As the big industrial ship closed in on him in the dark water, Moore made a snap decision: He opted to get back on board.
What It's Like To Be Held Hostage By Somali Pirates For 2 1/2 Years
Author Interviews
What It's Like To Be Held Hostage By Somali Pirates For 2 1/2 Years
"They found me eventually with the search lights and I raised my hand and they threw me a life preserver," he says. "By that point everything was pretty desperate and pretty hopeless."
The pirates had initially demanded a $20 million ransom, but as the years passed, Moore's mother negotiated the figure down to $1.6 million. Eventually she raised enough money to free her son.
Moore writes about his ordeal in the memoir, The Desert and the Sea.
Interview Highlights
On the pirates calling his mother and asking for a $20 million ransom
The Desert and the Sea
The Desert and the Sea
977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
by Michael Scott Moore
Hardcover, 451 pages
purchase
The only number I had in my head was my mother's number in California. She wound up being the negotiator on the phone with the pirates, which is not something I intended. ...
She was horrified but I mean she was obviously trembling she was obviously scared. She was also obviously waiting for the call. So in other words, she knew I had been kidnapped. The call came about a week after my capture and by then she'd been visited by the FBI and so she knew more or less what was going on.
On his initial plans to jump from the ship
I'm a surfer, so I paid attention to the currents. I paid attention to which way the swells were moving. The first idea if and when I jumped would have been to get away from the ship as quickly as possible, because I assumed they would start to open fire. So I had to think about how to get away from the ship as quickly as possible. The whole thing seemed ridiculous and dangerous and stupid.
On being brought from the ship to a prison house and doing yoga
Slowly it settled in, after about a month or so, that I was going to be there for a long time. And so once I realized I was in a house where I wasn't going to move for a while, I asked for a yoga mat. ... And I tried to do it out of eyesight of the pirates, because I figured it would just sort of baffle them or make them laugh, and that's exactly what it did.
But, you know, they never had me out of their sight. So [the] first time I did yoga all their heads sort of looked in through the doorway and they started to laugh, but then they started to do yoga with me. Some of them were aware of not getting much exercise either in these prison houses, so they would come in with sort of cardboard flats, broken down boxes, to stand on the filthy floor and they had these makeshift yoga mats and started to do the same postures. ... I had my own class, yeah, after a while I started to correct their postures.
On considering suicide
My father died when I was 12. I thought it was a heart attack for a long time. I didn't realize until I did some research myself in 2010 — so not very long before I went to Somalia ... — that he had shot himself. So he committed suicide and that was on my mind obviously once I was captured in Somalia. I felt that somehow I had steered myself into this situation where I had to make a similar decision, and it was on my mind a lot, especially after I wound up on land. ...
A Peek Into The Secret World Of Somali Pirates
NPR Books
A Peek Into The Secret World Of Somali Pirates
Surviving A Somali Pirate Attack On The High Seas
Author Interviews
Surviving A Somali Pirate Attack On The High Seas
There were weapons around all the time, and sometimes the pirates actually abandoned a Kalashnikov on the floor... And so then I would have to think very carefully about whether I should pick up the Kalashnikov, and whether I should start trying to escape that way. ...
But ... even if it was half successful, I probably would have been shot dead by the rest of the guards. There was never fewer than seven of them in a prison house. So in the end it would have been a suicidal gesture. ...
For a while it was a daily decision whether I should do it or not, and I had to make a determined decision to stay alive, because I knew ... there was a crisis at home. I knew my mother was suffering to get me out. And I also knew that there were probably military plans in place, and some somebody somewhere might actually risk their lives to come and get me. And I thought well, suicide could solve all that. You know it could end the problem at home and save any SEALs the incredible risk of trying to come get me. All these things went through my head.
On why he decided against suicide
At some point, I made a conscious decision to forgive my guards, to forgive the most immediate people were causing me pain. That was an incredible mental transformation.
Michael Scott Moore
At some point, I made a conscious decision to forgive my guards, to forgive the most immediate people who were causing me pain. That was an incredible mental transformation. Once I reordered my brain like that, I no longer had that impulse to kill myself. It was a daily discipline, but it worked. And it was also a good thing that I had pen and paper at that time so I could write and I could distract myself, but that mental orientation was absolutely crucial.
On eventually being released for $1.6 million that his mother gathered from family, friends and magazines he had worked for
It happened very suddenly and I didn't know what was going on. And I certainly didn't believe that I was about to go free. Even though the pirates kept telling me that. ... They had told me 100 times before, and I stopped believing them months, if not years, before.
And then a car arrived in the middle of the day, which was slightly unusual, they said, "Michael, we're going to take you to the airport," and I didn't dare believe them. But I packed my things, and sure enough when I got in the car they said, "We're not going to actually take you to the airport. We're going to drive you into the bush and hand you to some other Somalis." I thought, fantastic. You just sold me to another gang, if not al-Shabaab. So I was angry again.
But there was a slight difference in the way I was being treated. I wasn't being packed into the car with a bunch of guys holding their rifles. It was just a couple of English speaking translators with not very much in the way of weapons. And I was handed to another Somali who managed to get my mother on the phone.
So he called a number and got a negotiator who'd been working on my case ... and they both sounded elated, they sounded really happy, and they said, "Michael you're going to the airport and your pilot's name is going to be Derek." And then I knew I was going free. ... I felt lighter, but it was a progressive experience. It wasn't sudden elation, "Oh my gosh, I'm going free." It was one step at a time, towards not feeling quite so oppressed.
My 977 days held hostage by Somali pirates
Michael Scott Moore was kidnapped by Somali pirates in 2012. For the first time, he tells the story of his abduction, detention and eventual release
Michael Scott Moore
Tue 2 Jun 2015 01.00 EDT
Last modified on Wed 29 Nov 2017 12.09 EST
Michael Scott Moore surrounded by his Somali captors.
Michael Scott Moore surrounded by his Somali captors, who demanded a $20m ransom. Photograph: Michael Scott Moore
One afternoon two years into my captivity, in a dirty villa, I sat up on the mattress and noticed that my guard had left the room. His rifle lay on a mat. I considered grabbing it.
The pirates were holding me in Galkacyo, a regional capital in central Somalia. They told me it was Haradheere, near the coast, but I knew Haradheere had no commercial airport, and at first the pirates would giggle every time we heard passenger planes take off and land.
I had seen the dull and dusty buildings of Galkacyo’s airport as a free man, and now the aircraft noise inspired baroque dreams of freedom – fantasies ranging from a quiet release on the tarmac to a clandestine gathering of Black Hawks and commandos in the dead of night.
My guard, Bashko, came in and noticed the gun. He picked it up by the muzzle, nimbly, and sat down with a brilliant smile.
“Problem!” he said, meaning the unattended firearm.
My 977 days held hostage by Somali pirates
Read more
He rested it behind him and munched a stem of khat, a leafy green plant that acts as a stimulant. His eyes were fervid. I had just been wondering how many of the guards I could shoot before they shot me. I smiled. I was – or had been – a peaceful man. I didn’t want to kill him, or anyone. But I was going nuts.
“Michael,” Bashko said with good humour. “If the Americans come, you will be killed.”
“I know.”
“Why no money?” he asked, referring to the ransom the pirates had demanded.
I shrugged.
* * *
I flew to Somalia in early 2012 to write about a pirate gang jailed in Hamburg. They had been captured two years earlier when they tried to hijack the MV Taipan, a German cargo ship, near Somalia. Their marathon trial represented the first proceeding on German soil against any pirate, Somali or otherwise, in more than four centuries. I had reported on the case for Spiegel Online, where I worked in Berlin, and it seemed to me that a book about the case and some underreported aspects of Somali piracy might be interesting.
I travelled with Ashwin Raman, a Indian-born film-maker, whose documentaries about Afghanistan and Somalia had won several awards. We had arranged security through Mohammed Sahal Gerlach, a Somali elder, in Berlin. Gerlach had lived much of his adult life in Germany, but he came from Galkacyo, which had become a latter-day pirate supply town. Gerlach had good relationships with the dominant Sa’ad clan elders in the region. He had also guided a German TV correspondent through the same region about eight months before.
During the trial in Hamburg, some of the public defenders had insisted their clients were poor, simple, press-ganged fishermen. The notion of Somali pirates as frustrated fishermen was a cliche, but it seemed to work in court, where little could be verified about the men. When we arrived in Somalia, we found this fishing story in common circulation. We heard it in Hobyo, a pirate nest on the eastern coast where we travelled with a long convoy of guards. As guests of Gerlach and his Sa’ad clan, we interviewed a boss who called himself Mustaf Mohammed Sheikh. He preferred to keep his face wrapped in a keffiyeh and declared himself to be at war with forces of the west. He said “white people” had attacked Somalia by trawling its coral reefs and dumping poison on its shores. Some complaints were legitimate – overfishing and illegal dumping are enormous problems along the African coast – but pirates throughout history have piggybacked on romantic social causes, and Somalis were no exception.
“They just want to buy khat,” Gerlach told me later. He was only half-joking.
After 10 days in Somalia we had almost finished our work. I needed to finish gathering material, but Ashwin had nothing to do and wanted to leave early. It went against my gut instinct, but because we had agreed to do everything together, and because it might not be safe for me to hide in the hotel by myself, I went to see him off. The road to the airport could be dangerous, so we talked to Gerlach about security: two aid workers had been kidnapped there a few months before.
Gerlach assured us that we would be safe, and his friend, the regional president, sent a personal car. A Somali gunman rode with us. But by then it was too late. We had been researched. I pieced this together only months after, when a pirate showed me an image of my own face on his phone. The pirates had pulled an author photo of mine from an old New York Times interview. I’m a dual citizen, and I had travelled to Somalia on a German passport; but they knew I was an American writer.
The first cold indication of this scrutiny came at the airport, while we sat around having tea. We had to wait for the terminal to open. One of Gerlach’s friends, Yassin, happened to mention my name, and a young Somali man glanced over from a table nearby.
“You are Michael Scott Moore?”
“Yes.”
“I have seen you on the internet,” he said. “You are famous.”
“I am not,” I said, frowning.
After a long delay, Gerlach and I shook hands with Ashwin beside the airstrip and began the drive back to our hotel. Along a dusty road, which cut between the graves of Somalis killed in the long civil war, a pickup truck mounted with a heavy gun was waiting.
The truck approached with its cannon aimed at our windshield. A dozen or so men jumped off and swarmed to my car door. They fired into the air and tried to open the door. I held it shut, but they cracked my wrist with their Kalashnikovs, pulled me out, and beat me on the head. Gerlach was also beaten – but not kidnapped – and our gunman in the passenger seat never fired a shot. My glasses were broken in the dust. My brain recoiled from what was happening. Before they fired their weapons I had convinced myself they just wanted to see my papers. While they dragged me to a waiting car I felt a reflexive horror for my family and the burden I was about to become. I wanted to rewind everything.
The truck approached with its cannon aimed at our windshield. A dozen or so men jumped off and swarmed to my car door
We drove, first, to a house on the edge of Galkacyo, where my bag was handed to an angry-looking man who waved us away. We sped out of town to the east, and I sat with ripped clothes and a bleeding scalp, squeezed into the back seat next to three surly gunmen, bouncing across the bush, for several hours.
“OK, OK,” the pirates in the front seat said to me. “No problem.”
The car bounced over a bump so hard that my head hit the roof and left a bloodstain on the fabric.
“Fuck!” I said and pointed at the blood, cradling the broken wrist in my lap.
At first I spoke mainly in obscenities.
“OK, OK,” they said.
* * *
Near sundown we arrived at an outdoor camp in a reddish, sandy part of the bush. The pirates blindfolded me and led me to a foam mattress, which lay in the open beside a crumbling low cliff. I was dazed and bloodied but aware of other Somali gunmen, and other hostages. I saw very little. Without my glasses I am drastically nearsighted, and I spent my entire captivity, more than two and a half years, in a fuzzy state of near-blindness.
The guards handed me bread, a bottle of water and a can of tuna. That would be my diet for the next several months, along with occasional cooked pasta or rice. In two months, I would lose about 40 pounds.
Michael Scott Moore in 2010.
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The photographer, Cynthia E Wood, posted this image in a Facebook group on Michael Scott Moore’s birthday in 2012, after he had been kidnapped. It became a touchstone image for his friends during his captivity. Photograph: Cynthia E Wood
“OK Michael?” one of the guards said. He was an earnest young Somali with a turban and pale brown skin. He stood on a rise holding a Kalashnikov; the marbled sky behind him had thin swirls of reddening cloud.
“No,” I said after a while.
For some reason I thought about the things in my backpack. My sense of self was still intact, like a man who’s just lost his head and wants to put it back on. “They took my bag,” I told the guard. “Can you ask someone for my bag? It’s a maroon backpack, it had a camera in it.”
“They steal your camera?”
“Yes.”
“Thieves!”
I looked at him curiously. After a while I squinted at all the guards, one at a time, to see if I recognised any from our trip to Hobyo. They were not the same men. But if they were Sa’ad pirates, it didn’t matter. My hosts – meaning Gerlach’s relatives – had turned on me.
The next morning we moved to a house. The pirates stuffed two other hostages into the car with me and bound our hands. They were both in their 60s, one African, the other – I thought – a Pacific Islander. He had cocoa-coloured skin, small piercing eyes, and twin furzes of gray hair sticking out over his ears. This was Rolly Tambara. We were about to become good friends.
We drove along the coast that morning until we entered a half-wrecked, filthy house on the edge of a town. (Later I learned it was Hobyo.) We spent three nights there in separate rooms. We sat on thin mattresses, free to walk around but not free to visit the toilet stall without permission.
A Somali man who may have been a livestock doctor came to inspect my wrist. He declared it “not broken,” although pieces of bone moved around under the skin. He sewed a thin wooden splint around the throbbing joint and said it would heal in three weeks. (It took six.) Then I tried to sleep; but before dawn Rolly and I were loaded into a Land Rover and driven across the bush by pirates who seemed to be in a nervous panic.
We drove at random, for several hours, until dark fell. What I wouldn’t learn for days was that a posse of American helicopters had rescued the two aid workers captured in Galkacyo – Jessica Buchanan and Poul Thisted, an American and a Dane – from a pirate camp in a distant part of the bush the previous night. Nine Somali guards had been killed. The kidnappers were different from mine, but the pirate kingpin Mohammed Garfanji had financed both abductions. He lost a relative in the raid.
The Somalis in the front of our Land Rover were agitated. One of them, who the men called Ahmed Dirie, had rotten teeth and brown, stained-looking eyes. He seemed to be our guards’ lieutenant – their most immediate, low-ranking boss. His face looked half-melted with anger and he kept an ammunition belt strapped around his pot belly. He and his driver, Muse, quizzed me while we drove across the desert bush.
“Are you a marine general?” said Muse.
“Me? No.”
“Colonel?”
“No,” I said. “I’m a German citizen.”
“Ya, ya, ya,” said Ahmed Dirie.
They knew I was American, and they thought the Buchanan rescue had something to do with me. But I would not learn the full story for weeks. From what I understood of Muse’s Somali, a dozen people had died in some distant town.
“Helicopters!” said Muse. “American!”
“Oh boy.”
We settled in a dusty wooded valley. The Somalis let us sit freely, like kindergarteners, on foam mattresses under a tree. The pirates had cut Rolly’s hair in Hobyo. Now he looked almost dapper, with a half-bald head and a tough, small, sparkplug frame.
On our first morning in the valley, after a breakfast of cold rice, Rolly started to talk. He was an old Catholic fisherman from the Seychelles. Pirates had caught him and his friend Marc three months earlier, in late 2011. They were cleaning fish on Rolly’s boat about 50 miles from their home port when pirates approached in a skiff under a crackle of gunfire. The Seychelles’ main island of Mahé lies about 700 miles from Somalia. Their trip to Hobyo, at gunpoint, took seven days.
Rolly spoke a comical, French-inflected English. “When I go to fishing,” he told me, “I no like to eat fish. I bring chicken, saucissons, like that.” His boat had been equipped with a stove, and on his first morning as a hostage he tried to cook pork sausage for breakfast. One of the Somalis noticed. With his bare foot, from behind, the pirate kicked the sausage overboard. His Muslim sensibilities were offended by pork sausage. Rolly still couldn’t believe it. “They catch you and take you from your home,” he said. “And then they no like what you eat.”
A view of Hobyo as Michael Scott Moore visited in January 2012
A view of Hobyo as Michael Scott Moore and
Ashwin Raman visited, with armed guard, in January 2012 Photograph: Ashwin Raman
The pirates had also glanced at the name printed on the rear of Rolly’s boat – Aride, Port Victoria – and declared him “Australian”. They thought that he was too light-skinned to be African. In fact he was one-quarter Chinese. “Seychelles, you know, is an island country,” he said. “We are mixed, mixed, mixed.”
Ransom for the two men was $20m. Rolly’s mind seemed to churn through the same trenches of thought every day, and while we lay under thorn trees in the bush he would wince while he made complicated calculations.
“Michael,” he would say. “You know how much is $20m my country? Is a lot of money. You can buy house, you can buy car.”
“Rolly, with $20m you can found a corporation.”
“Heh-heh,” he would say.
* * *
The nighttime raid by US Navy Seals had rescued Buchanan and Thisted in open savannah, at night, but the Somalis kept us outdoors in the weeks and months that followed. They boasted on the phone to journalists but took no serious precautions, apart from hiding us under some trees. “Holding the hostages in one place is unlikely now because we are the next target,” a pirate spokesman told the Associated Press in late January – but once we had settled in the wooded valley, Rolly and I spent weeks there, even after a treetop-stirring surveillance flight by an enormous plane (probably an American P-3 Orion).
We moved back to houses in Hobyo after three weeks only because of a rainstorm. I had the impression that the pirates were making the whole thing up as they went along. They had no clear plan to extract a ransom or hand me back. They just made outrageous demands. Garfani would ask $20m for me.
One night in late February, a month after my capture, the guards hauled me in a Land Rover, alone, to a remote part of the bush to meet the pirate kingpin. I had heard of Garfanji but never seen a picture. He was a powerful criminal, with a reputation for cruelty as well as kindness to his own men.
The person I met in the bush that night seemed groggy and dull-witted; he sat cross-legged in the dust and spoke in a high, almost childish voice. He dialled a private American negotiator on his softly glowing smartphone.
The negotiator said, “The man who just handed you the phone is Mohammed Garfanji,” and my blood felt just like ice water. “They aren’t beating you or anything like that, are they?” he asked.
“No,” I said, although one boss, Ali Duulaay, had beaten me several times. “Not systematically,” is what I meant.
The negotiator’s voice was sane, strong, even good‑humoured. I had the false idea that somebody was in control. After a brief conversation he connected me to my mother in California, and hearing her was like hearing music for the first time in weeks. But the call was fruitless, like most of these ransom conversations. The pirates wanted too much. Even the negotiator sounded surprised by “$20 million”.
After the call, Garfanji searched his phone for the sound file of a news report about the Buchanan rescue. He said, in a slurring, apathetic voice:“Your people have killed nine of my people. If they try it with you, we will shoot you.”
Your people have killed nine of my people. If they try it with you, we will shoot you
Mohammed Garfanji
“What happened to the hostages?” I decided to ask.
“They were also killed.”
He tapped his phone to start the file and tossed it in the dust. I heard a clip from what sounded like an Al-Jazeera broadcast, which explained in clear English that two aid workers held captive in Somalia since autumn 2011 had been flown by US helicopters – alive – to the American base in Djibouti. My heart thumped with glee.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I told Garfanji, and I think no one in that circle of men had any notion how the phone had made a fool of their proud commander, by revealing his poor command of English.
* * *
When we returned to Hobyo that night, I lay awake in the darkened house, under a mosquito net, thinking about the report. Nine dead pirates would complicate negotiations. A ransom seemed hopelessly far away.
I tried to imagine a rescue in that house, which seemed to be a half-built pirate villa waiting for a last infusion of cash. The walls were half a metre thick. The windows had metal mesh screens instead of glass. A concrete wall surrounded the house. A shootout here would be ugly, I thought.
My door to the front porch was flimsy wood, and the guards sat right outside, on a woven mat. Two or three stayed up all night by chewing khat. “It is the Somali beer,” one of my guards joked.
Khat was far more important to them than the fishing war off the Somali coast. They chewed it whenever they could, not just at night. They had to be locked with me in these prison houses like hostages – a separate runner came and went with keys – so nothing excited them more than the daily arrival of fresh bundles of khat.
Most Somalis are Sufis, and chewing khat is one indulgence that sets them apart from the more puritan Salafists in the militant group al-Shabaab. Some of my guards had even fought against al-Shabaab in Somalia’s civil war that has rumbled on since the federal government first collapsed in 1991. The men considered fundamentalists to be an alien invasion force, and when they heard news on the radio about a drone strike against a Shabaab leader they would report it to me and hold up their thumbs: “America, good!”
Still, they were quite devout. Five times a day they took turns on a clean mat and mumbled a prayer towards Mecca. A Turkish naval officer once told me that pirates by definition were “not Muslim”, and he doubted they would observe Ramadan; but the pirates I met were meticulously observant.
One day I asked a guard about his beliefs. It was a bit like asking a mafia hit man why he went to church, but I wanted to hear it straight from a pirate’s mouth. “Bashko,” I said, “you are a Muslim.”
“Yes!” He was proud.
“But you are also a thief.” I bumped my fingers together, which had become a comprehensible gesture for us. “No same-same.” These things don’t fit together.
A smile crept over his face as it dawned on him what I’d said. He laughed and rattled a translation to the other guards. He straightened up in his chair and tapped his chest.
“I am a Muslim,” he said. “But I am also a thief,” he admitted. “Why? Because in Somalia, hungry-problem.”
“Yes, that’s true.” I held his eyes. But, I added, “I don’t think Islam works like that.”
Bashko was my friend among the guards, a quick-minded, bantam kid in his 20s with clever eyes and a flashing smile. I wanted long, detailed conversations with him – I wished intensely for a translator – but with our pidgin mix of English and Somali we could only speak in broad terms.
The theological problem nagged him, though, and after a week or two he answered my question. He said the Koran called for struggle against nonbelievers. Thieving from infidels therefore was not theft.
“Really?”
“Jews, Christians, Buddhists …” OK to steal from them, he implied. “Muslim, no.”
I shook my head. “Does the Koran say you can also kill infidels?” I asked.
“No.” Bashko was adamant. “All life is sacred under Allah.”
One sura, 9:5, the so-called Verse of the Sword, does mention kidnapping, and it is often used as an excuse for hostage-taking and even violent jihad. But we had no Koran in the prison house. In fact, I rarely saw the men read.
“But under Allah,” I asked Bashko, “it’s OK to steal from other faiths?”
“Yes, it’s in the Koran,” he said, and smiled, as if to say there was nothing he could do; the book outranked us both.
* * *
For the first few months of 2012 we heard regular surveillance in the air, and the roar of a low-flying Orion plane, every few days, would give me a thrill of reassurance and hope. It had the opposite effect on my guards. They wanted me to keep my mouth shut every time a plane came near because they thought sophisticated American listening devices could locate the sound of my voice.
In late March, members of the same pirate gang hijacked a long-line tuna ship off Somalia and anchored it near Hobyo. Rolly and I had to move onboard in mid-April. The idea, I think, was that US helicopters would be less likely to descend on a rusted industrial fishing boat filled with two or three dozen hostages than they were on a house or a camp in the bush. A few weeks later, in May, the pirates moved us back to land for 24 hours. A gap-toothed and rather stupid pirate called Bakayle said we were about to receive our “plane tickets” home. That was a bitter joke, and what followed would shape up to be the strangest and most appalling day of my life.
A Somali pirate in front of a hijacked fishing boat in 2012.
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A Somali pirate in front of a hijacked fishing boat in 2012. Photograph: Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP
We drove through the dry bush for an hour. The cars made their way to a sloping wooded area where other cars, and other Somalis, waited under the trees. The men marched Rolly away behind a thicket. I felt uneasy, but the pirates said, “No problem,” and I sat with them for about 20 minutes until one rolled down his window and we heard a harsh voice cry out.
“Rolly!” the guard said. They led me to a cluster of tangled trees. I saw a group of men, heavily armed, with rocket launchers and AK-47s, standing or squatting in the dust. Some wore turbans and keffiyehs. Most were older and seemed to be ranking pirates or clan leaders. They watched me with wary eyes for a reaction, like large predatory cats. Rolly dangled upside-down from a tree. They had tied him by the ankles to a heavy bough. He swung free in nothing but a pair of cotton shorts; his arms flopped like a rag doll’s. A fat, deep-black man with a high voice whacked him on the chest and feet with a bamboo cane.
Rolly dangled upside-down from a tree. They had tied him by the ankles to a heavy bough
It was a torture scene from the days when Ottoman officials would tie the feet of criminals and subject them to “bastinado”, or public foot-whipping. Two teenagers filmed it. Other Somalis ran up to kick Rolly in the ribs. They seemed to enjoy themselves. But Rolly didn’t scream again. He just closed his eyes and let it happen. I wondered if he was in shock.
The fat man was Mohammed Garfanji. He handed his cane to another Somali and came up the slope, where he squatted some distance from me and squinted.
“Hello, Michael. Do you remember me?” He said Rolly had to be punished because he would not admit to being Israeli. “But he isn’t Israeli,” I said. “I have found proof on the internet!” Garfanji blustered.
The man now holding the cane slid it through the cotton knot at Rolly’s feet and used it to turn him this way and that. Other men kicked him. I was about to say that Rolly spoke no Hebrew; but that could have led to an awkward line of questioning. (“Have you been to Israel?” etc) The Somalis I met harboured an unquestioned hatred for Jews.
I decided to say, “He speaks like a man from the Seychelles.”
A more junior boss, Ali Duulaay, squatted next to Rolly in the dust with a lit cigarette. Duulaay had organised both of our kidnappings. Garfanji was the financier, as far as I understood – he sat at the top of a number of interrelated pirate gangs – but Duulaay was a direct gang leader.
He liked to use his fists, and he’d clobbered Rolly and me several times. He was lean but strong, about 40, with acne-marked skin. A little game occurred to him now. He held the filter end of his cigarette up to Rolly’s upside-down face and taunted him. “Come on, Rolly,” he seemed to be saying, with a smile, trying to slip the cigarette between Rolly’s lips. “No, Ali, you know I no like cigarettes.” His face looked strained and flushed.
Bakayle taunted the old man about his ransom. “We will get $50m from your family!” Rolly didn’t answer, but from that day onwards he would refer to Bakayle as “Fifty Million”. At last the pirates lowered him to the ground. He lay on his side, propped up on one elbow, to recover his breath. I went to sit near him and asked the Somalis for food and water. One guard brought a bottle and box of cookies. “Are you hungry?” I said and Rolly nodded. “Just relax for a while. I think it’s over.”
But now it was my turn. Garfanji said “these men” in the woods wanted to know why no one had wired them money. Where was that $20m? “You’re asking too much,” I told him. “Even you know that.”
Garfanji bellowed my answer to the assembled bosses, who hollered their dissatisfaction and shook their weapons. One looked like Mustaf Mohammed Sheikh, the pirate Ashwin and I had interviewed in Hobyo. He kept a keffiyeh wrapped around his face, so it was hard to tell; but the resemblance was chilling.
Garfanji said I would be sold to al-Shabaab in one hour if the money wasn’t sent right away. “They are coming here now!” he said and I felt a mixture of fear and ashen contempt.
“Well, we don’t have the money,” I muttered. “There just isn’t that much money available.”
“You’re lying! I have looked into your bank account! I know how much money you have.”
His men had stolen a bank card, and I didn’t know whether someone had hacked my account. “So you know I don’t even have one million, Mohammed,” I said.
That tripped him up. He wanted to accuse me of having more, but from the way he dissembled I gathered he had not cracked my account.
“The American government hasn’t given us any answer,” he said. “These are dangerous men. They are not satisfied. How can we find more money?”
“You have my German passport,” I said. “Maybe the German government can help.”
I didn’t think it could. But I was surrounded by armed men and had to say something. Garfanji shouted my answer to the others and they shook their weapons. They liked the idea, apparently. Garfanji suggested a video. The whole episode, from start to finish, was pirate theatre. We rehearsed an interview while the cameramen adjusted their tripod and a handful of pirates stepped behind me, holding heavy weapons. I did not notice them at first. On the video they are hard to miss; but they were very quiet and I noticed them only at the end, after they stepped away.
Another man insisted I wear a pink blanket over my head, to disguise me from aerial surveillance, so in the video I look not just wretched but ridiculous. Garfanji played the inquiring journalist. He bellowed questions from behind the camera.
Afterwards Garfanji stood on a rise of dirt and addressed the men. He had pretended to mediate between me and this wild gang of bosses; now he rose to his true role as their chief. He swung the bamboo cane and pontificated. “Tyrant” was too big a word for him. He was a play-tyrant, a sadistic bully, and I saw for the first time that Garfanji, this high-voiced overweight child, had flecks of grey in his hair.
The camera team packed up and stopped to apologise to me. One had small wire glasses and spoke clear English. “I am sorry,” he said. “We can’t do anything. We are only journalists. We will put these videos on the internet.”
Within days, in fact, the video would be for sale. Someone sent an email to Ashwin in Germany, offering to sell the video for $2,000, but he declined. It ended up on the Somalia Report, a news site, and became the single well-known video from my time as a hostage. (We made four or five.)
“This wasn’t journalism,” I told the teenage cameramen and gestured at Rolly. “It was humiliation.”
“Humanitarian, yes.”
“That’s not what I said.”
* * *
In the autumn of 2012, eight months after my capture, I was moved to a series of barren prison houses in Galkacyo. I never saw Garfanji, or Rolly, again. (Rolly and his friend Marc were both ransomed and flown to the Seychelles in November, 2012.)
The pirate now in charge was Dhuxul, an almost bald, almost obese man with deadened eyes and a tuneless voice. He walked with a limp, on a wooden prosthetic. He told me his foot had been shot off by American helicopters during the Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu in 1993. That’s not impossible – he was in his late 40s, which is old enough – but the number of pirates I met with physical scars from that disastrous day of violence was implausibly high.
Dhuxul was pronounced “Duhul”, a dull and shapeless noise, not so different from the man. He lived in one of our prison homes, which was unusual. A high-ranking boss like him tended to keep his distance, rather than sleeping near the hostage. He kept alcohol and a TV in his room.
On his orders, the men chained my feet every night. Until then I had not been fettered or tied. Now, after I finished my typical dinner of boiled beans, a guard would kneel in front of my mattress and wrap my ankles in a bicycle chain. If he didn’t like my behaviour that day he might tighten the chain; otherwise he’d leave it loose. I had to be restrained all night, from about six in the evening till the morning call to prayer around five.
There was no clear explanation for this treatment, which started in the spring of 2013. But the long, 18-month period when my feet had to be chained at night remains as a sodden low point, when something crucial shifted in my spirit. I had flown to Somalia with curiosity and compassion; I had wanted to show, as far as I could, how Somalis lived and what pirates thought. With the chains on, I struggled every night with hatred and debilitating rage. The men treated me like a herd animal. Around me they smoked, giggled, and bowed to Mecca the way a nomad in the desert might pass days and nights around a camel.
At night I would dream about lively conversation with family friends, in Germany or America, but the dream always ended with the riddle of why I had to return to some kind of jail, and I would wake up to the sight of concrete walls in a house and languid Somalis sitting beside their guns.
A hostage does nothing, but the long hours are a crisis of longing. My sense of self, in fact my sanity, would surge and ebb. I tended to wake up in a stark panic and pray for no greater mercy than the dawn.
Rolly had told me that in the first few weeks of captivity, he had considered overdosing on pain pills. (He was an old man, so the Somalis had been generous with a variety of pills.) He had learned to pray on his rosary instead. I coped in other ways. I was a lapsed Catholic, but I found a Bible to read on the fishing boat. Yoga helped to calm my churning mind. I knew my family and colleagues were working to get me out, but thinking about so much money and trouble devoted to the cause of my freedom brought me close to violence.
Suicide would have been easy. AK-47s lay around like junk. When I was not with other hostages the notion of grabbing a rifle to shoot a few pirates, and then myself, began to seem not just desirable but moral. It would have saved a lot of people a great deal of trouble. It would have spared any Seal team the dizzying risk of a mission. I steered around the idea on some days only by cold logic, since killing myself would have meant a permanent loss for my family and friends.
What helped was a paradoxical attitude of forgiveness toward the guards. In different circumstances, Bashko and I would have got on well. Most of the guards, I had to remember, were just hired hands who deserved punishment far less than the bosses who had plotted my kidnapping. I also remembered a fierce American essayist called Richard Mitchell, who for some reason was on my mind almost every day. In one of his books, Mitchell revives the ancient idea, from Epictetus, that a victim suffers only by his own consent. Self-pity does nothing but heighten the pain. “To be sick, or to suffer, is inevitable,” writes Mitchell, “but to become bitter and vindictive in sickness and suffering, and to surrender to irrationality, supposing yourself the innocent and virtuous victim of the evil intentions of the world, is not inevitable. The appropriate answer to the question, Why me? is the other question, Why not me?”
That’s stoicism pure and simple. It helped in Somalia. A sense of victimhood in those prison houses was easy to contract, like a contagious disease, and remembering Epictetus – however second-hand – boiled a good deal of neurosis away.
* * *
In one Galkacyo house my mosquito tent and mattress lay in front of an open door, facing east. For months in 2013 I watched the dawn sky lighten every morning through an arabesque arch. The men watched with their Kalashnikovs from a khat-littered mat on the patio. When I stirred at night, they objected. But sometimes I had to urinate before the morning muezzin.
“Wuuriyaa!” they said one morning when I started to rise in the dark. Hey!
I sat up and lifted my mosquito net. “I have to pee,” I said.
One guard aimed a flashlight at my face. I sat still and held up my chains.
“Kadi,” I said.
The usual night guard went by a nickname, Madobe. He was a lean and sarcastic, handsome, simple-minded man who seemed to hate my guts.
“Kadi,” I insisted, although making any disturbance at night was against the rules. Madobe lurched forward through the doorway to flick his knuckle into my eye.
“Jesus!” I shouted.
The noise angered another guard. He argued with Madobe. Hitting was against the rules. They argued in whispers until one of them tossed me the padlock keys, which landed with a clink on the floor.
Madobe liked to abuse me. He was adept with his knuckle, and sometimes the eye would hurt for a day or two. That morning I decided to protest his behaviour. When the chains were off, after dawn, Bashko tried to delivered my usual bowl of beans.
Madobe liked to abuse me. He was adept with his knuckle, and sometimes the eye would hurt for a day or two
I shook my head.
“No chum-chum?” he said, using our word for food.
“No,” I said.
“Why?”
“Madobe hit me.”
Dhuxul woke up, and Bashko translated my complaint. Other guards upheld my story. Dhuxul gave the men a phlegmatic order and went out. He returned for lunch with a hot restaurant meal of spiced rice and boiled goat, in foam trays, for everyone. The men ate with relish on the patio and Dhuxul placed a plate for me near my pillow, on the floor.
The food smelled delicious, but I didn’t move. At last Dhuxul made an offer. Madobe was asleep in the other room, but he would punish him “tonight,” Bashko translated.Now would I eat?
Refusing this concession risked punishment. I had to meet him halfway. Yes, I told Bashko, after Dhuxul punished Madobe, I would eat. Not before. I pushed away the plate. We would save the rice and goat for tonight.
Dhuxul looked annoyed, but he picked up my chains from a pile on the floor and moved to the other room. I heard Madobe’s voice. The chains clinked. Big deal, I thought – more pirate theatre. Dhuxul wanted to fake me out. But the guards on the patio looked concerned. They moved aside and I saw Madobe in Dhuxul’s clutches, bent forward with his chained hands yanked behind his back. Dhuxul smacked him across the head.
Naturally my conscience was appalled. I hated Madobe, but I didn’t like to see him chained and smacked on my account. The pirates, though, were bent on acquainting me with hunger and confinement, with the prospect of death, above all with the rule of force. They were acquainting me with Somalia.
“OK Michael?” Bashko repeated.
The boss had made his concession. I had to respond.
“OK,” I said.
And Madobe quit thwacking me.
* * *
Hostages made famous by media coverage grow more expensive, as a rule, so my family made the agonising decision to keep my case quiet. It was not easy: whenever negotiations faltered, so did my mother’s faith in the tactic, and sometimes she warned negotiators and officials around her that she wanted to tell the world. The final decision was always hers, and I don’t question it. The media blackout didn’t shorten my stay in Somalia, but my guards did listen to the radio like eager kids after each video we made in the bush. They wanted to hear my name on the BBC, and it frustrated them to hear nothing.
“Michael!”
Bashko came to me one day in 2013 with some hot news.
“America – no ransom!”
“No, they won’t pay.” I shook my head in agreement.
“Why?” he chided. “America no money?”
He had honestly expected a ransom from Washington. The optimism made my head swim. I thought it was well known in kidnapping circles that the US and British governments paid nothing (normally). Garfanji should have known it before he financed my capture; Bashko should have known it by now. After I went free, at least one FBI agent would express real surprise that these men were so ignorant of US policy. But Bashko hardly knew the difference between Britain and France.
Months passed, then years. The bosses thought I could make them rich while I slept in their houses in chains. They hit up every conceivable source of cash – governments, families, employers, institutions of any kind. The demands were outrageous, fanciful, and for a long time I sensed negotiations had stalled. During one rare phone call with my mother in 2013 I blurted in German that a rescue “would be welcome”. By then I didn’t mind getting killed. For Bashko it seemed the height of western evil that helicopters might arrive before a fat sack of money; but I was numb to the risks of a rescue, and I imagined, naively, that the US no-ransom policy would require a consistent military response.
My case was particularly difficult. Two governments had to be prodded for help; two governments had to jostle for command. I spent 32 months as a hostage, and it is possible that the oscillation between US and German responsibility lengthened my time in Somalia. In the end I owed my freedom to a ransom cobbled together by my family and a number of US and German institutions. But it came without warning. I suppose Bashko did try to tell me; but rumours of a ransom surfaced every month, and I quit paying attention. The pirates’ wispy gossip and promises of freedom were more maddening than the raw passage of time, so I learned to listen to them with distant bemusement, the way an old man watches TV.
* * *
The morning of 23 September 2014, was not unusual. I woke up in the dark and waited for a guard to toss over keys for my chains. I undid the padlocks, went for a piss, and came back to face a sullen bowl of beans.
After breakfast I had a phone call with a mysterious American negotiator named Bob. My Somali translator, Yoonis, let me talk for 30 seconds before he yanked the phone from my hands. Bob managed to explain exactly nothing. Yoonis said, “Proof of life, only!”
Around noon I had to use the toilet, and from the high, broken-tiled, sun-shot bathroom I heard the front compound gate open for a car. That was strange – cars came at night, as a rule. A young Somali named Hashi stood outside the door with his gun.
“Michael? Gari,” he said.
Michael, your car is here.
“What gari?” I said. “I’m busy.”
“No problem.”
When I came out the men were buzzing with enthusiasm. Three Somalis were showing off a clear plastic sack of bound hundred-dollar bills. The bag was sealed. I couldn’t tell if the bills were real. “You are going free!” they said, but I didn’t believe it. I’d heard it too many times, and I had grown stunted and cramped. My brain felt like a fish in a swamp.
“You must pack your bags,” one of them said. “You are going to the airport.”
I had a bag of dirty clothes. I threw them together but still wasn’t convinced. I climbed into the car with two men, Yoonis and another translator. Normally eight armed men crammed me, blindfolded, into the car. Not this time. We drove through Galkacyo – what the men had called Haradheere for almost two years – and out some distance into the bush, where another car waited.
“Get out,” said Yoonis. “You are free.”
I felt bewildered but I climbed into the new car and found myself alone with a strange driver, a Somali who spoke American English. I was still convinced that the promise of freedom was false. But, to my surprise, he dialled a number while he drove, and on the phone I heard not just Bob, the negotiator, but my mother.
“Where are you?” I was astonished. “Not in Galkacyo.”
“No, we’re in California,” my mother said.
“Your driver will take you to a hotel,” Bob explained, “and another Somali will drive you to the airport. Your pilot’s name is Derek.”
Michael Scott Moore in Berlin, in May 2015.
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Michael Scott Moore. Photograph: Christian Jungeblodt
Galkacyo’s decrepit Abdullahi Yusuf International Airport, to the northeast of town, was just a dry airstrip with a few low buildings, just like I remembered. Now, on the asphalt, a small single-engine plane waited. Next to it stood Derek, a short leathery man in mirrored sunglasses – a bush pilot. When we pulled next to the plane and I opened the door, he stood under the wing to snap a photo.
“For your mother,” Derek said in a British accent.
He shook my hand and gave me a backpack stuffed with clothes. Derek said he would deliver me to Mogadishu. From there I would take an American C-130 to Nairobi. Relief was not quite the word – I was still too shattered to feel relief or excitement or joy – but it seemed incredible to me that Derek could fly a plane. He was the first competent man I’d met in a long time.
I fastened my seatbelt. Derek climbed in and slammed his door. A Somali on the tarmac asked us to wait “just half an hour.”
“What for?” said Derek.
“A journalist is coming, he wants to take your picture,” said the Somali.
“No,” I told Derek.
I wouldn’t hear for days what was happening in another part of Galkacyo. The ransom had to be divided. Everyone connected to me would want a cut of the money. Within two days several ranking men – including Dhuxul, Ahmed Dirie, and Ali Duulaay – would sit down for a tense meeting in front of a house belonging to a boss called Nuur Jareer. Duulaay and Ahmed Dirie, my kidnappers, wanted a large share of the $1.6m ransom. But by now they were outsiders. They had to demand the money from the sub-group that held me, which included Dhuxul and Nuur Jareer.
Guards at the meeting aimed their weapons in a complicated Mexican standoff, for mutual security, according to people who described the scene to me later. But the man aiming at Duulaay pulled his trigger. Gunfire unleashed by the others killed Ahmed Dirie, his brother, and one more of my kidnappers. Duulaay died on the spot. The boss Nuur Jareer was injured. Dhuxul pulled him to safety, but within another three days Nuur Jareer would die of his wounds.
Later I heard the group had invested $2m to hold me. The top men must have been sorely disappointed.
The plane began to roll forward. Derek and I put on headsets. “Galkacyo tower, Galkacyo tower,” he radioed. “Request permission to take off,” he said and gave his call sign. “Two souls on board.”
No response. Another delay.
“Sometimes they don’t answer,” he mumbled.
I was still shell-shocked and confused. My brain would feel cramped for months. People say, “You must have been overjoyed,” but any ransom is a filthy compromise, and I had long ago given up on hope as a dangerous indulgence. As the plane moved forward, I looked at the cracked and sun-beaten white buildings of the airport – these objects of fantasy for two and a half years – with mute animal wonder.
“Galkacyo tower, Galkacyo tower,” Derek repeated. “Request permission for takeoff. Two souls onboard.”
At last there was some noise from the radio.
“Yes, OK,” crackled a Somali voice, and Derek lined up his plane.
This Is What It's Like to Be Kidnapped by Pirates
Alex Reside
By Michael Scott Moore
July 24, 2018
In January 2012, journalist Michael Scott Moore was captured by a gang of pirates during a reporting trip in central Somalia. He would spend a total of 32 months in captivity. Here, Moore tells the story of the day he tried to escape.
During the spring and summer of 2012, the pirates kept Moore aboard a tuna vessel, the Naham 3, which they had hijacked on the open sea. The ship stood at anchor just off the town of Hobyo.
In August, the generator sputtered. A team of Chinese mechanics made near-daily trips to the rear of the vessel to keep it running, but the Naham 3 was a dwindling resource.
When the ship ran out of rice in August, the pirates delivered new twenty-pound sacks from Hobyo, which the East Asian crew regarded as a deep misfortune. They were chauvinists about rice and preferred the fluffy, short-grained white stuff common in their part of the world. Now they had to eat brownish basmati imported from Pakistan. Nguyen Van Ha, from Vietnam, pulled a face when he tried his first bowl. He shook his head in disgust.
Near the end of August, water flowing from our shower hoses felt warmer, which meant the monsoon season had started to turn. Abdul the translator came aboard to question Li Bo Hai, again, on behalf of the pirate bosses, and again I overheard the conversation. How much life was in the generator? How much oil, how much fuel? Answer, about a month. Somehow we had a reprieve. But Abdul acted vague about whether the bosses would preserve the ship.
Later the same day, Abdul carried a round-screened instrument down from the bridge, trailing electric wire. "I want this working again," he ordered. "If you need parts from that ship over there"—he pointed across the water at the Shiuh Fu 1, a tuna long-liner similar to the Naham 3, once hijacked by pirates, leaning wrecked on the Somali shore —"we can get 'em. But we can't stay on this boat without a radar."
One by one the men squatted to inspect the colorful soldered guts of the radar monitor. Taso and Cao Yong fiddled the longest, with an air of resignation, under the warm shade near our conveyor belt. For the first time, Abdul had mentioned the ship on the beach. He'd named our worst nightmare. Our mood plummeted, but the radar wouldn't come on again. Arnel explained the problem to Abdul. Finally someone piled the parts into a box and shelved it in a closet.
Word went around the next day that the generator would have to shut down to save fuel. We ate breakfast in morbid silence. Afterward we rushed the electric kettles to brew coffee and tea and save it all in thermoses. Around 8:00 a.m. the motor quit, with a long and terrifying shudder that vibrated the hull and left us alone with ourselves. For the first time we noticed the desertlike silence on the water. The generator had not only powered a surprising number of instruments, including the TV, the kettles, the trickling seawater hoses, and the sizzling woks—it had muffled Somali voices, meaning it had sheltered us from an unbroken awareness of living at their mercy. We tried to play cards, but during the long afternoon the tropical heat mounted, and we had little to keep us from remembering our status as prisoners, or the tons of rigid tuna in the freezer, or the captain, who had been shot dead when the pirates boarded, now stored in there like a fish. We wondered if he would decompose. A smell rose from the corner grate we used for a latrine.
Abdul ended this day without power by four in the afternoon, I think because he wanted tea. But the threat had not been lost on the crew. The pirates had wanted to warn us about living on shore, and the shock of the silent ship was linked to a fierce rumor of freedom that had circulated for several days.
The source of the rumor was hard to locate, but a few days earlier Ferdinand had said, "I feel it in my heart. I think we're gonna go free by the end of the month."
"You mean August?" I said. Which was almost over.
"Maybe September. I think the owners have started to negotiate."
Then a friend of Ha's—another Vietnamese man called Nguyen Van Xuan—told me that one pirate had told him the whole ship would go free "in five days."
"Everyone?" I said. "Including Rolly and Michael?"
Rolly was my partner onboard, a fisherman from the Seychelles, not originally a member of the crew. The pirates had placed us both on this hijacked ship for safekeeping. It seemed unlikely that a deal for my freedom, Rolly's, and the release of the whole Naham 3 crew had succeeded at the same time. But Xuan was a modest man who did not like to give offense. He wore old tasseled loafers and had smiling, wideset eyes. He looked troubled by my question for a moment, then beamed with joy.
In broken ship's pidgin he answered: "Hai dao speak, all ship. Michael and Rolly, okay!"
The pirate said the whole ship, so Michael and Rolly, too!
I felt better for about three hours. But this gossip was pure sentimentality, nothing but junk food for the starving. I started to recognize the scam. In the scheme of the Five-Day Rumor, our day without power was Day Four. On the next morning, no one went free—the generator shutdown had been a scare tactic. Instead, Abdul presided over a long series of phone calls to Asia. Every crewman climbed the stairs to the bridge, to use the ship's telephone, on a warm tide of hope. They were shocked to hear protests of helplessness from their bewildered families. On their way down they endured sarcasm from the pirates, who saw it as the families' stubborn fault that the men would not go free.
Korn Vanthy returned from his call and flopped on my mattress. He covered his face with one arm. In ship's pidgin he said, "My parents can't send the money. I will die."
"Who said you would die?"
"The translator. Abdul."
"Korn Vanthy—"
"He said the pirates will shoot me."
"Korn Vanthy, listen. Hai dao bow-wow sa-sa," which in our shipboard pidgin meant: The pirates gab a lot. "They won't shoot you," I said. "Don't worry."
I didn't believe it myself, or not entirely. Evidence against my position was lying in the freezer. But I kept up my line of argument until Korn Vanthy appeared to relax.
After the day of failed telephone calls, the rumor of freedom dissipated. Everyone's apprehension focused on a new rumor about a massive fish feeding near the Naham 3. The hull of our ship had grown into a rich colony of barnacles and algae, which attracted grazing fish and predators of increasing size. I remembered a line in Der Spiegel about the sharks trailing a hijacked German freighter while it limped to freedom after a four-month anchorage off Somalia. "The large numbers of mussels attached to its hull slowed its progress, allowing an entire food chain to follow behind, with sharks bringing up the rear."
The next day, we spotted the fish. It was a lumbering shadow in the waves—not a shark, according to Ha, but maybe a fat ocean sunfish or even a little whale. The crew rushed over to look. The shadow vanished, and the ship lurched. I can't say now whether the lurching caused by the sudden movement of men stretched our rusted anchor chain, or whether the bulbous monster somehow swam into it and snapped it. The crew, afterward, would blame the fish. But when I sat down again with Rolly on the fiberglass bench, a sickening thunk vibrated through the hull.
"What happen?" Rolly said. "The anchor break?"
Hobyo and the Shiuh Fu 1 started to roll away toward the south. We were moving with a fast, shoreward-angling current. The ship began to turn.
"Yes," I said.
Our view of the shore gave way to a view of rough open water. Half a dozen Chinese men hurried toward the engine room. The rest of the crew pulled on gloves and went upstairs to haul in what was left of the anchor chain. Rolly and I stayed downstairs on the work deck with Tony, who, as a cook, had no heavier duties.
The ship spun in the water because of the way the heavy current caught the hull. The Naham 3 had a deep keel, and the current must have caught it and turned us like a crank. We spun in long, lurching circles. I wanted to jump before things got worse, but Somalis had swarmed the upper deck with their weapons to yell at the laboring men. The shore twirled in and out of view. I wasn't sure whether to feel dizzy, sick, or terrified. Sooner or later we would beach. I didn't want to lose my last chance to jump, but I also didn't want to screw up. Any jump would have to be timed for the turning ship as well as the current.
While I thought about that, the twin-engine plane reappeared, flying in an aggressive circle. Rolly said, "Look!" and my blood seethed with adrenaline. Big Jacket appeared right away with his rifle, ordering us to cover our heads and hurry upstairs. Other Somalis bristled upstairs with their guns.
It seemed smarter to follow orders than to jump, so I went up the stairs with Rolly and hurried along the gangway. I had to lie on the bunk in my cabin and watch the horizon spin. I felt depressed and a little seasick. I missed my chance. I missed my chance. But an escape attempt would have been crazy. I'd never seen the Somalis so panicked and ready to shoot.
My own understanding of the problem, and my own resolve, were as straight and stable as the anchorless Naham 3, and together we turned like a merry-go-round on the edge of the Indian Ocean, moving northward for almost an hour, which wasn't long enough to wash the heavy vessel ashore. The engineers got the motor started. It rumbled twice as loud as the generator, with a rough dirty voice. The ship was soon puttering south in a line against the powerful current. At sundown the pirates ordered us back outside for dinner, under a monsoon sky, and everyone sat around the deck looking morose.
"What's going to happen?" I asked Hen, who sat by himself with his bowl of rice. "Are we going to Hobyo?"
"Hobyo!" he spluttered, with dark humor and frustration in his eyes, as if he couldn't believe the anchor chain was about to cause such a stupid shift in everyone's fate.
I felt no different. The sun sank in a gray-orange haze. I thought this would be our last night at sea. I didn't want to see Hobyo again, and I returned to my room feeling nervous and wired. Drones had to be in the air. Someone with the power to launch a twin-engine aircraft had noticed the accident and reacted, quickly, so it was possible that even an aircraft carrier stood not far off. This ship was moving an American hostage to an unknown destination. The Navy had to be watching.
Maybe the sea-craziness and lassitude had loosened my brain; maybe I'd lost some portion of sanity in five months on the water. I decided not to go to Hobyo. Instead I rolled the LED lighter into a plastic bag, sealed it as well as I could, using a tight elastic string, and lay in the fluorescent light of the cabin, running through what I hoped would be the order of events. Whoever had sent that airplane could send a rescue helicopter just as fast, I thought. I could leap with the LED lighter in my pocket and use it to identify myself in the water to any watching drone. Our engine was in such wobbly condition that the Naham 3 would have to keep chugging forward.
There could be a rescue, even in the dark, as soon as I swam out of range of the pirates' guns.
No, hang on, that's crazy.
If it failed, I would probably die. If I did nothing, I might go ashore.
I felt moody, depressed, and afraid. Ready to end the whole ordeal.
I lay flat on my bunk and wondered how it would feel to do nothing. I imagined Abdinasser waking me around midnight, and a series of skiffs shuttling us to a darkened beach. Then it would be goat liver and canned tuna for breakfast, and no more chances to escape.
I climbed down from my bed at about 8:00 p.m. to ask permission to use the bathroom. Abdiwali, the translator with a grizzled black-and-white beard, came into view on the bridge.
"What's the matter?" he said. "I need toilet paper."
"We don't have any."
I approached the bridge. "I have some downstairs, by the work area," I said. "Rolly and I have a bag in the closet."
"You can't go out there now."
"I need some," I said. "It's a problem."
Abdiwali turned to discuss the problem with another Somali.
"We will get you more tomorrow," Abdiwali said. "That doesn't help me now."
Abdiwali looked annoyed. They exchanged a few more words. "Okay. Come on."
The crew had rolled out sleeping mats; in the glare of white deck lamps they smoked cigarettes and watched TV. Abdiwali carried no rifle: that was good. He waited for me, unarmed, near the foot of the steps.
I smiled at the other hostages and found a random plastic bag in the closet. I rustled it and pretended to stuff something into my shorts pocket. When I returned to the open deck, Abdiwali started upstairs. There was no better chance. I kicked off my sandals so they skittered across the deck and ran for the cutaway section, launched myself off the gunwale with one bare foot, and dove, fingertips first, about twenty feet into the wavering, black, surprisingly warm water. ("Michael!" Abdiwali's voice hollered behind me.) The culmination of a dream that had percolated in me for more than five months at sea gave me a quick thrill of hope. But when I came up for air I noticed how buoyant I was, and how afraid.
I dove again, waiting for bullets. My only consolation was that pirates would have terrible aim. The Naham 3 churned forward, and I swam with the slanting current, toward the rear, keeping just under the waves like a dolphin. I raised my head to breathe. For days I'd calculated how long it might take to swim out of that margin of water where shooting me from the ship would have been all too easy for a pirate on an upper deck, like sniping a fish in a bucket. But the vessel's industrial hulk seemed to pass in a minute. Its forward speed, and the swift shoreward current, worked in my favor. Excited Somalis ran around on the upper decks of the ship to maneuver two searchlights across the water.
Nobody fired a shot.
Soon I was a ship's length away, about fifty yards. The swells were long and gentle. The water tasted brinier than other oceans I knew, and I floated easily because of the salt. I also wasn't cold. But my body felt electrified with fear. Before I jumped, I knew the chances of success were low, and the notion of escape was deliriously insane, half-suicidal, so I had left the ship with self-destruction at the front of my mind. I would go free or die trying. It took fear and desperation to urge me off the ship, but fear and desperation are forms of energy, which convert to something powerful if you express them well. Emotionally I had made no mistake: I felt fantastic. I no longer wanted to die.
I dove and swam again. The warm, pulsing swells were like black dunes. I stopped more than two hundred yards from the ship, and while the searchlights lanced across the water I decided to try the LED. I wanted to flash a signal up to whatever might be watching. It should have been clear to a drone that a hostage had jumped, and I thought an SOS pattern would help identify me. (I was also, by this point, quite out of my mind.) I rooted in my cotton shorts and came up with the plastic-wrapped lighter, waited for a large swell to shelter me—as if a black wave could hide what I was about to do— then aimed my plastic lighter at the sky. I clicked.
Nothing.
Of course not.
"Fuck!" I hollered and hurled the thing away. Now I had several choices. I could swim around, evade the searchlights, tread water, and hope for a helicopter. I could swim for the beach. Or I could drown myself.
The ship slowed. Searchlights traced the water. I wondered whether to tread here awhile or swim for the beach. The mile of ocean didn't bother me; what I feared was machine-gun fire. If a Somali caught a glimpse of my shoulder moving away in the searchlight, he could shatter the waves with a PKM.
I leaned back to keep my head low on the surface of the gentle swells and found a way to float on my back. It was easier than expected because of the salt. When a searchlight swept near me, I ducked, and it was blissful to submerge in the thick warm sea.
I blinked and squinted and listened for a helicopter. I watched the Naham 3 move on. Part of me still believed in the omniscience and desperation of a bureaucratic force like the Navy, a desperation as strong as my own, to recognize my poor figure in the water and glean my intentions and seize the slim chance to scoop me out as soon as I was free of the ship. I thought we'd have time. I thought it would take the pirates an hour or more to organize a skiff from land, since we weren't near Hobyo. And I thought I could still drown myself if necessary.
But the ship made an unexpected move. Instead of chugging away, it stalled and started to list. One searchlight beam found me but moved up and down, unsteadily, across the surface. I managed to duck and swim away. But the ship was leaning toward me on the swells. It was astonishing to watch. Everything—searchlights, running lights, water tanks, the still-turning radar antenna, all three decks and all the men at the rail—tilted like an oil platform in heavy weather. All two hundred tons of the Naham 3 were lurching in my direction.
I cleared my eyes and searched the sky for any artificial light. I listened for a helicopter. My buzzing blood was ecstatic, but the Naham 3 tilted and gathered speed on the waves. I wondered whether to swim around the stern, evade, and try to vanish into deep water, or turn and swim for the beach. I'd been floating for almost half an hour. I could comfortably survive the exertion, but I realized with dread that the massive ship would outpace me. It was a principle from surfing: a larger craft on any swell has more momentum. Whether I stayed put or swam for shore, I risked getting keelhauled by the barnacle-crusted hull.
The searchlight found me again while the ship listed. I could imagine a slow-motion chase, back and forth, if I swam around for deeper water.
And I could imagine drowning myself. I could see the hollering crew. Fuck. The ship lumbered close, lights blazing. Someone tossed a life preserver attached to a rope. I had to decide whether to swim around the hull—now—or grab the preserver. I swam and grabbed the rope. I held the ring close to my chest; the men pulled. It was only while I scaled the hull that I thought of a decent alibi.
"What were you thinking, man?" said Abdul frantically, his eyes manic and wide. "Why the fuck did you jump?"
Four men led me to the tuna bench, where somebody draped me with a blanket. Taso handed me a bowl of warm water to drink, in case I had hypothermia. Hen gave me disinfectant for my toes, which for some reason had started to bleed, and Tony handed me the sandals I had kicked away. I asked for bandages and tape.
My alibi was obvious. "Garfanji," I said to Abdul. "Al-Shabaab."
I said I didn't want to move ashore to be sold to terrorists; I didn't want to hang from a tree. Those threats had been half-serious in May, and now, almost four months on, they were like rotten fish. But Garfanji had made them, so he could damn well hear them again.
"Who told you that?" said Abdul.
"Everyone," I said. "Garfanji himself." Garfanji was a top boss. But a particularly cruel pirate named Bakayle sat further down the bench. I pointed to him."That man did," I said.
"Okay," said Abdul.
When the excitement subsided, two pirates escorted me back to my cabin. My blood still thrummed. I didn't sleep well, and in the morning I wasn't allowed outside with the rest of the crew. I would be condemned to three weeks of solitary confinement in my cabin. Meanwhile the Naham 3 would be tethered to a hijacked cargo ship called the MV Albedo, which had a sturdy anchor.
My mind felt wild and strange, like a caged animal's. I wondered how much ferocity and gnashing regret a human heart could stand. But the swim had been fabulous, invigorating, the very opposite of suicide. It had reminded me of freedom.
Michael Scott Moore
Michael Scott Moore's picture
Freelancer Michael Scott Moore has edited and written for Spiegel Online in Germany, where he followed the trial of 10 Somali pirates in Hamburg. He originated the European Dispatch column for Miller-McCune magazine and in 2009 wrote a series of columns on US and EU counter-piracy measures from the Horn of Africa.
Born in California, he's the author of a comic novel called Too Much of Nothing as well as Sweetness and Blood, a travel book about the spread of surfing to odd corners of the world. The travel book was named one of the best titles of 2010 by The Economist, and to write it Mike traipsed through Indonesia, Morocco, Cuba, Israel, and even surfed the Gaza Strip.
He was a 2006-07 Fulbright journalist in Berlin. He helped write an American documentary on honor killings, Two Sides of the Moon. He has written about politics and travel for The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and The Los Angeles Times.
QUOTE:
"Moore did not die for his story, but he suffered deeply and helplessly. Yet the book Moore has written, while clearly not the one he would’ve chosen, provides rare insight into Somali piracy and is an important addition to that most traumatic and illuminating genre of nonfiction, the hostage memoir."
Almost Dying for the Story: On Michael Scott Moore’s “The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast”
By Tristan McConnell
JULY 24, 2018
I MET A PIRATE once. It was the summer of 2009 in Somaliland, and I’d made the hot drive across a scrub of desert date, myrrh, and acacia trees to Mandheera, a no-stoplight town. A couple of miles off the road stood the most prominent building in the area and Farah Ismail Eid’s home — a whitewashed, colonial-era prison.
Eid was something of a celebrity, being one of the only convicted Somali pirates who conceded his guilt and would agree to be interviewed. Later, at a prison in Berbera, one pirate declined my offer (“Fuck you,” he told me in surprisingly idiomatic English) while another simply spat at my feet before retreating into the sweaty dark of his cramped, shared cell.
Back then, piracy off Somalia’s lawless coast was a big story that worked on a number of levels: it resonated broadly — thanks to Johnny Depp’s Hollywood adaptations of a theme park ride — had a direct impact on the global economy by disrupting one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, full of oil tankers and cargo vessels, and was a genuinely new iteration of Somalia’s long-running chaos.
Eid told me the Somali pirate origin story: untrammeled illegal fishing by foreign trawlers, toxic waste dumped on the shore, depleted fish stocks and wrecked reefs, lack of opportunity in a shattered state that has suffered decades of clan-based civil war, the necessity of protecting your livelihood, even if it meant law-breaking, and the imperative to survive.
He was a victim, as he saw it. “These problems fell on us like rain,” he told me, with a poetic flourish. “We are quite aware that what we are doing is wrong, but this is a way of shouting to the world. The world should ask, ‘Are these people wrong or were they wronged themselves?’” It was a call-to-arms, and an apologia.
Few journalists have risked finding active pirates, and for good reason, given the risks. One of the few is American journalist Michael Scott Moore, who was betrayed by his hosts and spent close to three years in captivity. He relates the story in an enthralling memoir called The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast (2018).
Moore was living in Germany when he found himself covering the trial of 10 Somali pirates in Hamburg in 2011 who had been involved in the failed hijacking of a German cargo ship. “[I]t seemed to me that a book about the case and some underreported aspects of Somali piracy might be interesting,” he writes. He was familiar with the sea, having written a previous book about the history of surfing.
His reporting initially takes him to Djibouti — a godforsaken chunk of scorched rock on the Gulf of Aden that consists mainly of ports, military bases, and sand — as well as to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. He knows there’s more to know, “[b]ut I wavered about going to Somalia.”
During the trial, however, Moore meets a Somali clan elder who, he believes, can arrange safe passage from the central Somali town of Galkayo to the pirate village of Hobyo, 125 miles away on the Indian Ocean coast. In early 2012, Moore sets off. In Galkayo, he meets “the mayor of Hobyo” who, in a quintessential Somali-diaspora fashion, is a London bus driver when not flaunting his impressive, if hollow, job title.
Moore feels queasy while reporting in Somalia but buries his fears and carries on. He makes it safely to Hobyo and back, but it is on the relatively innocuous journey between Galkayo’s town and its airport that his trip goes terribly wrong. A Mad Max–style “technical” — a Toyota pickup with a heavy machine gun welded onto the flatbed, so named because foreigners hiring them for security in the early 1990s would reclaim the cost as “technical expenses” — stops his vehicle. Moore is wrenched from the car, beaten, and abducted. His glasses are smashed, after which “everything looked like Monet.”
The self-inflicted horror of his situation, and the journalistic hubris that brought him to it, dawns fast. “What did I think I would find around here?” Moore writes. “Pirates who trusted writers? Truth?”
Once he is captured, his kidnappers demand a “pathological” $20 million ransom from his mother, 72 years old and retired with her second husband in Redondo Beach, California. Foreigners held in Somalia have commonly been released for less than $1 million, but pirates, it turns out, are less often aggrieved fishermen like Eid. They are chancers, and stubborn, often inept ones.
That reality was mostly obscure at this time to Western editors who loved Somalia’s 21st-century pirates because they seemed to bleed romantic, renegade history onto the news pages. The story drew journalists from Nairobi and further afield. Most of us did secondhand reporting, speaking to self-declared experts, negotiators, shipping monitors, and shady ex-soldiers who would either airdrop plastic-wrapped bricks of cash onto hijacked vessels or retrieve hostages from dust-blown air strips.
Some journalists made more of an effort, attending pirate trials in the Kenyan port town of Mombasa and the Seychelles, visiting Eid in his jail cell to exchange khat for quotes, or joining the international naval patrols whose warships were intended to deter pirates in their little motorized skiffs. This was dangerous work. Colin Freeman, a London-based foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, was nabbed by his own security guards and held for 40 days while attempting to cover Somali piracy in 2008, as recorded in his book Kidnapped (2011). Jay Bahadur, a young Canadian journalist — precocious, foolhardy, brave — rocked up in northern Somalia with some flimsy connections and a truckload of luck, eventually writing The Pirates of Somalia (2012). Years later, in 2015, James Verini wrote a compelling article for The New Yorker about the experience of pirate hostages, interviewing the surviving crew of the MV Albedo (captured in November 2010, freed in June 2014, a year after their boat had foundered in a storm off Hobyo). Moore showed great courage in going after the story at its source, and paid a huge price for it.
After weeks of shunting him from one dingy safe house to another in a series of SUVs, the pirates move Moore to the Naham 3 — an Omani-flagged Taiwanese trawler with a mixed Asian crew and a freezer hold filled with immense tuna and, grotesquely, the body of the vessel’s captain, shot dead during the hijacking. This shift underscores an important point about “Somali pirates,” which is that they are not really pirates at all, but opportunistic kidnappers who happened, mostly, to work at sea. The cargo was irrelevant and rarely touched, neither when it was millions of barrels of oil nor a freighter full of tanks and rockets.
Moore’s sense of hopelessness deepens as he reaches the rusting trawler. “For the first time in Somalia, but not the last, I considered suicide,” he writes. Fantasies of escape recur. They often take the form of a heroic blaze of glory — seizing an AK-47 from a dozy guard, rescue by Navy SEALs, or a leap to freedom from the gunwales (the latter he actually does, relishing fleeting moments of liberty in the sea, before his recapture) — but more often the escape he dreams of is suicide.
The struggle is constant, but throughout his captivity, hope penetrates the carapace of despair: Moore persists in using the LED torches on cheap cigarette lighters to signal to the presumably American drones that he hears buzz overhead, he tarries when ordered inside as light aircraft or helicopters fly by — as they regularly do, sometimes photographing the ship — and he risks smuggling German phrases identifying his location into the occasional phone calls home in which the pirates force him to beg for a ransom payment. Scrounging pens and notebooks, Moore jots down a series of scrappy prison diaries. Written where and when he can, and frequently confiscated as punishment or out of malice, these become “an essential refuge from prison.”
The other constant is the pirates’ inability to comprehend the gulf between their demands and Moore’s reality. In a moment of rare candor, a pirate guard called Dag, incredulous that Moore’s mother won’t pony up the ransom, desperately tells him he just wants “the Good Life,” the American Dream fed to him via television and smartphone. “I don’t have the Good Life, Dag. You guys kidnapped the wrong man,” Moore replies.
It is a measure of the misery of solitary confinement that Moore’s months at sea seem almost jolly in comparison to his time in the desert. There was a shared experience on the Naham 3, but no shared language, so the captives concocted a pidgin (“Hai dao loco-loco”: “Pirates crazy”), cooked for one another — including regular sashimi carved from the frozen tuna store — and watched Tom and Jerry DVDs. Most of his fellow hostages were “hip young Asian youth” who were either conned onto the trawler by unscrupulous employment agencies or lured by the promise of relative wealth. Moore has sympathy for the crew, but little for his captors, who are portrayed as cruel, sometimes comical and often stupid, a “bumbling criminal tag team” of guards, negotiators, and bosses united by greed and clan.
Moore’s talent for dark observational humor is used to great effect and leavens what might, in another writer’s hands, have been a relentlessly bleak book.
His eventual release, after the payment of an undisclosed though undoubtedly more modest ransom than initially demanded, and scratched together by his mother, offers almost instant Schadenfreude for the reader when his pirate captors get into a deadly altercation over the ransom. There follows a disappointingly short section dealing with Moore’s struggle to readjust to a liberty so long lost, which seems only to skim across the surface of a psychological distress that, one imagines, must linger.
Moore did not die for his story, but he suffered deeply and helplessly. Yet the book Moore has written, while clearly not the one he would’ve chosen, provides rare insight into Somali piracy and is an important addition to that most traumatic and illuminating genre of nonfiction, the hostage memoir.
QUOTE:
Although [Moore] found himself praying for the first time in years, the self-described lapsed Catholic said it was letting go of hope that helped him make it through two years of solitary confinement, Before that he was held for months on a hijacked fishing boat anchored off the coast with a group of other captives.
Journalist Michael Scott Moore on giving up hope at the hands of Somali pirates
David Rosenfeld Jul 20, 2018 (…)
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In nearly three years of captivity at the hands of Somali pirates, Mira Costa High School graduate Michael Scott Moore said what got him through the ordeal most was actually giving up hope.
Although he found himself praying for the first time in years, the self-described lapsed Catholic said it was letting go of hope that helped him make it through two years of solitary confinement. Before that he was held for months on a hijacked fishing boat anchored off the coast with group of other captives.
The image of the prison on a boat inspired the title of Moore's latest book about the experience released this week by Harper Collins called The Desert and the Sea: 977 days captive on the somali pirate coast.
“I learned to live without hope,” Moore said during a book signing at Pages: A Bookstore in Manhattan Beach Thursday July 19. “Going from hope to despair was detrimental so I didn’t do it. I realized that is a skill I still use. I don’t get too anxious about the future anymore.”
That was just one of the stunning and brutally honest revelations Moore made during an intimate question and answer session at the bookstore.
He was joined by his mother, Louis Saunders, who played an integral role in the negotiation process. While agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation were assisting her, and she ultimately hired a professional negotiator, Saunders spoke to her son’s captors on several occasions.
Moore was taken hostage in 2012 while researching for a book about Somali pirates. He had previously reported on pirate activity for Der Spiegel magazine. They ultimately paid the kidnappers $1.6 million delivered in cash shortly before Moore’s release.
“It was a risky business,” Saunders said. “It could have been they still didn’t release Michael. But everything went as planned.”
While Saunders described the day she learned her son was being held as the end of her life, securing his release she said was “total jubiliaton.” The news was still fresh when she spoke with the Daily Breeze in September 2014.
“We are just ecstatic that finally — after over 21/2 years — that he’s been released,” Saunders said.
It was not long after Moore was released that he learned the pirates had a dispute over the cash and there was a shootout where six of the top bosses were killed.
“It would have been better if they all had been killed,” he said.
Throughout his captivity, Moore described several attempts at freedom. Once while on board the anchored vessel, he jumped into the sea only to be pulled back in by his captors.
On other occasions he spoke in German revealing his location to what he believed were drones overhead under the belief they could pick up the instructions.
On praying, Moore said it gave him someone to talk to. He spent most of his days in a large room with several other pirates, who did not speak English. They kept his legs chained so he could hardly move around aside from doing yoga, which he kept a daily practice.
He was fed mostly beans, boiled potatoes and tuna from a can, one thing he said he can never touch again. At night he slept on a camping pad on concrete under a bug net. He said he thought about suicide, but couldn’t do it because of his mother.
“I had to assume I wasn’t going to get out alive,” he said.
In the nearly four years since his return, Moore said he is back to full physical strength. Mental strength, however, is another story, he said. An experience like that undoubtedly changes a man.
Moore, who previously wrote a book about surfing, had a lighthearted moment when he was asked about the waves in Somalia.
His glasses were broken when he first became kidnapped, so he could barely see the entire time. On the boat, he said he could feel the motion of the waves underneath so he ventured it was a decent swell.
“I assume the waves weren’t bad, but I only saw them from behind,” he said with a smile. “I guess we’ll never know because I’m not going back to find out.”
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QUOTE:
deftly constructed and tautly told rejoinder to Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, sympathetic but also sharp-edged."
Moore, Michael Scott: THE DESERT AND THE SEA
Kirkus Reviews. (June 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Moore, Michael Scott THE DESERT AND THE SEA Harper Wave/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) $27.99 7, 24 ISBN: 978-0-06-244917-7
A harrowing and affecting account of two and a half years of captivity at the hands of Somali pirates.
"It's hard to write one adventurous book without thinking about another," writes Moore early on, recounting his quest, recounted in Sweetness and Blood (2010), to document how the American fascination with surfing had spread into other parts of the world. Americans and the rest of the world were then fascinated with the pirates making news by marauding off the Horn of Africa, and so the author traveled to witness them firsthand. "The rise of modern pirates buzzing off Somalia was an example of entropy in my lifetime," he writes, "and it seemed important to know why there were pirates at all." He quickly learned. Taken captive, Moore learned lessons in the sociology, economics, and psychology of piracy while at the same time enduring some terrible treatment--some of it for show, some of it quite in earnest--as his captors tried to convince his poor mother, and then whomever would listen, to come up with $20 million for his freedom. There's plenty of gallows humor as Moore settles in for his long spell of unhappiness. When his young captors, "stoned on narcotic cud," blast music from their cellphones, he asks a senior to get them to turn it down. "They're soldiers," he's told by way of explanation, to which he replies, "ask them to be quiet soldiers." Imprisoned among a score or so of other captives, mostly Chinese and Filipino, the author discerned that many Somalis turn to piracy for lack of other opportunities, but while "each pirate was here to steal my money," few were eager to cause him personal harm. Moore's humane consideration of his captors reflects some of the small kindnesses he was shown, but it also contrasts with the indifference of Western officials who, it seems, would sooner have sent in the bombers than pay the ransom.
A deftly constructed and tautly told rejoinder to Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, sympathetic but also sharp-edged.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Moore, Michael Scott: THE DESERT AND THE SEA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A540723154/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5aff03d7. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A540723154
QUOTE:
philosophical and political baggage, it remains a satisfying bildungsroman, combining a wry but heartfelt take on teen passions with a serious ethical concern for the fine line between freedom and nihilism.
Too Much of Nothing
Publishers Weekly. 250.36 (Sept. 8, 2003): p55+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE. Carroll & Graf, $13 paper (240p) ISBN 0-7867-1196-5
Erie Sperling was killed 15 years ago, but instead of ascending In heaven like the narrator of The Lovely Bones, he is a troubled ghost in Moore's affecting debut. Eric spends his time haunting L.A., studying the mystical Jewish Zohar tradition at the local library and bemoaning his violent death at the age of 16. Most of all, he broods over his final months and his earthly relationship with his best friend and killer, Tom, a young hellion who acts out the "shlemielish" Eric's anarchic impulses, and Tom's sexually avid girlfriend, Rachel, who seduced Eric and most of the other male characters. Adrift in the moral vacuum of Reagan-era Southern California, the three laxly parented youngsters gravitate to the underground L.A. scene, where glamorous demimondaines elevate punk rock and drug dealing into a grandiose ideology of anti-establishment rectitude. San Francisco journalist Moore has an excellent feel for the worldview of these smart, awkward, yearning adolescents--their intense emotional attachments, their fumbling efforts at self-definition through pop culture, the attraction they feel to inappropriate adult mentors (trust-funded tattoo artists, Rastafarian beach bums) who promise to initiate them into adult mysteries without saddling them with adult responsibility. At times he overloads the high school melodrama at the book's core with philosophical and political baggage, linking it to everything from the Bhagavad-Gita to gentrification and the Nicaraguan Contras. But it remains a satisfying bildungsroman, combining a wry but heartfelt take on teen passions with a serious ethical concern for the fine line between freedom and nihilism. (Sept.)
Forecast: Moore's media background should help him get solid review coverage, particularly on the West Coast and in the alternative press.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Too Much of Nothing." Publishers Weekly, 8 Sept. 2003, p. 55+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A107929821/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4afbdbe0. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A107929821
QUOTE:
first novel that deserved hardcovers
prosperous beginning
Moore, Michael Scott. Too Much of Nothing
Kirkus Reviews. 71.17 (Sept. 1, 2003): p1094.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Carroll & Graf (240 pp.) $13.00 paperback original Sep. 2003 ISBN: 0-7867-1196-5
A prosperous beginning for San Francisco-based reporter and stage critic Moore.
In 1984, high-school sophomore Eric Sperling died during a car accident with his violently upset buddy Tom Linden at the wheel. Fifteen years later, in purgatory, Eric's lonely ghost still hangs about Calaveras beach in South Los Angeles, trying to haunt Tom--who actually murdered Eric, who wants vengeance. Vengeance may consist of awakening Tom to the foulness of his deed in murdering his friend, although Tom has spent some years in jail for the death he caused while smashed out of his mind. Throughout the story, we know only that it happened in a car that struck the back end of a big truck. Eric has never seen another spirit like himself, although he's become a spiritual Jewish being who studies in purgatory, in purgatory, in purgatory, a set of the 20-volume Zohar. In fact, he reads a lot in nearby libraries, and his tale illustrates an aspect of Jewish mysticism. He also has some physical abilities--to make floors creak, slam doors, even to float high over the beach. Back in their high-school days, Tom's alcoholic father died by falling off a fishing boat and striking his head on the prop. Tom lives with his German-American mother and has been sucked into the violent mindset of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. He slips LSD into a teacher's coffee and is later expelled for a year. Repellent though Tom is, Rachel falls for him and becomes his lover. Then Rachel accepts Eric as a lover as well, and when Tom finds out he kills Eric. While much of the story offers a big mix of secondary cultural figures, it turns on Tom's character, his hardening in prison, his strange later life as he becomes his father, lies around stoned and drunk and shielded by booze from even seeing or hearing Eric until the unbearable moment comes when the dead boy appears before him.
A first novel that deserved hardcovers. (Agents: Daniel Greenberg and Miek Coccia/James Levine Communications)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Moore, Michael Scott. Too Much of Nothing." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2003, p. 1094. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A108195941/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7f9f829a. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A108195941
QUOTE:
"The hundred details of friendship, music, snacks, pop culture, sex, and so forth in a teenager's daily life confirm this odd novel's success."
Moore, Michael Scott. Too Much of Nothing
Roberta Johnson
Booklist. 99.22 (Aug. 2003): p1956.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Sept. 2003. 240p. Carroll & Graf, paper, $13 (0-7867-1196-5).
For 15 years Eric Sperling has roamed Calaveras Beach, California, as a ghost. He would haunt his killer, but he has discovered that he can't do much unless the hauntee is receptive, and his murderer is on antidepressants, which doesn't seem fair. So Eric tells his story to readers and the homeless guys on the beach. He was 16, adrift in the Reagan years, admiring his best friend Tom's bravado and philosophy, not to mention Tom's sloe-eyed girlfriend, Rachel. Together the boys discovered Kubrick and cocaine, the Dead Kennedys and boogie boards. Their parents were friends, too, pleasantly ignorant of their sons' shadier exploits. After his father's accidental drowning, Tom became harsh, coke-dependent, and abusive of Rachel, who secretly seduced Eric. When Eric confronted his friend, Tom's temper flared into a fatal attack. Fifteen years later, Eric, still not understanding why he remains on earth, visits Tom for the last time. The hundred details of friendship, music, snacks, pop culture, sex, and so forth in a teenager's daily life confirm this odd novel's success.
YA/M: Immediate and real, with likable though troubled teens. RJ.
YA/M, for books best suited to mature teens.
Johnson, Roberta
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Johnson, Roberta. "Moore, Michael Scott. Too Much of Nothing." Booklist, Aug. 2003, p. 1956. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A106764060/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e46db860. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A106764060
Shocking twist of fate that brought a journalist way too close to his story
CBS This Morning. 2018.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 CQ-Roll Call, Inc.
http://www.cbsnews.com/cbsthismorning/
Full Text:
ANTHONY MASON: Back in 2011 journalist and author Michael Scott Moore agreed to write a book about the pirates who`d been plaguing the coast of East Africa. He`d hope to get close to his subject, but not as close as he got. Soon after arriving in Somalia in January of 2012 Moore was captured by pirates. He was held prisoner for more than two and a half years until a ransom secured his freedom.
DANA JACOBSON: Michael Scott Moore details his harrowing journey in the new book in The Desert and The Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast. And he joins us at the table this morning. Good morning.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE (Author, The Desert and The Sea): Good morning.
DANA JACOBSON: I`m going to ask a question your mother would ask, what were you thinking, we know, you want to tell the story but what were you thinking when you went out there?
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: Well, I went there after covering a trial for about a year in Hamburg of ten Somali pirates who were arrested trying to capture a German ship. So I was deep in the story already. And I-- I went with a documentary maker who was also interested in doing something down there. So we planned the trip for a long time and finally in the early 2012 we went down there.
MICHELLE MILLER: Oh, I`m sorry, continue.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: No, and spent a couple of weeks researching.
ANTHONY MASON: What-- what actually led to the spread of piracy in the region?
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: Well, it started with the illegal fishing. You hear all the time that pirates are just frustrated fishermen but it`s not quite that simple. The-- the roots of piracy, though, are in the fact that the Somalia lost its government in about 1991, and in the 90s there was a lot of illegal fishing off the coast and there were Somali regions that were trying to defend the coastline.
MICHELLE MILLER: You attempted escape many times. What fueled your--
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: Mm-Hm. Once.
MICHELLE MILLER: Once. But what-- what fueled that?
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: What? Anger. No, I did-- I didn`t like being a hostage.
ANTHONY MASON: Mm-Hm.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: And I-- they-- after about three months they captured me on land, but after about three months they placed me on a fishing ship a lot like the fishing ship on the cover of the book. And it was a tuna vessel they`d captured, not in Somali territorial waters, by the way, they went out hundreds of miles and captured it. And we spent this-- I spent the summer of 2012 on this ship. And I`m also a surfer and after a while-- well, once the anchor chain broke, something went very wrong on-- on the ship, I decided to try and escape.
DANA JACOBSON: You know when you spend that much time, obviously, you`re being held captive, but what did you learn about them that maybe you wouldn`t have? I know that sounds crazy, but that you wouldn`t have if you had not been around them for that amount of time?
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: Oh, well, the most surprising part was-- was that most of my guards were very devout Muslims.
ANTHONY MASON: Mm-Hm.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: I didn`t think going in that I would find anyone who was sort of self-deceptive enough to think that they could be religious and be a pirate at the same time.
DANA JACOBSON: Yeah.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: But that was a contradiction that took a while for me to figure out.
ANTHONY MASON: One of the ways you got through this was actually practicing yoga.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: Yeah.
ANTHONY MASON: A nd in some cases-- practicing yoga with your captor.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: Yeah. Well, once I was hauled off the ship and held on land in sort of a series of prison houses, there was-- I-- I actually requested a mat because at some point I realized I was going to spend some time in a lot of time in this one house. And the floor was filthy, but I asked for a mat. And I-- I was going to try and do yoga without the guards seeing me, but they watched me twenty-four hours a day. So I just started to do it and they thought it was hilarious.
ANTHONY MASON: Yeah.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: And then a few of them started to join in. And after a while they kept-- because they were also not getting any exercise in this house, they were locked in, too. So they kept doing it and I would give them pointers.
MICHELLE MILLER: What mix of emotions do you have when you were finally set free?
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: Yeah. That`s a good question. I-- by that point I wasn`t really capable of elation.
MICHELLE MILLER: Mm.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: You know I wasn`t just immediately happy. I-- I was-- first of all, I didn`t believe I was going free and then I was sort of-- I felt more relaxed and lightened sort of in stages during the whole day. But it wasn`t until I actually saw my family when I was back in Berlin that I really felt good.
MICHELLE MILLER: Wow. We`re glad you`re here.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: Me, too. Thank you.
MICHELLE MILLER: We`re glad you`re safe. Michael Scott Moore, we appreciate you talking about this.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: Thank you very much.
MICHELLE MILLER: Coming up, some quick thinking saved this baby`s life. We`ll have the incredible story.
You`re watching CBS THIS MORNING: SATURDAY.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
DANA JACOBSON: Think fast, that`s what a young woman in China did the other day when she heard a baby crying, only to look up and see it--
MICHELLE MILLER: Oh, my God.
DANA JACOBSON: --clinging to some electric wires. She grabbed a mat, which was nearby, called a couple of guards and together they caught the ten- month-old boy. He suffered only a minor injury. It`s not clear how the baby made it onto the wires. His mother is grateful to say the least.
ANTHONY MASON: To say the least, wow. What an incredible quick thinking that was.
All right. For several months a mother and her son were separated caught up in the sweep against illegal immigration. She filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. We`ll tell you what happened. That`s ahead.
For some of you your local news is next. The rest stick around.
You`re watching CBS THIS MORNING: SATURDAY.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
END
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Shocking twist of fate that brought a journalist way too close to his story." CBS This Morning, 22 Sept. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A555484016/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f813613b. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A555484016
Journalist freed after being held captive in Somalia for more than 2 years
Adam Goldman
The Washington Post. (Sept. 23, 2014): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Adam Goldman
A German-American journalist was freed Tuesday after spending more than two years in captivity in Somalia, according to two U.S. officials.
Michael Scott Moore had traveled to Somalia to work on a book about piracy and was taken hostage in January 2012 by a group of gunmen.
The officials said Moore was safe but remained in Africa. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss details of the case.
A video of Moore was released shortly after his capture showing him being held at gunpoint by masked men. In the video, Moore said if the ransom for him wasn't paid, the pirates would sell him to the terrorist group al-Shabab.
Moore was a 2006-07 Fulbright fellow in Germany. He has written for Der Spiegel Online. He was born in Southern California and has dual U.S. and German citizenship.
By Adam Goldman
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Goldman, Adam. "Journalist freed after being held captive in Somalia for more than 2 years." Washington Post, 23 Sept. 2014. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A383392563/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5d9089c4. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A383392563
What It's Like To Be Held Hostage By Somali Pirates For 2 1/2 Years
All Things Considered. 2018.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 National Public Radio, Inc. (NPR). All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions page at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
http://www.npr.org/
Full Text:
To listen to this broadcast, click here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=631941716
HOST: ARI SHAPIRO
ARI SHAPIRO: Michael Scott Moore is a journalist who traveled to Somalia to write a book about the history of piracy in the Horn of Africa. Things did not go the way he planned. The title of his new book tells you what happened. It's called "The Desert And The Sea: 977 Days Captive On The Somali Pirate Coast." His ordeal began just after Michael Scott Moore dropped off a colleague at a small airport in Somalia. And as he was heading back into town, his car came upon a flatbed truck full of armed men.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: The 12 or so gunmen on the back came off the flatbed and around to my side of the car and pulled me out. They bloodied me. They broke my glasses. They broke my wrist. And they piled me into another waiting SUV and drove me off into the Somali bush.
SHAPIRO: That was day one. Over the next two years and eight months, Moore was kept in huts and on a hijacked tuna fishing boat full of other hostages. He got to know his captors. He made friends with other prisoners, and he kept turning over one line in his head, something a pirate said in the earliest days of his captivity.
MOORE: You have made a mistake, he said. He said, mistakes are human. And it was an insulting thing to say because there he was in a position to make something off my ransom, and he is telling me that I made some sort of a mistake as if I had made a wrong move within Somalia, as if I had done something to cross the gang. He was trying to make me feel guilty. But, of course, that echoed in my mind for the rest of my time because I made a very big mistake, you know? I not only went to Somalia. I got captured, and that weighed on me for the entire 2 1/2 years obviously.
SHAPIRO: Was going to Somalia the mistake? Was it something that you did when you were in Somalia? Not to place blame on you, but as you turned this over and over in your head, what was the conclusion?
MOORE: Yeah (laughter) well, that's a good question. The longer I was there, obviously, the more sorry I was that I'd even gone to Somalia. No, the - going to Somalia in itself to research the book, no, it was not in itself a mistake. But after a few months of captivity, it was no longer worth it, you know?
SHAPIRO: At various moments throughout your captivity, you are allowed to call your mother, usually to ask for ransom payments.
MOORE: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: And these are some of the most painful and also sometimes kind of comically absurd exchanges of the book.
MOORE: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: Will you read from one of these passages?
MOORE: (Reading) He scrolled through the list of contacts on his phone and found my mother's number, pressed call and handed it to me. Her contact name on the screen was (foreign language spoken), mother of the infidel. Hello, said the infidel's mother. Mom, I said, the men here are threatening to sell me to Al-Shabab within three days if they don't get their money. OK, she said, playing it quite cool. Garfanji repeated his demand for a letter of absolution from the president. It must be signed by Obama, he said. It must have a White House seal.
(Reading) How should she send it, I asked. She can send it by email, said the pirate boss. You could just mock something up in Word, I mumbled (laughter) into the phone. Oh, said my mother, who would have been coached on this question by the FBI. I don't know if we can do that, Michael, that would be forgery. Tell her the demand is still $20 million, Garfanji said. What is her counter offer? Mom answered, $8,000. Maybe we can go up to $10,000 (laughter). The difference between the two offers made me dizzy, but I felt proud of my mom. It was the only serious response. She says $10,000, I said.
SHAPIRO: There are so many emotions in that one passage.
(LAUGHTER)
MOORE: Yes.
SHAPIRO: I mean, as you read it, you're laughing, but also your mother is talking to her son who is being held by pirates in Somalia. You can imagine how she must be feeling.
MOORE: It's horrifying.
SHAPIRO: And the whole thing seems like such an absurdist farce.
MOORE: It was, and it got worse. The whole ordeal was horrible on my mother, and the FBI agents that supported her said that she was just exceptionally good under pressure because it was obviously an emotional thing for her. I didn't think that she would be placed in that position, honestly. But that's how it worked out.
SHAPIRO: Is she eager to read this book, or does she not want to relive it?
MOORE: Yeah. She's read it, but it took her awhile. She said I can only read a few pages at a time.
(LAUGHTER)
SHAPIRO: I've heard different narratives about pirates, that they're effectively terrorists or that they're just desperate poor people, that these people are fundamentally evil or fundamentally sympathetic. What's your view?
MOORE: They are not fundamentally terrorists. It's also a lie, though, that every pirate is a frustrated fisherman. That's a very convenient story for the pirates to put forward. The true part of it is that Somali piracy has its roots in illegal fishing, and illegal fishing is still a huge problem up and down Africa. But that's one point of the title of "The Desert And The Sea" is that most of the pirates I met were not fishermen. And as it turns out, let's say in a skiff full of six pirates, all six of those guides need to be gunmen. Only one of them needs to know how to run the outboard motor. So a pirate gang can get along with a whole lot of people who are not fishermen and have no experience on the water. And as a matter of fact, a lot of pirates can't even swim. The other thing, though, the other important thing to say is that there would be no piracy in Somalia if enough kids had jobs.
SHAPIRO: You were in captivity for so long. You at one point write hope is like heroin to a hostage, and it can be just as destructive. What do you mean by that?
MOORE: Hope was a cycle, and after a while, it became a destructive cycle. People say, well, how did you hang on to hope for two years and eight months? And the fact is I didn't. I learned to live without hope. So having your hopes raised and then dashed every two weeks, which is what the guards tried to do - they would say, Michael, don't worry, you know, you're going to be out in two weeks or a month or something - was devastating. It was actually no way to live. And so I had to find a different level of existing. And it turns out you can live without hope.
SHAPIRO: That's not something we ever really hear in our lives. There are so many quotes about a man cannot live without hope. You're saying you can live without hope.
MOORE: I'm saying you absolutely can, yeah. Any Hallmark-like quotes to the contrary are wrong.
SHAPIRO: What's that like?
MOORE: Well, hope and despair are just two ways of approaching the future. I don't know which philosopher I'm paraphrasing - I think maybe Sartre - but those are just two mindsets towards an uncertain future. And if you recognize that and simply don't think forward towards the future and don't insist on a rosy outlook for the next couple of weeks or months or years, then you can live in the moment. And that's what I had to learn to do. I would have snapped if I had done it any other way.
SHAPIRO: This book's conclusion is also written into the title - "977 Days Captive." After nearly three years, Michael Scott Moore was freed in September of 2014. The ransom was $1.6 million. He calls it a filthy compromise. I asked Moore how often he thinks about the years he spent with the Somali pirates.
MOORE: Oh, all the time. I mean, I don't dwell on it, but it's important not to just stuff it away. I think it's important to make sure that you realize it's still part of your life. While I was in Somalia, I thought of my life in Berlin and California, which is where I live now, as a totally different planet, you know. And now it's easy to think of Somalia as a different planet. But it's not, you know, so you have to live with both.
SHAPIRO: Michael Scott Moore, thanks so much for talking with us.
MOORE: Thank you.
SHAPIRO: His book is "The Desert And The Sea: 977 Days Captive On The Somali Pirate Coast."
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"What It's Like To Be Held Hostage By Somali Pirates For 2 1/2 Years." All Things Considered, 24 July 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A548334612/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=41997bcd. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A548334612
Journalist Held Captive By Pirates Says Focus And Forgiveness Were Crucial
Fresh Air. 2018.
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HOST: DAVE DAVIES
DAVE DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. Since the early 2000s, pirates operating off the coast of Somalia have hijacked hundreds of ships and held thousands of crew members hostage for ransom. Our guest, Michael Scott Moore, is a journalist who was captured on dry land by pirates in Somalia in January 2012 and held more than 2 1/2 years before he was released. Moore is a citizen of the United States and Germany.
After he covered a trial of pirates in Berlin, he decided to travel to Somalia to explore the world of pirates and the possibility that the Somali coast could put piracy behind and develop a viable maritime economy. He took precautions but was seized and taken hostage. Over the course of his captivity, Moore was beaten and moved frequently. He contracted malaria. He tried unsuccessfully to escape and, for a period of time, considered suicide. He tells his harrowing story and explores some of the history and causes of piracy in a new memoir.
Michael Scott Moore has written for several publications and is the author of an earlier comic novel about Los Angeles called "Too Much Of Nothing," as well as a travel book about surfing, "Sweetness And Blood." I spoke to him about his new book, "The Desert And The Sea: 977 Days Captive On The Somali Pirate Coast." Well, Michael Scott Moore, welcome to FRESH AIR.
MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE: Thank you.
DAVIES: I'd like you to read this portion which describes your capture. You're in a car with an armed guard up front. You want to just set this up and read it for us?
MOORE: Sure. So I was traveling with another journalist, a documentary maker named Ashwin Raman. He decided to fly off to Mogadishu, so we drove him to the airport. We saw him off, and it was on the way back from the airport on a dusty road towards town that a truck full of kidnappers was waiting for us. And the truck was a flatbed truck with a cannon sort of bolted in the back. It's called a technical in that part of the world. And they're very common sort of battle wagons in the Somali Civil War.
(Reading) I saw the words kibir jabiye (ph) on the technical and felt a moment of relief. A car honked. The technical jerked to life. I had not flown to Somalia to test my nerve against the worst fears of a foreign correspondent. I didn't want to tempt death, but I had broken one of the cardinal rules of anyone who pokes around in troublesome parts of the world, which is to keep your family's lives unaffected. The horror of crossing that line wasn't evident to me when the technical approached the car with its cannon aimed through our windshield. It wasn't even clear when a dozen or so men jumped off holding weapons. It wasn't clear because my brain recoiled in denial. I told myself it was a traffic stop. These armed clan soldiers just wanted to see my passport. No problem. My German passport was here in my bag.
I had never witnessed denial working in my own head with so much specific clarity, but it moved like a gyroscope compensating for a drastic blow that hadn't even arrived to maintain some balance. And when the gunmen swarmed to my side of the car and fired into the air, the balance wobbled, and my bowels twisted and I understood very well what the hell was going on. I leaned against Gerlach to cover my face with one arm, as if that would help. When I turned out to be alive in spite of the thunder of gunfire, I held the door closed with my right hand. They wrenched it open and pounded my wrist with their Kalashnikovs.
I had never felt so much violent malice at such close range, and I kept pulling at the door, hoping to buy time while our guard in the front seat performed his job. I was confused by the number of men who kept pounding my wrist with their gun barrels. I felt bones crack. I let go of the door, and they pulled me into the dust outside and beat me on the head.
DAVIES: And that was the last freedom you experienced for more than 2 1/2 years.
MOORE: That's right.
DAVIES: So you're taken into a car, and you're driven somewhere else. What were the first few days like? I mean, for one thing, you were injured. Your wrist was broken. Were you treated?
MOORE: Yeah. My wrist was broken, and I wasn't treated for a few days. So I was in pain, and I was confused. I was - my scalp was bloody, and that was drying. And I was confused. I didn't know what was going on. They held me in a house for a few days, a very dirty prison house, along with two other hostages that I didn't meet for a couple of - for a little while. And I was just afraid. I was afraid of what was about to happen.
DAVIES: And you end up being moved around an awful lot. They would see planes in the sky and blame you for it, or move you again because they thought they were being spied upon.
MOORE: Yeah. We moved out of the house pretty quickly and then moved around from bush camp to bush camp for the first few days. And I think after about 10 days or so a plane flew over and circled over our bush camp. Maybe not right above, but pretty close. And it was the first time we'd heard a plane in a while, which means we weren't on a flight path. We weren't on - it couldn't have been a commercial jet. And the way it circled, it obviously wasn't a commercial jet. So the camp of Somalis went dead silent (laughter), and Rolly, who was the other hostage at the time, said, they think that plane came for you. Because he'd been in captivity in Somalia for three months, and he hadn't heard very many planes. And he was from the Seychelles. And I said, well, maybe it did.
DAVIES: Right. And that's something that would be repeated countless times over the next two years. There came a point when they first asked you about a ransom and a pirate named Duulaay - Am I getting that close?
MOORE: Ali Duulaay. Yeah.
DAVIES: Right.
MOORE: Duulaay was sort of his last name.
DAVIES: He takes you out to a remote spot, gives you a phone, and says, we're going to call your mother. What did he tell you to say?
MOORE: Yeah. He said - well, and demand from her $20 million. I mean, I think I must have smirked because they said, it's not funny. But it was not - you know, in some sense it was funny. It was not a serious demand. But it was an incredible sort of opening gambit. Not very many people have said they're used to hearing $20 million as an opening demand.
DAVIES: And he pointed a pistol at your face and said...
MOORE: Oh, yeah, he was holding a pistol and waving it at me.
DAVIES: And you were also to get a letter signed by President Obama absolving the pirates?
MOORE: That came later.
DAVIES: OK.
MOORE: That came from another boss named Mohammed Garfanji. But yeah, Obama was president at the time, and he wanted a specific letter absolving him.
DAVIES: OK. And so this first time - I mean, this is one of the remarkable things about being a hostage in the age of modern communications - is that, I mean, they got your cell phone - your mom's number, I guess, from your cell phone, which they took from your backpack. And then they can dial her. No?
MOORE: Not quite. I had a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and I should have called them first, probably. But my backpack was stolen. So all my notes with all my phone numbers were stolen. The only number I had in my head was my mother's number in California. She wound up being the negotiator on the phone with the pirates, which is not something I intended.
DAVIES: What did she sound like when she answered?
MOORE: Oh, she was horrified. But - I mean, she was obviously trembling. She was obviously scared. She was also obviously waiting for the call. So in other words, she knew I had been kidnapped. The call came about a week after my capture. And by then, she'd been visited by the FBI. And so she knew more or less what was going on.
DAVIES: Right. And you said that - I mean, you had many conversations with her over the next 2 1/2 years - and that she always kind of kept her composure because the FBI had given her specific instructions on...
MOORE: Yeah.
DAVIES: ...How to behave and what to say. Yeah.
MOORE: Yeah, that's right. They gave her a lot of support and a lot of advice. And so she was pretty incredible on the phone. I mean, it was obvious that it was an emotional thing for her. But even the FBI said, somehow, she could turn it off and be all business on the phone.
DAVIES: You write that one of the decisions that she made was not to publicize your case. Why?
MOORE: The idea was that a famous hostage would become more expensive. So she talked it over with some magazines I had worked for, including Der Spiegel in Germany, and also with the FBI. And she made the decision to keep it out of the news. I think there were a few reports when I got captured. But there weren't more reports until I actually got out.
DAVIES: So you settle into this pattern of being moved around a lot. And you obviously got to know a lot of the guards. What were the days like? What were the guards like?
MOORE: The days were very long and slow. The guards - they changed over now and then? So, sometimes, the guards were very chaotic. Sometimes, the guards were a little bit friendly. I don't think I got to know or got to talk to guards until after about a month or so. At first, it was just hatred, you know? So we were also held in a house just for the first few days. And then there was a rescue of two other hostages in another kind of part of Somalia. And for some reason, the pirates pulled us out - pulled me and one other hostage out of the house and kept us in the bush for the next few weeks. So that was a little bit tense. You know, that's - and that's when they were sort of running around, away from any surveillance planes.
DAVIES: Michael Scott Moore's book is the "Desert And The Sea: 977 Days Captive On The Somali Pirate Coast." We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOAN JEANRENAUD'S "AXIS")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with journalist and author Michael Scott Moore. He spent 2 1/2 years as a captive of Somali pirates after he was captured actually on dry land and held until he was released. His new book about the ordeal is called "The Desert And The Sea."
One of the interesting things about reading this book is you really get to know these guards at least on some level. And there are distinctions among them. At times, you talk to them about what they did, the morality of piracy, how they viewed what they were doing. What was their view on it?
MOORE: Well, they were Muslims. So I thought that was really interesting. Before I went to Somalia to write about pirates, I knew Somalia was a Muslim country and most Somalis were Sufis. I did not think that most pirates were devout. But most of my guards took breaks five times a day to pray. And when I talked to one of them about it, a guard named Bashko, he said he was a Muslim, but he was also in a position to take money from me because he said I was an infidel.
And so stealing from an infidel wasn't theft. And the excuse he gave for that was that in the Quran it says to struggle with the infidel. And they were going to be merciful to me because they were not al-Shabab. They were not radical Muslims who would just shoot me dead for being an infidel. But they were going to be - going to feel justified in taking money from my mother. I'd never heard of an interpretation quite like that before. But that was the one that they lived by as Sufis. And I thought it was a strangely fundamentalist excuse for abusing another human being.
DAVIES: You also write that you knew and many people knew that the United States had a publicly declared policy of not paying ransoms for pirates. Did your captors know that?
MOORE: Not apparently. So I think every journalist if not most Americans know that there's is a hard-line policy in Washington against paying ransoms. And I think journalists think and maybe a lot of the American public thinks that this policy keeps us safe. In other words, it's a deterrent to some kidnappers in the world to kidnapping Americans as if they go around and select, you know, one nationality over another based on policy. And that just isn't true.
And once you're in a place like Somalia, you realize how far from the truth that is because none of these guys, at least not in my guard team, paid attention to national policy. And in fact Bashko, the guard I just mentioned, came into my room one day very angry eighteen months into my captivity.
And he was actively fuming about hearing some news that Washington wasn't going to contribute to my ransom. And he challenged me about it. He said, why? Why would a rich country like America not pay a ransom for one of their people? And I said, that's not what we do. And I tried to explain the rationale to him. But by then, it even seemed a little bit weak to me.
DAVIES: There was a period - you know, you were on land when you were captured. And then you were moved to a ship, the Naham 3, right? - which holds a distinction in this period of piracy. Tell us about this ship. Who was onboard?
MOORE: Yeah. The Naham 3 is a tuna vessel operated by a Taiwanese company out of Mauritius, which is an African island. And it had been fishing near the Seychelles when it was captured in - I think it was March 2012, sometime after I was captured. And I was placed onboard with one other hostage. And we joined the hostage crew. So for a while, there were 30 of us.
And this crew turned out to be the last very large group of hostages to be held by Somali pirates. The others are portions of other crews, you know? But this - from this area that you can trace from about 2005 to about 2012 where ships were getting captured all the time, the Naham 3 was probably the last or the last big one. And then there were a few others afterwards who weren't held for quite as long.
DAVIES: Right...
MOORE: But these guys...
DAVIES: ...And held longer than most, too.
MOORE: These guys were held for almost five years, which I think is the second-longest of all the crews that have been held by Somali pirates.
DAVIES: And it's interesting because you'd been in an environment where you were just staying in a house, one house or another, day after day after day. And suddenly, you're on the deck of a ship with 13 people similarly situated, again guarded by, you know, pirate guards with Kalashnikovs. But what a different life that must have been.
MOORE: Yeah. It was almost 30 people. So we were placed on land after having seen the ship from Hobyo. We were held in some sort of Italian colonial rule or something in Hobyo. We saw the ship. And a few weeks later, we were actually placed on the ship. And I had no idea what was going on. I assumed we were going to sail to some other part of the Somali coast to foil, you know, a military rescue or something like that. So I was desperate once we got on the ship. I was really depressed. I also injured my back on the skiff ride over. And the pirates had confiscated any notes I had taken on land. My life seemed to have been, you know, sort of brought low by - when they brought me onto the ship at night.
DAVIES: Right.
MOORE: But in the morning, all of a sudden it was evident that there were 30 hostages. And all of a sudden I had, you know, an enormous group of potential friends.
DAVIES: Right. And so you lived this life together. There were also planes coming over. And you later learned that they actually got a picture - a recognizable picture of you from - through a plane or a satellite?
MOORE: Yeah, that's true. I'm not sure if it was a plane or a satellite. But my mother saw a picture of me on the deck of that ship. And I think she said it was a satellite picture. But a little bit later in the summer in 2012, a plane started to visit the ship very regularly and very conspicuously. And it was obviously taking pictures of us. I think it was a spy plane of some kind.
DAVIES: Right. So you were near the coast, like, about a mile off. You were anchored, which made you look at the water and think about jumping. What...
MOORE: Yeah.
DAVIES: What did you consider in figuring out whether you wanted to try this?
MOORE: Well, I'm a surfer, so I paid attention to the currents. I paid attention to which way the swells were moving. And the first idea, if and when I jumped, would have been to get away from the ship as quickly as possible because I assumed they would start to open fire. So I had to think about how to get away from the ship as quickly as possible. The whole thing seemed ridiculous and dangerous and stupid. So I contemplated it. I - you know, I fantasized about it. But for a long time, I didn't do anything.
DAVIES: But eventually you did, right?
MOORE: Yeah. After that, the plane started coming and - this twin-engine plane. And I wasn't sure whether that was flying from land somewhere or from an aircraft carrier. And that was an intriguing idea to me that there was an aircraft carrier nearby. So it was obvious we were under surveillance. It was clear to me that the Americans knew where I was.
And then one afternoon, the anchor chain of the Naham 3 broke. And instantly the - this 50-meter ship - this industrial fishing ship started to twirl in the water. It started to move with the current, I think, northward along the coast completely out of control. And the crew obviously mustered to try and do something about it. And within 20 minutes, that plane arrived. And the crew got the ship under control, but the engine didn't sound too good so - once we were trundling in some, you know, reasonable way along the coast to some other kind of anchorage.
First, I assumed the pirates were going to take us onshore. So I thought these were the last hours we were going to spend on the ship because the ship was starting to break down. And that night, I also assumed that we were being watched by the Navy, which we probably were. And then I thought, well, maybe there is an aircraft carrier nearby. And I made a plan to get off the ship. I actually got out of bed when I wasn't supposed to be out of bed, found a way to get down to the deck, and I jumped. I jumped into the water.
DAVIES: What did it feel like?
MOORE: (Laughter) It felt great. Oh, my God. No, it was - the water was warm. It was like a 20-foot leap off the deck of the ship, and it was just exultant at first. I mean, of course I was terrified, too, because I expected gunfire. But I swam with the current, with the swell. You know, I had observed which way the waves were going, and I just kept going. And in a couple of minutes, I was clear of the ship. No one fired a shot, and so then I was out there in the dark water.
DAVIES: And then what happened?
MOORE: I assumed the ship was going to keep going 'cause, like I said, the engine wasn't in terrific shape so I didn't think there was a way to turn around the ship. But, you know, I had swum with the direction of the swell. And actually what the pilot of the ship did was cut the engines and let the ship drift towards me on the swell. And that was fairly terrifying because it was a big, lit-up industrial ship, and it started tilting towards me on these black waves, you know.
DAVIES: And it was covered with barnacles and would've cut you to pieces if it run over...
MOORE: Exactly.
DAVIES: Yeah, yeah.
MOORE: It was - because it was a larger craft, it was going to move faster than me. And if I had let it roll over me, it probably would've cut me up because it had been sitting at anchor for so long. So I decided pretty quickly to get back on the ship. I raised my hand. They found me eventually with the search lights, and I raised my hand. And they threw me a life preserver. I have to say if I had heard a helicopter at that point, I would've swum around and evaded. But by that point, everything was pretty desperate and pretty hopeless.
DAVIES: Were you punished?
MOORE: Oh, yeah. No, I mean, the pirates were angry. The rest of the crew was very helpful. They gave me some water in case I was dehydrated or hypothermic or something. They tended some wounds and that kind of thing, but the pirates were really angry. And the next morning, Ali Dulai, who was one of the bosses we've mentioned, came into my cabin where I had been stuffed in solitary confinement and beat me on the - while I was lying on the bunk.
DAVIES: Michael Scott Moore's new book is "The Desert And The Sea." After a break, he'll tell more about his captivity, including how a homily delivered by Pope Francis on the radio inspired a change in his thinking that allowed him to cope with the ordeal. Also jazz critic Kevin Whitehead tells the story of a new recording inspired by a discussion of art, race and politics in America. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MICHEL PORTAL'S "THE SANDPIPER")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross who's off this week. We're speaking with journalist Michael Scott Moore who was working on a story about Somali pirates in 2012 when he was seized and held hostage for 2 1/2 years. He has a new book about the experience called "The Desert And The Sea." He was captured and held on land, but at one point was transferred to a captured tuna vessel. When we left off, he described trying to escape by jumping into the sea. He was recaptured and beaten for making the attempt.
You eventually were taken back off of the ship and resumed your life of being moved from one house to another. And this went on for a very, very long time with intermittent phone calls to your mother and negotiations. You know, people in prison sometimes adjust to life there. I mean, they make a life - not the one they would have chosen. And I'm wondering how you adapted to this. I mean, surely you didn't come to think of this as home, but did it get normal in some way? How did you maintain your mental state?
MOORE: Slowly it settled in after about a month or so that I was going to be there for a long time. And once I realized I was in a house where I wasn't going to move for a while, I asked for a yoga mat. I asked for a mat where I could do yoga. And I tried to do it out of eyesight of the pirates 'cause I figured it would just sort of baffle them or make them laugh. And it - that's exactly what it did, but, you know, they never had me out of their sight.
(Laughter) So first time I did yoga, they all - all their heads sort of looked in through the doorway, and they started to laugh. But then they started to do yoga with me. Some of them were aware of not getting much exercise either in these prison houses, so they would come in with sort of cardboard flats but broken-down boxes - right? - to stand on on the filthy floor. And they had these makeshift yoga mats and started to do the same postures.
DAVIES: So you had your own class.
MOORE: I had my own class. Yeah, after a while, I started to correct their postures (laughter).
DAVIES: And did that create a bond at all?
MOORE: Sure. I mean, with the guards who were inclined to be friendly to me already - some of those were guards that knew me from the ship or from before. They became almost friends, you know? The other guards really wouldn't - you know, didn't seem to care about me at all and didn't even want to hear a word of Somali from me. But with those guards, I could build up a rapport - with the friendly ones. And we could sort of mix our Somali and English and have conversations.
DAVIES: You're a writer. It's, you know, a longtime habit in a mental refuge. And I gather sometimes you had notebooks. Sometimes you wrote things that were confiscated and lost. But when you could write, was it helpful? What did you write about?
MOORE: Oh, it was incredibly helpful. And of course the first few times I had notebooks - I think I had my notes confiscated twice while I was a hostage. And those first couple of times, of course, I was writing about what was happening, and that was probably my mistake. So the the bosses were very curious about what I was writing. And sometimes I even quoted one of the guards, you know, naming the boss or something like that. And I got the impression that some of the guards might've been punished for some of the things I'd written.
So the third time I got my hands on a notebook, which was very late, so I - once I was brought back onto land, I went a very long time with no notes, no pen or paper. And that was horrible. That was awful. Once I got my hands on pen and paper again, I started to write recipes, and I started to draft a novel. So I wrote about things that were not going on, and that actually helped me hang onto the notebooks.
DAVIES: Recipes?
MOORE: Recipes. I was so hungry that I started to fantasize about Mexican food in California, meals that I'd had before here and there, including a kidney stew that I remembered from Great Britain but never cooked in my life. And I wrote down the ingredients just to imagine what it would be like to cook it. And it still surprises me - because I'm not an especially good cook - that I got all the ingredients right.
DAVIES: Did you pick up any Somali recipes? I mean, they fed you - what? - camel meat and rice sometimes.
MOORE: They did. Those were good days when I got camel meat. Most of the time, they just fed me beans or pasta with some boiled potato on it, so not very much. Sometimes for protein, they boiled a goat. And boiled mutton isn't something I need to eat again very soon. Camel is especially good, and we got that every now and then.
DAVIES: You got a Bible at one point. This might've been on the boat, the Naham 3, right?
MOORE: Yeah, it was on the Naham 3. Yeah.
DAVIES: And you said you read it through more than once.
MOORE: Yeah, I probably read it twice. I had nothing to read otherwise, and so I devoured it actually.
DAVIES: And what did you get from that - from reading the Bible? And you weren't...
MOORE: (Laughter).
DAVIES: ...Particularly a religious person before, right?
MOORE: Right. I had been a Catholic boy, but I was lapsed Catholic. And so I read it very critically. I was looking for, you know, some solid advice (laughter). And in the Old Testament, it was remarkable how all the advice was, you know, make a good life on Earth. The Song of Psalm and the Psalms, which some of which come from King David, they were all about building a very good worldly life, which is the opposite of what we think of as Christianity obviously. And so when I got to the New Testament, I was looking for very specific advice about how to die basically. And it's remarkable how vague the New Testament can be sometimes. But all that stuff sank in, and I think it wound up helping down the road.
DAVIES: You thought about suicide. You say you thought about suicide a lot, and there's a family history here. Do you want to share that?
MOORE: Yeah. Well, so my father died when I was 12. I thought it was a heart attack for a long time. I didn't realise until I did some research myself in 2010 - so not very long before I went to Somalia; about a year and a half or so - that he had shot himself. So he committed suicide, and that was on my mind obviously. Once I was captured in Somalia, I felt that somehow I had steered myself into this situation that was - where I had to make a similar decision. And it was on my mind a lot, especially after I wound up on land after the ship.
DAVIES: And how did you consider it? What - yeah.
MOORE: Well, there were weapons around all the time. And sometimes the pirates actually abandoned a Kalashnikov on the floor. And so then I would have to think very carefully about whether I should pick up the Kalashnikov and whether I should start trying to escape that way. So in other words, whether I should start killing my guards. But even if it was half-successful, I probably would've been shot dead by the rest of the guards. There were never fewer than seven of them in a prison house. So in the end, it would've been a suicidal gesture.
And all these things were going through my head. You know, for a while, it was a daily decision whether I should do it or not. And I had to make a determined decision to stay alive because I knew that either - I knew there was a crisis at home. I knew my mother was suffering to get me out. And I also knew that there were probably military plans in place, and somebody somewhere might actually risk their lives to come and get me. And I thought, well, suicide could solve all that. You know, it could end the problem at home and save any SEAL(s) the incredible risk of trying to come get me. All these things went through my head.
DAVIES: And so why do you think, in the end, you didn't try?
MOORE: Well, a big motivation was hatred for the guards and - as well as suffering and depression, you know? But at some point - and this was after hearing a homily from the pope, as a matter of fact, on the radio. At some point, I made a conscious decision to forgive my guards, to forgive the most immediate people who were causing me pain, you know? And that was an incredible mental transformation. And once I reordered my brain like that, I no longer had that impulse to kill myself. It was a - you know, it was a daily discipline, but it worked. And it was also a good thing that I had pen and paper at that time. So I could write, and I could distract myself. But that mental reorientation was absolutely crucial.
DAVIES: Can you talk a little more about that - I mean, how you managed to let go of the hatred and why that changed everything.
MOORE: Well, I mean I was sitting there feeling guilty about all sorts of my own problems, you know, all sorts of mistakes that I had made. And what the pope said was very eloquent. And it said something about how the mercy of God can actually lift these sins away. In other words, if you forgive other people, you can be free of your own mistakes. And that worked. It really did. I changed my mental attitude towards the guards and stopped directing hatred towards them, you know, during a good portion of each day. And I felt lighter in myself. And I started to get on with the business of just surviving.
DAVIES: We're speaking with Michael Scott Moore. He's a journalist and author who was captured by Somali pirates and held for 2 1/2 years. His new book about the ordeal is called "The Desert And The Sea." We'll continue our conversation in a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF STEFANO BOLLANI'S "ALOBAR E KUDRA")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with writer Michael Scott Moore. His new book about his experience being held captive in Somalia by pirates is called "The Desert And The Sea."
Eventually it happens, right? I mean, eventually your mom connects with people. And it all works out. A ransom is paid. And you are taken to the airport to a guy driving a little plane out of this airport at Galkayo. And could you describe the feeling?
MOORE: Yeah. Well, it happened very suddenly. And I didn't know what was going on. And I certainly didn't believe that I was about to go free even though the pirates kept telling me that.
DAVIES: They told you that 100 times before.
MOORE: They told me 100 times before. And I stopped believing them, you know, months if not years before. And then a car arrived in the middle of the day, which was slightly unusual. They said, Michael, you know, we're going to take you to the airport. And I didn't dare believe them. But I packed my things. And sure enough, when I got in the car, they said, we're not going to actually take you to the airport. We're going to drive you into the bush and hand you to some other Somalis. I thought, fantastic, you just sold me to another gang, you know, if not al-Shabab. So I was angry again.
But there was a slight difference in the way I was being treated. I wasn't being packed into the car with a bunch of guys holding their rifles. It was just a couple of English-speaking translators with not very much in the way of weapons. And I was handed to another Somali who managed to get my mother on the phone. So he called a number and got a negotiator, who had been working on my case - and my mother. And they both sounded elated. They sounded really happy. And they said, Michael, you're going to the airport. And your pilot's name is going to be Derek. And then I knew I was going free. And of course it was - I felt lighter. But it was a progressive experience. It wasn't sudden elation. Oh, my gosh, I'm going free. It was one step at a time, you know, towards not feeling quite so oppressed.
DAVIES: Can you tell us what the terms of your ransom were?
MOORE: Well, my mom talked them down to 1.6 million. The demand was 20 million, but I got out for 1.6 million.
DAVIES: And where did she find that?
MOORE: Oh, she had to scrape it up herself. I mean, she collected it with help from family and friends, from some magazines I had worked for and some institutions in the U.S. and in Germany.
DAVIES: You know, we didn't mention. But you had malaria in your captivity.
MOORE: Yeah.
DAVIES: And typhoid too?
MOORE: Yeah, it sounds like I had malaria and typhoid at the same time. I just felt sick. But the pirates actually took a blood sample and brought it to a real clinic. And I know that because it came back with test results and the proper drugs. So they were trying to keep their hostage alive. And the test results said typhoid as well as malaria. And I had drugs for all of it. And it took about a week, but I got better.
DAVIES: So what kind of physical shape were you in when you were released?
MOORE: Oh, terrible. I had been so malnourished that my immune system had actually started to fail. So I had infections in my skin. I had boils. I had some kind of a just - I don't know. I was coughing for some reason - a lung infection or something, certainly an ear infection - you know, all kinds of little things that were going wrong that I had just gotten used to. And I was also incredibly thin. My muscle had wasted away. So even though I'd been doing yoga, I think I was weaker than I realized. I had simply not been walking enough.
DAVIES: It's really touching when you describe in the book your reunion with some of the people who were also hostages - the first two guys that you knew and then some of the crew from the ship, the Nahad 13 (ph).
MOORE: Yeah, the Nahad 3 (ph).
DAVIES: I'm sorry, yeah.
MOORE: Like we said, they were held for almost five years. And so when I got out, they were still captive. I got involved in their case a little bit. And when they finally got out in the fall of 2016, I went to Nairobi, and I saw them. And that was wonderful because they weren't expecting to see me. They weren't - at that point, they were also bewildered by going free after all that time. And they were surrounded by people they'd never seen before, you know. And then they saw me, and they sort of erupted. It was really, really wonderful.
DAVIES: You describe a Facebook message you got from somebody in Somalia, which was - tell us about it.
MOORE: When I got out, I - maybe a month later or so, I got a message through messenger on Facebook from one of my guards. He contacted me and just wanted to sort of - I think he tried to say he was sorry or something like that. But he was interesting to sort of correspond with.
DAVIES: You know, it's interesting that one of the guards said to you at one point, you know, Michael, pirates no more. Pirates finished. This has really kind of come to an end, this period of piracy on that part of the coast, right?
MOORE: And it happened while I was lying there. Yeah, exactly. So it stopped becoming much of a headline while I was a captive. That was Bashko. He said, yeah, the pirates aren't so active now anymore. And that was the first I heard of it. But it started to be corroborated by things I heard on the radio.
DAVIES: And why is that? Why did it come to an end?
MOORE: Because - mainly because of shipping industry practices. Cargo ships still give Somalia a wide berth. They don't sail too close to the coast. And a lot of them hire armed guards. And it turns out a spatter of bullets in the water can scare off a skiff. It's just not worth it for them if there's actually an armed team on a cargo ship. And that has really convinced - it hasn't gotten rid of the pirate gangs. But it's convinced the bosses to concentrate on other businesses.
And, you know, they're still out there running around in skiffs maybe in, you know, smaller numbers because when - especially the last spring in 2017, ships tried to sail closer to Somalia and sort of cut their distance by sailing close to the coast again. They got captured. So the gangs are still around. And actually, I've written - I wrote a feature for Businessweek, a little more than a year ago, explaining how some of the bosses have actually moved into this into human smuggling. At least one former pirate financier became a financier for human traffickers on the Horn of Africa.
DAVIES: Well, that's discouraging. I mean, of all the money that's come in in ransom payments, I mean, I guess one thought might be, well, there's some capital there that could be used for investment in a legitimate economy.
MOORE: Well, exactly. And I was hoping that would be true. I think probably it has bled out into the legitimate economy. But the actual pirate bosses, they're gangsters. They're organized criminals. So they've probably ploughed some of their money into real estate but also into other illegal businesses, including gun smuggling. That's another big one.
DAVIES: You know, I have to ask you. This was an ordeal. This was a horrible experience. It went on for, you know, 2 1/2 years. And were you at the time often thinking, if I survive this, I'm going to have a great story to tell. This is going to be a book.
MOORE: Well, I knew I had good material. But after some time in Somalia, I didn't - I couldn't afford to hope I was going to get out anymore. So I simply had to find a different way to live. So no, I didn't assume I was going to get out to be able to write the book. I knew there was at least a 50 percent chance that - you know, who knows? - a rescue was going to come in. Or I would get shot accidentally - but at least a 50 percent chance that I would get killed somehow.
DAVIES: So you had to survive by saying, this is my life.
MOORE: Yeah, I had to reduce everything to just the beans in the morning and the misery during the afternoon.
DAVIES: Well, Michael Scott Moore, thanks so much for speaking with us.
MOORE: Thank you very much.
DAVIES: Michael Scott Moore is a journalist and novelist. His new book is "The Desert And The Sea: 977 Days Captive On The Somali Pirate Coast." Coming up, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead tells the story of a new recording inspired by a discussion of art, race and politics in America. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANGLE AND JOAO CESER'S "BENDER")
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Journalist Held Captive By Pirates Says Focus And Forgiveness Were Crucial." Fresh Air, 30 July 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A548335100/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a8781906. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A548335100
QUOTE:
"I’m not sure there is such a thing as surf literature. But if there is, it has moved well beyond the self-mockery of Mark Twain ..., the hyperbole of Jack London and the snazzy pop-¬anthropology of Tom Wolfe. ... Moore’s ... history is a thing of shreds and patches, casually, almost randomly, assembled. But what he has done, subtly and beguilingly, is write a book about surfing that often is not really about surfing but about simply being alive (and, in some cases, dead)."
A nomadic Californian surfer once took a wrong turn somewhere in Europe and ended up at the Berlin Wall. His faithful board still slung across his back like a guitar, he gazed up at one of the border guards, ensconced in a tower behind a machine gun and miles of barbed wire, and yelled out, “Man, you are bummed, because you will never know what true surfing really is!” That ringing indictment of totalitarianism — reported in a 1980s issue of Surfer magazine — turns out to be wrong. In Michael Scott Moore’s clued-in and far-flung “Sweetness and Blood,” the border guard, so to speak, exchanges his military uniform for baggy shorts and a rash vest. The surfer who came in from the cold. Trabants out, woodies in.
On Moore’s post-cold-war surfari, everyone is now a beach bum, no one is bummed, anybody can surf anytime, anywhere, from Cuba to Morocco, from the Gaza Strip to Japan. Of course, the Siberian waves aren’t too hot. And personally, I still require palm trees and a sultry breeze before I paddle out. But Moore and a robust wet suit have boldly gone where only serious and often seriously unhinged dudes have gone before, mapping out a fresh, unexpected cartography of the waves.
The literature of surfing takes off in the late 18th century, with the voyages of Capt. James Cook. Cook couldn’t even swim, much less surf, which perhaps explains why the Hawaiian watermen eventually did to him exactly what his name seemed to be recommending. But not before one of his crew declared surfing “the most supreme pleasure.” It was the kind of utopianism that seeped even into the French Revolution, though it was tempered by the guillotine.
The tradition of the surf bard extolling the exploits of ace riders goes right back to the origins of surfing, a millennium or so ago, in the islands of Polynesia. It was never enough just to go surfing: you had to hype it up, too. Moore is a modern surf troubadour, singing the adventures of a cast of eccentric pioneers, not to mention Agatha Christie (whose surf writing had hitherto escaped me) and the Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who becomes a kind of honorary surfer by virtue of having been an individualist and dissident who spent time in jail.
The classic lexicon of “epic,” “insane” and “gnarly” is mostly set aside here. Highly imperfect waves abound. The closing line of the book, quoting a Japanese surfer, “Paddle, paddle — and sometimes, big wave come!,” sounds like “Waiting for Godot”with (or rather without) waves. Moore, an itinerant American who lives in Berlin and writes for Spiegel Online International, writes in a spirit closer to Bruce Chatwin’s “In Patagonia”than to the latest issue of Carve.
Photo
Credit Tom Kelley/Getty Images
During the Persian Gulf war, surfers used to say, “If only Saddam surfed!” The “civilizing mission” of the American military has ended up planting surf boards on beaches around the globe just as the British left cricket bats behind. According to Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now,”“Charlie don’t surf.” Now Charlie definitely does surf, and maybe Al Qaeda too. “Osama? . . . Salem says don’t come out today. Nah, the surf’s flat.” That’s a joke phone call by an expat American surfer Moore meets in Morocco, but it’s almost plausible.
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In his quest for the “first” surfer in various unlikely locations, Moore gives the palm to an Italian ice cream salesman who rode the waves off Cornwall before World War II. In Germany, Moore discovers that surfers first took to the icy North Sea in the 1950s, when “surfing on a German beach was a small expression of die neue Zeit, the shift from Hitler’s nightmare and the long shadow of the 19th century to an outlook that was more spontaneous, easygoing, modern and rich.” Hemingway played an indirect part in making France the West Coast of Europe, when the scriptwriter on the film of “The Sun Also Rises,”on location in Biarritz and eyeing the surf, wired back to Hollywood for a board.
Cornish surfers supposedly used to steal coffin lids to surf on, and there is a death-wish side to surfing. But there is also a yearning for rebirth, maybe even for the kind of harmony that seems unattainable on land. Moore tracks down Surfers Against Apartheid, founded in the 1980s by South African surfers to boycott contests at home, and an 86-year-old Jewish surfer from California who distributes surfboards to Palestinians in Gaza — despite the Israeli blockade and the criticisms of at least one surfing rabbi.
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Surfing is less a counterculture than a cooler microcosm of the larger nonsurfing world, an ironic empire of anti-imperialists. In Cuba, Moore writes, where the first local surfers rode plywood desktops in the 1980s, Castro once feared that malcontents might steal a wave all the way to Miami (though now there’s a Havana Surf Club, supplied mainly with donations from across the Florida Strait). Surfing aspires to communion but is sucked into conflict. The Bali nightclub bombing of 2002 was, in part, an attack on surfing culture — “acts of unreason against another kind of unreason,” Moore writes — since Australian surfers paved the way for the expansion of tourism in the region.
I’m not sure there is such a thing as surf literature. But if there is, it has moved well beyond the self-mockery of Mark Twain (“None but the natives ever master the art of surf-bathing thoroughly”), the hyperbole of Jack London and the snazzy pop-anthropology of Tom Wolfe. Later this year, the surf writer Matt Warshaw is bringing out what promises to become the standard “History of Surfing.” Moore’s own history is a thing of shreds and patches, casually, almost randomly, assembled. But what he has done, subtly and beguilingly, is write a book about surfing that often is not really about surfing but about simply being alive (and, in some cases, dead).
I once came across a surf-and-brimstone article in a magazine on top of a wardrobe in a surf shack in Yallingup, Western Australia, next to a dozing snake. The headline was something like “Sex or Surfing — You Choose!” I think the only way sex gets into this book is when Moore pulls out his Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax and proceeds to hand it out to deprived surfers (along, finally, with his beloved board).
“Mad, bad and dangerous to know.” A lot of surfers would sign up for this description of that well-known wave aficionado, Byron (“And I have loved thee, ocean! . . . I wanton’d with thy breakers”), and Moore bathes his tribe in a warm, primal glow. But there is tragedy, maybe even absurdity, exemplified in the lament of Ken Bradshaw, after he rode what many rated as the biggest wave ever surfed (60 or 70 feet — or maybe it was 85): “How can I ever get that high again?” One surfer I know has posted this line from Camus’s notebooks on his Facebook page: “Beauty is unbearable and drives us to despair.” Take out “beauty” and put in “surfing,” and Camus’s next line still makes sense: “It offers us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we yearn to stretch out over the whole of time.”
SWEETNESS AND BLOOD
How Surfing Spread From Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, With Some Unexpected Results
By Michael Scott Moore
328 pp. Rodale. $25.99
Andy Martin is the author of “Stealingthe Wave: The Epic Struggle of KenBradshaw and Mark Foo.”
A version of this review appears in print on June 20, 2010, on Page BR16 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Surfin’ Safari. Today's Paper|Subscribe
QUOTE"
"The book is diverting but there is room for more on the sublime, childlike thrill of catching a wave—the momentary mastering of a frightening thing, the drop down its face and the swoop along its length to keep ahead of the white water. And about the beauty of the shoreline when seen from a buoyant lump of foam and fibreglass, while you get your breath back and wait for the next wave to come."
Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, With Some Unexpected Results. By Michael Scott Moore. Rodale; 336 pages; $25.99. Buy from Amazon.com
SURFING, with its risk-taking, expanses of taut flesh and sun-bleached hair, has been the coolest sport for more than half a century. To the uninitiated this masks an important truth. Surfing is more akin to fly-fishing or bird-watching than to parachute jumping or alligator wrestling. Waves, more often than not, are no good for riding. Surfing involves lots of waiting around and nerdy discussions of equipment. Surfers must rise early in the morning (when the waves tend to be best) or risk losing the right to gloat to others about how they should have been here earlier.
Like any pursuit that relies on an ephemeral conjunction of conditions, information technology has taken some of the magic away. Serious birdwatchers can subscribe to text-message services (or Twitter feeds) that will tell them where others have spotted an Iberian Chiffchaff recently. Surfers have websites like magicseaweed.com that predict when and where the desired combination of low pressure far out to sea with the right local tides and winds is likely to be found at any given time. Governments unwittingly help out by providing data online from wave buoys. This allows a surfer living in London to decide whether to head to Portugal or to Cornwall for the weekend, though it also increases the chances that many others will be there too.
Before this innovation, anyone who became hooked on surfing had to live near the beach or, in the case of some of the Californians who pioneered modern surfing, on it. They had to be able to drop whatever they were doing and jump in the water whenever well-formed waves appeared. This ruled out doing anything else terribly seriously, and a rebellion was born.
It did not last very long. As often happens with subversion in America, surfing quickly became a business. Garage tinkerers like Jack O'Neill, who lost an eye experimenting with a prototype leash (a cord that attaches surfer to board), became successful entrepreneurs. Hollywood joined in with the story of Gidget, played by a platinum-blonde Sandra Dee, who went to the beach on a reluctant manhunt with her more coquettish friends, but fell in love with the nine-foot hunks of balsa wood that the beach boys were riding.
After “Gidget” boards got easier to surf and—thanks to the shortboard, an Australian innovation—could be fitted in the back of a car (or the hold of an aeroplane). Meanwhile surf fashion spread to places hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. Michael Scott Moore writes that some landlocked Americans bought useless plastic boards from department stores to strap to their cars at the weekend as a mating call to the would-be Sandra Dees of suburbia. For all this, surfing retains some ties to its early Californian ethos. Good boards are still shaped by hand in small numbers rather than pressed out of moulds on a production line.
There is a sombre side to surfing's progress: Mr Scott Moore argues that surfers were largely responsible for turning Kuta, on the Indonesian island of Bali, from a quiet village to the neon eyesore that Islamic fundamentalists bombed in 2002. He writes about surfing in mainstream places like California and Morocco and wacky ones (Gaza, São Tomé and Príncipe). There is a fine section on the economics of surfboard rationing in Cuba, and the passages on surfing the Eisbach river in Munich and the Severn river bore in Britain are jolly. But his fixation with finding out who was the first person to stand up on a wave in various different places is not for the casual reader.
“On first seeing this very dangerous diversion”, wrote James King, a lieutenant on Captain James Cook's voyage to Hawaii in 1779 who observed surfers using old canoes, “I did not conceive it possible but that some of them must be dashed to mummy against the sharp rocks.” The book is diverting but there is room for more on the sublime, childlike thrill of catching a wave—the momentary mastering of a frightening thing, the drop down its face and the swoop along its length to keep ahead of the white water. And about the beauty of the shoreline when seen from a buoyant lump of foam and fibreglass, while you get your breath back and wait for the next wave to come.
QUOTE:
"travels to some surprising surf locations in his book, including the beaches of Tel Aviv, Indonesia, Japan, and the North Sea Island of Sylt. He even surfs the river waves of the Eisbach in Munich, which has become something of a tourist destination."
'Sweetness And Blood,' Finding The Surf In Some Unusual Locations
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August 10, 20102:01 PM ET
SARA RICHARDS
Michael Scott Moore is the author of the 2003 novel Too Much Of Nothing. Moore is also the European Dispatch columnist for Miller-McCune magazine.
Michael Scott Moore
For better or worse, it seems like American pop culture has crept into almost every corner of the globe. Travel anywhere and you’re likely to find some trace of it, whether it’s fast food, entertainment, clothing, or music.
Journalist Michael Scott Moore recently published a book on what seems like one of the classic images of Americana pop culture: surfing.
His book is Sweetness and Blood: How surfing spread from Hawaii and California to the rest of the world, with some unexpected results.
Moore travels to some surprising surf locations in his book, including the beaches of Tel Aviv, Indonesia, Japan, and the North Sea Island of Sylt. He even surfs the river waves of the Eisbach in Munich, which has become something of a tourist destination.
Moore says surfing has been gaining visibility with a loyal and sometimes unorthodox following. These surfers face harsh conditions and sometimes cultural barriers, but have, in the process, created their own kind of identity.
"No matter how bad the surf is or how cold it is or how bad the conditions are," Moore says, "there's that thrill of getting picked up by a wave that never goes away. That’s always part of surfing, and that’s what people get addicted to and it’s astonishing how universal it is,” Moore says.
There is no denying that surfing is an American icon, and as Moore notes, the sport does have roots in the peaceful pacific island of Hawaii.
Sweetness and Blood follows the spread of surfing through some unusual locations, including the Gaza Strip, West Africa and Cuba.
Amy King/Rodale Press
But even in Germany, a country not exactly known for its tropical weather, surfing, or “wellenreiten” has been gaining momentum.
Moore moved to Berlin in 2005 from San Francisco. As a California native, he grew up surfing, so when he moved Berlin, he says he was surprised to find a surfing community in the city.
“I dropped everything and came out just to see what living in Berlin would be like, and it’s been actually very good, but the last thing I expected to do was find a surf board to ride,” Moore says.
Even though there are no actual waves to surf in Berlin, Moore says there’s still a good number of surfers in the city. He’s seen a handful of board shops that offer surf boards in the summer and gear for snow boarding in the winter.
“I bought a surfboard to travel with while I was here, and the guy who sold it to me was perfectly knowledgeable, told me exactly how the board would behave and was absolutely right, and it was a pretty good deal on a good used epoxy board and I had a selection to choose from. It’s just astonishing,” Moore says.
QUOTE:
Moore’s account of his captivity in Somalia is a fascinating page-turner. ... Having faced an experience no one ever should, Moore constructs a narrative that makes readers’ hearts beat faster and with purpose."
The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast.
Moore, Michael Scott (author).
July 2018. 464p. Harper/Wave, hardcover, $27.99 (9780062449177). 960.
REVIEW.
First published June 1, 2018 (Booklist).
Moore’s account of his captivity in Somalia is a fascinating page-turner. A Berlin-based writer, Moore traveled to Somalia in 2012 on a grant for crisis reporting and hired a guide to facilitate a meeting with pirates. Incredibly, pirates kidnapped him on the trip, believing him to be able to pay a 20-million-dollar ransom and obtain letters of exoneration from President Obama. After three years, his mother paid a lesser ransom and Moore was freed. Enduring conditions that could make any person suicidal, Moore reflects on his father’s death, which he long believed to be caused by a heart attack but was in fact a suicide. Moore’s honest writing will speak to readers; he is candid about his feelings, his mistakes, Somalia, his conditions, and his pirates. He walks the tightrope of inviting readers to have empathy for pirates whose national history includes brutal colonialism while demonstrating the pirates’ capacity for torture. Moore also invites us to learn about him, as he himself does, during these three years that will forever mark him. Having faced an experience no one ever should, Moore constructs a narrative that makes readers’ hearts beat faster and with purpose.
— Emily Dziuban