Impossible Odds

with my clothing already soaked and the downpour drenching the rest of the camp. By this point we had nicknamed Dahir “Helper,” because once in a while he would extend a small favor—in this case, allowing me to sit in his car while the world washed away. The stomach bug passing through the camp was wringing me out. I had to keep leaping out of the vehicle and running to a nearby bush through the pouring rain while diarrhea twisted through me, alternating with bouts of vomiting. Each time I got back to the car I was weaker.
    This was the first time despair hit me so hard nothing I did could push it away. Since the first day our condition had steadily degraded, and nobody in the camp seemed to have the clarity to pull things together. Dahir didn’t even look at me, though I couldn’t tell if he was avoiding my eyes out of shame or if he just found me disgusting in my reduced condition. For that I couldn’t blame him.
    We weren’t without entertainment, though. One of the pirates downloaded a news video to his cell phone, a real Saturday afternoon at the movies. The clip showed Somali kidnappers standing behind two captive Spanish sailors who had already been held for three months to the north of us, off the coast of the Puntland region. They were interviewed by Somali journalists. The video showed the two men sitting under ragged orange tarps and looking beaten down and forlorn. Somebody off-camera asked them about their experience in captivity. The poor men just kept saying they’dbeen held for months without any word from their employer, nothing from their government. They added that on some days they weren’t even permitted water.
    Abdi gloated and chuckled and preened, mouthing a mix of broken English and making dramatic gestures so expressive he could have been a street mime. The gist was the two men in the video had just been successfully ransomed for $35 million!
    The other men cheered at that like sports fanatics during the playoffs. No matter what words Abdi had actually spoken, the meaning they took was “success is inevitable!”
    I’m sure my mouth was wide open, I was gobsmacked. He can’t believe that! Thirty-five million dollars?
    I could only stare into Abdi’s opaque red eyes and conclude that on some level he actually believed his absurd fantasy. But I didn’t see anything on that clip about the Spaniards’ being released, let alone any news of $35 million, money supposedly paid out for two old fishermen and a dinky boat. It was so idiotic it made me want to scream. Frustration put a bitter taste in my mouth.
    By the end of the day my fever began to spike. I felt my temperature rising and my overall condition heading for the tank. I asked the men over and over to get me a doctor, but couldn’t get the words out without sobbing. They hated it when I cried, and usually reacted with anger, ordering me to shut up. This time nobody bothered to threaten me. But I honestly couldn’t tell if I was crying in sickness and fear, or just from the humiliation of having to beg for things most people wouldn’t deny to an animal.
    Poul finally dared to go to Jabreel on my behalf and plead the case for getting a doctor for me. But Abdi was nursing a khat hangover and anxiously awaiting their next delivery of the stuff. He flipped into a rage at the “insult” of Poul’s daring to take the initiative and do something so bold as to ask a favor of him. Abdi railed and shouted more angry threats, coherent only in manifesting his ill intent. I asked him if I could call the contact man calling himselfMohammed, hoping that if Mohammed was really connected to my NGO he would arrange medical treatment. The request was dismissed.
    I think I was saved by greed in that moment. At some point Abdi or Jabreel must have looked at me and realized they were closing in on having a dead American kidnap victim on their hands. I don’t think there is enough khat in Somalia to medicate away the anxiety over that. The concern I had heard from these men on the first day, when they were parroting “Amer-ee-cahn” and throwing glances at me, now came full circle.
    They worried that my very presence in the plan was an unforeseen risk. If not, they had no reason to throw troubled looks at me and talk about an “Amer-ee-cahn.” And now, right at this point, I felt everything take a change of direction just as solidly as you feel a train hit a fork in the tracks and head off on a new bearing. The power of greed caught