The Joe Rogan Experience - #1149 - Michael Scott Moore

Episode Date: July 30, 2018

Michael Scott Moore is a novelist and journalist, who was kidnapped by Somali pirates and spent two and half years in captivity. His book "The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast" is available on Amazon now.

Very nice to meet you. Good to meet you. How are you? Boom, and we're live. So, just to give everybody a good way to start this. You have a book. The book is called The Desert and the Sea. And you have one of the most disturbing and craziest stories I think I ever read. You were kidnapped by Somali pirates, and you were held hostage for more than two years. What the fuck was that like? And what

does it feel like to be a free man now after all that? Are you kidding? It feels great. In America, wandering around the valley. The valley where I was born and raised, by the way. Were you? Yeah. This is the first time I've been back in the valley for a couple of years now. What happened and how did it happen? Long story. So I went to Somalia in the first place to write a book, a very different book about Somali pirates. Right.

And I'm a journalist. I was working in Berlin at the time and I had followed the very long trial of 10 Somali pirates in Germany, in Hamburg, for about a year, all of 2011. And before that, I had already thought about going to Somalia because the pirate story was interesting in all sorts of ways that I thought other writers weren't getting to. And I had met another journalist, a documentary maker named Ashwin Rahman, who also wanted to go to Somalia for his own project. And so we talked about going for a long time. And by the end of 2011, in the middle of the trial, all our plans came together and we wound up going in January of 2012. We had about 10 days of good research. We both got pretty good material.

We were in a part of Somalia where other journalists had gone, so we weren't doing something that was totally off the map. On the 10th day, Ashwin flew off to Mogadishu, and I went with him to the airport. We saw him off, and it was on the way back from the airport that a truck was waiting for our car. And the truck, which was actually a technical, so a battle wagon with a cannon in the back, stopped us, aimed the cannon through the windshield, overpowered my guard, and 12 guys with Kalashnikovs pulled me out of the car. So they put me in another car and we drove off. So from that moment on,

I was a captive. Jesus Christ. And so they were obviously trying to get some hostage money. Yeah. Ransom money. Oh, yeah. No, it was about money. And I think they were hoping for both of us, by the way. Ashwin feels very lucky that he didn't get captured. So they had planned this. Yeah. And they were probably waiting for our car earlier in the morning. It was just Ashwin's good luck that we took a different route to the airport. How much money were they asking for? Well, so the first thing they asked for me was $20 million. But that was after the first week. I went for a week without having a phone call home. And in that period, SEALs rescued two other hostages from another part of central Somalia,

including Jessica Buchanan, an American. And I think nine Somali guards died in that raid. And they had some clan relationship to some of the guys holding me. And so the guys holding me were very upset. And I think that's why they asked for $20 million and more importantly held on to that demand for so long. They held on to it for almost a year. That specific number, they wouldn't budge. Yeah. So they were in negotiations?

Yeah, there were negotiations, but they were phony negotiations in some sense because the Somalis weren't really negotiating. So for some background for people that are unfamiliar with the situation in Somalia, Somalia, if you correct me if I'm wrong, that area was traditionally fishermen. Yeah, that's wrong. It's wrong. So that's actually the point of the book. That's actually one level of the book. That's actually one level of the title, The Desert and the Sea. So you get the idea from things that Somali pirates

like to say that they're just frustrated fishermen. That's only part of the story. And so that's a very important premise in the book. There are fishing communities on the coast, and they're being hard hit definitely by illegal ships that come in to steal the fish. But that's a problem up and down Africa. And because of that problem, once Somalia had no government, there was no navy to defend the coastline, local sort of clan leaders would send out boats with militiamen and hold fishing boats for $50,000 ransoms over 24-hour periods, really nothing very much, and they called it a license fee. And that's how you did business in Somalia in the 90s.

We didn't hear about that. It was too small time. We started to hear about it when they graduated to capturing cargo ships. What I had heard was that there was illegal dumping that wasn't just fishing. Also. Yeah. Yeah. And that they initially called themselves the People's Coast Guard of Somalia or the Voluntary Coast Guard. One or two pirate gangs tried to call themselves that. And, you know, they had a point. There was no one else patrolling the coast.

But that wasn't really what was going on. No. I was captured on land, first of all. Every other hostage I met was a fisherman, a poor fisherman, captured hundreds of miles from the Somali coast. So that's not protecting the coast. So what role does this stuff called cat, K-H-A-T, this is a plant that they chew? And it has like a stimulant effect? Yeah, it's a little bit like coca leaf, but I think actually it's a narcotic.

It gets you high at first, and then you crash, and you wake up depressed, and you need more. But these guys, every single pirate I met was addicted, and they wound up having to sit in front of these piles of cut every afternoon just to get high enough for their addiction. And then, like I said, they would crash at night and then do it again. In my case, there were guards 24 hours a day, which meant there was also a shift that slept during the day to cut at night and then crash in the morning. Did you try any of that stuff? Yeah.

I mean, they kept offering it to me. What was it like? You know, it takes like two or three stems or three or four stems. Not much, but it changed your mood. You know, you could be depressed and you'd feel better. Or you could be a little bit sick and you just wouldn't feel it anymore. But I didn't want to get addicted to it, so I didn't keep pushing that. It's that addictive?

Yeah. Well, I saw it. I saw how addictive it could be with the guards. You know, a little bit on an afternoon didn't make me want to keep doing it necessarily. But every now and then I did it just for the sake of my mood, yeah. That's always in the narrative, this cat stuff, that they're somehow or another unhinged because they're on this stuff all the time. Yeah, I mean, you can get really unhinged in the sense that once you're wired on it, you're easily sort of upset. And these guys would sometimes have fistfights in front of me and that kind of thing.

Not all the time, but yeah, they would get hopped up. They would just get jittery, and that's very dangerous with Kalashnikovs lying around. So their culture somehow or another has evolved to this point where it's insanely common to kidnap people to the point where if you if you talk about Somali pirates, there are very few countries where pirates go after their name so easily. Yeah, the they kidnapping became part of the culture. That's true. But pirate bosses, which are not so active now off the coast, also have other businesses that they get involved in. And so I've written about this in the meantime, too.

They get involved in gun smuggling and also even people smuggling on the Horn of Africa. So whatever takes that kind of equipment, you know, SUVs, Kalashnikovs, cheap food. When you say people smuggling, what do you mean? It's a good story. I found out, I'm the person that proved that on the route between Somalia to Libya, some former pirate bosses were active in moving people. So in other words, Somalis who want to go to Libya will put themselves in the hands of some traffickers, and some of those traffickers might be ex-pirates. But go there as far as just being transported willingly? Willingly at first.

And then there's always a place in Sudan where it shifts from being willing to being unwilling. Well, this is an issue that's been going on in Libya recently. I'm sure you saw the most recent slave auctions that were videotaped and put on YouTube. The stories are awful. I've heard those firsthand, yeah. Insanely disturbing that you're watching a videotape of slave auctions in 2018. Well, it's more than disturbing.

It's a revival of what was going on when slavery was legal. So in other words, okay, where the Somalis are involved up to the Libyan border is one story, and that's the story I've covered. What happens in Libya is a different story. The clans and the roots that migrants take through Libya, the clans they put themselves in the hands of, roots that migrants take through Libya, the clans they put themselves in the hands of,

are still the same as the clans and the roots that were used during the slave trade. So there's almost like a, you know, there's a historical memory there of what went on. And it's the same thing happening. So I suspect a lot of migrants don't quite know how bad it can get. The route up until Libya is probably easier than Libya itself. Libya itself sounds like a horror show for the migrants. Well, it's particularly, it's one of those bizarre things. We have a horrible dictator like Muammar Gaddafi. And you say, well, it's probably a good thing to get rid of that guy, right? But no, when you get rid of him, then you have this power vacuum. And apparently it's a failed state now and it's gotten even worse.

Yeah, it's going in the direction of Somalia right now. And there are a couple of rival governments. I think it's a little bit more stable than Somalia was after their dictator fell. But there's a similar thing going on. It's true. Gaddafi was a bad guy, but he was also a bulwark. And he knew that and he used that to his advantage with Europe. A bulwark? A bulwark against migration paths. I've never heard that expression.

A bulwark. A bulwark? No. What does that mean? A roadblock. Oh, okay. When you were there, when you decided to take 10 days and you'd done all this research, what did you expect when you went there and what was different? Well, so we were careful about finding security. We found a Somali elder in Berlin who could offer the protection of his clan in Somalia. And he had done it with another journalist, a German journalist.

And he took us out from Gelkayo, which is a town in central Somalia, out to the coast to Hobyo, which is a pirate town you might have heard of. A pirate town? An actual pirate town, yeah. So it's all pirates? Well, it's in the control of pirates. So in other words, the government that sits in Galcayo has no influence there. The pirates are the ones who can have the say-so. So what is their business like?

I mean, when you say it's like a pirate town, so the pirates are essentially in control. But like, what else is going on there if you've got pirates in control? No, normal Somali life is going on there. But the, you know, let's say the police force would be pirates. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, when we got there, it was pretty quiet and we didn't see much normal life, and we had a very organized interview and lunch one afternoon with a guy who turned out to be a real pirate.

You know, that wasn't a joke. And then we left around sundown, and that was it. We didn't spend a whole lot of time in Hobia. When you were there and you eventually got captured and taken hostage, what was the initial experience like? Well, so when that happened with the technical, with the truck, at first my mind actually recoiled from what was going on. I mean, I actually was in denial for a couple of seconds. I thought, okay, just a roadblock. But once they captured me, I thought,

this is going to be really hard on my family. Jesus. And they beat me with their guns. They broke my wrist. They bloodied my scalp. And they broke my glasses. So that's the other thing I noticed right away. It was that, shit, I'm going to be blind.

How bad are your eyes? I'm nearsighted. It's not good. And this is like initial, like right away? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It happened in that first skirmish. Yeah. So your wrist was broken right away?

Yeah. Because I was trying to hold the car door closed and they pounded on it with their gun barrels. Wow. And is it hard to talk about this? No, because now I've written the book. I wouldn't have been able to do this before writing the book. But writing the book familiarized myself with my own memories. It made me fluent with this material.

But your physical state seems to shift when you discuss it. Oh, maybe. Yeah. your shoulders have risen sure you're like yeah i mean it's a question of you know it's it's not pleasant i couldn't imagine yeah i mean it must have been just insane um so you said there was a long period of time before they contacted anybody. Who do they contact? Okay, so it was a week. And so I had a grant, a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. I should have called them. But I had all my notes stolen, which means all my phone numbers too.

all my notes stolen, which means all my phone numbers too. And so when they finally brought me up to a bluff with a little cell phone and said, call somebody, I said, well, bring me my notes. I need to find the right phone number. They said, no, just call someone. So I called my mom. Oh, Jesus. And that's what happened. By that time, the FBI had informed her, had actually come to her door,

and briefed her a little on what to say on the phone. So she was ready for the phone call. She'd been sitting around for days wondering when she was going to hear from me. But that was also true about the Pulitzer Center. It was also true about my colleagues at Spiegel Online in Berlin. It was also true about my family in Germany. It was also true about my colleagues at Spiegel Online in Berlin. It was also true about my family in Germany. Everyone had been briefed a little bit. Now, were they waiting for a specific reason?

Why did they wait a whole week? No idea. It's a really good question. I kept asking for a phone call. I mean, I was sitting there kind of in a panic, too. And what were they saying to you during this week? They said, oh, yeah, okay. You have a broken arm, right so you're you're obviously you're in pain you can't

see anymore yeah i was in a the first first they took me to a bush camp then they took me with a couple of other hostages to a prison house and uh yeah i had my wrist in a sling, and it just was painful and it was confusing. I really didn't know what was going on. And then slowly they brought a doctor in to look at the wrist, and then slowly they took us out into the bush, and then finally they put me on the phone. So you got medical treatment for your wrist, sort of? Yeah. Did he set it?

He was probably a livestock doctor, but the guy was, he was a very sympathetic older man, but he said, your wrist is not broken, and he put a splint on it, and that was it. It was broken. Not broken in half, you know. But definitely cracked. I felt bones moving around in there. Yeah. It's been rearranged.

It's been reshaped. Did you eventually get medical treatment when you get home for it? Oh, yeah, when I got home. Do you have to get surgery? No, two years and eight months later, it was okay. It's a functioning wrist. Yeah, it's set wrong, but it's a functioning wrist. Did you get an x-ray just so you could see how weird it looks?

I didn't even bother. Wow. Now, when you're there, once you get the initial phone call, what is the process like after that? Are they talking to you about what they want? Yeah. They said, okay, you have to demand $20 million from your mother. I think I must have smirked or something. They said, it's not funny. I said, yes, actually it is. That's not a serious demand. But that was their opening gambit. 20 million.

Why specifically 20 million? That's a good question. The first two hostages I was held with, two Seychelles fishermen, the ransom for them was also 20 million. But that's 10 million each. So maybe they were just doubling it for the American. There was a time where they told you that if people showed up for you, that you were going to be killed. Oh, sure. They said that right away because by the time the phone call had happened, the raid for Jessica Buchanan and Paul Tistad had already happened too.

So they even mentioned that to me. And, of course, I had no idea what they were talking about. I had no news, you know. So I mentioned it to my mother on the phone. I said, they're talking about a raid and they're saying if somebody else comes for me, I'm going to get shot dead. But, you know, those are already the terms of a kidnapping. Right. You know, that was not a big change in my situation.

And my mom could tell me very little on the phone about about the rescue but she had something positive in her voice she said oh yeah the rescue and i thought that doesn't sound like the pirates of course told me the hostages had been killed like that doesn't sound like it went bad but it was still another month and a half or something before i found out the full story jesus two and a half years is is that what you're calling them? Yeah, two years and eight months. God. Now, you ate with them, you got used to them.

Did you almost become friends with them? Sure, I became friends with, you know, half friends, with about half the pirate guard group that was with me at that point. So I was held in a number of places. They also placed me on a tuna ship. I was placed on a ship hijacked by Somali pirates for about five months. And I think I'm the only Western writer to know life on a ship like that.

Five months? Yeah, for the full spring and summer of 2012. Wow. full spring and summer of 2012. Wow. And then it was after that that I was held on land alone with the guards, and that's when I got to know the guards. You must have had this feeling like they're never going to find me.

They're moving me around. They're putting me on a ship. That was a problem. Especially when they put me on the ship, I felt like any progress the military had made in finding my location would have been completely reset. You know, I was terribly depressed when they first put me on the ship. And you were there for five months. Yeah. But once I was on the ship, I felt better because there were 28 other hostages, the crew of the ship, and they were great. because there were 28 other hostages, the crew of the ship, and they were great.

It's always better to have company when you're a captive. Yeah, so the other people that were running the ship when they captured it, they were there as well. Yeah, and that was a crew of 28 guys from East Asia and Southeast Asia. Did they speak English? Only five of them. So five of them were from the Philippines, And we got along with them really good. Everyone else we had to get to know somehow. And the ship, they couldn't speak to each other either because it was like a Tower of Babel on the ship.

And so they developed their own pigeon, which is what sailors have done for centuries. It was a pigeon mixture of English and Chinese and a few other words. Wow. Yeah, that was fascinating. Yeah, I could imagine. Now, as a writer, you had to be sort of like halfway torn. Like, God, if I get out of here, what a fucking story. Yeah. Yeah.

I knew I was living through interesting things and gathering good material. living through interesting things and gathering good material. But after at least a year or so in captivity, I stopped hoping that I was going to get out alive. I mean, things were going so badly as far as the negotiation was concerned that I thought this is really, I'm really in deep shit. Now, is that standard for them to hold people for that long? Yeah, yes and no. I think I was held longer than any Westerner. But the men on that ship didn't get out for a total of five years, just under five years they were held. But they

did get out eventually? They did get out in 2016. Wow. And I was privileged enough to go to Nairobi and see them there. I took them by surprise. Wow. So you flew out to meet them? Well, I was privileged enough to go to Nairobi and see them there. I took them by surprise. Wow. So you flew out to meet them? Well, I was still living in Berlin, and I was following the case very closely. And I helped raise some money. The lawyers who were running it flew me down there. And that was really nice. And it was nice for the guys, too, because they were obviously confused.

There was nothing but very well-meaning but completely anonymous people around them. And then they kind of came out of the terminal in Nairobi. And they were obviously still sort of a little bit confused. And I tapped one of them on the shoulder. And he recognized me. And it was pandemonium. Wow. It wound up on Reuters video.

I think it's available. Now, how did you eventually get freed? So my mom raised a ransom. She raised it with help from family and friends and also some magazines I'd worked for and some institutions in the U.S. and Germany. And when she talked the pirates down to 1.6 million, then I got out. For some reason, at the very end, the pirates came down like precipitously. The very end? After two years? They're holding on for like, I think they went down to four or five million or something like that. And then at the very end, they came down to what was on offer.

No explanation? Not really, except that from my point of view, there was a labor unrest stirring among the guards. So in other words, the guards were sick of holding me. Oh. And so one day towards the very end, but a few weeks before I got out, one of the guards actually said, Michael, we might go on strike. On strike?

Yeah. Do you need some help with that? I can go on a hunger strike if you want. They're like, slow, slow. Now, there was one thing that I read where a guard had left you alone with a loaded rifle. It happened more than once. What's the, what's the thought process there

in your mind? Yeah, that was, so especially after the first year or so and until... How many guards are you talking about? We're talking about seven to 15 at any given point in...

How many bullets are in the gun? Well, it was a Kalashnikov, so a minimum of 16. That's not enough. That's not enough. That's not enough. And there were always a few guards who were asleep, a few guards who were awake. And so you go through this thing in your head. You think, well, I can grab the gun.

I can kill a few guys guys but it would be suicidal um but i went through various scenarios in my head all the time you know that was a that was a very big temptation because the guns just lay around like junk you know um and that was that was a dark period because the question was not just can i blast my way out and live, but also should I just take care of it and kill myself now? Because I knew that I was causing a whole lot of trouble for my family at home. And there were probably military plans to come get me, which would put SEALs at risk or special operators at risk. And so it's better to just check out. And so that was on my mind often, especially during the second year. Were they sympathetic characters in any way? I

mean, did you, when you were around them for long periods of time and you're taking into consideration this life that's been thrust upon them, This is the environment they grew up in. And this is their, I mean, you had to have at least in some way gotten to know them. Sure. And I went there thinking, well, you know, I'm going to tell their story somehow. Yeah. Did you tell them that? Yeah.

But by the time I was captured, that didn't matter. You know? Yes, of course. They were especially the ones who wanted to talk to me. Of course, they were sympathetic. They're poor people. So even if it's not true that most pirates are frustrated fishermen, probably only about 20% of them are, all of them are poor. All of them need jobs.

And that's why they became pirates. You have to layer on top of that the fact that a cat habit is extremely ruinously expensive in Somalia. Where does cat come from? Cat comes from highlands. So it has to be grown in the mountains of Ethiopia or Kenya and flown in fresh. It can't be grown in a flat, hot desert region like Somalia or Yemen, but that's where it's popular, especially among Muslims who can't drink alcohol. So there's a whole trade in that region of the world. And most of the time it's legal.

I think they only illegalized it in Britain, for example, in 2014. Really? Yeah. I think it's illegal here, but the trade, it just flows like water in Somalia and the Arabian Peninsula. So the voluntary Coast Guard of Somalia, what we've been led to believe that this is how it all started out, how did that narrative get established? So once they started to capture big ships, they fell back on that story, which had been true up up till then which was we're just defending our coastline from fishing so it started that way it started that's right it's true in the roots of it okay so that's what i'd heard what i'd heard is that it was it had started because not just because

people were fishing out there because they were dumping toxic waste also um yeah and that was that's also true um the mafia was dumping – had a – The mafia? Yeah. There were actual – it's been sort of uncovered by Italian journalists. But the Italian mafia had found a way to bring waste for a certain amount of money down to someplace where they thought nobody would see it again. amount of money down to someplace where they thought nobody would see it again. And some of it washed ashore in 2004 with the Indonesian tsunami that actually reached that part of East Africa.

So some of those big things that the Italians dumped over the side of their boats wound up on the beach in Somalia. Oh, so an actual physical vat or something that they could see what it was? And I saw one of them, yeah. Really? Yeah. What was in it? I don't know, but it was a great big sort of orange.

Great big leg? Weirdly shaped cube. How large? Taller than me, so at least eight feet square. And it had been used to contain some sort of toxic waste that's what my fixer told me so but i had seen pictures similar pictures in um documentaries so i i think it was probably true it's described in the book just briefly but um i that's the kind of thing that happened certainly um the the italians were not or the the mafia was not being very

you know they were being criminals too so yeah that's uh that's their business that's your business um did you watch the tom hanks movie i watched 45 minutes of the tom hanks movie in somalia in somalia while you were captive? Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. What is that like? Well, so I knew Captain Phillips was going to be a movie when I left. That was already clear. Wow.

Spielberg had already announced it or something like that. So they had announced it when you left and you got to watch it in Somalia. Yeah, because by the time this was towards the end of my captivity, I had a shortwave radio, So I was listening to the radio. By the time it came out and went to the Oscars, it was all over the BBC. So I knew about it. I knew it was out. Like, okay, so I'm missing Captain Phillips, whatever.

Wonder what that's like. And then one day all the guards got new smartphones, pretty fancy smartphones. And they were apparently loaded with a new collection of films and music and whatever to keep them occupied. One afternoon, I saw two guards just completely wrapped by some sort of film on the phone. And I heard some American voices. I'm like, I wonder what this film is.

And finally, I said, fuck me, that's Tom Hanks. So I knew what they were watching. And two weeks later, one of the guards actually handed me the phone and said, you know, Michael, look. And so I saw about 45 minutes of it. Wow. And, of course, when he handed me the phone, the first thing that went through my mind is like, okay, I'm going to call mom and find a way to turn down the volume and call California.

He took the phone away before I did that. But I had a whole plan. I developed a whole plan while I was watching Captain Phillips, you know, get on the plane in Boston Logan or whatever. Wow. So atmospherically, it was a pretty good, pretty well-done movie, but there were a couple of scenes where that just wouldn't have happened in real life. I didn't watch the movie.

So what was inaccurate about it? There was one scene where there was some selection of pirates on the beach, so in public, and I thought, gosh, how did they get that? I've never even heard of that before. And then I thought about it and realized, well, yeah, actually it wouldn't happen like that in public. It was just for dramatic purposes. I was envious of their material at first, and then I realized, oh, they made that up.

So things like that. But the pirates were fascinated to see people like them, and in some cases their friends, portrayed on screen. Even though we all know how the movie ends very badly for Somali pirates. So they knew about the story that was based on. Yeah, no question. Even though we all know how the movie ends very badly for Somali pirates. So they knew about the story that was based on. Yeah, no question. Not only that, but one of them said that he was friends with one of the pirates involved. And I believe him, actually.

He had the right clan affiliation for that. So it's quite possible. What was it like to see them watching their story being depicted on the other side of the planet well that's what was weird is that they they were so fascinated by it but we you know otherwise they didn't necessarily like to talk about bad news for pirates or you know like i said when the hostages were released um or rescued in the first few days of my captivity, I kept hearing that the hostages had been killed. So they like to spin things in a good way for pirates in general. So I just would have assumed they would just ignore Captain Phillips because it ends so badly. They were just fascinated. They really were. And so what was daily life like for you? Like you, do you ate

with them? Well, I separately, but sometimes in the same room, they, they made very bad food, boiled beans and flavorless boiled goat and that kind of thing. But they would eat from a communal platter sort of elsewhere within sight. I didn't have to eat from the same platter. They eat by hand? Yeah, by hand, yeah. Yeah. That's very common in that part of the world?

Yeah, it really is because utensils just aren't that common, and they really like spaghetti, so they sort of wrap the spaghetti around your fingers. And I had done that as a free man. I sort of sat with the somalis and and ate that way but as a as a hostage i was in no mood to be that you know that friendly yeah they they gave me a fork and i could eat my on my own so how like what kind of physical state were you in after two and a half years of this yeah it was pretty bad i was my um my immune system had started to fall apart. So I don't go into detail too much about this in the

book, but I had a staph infection of my skin and some other kind of infection in my ear. And I was just something in my lungs. I was just not very, I was sick. And I was sick constantly for several months before I got out. So I knew something had really sick. And I was sick constantly for several months before I got out. So I knew something had really changed. And I think the pirates were aware of that too, slowly. Do you think that probably possibly contributed to them lowering your ransom? Possibly. But I, you know, not that they were sympathetic,

but it's possible they saw me sort of reaching my physical limit slowly. Yeah. Slowly. So it's not like it was— Staph amputation can get you pretty quickly now. Yeah. I mean, it wound up just being that, but it was raising boils on my skin, and they knew about that. That's not that long ago, 2012.

2014 was— When you were released. when I was released and had the infection. I mean, four years ago, that's nothing. I'm pushing four years now. Yeah. What does it feel like now to be free? Do you still have PTSD from it? Do you get? Well, now I can be happy about it.

I think the day I was released, I was sort of – I felt better in stages, but it wasn't a sudden euphoria. Now I can really be happy about it. It took me about a year to get back to full strength. the symptoms of PTSD that I showed when I first got out, which included like hypervigilance, went away slowly as I got physically stronger. Hypervigilance being like wake up in the middle of the night, nightmares? Well, nightmares only happen within the first year. Waking up in the middle of the night, that still happens. I still don't sleep too well. Hypervigilance, I mean, out in public, too many people around, you know, like you hear with vets. And I was aware of that as a symptom. And I felt at first when we were out in public in Nairobi, and I turned to this FBI psychologist who was with me, and I said, you know, am I hypervigilant? He said, maybe.

Then I said, are you here because, you know, I might have PTSD? He said, we. Then I said, are you here because I might have PTSD? He said, we don't like to put a label on anything. And that was his attitude towards me. That was the tack he took. And in my case, at least, it was right. Eventually, he said, I said, shouldn't I be treated for PTSD? Or shouldn't I be going to regular talk therapy or something like that? And he said, you don't want to pathologize anything.

In other words, you don't want to create mentally another condition for you to recover from. It's enough work for your mind and your body to recover quite naturally. They know how to do it from all that trauma. That's very interesting because I've heard people talk about that with other things, particularly with war, that you're better off not deciding what you have or not being told what you have. In my case, that's true. I mean, who knows?

I think PTSD can be so complicated. They're pharmaceutical solutions and that kind of thing for some people. The body and mind know how to recover. So you have to let them. Do they give you techniques to recover? Instead of explaining or discussing what the issue is, do they give you techniques to feel better or to establish a more normal existence? No.

I mean, I didn't get a checklist, but the psychologist would say, you know, if something's bothering you, write it down. But he knew I was a writer. Um, he, they made sure they knew that I had a loving family around me when I got back and a great circle of friends in Berlin. That's really important. Um, I think everybody finds their own way. I mean, I, I knew I was weak. I mean, I was just like a wraith, you know, when I got out. How much weight did you lose? I lost about 40 pounds. And when I first came out and walked around in Berlin, Berlin's a walking city, so I tried to lead like a normal day. My knees swelled up and my ankles

swelled up and they were really painful so it was like i just played a game of football or something you weren't moving while you were there yeah not enough i did yoga but i i didn't go for a jog around the room or something like you sometimes hear for prisoners if i'd done that i think they would have been so startled they would have shot me uh but But I was not in any kind of shape for normal life when I got out. And, in fact, one day when I got back from Berlin, I tried to run for a street car. I just didn't have the musculature for it. I simply didn't have a stride to run. I could not run.

Wow. I thought that was really weird. But one of the doctors who tested me said, well, you have a protein deficiency. One of the doctors who tested me said, well, you have a protein deficiency. And once I started to take care of that and I went consciously to the gym and made sure I got stronger and also put on more muscle, the mental things sort of took care of themselves too. So that body-mind connection was really important. And when they're telling you this, that you have a protein deficiency, that you should exercise and take care of your body, and this is improving, are they giving you guidelines? Like, this is probably a good idea to try to do this.

I mean, are there any strategies that people have to deal with coming out of long-term incarceration? Not specific ones. I think it was clear to everyone that I was easily overwhelmed. So, you know, at one point my family sat down with me with all the paperwork that had to be taken care of. And I could only deal with that for like an hour at a time. So, and the debriefing. Paperwork? Oh, bank things to sign and that sort of thing.

How so? Well, just all my affairs were in somebody else's hands when I was in. For the two and a half years. For the two and a half years. And so we had to sort of rectify a lot of that. You know, I couldn't plow through it in an afternoon or in a week. I had to do it in stages. And it was the same thing with like a debriefing with

the FBI, which I did for three weeks. I couldn't always do it for an entire day. What would happen? My brain would actually seize up. I mean, I actually would just, I got, I mean, you said earlier when I talk about it, I go like this, my whole body would like constrict and I would, I would simply, part of me would just shut down. You've leveled off now physically like your shoulders. But I'm looking at you right now from our conversation. Yeah, but I don't feel –

When you started talking about it, your shoulders, it seemed like started to almost visibly rise up. Probably. Yeah. But I'm saying when I first got out i would i would must have been much more exaggerated i was paralytic no i mean i i just something inside me just shut down yeah so it you're it just wouldn't you you just didn't have the capacity to sit down and concentrate on anything it wasn't concentration it was a sense of overwhelm yeah yeah well concentrating on too many things at once i think um it was also i was overwhelm. Yeah, well, concentrating on too many things at once, I think.

I was also overwhelmed by too many friends, you know, too many people in the room because too many social cues to read. I didn't have that with the pirates. It was real clear. I was the hostage. They were the guards. In some sense, we were enemies, and that was it. And we had real simple things to say to each other, and that was it. And that was my life for a couple of years after the ship.

It was not complex. And so when I got out, the complexities of a more comfortable life, but a more elaborate life, were really difficult. Yeah, obviously you were aware at the time that you were struggling with this. You were aware that it was difficult. Real clear. But were you confused by that difficulty? No, not confused.

I wasn't sure how I was going to recover, but I knew to take it slow. And taking it slow was important. And how did you ultimately recover? Yeah, one day at a time like that. I mean, I consciously got better physically. I mean, I consciously got better physically. I mean, I consciously did yoga and went to the gym, consciously ate well. My doctor said, don't follow a vegetarian diet, but eat a full diet and make sure you get enough protein.

Why not have a vegetarian diet? He said you need protein. You need a lot of protein. A lot. You need animal protein specifically. Yeah. Yeah. You need a lot of protein. A lot.

You need animal protein specifically. Yeah. Yeah. Now, what is your situation now is that you said you still have a hard time sleeping. Mm-hmm. And is it a nightmare issue or is it an anxiety issue? No, not nightmares. But for some reason when it gets – so in Somalia, when it came time to go to bed, at least for a long period, they would chain up my feet, and I would have to lie on a mattress under a mosquito net. And that was it for 12 hours.

So now when it comes time to sleep, instead of tired, I get anxious. And then it's possible that I might wake up fully awake after only four hours. So I take melatonin. It's nothing, you know, I don't take hard drugs to sleep, but I take a little assistance. Yeah. Wow. Now, this book that you wrote, The Desert and the Sea, how difficult was it to sit down in front of a computer

and sort of recapture these thoughts and transcribe them? Yeah. Well, so that was also sort of blood and sweat. The research was blood, sweat, and tears, and so was the writing. But I did know at least the facts of the story. So I put those down first, and then we went back and did how it felt. So putting everything down, which a writer likes to do, you know, all at once in one sort of great act of creation, that would have been a little overwhelming. So I did it in layers

and that was the way to go. What were you like before this and what are you like now and what's different? I think my basic self is the same but I'm more patient. I'm more grateful. So just getting out alive made me certainly grateful to be around. It was great to see my family and friends again.

And if I ever start to feel ungrateful for something, I have this well of memory that I can go back to. That's essential. And I think in Somalia, I also learned to forgive, which was not an easy process. But I think it's something very essential. How so? How did you learn to forgive? So we talked about picking up a Kalashnikov. I was going to do that. I thought about doing that.

And it was an internal debate for a really long time until one point where I actually heard something on the radio from the Pope, the new Pope I'd never, you know, even seen before. something on the radio from the Pope, the new Pope I'd never, you know, even seen before. And he gave a very good homily about what forgiveness meant. And that resonated. And at some point, I made a conscious decision to forgive the guards who were around me. You know, these are the lowest ranking guys, but they were making my life miserable. And I made a conscious decision to forgive them. And I had to do that over and over. And that made my mind a whole lot more stable and settled, which means that unless I had done that, I probably would have picked up a gun and killed myself, if not them or both. That's fascinating that

a speech by the Pope could resonate so strongly with you while you're in captivity. Just forgiveness. Forgiveness. It wouldn't have had to be by the Pope, but he was pretty good. That's something that people pay lip service to. And, you know, you hear people saying you should live a life of forgiveness and it's healthier for you. But no one can really understand that the way you have. For me, it was life and death

wow man it's i mean i can't wait to read your book it is a crazy story you're i mean this it's just such an insane experience yeah it was that you're you're just your well of experiences, like what you can draw upon is so different from most people that you're interacting with. You must almost feel like you're going through life interacting with privileged children. Sometimes. So first of all, I'm just very happy to be back in the world I grew up in.

So that's the main thing. But, yeah, that comes up sometimes. You know when people complain about things? For example. Oh, it's so fucking hot out. Right. Or, you know. Yeah, you should try hot in Somalia prison

where you're shackled to a bed. Right, exactly. Or, you know, idiots in traffic. I'm a much more patient driver, and so is my mother, by the way. Oh, I'm sure. So happy a much more patient driver, and so is my mother, by the way. Oh, I'm sure. So happy to get her son back, right? Yeah.

She's the heroine of the story. I mean, she really took, you know, an enormous amount of suffering. What was it like to see her after two years and eight months? Oh, it was incredible. No, I mean, it was—obviously, she was on my mind, and all my friends and family were on my mind while I was in Somalia. And just to see somebody that I'd been thinking about all this time in a sort of hypothetical way again in real life in a way that I really thought I wouldn't was overwhelming. It was really, really fantastic. Now, had you gone to dangerous places for journalism before Somalia? Where had you gone?

So for my second book, Sweetness and Blood, I surfed in Gaza. Wow. And I'd been to northern Iraq and some other places, but this was easily the most dangerous. What did you do in Gaza? I went to see the Gaza Surf Club, and I actually went surfing with them. The Gaza Surf Club? This exists actually went surfing with them. The Gaza Surf Club? This exists, yeah. What is that?

So it's a group of Palestinians who like to surf but who don't have enough surfboards. And so they organized into a club, first to share a couple of surfboards that they had found and managed to buy, and also to receive donations from a group of surfers in Tel Aviv who thought these guys should have boards. And so a relationship grew up between a group in Tel Aviv called Surfing for Peace and the Gaza Surf Club. So Jews in Tel Aviv are donating surfboards to Palestinians. Wow. It's completely wonderful. It's a grassroots peace initiative.

It's been going on for years now. But one of the eloquent things that the leader of the Surfing for Peace group said was, you know, we're not getting anywhere on an official level. So we better do something on sort of a grassroots level. I think it's marvelous. Wow. What do you do now? Oh, I, so seeking out danger was never the point, you know, I tried not to shrink from it, but, uh, that was not, you know, I'm not a thrill seeker and that's not the, what I'm trying to base my career on or

anything like that. Um, right now I'm writing a novel, so that should keep me seated for a while. What's it about? It's about drones. Drones. That doesn't sound peaceful. It's not. But I'm not going to say any more about it at the moment. I get it. Do you ever anticipate yourself

traveling for journalism again? Sure. Oh, to travel, yeah. But just nothing like this? Yeah, no, I don't need to do dangerous travel anytime soon to travel. Yeah. But just nothing like this. Yeah. No, I don't need to do dangerous travel anytime soon. No, no. Yeah. Some people just want to jump right back into the fire. Yeah, that's not. But that was not the point in the first place. Right a modern liberal state, which is what Germany is, and so is America, by the way, and an archaic crime. And Germany, in fact, is newer than the United States in the sense that its constitution was written in 1949 when nobody was thinking about piracy. So the laws against piracy are extremely lenient in German law in a way that they're not in

Spanish or American law. We have laws that date back to when it was a capital crime. And basically the Germans did not deal with these guys. And I thought it was fascinating in the first place that this ancient crime had revived after a couple centuries of relative quiet, you know. And so that tension on its own was interesting. And that was worth the book, because nobody was quite approaching it that way, you know. So that tension is still interesting. And that tension is still alive. So there are certainly threats to modern liberal states going on around the world. So what were the trials in Berlin?

There was a trial in Hamburg and I was going back and forth from Berlin. It was 10 guys from Somalia who tried to hijack a cargo ship that belonged to a German ship company that was based in Hamburg. I think they were overpowered by the Dutch Navy, but the Dutch handed them over to the Germans. In fact, the Dutch said, okay, we'll do this as long as we don't have to try them, because everyone knew from the outset that there was going to be a problem trying Somalis. Well, in what way? In Europe in general, but especially in Germany, I think there's actually a law against shipping them back to Somalia because it's considered not

a safe place. For them? For them, even for them. And I think that's nuts. Once they were convicted, I think they should have been deported after they served their time. That's so bizarre. But if they were shipped back to Somalia, how would they be treated? Like what is the government like in Somalia? It must be insanely corrupt. I asked some of my pirates about that. It is corrupt. It's either corrupt or nonexistent.

So the government in Somalia is focused around Mogadishu, and it just doesn't have that much power in the provinces. And I was in one of the provinces. And because the provinces don't get a whole lot of money from Mogadishu, so they run their own businesses, in some cases piracy. I asked one of my guards what would happen if a pirate went and got thrown into jail in some other country and then came back and tried to set up friendships again with his old pirate buddies or whatever, would he be killed? Would he be in danger?

He's like, no, no, no problem. They'd probably let you right back in. No problem. Yeah. I mean, is there any sort of punishment for them when they get back to Somalia? Is there any penal system? Potentially there is, yeah. But that's not considered a crime.

Yes, it is. So there are laws on the books, especially in the regions, and even prisons for pirates. The problem is that clan relationships are a lot more important than newly written laws. And so even pirates who go to jail, this was true about one boss in my case,

might get out again. So this guy, this guy who was a pirate boss in my case, wound up in jail while I was still captive for one month in Mogadishu and wound up walking. Wow. And he was captive for piracy? I think for having weapons that the government didn't expect to see in one of his houses. So something off to the side but... So it's a really sketchy system of

bartering and payoffs and... It's who you know and who you're related to. And the there are other prisons for low-ranking pirates in Puntland and also in Galcayo where I was. It's a crapshoot how much time those guys are going to spend in jail. And what happened with the people in Germany?

They got a total of seven years, I think, or an average of seven years. In Germany? In Germany. And then what happened when they were released? Nothing. Wow. Wow. Yeah. That's a whole separate story, which I haven't even started to address.

But as it turned out, a few of them went back to Somalia anyway. And probably went right back into the business. Well, or something else illicit or profitable or whatever. And there's a wide variety of people that they target, right? They target people on individual crafts. They target large boats, commercial vessels. Yep. They did all of that.

I mean, in fact, I met hostages from all of those, you know, from the whole range. How many hostages did you meet over the two years and eight months? A total of 30. So the crew on the fishing ship, the tuna vessel was 28. And then I met two Seychelles fishermen. The two guys from the Seychelles were small time. So they were just on a small craft. What is Seychelles? The Seychelles is a chain of islands off Africa. It's a country that belongs to Africa, country that belongs to Africa.

But it has a French name. The guys on the tuna vessel were from a relatively big ship. The guys from the Seychelles were from a small private craft, and I was an example of someone captured on land. And these people that were from the small private craft, who were they trying to get money from? Just anyone who knows them? Is that how they do this?

Yeah, whoever. Anybody they can. I mean, of course they ask from the government, but the government doesn't always pay. You know, the given government. Yeah. The whole system seems so insane that they've got, I mean, they keep people for years and years. Yeah. And they have just a whole collection of them. Are they trying to extract money from people that know them?

Yeah. As it turns out, they're not very good at it. So pirates are in the kidnapping business, but they don't always know what they're doing. So the bosses, I think, got used to demanding a lot of money from shipping companies and finding out that if you hold a ship stubbornly for a long time, you get a lot of money from the insurance company or whatever. That calculation doesn't work with human beings. So in other words, everyone else on earth who negotiates for a human being expects the person's price to go down as the time wears on. And it took a while for pirates to understand that. Wow.

What is it, I mean, when you're dealing with all this, like what is it like on your psyche when you're getting two years in two and a half years in and you you have some sort of light at the end of the tunnel what what is it what does it feel like well i didn't know there was light at the end of the tunnel so um two years in that's where um you know it was either forgive the guards or or self-destruct. By then, I had also deliberately let go of having any kind of hope. So that was a second survival strategy. I had to not hope that I was going to get out because hoping had a downside. That cycle of hope and despair was extremely damaging to my mental well-being. So after going through that cycle a few times, I'm like, well, I have to find a different way. One of the things that I've gotten out of travel is I think your view of the world changes when you see the way people are living in different places.

Your spectrum expands. You start recognizing, oh, I might be used to Southern California, but this is not how they do things in Ohio. This is not how they do things in Italy. When you go as far as being a captive in Somalia, your spectrum is massive. I mean, your view of the world being entrenched in that life and being with those people while they're chewing this narcotic and carrying around Kalashnikovs and yelling at each other in a foreign language and watching fistfights and realizing they don't have anything either. How much has that changed you as a human being and your view of human life on Earth? Well, I think enormously. I mean, you're right. It expanded my range and my understanding of what other people think.

They obviously come from a completely different perspective in Somalia. Not only are they Muslim and African, but they're also very isolated. So Somalia, as a rule, has always been difficult to penetrate for outsiders. That was true when Richard Burton was there in the 19th century, too. for outsiders. That was true when Richard Burton was there in the 19th century, too. It's a closed culture, and they have their own way of thinking. And also the language is not related to most other languages you've heard, unless you're familiar with languages in Ethiopia. Did you learn any of it? Yeah, a little bit. But I resisted learning it from the guards.

When I was there, I thought about it like in Berlin, you realize that a lot of East Germans during the communist era were taught Russian in school, and a lot of them hated it, and I was not in a mood to learn Somali once I was a captive. So it was similar to that. in a mood to learn Somali once I was a captive. It was similar to that. I learned a few words, but I never had a good teacher. And, of course, when I was a journalist, I was relying on translators.

I would imagine that as a writer, that spectrum, the expansion of the spectrum, although there's no way you would ever barter it off or bargain to have those experiences to broaden your spectrum, it has to have changed the way you put pen to paper and view the world and your ability to describe things. Yeah, I think you realize that each individual has certain boundaries and certain self-definitions. And those self-definitions can be—the distance between one individual and another can be enormous. But in some sense, also, they're superficial distinctions. but in some sense also they're superficial distinctions. Yeah, but their inescapable reality is so alien in comparison to someone who lives in Bel Air. Oh, absolutely. Just that contrast between this world

that you were so deeply entrenched in for two years and eight months, that has got to change the way you look at human life. Yeah, because the gulf in wealth is so enormous. I mean, they can't imagine the amount of money it takes to live in Bel Air. And the other way around, I mean, I think it's very difficult for someone in California to imagine how little you can get by on and how close to the earth most people on the planet live. Yeah, there's a statistic that I read once that I repeat all the time

because it still baffles me, that if you make more than $34,000 a year, you're in the 1% of the world. Of the world, yeah, possibly. Yeah. And that is probably magnified many fold in Ethiopia. Yeah, in Ethiopia and Somalia. I mean, it's very, you know, in some ways, although they want money all the time, especially if they're criminals, the money that we're used to sort of greasing our path through life around here is just not available.

It's just not part of the reality. What do they do with money when they get it? Well, it depends. If they're pirates, they splash out on a fancy car or cops or something. Did you see fancy cars when you were there? Oh, yeah. No, I was placed in fancy cars. Really?

Yeah. No. Yeah. No, I was placed in fancy cars. Really? Yeah. No. So the pirates had great cell phones, expensive SUVs, weapons that they had bought from abroad and maybe a weapons bazaar in Mogadishu or something like that. But that's not cheap either. They bragged about how the bullets cost like a dollar each. One of them might have been wearing a band of 500 bullets. And the cut is expensive. So lots of things cost an enormous amount of money in Somalia.

But if you're, you know, if you're a very ordinary Somali, you're getting by on, you know, less than a dollar a day. So there's the ordinary Somalis who are not criminals or not pirates, at least. And that's the majority. The majority. And then you have these pirates that are essentially running through the streets in Mercedes Benz. They're like gangsters. They're like gangsters. And that's actually how one Somali who had some connection to Germany described him to me.

You know, he was wandering around in Galkayo because it was his hometown in some way, his ancestral town, and he had met some. This was before I got captured. It was like they had rap thumping from the SUVs. Did they really? American rap? Who knows. Who knows. There's lots of actually good

African rap. Really? Oh yeah. Senegalese rap. Have you ever heard West African rap? No. Really good. I'd like to get some because I love music that I don't understand the words to? Oh yeah. Senegalese rap. Have you ever heard West African rap? No. Really good. I'd like to get some because I love music that I don't understand the words to. Oh yeah. Yeah. I can send you some band names.

Please do. I will. Yeah. When I write, I like to listen to things I don't understand because I can still write and not think about their words. Right. Yeah, exactly. When you're around these gangsters and you, do get this sense of like, oh, God, like they this is they need this money like this money.

They want to keep this going. They're going to need more money. This is just a never ending cycle. That's that's obviously how it seemed. Yeah. And that's true. I think some of the guards, some of the lower ranking, and maybe some of the gentler guards, the ones who got along with me, did not necessarily want to be gangsters for the rest of their lives. So I think for some people the plan was get a bunch of money and get out. But as an operation, yeah, it just needed – there was no limit to the money they needed or wanted. And so in the end, the real motivation is not illegal fishing but greed. And do they have any – well, it initially started with illegal fishing though, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Do they have any sort of ultimate goal? Like one day I'm going to retire. I'm going to have a mansion in the hills. Yeah. So I think individually they do. And some bosses get a mansion and a big compound and live large. And then they try and hire younger pirates and that kind of thing.

The thing about piracy and also terrorism. So al-Shabaab is the al-Qaeda aligned group in Somalia. terrorism. So al-Shabaab is the al-Qaeda aligned group in Somalia. Al-Shabaab and pirates are the two main corporate structures in Somalia. So in other words, if you're a young man and you know how to use a gun, those are the places you join up with if you want to be upwardly mobile. If you want to impress somebody and get promotions and make money and marry a wife, those were the most available options. Otherwise, you know, you had scarce jobs, maybe some frustrating sheep herding or fishing, more interesting jobs in the cities, but not very many. And then maybe a pretty well paid UN job, you know, if you're lucky. So these things are very tempting for young Somalis.

And even if the pirate bosses are no longer capturing ships on the water, it's fallen off quite a bit in the last few years, they've still got other businesses going on, including, like I said, human smuggling and gun smuggling. Does anybody have aspirations to get out? Did you run into anybody that understands that the rest of the world, like there are opportunities to live in a place where you don't have this kind of systemic violence and crime? Yes, definitely.

I mean, I think they don't necessarily understand the rest of the world very well, but they know that Somalia is in trouble. And so a lot of people wanted to get out. And some of the guards talked to me about wanting to go to Europe. But one of them who did, and I describe him in the book, he wound up getting married to Mogadishu. So I wound up with a wedding photograph from him. Wow. So he wound up not going, which was smart.

Did you stay in touch with them? Not exactly. One guy found me on Facebook and corresponded to me. Jesus Christ. One of your captors? One of the guards, yeah. One of the gentler guys. One of the guys who got along with me.

What was that like when you get a message on Facebook from someone who held a gun to you? At first, I didn't want to answer him, but slowly I realized I could get good information from him. Facebook! We're not friends. I mean, I've explained this before, but we didn't become Facebook friends. You don't follow each other? I don't let him into my life on Facebook. But no, we message each other. It's okay. You set limits. Yeah, but still. When you said that you had forgiveness, that was very important.

Did you express that to him? Yes, at least in my tone. I mean, he was one of the easiest people to forgive. He was never obnoxious or violent towards me, except for belonging to this violent gang. I think he was personally never as obnoxious as some of the other guards could be. Did you try to communicate to him that the rest of the world is different? Did you try to communicate to him what it's like where you grew up and that your experience as a human being is so wildly different than his?

No, that wasn't our topic of conversation. Did you ever think of introducing that? I got some of that information from him. Let's put it that way. He told me a little bit about his background, and it was military, as a matter of fact, which I think is typical. So in other words, a lot of them are trained gunmen. I wasn't anxious to share a lot of information with him.

But, you know, if he reads my book, he'll learn it. There's a lot of personal background in the book. Wow. It's so hard to even imagine. imagine you know there's some people that tell you things you're like oh i can kind of imagine that but your story is so fucked up it's almost impossible to even imagine and so unique in that you grew up in this incredibly western world this this you know first world you're're in Germany and then you go to Somalia and get captured and stay there and it alters your reality. Yeah, it did.

It really did. And it was, it's a lot more fucked up than I expected it to be. In other words, I didn't, you know, I wouldn't have wished for this. I wouldn't have wished for this on my family either. I couldn't imagine. Yeah. Do you think about Somalia? Do you think about what it must be like to be a person that's stuck there, that lives there? Oh, I had plenty of opportunity to think about that. That was

obviously behind what my guards were doing. So that was on my mind quite a lot. And that's where you realize that actually most of the world lives quite poor. Somalia is one of the poorest countries. So it's even under the average line for the rest of the world. But no, it's clear that most of the world doesn't live like we do in the West. What was a day like there? Like what did you typically do other than be shackled to sleep? Yeah, well, it depended where I was. If I was on the ship, then there was a—I slept in a cabin along with 10 other hostages,

and then we came out to the deck in the morning and had instant coffee and something for breakfast. And the food was not bad because it was still an operating fishing vessel. And we got piles of rice and basically Chinese food from the kitchen as long as supplies lasted. Once I was on land, then I just woke up alone under a mosquito tent and wondered what to do that day. I had to live in my head quite a bit. If I didn't have paper and pen to write with, which I didn't for at least a year and a half, I had to sort of write in my head. I mean, I actually composed paragraphs in my head and went through them and memorized them. And eventually, I had a two-hour routine in the morning where I just lay still and went through these words in my head.

That was one way to keep sane. So you remembered the individual paragraphs and you put them in an order? I was revising books in my head. So I would go through and say, okay, this needs work. Might as well get to it. And then I would compose a paragraph, refine it, memorize it, all in my head. You know, I have friends that do comedy that way. They don't really write.

They only write in their head. But they still call it writing. And I found that interesting. They said, well, this is the best way for me to constantly remember it. That's interesting. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, that's what I had to do, commit it to memory.

And so you sat down there and when you were going over the material this was a purposeful strategy in order to keep your sanity and give yourself some some order and keep my mind occupied um and when i and i would memorize that and then i also had like a list of names from the ship to memorize so i had written all their names down with the proper spellings right i was still optimistic when i when i was from the ship to memorize. So I had written all their names down with the proper spellings, right? I was still optimistic when I was on the ship. And so I had an incredibly complex list of names from the crewmen, which I lost. And so I lost the list between the ship and land. So remembering their names became part of my morning routine too. And this is obviously phonetic, right? Because you're dealing with Asian language. I had learned to spell them though.

Luckily when I got out, I got a list of the crewman's names from the FBI. Wow. When did this book come out? It just came out last week, and it's been a few years in the making. Is it difficult to do conversations like this? No. Like I said, it's easier now that I've written it, so I'm fluent with this material now. But when I first got out, I wouldn't have been able to talk about it like this. I would have just bunged up. I wouldn't have known where to start. I would have just bunged up. I wouldn't have known where to start.

What do you anticipate doing once the dust has settled and this is firmly established and you're done with the promos? Well, I'm working on a new book. The novel, the drone novel. I'm working on the novel, and I'm following a story, a couple of stories in the meantime, too, some journalism. And I work for Hostage U.S. at the moment, too, which is a good nonprofit that supports families that might have somebody in captivity somewhere. And the U.S. government, as it turns out, helps families in really good ways. as it turns out, helps families in really good ways.

But in the ways that they can't, in terms of just letting the families know what to expect and what might be going on with their people, Hostage U.S. can step in and help. I think your story is really important, and I think it's not just important in terms of the fact that you've had an incredibly deep view of what it's like to live there but that you you've got your life back yeah and in in this experience of no hope and sorrow and captivity and just all the the various struggles that you went through, you've experienced something that just very, very few human beings, even in the 7 billion people on this planet

and all their struggles and trials and tribulations, there's what small handful have been held captive by Somali pirates and then managed to live. Well, there's a network of former captives, and that's what Hostage U.S. is about. How many people have been held captive? Oh, more than you realize. But several of us are still alive, and so the best people for me to talk to when I first got out was other people who'd been captive.

David Rode, who was held hostage by the Taliban when he was working for the New York Times, was also on the board of the Pulitzer Center when I got captured. So he followed my story. Talking to him after I got out was fantastic. It was better than a psychologist. And I was aware of it. He escaped, you know, so I was aware of his story when I was there. So we were thinking about each other in a way, you way, and we're friends now. It's great. Talking to someone who's been through it is psychologically the best thing. Now, what are the numbers in terms of how many people who've been held captive by the Somalis?

Oh, by Somalis? How many are currently? Do they know? Currently, yeah. It's down to about four Iranian fishermen. That's it right now? That's it. And then a couple who are actually captured by pirates,

and then a couple of Kenyans who I think were handed over to a pirate gang. So it's much reduced. And in fact, the Nahum 3 crew, when they got out, was the last big crew that was being held by pirates. They got out in 2016. So the pirate era, you might say, is sort of tapering off. But why is that? Oh, because while so it was while I was there, pirates stopped being so active on the water. And I slowly gleaned that from from the BBC or whatever I was listening to. And I'm like,

fuck, I came here to write a story about pirates. Now it's not even a story. story about pirates. Now it's not even a story. You've become the story. I became the story. It's not good. But it fell off in 2013, maybe even a little earlier, late 2012, partly because the bosses shifted their focus to other businesses and they found it less profitable to hold people. probably also because of my case. I mean, my case wasn't moving along. But mainly because, and this still has to be true to keep piracy down, cargo ships sail now with armed teams, you know, contractors. And it turns out a spatter of gunfire in the water can keep a skiff from coming on.

That's enough. And it should out a spatter of gunfire in the water can keep a skiff from coming on. That's enough. And it should be enough. And that's really the main defense. The naval teams that still cruise off Somalia, it's a very important formality. But I don't think they practically stop individual cases the way an armed team does. And there was a lot of fear about that beforehand, a lot of fear about putting weapons on a civilian cargo ship, you know, or a merchant ship. Somebody thought, a few people thought there would be like an arms race in the water.

And then, you know, pirates would come on with heavier weapons or whatever. Turns out not to be the case. Now, what did the bosses shift their attentions to? Turns out not to be the case. Now, what did the bosses shift their attentions to? Like I said, probably some human smuggling, drug and weapons smuggling. You know, they have portfolios. They have other businesses.

And they just roll it over into something else if piracy becomes too difficult. And that's what the precautions that the shipping industry now takes have been enough to make it too difficult for the bosses. Did you take any consideration or did you anticipate in any way a cure for what ails them? Yeah. In fact, that was another idea that sent me there. I wanted to investigate the possibility of just ginning up legitimate business in Somalia because America went through the same cycle 300 years ago. We had pirates when we were colonials. We had pirates, very savage ones, who sailed from the eastern seaboard out to Africa, actually out to the horn of Africa. And they were very brutal to Muslims. So it was reversed. And we recovered from

it by becoming a country and becoming responsible for our own economy. What's going on in Somalia now is a lot of illicit business activity, but it's business activity. You turn it into something illicit and give people jobs, they're not going to be pirates anymore. And there are ways to do that, and I think slowly people who have power in Somalia are figuring that out. But it's still a lot of criminals that have too much power in Somalia.

Well, listen, Michael, I didn't want to touch your book until I met you. I wanted to somehow or another have a fresh conversation and get your perspective on this. But I think your view of the world is very valuable, and it's just very, very different. And I'm so happy that you got out, and I'm so happy. I'm so happy you wrote this book, and I can't wait to check it out. It's available now, The Desert and the Sea. And just thank you.

Thank you, Joe. Thank you for being here. I really, really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me on. All right. Wow. Thank you.