Christopher Hope - Jimfish

Zoran the Serb smiled his sad Serbian smile. ‘Ethnic hatred is a help if you’re hoping for civil war. But you don’t need distinct tribes worshipping different gods to whip up a good massacre of the neighbours. A happy family can be at each other’s throats quicker than you can say “ex-Yugoslavia”. In Somalia it’s your clan that counts. Yours against theirs. And their family feud has killed hundreds of thousands. Even more are starving. Outsiders try to help, but aid trucks get ambushed, cargo planes shot down, ships can’t dock. Anyone who isn’t dead is dead broke. The latest idea is to sell hostages. That’s why they locked me up here. I told them: “I’m a Serb — no one wants to buy a used Yugoslav. Hell, we’re worth even less than South Africans!”’

Jimfish decided it was time to tell his cellmate the truth. ‘I happen to be from South Africa.’

For the first time Zoran looked quite cheered. ‘Good heavens! A Serb and a South African — twin polecats of the western world and we end up in the same cell!’

Suddenly, helicopters were clattering overhead and they heard the sound of shooting. Zoran walked to the door of the cell and, to his astonishment, it opened.

‘Our jailers — they’ve gone! What is going on? I’m getting a bad feeling.’

Jimfish was happy to reassure Zoran. ‘It’s very good news. They’ve gone to the beach. It means the Americans have landed.’

‘Americans invading Somalia?’ Zoran was incredulous. ‘I’m getting a very bad feeling.’

‘Not invading,’ said Jimfish. ‘Intervening. This is a humanitarian operation. The Somalis will greet them with open arms.’

‘They’ll open fire, more likely,’ Zoran said. ‘The soldiers who kidnapped us have gone hunting for high-end hostages. They don’t need us bottom feeders any more.’

Jimfish was shocked at Zoran’s Serbian cynicism. ‘The Americans plan a short, surgical intervention. They’ll feed the starving, treat the sick, shoot the warlords and leave.’

‘My very bad feeling just got worse,’ said Zoran. ‘How do you know all this about the American plans?’

Jimfish reassured him. ‘Because I am the first stage of the mercy mission — I am the harbinger of hope.’

‘More like the canary in the coal mine,’ said Zoran. ‘Let’s get out of here before the goons get back with new hostages and shoot us because they need the cell space.’

Crouching behind a dune on the beach Jimfish and Zoran watched the first frogmen coming ashore. Under the full moon they looked in their wetsuits and flippers like walking fish. Jimfish remembered Port Pallid, the old captain who had been good to him and the great blue fish with four small legs that lived secretly in deep undersea caves, stood on its head, swam backwards and had lived on, quietly, successfully, for millions of years even though everyone was sure it was dead.

He knew, then, that it was time to go home. And yet what good would that do? When he had shot his future brother-in-law, as well as an American secret agent, plus a Minister of Education, and left his dearest Lunamiel to the mercy of a Liberian brigadier who wore nothing but his boots; and when the rage that his old teacher Soviet Malala — dead in distant Ukraine — called the rocket fuel of the lumpenproletariat had turned to tears and treachery, and his dream of arriving on the right side of history seemed as far away as ever.

As he and Zoran watched, three inflatable rubber landing craft packed with marines — their faces daubed black, carrying packs and weapons — slid out of the surf and on to the sand. It was then, as if the beach had been hit by a bolt of lightning, that night turned to day. The lights belonged to dozens of camera crews who had been waiting in the darkness.

The frogmen and the marines in their night-vision goggles were blinded by the lights and mobbed by men with important, carefully combed hair, speaking earnestly to camera. The cameras then filmed a short ceremony in which a banner was unfurled and planted on the beach; it read OPERATION RESTORE HOPE.

‘What are they doing with all these cameras and lights?’ Jimfish asked Zoran.

Zoran looked at his watch. ‘It’s prime-time evening news hour in the US. Big story: “Marines ambushed by the media in Mogadishu”.’

The marines forced their way past the anchormen and began digging in, and the film crews wheeled their cameras close up and followed every spadeful of beach sand. Jimfish felt sorry for the soldiers. You land on a beach expecting to kill or be killed and, next thing you know, someone shoves a mike at you and asks if you have a special message for your girlfriend watching at home in dear old Savannah.

Next on to the beach came the amphibious vehicles, rolling up the sand dunes with their drivers yelling at cameramen to get out of the way because there was a war going on. At this point, three Somalis rushed towards the marines, holding their arms above their heads, calling, ‘Don’t shoot!’

They were immediately thrown down on the sand and bound by the marines, while the cameras watched.

‘We are interpreters!’ one of the men managed to shout, before all were gagged and turned face down in the sand.

Zoran told Jimfish to be ready to run for his life. ‘Any minute now both media and marines will be ready to march on Mogadishu.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ Jimfish asked.

Zoran looked at his watch. ‘We’re probably in a commerical break right now. The networks will want to see the troops in place outside Mogadishu, ready for the next segment of the show. Straight after the ads. That’s when the marines march triumphantly to the capital and the locals cheer.’

Jimfish was reassured to hear this. ‘So far, so good. Mission accomplished.’

‘So far, so bad and getting worse,’ said Zoran. ‘These poor guys haven’t a clue what they will be facing. Mogadishu is a mean town: lousy with burning tyres, burning rubbish, burning hatreds. Foreign invaders with nothing to gain hunting locals with nothing to lose. A recipe for disaster. These marines are on a hiding to nowhere.’

As he predicted, film crews, marines, make-up men, hair stylists and news anchors, still talking earnestly to camera, began marching off in the direction of the capital, under the banner, OPERATION RESTORE HOPE.

‘Now we grab one of those empty landing craft the marines arrived in,’ said Zoran, and made for the water.

‘What do we do about them?’ Jimfish pointed to the interpreters lying on the beach where the Americans had trussed them. ‘Let’s untie them. Then the two sides can talk to each other.’

‘What good would talking do?’ Zoran pushed Jimfish into one of the inflatables. ‘Who wants to hear what the other side is saying? Let’s get out — before this dialogue of the deaf turns into a dance of the dead.’

As they were floated into the surf, a squadron of helicopters flew overhead, heading for Mogadishu, and Jimfish was proud to be able to identify them.

‘Blackhawks. Most modern killing machine around, so I’m told.’

Zoran raised his eyebrows. ‘From what I’ve seen in ex-Yugoslavia, I’d say that prize still goes to a human with an enemy in his sights.’

Jimfish gave one last look at the three Somali interpreters still bound, gagged and kicking in the sand, and asked again if he could free them, but his words were lost as Zoran fired up the motors and they headed out to sea.

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1993

The useful thing about a large, ribbed, inflatable landing craft with two good outboard motors and loaded with plenty of extra fuel, in methodical marine fashion, was that it carried Jimfish and Zoran well down the east coast of Africa to Mombasa in Kenya, where they took on more fuel and sailed south.