Djibouti

SOMALI PIRATES ARE

She read the piece that began: "Somalia's increasingly brazen pirates are building sprawling stone houses, cruising in luxury cars-even hiring caterers to prepare Western-style food for the hostages."

Down to: "In northern coastal towns the pirate economy is thriving thanks to the money pouring in from ransomed ships, which has reached thirty million so far this year."

Dara pulled stories off the Internet and read about Somali pirates for the next few hours, accounts of what they were up to, some stories with photographs:

The Saudi oil tanker carrying a hundred million dollars of crude, hijacked, boarded by pirates in less than fifteen minutes.

The MV Faina, a Ukrainian cargo ship, being held for ransom since September, thirty-three Russian tanks and assault rifles aboard.

Photographs of Somali speedboats skimming over the water with six or seven pirates aboard, each boat armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Another photo, a trawler and its crew of Somalis wearing casually wrapped kaffiyehs and T-shirts, and a sign on the trawler's wheelhouse that read SOMALI COAST GUARD.

She began to realize these guys were doing their own style of piracy, nothing like the old-time cutthroats. The Somalis were having a good time getting rich. She thought of Xavier who lived around the corner on St. Philip, and phoned him.

Xavier's voice came on asking Dara, "What you up to this hour?"

She said, "You've been through the Gulf of Aden, haven't you?" XAVIER LEBO, SIX-SIX STRAIGHT up in his bare feet, seventy-two years old, a black man with a gold ring in his ear, some gray in his hair and white teeth he showed smiling at Dara. Xavier had gone to sea when he was sixteen. He told Dara he'd been through the Gulf of Aden thirty, forty times counting both ways. He said, "You know how many ships pass through?"

"All I'm sure of," Dara said, "it's on the east coast of Africa."

"Twenty thousand merchant ships and oil tankers a year," Xavier said. "The ones headin west go up through the Red Sea to Suez, where the Egyptians try to shake you down. The other way you go all the way to China. You interested in the pirates, huh, rippin off all the ships go by."

"I wouldn't mind talking to some of them."

"They gone after a hundred ships and caught maybe forty of 'em. Take money from the safe and what they want from the galley. Or they run the ship down to Eyl and hold it there for ransom. Ask a couple million for a Greek cargo ship and get it. You know what they want for the Sirius Star, the Saudi oil tanker? Twenty-five million. The Saudis say they won't give 'em shit. All right, they'll take seventeen million. They'll get some- thin and buy new cars. You know what their favorite is? Black Toyota SUV with black windows. I hear some of the pirates are dressin up. They put on a suit and tie, drive up to Djibouti to get laid and marry a fine-lookin woman. Be his Djibouti wife."

Dara heard him flick his Ronson to light a cigarette.

"You know where to find the best-lookin girls in Africa? Eritrea, on the Red Sea, above Ethiopia. But now I think about it, they some fine-lookin Ethiopian women I've seen. Smart-lookin thin ladies with the cheekbones, some black as coal, their race not tampered with much through the ages." He said, "Hang on a minute, I got to take a leak, relieve my worn-out bladder."

He came back on and Dara said, "I'm thinking about doing one on the pirates. Interview some of them…Does that make sense?"

Xavier said, "Yeah, but they take one look at you, gonna hold you for ransom."

"Really?" Dara said. "What do you think I'd be worth?" THEY MET THE FIRST time two days before Katrina, knowing it was coming, Dara waiting for a table at Felix's, the manager telling her, "Just a few minutes, Dara."

Xavier got up from his table and waved her over.

"Come on sit here. They lyin to you, 'just a few minutes.'" He pulled out a chair at his table, a dozen oysters and a bottle of beer waiting. "You don't mind, I like to ask you about a movie you made." He started to smile a little. "The one you called Whites Only? You surprise me. Nice-lookin woman associatin with those freaks. They try and mess with you?"

"At first," Dara said, seated now with Xavier. "I told them I'm too busy to fall in love, okay? I asked what they've got against African Americans. Got them saying nasty things and started shooting."

"Shoulda used a shotgun."

Dara had a dozen oysters, then another while Xavier was on his third plate, Xavier telling her he'd been going to sea on and off most of fifty years. "Me and three hundred thousand Filipinos. I don't know where they go. I always come back to New Orleans."

They had a couple of cognacs and coffee after.

"You gonna shoot the hurricane's on its way?"

"I may as well."

"Bringin the Gulf of Mexico up the river. You gonna need a tall man to hump equipment, keep it dry."

"And a second cameraman," Dara said.

By the time they were shooting what was left of the Ninth Ward, Xavier was aiming a shoulder-mounted Sony at people sitting on top their homes, Xavier seeing their despair and hoping to catch it on film. Later on he sat in on the editing of these scenes and watched Dara give it her touch, eliminating his smash close-up of a woman's face to treat her more gently, the woman on her roof holding a child. Xavier would look at Dara's cut and see what it was like to be that woman.

He went to Hollywood with Dara for the Oscar show.

She even brought him onstage to stand next to her in his tux Dara borrowed from one of the Lakers, Xavier looking down at the top of her blond hair, done to slant across the corner of her eye. He thought Dara looked like a movie star. Even had on makeup. Dara in a black gown pasted on her slim body. She looked to Xavier like she was supposed to look. It seemed natural to her, like the hot chick was inside the documentary film shooter waiting to make her move. She held up Oscar, raised him over her head as she thanked her sponsors. Then brought Oscar down and thanked her cameraman Xavier LeBo, saying his name in a slow way as she looked up at him. "Xavier kept talking to me, asking if I was quick enough to shoot a hundred-and-fifty-mile-an-hour hurricane going by." Dara said, holding up Oscar again, "Xavier deserves some of this award."

Xavier said, walking off with Dara, "You right that time." DARA MADE UP HER mind they were going to East Africa to get the real stuff, pirates in action boarding merchant ships. "And talk to them," Dara said, "get their side, the entire shipping world against them. We'll head south along the Somali coast to-wherever they're holding the ships."

"Eyl," Xavier said, "on the Indian Ocean. Gonna need a trawler, a deep-sea fishin boat cleaned up, can take any kind of sea. I get it ready, stock provisions-for how long?"

"A month at least. Where do we get the boat?"

"Djibouti, at the crossroads of us and the Arabs. Leave Djibouti, you in the Gulf of Aden lookin for pirates. Us and warships from around the world, all out there like we know what we doin."

"You've read about the pirates?"

"You say we goin to Somaliland I read everything's been written about pirates. The past few months the Internet's heavy with pirate shit and the different navies after 'em."

"I'll print out the latest stuff and read it on the plane," Dara said. "I imagine we go to Paris first."

"Connect there to Djibouti. Air France or Daallo, you want to travel with the natives. You have a name for the movie?"

"Modern-Day Pirates."

"About stock and bond salesmen?"

"You like Djibouti?"

"That has a sound to it, yeah. I'll give you one, The Evil Solution."

"You're kidding."

"One of the pirates called it that. Man name of Shamun, head of the gang that took the Saudi tanker-seven times bigger than the Titanic. He said when evil is the only solution…No, he said they have to get Somalia to settle down first, with a gover'ment can go after the pirates when they ashore. He said get rid of the foreign boats fishin these waters and you rid of the foreign navies watchin over them. He said if they busy with fishin boats they can't protect the ships haulin goods. Shamun said, 'So they become our fish.'"

"It's not a bad line," Dara said.

"You want to hear what else he said? 'What we doin might be evil, hijackin their ships. But if evil's the only solution'-where I stole the title-'then we do evil.' This is a man in the middle of all this shit goin down, calls it The Evil Solution."

"It only works," Dara said, "if the audience knows whose point of view it is. Otherwise it sounds like a Sherlock Holmes title."

"All right, you come up with the name of your picture," Xavier said. "I won't worry my head about it."

"Are you packed?"

"Leavin tomorrow." He said, "How about Dara Barr's African Adventure? Have natives bangin on tribal drums."

"I was thinking of laying in drums," Dara said.

"Good, you gettin yourself in the mood," Xavier said. "I'll see you next week in Djibouti."