Postcard: Nairobi

摘要

The pirate is sitting in the back-seat of my car. We're parked in the basement lot of a Nairobi mall, and the Muzak version of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" echoes across the concrete. The man, who calls himself Ahmad, tells me he helped hijack six ships off the coast of Somalia before he quit the trade in November because his wife left him for another pirate. I met Ahmad in mid-March at a restaurant in Eastleigh, a Nairobi neighborhood dominated by Somalis. He came with another ex-pirate, named Bashir, who bared his black, rotten teeth every time he smiled. Bashir and Ahmad sipped strawberry milk shakes through long straws.