In The Other Side Of The World

Mary, Zara, Tom, Bob, Harry and John lands in Zagreb. All are excited about the new place, new people, climate, and the new environment which they have to adjust to. Tom, Bob, Harry, and John works in the same company and they all go together to the workplace by tram. Mary and Zara spend their time by doing household work and in the evening, they have fun by engaging themselves in activities like long walks, aerobics classes, and shopping.

Every Fridays, they arrange for get-together either in Mary and Tom’s house or in Bob and Zara’s house or in Harry and John’s house. During weekends, they visit National Parks, Museums, Waterfalls and main attractions in Zagreb and nearby places.

It is Christmas Season in Zagreb.

Mary and Zara were taking their usual walks near the Riverside.

Zara said "Yesterday Bob gave me a surprise by booking tickets for Italy sightseeing during Christmas Vacations. Harry and John joining us too. Are you guys joining?"

Mary replied, "Zara, let me have a word with Tom. As you know, Tom being workaholic won’t be interested in sightseeing. Will let you know about it tomorrow.”

Zara couldn’t hold her excitement for the trip and she is discussing the list of places to visit, clothes to be bought and packed and the food to be taken for the journey. By seeing Zara, Mary is in double mind: She longing to go with Zara and on the other hand, Will Tom agrees to take her for such trips.

Mary comes back home after her walk, freshen up, cooks dinner and waits for Tom to arrive.

Tom rings the bell. Mary opens the door.

Tom: Honey, I am home. How was your day?

Mary: My day went on well.

Mary eagerly waiting to tell Tom about Zara’s sightseeing plan. But she kept quiet to avoid disappointment in case if Tom does not agree to take her.

After dinner, Mary is washing utensils in the Kitchen and Tom settled in Sofa to watch TV.

Out of sudden, Mary could hear Tom calling her to come quickly as he forgot to tell her something.

Mary sits beside him and asks ” What is it that you forgot to tell me.”

Tom: “All are going for Italy tour day after tomorrow for Christmas and new year holidays. Can we join them?”

Mary: ” I love to.”

Mary’s happiness knew no bounds and hugged Tom.

Next day, after Tom leaves to Office, Mary calls Zara.

Mary: ” Hello Zara”

Zara: ” Hi Mary, what’s up”

Mary: ” I and Tom joining with you for the Trip. “

Zara: ” Wow, It’s a wonderful news. We will have fun.”

Mary full of ecstasy packed her and Tom’s bags for the trip. She packed breakfast for all. They boarded the train from Zagreb at midnight for Italy tour.

Venice:

On 31st Dec, they arrived Venice in the early morning. It was Snowy and very Cold. All checked into a hotel. Mary and Tom took some rest before they meet others at scheduled time for sightseeing. All stepped down and walked on the road enjoying the snow. Men were in a hurry to reach the destination. Women were playing with snow as they walk. Harry and John were busy clicking pictures and selfies.Tom and Bob asked Mary and Zara to come quickly to the bus stop. All boarded the bus.

The bus came to halt in Venice central. They could view all 4 modes of transport (i.e., airport, railway station, buses, cars, boats, and gondolas) from a bridge. Harry is clicking pictures of Mary and Tom near the bridge.

Harry: “Try a pose of proposing each other.”

Tom: “I am growing older. It’s been 15 years we are together. And now you ask me to propose her.”

Harry: “Come on…”

Tom: “If I don’t propose her, Will she not stay with me?”

Harry: “Please propose her.”

Tom with Harry’s compulsion go near Mary.

Mary’s face blushing with a smile looks at him. Tom kneels down and holds her hand.

Tom: “I love you forever and ever more till this earth becomes stardust.”

Mary’s eyes filled with tears.

Mary said: “Me too.”

Harry captures the wonderful moments of Tom and Mary and shows thumbs up.

All have to wait in a long queue for a Boat ride. Zara and Bob preferred for Gondola ride and rest of the group for the boat ride.

At noon, Harry, Tom, Mary, and John boarded a boat. All of them teased Zara and Bob for their Gondola ride to stay away from others. Zara is overjoyed as usual and ignores other’s comments.

All of them saw palaces, coloured houses, couples in gondolas, churches, etc while travelling in the boat. Many people hopped in and out from boat at different destinations. The group chose to get down at destination named as St Marco.

St Marco has shops selling antics and masks, church, shopping centres, and concerts. Harry and John proceeded to have a gala time at the concert. Mary and Tom went to shopping areas and church. As she found that it’s expensive to buy, Mary and Tom decided to go for window shopping walking hand in hand. As they were hungry, they decided to try on seafood enjoying each other’s company. They met Harry and John at the concert. About 12 hrs of spending time in a boat, all were tired. At midnight, everyone wished good night and went to their respective rooms in the hotel to take rest.

Pisa:

On 1st January early morning, it was snowing heavily in Venice. Group is planning to go to Pisa. They are watching TV with headlines flashing that all public transport were not running due to snow.

The Group is disappointed and they are in silence, thinking what should be done.

Mary and Zara inquired the reception if the hotel authorities could arrange any vehicle.

Hotel authorities replied that there is no alternative.

All of them were sitting on the sofa at the reception.

Suddenly, Harry suggested,” Let’s find a way ourselves to go to Pisa and make an adventure trip. If we don’t find a way, we will come back to Hotel. I don’t find any point in waiting here and relying on the hotel authorities. “

John agreed.

Mary and Zara jumped from sofa and said,” Yippee, that’s a good idea. Let’s go.”

All agreed and they set off on the snowy road to the nearby bus stop.

On the way, they saw people trying their level best to shovel the snow to clear the road. They struggled to walk as the snow is till their knee length. Harry, John, Bob, and Tom helped the girls to reach the bus stop.

They waited for 1 hour for a bus but in vain. No vehicles in sight. Harry and John were passing their time by playing football in the ball of snow; Mary and Zara by building a snowman; Tom and Bob are losing their patience for agreeing to Harry’s stupid idea.

After about 2 hours of waiting, they all are losing hope and are about to cancel the Pisa trip.

Harry said,” Oh my God… Look there.”

Will luck favour them or not?

All were relieved to spot a bus from a distance after a long wait. When the bus approached nearby, they found that it’s almost full and people were standing on the steps.

Tom and Bob exchanged glances to ask each other, is it necessary to go to Pisa on this crowded bus.

Harry shouted to the group,” Climb in…”

John, Mary & Zara climbed on the bus without any hesitation. Bob and Tom have no other option as their wives had already hopped in.

With a lot of push and pull from the crowd inside, they reached the railway station.

They couldn’t differentiate between the railway tracks and road due to heavy snow. They started running in the tracks to catch the train which is about to leave in few minutes.

An announcement is going on in the local language that nobody should walk or run on the railway tracks but Indians, as they couldn’t understand the local language were walking on the track paying no heed to it.

They boarded the train. Harry, John, and Bob hung their wet clothes on the window aisle. Ticket Collector was astonished to see the clothes hung when he came to check their tickets. But no one was bothered to notice his expression and were having fun playing games and giggling.

They reached Ferenze station by noon, had lunch in Mc Donald's & off to PISA Railway station. It is Raining in Pisa.

They walked & as they pass through the lanes, they saw Auser River, Restaurants, Churches, Embassy & Botanical Garden. There is Cathedrals, Baptistry & cemetery surrounding leaning tower. All were sitting near Leaning Tower enjoying the sight.

Suddenly Harry said to them,” Got the Tickets, We are climbing to the top of the Tower.”

Mary and Zara were tired.

Mary said: ” Why don’t you guys climb. We will rest here.”

Tom: ” We have already got tickets for all. You will enjoy it.”

Mary and Zara unwillingly joined the Queue for climbing to the top of the tower. They had to wait around 30 minutes for their turn.

Mary, Tom, and the group started to climb. Mary and Tom lead the group of people and had to rush so that they give way for other people to climb. Mary is exhausted and asked Tom for help.

Tom said to Mary: ” Do count the steps as you climb. You won’t feel tired.”

Mary started counting the steps. At last, when they reached the top, Mary excitedly said she could climb 302 steps. At the top, they could view a spectacular sight of entire Pisa lit up at night.

Mary and Zara had a candy in the shape of Leaning Tower after stepping down from the tower and jumped in joy like small children.

In the evening, they boarded the train to Venice. When they reached Venice, the streets had no buses, cabs or any vehicles in sight. All of them started walking on the lonely road. A crowded bus arrived at midnight and left them in a spot where no one knew the route back to the hotel. Harry and John were enjoying clicking pictures of waterfalls and fountain and least bothered about the situation.

Another bus came by. They got in. After 10 minutes of traveling, they came to know that the bus is going in a different route. All got down and walked for about 10 km. At a few distance, they could find another hotel and asked the authorities to hire a taxi. Luckily, this time, authorities were kind enough to book the taxis for them. Finally, they reached their hotel after a hectic journey and fell asleep.

ROME:

Next day morning, all of them packed their bags to set off to Rome.

It’s a warm weather in the city which enabled them to roam about, unlike Venice. The city had its own beauty with many monuments, museums, churches and other attractions. They traveled by bus and Metro trains to the hotel booked by them. Reached a resort where they had small cottages to stay, eating place, a market, and a cycling spot situated near the beach. All of them went to the respective cottages allocated to them having an early dinner i.e., Italian food so that they can set off with their sightseeing the next day.

In the early morning, they went to Rome central station. From there, they took a Hop-on Hop – off tour bus and had a sightseeing tour around the city. They visited Colosseum, St. Peters Square where Pope used to address the speech, Municipal Office, State Building in Rome, Trevi Fountain, Vatican City, Tiber River, Museum with Mouth of Truth, Michelangelo's Castle & a church. They saw a man dressed like Statue of Liberty near a church. They thought it’s a statue and were standing beside it. But suddenly it started moving, all were astonished to find that it’s a man dressed like a statue.

The next day morning, Harry, John, Bob, and Zara went to play on the beach near the resort. Tom and Mary decided to stay in the cottage and take rest. At noon, all packed their bags and went to visit St. Basilica Church, Parliament House & Cultural Arts Theater. They boarded a train back to Zagreb.

When they reached Zagreb, it was bit snowing. In the next weekend, they plan to meet and have a good time in sweeping the snow in Mary and Tom’s balcony. Mary and Zara took their shovels but instead of clearing the snow, they started making snowballs and play with it.

All Happy times came to an end. It was time for them to depart to India. All promised each other to meet in India.

In India, nothing worked out as promised. They were in constant touch over the phone. No Get-together due to traffic jams, personal commitments and as they were located in different parts of India.

All of them were missing each other and also the fun they had in Zagreb.They decided to have a get-together during Christmas and new-year holidays again.

All boarded a ship on Christmas day to sail abroad. All were drunk and being merry. Suddenly Mary and Tom decided to take a sailboat just for fun and they thought to do something different and sail along in the ship where others from the group were sailing.

Small, sloshing waves were coming from the southeast, and a trickle of wind blew from the southwest. There was no moon, and the stars were shrouded by clouds.

The boat was slowly edging away from Mahé. The wind was pushing them farther north than they’d planned to be. With no ships or land in sight, the sailboat bobbed along all alone.

Tom would catch snapper in the hours before dawn and Mary would fry them up for lunch. They’d bake their own bread in the yacht’s shoe box-size oven and sleep on-board even when in port.

Mary was on watch — it was her turn to do the four-hour shift — and her husband, Tom, was asleep below deck. It was about 2:30 a.m., and she sat in a T-shirt and light trousers at the stern, feeling seasick. Because the wind was so faint, Mary turned on the sailboat’s small engine, which chugged along at five knots, just loud enough to drown out other noise.

By the time she heard the high-pitched whine of outboard motors at full throttle, she had only seconds to react. Two skiffs suddenly materialised out of the murk, and when she swung the flashlight’s beam onto the water, two gunshots rang out.

“No guns! No guns!” she screamed.

The crack of assault rifles jarred Tom awake. The first thing he thought was pirates.

Within seconds, eight scruffy Somali men hoisted themselves aboard, their assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers clanging against the hull. Tom activated an emergency beacon, which immediately started emitting an S.O.S., and then went up on deck. The men stank of the sea and nervous musk, and they jabbed their guns at them.

“Stop engine!” they shouted. “Crew, crew! How many crew number?”

One pirate was particularly concerned about anything flashing, and Tom’s heart sank when the pirate stomped below deck and discovered the emergency beacon, blinking like a strobe, and promptly switched it off. The pirates ordered them not to touch anything else, and then they demanded a shower.

Once the Pirates were in control of the sailboat, they ransacked it, flinging open cupboards, eating all of Mary’s cookies and stealing their money, watches, rings, electronics, their satellite phone, and clothes. There were now 10 men; two more pirates had scampered on board to join the others. After showering and draining the entire supply of fresh water, they started trying on outfits. A broad-shouldered buccaneer named Buggas, who appeared to be the boss, was especially fond of their waterproof trousers, parading up and down the deck wearing them, while some of the other pirates strutted around in Mary’s brightly coloured pants and blouses.

The Pirates lashed their skiffs to the sailboat and reset the course for Somalia. But with the winds so limp, it could take two weeks. Buggas needed a faster getaway, so he made contact with another group of pirates on the Singaporean freighter that was recently hijacked.

“Speak this man!” he shouted at Tom, thrusting the satellite phone into his hand. “They rescue us.”

It was Tom’s introduction to the loose fraternity of Somali pirates and to one of the Pirates’ newest strategic advances: the mother ship. Mother ships are larger vessels — also usually hijacked — that serve as floating bases, with weeks of food and fuel aboard. The mother ships prowl the ocean with the faster attack skiffs tied alongside, allowing pirates to commandeer vessels 1,000 miles offshore. Their strike zone is now more than two million square miles of water, which is virtually impossible to patrol.

Tom spoke to the freighter’s Pakistani captain, who had a gun to his head and arranged a rendezvous. Right as the boat was about to tie up to the hijacked freighter, a British Navy ship that had been trailing from a distance started to close in. Buggas jammed his weapon in Tom’s face, telling him in broken English that he had better radio the ship to back off.

“Please turn away or we will be killed,” Tom told the Navy, and moments later the British ship slid away.

In the meanwhile, the others in the group started searching for the sailboat in the morning but couldn’t find it. They were getting worried for Mary and Tom and asking the ship authorities to locate the sailboat.

The Freighter — which already had more than a dozen captured crewmen on board — lumbered 150 miles or so to the Somali coast, where it soon joined several other hijacked ships anchored near the beach, a floating community of hostages. Being around fellow captives gave Mary a trace of comfort, knowing she and Tom were not totally alone. Almost all hostages are kept on their boats, but Buggas deviated from the standard pirate script and granted that it was time to go ashore.

Dozens of men — all of them carrying guns — were working on the beach with disc cutters, welders, and other power tools, preparing a fleet of boats for future hijacking missions.

Right behind the little base were two freshly washed Toyota trucks parked in the sand. As they stepped in, Mary saw Buggas wearing Tom’s Rolex and commented, “Oh, look, he’s wearing your watch.” One of the men sitting in the front seat overheard her and confronted Buggas, who then sheepishly handed the Rolex back to Tom. The man, who spoke English, was better-dressed than Buggas and wasn’t armed. He had an educated air about him.

Mary would get up around dawn when the desert was just bearably cool. Tom would sleep a little later. They would try their best to ingest a breakfast of goat liver and then wash up with a jerrycan of good water. They would read the few books they were allowed to grab from the yacht and write in their diaries. Tom tended to focus on the here and now: “Overcast, a little wind,” reads one entry in neat blue ink. “Another sleepless night” was another. Mary tended to be more introspective with longer entries in a perfectly formed script. The smells are sweat, the stinky perfume the pirates would douse themselves with and the scent of the charcoal, which had been soaked in diesel. Sometimes, in the morning, if they felt motivated, they did yoga together; once Tom turned around to see half a dozen gunmen earnestly following along. It seemed everyone was horribly bored.

Mary got through the early part of the morning, and then the heat and humidity would build up, and she is lying there thinking what to do.

Lunch was a mound of plain spaghetti, typically served in nauseatingly large portions. Then nap time and maybe laundry. Sweetened boiled beans and rice for dinner. They didn’t interact much with the pirates, who would occasionally bark at them to borrow their scissors or listen to their radio. Then sleep.

Buggas appeared to be calling all the shots, which dismayed them because he seemed uneducated, temperamental and crass. They kept hoping some wiser, more experienced pirates would show up and realise they were not rich and strike a deal for a more modest ransom. But that never happened. Buggas was supremely confident that he was on the verge of making millions.

Buggas is around 33 years old, fairly thickset, round, chunky face, low forehead, small eyes, fleshy lips that he tended to leave open. He constantly threatening them: “No money, you dead, kill you.”

The Pirates scoffed at such petty cash and demanded $7 million and told Tom to find a negotiator.

“Negotiator?” Tom said. “I don’t have a negotiator.” He suggested the Pirates call Mary’s brother, Francis, a retired farmer. Francis got a phone call from a guy who says, ‘I got your sister and her husband at gunpoint so you better send us everything you got and more and you’ll be lucky if you get them back’?”

Tom and Mary soon deduced that escape or rescue was unlikely. The pirates operated with total impunity in their patch of Somalia. People were always coming by the camp — who would sit for hours with the gang, talking, laughing, leisurely sipping little cups of tea, making it abundantly clear that the whole community was complicit and that no one would help them. For Tom, who is unfailingly polite and gentle, a man whose voice rarely clears a whisper, this is what brings out the bitterness.

It was all over the news about their hijack. Harry and John asked Bob and Zara to go to India to inform to Mary and Tom’s family and also said that they will stay behind to know about their whereabouts and the negotiations. Friends groaned about the pirates. “They’re morons, they’re criminals.”

By this point, Buggas and his gang were becoming extremely agitated. A small airplane had been buzzing over their camp — possibly some secret service — and the people in India, Mary’s family were refusing to negotiate with the pirates.

“Family no speak,” Buggas kept grumbling. “Family no speak.”

One day he marched to the entrance of the lean-to where Tom and Mary were sleeping, a messy bush camp with mattresses lying in the dirt, ammunition tins carelessly baking in the heat and plastic sheeting stretched overhead.

“You go, one, one,” Buggas ordered. “Tom, bags, go.”

Buggas’s plan was to separate Tom and Mary to make them as miserable as possible so they would urge their relatives to cough up the cash. But they refused and roped their arms around each other. It was more than just the fear of being lonely.

Buggas snatched up his gun and blasted three shots in the air.

“Come out!” he yelled. “Come out!”s clutched each other even tighter.

Tom and Mary clutched each other even tighter.

“You crazy,” said one of the guards. snapped back, “You crazy.”

Tom snapped back, “You crazy.”

Buggas raced over to a tree and yanked out a root. With a big knife, he stripped it smooth. He started ferociously whipping them, aiming for Mary’s head. They crumpled to the ground, and the other pirates pulled them apart. Until this point, though they had been threatened many times with loaded assault rifles, they have never been beaten. It seemed that the Pirates were reluctant to even touch them — until now.

As several gunmen dragged Tom away, he turned around to catch a glimpse of Mary on her knees, screaming. That’s when Buggas ran up to her and smashed the back of his rifle into her jaw, shearing off a tooth.

Thus began three long months of solitude. Mary and Tom stuck in little huts only a few miles away from each other but weren’t allowed to communicate. Tom tried to keep himself occupied, sketching in his journal and making a phrase book of Somali words — “bowl,” “banana,” “knife,” “bald.” There was one man, the cook, who occasionally spoke to him.

At this point, Tom began his “begging calls” to relatives. While Mary had qualms about leaning on family members. But even accessing their savings was complicated. They were officially under duress, the family’s solicitor informed Francis, and therefore not considered mentally fit to hand over control of their accounts.

Tom fumed on the phone to his brother-in-law Francis: “Tell the solicitor to use the money for a gravestone and bring it out here himself!”

Francis: “I knew we weren’t going to get out without money being paid. It’s as simple as that.”

Tom dealt primarily with a translator named Bawa, who was negotiating with Francis. Pirate translators tend to be educated men from within the community who work for several different pirate gangs and are typically paid a flat fee, which can reach $200,000 — they are essentially white-collar pirates.

Mary, meanwhile, was completely isolated. Buggas had instructed the guards not to talk to her. Mary’s cook would throw down a bowl of food and then just pad away. She started talking to herself and chanting, sometimes mimicking the call to prayer. “Shut up or I beat you!” Buggas would yell. It tormented her to think that Buggas and his gang were actually going to profit from her misery. She wanted to deny them that and felt spite bubbling up inside her. She was completely powerless to control her fate — except in one way. She had hidden a couple of razor blades in her hut and fantasised about slitting her wrists at night so the pirates would wake up to find her sprawled in a pool of blood.

A doctor, known as Dr. Hans, was allowed to see them. Hans was shocked at how bad Mary looked. Mary had gotten even skinnier. She had trenches under her eyes. She kept saying: ‘I need my husband. I want to see my husband before I die.’ ”

By the spring, Mary and Tom had spent six months in captivity.

Dr. Hans also told me that Buggas was not actually in charge. “He was just the chief of security, chief of the militia,” he said. “He was working for three or four investors who were making the decisions.”

Francis and Bawa were negotiating a payment under a half-million dollars, all they could afford and, for the pirates, a humiliating fraction of what corporate shipowners typically pay.

Francis started looking into chartering a plane in India to package the money and deliver it to Buggas. Buggas agreed to reunite the Mary and Tom while the arrangements were being finalised. Mary seeing Tom for the first time in three months as he stepped out of a truck with his dusty bags to move back into her hut. Her usual composure cracked for a moment, and she began to cry.

But then Tom smiled. Even Buggas was standing benevolently by and saying, ‘Are you happy?’ Can you believe it?”

In mid-June, Bawa the translator showed up at the bush camp with a typed-out sheet of paper, in English, essentially a pirate contract. “It’s standard pirate procedure,” Francis told Tom. The letter stipulated that the family would pay $440,000 and “the pirates” — this word was used in the contract — would promptly release them. Ali signed the contract and faxed it to Francis, who then spoke to Mary. “The plane is on its way,” Mary remembers Francis saying about the aircraft that would drop the money.

But then nothing happened. Mary and Tom stayed in their bush camp. When they asked their guards what was going on, all the pirates would say was, “No fly today.” Or tomorrow. Or the next day. Dejected, they wondered whether Francis got cold feet and backed out.

Dr. Hans returned in July for Mary’s check up and whispered to them that the money drop had been made; the Pirates received nearly $450,000.

By this point, Tom was sick of playing the good hostage. When the gunmen would ask to use his radio or deck of cards, he’d simply refuse. What were they going to do to him, anyway?

More than a year after they were taken, Mary and Tom were told to pack their bags. They climbed into the Toyotas, and it seemed as if the whole village piled into the sandy road to wave goodbye. “We weren’t letting our hopes rise too high,” Tom said.

They drove for hours, heading west, deep into the desert. Buggas sat in the back of their truck, cheeks bulging with khat, a machine gun on his lap. His last words to them were, “Mary, you go India tomorrow.”

The next day at dawn, they stepped out of the truck and saw a Somali man approaching them. He was wearing a black jacket and a baseball cap and said: “I’m Kade, and I’ve come to take you home.”

But then Kadiye hugged them. It was at that instant, with Kade’s arms around them, that realised they were finally free. But Kade said they were still in danger — other pirates or bandits might be lurking around, and they needed to move fast. They finally made it to the airport, where they were served them tea, toast, and eggs.

After they arrived in India a few days later, they slept a lot. Tom found it therapeutic to immerse himself in simple tasks. To his distress, he learned that his 99-year-old father died while they were in captivity and now, in addition to reclaiming their affairs, they had to straighten out his dad’s too.

Shortly after they returned, they agreed to a series of interviews and a TV station and started working on a book, which was published. They did this with one goal in mind, to make enough money to pay back their families.

Even friends came to see Mary and Tom. All rejoiced that they are back and they called for a celebration.