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Pirates of the Arabian
Interesting article... This pirate does not wear a Royal Navy jacket, a red feather in his hat, an eye patch or have a Jolly Rogers flag. In tattered clothes, he limps out of his room at Yellowgate police station in Mumbai, holding a urine pouch on his side. His leader is no flamboyant, swaying Johnny Depp, mouthing, "Son, I'm Captain Jack Sparrow, savvy?" Captain Hrufer Noor, 34 -- puss oozing from his knees, and his skin peeling -- breaks down while talking about how he switched to buccaneering.The 28 Somali pirates captured by the Indian Navy and Coastguards a couple of weeks ago could make many die-hard pirate fans consign the swashbuckling stereotype to the Davy Jones' Locker, which, in case you're not 'savvy', lies at the bottom of the ocean. There is no sound of 'Ho ho and a bottle of rum' from the lock-up they are huddled together in. Their clamour for food and medicine confound the mythical fearlessness of legends, such as Edward Teach alias Blackbeard, John 'Calico' Rakham or Bartholomew Roberts. Their injuries -- in filthy slings and bandages -- are too real to remind anyone of the one-legged Long John Silver from R L Stevenson's Treasure Island. But the thing that makes the Somali pirates most starkly different to their lionised predecessors -- fictional or historical -- is the reasons they give for choosing this notorious life. Notoriety was the last thing on Noor's mind considering that he has kept his profession a secret from his wife. "She thinks I'm on a security assignment. I used to be a driver. The civil war finished everything. My employer migrated to Kenya and left me jobless. I took to piracy to feed my wife and three children and on the insistence of Mohammed Allen Galey, a pirate don." His story sounds very different from that of the wealthy 'gentleman pirate' Stede Bonnet, who, legend has it, gave up his respectable life for adventure and, by some accounts, to escape a nagging wife. Posted by: tu3031 2011-02-20 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=316454 |