ThoughtGallery.org > Michael Scott Moore: “The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast”

Michael Scott Moore: “The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast”

In early 2012, having covered a Somali pirate trial in Hamburg for Spiegel Online and with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, journalist and author Michael Scott Moore traveled to the Horn of Africa to research a book about piracy and ways to end it. In a shocking and cruel twist of fate, the 45-year old California native (with dual German and American citizenship) was himself kidnapped and taken captive by pirates. In THE DESERT AND THE SEA: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast, Moore, for the first time, chronicles the full story. Written with dark humor, candor but also a literary journalist’s clinical distance and eye for detail, this incredible book reads like Catch-22 meets Black Hawk Down.
Moore brilliantly weaves his own experience–including physical injury, starvation, isolation and terror–with a larger examination of the world around him. He explores the economics and history of piracy (going all the way back to America’s own colonial history), the effects of postcolonialism (Italian and British); the politics of hostage negotiation and ransom (including Moore’s mother’s role in gaining his release); the legalities of industrial fishing (he spent more than five months aboard a hijacked tuna long-liner—the only Western writer to experience life aboard a ship hijacked by Somali pirates); the role of Islam among the pirates, and he masterfully places his ordeal into political and historical context (including the rise of al-Shabaab and ISIS).
Moore writes movingly about grappling with the idea of ending his own life, as well as his search for meaning during his darkest hours. During a long 18-month period when his feet had to be chained at night, he wondered: “I had flown to Somalia with curiosity and compassion; I had wanted to show, as far as I could, how Somalis lived and what pirates thought. With the chains on, I instead struggled every night with hatred and debilitating rage. What helped was a paradoxical attitude of forgiveness toward the guards. I also remembered the ancient idea, from Epictetus, that a victim suffers only by his own consent. Self-pity does nothing but heighten the pain. The appropriate answer to the question, ‘Why me? is the other question, Why not me?’”
Moore, a lapsed Catholic, also found help in reading a Bible he found on the fishing boat, and yoga helped to calm his churning mind. One of the most heart-wrenchingly funny moments in the book occurs when Moore, to keep his muscles from weakening, starts to do yoga. Before he knows it Moore conducts a makeshift yoga class for pirates.
THE DESERT & THE SEA is a riveting, thoughtful and emotionally resonant exploration of foreign policy, religious extremism, and the costs of survival.










When: Mon., Jul. 23, 2018 at 7:00 pm
Where: The Half King
505 W. 23rd St.

Price: Free
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In early 2012, having covered a Somali pirate trial in Hamburg for Spiegel Online and with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, journalist and author Michael Scott Moore traveled to the Horn of Africa to research a book about piracy and ways to end it. In a shocking and cruel twist of fate, the 45-year old California native (with dual German and American citizenship) was himself kidnapped and taken captive by pirates. In THE DESERT AND THE SEA: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast, Moore, for the first time, chronicles the full story. Written with dark humor, candor but also a literary journalist’s clinical distance and eye for detail, this incredible book reads like Catch-22 meets Black Hawk Down.
Moore brilliantly weaves his own experience–including physical injury, starvation, isolation and terror–with a larger examination of the world around him. He explores the economics and history of piracy (going all the way back to America’s own colonial history), the effects of postcolonialism (Italian and British); the politics of hostage negotiation and ransom (including Moore’s mother’s role in gaining his release); the legalities of industrial fishing (he spent more than five months aboard a hijacked tuna long-liner—the only Western writer to experience life aboard a ship hijacked by Somali pirates); the role of Islam among the pirates, and he masterfully places his ordeal into political and historical context (including the rise of al-Shabaab and ISIS).
Moore writes movingly about grappling with the idea of ending his own life, as well as his search for meaning during his darkest hours. During a long 18-month period when his feet had to be chained at night, he wondered: “I had flown to Somalia with curiosity and compassion; I had wanted to show, as far as I could, how Somalis lived and what pirates thought. With the chains on, I instead struggled every night with hatred and debilitating rage. What helped was a paradoxical attitude of forgiveness toward the guards. I also remembered the ancient idea, from Epictetus, that a victim suffers only by his own consent. Self-pity does nothing but heighten the pain. The appropriate answer to the question, ‘Why me? is the other question, Why not me?’”
Moore, a lapsed Catholic, also found help in reading a Bible he found on the fishing boat, and yoga helped to calm his churning mind. One of the most heart-wrenchingly funny moments in the book occurs when Moore, to keep his muscles from weakening, starts to do yoga. Before he knows it Moore conducts a makeshift yoga class for pirates.
THE DESERT & THE SEA is a riveting, thoughtful and emotionally resonant exploration of foreign policy, religious extremism, and the costs of survival.
Buy tickets/get more info now