Canadian bestselling author and investigative journalist Jay Bahadur remembers telling people how he wanted to be a reporter when he was just four years old. But by high school at University of Toronto Schools, he had all but forgotten about the ambition from his much younger days. 

It wasn’t until after university, when he enrolled in a freelance writing course at U of T, that the idea of becoming a journalist really took root — and with it a life-changing decision to go to Somalia to put his journalistic skills to use. 

Bahadur’s initial plan was to head to Somaliland to cover upcoming regional elections there. But when the Somalia piracy story started taking over headlines across the globe, his plans changed. 

“I cooked up a crazy scheme over some beers at C’est What on Front Street with my friend Alex to go to Somalia and cover it. That led to me writing it up as a class assignment, and afterwards, once it was on paper, the idea seemed doable.” 

The idea was to meet some of these pirates to learn what was really going on beyond headlines.

In late 2008, Bahadur quit his market research job, packed his bags and left for Somalia where he spent three months in Puntland, an autonomous region of Somalia and the base for the aforementioned pirates. The result of that and subsequent trips led to the writing of The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World, an acclaimed 2011 bestseller, which recently went from the page to the big screen in the Bryan Buckley–directed The Pirates of Somalia, starring Evan Peters, Al Pacino and Melanie Griffith. 

When asked when he knew he had the potential for a book based on what he was encountering, Bahadur explains the plan was always to make a book out of it, something he describes as arrogant in hindsight, given that he had never been published before. But spending time in Somalia right before the headline-grabbing hijacking of cargo ship Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates gave him an edge.  

“I was able to sell articles to several newspapers based on my experiences in Somalia and then in turn use that platform to convince potential book publishers that I was legit.” 

Luck was also on Bahadur’s side in other ways, most importantly in whom he found as a local ally in Somalia.

“The guy I finally found, Mohamad Farole, ended up being the son of the regional president,” he explains, adding that Farole’s family members were also close relatives with many of the early pirates, something that helped him secure interviews and stay safe. 

“His family took great care of me and kept me safe.”

After the book came out, Bahadur says there was fair bit of interest in acquiring the movie rights, but it was Bryan Buckley’s commitment to representing Somalia faithfully that sold Bahadur on the director’s offer. 

“The positive response from the Somali community to the movie has been extremely gratifying to me,” he says 

Although Bahadur was not significantly involved with the production of the film itself, he did shoot a small cameo where he plays a journalist executed by terrorists in a nightmare sequence. 

“It took hours of makeup application and waiting around and a lot of takes to get that 10-second clip. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the work that goes into the craft of acting.”

The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World by Jay Bahadur is available at most bookstores and on Amazon.