B009G3EPMQ EBOK (11 page)

Finally they appeared to get the message. Our suggestion was rejected out of hand. But I noticed the decision seemed to be a
group sentiment, not a response made on anyone’s order. One of the men barked something indicating that before we communicated with the outside world, everybody had to wait for permission from the “Chairman.” Whoever this was, he hadn’t arrived yet.

Now we had that much—not only was there an identifiable leader, but he went by the businesslike title of the Chairman, instead of a clerical title of any kind. If someone referred to a mullah, that Muslim title would indicate Al-Shabaab, in this region. Thus the difference in title was no small distinction. A secular title was good news. Very good news.

Someone brought me a scarf to make sure I stayed covered, and I was provided with a can of tuna, a packet of sugary cookies, and a small bottle of water. Funny how the mind works to shield us from grave danger; I felt concerned about how I was supposed to eat tuna with my filthy fingers after hours of being pushed in and out of cars, stumbling hands to the ground, and sleeping in the dirt. The answer in that moment was a wrapped tampon in my small black bag. I took off the wrapper and used the applicator as an eating utensil, then tucked it back in the bag to keep handy. At least I could do something about dirty fingers. That small victory in hygiene somehow made it easier to tolerate the fact that I could do so little about the odds of getting my head blown off.

•  •  •

There were about twenty Somali men milling around our latest stopping place. Their number included that same boy I’d noticed during the initial attack because of his high voice. My first assumption was that he must be the son of one of these men. But it quickly became evident that nobody was watching over him; he looked completely wasted on
khat,
and he fidgeted away the drug’s stimulant effect by constantly running his mouth and throwing out macho poses with his AK-47.

Here you go, Jessica,
my own thoughts taunted me
—a child soldier. Help the poor thing.
Although I came to Africa on a wave of concern about the plight of child soldiers, I hadn’t asked myself what I would do if I was taken prisoner by them. My first lesson in this boy’s case was simple: The term “child soldier” was a misnomer. This boy’s childhood was long gone. He had a
khat
user’s black holes where his eyes ought to have been. I had no doubt he was capable of forgetting why we were kidnapped in the first place and killing us for his own amusement. Even if he could control his impulses, he and all the other armed men were so offhanded in the handling of their weapons that even now with the terror ride over, my experience of the fear of accidental death through lunatic carelessness was at least as bad as the fear of execution.

I asked for permission to use the “toilet,” and upon receiving a grunt of affirmation, tried to ask if there was any toilet paper. Nobody had any idea what I meant. I knew the cultural custom was to use a small bottle of water and one’s bare fingers, but as a Westerner the idea was highly unattractive. I wound up tearing the cardboard liner of the cookie package into strips. After that there was nothing more to do but pick a bush. Within the coming days I would end up ripping my thin scarf into narrow strips for personal use, one strip at a time.

Fortunately, the men all appeared to be ignoring me for the moment, so I selected a bush for its remote location and walked over to it shaking with nerves, trying to watch from the corner of my eyes for any men who had followed me. This began a daily grind of petty humiliations over my need for personal privacy and the general lack of it.

At the bush I looked out and saw a nearby road that ran away, tantalizingly away. I won’t deny it occurred to me to run, an instinctive impulse. But in the next moment I also realized any escape attempt on my part would only leave Poul to their revenge. As for me, out there in the middle of nowhere without identification or
even money for bribes, there was no such thing as a lone escape. Any such attempt would fail. A minute later I turned my back on the road, the beautiful road, and resumed my place among the squabbling Somali kidnappers. I could only hope Poul would feel the same loyalty if the idea of bolting occurred to him.

The skies opened up, and a chilling rain began to pour, quickly soaking us. We weren’t given any form of shelter, and were left to a single sleeping mat. They made me lie down on half of the mat and pull the other half up over me, but that made little difference. I was already drenched and freezing. This new element of discomfort plunged me into that place where the distinction between the mind and the body blurs. I discovered the odd fact that shivering from the cold somehow made the shivering from fear feel much worse. I curled into a ball and felt my muscles tightening like weighted ropes.

Although I couldn’t talk with Poul, I knew he wasn’t being treated any better than I was. My emotions were running the gamut. Even though I was grateful to have someone for company in this thing because enduring it alone would be worse, I also wanted to slap him and scream. He had repeatedly met my concerns over this trip with casual dismissals, as did some of my colleagues. In those moments I felt a strong sense of betrayal.

It felt as if my life as a “good girl” had sent me down the wrong path, leaving me eager to cooperate instead of eager to use common sense. I racked my brain to answer why I went along with this moronic plan to stick our toes over the Green Line and put ourselves in grabbing range of people who either saw us as nothing more than an economic opportunity worth killing over or regarded our very existence as an affront to their ideas of the Deity.

Had my willingness to replace my judgment with his been some sort of father figure thing? Not only was Poul of my father’s generation, but throughout most of my lifetime he had lived in
Africa. He and his wife had raised their child there without major mishaps or deadly cultural conflicts. I guess when it came down to it, I had simply decided he knew Africa’s people better than I did.

But Poul’s career had largely played out at a time when the hegemony of Western culture and ingrained fear of American military might have restrained the hands of many would-be attackers. In more recent years, the psychological barriers had become walls filled with holes.

The view of my new world was clear from the low vantage point of a kidnap victim on that soaking mat. What we had failed to realize in taking this trip was the simple but vital fact that although our organization had been providing for these communities for years, not only had that not been sufficient to prevent this; it had attracted it to us.

Once the rain finally subsided, I lifted the mat to have a look around, only to see the barrel of a Kalishnikov pointed at my face. “Sleep!” the gunman yelled again.

Okay, got it.
He wasn’t talking about actually sleeping, he just wanted me to lie down and stay down. He gestured with the barrel to indicate I should get back under the mat, whether it was raining or not. I lay back down and remained that way for the next hour or so, too frightened to move.

My body and brain only allowed me to stay in a condition of abject terror for a fairly short time, then the level dropped down to a persistent, low-grade animal fear. I guess our instincts carry ancestral knowledge that if you’re still alive after the initial confrontation, you need to relax enough to work on your chances of survival.

So the fear eventually gave way to an extremely prickly form of boredom, and I dared to lift the mat a second time. There was immediate yelling and gesturing with gun barrels to communicate that I was to remain in that spot. Their meaning was clear enough,
but fear or no fear, I was shivering from the damp chill. I asked for a blanket or for another scarf.

Oddly enough, one of the men actually gave me his jacket. It helped a bit, which was fortunate, since we ended up “sleeping” there for hours. He didn’t have to do it. That was something. It was a human spark. If there’s one you can find another. Or at least you can try.

When I was allowed to rise again much later, a man named Abdi introduced himself. It’s a common name in that region, and there was no way of knowing what an important figure Abdi was going to become, or to glimpse the depth of psycopathy he was able to display. But at least Abdi spoke some basic English, and I was grateful to finally meet a kidnapper I could communicate with in ideas beyond the simplicity of rough orders and frightened obedience. He looked to be somewhere between thirty-eight and forty-five, with a full beard. When Abdi raised his hands to gesture above his head, as he often did, his shirt lifted up to reveal a bullet scar on the right side of his stomach. So there he was: jagged bullet scar, volatile temper, red eyes, Abdi was a player.

Abdi grinned, devoid of humor and full of malice. He assured me they were not going to kill us—but they wanted money, big money, too. When he spoke, he showed teeth stained mossy green from chewing
khat
leaves. My problem with him was that it wasn’t clear if he was actually in charge of our destiny. He might be speaking for genuine authority, but he might not. When these men were full of
khat,
they all loved to strut and preen.

He could just be some guy who speaks a little English and likes to brag.
I had to let it go. After all, whatever Abdi’s level of authority might be, we had been told to wait for a verdict from the “Chairman,” and Abdi wasn’t him.

•  •  •

Nature has its own way of setting priorities. In spite of all the shock delivered by these terrifying events on that first day, for me the biggest surprise didn’t come from my captors. It came from the fact that the cramps that caused me to text Erik early that morning and tell him we weren’t pregnant had abruptly ceased.

Boy, the news was really pouring in. Not only had I been kidnapped by belligerent quasimilitia thugs, it now appeared I might actually be pregnant after all.

I decided to assume I was, as if I needed further motive to look for a way to escape alive. Therefore my waiting game took on layers, as you can imagine: worried boredom, smothered resentment, badly concealed outrage.

The only way to wash was to use the same bottled drinking water we had to conserve. The feeling of being hungry to get clean grew while the hours melted into the following day. I was glad to at least have my little bag with my thyroid medicine and a few small hygiene items. The medicine was important enough in keeping my thyroid levels balanced that if I went even a short time without it, I could feel the gears in my system begin to grind. I knew I’d be in trouble if they kept it.

The kidnappers rotated crews once more, and a fresh bunch showed up. It seemed like a lucky break that up to twenty-six of our captors were around us at any given time; I rationalized that I might be safer from rape if the men had to answer to one another for their behavior. Once several catnaps and numerous trips to the bush for a makeshift toilet passed without a physical attack, I was able to relax a bit.

There appeared to be some measure of discipline among them that restrained the worst of their savagery, even as ragtag and drug-addled as they were. I found when I had to pass by them to visit the bushes, they more or less ignored me. Abdi’s initial prediction that we were to be protected for our cash value appeared to be genuine, at least for the time being.

Whoever controlled this operation, the Chairman or whoever else it might be, was obviously using a regular supply of reliably fresh and therefore effective
khat
leaves each and every day. Addiction bonded the men better than actual loyalty. A happy side effect may have been that common to any form of heavy stimulant use: temporary physical impotence.

Jessica:

The second day melted into a third day. Our kidnappers subjected us to a routine of daylight hours spent under a scruffy stand of old acacia trees surrounded by giant termite mounds. The whole night was spent under open sky. It was a strange pattern. The men showed such extraordinary concern over concealing us during daylight hours that it was obvious they were afraid of aerial surveillance. At night, however, we were force-walked out into open fields to throw down our sleeping mats and sleep away from the trees. It was as if the men’s fear of being seen from overhead didn’t apply to nighttime. Perhaps they had never heard of infrared cameras. I wasn’t about to bring the subject up.

That second night they walked us out into the desert again, just as they had done the night before, and once again there was the sour fear of an apparent execution. After an hour or so of stumbling around out there, they ordered us to the ground.

This time, instead of putting us on our knees for another ghoulish performance, they just yelled once again for us to “sleep!” There seemed to be no reason for the protracted night hike. I wondered, did these guys actually think the U.S. government would send
drones to spy on us? And did they actually think that could happen this fast?

Still, the shouted order to “sleep!” soon became recognizable as a more general form of command and control. The kidnappers kept moving us on foot every couple of hours, then stopping again and commanding us to “sleep!” whenever we halted. It felt crazed and pointless and did nothing to convince me they had any idea what they were doing. The only logic to it was that same concern about secondary kidnapping by roving gangs. On top of the heavy weaponry our captors flaunted, they seemed to be taking no chances of letting word get out about our location.

It appeared that when it came down to rank, among this group, the rank below Abdi was held by the “Colonel,” and above him was the Chairman. But I wondered, was the Chairman actually the one in charge? It was clear we had no chance of getting out of there unless we could deal with someone who had decision-making power. The most authority the guards seemed to have was the power to grant us permission to make a toilet run to the bushes.

If the Chairman was really running the show, he was likely to be the money man behind this. This would be true whether he used his personal funds or someone else’s invested money. It was puzzling; I didn’t think the Chairman gave off the air of the complete alpha dog.