Girl, Taken - A True Story of Abduction, Captivity, and Survival

by Elena Nikitina

  Through the paint and dust on the glass, I could see patches of trees with green and yellow leaves, spreading their branches under the autumn sun during what looked like a beautiful, and perhaps warm, Indian summer day.

  Until that moment, I hadn’t even realized how totally I was in prison. I wanted very badly to get out of there. I wanted freedom, fresh air, pure nature.

  Why don’t we appreciate the things that are given to us, when we have them? I had never enjoyed the frequent picnics in the countryside with my parents. I did not like to go pick mushrooms in the forest, or go fishing, or even to spend a night in our small boat in the Volga River delta. I thought of myself as an urbanite, a city person – I always preferred the comfort of my home over sleeping in a tent amid the inconvenient and uncomfortable outdoors.

  How I would love to be back out there in the wild, right now! Would I ever experience it again? How much better it would be to be on the banks of the beautiful Volga River, or on our boat, rushing through the waves in the delta. I would give anything to be there, and not here.

  The tiny room – my cell – was dark and depressing. Everything about it seemed heavy and threatening. I wanted – with every fiber of my being – to feel sunlight and breathe fresh air again.

  ***

  A few days passed. I was trapped in a time warp.

  Every day was Groundhog Day – it did not come to an end, but transitioned to the next, looking exactly like the previous one. Short dreamless nights turned into endless, pointless days, full of hope in the morning and sorrow by nightfall. I would prefer to never wake up at all, until the day of my salvation. At night, I could not fall asleep for a long time, listening to every rustle from outside the window and behind the door. I was ready, at any moment, to run from this room into the arms of my rescuers.

  Most days, hope did not leave me. For a long time, I was absolutely certain that one dark night, the special police forces – a SWAT team, commandos – would storm into the building and save me. I was always ready for this moment. I would spend the whole day thinking about it, adrift in my imagination, developing possible plans for the rescue operation and how it might happen. I tried to picture it down to the smallest details, so that at the right time I would be ready to help the rescuers to save me.

  It would not be easy – the terrorists were armed from head to toe. I imagined every single possible technical aspect of the operation, every likely scenario.

  It was going to happen very soon. I could afford to be patient because this strange time was bound to be brief – it would not last much longer, certainly not too long to wait. I believed in this story and I lived by it. It was my religion.

  But each succeeding morning I opened my eyes and I cried at my own helplessness, and at the unfairness of it all. I wanted to scream from the bottom of my lungs and go into hysterics, but I knew it would not help me. I kept struggling to remain silent, quiet and invisible. I was waiting for the rescue. I wished for this with all of my being.

  Day passed into day, like the links of an endless chain, a chain that soon stretched into weeks. Nothing changed, and still I hoped for salvation.

  Even though I never, not even for one second, wanted to get used to the idea that the present state of affairs was my destiny or my life, I still had to work out some way to organize my day. I had to have a schedule. Depression and loneliness helped me to some extent – I discovered that I had lost the taste for life, and I could lay down in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling without moving.

  In the freedom of my past life, and being energetic by nature, I could not sit still. Now all of that power seeped out of me, like air from an old tire. My current life consisted entirely of humiliating trips to the bathroom and back, twice a day. This well worn path – back and forth – passing through the other room, offered me the only variety in my day, along with a glimpse of the outside world, the occasional sunlight coming through the windows covered with heavy curtains.

  Then, back into the dark room, where I now lived and where time stopped. I tried to eat and drink as little as possible. I did not want to remind the men about myself. I knocked on the door only when it was absolutely necessary. I thought I would never get used to the bed, the food, and especially the bathroom. Everything in this place disgusted me. Because I knew I would leave forever very soon, I tried to minimize contact with the strangers’ belongings and toilet articles.

  There was never any hot water. After a few days without a normal shower, I learned how to “take a shower” using only the faucet and the sink. Since I knew that the door was guarded by an armed jailer, and the he could come in at any second, I took my sink showers very quickly. Using only ice cold water, I wiped my whole body with my lacy underwear, and the immediately put them back on to dry.

  After two or three weeks, I knew there were always at least two armed men in the apartment. They all had weapons, mostly big machine guns. Besides the three guards, I would hear some other men come in – for periods of time, the space behind the door was filled with voices. Near the window in the bigger room, there was a large stack of the guns and ammunition. It looked like they were preparing for the war.

  The room was furnished minimally – it did not seem to be owned by anyone. There were no extraneous things that might be the sign of the owner, except for a rolled mattress leaning against the wall. I began to get the impression that there was only one permanent resident there – me. The men who guarded me rotated and were replaced every once in a while.

  Another place from which I could observe the outside world were the painted glass window in my room. I often climbed on the window sills and looked through the slits of the thin layers of paint. I did not notice a single person nearby. The streets, blurry as they were, seemed completely deserted. But even if I did see someone eventually, what could I do? Yell for help? That wouldn’t work – the first ones to hear my scream would be the people behind the door. They would tape my mouth shut and tie me up. So I could not act recklessly. I had to come up with another plan.

  * * *

  The fox man came again a few days later. I sat on the bed leaning against the wall and remained silent, staring at a single point on the gray wallpaper. What could I do? The last remnants of my body’s inner strength boiled inside of me, ready to explode in rage at my own helplessness. The man crouched on the end of the bed and spoke cheerfully, as if he was telling me not to be upset about a lost hair pin.

  “Don't worry,” he said. “Nobody will hurt you. In a couple of weeks, you’ll go home.”

  I was infuriated by his tone. I wanted to wrap my hands around his throat and clench it in my grip just to shut him up.

  The ruthless bastard – he didn’t even seem aware that he and his gang had committed a crime against a human being, a crime that would leave a painful and permanent mark on the rest of my life, even if I went home right now.

  Two weeks? I could barely last a few more minutes in this prison.

  I didn’t answer him. I was too choked up from outrage.

  I was going to handle these days stoically, but to do so, I at least needed some hygiene items. I asked him for a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. I also mentioned something that was very much on my mind.

  “The bathroom has no toilet paper,” I said.

  I did not want to complain. I just wanted to live my last few days with some dignity, some small amount of comfort, and without their anger escalating.

  “Muslims don't use toilet paper,” he said. “We use the jug of water.”

  I nodded. I already knew this answer and was ready for it. Okay. There wasn’t going to be any toilet paper.

  Beyond the lack of toilet paper, the trips to the bathroom themselves were a real torture for me – it was humiliating to knock on the door each time, and ask permission to answer my basic natural needs. I was not an animal, I was a human being. Asking to use the bathroom, then being shadowed down the hallway by an armed man – it tested my will and my sanity – and every day I had to pa
ss this outrageous test.

  I felt abandoned to survive on the island of a cannibal tribe. I did not know their language, and I couldn’t predict what would happen to me next. They were from another world, they had their own customs, with which I was obliged to comply.

  Why was this happening to me?

  Privacy is a treasure – one I didn’t even know I had until it was stolen from me. To live at gunpoint and under constant surveillance – how long can a person endure such a life before she goes insane?

  I didn’t want to touch the food anymore. I tried to drink as little as possible to keep my forays to the bathroom at a minimum. I had to suffer for a few more days, and that was it. I forced myself to believe them when they said I would soon go home.

  But the next few days turned into an eternity of waiting.

  I waited and wished with all my heart, and wanted to believe that in a few days I would be home. A life of freedom looks completely different when you think about it while in captivity. The prisoner thinks, “When I’m free again, I’ll never waste another moment of it.”

  When I made it home, I would embrace every second of my freedom. I would hug the people dearest to me – my mother and Sergey. I would never argue with them. I would always be kind and considerate of them. I was going to live my life differently.

  My decision not to eat or drink anything soon had to change. I was losing strength. I could feel it ebbing from my body. I had been stashing the pita bread which they brought me every day in a drawer. I could not survive without fuel, so I took a big piece of the bread and ate it. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

  * * *

  And then came the black day. Or rather, the red day – I started my period. As if things weren’t bad enough – treacherous natural processes of the body threatened my already precarious existence. What was I going to do? Knock on the door and ask if they have a few tampons to share? I had to find a way to deal with it myself – and I found it.

  The sheet that covered the mattress on the bed was quite thick. Ripping it with my bare hands was not easy. I struggled for a while, my hands and wrists becoming sore from the effort, but finally the dense linen succumbed and I was able to pull apart two long strips. I made three rolls – the pads were bulky and uncomfortable – but still better than nothing. My thin lace panties could barely contain a huge chunk of the rolled fabric.

  My body brought me untold difficulties – either hunger or thirst, or the need to go to the bathroom. Now I had another one. Why wouldn’t my body go into hibernation, why wouldn’t it switch to an extreme mode and abandon its natural needs, at least temporarily? Everything would be much easier.

  At least now I knew why I was here. I was aware that at any moment everything could change. I could be traded for money, or I could be rescued by the police. Or, knowing that they couldn’t get their money, the Chechens could cut my body into pieces and send the pieces home. Or they could just kill me – at the time of the money transfer or instead of it. Holding my breath, I would creep to the door and listen to them talking, trying to guess what they were saying by the manner of their speech or the tone of their voices. Everything was useless – their language had nothing in common with the Russian language, except for a few words that were international.

  Time dragged by. I did not know what to do with myself. When I could no longer lay down, I would stand up and walk in circles in the tiny room. The people behind the wall lived a life of their own. I heard the door open sometimes, and someone would come into the apartment. Sometimes the voices I heard seemed far away – most likely they were in the kitchen. They would debate some point or laugh at some joke. Sometimes they were right in the next room, probably sitting on the couch, very close. It always seemed like they were about to enter my room and do something terrible to me. Despite the fact that I had felt a sense of fear every second, every minute, every hour, all day every day, and it accompanied me from the very first moments of the kidnapping, I couldn’t adapt to it. It paralyzed me over and over again, as if for the very first time. It was impossible to control – I would never be able to get used to it.

  Every human being feels a sense of fear throughout life. Fear – it’s a mechanism that warns us of danger. A man is afraid of loneliness, and this makes him to search for a partner. The fear of hunger drives him to search for food. The fear of death – it binds us and compels us to act or obey.

  I was not afraid of sudden death in these circumstances – the torture and the abuse frightened me much more. The fear for loved ones is the most intolerable fears of all, it corrodes your sole and destroys your well-being. I was terribly afraid for my mom, who must be suffering and could not know how to help me. I feared for her sanity.

  As hard as I tried, I could not live the illusion of salvation and a happy return home. I did not believe them. I knew that kidnappers did not work cheap – they had demanded a great deal of money, which would never be found. It couldn’t be found – my mother simply did not have it. I was afraid that they would cut off parts of my body, one at a time, and send them by mail as a warning. I would prefer a hundred instant deaths over torture.

  I remembered the story that, I naively thought, was terrible enough. When I was in high school, we went by train on a school field trip to the so-called Golden Ring cities of Russia. In Suzdal, we visited the famous historical village, where all the details of the life of the previous century had been recreated. We tasted the water that had been carried from the well, we ate the bread baked in the special ovens – in general, we were trying to feel the lives of the boyars and the serfs.

  Along with all sorts of interesting sights from the 1800s, our school travel group visited a nearby lake. There was the great centuries-old oak tree growing on the shore, spreading its huge, heavy branches just above the water. A rope swing with a wooden seat dangled from one of the heaviest branches. It was the same type of swing the boyars’ children used in days of old. The swing was not a tourist attraction, but of course everybody wanted to take a ride over the lake on it.

  The rope was long. When someone sat on the swing, another would pull it back and then with a hard push, launch it away from the shore, the person on the swing flying 20 feet out over the lake, before safely swinging back to dry land. Each of the students waited impatiently for their turn to experience this incredible flight over the huge pond of water. Finally, my turn came.

  I clung with both hands to the rope and closed my eyes in excitement. One of my classmates drew back the seat and let it go. The feeling of free flight over the lake was indescribable! I felt weightless, like a bird. Especially the moment when I realized that something had gone wrong - the rope had broken and wasn’t attached to the oak anymore. I flew over the pond - I’ll never forget that feeling, that experience with the terror of the unknown – and plunged into the water still holding the rope and sitting on the swing.

  Splash!

  I opened my eyes.

  The ceiling of the dismal room appeared above my head.

  I was still here.

  I remembered how I swam back to the shore and into the hands of the teachers who accompanied and supervised us. Needless to say the pond was not intended for diving. I was lucky enough not to come across the branches sticking out of the water and pierce my stomach. The teachers were scared – God forbid one of their students should get hurt on their watch. And I was scared, more so than they were.

  I borrowed dry clothing from my friends – luckily some of them were wearing several layers. On the train, on the way back home, we were a gaggle of teenagers laughing and shouting about the incident.

  * * *

  Time passed in torment.

  I was trapped, imprisoned. My personal space was reduced to a few square feet bounded by the four walls of a gloomy room. I was surrounded by people I did not choose, I could not understand, and who I nevertheless had to deal with. I was lonely for my mother and my boyfriend. The possibility of being subjected to violence at any moment slowly drove me insane. I
was a bundle of nerves on the one hand, and on the other, I was indulging a fantasy that all of this would end in a few days.

  I knew the room inside out.

  The faded wallpaper told me that it hadn’t always been dark in here. Some time ago, when the windows were not blacked out, these walls were getting enough sunlight to bleach out the color of the wallpaper. Near the windows, you could still see the original color – it was an ugly light brown, sort of yellowish. Perhaps it wasn’t that bad under natural light. The dim light from the ceiling lamp made the color look worse.

  I had decided to give the light a try after a few days. It hung lonely on an exposed wire and shone a dead color of light, and revealed a dismal room – the prison where I lived. The yellowish wallpaper, in some places stripped away, met brown painted moldings at the bottom. The floor was covered by an old gray carpet. The only furniture was the narrow bed and a bedside table near the window.

  By far, the most interesting item in the whole room was an old Sharp cassette tape recorder. It even had an unlabeled cassette inside of it, the kind of tape you record songs onto yourself. It took me a while before I dared turn it on and check what was recorded on it. I fully expected to press the button and hear songs in Chechen language. I did not want to hear more – I had enough of Chechen language in my life.

  I was so wrong. It was the Gipsy Kings!

  The band played searing flamenco music. They were so popular in my hometown; you could hear them playing from every speaker. Their passionate love songs were listened to by everyone, despite the fact that nobody could speak or understand a word of Spanish. You were so swept away by the feeling of the songs; you didn’t need to know what the words meant.