Then, getting to the bit I cared most immediately about, I sent my love to my wife, Mary, “and my five [sic] children.” I stressed how much I missed them, and said how much I regretted the pain, worry, and suffering these circumstances would be causing them. Just before I lost it I turned to Louis to allow him to take his turn.
Louis began slowly. He’d had more time to think—not always a good thing—and had watched and felt me waver as I got into the family bit. I tried to give him as much moral support as I could without interrupting and soon he was filling in the blanks I had left wide open. It was for each of us a wrenching, emotional experience but it was also cathartic.
We considered it a necessary step toward seeing this thing through and getting home. Thus, the dance had begun. We understood that the negotiations had been opened, and we assumed that our families would shortly know that we were alive and relatively well. Yes, they would be devastated by the Al Qaeda part but heartened by this invitation to the government and the United Nations to engage, and they would know that once engaged, the Canadian government could be a formidable force.
Following Louis’ segment, we were led out of the tent but told to remain nearby in case they needed to do it again. As we waited near that great dark monster of a tent we could hear angry, shouted words that sounded very like threats and taunts from within, similar to the defiant screaming of slogans and brave posturing we had heard on TV Night.
Apparently the boys were again pumping themselves up, waving weapons and screaming insults at the video camera, decrying all the ills and evils perpetrated by the West and the United Nations against the innocent Muslim ummah—the worldwide Islamic community. We knew that such a conclusion to our taped messages would be unlikely to give our families the peace of mind we had so wished to impart. The slogan shouting went on for some time until they thought they had got their messages of hate and retribution just right. Then the cast trickled from the tent, glaring at us as they passed, with wild and adrenalin-suffused expressions. Sometime later we were told we could go, but where?
Suddenly, though, for the first time in five days, I did have somewhere to go and recalling Omar’s instructions on hostage toiletry etiquette, I sought out a sentry in order to get permission to “go far.” The only person in our immediate vicinity was someone who had evidently been assigned to watch us but I had not noticed him before, which was surprising because he cut an impressive figure. I approached him and asked where I should go and if I might bring a small quantity of water with me. He spoke reasonably good French that he seemed to be dredging up from a long unused part of his memory, and indicated a rather steep skree slope about 150 metres distant. He suggested the other side of that hill would be fine.
As for the water, he sternly pointed out that it was too precious to be wasted on such things. Instead, I should, on my walk to the suitably discreet spot, search for small, flat and smooth stones that would serve the purpose. I was skeptical but in no position to argue from any number of perspectives. The operation was successful and the stones smooth enough, but unsettling was the fact that hand washing, even left-hand washing, seemed out of the question. When I got back to our position, a little surreptitiously used drinking water was the best I could manage.
The new guard was speaking to Louis when I returned. He was atypically tall, perhaps six-two (188 cm), and had a slim but solid physique. His rich, curly black hair escaped around the fringes of his turban and was echoed in his full, curly black beard. He had high, wide-set, and prominent cheekbones over which his lightly pockmarked olive skin was tightly stretched. His large and bright deep-set, dark brown eyes were his most striking feature. They were so startling that it took me a moment before I realized that their impact had been enhanced by the application of kohl, an ancient form of black eyeliner.
He introduced himself as Omar, so, for Louis and me he inevitably became Omar Two. He was one of the more enigmatic and interesting of our kidnappers—deeply, fanatically, religious, very much a Salafist mystic and the closest thing to an Islamic scholar among them. Omar Two seemed to be a warrior-monk, a loner who saw himself as an avenging angel of Islam. He was in his mid-thirties, one of the older members of the group and had, he said, been raised in the crucible of the Islamic Brotherhood. He proudly allowed that he had been engaged in the Algerian jihad since he was a teenager. We were fairly sure he was Algerian but even that was not certain, and for these people nationalism—allegiance to or even identification with an apostate state—was something to be despised, but he was certainly North African.
Omar Two was interested in us, perhaps even intrigued, but he never, not for a moment, liked, admired, or befriended us, and that pretty much sums up how I felt about him. At this first meeting he forbade us to use the classic Arabic greeting Salaam Aleikum (Peace be upon you, or God be with you), because, as infidels, we were disqualified from invoking Allah in any context. He was both fascinated and appalled by what we represented. We were in his eyes inherently evil, literally godforsaken, and thus his implacable enemy. His only objective was to get us to convert, going to any length or using any tactic to achieve that end.
Only if we became brothers in faith could we have, in his clearly stated view, anything other than a steadfastly adversarial relationship, informed by mistrust and enmity. While Omar One would usually speak of “when you return home,” Omar Two would invariably say something much more highly qualified: “Should you be allowed to return to your families” or “If it turns out that you do return to Canada.”
We were left alone that afternoon. We walked some more and discussed at great length how long our video message would take to get to New York and Ottawa and how it was likely to be transmitted. Having seen the laptop, the GPS navigation devices, and the ubiquitous Thuraya satellite-phones, we were confident that our families and senior UN and Canadian government officials would be viewing it within hours—two or three days at the most. Immediately following the end of the recording session a truck had left the camp, and we assumed it had taken the video to a place from which it could be transmitted, probably directly to North America but possibly to a Canadian embassy in the region, or perhaps to Al Jazeera and eventual broadcast, a prospect we did not relish but considered a distinct possibility.
That night we were directed to sleep in the tent, on those thick, soft rugs. We had not realized, though, that it would be in close proximity to a dozen of our captors, principally the younger ones. It was an experience I think it is fair to say that nobody relished, and it was never again repeated. Once the tent flaps had been dropped it was absolutely pitch dark. The intimacy of our guards tossing and turning closely packed around us in that airless tent was distinctly unpleasant and, if truth be told, both Louis and I are accomplished snorers and I could feel the distaste of those around us at the sounds and smells emitted by these ancient barbarian infidels.
The atmosphere in the camp the next morning was relaxed and the contrast made it seem like a Sunday morning back home. The weather was cold at dawn and visibility was limited by sand in the air, which gave everything a brown-yellow hue. Our captors were going about their tasks in a rather desultory manner, no rush, no urgency, no excitement. Omar One was almost affable. Business was unfolding as it should. The video had been made and was on its way west. We asked where: to the United Nations or Canada? In response, Omar asked which would be preferable in our view. Without dissimulation we replied we had no idea. He merely shrugged, eloquently letting us know that it was our fate that was at issue and if we chose not to engage it would be at our own peril. Of course, his beliefs held that it was all predetermined anyway: all God’s will, and His will would be done whatever our attitude.
As gear was being assembled I noticed that there seemed to be fewer people around and, in particular, that Khaled (Jack) and his staff seemed to have departed. We came to learn this was typical of his behaviour. He would simply show up with anywhere from one to three trucks (usually two) and stay for an hour or a few days. Sometim
es he would meet with us but not always. If he wanted to talk to us, he would appear at our sleeping position with, in order of preference (both ours and his, as it turned out), Omar One, Ibrahim, Omar Two, or Hassan to interpret, as well as such senior staff as were available. We would all sit in a rough circle on our blankets and he would state his business, elicit answers, and be gone; there were very few pleasantries, but oddly it was all a little formal and businesslike and not disrespectful of us or our space.
That morning, Omar One joined us in the tent once some of the side flaps were rolled and tied up. It seemed he wanted to chat or, as we soon found out, preach, for such was his profession prior to committing himself to jihad. As an itinerant preacher he had travelled widely. He was full of stories about the hot water he had got into and how the purity of his mission and Allah’s beneficence had always extricated him from dicey situations. Omar was one of the most natural and entrancing storytellers I have ever encountered. I felt as if I had been transported back in time and was listening to a troubadour from the Middle Ages.
The younger mujahideen couldn’t get enough of his tales, which all had a religious theme: either his animation of Qur’anic stories, his account of his missionary activities and religious conquests, or his vivid re-creations of numerous hadith. (These last were the divine sayings of the Prophet, attributable directly to him as the original transmitter from God, or accounts of something Mohammed did, transmitted through the centuries along an unbroken chain of “learned and knowing” sages.)
Soon we were joined by the half-dozen teenaged cadets or recruits whom we—very privately—dubbed “the children.” They sat around as Omar recounted what Christians would call Sunday school stories. As he spoke of Adam and Eve (who were thirty metres tall), Abraham and, everybody’s favourite, Noah, I was transported back to my own rather brief exposure to essentially the same stories in church basements in Montreal. I was particularly intrigued by the differences in the Islamic interpretation and by Omar’s performance. It was the first quiet, contemplative, non-threatening moment I had had in nearly a week and I found it soothing.
My knowledge of Islam—the world’s fastest growing religion—prior to this misadventure had been appallingly cursory, but I did know enough to avoid presenting myself as an atheist. In the eyes of the strict Muslim, there is no greater sin than that of the apostate, one who rejects God. Thus, as their captive, I was the Christian of my youth. In the eyes of our Islamic kidnappers I was therefore at least a follower of an Abrahamic religion—a person of The Book—and as such, less disfavoured among infidels, even by fundamentalist Muslims.
After an hour or so, they began to break camp and load three vehicles. The large dark-green tent was left standing, presumably for some rearguard element to deal with. In addition to the two forty-five-gallon barrels, each truck was piled rather haphazardly with everything else required for the crew of that truck to live and fight: blankets, clothing, a pot and a few steel bowls, the heavy machine gun and its substantial mount, a few linked twenty-five-round belts of ammunition, personal possessions, blankets, and a few bags of rice, pasta, and powdered milk.
In addition to the AK-47s, carried at all times by everyone from Jack down to the smallest of the children, were small arms that normally consisted of a light PK belt-fed machine gun, a few twenty-five-round belts of 7.62 ammunition for that weapon, and at least one RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher and three or four reloads. Each mujahid possessed his own ammunition vest containing eight to ten spare magazines for his Kalash. These were worn on sentry duty or whenever they expected action, and they had to be kept close to hand at all times.
Eventually, we were ordered aboard the trucks now that everything had been elaborately tied down and four or five of the brothers were perched on blankets, folded and strapped atop everything else, giving the vehicles a very high centre of gravity. Normally two would face outward on each side, one hand for their weapon and the other grasping some rope or strap to keep them aboard. The final addition to the load would be firewood, always a scarcity in the desert. Thus, whenever they passed one or more standing dead trees, whose water source had long deserted them, they would halt for a minute or two as the boys broke off such branches as they could for the cooking fire at the next camp.
As the trucks were being manoeuvred in front of the tent where Louis, the children, and I had spent the night, I saw that Omar One, in the vehicle that had grabbed us almost a week ago, was about to back over a black and white soccer ball. I shouted for him to stop. Whether or not he heard, he continued and the ball burst with a loud pop. He got out, inspected the crushed ball, and smiled happily to himself. He seemed glad that the frivolous plaything—the only entertainment available to the half-dozen teenagers among them—had been eliminated.
As we set off from TV Camp, I attempted to put what was happening to us into perspective. I’m not suggesting that I was in any way reconciled to my fate or that I had found some inner peace. Rather, it was just that the feeling of abject, pervasive terror that had characterized the four-day trek north had dissipated a little. Above all, we were alive, and not gravely damaged. My back felt better after two relatively sedentary days at TV Camp. We had recorded what I took to be the classic proof-of-life video message. Things therefore seemed to be taking their natural course in terms of how I thought kidnappings worked, and all my instincts told me that we were not about to be killed, at least not in the near future. Freed, therefore, from the imminent prospect of our own demise, we transferred more of our capacity for worry to the plight of our families.
Our abductors reflected the same sense that the opening phase had been successfully completed and the establishment of contact with whomever they considered to be our principals seemed to be underway. The negotiating gavotte had begun. It seemed reasonable to think that there would now be a pause of some duration. It was clear from their behaviour, however, that they fully expected that a significant effort would be mounted to find and rescue us, despite my scripted “no violence” plea, and their primary focus as we entered the next phase would be to ensure that this did not happen—or at least not successfully.
PART TWO
PRISONERS OF ALQAEDA
IN THE SAHARA
CHAPTER 6
CAMP CANADA
‘Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
…
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
I occupied the centre position in the cab of Omar One’s truck, while Louis travelled in another vehicle. This seemed a reasonable distribution of their high-value assets. Any number of things could go wrong in these cross-country moves in the Sahara and our kidnappers wanted to ensure that at least one of us would survive any mishap.
The sky was now clear of blowing sand and the sun bright, but it was not overly hot. We were heading north in a three-truck convoy, about a hundred metres apart but not necessarily following the tracks of the preceding vehicle. As a result of the much-needed rest over the past two days and the fact that there was less adrenalin pumping through my system, for the first time I began to study the dramatic nature of our surroundings.
After an hour or so of fast driving over a hard, flat, dark-brown surface strewn with fist-sized rocks, we reached an area of lighter sand that progressively changed into soft, undulating dunes, not particularly high and relatively easy to navigate. Suddenly there was a pounding on the roof of the cab and Omar stuck most of his upper body through the driver’s window without easing off one bit on the accelerator and twisted back to see what the boys in the back wanted. They were all excited, pointing and screaming, “La biche, la biche!” This was our first encounter with the elusive, fawn-coloured desert antelope, a protected species that our captors revelled in hunting. The Belmokhtar group alone claimed to have killed 2,500 of them ove
r the preceding four years.
The lead vehicle, driven by Abdul Rahman, was already in pursuit—although without my glasses I never saw it. He was seeking to herd the nimble, waist-high gazelle toward the more open part of the desert so that it would not be able to find refuge among the steeper, rocky outcroppings where the vehicles could not follow. Omar instinctively moved to limit its escape in the opposite direction while the third vehicle followed the beast directly, hoping to get alongside in order to give the mujahideen in the back a clear flank shot. On this occasion, though, the antelope jinked behind Abdul Rahman’s truck and disappeared in higher terrain, and the hunt was over. I had yet to understand the extent to which this was not just, or even primarily, sport but about food and survival. I would soon become a passionate supporter of the hunt or, more accurately, a committed fan of its product.
The brothers were in a good mood. They had enjoyed the excitement of the chase but their deep, religiously grounded fatalism taught them that if they had been unsuccessful it was because Allah had so decided. Thus there was no point—indeed, it would be an insult to God—to even wish it had been otherwise.
We continued through the dunes and across another horizon-less flat reach, the only feature being the odd shallow, rock-strewn wadi. After about three hours of driving we started to encounter widely separated acacia thorn trees and a few sparse tufts of rough grass. The first trees were dead but as the trucks worked their way around them the vegetation became thicker; there was more grass, the acacias displayed dusty greenery, and then some chest-high bushes appeared. Soon there were multiple tracks in the hard surface and, moving slowly, we went deeper into what I thought of as a pretty underwhelming oasis. This was not Hollywood, and there were no languid pools or swaying, date-laden palms.
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