A Season in Hell

by Robert R. Fowler

  A few days after the delivery of the tarp, our captors returned from a water run and unloaded some forty-five-gallon drums near our position. We asked Omar One to see if the camp emir, Abdul Rahman, would allow us to use a couple of them to create a shelter. After some hesitation they agreed, once we had accepted that any time the water was needed they could tear apart whatever we had erected to get to it (and on one occasion they did just that, in the middle of the night).

  We set the two barrels up at the head of the “bed” and stretched the tarp over the top, weighing it down with rocks and sand at the base of the drums and more rocks piled on their tops, then pulled it taut to a little past the foot of our blankets, where we held it in place with more rocks. There was sufficient tarp remaining to cover the sides of the sleeping area, and we used short sticks to prop open the sides, allowing air to circulate at night but bringing the flaps down in a storm. The clearance—perhaps ten centimetres—above our faces at the head of the bed and zero clearance at the foot made it difficult to move, but we solved that by digging long, cocoon-like trenches side by side into the sand, which made a smoother mattress and afforded a little more head and foot room.

  We had been told by Omar One that we had only to ask any of les frères to refill our plastic drinking water container when it was nearly empty. Nice in theory, but it rarely worked out that easily. When we asked about washing, he allowed that this more complicated matter would have to be decided case by case, for us and every other person in the camp, by the camp commander, Abdul Rahman. Washing was discretionary; drinking was not. We then received a long lecture on the value of water, the risks and costs associated with supplying it, and the discipline this imposed on its use.

  Specifically, Omar insisted that water was never to be wasted (thus not to be used for going loin) and that the brothers had been instructed by the imam to use sand instead of water to perform symbolic ablutions before each set of daily prayers. The water was obtained from deep desert wells and collected, stored, and cached in steel drums. About every three days a truck departed on what Louis and I termed a water run, usually leaving early in the morning and returning late at night, and sometimes not until the next day.

  The full drums were then unloaded at a central water point near their trucks; those on kitchen duty that day would fill their pots, and the individual mujahideen would top up their water bottles at will. Drawing water from the drums involved siphoning it with a three-metre length of plastic hose that (in company with a roll of packing tape used to bind prisoners) was stored around the principal stick shift in each truck. Unfortunately, the same tube was used to siphon diesel fuel into the trucks’ dual fuel tanks. We soon learned to avoid asking for water whenever we heard a truck returning, as they were immediately refuelled and we were eager to avoid getting the half litre of fuel remaining in the hose added to our water jug.

  Indeed, the greatest problem with water, particularly for me, was not quantity but quality. Perhaps one time in five the taste of the water made it wholly undrinkable. It was often contaminated, if not by fuel then by whatever chemical had been in the drums to begin with. Clearly they had not, and would not, “waste” precious water to rinse out their barrels. A number of the drums were decorated with the large, inverted triangle with skull and cross-bones inside denoting poison.

  When I couldn’t drink the water, Louis or I would, Oliver Twist–like, return to the imprecisely designated frontier between our zone and theirs, wait until someone deigned to recognize us, and then, offering that person our newly refilled jug, try to explain that whatever it was contaminated with was so strong that I could not keep it down. This often did not have the desired effect on those who did not agree with the priority I assigned to staying alive, particularly the children. Some were likely to snatch the container from my grasp and return after a long time with the same or sometimes worse water. At that point it would all become vastly more complicated, with face involved, and would take hours before I got something I could drink. Louis’ stomach was tougher than mine, but not much.

  Often, especially as the water level in the barrels got below a third full, the water was cloudy with sand, sometimes dark brown and opaque. In these situations we would very carefully pour a cup full and allow most of the sand to settle to the bottom for an hour or so before drinking off the upper portion without jiggling the cup. This was a much easier issue to deal with than unpalatability but required management. When the water became really sludgy, we strained it through our (filthy) scarves before allowing it to settle.

  After a while we managed to scrounge a cast-off second container for wastewater (the final muddy half cup in our drinking container). We tried to keep this one more or less out of sight and use it surreptitiously for going loin and washing our hands afterward, but after a few weeks we got busted and lost the second container. One day, without a word, one of our kidnappers simply picked it up it from behind the rock where it was hidden, without breaking stride, and walked away with it.

  We were given water with which to wash on few occasions. Some were what we called “small washes,” for which we were given ten litres to share. That allowed us a sort of kitty wash, using our scarves and a little soap to deal with strategic parts of our bodies. Then we would use the filthy water to wash a couple of items of clothing, usually our tattered underwear and socks. The rare but wonderful ones, though, were the “large washes,” for which we received thirty litres. That allowed full body, head, and hair washes. And by capturing most of the water by standing in a large tub we were sometimes allowed to use, we were able to wash and minimally rinse our clothes, while still preserving a little dirty water to contribute to our waste water container. The thirty litres would be delivered in a black plastic container. Leaving it in the sun for an hour ensured that the water temperature was pleasant.

  Only once did we witness how they did the watering business and it was startlingly “handraulic.” In the middle of a flat, featureless expanse of desert, we pulled up at an “improved well.” That is development-speak for a well that has been hand dug but equipped with a large, pre-cast cement lip, perhaps two metres in diameter and rising almost a metre from ground level. This serves to protect the well, and water drawers, from cave-ins and makes the task of drawing water a little easier. Two of the trucks drew up to within a couple of metres of the wellhead and their crews unloaded the enormous amount of baggage in order to stand half a dozen water drums upright.

  Everyone was a little tense and sentries were sent deep in every direction. From somewhere, an enormous pan (the cut-off bottom third of a forty-five-gallon drum) was placed on the roof of the cab of one of the trucks and the sturdiest of the youths girded himself for the task. Placing one foot on the rim of the well, he lowered a bucket made of some kind of animal skin attached to a rigid circular rim on a long, thin, frayed, yellow nylon rope and proceeded to haul water up from what looked to be about a fifteen-metre depth. When the soft, leaking bucket cleared the well, it would be handed to another of the young mujahideen, who, grabbing the rim and hoisting it above his head, walked to the truck. A third, standing in the truck bed by the cab, would reach down, take the bucket, and dump its contents into the pan atop the cab. On and on it went. As the pan filled, water was siphoned down into the standing barrels.

  Witnessing this exhausting procedure was, in itself, a lesson in water conservation, and we understood full well how vulnerable they clearly felt when engaged in the long watering process.

  We ate badly, and worried about scurvy and other ravages of vitamin deficiency and nutritional insufficiency. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization deems that a daily intake of 1,800 calories is needed to maintain nutritional health, but a fifth of the people in our troubled world do not manage anything like that. I very much doubt that we were receiving even half that amount. When one evening we were served a satisfying lentil soup I tried to encourage more of the same by offering compliments. The answer was fiercely dismissive: “We eat out of necessity, not
pleasure.” And we saw no more lentils.

  They insisted that we all ate the same thing and, although we did not see what they ate except on a couple of occasions when we were fed en route, I never found any reason to disbelieve them. That said, I don’t know how they did it. They were fit. Hassan would escort the half-dozen younger ones on training missions at the run and they practised small-unit tactics, slithering among the rocks and dunes for hours in the blistering sun. They ran up and down mountains and did sentry duty at least twice each day, in addition to performing their various chores and going on missions (for water, communications, and so forth) outside the camp. Louis and I, however, were tired out by our daily walks and despite our relative inactivity, we were each losing weight at about a kilo a week.

  Our daily regime consisted of a breakfast of a large (shared) cup of powdered milk and a kind of fritter shortly after dawn, and a lunch and usually identical dinner of rice or pasta, delivered in a cracked and dented communal aluminum bowl, with bits of filthy string wedged into the rents in the metal. Sometimes, if we were lucky, there would be trace elements of tomato paste or sardines. Wonderful meals would see gristly bits of goat, sheep, or camel added to the rice or pasta, which guaranteed an hour or so of methodical tooth picking with a thorn snapped from the tree above our heads. Neither a sheep nor a goat nor a can of sardines nor a tin of tomato paste goes far among thirty young, hungry males.

  At first our rice-filled bowl was simply dropped, sometimes flung, onto the sand in front of us. It was usually delivered by one of the children, who went to great lengths to avoid the possibility of touching us and to ensure we received a good portion of sand with our meal.

  After a week at Camp Canada, a supply truck showed up late one evening and we were given an enormous bowl of fresh lettuce, tomatoes, beets, peppers, and onion for breakfast, all smothered in some kind of store-bought salad dressing, which we wolfed down with enthusiasm and excitement. That happy experience was never to be repeated. The same delivery provided us with, among a few other things, a large bag of raw peanuts, which we roasted over a small fire, and a tiny tin of Nescafé, which we added, a few grains at a time, to our breakfast cup of powdered milk.

  Now and then there were surprising acts of generosity. Al Jabbar one day brought us a haunch of a desert antelope, skin and hoof still attached, and indicated, giving us matches, that we could cook it over our own small fire. He understood we had nothing with which to remove the skin and lent us a small penknife for the purpose.

  A couple of days later he came by to ask for his petit couteau and we reminded him that we had returned his penknife later on the same day he had lent it to us. Shrugging, he wandered away and was seen over the next few days searching the sand throughout the camp. Several of the children strode up to us in the days that followed, gruffly demanding to know where le petit couteau was. I indulged my paranoia, frantically searching our plot in case we hadn’t returned it as both of us were sure we had. I recalled with a sinking feeling Omar One’s recent reading of a sura (Qur’anic verse) recounting a slightly different version of the Sunday school story of Joseph and his coat of many colours. The key bit about trumping up a charge by vengefully hiding a golden cup within the baggage of his evil brother was very much in my mind as I worried that le petit couteau would suddenly be discovered by our guards among our miserable possessions.

  On arrival in Camp Canada I realized I had to find some way of keeping track of time or my grip on reality might well slip. I worried that if I lost the ability to measure the passage of time, I might well lose hold of other anchors. Above all, I needed to be confident that I could keep my wits about me, could track and even perhaps encourage progress toward a happy conclusion to our misadventure—to the extent that might prove possible from the middle of the Sahara. I wanted to ensure that if I emerged from this trial it would not be as a cringing, broken disappointment to my family.

  Our watches had been taken. So, borrowing ideas from POW lore, I determined we needed a routine that included the methodical and accurate registration of the passage of time. Further, it would have to be reasonably discreet and portable, as I had no idea of how long we would remain in one place or what we could take with us if and when we moved. Thus the classic scratching of lines, Count of Monte Cristo–like, on the prison wall or a rock or tree was not an option.

  After a few days, I decided to try to record the passing days on the underside of my belt, using the ubiquitous long and very sharp thorns that adorned the acacia tree under which we sheltered. However, the rough surface of the underside was not suitable for fine markings, so I switched to the polished outer side and developed symbology that would serve us rather well: short lines for days of the week, longer lines for Sundays, to distinguish the passage of weeks, and a line across the full width of the belt to denote the end of a month.

  The only other symbols were slanted finials on the lines marking the days on which we were allowed water with which to wash. These washing marks enabled me to approach the camp emir with a very precise pitch, which clearly had some effect, as in “We haven’t been able to wash in seventeen days and we need to do so.” Later, I added symbols to denote other significant events such as the recording of video messages and when we moved to a new camp. All of which, in addition to offering us that vital connection to the real world, has also assisted me enormously in creating this account.

  In order to keep this record circumspect, if not secret, I could not use the belt to hold up my ever-looser trousers. As it turned out this was not a problem because just as I lost enough weight to make keeping my pants up without a belt problematic, the trousers began to disintegrate from their hard, 24/7 use. So I simply removed the belt and kept it in the plastic bag with my few possessions (soap, toothbrush, and paste). I don’t know if they were aware of the belt-calendar but I suspect they were, for two reasons.

  First, they were remarkably observant and had us under close scrutiny twenty-four hours a day. We were a curiosity and their principal entertainment, just as they were ours. Early on in Camp Canada, Omar Two, the mystic warrior (“I have my faith and my gun, what more could I possibly require?”) approached in a stormy mood and demanded to know what sort of uniform I was wearing (a point my daughters have also raised on more than one occasion). I insisted that it was no kind of uniform, even if the pants and shirt were very similar in colour. Fully appreciating the satisfaction he would get out of establishing that I was part of some uniformed service—and the likely unpleasant consequences—I was at pains to demonstrate that mine were standard Western casual clothes. Not so, he claimed, for they all sported the same distinctive military-looking logo. When I then examined what I was wearing and the devices to which he was pointing, I realized with some dismay that he was quite correct. My trousers, shirt, and even my shoes displayed the Dockers logo, which, with its anchor flanked by impressionistic wings, did look pretty operational. I had not been aware that I was so loyal to the Dockers brand.

  Second, they became very used to the fact that I knew the date and day of the week. Occasionally, one or other of our jailers would approach us and ask, “Is it Monday or Tuesday?” or “the twenty-third or the twenty-fifth?” Clearly they had accepted that in some manner or other, I was keeping track of time.

  It is difficult to overemphasize the importance, at least for my mental well-being, of the decision to maintain the belt-calendar. Perhaps on two or three occasions we let the marking of the days slip when we couldn’t update it sufficiently discreetly and then had to add a couple at a time. Often Louis reminded me to do so before I had thought of it. Having that record and knowing how much time had elapsed between significant events helped keep everything in an orderly perspective and gave us some sense of control over our lives. I wonder if our captors realized that too and simply decided that our mental stability was also in their interests in that sick, suicidal, or dead assets were not much use to them.

  Knowing the day, date, and precise length of our imprisonment
also nourished what came to be an important morale-building ritual. Each day when we awoke, and before our rudimentary ablutions, we would start with an exchange.

  “Good morning, Bob. It’s Wednesday, January 7th, and we are still alive.”

  “Indeed we are, Louis, on this the twenty-fifth day of our captivity.”

  While our jailers never told us how long we would be staying in any particular location, on arrival in Camp Canada we had the impression that we had reached a final destination: perhaps not the final destination but the place to which we had been travelling for six days, and the attitude of our kidnappers seemed to suggest that we’d be here a while. So, just as I had decided that we needed to keep track of the passage of time, so too did we determine that we needed to establish some kind of rhythm and structure to our days.

  We were always conscious of the rather self-evident link between the states of our mental and physical health. I remain convinced that had one suffered significant damage, the other would have followed in short order. Neither of us had previously come close to experiencing the intensity of the psychological and emotional stress we were under, nor had we known such austere conditions or extreme climatic challenges. There were dangers we understood implicitly, like sunburn, sunstroke, infection, water-borne diseases, and dehydration, but we had little understanding of the potential ravages of depression, isolation, and extreme fear.

  Also, we were unaware of what other challenges to our physical health might lurk in the food, the water, and the sand or be transmitted by the insects that abounded. While we knew that scorpions and poisonous snakes inhabited the desert, we knew little about how to spot and avoid them, and less about how to treat stings and bites from such creatures. In fact, we didn’t know whether they were treatable or necessarily fatal in such remote circumstances, so far from any kind of professional medical assistance. We did know, though, that the “I’ve got a hangnail or a thorn in my foot so you’ve got to let me go” gambit was not going to get any traction.