And always there was that desolate and haunting aria from Act IV of Manon Lescaut, “Sola, perduta, abbandonata, in landa desolata! Orror!” which concludes with the thrice-repeated “Non voglio morir” (I don’t want to die). And finally, all too forlornly, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
I don’t know how widely music is recognized to be the favoured window to the soul, but that is certainly the case as far as I am concerned. Nothing is so emotionally evocative, and while I am not a singer, these and many more were comforting, melancholy, and important companions in the Sahara.
On Day 34 I fell into a deep funk and I can recall nothing that might have triggered it beyond the fact that there was so evidently no movement, no developments, no nothing. I came close to convincing myself that our situation would not end happily. Things improved a little the next day, which was wet, windy, and cool, and I contrived to be as active as possible: walking, gathering wood, cleaning up … and staring into the middle distance. Louis tried valiantly to buck me up but I could tell he wasn’t far behind me as I slipped deeper into the pit. Oddly, this helped. We had rules against that happening, dammit! I was not allowed to infect him with my dark thoughts so I strove harder, in the interests of helping Louis, of course, to avoid going deeper.
But on Day 36, another grey and blustery day with a lot of blowing sand in the air, as we began our walk I saw Hassan digging not very far from where they parked their trucks. Each time we reached a slight rise in our short track, we got a good view through a gap in some scrubby grasses of the masked Ninja Boy methodically, relentlessly, digging. He seemed to be in no particular hurry but as we did circuit after circuit the pile of sand beside him grew, and slowly he dug himself deeper and deeper into the ground.
After a while the taciturn Socks joined him. They took turns digging and every once in a while they walked around what was by now a long, thin, and now fairly deep hole to check out their progress. Hassan was down to his thighs.
I drew Louis’ attention to it but he’d already seen what was going on and said nothing—a bad sign. We talked about everything. I hollowly asked why Hassan would be digging. What Hassan would be digging. Could it be another cache? But there was nothing beside him that needed burying, no fuel or water drum, no bag of shoes, or tent.
“It’s our grave,” I offered, and Louis just balefully stared at me and resumed walking—no challenge, no rebuttal, no happier alternative. So we walked, and for five or six paces every minute each of us in turn got a full view of the emerging grave. Once I had articulated the solution to the riddle there seemed no other answer. Hassan hated us. He had been particularly aggressive and abusive over the past week. He would know we could see and would so enjoy our turmoil as we became aware of what he was up to.
We had been taught about the rules guiding ritual Islamic slaughter, rules I often thought would be applied to any kind of slaughter. Inhumane treatment of the animal went against fundamental principles of Islam, but that would not bother Hassan. A very sharp knife must be used to facilitate rapid and painless cutting. Hassan wore his eighteen-inch fighting knife at his waist at all times. We had been told that the slaughter should not take place in front of the other animals and that the animal being slaughtered should never see the knife, but Hassan would want us to see the knife … and the grave.
I was certain, absolutely certain, that some time soon—within the next twenty-four hours or so—we would be brought to a tent, blindfolded, our throats sliced open, and our bodies tossed into that hole. There was no doubt. There could be no other interpretation. It had been decided. Thus the fear was not about an immediate execution. It was not minutes away, but it would happen soon—that evening or the next morning—and these were our last living moments. What a waste! How ignoble an end! No goodbyes, no closure, just a hole nowhere in the Sahara desert.
So we walked and Louis stopped marking our progress. How could that matter? And, straight out of the book of clichés, each of us sought to make peace with ourselves and, a little to my surprise, that was precisely what I managed to do.
I reviewed my life. Took stock of what had gone well and not so well, considered the happy relationships and the less so, reviewed the things I was proud of and not-so-proud, and then I adapted my evening ritual and bade farewell to Mary and the girls and their husbands and children. And at the end I did find a kind of sad peace. There had been a lot more good than bad. I determined that my life had served some purpose, that perhaps the world was a little better for my having passed through it. That I had a marvellous wife and family who were also doing good things. So I was ready—not accepting it, not resigned to it, but ready.
But then strange things started happening around the grave. First, long sticks were bent over the hole in high hoops and then Hassan began weaving grasses among the hoops. Odd for a grave. Then, as it started to drizzle, Hassan stretched a sort of poncho over the hoops and climbed inside. It was a hooch! He’d built himself a shelter from the rain and wind. Talk about taking counsel of one’s fears!
We were drained, emotionally wrung out. We couldn’t even talk for some time. We had been certain, but we’d been wrong.
Despite this experience, despite having been there before and having so misjudged the circumstances, I decided on other occasions that the game was up and I am confident in the belief that it very nearly was. None, however, was quite as traumatizing as that first time on Day 36. And, of course, we had the making-peace-with-yourself routine all worked out.
I remember nothing about Day 37. We were in shock. It took a while to reconcile ourselves to the fact that the whole near-death experience had been a fabrication of our own less than stable minds. While we believed our captors were entirely capable of killing us, and it was all too clear some of them wanted to get on with doing just that, what had happened the previous day was only indirectly related to them and far more something we had done to ourselves—and that took some getting used to.
Then Day 38 was the pits. I became angry and despondent. How, after more than five weeks, could Ottawa leave us in such misery, in such appalling circumstances, without getting us some sign, some message that a fix was coming? This was the same old self-indulgent stuff: nothing like as deep and wrenching as Day 36 but still down, still wallowing in self-pity, though at least this time with a greater degree of self-awareness. Finally, I snapped myself out of it. Louis and I talked about the need for a very strict application of the rabbit-hole-avoidance rule and the obligation of the one who was further out to extract the guy further down, immediately. From then on we were a lot more successful in applying this practice.
As Days 34, 36, and 38 had been bad, I—the non-superstitious one—could not shake the apprehension that, henceforth, even days would be bad and odd days would be better. It was idiotic but at least had the advantage of implying that 50 percent of the days were destined to be not so bad. At about this time I began to run scripts in my head that always concluded with someone telling us “… and, therefore, we have decided to free you.” There were countless variations on the scenarios that preceded this phrase, literally hundreds, and I would run them back to back. It was clearly obsessive behaviour and I’d have almost to slap my own face or pinch my arm to extract myself from these delusional loops.
On Day 43, 25 January, Omar Two came by to gloat. With ill-disguised glee he boasted, “We’ve taken four more!” I sensed that his furtive side glances probably meant that he was not supposed to be telling us this news, so I pressed him for as many details as quickly as possible before he changed his mind. Bit by bit the story emerged, but I decided that he was telling us what he had gleaned from Radio France Internationale or Al Jazeera rather than passing on information that had come through the AQIM communications network.
He told us that three days before, four European tourists had been captured while leaving the Anderamboukane festival of nomad culture on the border between Mali and Niger, about two hundred kilometres north of where we had been taken: a Swiss couple
, a German, and an Englishman. They had, he said, been taken by an AQIM sister katiba in the Sahara and, ominously, he told us for the first of many subsequent times, “You are really fortunate that you were taken by this group because there are many others that would treat you very, very differently, where it would go very hard for you.” And then, with a snarl, “We would really like to be cutting you into little pieces, but Khaled will not let us.”
With that, he stalked away and didn’t come near us for two weeks. Louis and I were convinced that was because he knew he had overstepped the bounds by giving us tactically useful information and he was worried we would reveal his indiscretion to les frères, which, of course, we did not. The information was very precious. It was new, current, and highly relevant to our circumstances. Endlessly we discussed its implications. Was it part of a widespread initiative? Were Westerners being grabbed across North and West Africa?
Clearly our situation had just got a lot more complicated. Now three more Western governments were involved and they had widely differing official stands and track records on the pay or never-pay spectrum. We knew the Brits were, at least officially, among the more inflexible, while it was widely reported that money had been paid to get the German, Austrian, and Swiss tourists out of Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (the predecessor to AQIM) captivity in 2003. Also, it was alleged that a ransom had been paid to secure the release of the two Austrians, Wolfgang Ebner and Andrea Kloiber, in October 2008. As our situation had become more complex it would probably take longer to resolve, but seven hostages from five different countries (four Western and one African) might bring collective pressure to bear, and collective decision making.
Recalling the horror of our first few days, we had enormous sympathy for the anguish these four people would be suffering, but our minds were immediately, and rather selfishly, flooded with the implications of all this for our predicament. Were the others close by? Would we all be brought together? Was that likely to be good or bad for us? How, precisely, would this complicate or facilitate our eventual release?
We had far too much time to worry about such issues and even in normal circumstances I tend to be compulsive in my analyses. After a couple of days I concluded that it was unlikely we would be brought together with the other hostages as our kidnappers would want to keep their assets in separate baskets. Further, I expected that the three new countries would spend a lot of time talking and fretting as they attempted to find common ground with Canada on negotiating with terrorists, ransom, and exchange of prisoners, but in the end each would make its own decisions.
I considered that the additional hostages would also make the calculations in the relevant capitals relating to rescue options much more complex, and that any attempt to rescue the seven of us would be much more risky. I thought that this new development would very likely prolong our ordeal. However I also believed (or, perhaps, hoped) that it might also militate in favour of a happier outcome, at least for Louis and me.
One additional calculation was but a shadow of a thought—too sensitive, too disturbing to grapple with directly, but too important to completely ignore. Louis and I were always aware that one or both of us might be killed by our Al Qaeda abductors once they decided they didn’t like the direction that negotiations were taking. With the capture of the four Europeans, the pool from which the short straw might be drawn had become larger, even if we knew that they were unlikely to execute a woman.
On Day 44, the day after Omar Two revealed that AQIM had taken four European hostages, I spent a lot of time thinking of the 444 days that fifty-two staff members of the American Embassy in Tehran had spent in captivity between November 1979 and January 1981. It was ten times what we had just been through, and I didn’t think I could manage that.
On Day 52, 3 February, Louis and I were sitting in the shade around midday when Omar One approached to announce, “Good news, the Canadian Embassy in Bamako wants proof-of-life.”
Shortly afterward, Omar One escorted the man we would come to know as Omar Three to our position and, with some deference to O3, introduced him to us as an important fellow, a close collaborator of Emir Khaled. We had seen him around for a few days but always at some distance. Omar Three was clearly a senior officer, more senior, I suspected, than anyone else in camp. He told us that the Canadian Embassy in Mali had asked for another video. As we were talking, a tent was being erected. Omar Three said that we were essentially to perform as we had for Video One on Day 5, but this time there would be three of us, for “The UN has insisted on seeing Soumana—not the government of Niger, which doesn’t care about him—but the UN.”
I asked what the message was to be and he repeated, “It will be the same as before. Mr. Robert, you will speak first, then Mr. Louis. You will say who you are, when we took you, who we are, that you are not suffering and, if they want to see you alive, there are to be no military actions against us. That is all.” I said that we would also want to speak to our wives and families and O3, waving his hand dismissively, said, “Sure, sure.”
As we approached the tent, Omar Three drew me aside and said, “You must tell your colleague, Louis, to get hold of himself. We do not want to give people the impression that we are abusing you.” Louis was indeed visibly nervous, so we had a quiet chat as I repeated Omar Three’s concerns, which we both took as perhaps the most positive sign we had been given since the outset of this horrible adventure. As we entered the tent, I asked O3 when Soumana should speak and he dismissively replied, “You, then Louis. Soumana will not speak!”
The set-up for Video Two seemed to be precisely the same as for the first one. The black Al Qaeda flag with white Arabic script was again pinned to the wall of the tent. Behind us were four mujahideen in black turbans, festooned with ammunition belts, three of them with machine guns and the fourth, standing right behind my head, holding a sword, his hand on the hilt. I do not recall these people being there when we walked into the tent, certainly not the menacing one with the sword, who would have received my full attention. So I expect that they did not come in until after the three of us were seated facing the camera.
With little ceremony Julabib, who again sat cross-legged in front of me, signalled: three, two, one, and—pointed. Without preamble I repeated pretty much what I had said forty-seven days before: who I was, what had been my UN mission (getting the title of my employer right this time), when and where we were taken. I said that we were being held by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and that we were being treated honourably or correctly, I don’t recall which. I stressed that climatic and living conditions were getting tougher and noted we were experiencing health issues. I urged Canadian and UN authorities to put an early end to our captivity without resorting to violence.
I then addressed myself to Mary and the girls (even getting the number of my children right), telling them how much I loved them and how I regretted the pain our situation must be causing them, and turned things over to Louis, who went through a similar routine. That was it. When we got outside the tent, Hassan, wishing to put an end to our upbeat mood, sidled up to us and said with a sneer, “Don’t think for a moment that this means anything. This is by no means over.” Well, he sure got that right.
The directors, Omars One and Three, however, seemed pleased. Soumana was led away before we could exchange more than a few friendly words, but he seemed pleased that he had been included and, of course, that his family would learn that he was alive and looking well. Once back at our tree we were brought pen and paper and told to write in English and in French what we had just said and to sign and date these statements. Each of us wrote a little more to our families but was careful to stick fairly close to the agreed script.
Once completed, these statements were handed to Omar Three, who was in his truck and on his way within moments. Both Louis and I took great comfort from the seriousness with which our captors seemed to take the production of this second video and the urgency with which they wanted to get it to market. From
Hollywood, I had learned that the production of evidence of well-being (“proof-of-life,” in the kidnapping lexicon) was usually demanded at the outset and again just before liberation, so we thought we might be on that track; so too, quite clearly, did most of our kidnappers.
That said, we were confused. Aside from the happy addition of Soumana, we had just done on Day 52 what we thought had been accomplished on Day 5, and we couldn’t figure out why it had been necessary. What would Ottawa learn from the video message we had just made that we had not told them seven long weeks before, beyond the fact that we were still alive? Was it possible they had not received the first message? It seemed as if the clock had just been reset to zero, that in fact, nothing had been achieved over this period. I think this may have been a fairly accurate assessment.
On Day 62, in a scene out of The Bridge on the River Kwai or The Great Escape, I demanded to see the camp emir, Abdul Rahman, to request adequate clothing and footwear. At the end of that unproductive meeting, we were informed that we would—after fifty-six days—be leaving the hell-that-we-knew, Camp Canada, the next evening to venture into an even more uncertain future. “We will leave tomorrow, at night,” said AR with great seriousness, “so that the flies will not follow us.” From his evident frustration, however, it was clear that the move would not be in the direction we hoped so fervently to be going.
A Season in Hell Page 18