A House in the Sky: A Memoir

by Amanda Lindhout

  I imagined the calls going through, Adam’s voice on my dad’s line. I couldn’t, for the life of me, imagine what he would say. What words got used? How did arrangements get made? My father had chronic health issues and lived on disability checks. My mother made minimum wage. My bank account was just about empty. My friends in Calgary were mostly waitresses, none of them wealthy. I’m not sure anybody I knew back home could even find Somalia on a map. In Iraq, kidnapping was enough of a worry that it had been a topic of conversation at the Hamra Hotel. The big-time journalists generally had kidnapping insurance through their news organizations. Usually, it would pay for a crisis response company to help negotiate for a hostage’s release. Freelancers most often had none. And it was common knowledge that you couldn’t rely on your government to get you out. As a rule, governments won’t pay off hostage-takers. It’s too expensive and too loaded. No government wants to be found handing money over to terrorists.

  It was evening when Nigel and I were allowed out of the room again, to use the bathroom and to get some air. Ali ushered us to a straw mat laid out alongside one of the compound’s walls. He handed us two more tins of tuna fish and another flask of tea. It seemed clear we’d be spending the night. Calmly, I let go of the idea that this would be a one-day ordeal. It was like putting down one stone and picking up another. This would be a two-day ordeal, I told myself. I could live with that. As darkness fell, the air cooled off somewhat. The sky became a screen, shot through with pinpricked stars. Beneath it, I felt small and lost.

  Over near the lean-to, I could see the soldier boys lolling around. Some sat on the ground; a few had laid themselves out flat. They were listening to a silver battery-operated boom box, having tuned in to the BBC Somali Service. A male newscaster’s voice blared in Somali, delivering what I assumed was news of the war. Then, with bizarre clarity, I heard him say the words “Shamo Hotel.”

  In the lean-to area, the words caused a stir. The soldiers were sitting up and beginning to talk. Ali got to his feet and started waving at us excitedly, pointing toward the radio. The newscaster said “Canadeeeean” and then “Australeeeean.” My eyes met Nigel’s. The news story was about us, for sure. The feeling was crushing. It was confirmation that our troubles were both real and deep.

  18

  Ransom

  I know now that kidnappings for ransom happen more frequently than most of us would think.

  They happen in Mexico, Nigeria, and Iraq. They happen in India, Pakistan, China, Colombia, and plenty of places in between. Sometimes the motivation is political or personal, but most often it’s about money, plain and simple. Hostage-taking is a business, a speculative one, fed by people like me—the wandering targets, the fish found out of water, the comparatively rich moving against a backdrop of poor. Oil workers in far-off countries, traveling businesspeople, journalists, and tourists get swiped out of cars, or from meetings, or are deftly escorted at gunpoint from a restaurant. Back home, you wouldn’t know how often it happened if you didn’t pay attention to it. The news stories pop up and then disappear: An American traveler gets grabbed in Benin. A Dutch consultant gets held for ransom in Johannesburg. A British tourist is dragged from a bus in Turkey.

  Families get called; governments are contacted. A certain machinery quietly goes into gear. Nobody would ever call these situations common, but they happen frequently enough that there are procedures in place, a way things go, at least on the home front.

  In my case, it was not the kidnappers who alerted my family but a radio producer in Vancouver who had noticed a thinly reported wire story coming out of Somalia not twelve hours after we’d been taken. What it said was that two journalists, one Canadian, one Australian, had gone missing outside of Mogadishu. Only our first names were included, but I’d done some work for that producer earlier in the year, giving live radio updates from Iraq, and I’d let him know I was headed to Somalia. Searching for contact information on the Internet, the producer had called my uncle in Red Deer, who then rang my father. He and Perry had been sitting, until that moment, in the sun on their back porch.

  My father called my mother. My mother called my brothers. Nobody was clear on what to do. The radio producer in Vancouver had passed on a number for the government office of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa. When my father called it, a staffer explained that while they were aware of what the news said, nothing was confirmed. She then gave a different number for my family to call if they heard anything. She told my father to sit tight.

  One news report begat another. My father’s phone rang and rang with calls from reporters, dozens of them. A couple of TV trucks had parked in the street outside the house. Neighbors gathered on the sidewalk. The phone rang, but my father, feeling overwhelmed, stopped answering. Perry opened the door only to close friends and relatives. Otherwise, they stayed locked up, waiting for something to happen.

  The first phone call from Somalia came the next morning, a rubbly voice on my father’s voicemail, the man who called himself Adam saying, “Hello, we have your daughter.” He said he’d call again to talk about money, and then hung up. The call made it official. I hadn’t gotten lost or run away. I’d been taken. I had captors, and those captors had demands.

  I think now of my mother leaving the small house she’d rented in British Columbia. Too rattled to drive, she enlisted a friend to help her make the ten-hour trip through the Rockies to my father’s place in Alberta. I imagine the car climbing the crooked road, surrounded by pine forest, my mother perched stiffly in the passenger seat. It was August. The lupine would have been blooming in the dirt along the road’s shoulder. The mountains would have carried white veins of snow. Probably there were hawks in the sky. My mother, I would guess, saw none of it.

  By nightfall, three agents from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had arrived in Sylvan Lake and were sitting around the dining room table at my dad and Perry’s house, along with my mother. The agents asked questions and took notes. They listened several times to Adam’s voice message. They requested permission to tap my parents’ phone lines. They offered talking points for what to say when Adam called again. The idea was to try and have Adam put me on the phone—to prove I was alive, to get a sense of how I was being treated, to listen for clues. When it came to money, they were to tell the truth: They had none, and the government wouldn’t pay a ransom, either.

  My belongings—my journal, my toothbrush, all my odds and ends left in the Mogadishu hotel room—would soon be shipped to the Canadian embassy in Nairobi. My parents would receive a typed bullet-pointed list of everything I’d been traveling with: one green shawl, one brown T-shirt, one bathing suit, one Apple MacBook laptop, two pairs of black trousers, one head scarf, one bottle Nivea sunscreen, assorted pens and notebooks, assorted airline itineraries and electronic ticket records, assorted currency from Thailand, India, and Pakistan. My mother would later tell me she pored over the list, examining what was left of me, as if it would explain something about why any of this had happened.

  When it came to the reporters camped on my father’s front lawn, my parents were instructed to say little—not just to the media but to friends and neighbors as well. The hope was that, starved of fresh information, the news story about my kidnapping would die out quickly. It was better, the agents explained, to be a low-profile captive than a high-profile one. Hostage-takers, in general, are plenty savvy. They know how to Google. They read the news. They, too, would be scanning for clues during those early days, trying to assess the value of their catch. Did my family have money? Did I work for a big, wealthy company? Was I important to my government? A simple stressed-out comment from my mother in the news about how desperately she wanted me back could lead to an immediate hike in ransom.

  The message from the investigators to my parents was that they were not alone. Teams of trained negotiators would rotate in and out of Sylvan Lake, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, monitoring the phones and coaching my parents twenty-four/seven, until it was done. Together, they wou
ld work to wrangle, coddle, apply pressure, and offer vague assurances to our captors—to hit whatever levers it might take to get me sprung from Somalia.

  Kidnappings happened, my parents were told, but they also ended.

  This was meant as reassurance. So was another point the agents made, offering a first bit of hard comfort in what would turn into months of it: Nigel and I were now commodities. The kidnappers had spent money to catch us and keep us. They’d made an investment, which meant that it was in their best interest to keep us alive. If they killed us, it would be their loss, too.

  *

  In the tin-roofed house in Somalia, of course, we knew none of this. I spent the first day and night of captivity vacillating between panic and something that amounted to faith, a certainty that our ordeal would end quickly if only we could hit upon the right strategy for talking to the men holding us.

  Early on the second morning, Adam came into our room, accompanied by Ali, Yahya, and Ahmed, and announced that they had come up with a plan. He would be calling our families shortly to demand a ransom payment. They would be given one day to pay. If no money came, we’d be killed.

  Immediately, I started to argue. I said, “Our families don’t have money. They can’t pay ransom. And besides that, it’s Sunday, and so even if they could, all the banks are closed, anyway.”

  Adam was unmoved. When Nigel asked why they were holding us, he smiled and said something about our governments being at war with Islam. “You have bad governments,” he said, as if suggesting that we shouldn’t take anything personally. He added that they didn’t want money from our families. “If we are going to kill you in twenty-four hours, your governments will find a way to pay,” he said. I could see he was missing one of his top front teeth.

  I said, “How much are you asking for?”

  “Ah!” said Adam, as if I’d hit upon something he’d forgotten to mention. “We are not yet certain.” He eyed us as if trying to evaluate our worth. “Maybe one million dollars,” he said, shrugging lightly, “maybe two.”

  Nigel and I sat in stunned silence while the four men filed back out the door. A few minutes later, we heard a car leaving the compound.

  We were starting to understand, somewhat, the power structure in the group holding us hostage. Adam and Ahmed appeared to be the leaders, with Yahya, the older military man, and Ali serving as deputies, overseeing the foot soldiers, the eight or so long-legged young men—the boys, we started calling them—drifting around the courtyard with their guns. The leaders came and went in the Suzuki; it seemed they were staying at a different place, possibly back in Mogadishu. Yahya seemed to be directly in charge of the boys, ordering them around in Somali, sending one or two out to fetch thermoses of sweet tea or bags of cooked spaghetti from some unseen market on the other side of the walls.

  Ali appeared to be in charge of us. Without his commanders around, he kicked into high gear, barging in and out of the room with a jumpy sort of ferocity. “If your governments don’t pay, you will die,” he said at one point, looking down at us from the doorway. He dragged a finger dramatically across his own neck to indicate that we would be beheaded. Clearly enjoying the moment, he leaned in close. His voice was high-pitched for a man’s. “How does it feel,” he said, “knowing you will soon die?”

  The morning passed minute by minute. Every few hours, we could hear a muezzin call from a mosque and then the shuffle and murmur of prayer outside our door. Nigel lay on his mat, crying softly, keeping one elbow crooked over his face as if he couldn’t bear to look at his surroundings. On the previous day, Ali had given us each a brand-new piece of fabric, a large square of lightweight cotton. Nigel’s was red, and he was wearing it instead of his jeans, wrapped like a skirt around his waist to give his body more air, which was how we’d seen some of our captors dressed. I was sweltering, still in head scarf and abaya with my jeans and tank top beneath, knowing I had no choice but to stay fully cloaked. I’d taken my sheet, which was covered with delicate blue and white flowers, and spread it out to put a layer between me and the moldy floor mat.

  I made the calculations. Somalia was in a time zone nine hours ahead of the Canadian Rockies. I wondered, Was my family sleeping? Would the kidnappers call them in the middle of the night? I fought off tears. We were behind high walls, outnumbered by men with guns, and with no sense of where we were on the map. Our helplessness seemed complete.

  Ali stuck his head through our door again. “How does it feel,” he said, “to know you have twenty hours to live?” He made the beheading motion with his finger, this time adding a sound effect—a swift scraping hiss. Then he left again.

  I tried unsuccessfully to barricade myself off from his words, to push what I knew from my mind: Our captors were fundamentalists. And fundamentalists really did behead people. In Iraq, I’d gone out one day to do a TV story and had visited a field at the outskirts of Sadr City. The place had become a dumping ground for the bodies of people killed in the fighting between Shiite and Sunni militias. A man’s decomposing corpse, lying on the ground amid piles of garbage, caught my eye. His hair was matted and his eyes were open, brown and blank. It took me a few seconds to assemble the picture, to realize what it was that I was seeing. The man’s head had been partially severed from his body, the top vertebrae of his spine flashing white like whalebones in the sun.

  It was a lesson the world had already taught me and was teaching me still. You don’t know what’s possible until you actually see it.

  *

  With time ticking down, we were novelties, Nigel and I. With a now-or-never bravado, two of the soldier boys entered our room with lunch and lingered awkwardly in the doorway. They were keen to practice their English.

  One of them, I would actually come to like. Jamal, his name was. He spoke only a small amount of English but compensated with an eagerness to engage. He sat on the floor cross-legged, in a navy blue T-shirt and a pair of tan dress slacks with cuffs that rode high over his skinny dark ankles, and smiled at us in a genuine way. He was a teenager—eighteen years old, he said—a clear work in progress, with long spindly legs and narrow shoulders that sloped forward, as if he were trying to shed some of his considerable height. He had bright eyes and dark curly hair cut close to his skull. On his chin, he had a few sprouting hairs, the very beginnings of a beard. I could smell his cologne, fruity and cheap. I remembered Jamal from the day before. He’d been the gunman who first appeared at my window. His eyes were unforgettably big and frightened in a way that broadcast his inexperience. Though his face had been wrapped, the scarf had fallen partly open, and I’d seen enough that I could recognize him now.

  He came to our room with another boy, Abdullah, who was more heavily built and somber-seeming. Abdullah had carried our meals—two more bags of greasy spaghetti—and dropped them quickly into our hands using only the outer edges of two fingertips, as if we might bite.

  Jamal, though, was openly curious, only a little bit bashful, averting his eyes when he asked us questions, smiling at the ground as he heard our answers. Where did we live? Were we married? What did we think of Somalia? Did we own cars? Abdullah sat down as well, but he made me uneasy. In a flat voice, he said that he also was eighteen and fighting the jihad.

  “Soldier,” he said, touching his chest with evident pride. I could feel him looking at me as he said it, even as I avoided meeting his gaze.

  Both Nigel and I left our food untouched. To eat in front of them felt like putting a weakness on display.

  Jamal, it turned out, had just gotten engaged to be married.

  I said, “Is she a beautiful girl?”

  He dipped his head sheepishly, the grin irrepressible. “Yes, beautiful.”

  “When are you getting married?”

  Jamal said, “After now.”

  “You mean soon?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Inshallah.” Searching for the words, he added, “The married party is . . .” He rubbed two fingers together.

  “Expensive? A wedding i
s expensive?”

  “Yes.” He seemed to beam relief, having made himself understood.

  What he meant by “after now,” I realized, was “once this kidnapping is over.” It occurred to me that for Jamal, this wasn’t so much about jihad. He was waiting for his payout so he could go home, throw a wedding, and marry his girl.

  *

  “You have seventeen hours until you die,” Ali said after we’d made a late-day trip to the outhouse and resettled ourselves on our mats. Nigel was lying on his side, facing the wall. I found myself hoping Ali would leave and Jamal would come back, bringing his comparative cheer. Nigel had closed himself off. He hadn’t managed to say one reassuring or hopeful thing all day.

  Ali said, sounding angry, “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you.”

  “You will soon die.”

  My hips were sore from the pressure of the concrete beneath my thin mat. I was feeling drained by the heat. I was sick of his nastiness. “Well,” I said, knowing I was being flippant, “if that’s how Allah wants it . . .”

  Ali’s rage was instantaneous. He took a few steps closer, as if to strike me. “You,” he seethed. “You think this is a joke? If you are ready to die, then say so. I will kill you now.”

  I cowered. “No, no, no, I’m sorry,” I said, switching my tone to reflect how I felt. Fear, sustained over a number of hours, feels like something you can drown in. I’d been paddling in it all day.

  Nigel had quietly rolled over on his mat and was listening.

  I said, “I don’t think this is a joke, my brother. I don’t want to die.” I bowed my head. “But if it’s my time, then there is nothing I can do about it. That’s all I was trying to say.”

  When I looked up again, Ali seemed to be regarding me carefully. His anger had subsided a little. I regretted saying it. To mock the Muslim belief in predestiny—the idea that Allah had planned our fates carefully and there was little we could do to swerve from them—was sacrilege, a hot-button move if there ever were one.