A Long Walk Home: One Woman's Story of Kidnap, Hostage, Loss - and Survival (22 page)

‘I don’t lie to my son,’ I said simply.

And then he clicked back into shape, as if aware of how far he’d strayed ‘off message’, as written in the look on my face. But, as far as I was concerned, his mask had slipped:
He’s not as nice as he makes out, this fellow.

‘OK,’ he shrugged. ‘I tell Big Man. But he not happy.’

I gave him a shrug of my own. ‘I’m not happy, Ali.’

And I wasn’t. I had given Ali the benefit of the doubt in terms of his own motives and intentions. And I wasn’t about to stop dealing with him just because he had shouted at me. I couldn’t afford to. But it had been a farewell to the notion that he was really ‘on my side’.

On Boxing Day, then, I got my treasured phone call: my first contact with Ollie in thirty days. I told Ollie that I was ‘in the forest’, but I stumbled, as I couldn’t persuade myself, never mind him. I genuinely hoped that in my tone of voice I was sending him a message that I was not ill, frantic, or otherwise very much more inconvenienced than usual.

‘And Ollie, when you eventually come and get me, please be sure to bring a change of clothes for me. I’ve only got loose robes on, the sort Muslim women wear for their modesty …’

My instinct was that Ollie, hearing me burble on about changes of clothes, would find it difficult to believe I was in any kind of forest.

‘We’re still working to get you home, Mum, and we’re getting closer, that’s all I can tell you. So keep eating, keep focused, keep walking.’

I told him a little about my fag-packet game.

‘That’s good, keep your mind occupied, Mum, keep hope.’

‘Have you seen your uncle Paul and Maxine?’

‘Yes. They brought Christmas lunch round. We exchanged presents.’

I felt a real pang in my heart, to be so far removed from this simple shared family moment. But in my prison I wasn’t treating it like ‘Christmastime’. So I was just glad to hear David’s youngest brother and his wife were being so supportive, as I’d known they would.

‘I’d have hoped to have been able to call you.’

‘I was hoping too, Ollie darling. But, listen, out here, it’s just another day for me. We’ll have Christmas when I get back. We can choose to have Christmas whenever we want to …’

When the call was cut off as usual, I felt pensive, but strengthened as ever by Ollie’s calm and assurance. Gerwaine and Ali entered and Ali said, ‘Everything OK, you stay here until you go.’

That was comforting. I thought:
However long it is until I go, it’s relatively comfortable here. I know what to do. I just have to conserve my energy, look after myself, as best as I can.

New Year’s Eve was another celebration deferred. My company was the radio, and I listened to the end-of-year quiz on the World Service, sitting on my bed. What I did vow to myself – my resolution – was that in 2012 I would go home.
This year it happens. I will not be here in twelve months.

The year 2012 was only days old, and I was taking my respite in a night’s sleep, when my bed was kicked repeatedly and I woke to glaring torchlight in my eyes, then a slow-forming vision of
phantom-like figures flitting around my room, Ali standing by with a black plastic bag …
This wasn’t the deal
, I wanted to cry out. But we were on the move. I went through the motions once again, as if automated, and I was shepherded outside to the car, my insides churning. It wasn’t long before I recognised the grimly familiar route the car was taking – back to the Horrible House – and my spirits plummeted. There was a rotten inevitability to the latest setback, the newest broken vow. I should have known better, but somehow I had just stopped concentrating – yet one more unwelcome lesson for me.

I didn’t suppose the pirates were a great deal keener than me on this enforced return to the wretched Horrible House, and the reduced short-straw rota for guarding me. For my part, I got myself resolute again, ‘spinning’ the situation in my head as if I were open to persuasion:
It’s squalid, yes, but there’s nothing here to surprise you any more. Be stoical, get on with it.
Though I didn’t trust the pirates one bit, I trusted Ollie unreservedly. And since he had told me, ‘We’re getting closer’, then it had to be true.

While I had been away, though, the insects had reasserted their dominion in what was ‘my’ little room. And the level of infestation that met the eye seemed to unsettle even the pirates. At the first opportunity Kaalim went off and came back with some industrial-strength bug spray. I was escorted into the African round house and there I waited for about half an hour while Kaalim fumigated, and the noxious gases then dispersed. When I returned it was like a scene of killing fields – dead bugs, supine, at all sides, on the floor and across the bed. I needed another loan of the house broom in order to sweep out all the shiny, dark, clustered carcasses. But I completely approved of the extermination order.

As much as ever before, I longed to improve my personal hygiene, too. But I got a modicum of relief in this department by way of two startling discoveries. In the morning I noticed some cardboard by the door, the flattened and discarded box of a radio just like mine. In light of the wobbliness of my bed I thought I might use this cardboard as a wedge under one leg, and so I picked it up – to reveal underneath it, grail of grails, a
black plastic comb. It was clearly a man’s item, with all its fine teeth broken off, but five of the thicker teeth remained. And so, thrilled, I sat down on the bed and attempted to comb my hair. I longed for the sensation of those teeth untangling and parting the strands cleanly, but it simply wasn’t possible given the matted mess on my head. I was too vigorous – some hair came out, and I scraped my scalp painfully. None the less, I took a quiet satisfaction in this new addition to my meagre grooming rituals, offering, too, a new way for me to help the morning hours pass.

Then I spotted another object lying discarded on the floor by the table – on closer inspection, a men’s roll-on deodorant. Marvelling at my fortune I snatched it up and put it to immediate good use then, freshly scented, I stashed it away in my water box. Alas my blessing was short-lived: soon Gerwaine came in and hunted about the room, evidently looking for something, eyeing me suspiciously. Once he started sniffing in the vicinity of my person there could be no doubt what he was after. I played dumb. But in the evening time he returned and made a beeline for my box. Once he’d found what he was after he grinned, triumphant.
Bugger
, I thought.

The pirates had long and obdurately – and, to my mind, quite un necessarily – denied my requests to launder my own clothes. But I had targeted Gerwaine, so fastidiously Mr Clean in his habits, as one who might be susceptible to renewed pleading. So I asked him if he would permit me to wash Amina’s
jilbab
, and he indicated that would be OK by him. The job was hard work, the big
jilbab
heavily unwieldy once soaked. But I hung it up on a washing line in the compound. Ibrahim noticed immediately, however, and charged across, ripped the dress down and threw it at me, shouting, then ushered me back into the room. Instead I hung it on one of the hook-like branches that poked through the walls.

My walking routine, my precious structure, was waiting for me to get up and conform to it. And I wanted to, badly. But I was lethargic; my limbs ached. I knew it was no longer possible for me to walk as regularly as I had been doing. I lacked the muscle for it. I was aware, too, that my pace was slowing – my feet dragging, the soles burning. A light-headedness came over me whenever I pushed my level of exertion. So to retain my structure I was going to have to reduce the load, figure out what could be my maximum effort without wearing myself out. I cut the schedule in half. Starting at 7 a.m. I would walk every other hour: at 9 a.m., then 11 a.m., and so on. Between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. would remain a break.

Once again it was the Old Man and Kaalim who brought in the supplies – food, flasks of water and
khat
– two, sometimes three times daily. The pirates set themselves a useful task and made a shelter from branches and sacks on the right-hand side. Jamal parked himself there conspicuously from morning to afternoon, tinkering with electrical devices when not talking on his phone or napping. I’d decided he was some sort of engineer or technician when he wasn’t being a pirate.

Ibrahim and Bambi were the pirates routinely assigned to share my room at night, and they respected the privacy of my washing time but made sure always to come in at the very instant I was finished. The door was shut and locked, and I resigned myself to the two of them playing with their phones for an hour at least, swapping and showing off whatever little downloads amused them, while I contemplated the darkness behind my eyelids.

In the morning I would lift the inner curtain, open the door and wedge it with a rock, then throw the curtain back over the
top of the door so it covered the doorway. But in successive days I began again to venture a little ‘draping’ of the curtain over the door’s top edge, allowing me a little more of a view of the compound. My ruse lasted only a couple of days. Then in the course of the lunchtime delivery errand the Old Man caught a clear sight of me peering out through the doorway, and he alerted Kaalim and Gerwaine, who was busily sweeping. They came over immediately, saying, ‘No, no, no’, and yanked the curtain down fully to leave me in darkness.

My radio was ever more essential to me here, and I had the hugely significant bonus of decent reception in the evenings too. World news dominated, of course, and the news was routinely unhappy. But I was aghast to hear the early reports of the Italian cruise ship
Costa Concordia
having struck a reef and run aground off the coast of Tuscany, at the cost of many passengers’ lives. I followed the updates from bulletin to bulletin, fearing this was one of those bad-news stories that would only get worse, and hoping for as many survivors as possible.

More consoling listening came via a new programme on the World Service called
The Fifth Floor
, which I first discovered one Saturday morning, 14 January. It was a quite light-hearted digest of news and offbeat stories from reporters across the Service’s global reach – hence reports from Syria, Tunisia, Nigeria, Indonesia. One studio discussion item struck me as unexpectedly plaintive: the two reporters were a married couple, and they described the difficulties of their respective jobs from studios thousands of miles apart. Before the conversation got going, they exchanged quiet and clearly deeply felt
I miss you
s on air. I couldn’t but be touched by this.

As always the radio reminded me of the sorrows, losses and hardships of others, in all sorts of situations. It was a solace, yes,
but there was only so much succour one could take. I was fed up of going to bed hungry, waking up hungry, wearied and debilitated all the time. Yes, I would get out, I was sure, but, more and more, I looked at what I could see of myself, my poor ailing body, and I wondered:
When the day comes, what kind of physical state will I be in?

That Sunday I was able to sneak a look at the pirates as they took down their washing line and dismantled their improvised shelter. It seemed to augur another change of location. Did I dare believe it? I kept a lid on my emotions, and in due course my instincts were proved right.

I was woken in the night, and I hurriedly complied with the usual routine, counting my blessings that this Horrible House stint had, incredibly, lasted hardly more than a week. I was guided by the low glow of phone screens into the back of the station wagon, the mattress, buckets, and pirate clobber were thrown into the boot, and we bumped off back in the direction of the village. I was fairly sure we were en route to the Big House – until we drove past it, thus casting me into confusion. In fact we drove just a bit further down the road, and then round a corner, stopping outside another compound.

It had two metal gates, seemingly fashioned out of some sort of oil barrel. Once again Gerwaine, appointed key-master, didn’t have the right one to undo the padlocks, and hastily he got onto his phone. I shook my head over one more basic logistical bungle on their parts. At last the right key was delivered, the gates opened up, and Kaalim shepherded me inside.

I was in a place inherently similar to Horrible House, only slightly bigger, and notably less dilapidated, with a larger thatched
African house in the same corner place, and two rooms rather than one in the central accommodation. I could see what looked to be a well, heavily concreted all around. The fencing, though, was even more of the ‘rush’ variety, with the branches of trees hastily enmeshed together. This was no stronghold: clearly it wouldn’t withstand even the most feeble attempt to storm it.

I had to step down a little into the room, which was exactly the same size as my room at Horrible House – nine paces long – with the floor covered by green and gold linoleum laid in strips. It was the very same shape, too, with a little window in the far left-hand corner, shrouded by a heavy curtain. The bed frame was a shade smaller than in the other houses, and my grubby old mattress, once thrown down, was a bit too big for it. The bed also had a curious headboard, painted yellow with dribbles of red that gave a cack-handed ‘bloodshed’ effect. Against one wall was a low chest of drawers with legs, and on top of it a veritable salon’s worth of toiletries: aftershaves, oils, talcum, body lotion, deodorant, hair oil.

Ali, Bambi and Chain-Smoker threw down mattresses with the clear semaphore that they would be my roommates for the night. When the door was shut on us, I felt that familiar, uncomfortable sense of airlessness. Given the tin roof, and the heavy curtain over the window, I knew I would be in for another argument about oppressive heat and ventilation. But in other important respects the place was a small step up on Horrible House.

Come the morning I tried to ask Ali what was the reason for our moving this time. Answering at a tangent, as he did so often, he told me this house actually belonged to Tall Man – a pirate who had always been notably civil towards me. And now I was his house guest.

My dreams, still, were often strikingly lucid and coherent, with an unnervingly four-square reality about them. One night I dreamt I was at Kneesworth House, talking to Linda, my manager, in her office, about a patient for whom I wanted to organise a home visit. I was absorbed in this conversation, in trying to advocate for this woman, because she hadn’t been home for a long time. Linda, however, felt the visit was a risk, and that we would struggle to take three people off the ward for a day just to act as escorts.

As we talked I could see Linda’s bookshelf, all of its volumes on social work and psychiatry, plus the framed photographs of her daughters. Better yet, I could see the view from her window, dominated by a big and beautifully shaped cedar tree.

And then it all began to fade: Linda’s voice receded, and seemed bizarrely to vie to be heard with the wail of the
muezzin
. I wanted so badly to hear Linda but the interference was too strong, louder and louder … and then I was coming out of sleep and returning to consciousness in my room at Tall Man’s House. It was 4 a.m., and outside the faithful were being summoned.

The home visit I’d been pressing for so keenly had already happened, of course. And it had gone off just as well as could have been wished for. But waking from that dream was a tough reminder that the world I’d formerly inhabited was busily going on without me. I did think about work a lot in waking hours, so it was no surprise that it infused my dreams too. I mulled over good, satisfying work that I felt I’d done: getting patients home, or back out into the community, or into their own places or group homes. I needed to remind myself that only four months ago I was a professional woman who got up promptly, got dressed and went to work – work that was stressful but also gratifying. A
woman, too, who could return to a home that was a haven, to a husband, to a life that was fundamentally good.

It seemed to me I had spent many years – an active project from childhood, even – trying to carve out an identity for myself, make the most of my potential, build a life. I had accomplished something, both for myself and together with David. And I shuddered anew to think of how violently that identity had been assaulted over the last four months. To be confined to a bare and filthy room, to be shouted at by angry men in an indecipherable language, to be shrouded in an alien set of clothes uncomfortable against one’s skin, to be humiliated and ridiculed, made to feel like nothing … In spite of it all I believed still I was Jude the social worker, wife, mother. But everything was conspiring to turn me into a woman without an identity, without freedom, without co-ordinates, and no comprehension of what might happen to her. It was a very frightening place to be, a very disturbing present tense. I longed for the recent past – for who I had been.

The array of toiletries on the chest of drawers in the room was a monument to Tall Man’s considerable male vanity, his obvious interest in all varieties of grooming. (There was boot polish and a horsehair brush in the assortment too, and he was forever cleaning his shoes.) But in fact Tall Man was far from the only pirate with such self-pampering interests. Bambi and his friend Chain-Smoker routinely cadged from Tall Man’s kit and would oil each other’s hair, plastering little quiffs at the front down flat. I had known David to faff around in the bathroom on occasions but these young men were remarkably invested in their personal appearances. Youth, I thought, was probably the decisive element.

I noticed Amina’s daughter, and the tall Beautiful Woman, to be more regular visitors at Tall Man’s House, bringing food and supplies. But Daughter was content, too, just to wander into my room, peel off her
khimar
and flop on the floor, with a big teenage ‘Phew!’ Even if I was walking round she would sit and watch, as if seeking a respite from her busy world. On one occasion she offered me a piece of chewing-gum and mimed how I’d use it, in case I might struggle. She was always churning her jaws on gum herself, often while peering at her phone. Often she carried a handbag. One Sunday she came in dressed all in pink, with matching shoes and nail varnish. Ali entered, had some words with her, and told me the girl was ‘going to meet someone’. I smiled at her, and took her hand in mine. She was young and blameless, in a place where it was hard to be alive. I hoped that whoever she met that day would treat her well.