A Long Walk Home: One Woman's Story of Kidnap, Hostage, Loss - and Survival (32 page)

The men who conceived this operation, those who funded it and profited by it, those who took David’s life and those who were in charge of my imprisonment – I am sure these people had not a scintilla of regard for me or for David. Our lives were held cheap. And so I believe those men should be made accountable: there ought to be consequences for their iniquitous actions. I can imagine I would derive some satisfaction from their being tried and convicted and sentenced to serve serious prison terms.

Nothing can undo what was done to David, Ollie and me, but it does seem to me that others could be spared similar tragedies if some of the key players within Somalia were brought to justice. To speak only of Daoud, the Negotiator: as an English speaker his services are much sought after and dearly bought, and I am sure he was engaged in other ‘negotiations’ simultaneously with mine. If he were put behind bars that would constitute a significant blow to piracy in Somalia, and would send an
important
message to the higher-ups that they are not untouchable-as they may currently believe they are.

Ali Babitu Kololo was not among the five men who took me off Kiwayu in a skiff. But if he is found guilty of the crime for which he stands accused then he is deeply complicit – things
would not have happened as they did had the pirates not been guided around the island as they evidently were.

What of Ali, my ostensibly sympathetic ear, the fisherman navigator who told me his hands were tied just as surely as mine? Again, the pirates could not have achieved their objective
without
him. In this, was he really an innocent party, under duress, as he insisted to me? All I can say is that through my captivity I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Then again, since my release, it has been put to me by experts in the field that the pirate gangs always retain one member who speaks English well and ‘befriends’ the captive, simply in the hope of keeping them more pliant and biddable.

This brings me to the ‘runarounds’ – the teenagers like Bambi and Chain-Smoker, often silly and giggling in their manners, who were nonetheless paid to train guns on me and might even have been authorised to fire them. I looked at these youths during my captivity and thought,
Do I hate them?
I wasn’t sure, although I was certain I didn’t harbour for them the same visceral abhorrence I had for the likes of the Fat Controller and Daoud. I hated what they had done, their part in it. But I found myself trying to see through that. It was the social worker in me,
perhaps
, that felt they were products of their environment, doing probably the only real work available in the vicinity.

Am I too lenient? Some may think so. Wise heads have advised me, ‘You shouldn’t feel the slightest sympathy for any of them. They all know exactly what they’re doing. They’re all as ruthless as each other …’ But I can’t help seeing a division of labour in Somali piracy, in which the younger hired hands – while certainly culpable – cannot be considered as utterly
reprehensible
as their older paymasters, who could do something different and better with their lives instead of being criminals
and exploiters. Piracy is corrupt, and its corruption spreads and pollutes the ecology so easily – especially when it is a seeming cornerstone of the local economy. For this reason I have to assume that the local people of Amara had no significant quarrel with the notion of me, a captive white woman, marooned in their midst. But in a society, a country, so deprived in terms of regulative norms, it seems all too easy for deeply abnormal, even immoral behaviours to become routine and reinforced.

All I can say is that when in October 2012 a new Somali government was sworn in, I sincerely wished it well: Somalia needs proper governance, directed towards the common good, beginning, perhaps, with the question of how to make the best possible use of its social and economic resources. Any
improvements
in that regard will surely decrease the likelihood of young Somalis taking up guns, or having guns pressed into their hands in exchange for money and
khat
.

Quite apart from these material considerations, I don’t dwell unduly on thoughts of retribution for my captors. Yes, for all the reasons discussed above, I want to see justice served. But equally I have to accept there might never be any sort of reckoning for those pirates whatsoever, and so I don’t intend to live my life in bitterness, over things I cannot influence. That was not the person I was when I was taken, and it is not who I am today.

I admit, in certain other respects, I wait still for the ‘me’ I was on 10 September 2011 to come back, because I miss that person, and I wonder how long it will take for me to feel ‘like myself again’. Inwardly I accept that I can’t fully recover who I was. Nevertheless I want to know myself and be known by others not as ‘an ex-hostage’ but as Jude – woman, mum, professional, etc. If I allow my ordeal to define me ad infinitum then it becomes, in effect, a double captivity. And that is a predicament against
which I must continue to fight. The pirates ended my life with David, the only man I have ever loved, and with that they took enough from me. I will not allow them to take any more.

One night in November 2012 I dreamed that I was assisting British police in the construction of a three-dimensional model of the room in which I was held at the Big House compound. It was one more aspect of the investigation into my kidnap, and of the larger project of intelligence-gathering into Somali piracy, and I was happy to help, and found the police solicitous and meticulous as always.

But the mood shifted suddenly, as in dreams it is wont to do, and I found myself surrounded by strangers, all telling me that they felt it would be additionally useful if I were to spend some time inside this life-sized replica of my Somali prison – just to authenticate the feeling of my having been there. And so they swung open that familiar right-side metal door, and I looked through, and before my eyes was ‘my’ room, as true as a
photograph
. I could feel dry desert heat, see the rockery-like pile of stones I’d collected in a corner, the cream-gold curtains, the green plastic chair, the coral-pink lino …
No, I won’t
, I screamed – loud enough to force myself awake in the real world. The bedside clock read 3 a.m. I was clammy and shaken, so glad to be released from my nightmare, so unnerved by the sensations it revived in me.

I suppose I could be described as a ‘survivor’ type. My captivity showed me that I could come through a deeply adverse
experience
, a true test of resilience. But it’s clear to me now that an essential element in this was the
not-knowing
, the manner in which the ordeal was thrust upon me. Now, the idea of having to face up to any sort of term of captivity is something I couldn’t contemplate under any circumstances.

No one will be surprised to hear that I am desperately keen to put my ordeal behind me. But it’s more easily said than done, when so many things serve to remind me, not just the memories that have been stored up in my own mind and body, but odd external stimuli that can stir the embers of memory unexpectedly. Some of these are aspects of trauma bearing directly on my experience in Somalia. (For instance, I find it difficult now to travel in a car at night, after the nerve-straining drives I was
subjected
to in captivity.) But some of the other thoughts that assail me are more fleeting and perplexing.

One morning I was travelling from Bishop’s Stortford by train when through the window I glimpsed a woman in a black
jilbab
, seeming almost to float down a street that was separated from the tracks by a wall – and suddenly thoughts of Amina rushed into my head.
It’s 9 a.m. here, midday in Amara – I wonder, is she cooking?
I had to catch myself:
Stop, don’t go there, you don’t want
to know.

Again, some people might hear this and be put in mind of Stockholm Syndrome – of the hostage who ends up identifying with her captors. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a shred of such
feeling
. And every day I am so grateful I am here and not there. But as long as the shadow of captivity is over me, until a greater stretch of time has interposed itself between my present and those terrible days, then I am still forced to compare and contrast ‘here’ and ‘there’. It is part of my mental furniture.

For instance, at home I have found it far more difficult to get out of the bed in the morning and start the day than I did in Amara. The emphasis is different, let’s say. Now I see the day stretching out ahead of me, a daunting expanse. What am I to do with it? In Somalia every day gave me a consuming focus, proposed a particular challenge – the challenge to get to the end
of it, to figuratively put one more black cross on the calendar, marking off days towards the deliverance that I felt sure was coming. My only real activities, as I noted in my diary, were ‘walking, waiting and writing’. Now it’s very different. I have my freedom, so what am I going to do with it? What am I going to do without David? Where do I go from here?

Had I come home from captivity to David, the challenge would have been immeasurably lessened. Instead, having to contemplate a life without David is something I still don’t do very well. His murder is something I will never ‘get over’, and I miss him acutely every day. Sometimes I find myself looking for him, or abstractly expecting him to come through the door. I walk round the house, and I know he’s not there, yet still I walk, thinking somehow I will come upon him in some familiar pose – standing before the bathroom mirror, say, razor in hand. I find myself cooking enough for two, and it depresses me – but then I find few things as dismaying as ‘cooking for one’.

We all know that death is terminal. Yet the heart does persist in wanting to restore the loss. Fundamentally I feel robbed, cheated. This wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. David and I were meant to work hard all our lives, then enjoy a lovely retirement together – and we were on schedule for that. We could entertain idle thoughts of grandparenting, a role in which David would have been fantastic, a natural, with so much to share and impart. There is so much still I want to say to him, experiences and trips and travels I want to enjoy with him, books and exhibitions. We never did go to Hampton Court as we planned, never rode on the London Eye. But most of all I miss him as my husband, my best friend, my partner through life.

I have periods of feeling strong and on top of things, a sense that I am coping pretty well, all things considered. I see friends,
socially I am ‘out and about’ more than ever before. But I am making myself do it now, where once my default preference was really to be holed up at home with David. I don’t enjoy being a single person. But nor do I wish to be part of another partnership.

I do a fair bit of voluntary work and I’m happy to do it. I haven’t got my old job, but I just couldn’t possibly have returned to it. Perhaps a different kind of job lies in store for me
somewhere
? The logical part of me says I will find it – not necessarily paid but something self-realising, which might require
retraining
. I want to do that, and I believe I will.

But it’s what to do on a personal level. I’m not a wife any more, not one half of an amazing partnership that flourished over thirty-three years. Every time I get on a train at Stortford I want David to be there with me. One battles those memories. Every day I am reminded of what’s happened, by David’s absence, his not being in the same bed, the radio silent where once it was his daily accompaniment to the morning shave. These days I can hear David’s laugh, giggly and schoolboyish, in my head, but somehow I can’t seem to hear his speaking voice. One lives with these things. One cannot purposefully forget, and so many things serve only to remind me of what’s been lost.

There are nights when I can’t stop crying and I know I’m simply a wreck. On another level, in the domestic sphere, I find myself struggling with the most mundane of decisions. I keep forgetting to put the recycling and rubbish bins out, and in the correct sequence – black one week, blue, green, brown the next. David took care of that: he would have the timetable taped up and marked in colour. I can’t record programmes on the
television
. A hunt round the house for a simple screwdriver can reduce me to tears of frustration. I know in the grand scheme, considering what has happened to me, these things may seem
unimportant. But the little things, the seemingly inconsequential minutiae of life, have so much meaning packed inside them and maybe especially when that life has been made by two people together.

Why can’t I find the old photos I’m looking for? I know they’re here somewhere … David would know where they were. His memory was phenomenal – for days and dates, phone numbers, passport numbers, National Insurance numbers. Sometimes I can barely remember my home address. He was ‘household manager’ whereas I was cook and cleaner and gardener. David was happy to mow the lawn or pull up an occasional shrub, but his main interest in the garden was as a place to sit and read the paper. His fastidiousness was
something
else. I was so used to him, with the cheque book in his hand, finding me and wanting to cross-reference the stubs against the bank statement. ‘What did you buy at Jones’ on this date? For sixty-four pounds?’ It used to drive me spare at times but, my god, I miss it now so much. And his meticulous nature proved a godsend, for if our legal affairs had not been in such good order then it’s possible I might still be staring at a wall somewhere in Somalia. My captors would likely have kept me for as long as it took.

I think back on the portentous conversation David and I had only a couple of weeks before we left the UK for Kenya: ‘If I died now I’d be happy, because I know you are going to be looked after, and I know you wouldn’t be frightened.’ He was right, as he so often was. I don’t feel frightened of the future. I’m just very angry and saddened that David won’t be there to share it with me. And so I cannot let go of the past just yet.

Of all the interested questions put to me after my release, the one I found most bizarre was when I was asked, more than once, whether at any point in my captivity I had felt like committing suicide. As low as my spirits sank on occasions, that thought never occurred. For one thing, I wasn’t going to let my captors see me so reduced. I needed them to know I was made of sterner stuff, just as I still am determined that what’s happened will not define the rest of my life or ruin anything else in it. I won’t let it. There is too much to live for.

The other reason why I never even considered self-harm is that I had my son to think of. He had been robbed of one parent, and I would not bereave him twice over. For my part I knew I had a life to come back to, for all that it was life without David. And I was going to come back to it, so I needed to do all I could. Above all I had my son. I have one person in this world whom I trust entirely, rely on, and would give my life for, and that person is Ollie. Every telephone call I received from him in captivity was pure inspiration: Ollie was my rock, my reason to press on out of darkness into light.

I am immeasurably proud of him for what he achieved in bringing me home – for remaining so calm, assured and stalwart throughout my captivity. Indeed the way that Ollie comported himself impressed some very seasoned people in the highly difficult and dangerous profession of security. David and I left for our Kenyan holiday with Ollie still ‘my boy’ in some regards, but in the course of the nightmare that unfolded he became a man, without question. He may never realise just how much he means to me, or how much of David is in him: he is, in certain precious and vital respects, his father’s son. But above all Ollie is his own person and he will carve out his own way through life. I have been forced, unexpectedly, tragically – to take a very
different
path from the one I expected. But I believe a time will come for me when I can begin to enjoy my life again.

These days, though, I feel myself drifting on the ocean of life, cast adrift by circumstances beyond my control. I’m not grounded – my anchor is gone – no more David. I wait for other boats to pass by, in the shape of friends and family, who offer precious comfort and support and fellow feeling. But when they have sailed off once more, as they must, and I am left alone again, I feel the drift, and I wonder how long I will be at sea.

I try to bring myself back the best way I know how, which is briskly, self-chiding:
You and a million others are thinking the exact same thing. And in fact you are probably a good deal better off than most of them are. So stop feeling so sorry for yourself and get on with it.

I have noticed a tendency in other people, naturally and
understandably
, to want for me to be happy, achieve some ‘closure’, get over it. Often I am asked, solicitously, ‘How are you feeling?’, and I hear myself say, ‘I’m OK.’ But I’m not. And nothing anyone can say can make it any better. I also have the understandable tendency in me not to want to make people uncomfortable, but then for my own good I also need to be able to speak frankly. I find this easiest, perhaps, with people who have known the same loss as me. After my release I remade the acquaintance of a woman I used to know who subsequently lost her husband to illness, and I have found her views and advice very instructive. ‘For two years,’ she told me, ‘you are just getting through the days, just getting used to the fact you’re on your own. After that? You never forget it. You’re not the same person. But you get through it. You will get through it, Jude.’

I know what she means. It’s nothing but time: only time can possibly make a difference.

Just as I felt that I could hear David’s voice in captivity, only days after I learned of his death – I feel right now that he wants me to carry on. I think he would have been proud of me, of the way I got through my ordeal. I don’t believe he would have been happy with the thought that one of us lived on but somehow ‘gave up’, succumbed to self-pity, resigned on life. I was privileged to enjoy the life I had with David. It was a truly good life; it could not have been better. We enjoyed everything and every part of our being together. I have to treasure David’s memory and not be haunted by it – not while so much of life remains. I’m reminded of this feeling whenever I look out at the copper beech tree in my garden – in the sunlight, scarlet and orange, colours I never saw in Somalia. My life won’t be the same, but it is life itself, and its value is clear: it is all that we have and all we ever can have, and it must be cherished, respected, never ever taken for granted.