Lost to the World, page 1
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A Note About the Author
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Copyright Page
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I am not made from a wood that burns easily.
1
The first thing that struck me was the smell.
I found myself alone in a mud-walled room with straw and animal feces scattered across the dirt floor. My hands and feet were bound with metal cuffs. It was dark; what little light there was slipped in through a small hole in the ceiling where a pipe passed. The stifling heat left me feeling faint. Randomly placed in the corner was a red bucket, which was to serve as my toilet. There was no mattress. The floor would be my bed.
The pungent odor was the first thing that hit me as I regained consciousness. It was unbearable and turned my stomach. It wasn’t just the room that smelled; I did too.
My immediate thoughts: Where am I? Will I ever see my family again?
Just a few days earlier, I had been at home, in Lahore, Pakistan. It was a normal day like any other. My routine was to wake up, get dressed, and take a ten-minute drive to my workplace. To my complete shock and horror, I was ambushed on my way to work, beaten, and drugged. Waking up to unfamiliar surroundings. Shackled.
This was now my world.
How can your whole life change in an instant? How can everything you know and trust and depend on, every person you love, every comfort you’ve come to enjoy and embrace, disappear in a moment and be replaced by pain, loneliness, and despair? When that happens, how does one go on?
Would I survive?
These were questions that, it turned out, I would have four and a half years to contemplate.
* * *
As I sat, clueless and groggy, on my very first day in that sweltering, filthy room, I had more pressing considerations. My natural survival instincts were triggered and I began to make a mental checklist.
Figuring out who had taken me, and why, and what they wanted, and whether I could give it to them and get home safely. As I struggled to get my bearings, two immediate thoughts crossed my mind.
I must be in Afghanistan. And I’m going to be beheaded.
I was familiar with stories about kidnappings in Pakistan and knew of people who’d been abducted. In most cases their captors would demand a ransom; however, on occasion it was just to make a gruesome, violent statement, leaving a brutal video for the world as proof of their seriousness and their insanity.
As I’d learn much later, my captors had done both.
I discovered that, less than an hour prior to my arrival, the room I was being held in had been used as a holding pen for sheep to be sacrificed for a Ramzan feast. This, in part, explained the smell. In the punishing late-summer heat, the room stank like a barnyard, or a slaughterhouse. And I didn’t smell any better.
It had taken my captors three days to transport me here—wherever “here” was. I assumed I had been ferried to Afghanistan, but it could have been Pakistan. It was hot and dirty, buzzing with mosquitoes. Beyond that, I knew nothing. Clearly, my location didn’t matter; I wasn’t leaving anytime soon. I was restrained by chains, completely immobilized, similar to a death row criminal. I’d been stripped and dressed in a woman’s soiled shalwar kameez, now also covered in caked blood and vomit, which I assumed were my own. My jaw was swollen and throbbing, and I had an open wound over one eye. The chains that bound me were fastened to a metal loop in the floor, the kind you’d use to restrain an animal—for example, a sheep—waiting to be killed.
The three days I’d spent traveling to this place were lost to me in a fog. After I was snatched from my car on a busy street in an upscale neighborhood, I’d been blindfolded, beaten, and injected with ketamine, a horse tranquilizer, to keep me unconscious. My captors stuffed me into the back of a car, wedged down on the floor, and kept me out of sight. Whenever I stirred, I was kicked into silence.
On the first day they took me, we eventually arrived … somewhere. Having been abducted on a Friday morning, dragged into an empty house blindfolded, I woke up on what I assumed was the following day. One of the captors recklessly pulled the pin from a grenade and placed it in the palm of my hand. He moved within an inch of my face and hissed in my ear in Urdu, “Have you ever held one of these before?” Later, he shoved a gun into my mouth and psychotically asked, “Have you ever seen one before?” I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say. I babbled something about money, about obedience. About how I’d give them what they wanted if they released me.
“You’re a valuable treasure,” he shouted. “The whole country is looking for you.” He yelled so as to frighten me. It definitely worked.
When this man wasn’t terrorizing me, he’d reassure me in calming whispers, which was even more unnerving. “Don’t worry. You’ll be home soon.” He explained that he would collect the ransom and release me, and this would all be wrapped up in a day. Maybe two.
His mocking laughter was followed by blows to my head, and a syringe full of ketamine.
Everything about the days right after my kidnapping was obscured in that ketamine haze—a half-remembered barrage of beatings and druggings and barked commands and darkness and barely recollected images. I recall waking up in the back of a car, begging them to stop so I could step outside and urinate. Someone in the car handed me a bottle. They all wore masks. I felt like a ghost, traveling to hell. I started pleading with them to let me step outside by the road to relieve myself. “You’ve beaten me, you’ve cuffed me, you’ve kept me on the floor,” I yelled. I kept jabbering. I was petrified.
“I don’t need this!” the driver shouted finally. “Put him out!”
More ketamine.
* * *
My next lucid moments were at an army check post on the outskirts of Lahore. I could barely see. I was in a burka. My captors had disguised me as a woman and sat me up between two of the men in the backseat. As one of the men held a knife to my side, its point perilously close to cutting into me, he whispered, “If I hear a sound, I’ll gut you!”
I was unaware that the whole country was looking for me; my kidnapping had become national news. The ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, had found the safe house where I’d been held the day before. They’d found my broken sunglasses, and a syringe, used to inject me with ketamine, with samples of my blood in it.
I tried to get a sense of what was happening through the netting of the burka’s eyeholes, but the headpiece had twisted to the side. I was drenched from head to toe in perspiration from the searing heat and the ketamine coursing through my body. The heavy black material of the burka clung to me, as stifling as a death shroud. When I’d first regained consciousness, I thought I was in a grave. In a way, I was.
Two young officers, their machine guns slung over their shoulders, gave the car a quick once-over, glancing at all of us, then waved us through.
* * *
Repeatedly injected with ketamine to sedate me, I still had no idea where we were as we drove into a small town. It was approaching dusk on this early evening, still daytime. My captors drove aimlessly, killing time, waiting until sundown when everyone would break their fast, allowing my captors to spirit me away in the darkness without drawing attention.
As the sun set, the nondescript car was parked. I was moved inside a low, mud-walled building and into the squalid cell where I regained consciousness. This room with the single red bucket and the disgusting, nauseating smell was now my world.
* * *
The ketamine forced an uncontrollable vomiting, which covered me in bile that hardened. I’d never before smelled this putrid in all my life.
My entire body ached from the physical violence from the past few days. Medical attention was certainly not an option.
My captors came and went, wearing scarves to mask their faces. They were young men, I could see that now. One of them looked no older than thirteen. They spoke an unfamiliar language. Later I would learn they were from Uzbekistan. We couldn’t communicate or understand one another. The two or three guards in charge ignored me. Alone, I listened to the monstrous buzz of the mosquitoes. They came in great swarms, in and out of that single hole in the ceiling. A deafening racket that still irks me to this day.
I began thinking about The Matrix. It was one of my favorite movies. I was obsessed with it when I’d watched it as a teenager. My friends and I ditched our baggy, hip-hop-inspired styles for slim black jeans and slick black overcoats. I got new sunglasses. I saw myself as Neo. I wanted to take a pill and escape the comfortable fantasy world I’d been living in to see how the world really worked, in all its horror and grittiness.
Now it had happened, except someone else had forced the pill down my throat. My old world had disappeared, almost as if it never existed. As though it were a dream, I was in this new world, which felt like a nightmare I could
As I sat there, terrified, alone, I wondered if there was any chance of my going back again.
Beyond that, I knew nothing, not where I was, who had taken me, what they wanted, what my family knew, when it would end, or how.
What was undeniable was that I was on my own.
For the very first time in my life, I was completely isolated.
Alone.
* * *
If I had known, on that very first day, that I would spend the next four and a half years of my life in captivity, I do not think I would have made it. The one consolation of my first few days was that I believed that my ordeal would soon be over. My family would find a way to meet my kidnappers’ demands and set me free, or they would kill me. It seemed this couldn’t drag on for weeks, months, let alone years.
Looking back, I find it hard to believe that’s what actually happened.
Yet it did. I know. I was there. I lived through every ugly moment of it.
On the first day, every so often, someone would come in to check on me or drop off a meager meal. Sometimes, they would tell me he was coming. He was on his way.
“Who?” I would ask.
I had no clue who they were talking about—this man who would hold my life in his hands for the next four and a half years.
Then, one day, weeks later, he arrived.
That’s when my ordeal truly began.
2
As I write this, I am thirty-five years old, but it’s hard to calculate my actual age. Do I include the years wasted in captivity, separated from my family, my friends, and the life I’d built for myself? For ten years, I was married; for more than half that time I was alone. For the five years we were separated, I struggled in darkness, trying to remember my wife’s face or recall the sound of her voice. Which anniversary should we celebrate?
For four and a half years I did not hear my name spoken aloud. I was given an alias, Ahmed, or Jee Bhai, which was provocatively meant as a taunt. In Urdu, jee bhai is a respectful response, much like saying, “Yes, brother.” In the initial days of my captivity, my answer to nearly everything was Jee bhai, which led the guards to call me that to berate me. Later, when I found myself in a Taliban prison in a case of mistaken identity, I adopted a new alias, Yusuf Britannia. I reinvented myself as an act of self-preservation. For years, I’d longed to hear my name aloud, but in that prison, I knew if anyone discovered who I really was, it could ring a death knell. My name is Shahbaz Taseer. There is nothing special about me. But I do have a story to tell.
It took not one but many miracles for me to be here to tell it.
* * *
What would you like to know about me?
Did I have a happy childhood? I did, though I now realize it was spent in a bubble of privilege, protecting me from the harsh realities of the world.
My most precious indulgence is waking up to be with my three-year-old daughter. I assure you, I am not particularly brave. I am not particularly strong. I am definitely not a hero, though I do have a better understanding now of what being stoic means.
This is not a story of some amazing qualities I possess. It’s the story of what my time in captivity taught me, and how it tested me. I saw the gravest evil, and gestures of kindness too. During that time I was exposed to vile strains of hatred I could never have envisaged. It also inspired me to believe in the power of enduring love. It opened my eyes to the grace that comes when you realize some values are never worth compromising. It made me recognize the ability of the human spirit to endure the unimaginable.
My story is not of what I set out to do; it’s simply one of survival and hope, in harsh, hostile, and unfamiliar surroundings.
My parents, Aamna and Salmaan, did everything to secure a warm and loving environment for us to grow up in.
Our home centered around family life and was an open house where friends knew they were welcome. Our home was warmed by books, art, and sculptures collected over years of travel.
The focal point of the day was outdoor sports. Depending on the weather, it was badminton, table tennis, soccer, or our family favorite, swimming. My father, naturally competitive, was the first to take me and my siblings on and relentlessly beat us for years.
My two younger siblings, Shehryar and Shehrbano, played a pivotal role in my life growing up. To say we were close-knit would be a gross understatement. Being less than two years apart, my brother Shehryar and I share a strong bond with similar interests in sports and music, with plenty of mutual friends. I was always more protective of Shehrbano, who is beautiful, smart, and brave. I have always adored her and tried to be a reliable and supportive big brother. I met Maheen in college, and after a five-year courtship, we were married. It was an exciting new chapter.
* * *
I have many memories of growing up with my father, but perhaps the most pleasant one was joining my abba in his favorite sun-splashed library, sipping our morning tea, him reading newspapers spread out before him with the TV on broadcasting the latest news updates. He was a morning person, starting his day at 6:00 a.m.
I am the eldest of my parents’ three children. Mine was a home bustling with people, full of positive energy.
My father created a media empire with newspapers, magazines, and television channels, founding the largest nationwide cable network. It was important for him to keep up with daily developments. But more than that, he was passionately engaged with the world and wanted us children to be too. He had a library full of books, from floor to ceiling, from Socrates to Jeffrey Archer, and he was always proud to say he’d read every single one of them. There was no activity he enjoyed more than reading, from biographies to books on finance and history to trashy thrillers. “You need to be well-informed!” he’d constantly tell us, which always felt like part encouragement, part scolding. He pushed us to pay as close attention to current events as he did. No one else could be as well-read as my father, but my interests lay elsewhere.
I attended an all-boys institution called Aitchison College, one of the most exclusive private schools in Pakistan. Not very academic, I did just enough work to get by. I was more inclined toward theater, arts, and my passion, music. My younger brother, Shehryar, was the talented athlete of the family, excelling at any sport he chose. The more physically challenging it was, the more competitive he got.
After four years at Aitchison College, I switched schools and enrolled at the Lahore American School (LAS).
In stark contrast to Aitchison College, which was steeped in traditions and the culture of the subcontinent, LAS was an international coeducational school, with a more relaxed environment and a different approach to academics.
I adjusted to the new system, enjoying music, theater, arts, sports, and notably the company of girls in high school. I became popular and made many friends, whom I still remain close to, two decades later.
* * *
My father loved to quote that we are tempered like steel: “Often we pass through a situation and come out stronger.”
He wasn’t idly speculating about hardship. I knew all too well what he had been through. He’d been imprisoned multiple times, including extended bouts of solitary confinement, as punishment for his public protests against Pakistan’s military dictator General Zia in the early eighties. My father had been politically active and extremely opinionated, which in Pakistan is a combination that’s likely to get you into trouble. As a young man, he had become an admirer of the legendary Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president and prime minister of Pakistan in the early 1970s.
My parents were newly married when my father was incarcerated for four months in solitary confinement in Lahore’s infamous Fort. Being kept in complete isolation meant no contact with the outside world. It took my young mother many weeks to locate where he was. My father arranged to have a note smuggled out to her by a guard. The letter contained an assurance that has since become part of our family lore: “I am not made of a wood that burns easily.” I’ve often thought of this sentiment ever since.
