Lost to the World, page 6
Making portions to carry me through the day, I realized I’d often complained of being hungry in the past. You know that feeling: “I’m starving!” you protest. I’d said it myself a million times. But I’d never known actual hunger. Not like this. Now, hunger meant my body craving and demanding food, and being unable to move, let alone find food to feed myself. It was soul crushing. I would eat what I would get when my captors gave it to me and not before, and nothing more than that. The meager quantity was never near enough. I could no more escape my hunger than the heat or my chains.
The way countries manage their prisons reflects their minimum standard of humanity. Prisoners are entitled to basic amenities, such as running water, use of toilets, food, and human company. I had nothing. An inadequate amount of water and food, no social interaction. My guards had no interest in anything I had to say or do. They felt relieved of their responsibilities once the noodles and the water were left by my side every morning.
Being kidnapped in Pakistan means only one thing: a ransom has to be paid. If your family cannot pay for your return, the kidnappers don’t simply drop you off by the side of the road with a shrug and a pat on the back. They make a horrible example in the most gruesome way possible, to send out a clear message to the next victim’s family.
As I prayed that my family would be able to meet a possibly unreasonable demand, to save my life, my blood would run cold with fear and anxiety.
My situation was black-or-white—nothing in between. No one here cared enough to ease my discomfort or fear. I wallowed in filth, with a parched mouth and perpetual hunger.
I had two guards, whose names I’d learn later. The stubby one who’d bring my breakfast called himself Omar Turk. He was cruel, perverted, and took pleasure in beating me. This small man, with a misguided sense of authority, unlocked my chains and handed me a broom, indicating I should sweep the floor. As I stood up with aching wrists and a stiff body from lack of movement, I fumbled with the broom. Omar Turk was infuriated by my ineffective sweeping skills and berated and beat me. He had wanted to do this for a few days; now he had the perfect excuse to punish me. Terrified, I crouched and cowered but nothing would stop him.
That was Omar Turk. He was the lesser of the two evils.
* * *
The other guard, Abdul Momin, was far worse than Turk. Abdul Momin was odious. He needed no excuse to beat me. A psychopath, he beat me for sport and bullied me for entertainment. He spoke Pashto in broken sentences, enough for me to understand his story. Abdul Momin spent endless hours boasting crudely of the murders and carnage that made up his résumé. Claiming to be a Muscovite, he was now a fugitive with a trail of heinous crimes. He’d brutally killed a couple of Uzbek girls he believed to be prostitutes. The stories were embellished with gory details, which he reveled in.
Time stood still. My guards brought my meager rations and occasionally tormented me, but for the most part left me alone. For hours on end, chained, hunched, I sat in the room. I woke. I ate. I sat. I slept. This went on for a few more days. Then a week. I kept waiting for someone to come in and explain what was going to happen next. I waited for some kind of word. I waited to meet the leader of this operation, who could explain what was going on. The one who’d hissed in my face when I’d been blind under a hood, “I’ve come for you, Shahbaz.” But I heard nothing. I kept waiting. No one arrived.
The sun sneaked through the crack in the roof, then disappeared. That was the extent of my day. The sun came. The sun vanished. I fell back into darkness. Another week passed.
I thought of my father. How he’d been in solitary confinement early in his life, as a political prisoner, in a Lahore jail. He was arrested for protesting against the military dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s president at the time. I still missed my father fiercely. The protective umbrella that had shielded me was gone forever. I found myself alone. Abandoned.
The situation felt hopeless. My mind raced with unanswered questions. I would ask myself the same questions repeatedly: Was my family aware of where I was? Who were these people holding me? What organization did they belong to? And most important, what was their demand? Remembering my father’s stories of incarceration and solitary confinement and how he had emerged a stronger person, I wondered if I would be the same or, indeed, if I would return at all.
All of these thoughts of my father’s experience didn’t make me feel closer to him, not at first. If anything, they brought me more despair. His was a story. He had been a prisoner of conscience, jailed because he’d fought for his ideals. I was a prisoner of circumstance. I’d been snatched against my will in broad daylight in the street because of my surname. I wasn’t being held for having taken a principled stand or for protesting a brutal regime. I merely represented a lottery ticket. Nothing more. I could draw no respite or solace from my father’s experiences of jail.
There is no way I am strong enough to endure this. This thought haunted me as I sat alone. There is no way I am as strong as my father.
I recalled that my father had told me as a child how he’d passed the days in solitary. Each day, he’d scratch a line in the wall. As a kid, when he told me, it sounded like a corny scene in an old-fashioned movie. But he convinced me it had helped him keep his sense of time. When you’re locked away with no contact with anyone, it’s easy to lose your perspective with the world, he explained. At least this way he knew days were passing, that life was moving on, and that one day his ordeal would end, even if, as each day passed, that end seemed as if it would never come.
I started doing the same thing. From my position, I could edge over and reach one wall. Luckily, the walls were made of mud, which was soft enough that I could scratch a faint mark in it with my thumbnail. I did my best to guess how many days I’d already been here. After that, I carefully gouged a new mark as each day passed.
“I am not made of a wood that burns easily,” my father had famously written to my mother while he was held in the dungeons of the Lahore Fort jail, as a way to reassure her that he would return unscathed. As I sat alone in a cell of my own, one question plagued me:
What kind of wood am I made of?
I was too frightened to consider the answer.
10
The ensuing weeks remained uneventful, other than my being shifted to new accommodation within the structure. This gave me a better understanding of the compound, which included, other than my prison cell, a mini-headquarters referred to as the markaz and a bunker for transient mercenaries. Having had no interaction with any of them, I had no idea of what their mission was, where they came from, where they were going.
Surrounded by windowless walls, I could be compared to a blind man, depending solely on my senses. Listening carefully, I counted ten men in all; however, I was unable to follow their conversations owing to the language barrier.
Beyond my room, an adjoining courtyard led to a shower and the rudimentary toilets, a kitchen of sorts, and a separate room where the men slept. The location of the compound remained an enigma.
For the most part, Abdul Momin and Omar Turk were the only ones who checked in on me and brought my food. I was alone. I imagined the other men had better food than my black tea and stale bread. But why would they spare a thought for me, the kafir chained like an animal?
In my new surroundings was a small hole in the roof for heating. I tried to look at the sky through the hole, but the light hurt my eyes. Chained and tied to the floor, to combat the emptiness of endless hours in solitude, I decided to befriend my mind. The lyrics to all my favorite rap songs came to memory. Making a mental list of good friends and acquaintances, spanning my life all the way back to elementary school, I felt an involuntary smile when recalling some of our antics.
One day, I spotted a spider weaving a web on the ceiling. I named him Peter. I watched Peter work for hours in the rafters. Over time, we became friends.
He was my constant companion and confidant. Peter was a good listener. I told him about my life. I told him how much I missed my father. I recited Chris Rock comedy routines I had listened to so often they were committed to memory. Sometimes I would lie there silently watching as Peter weaved his web in the damp darkness of the ceiling. To my eyes, the web’s patterns had some meaning that only Peter knew; perhaps I would unlock the cryptic message in his design. While he worked tirelessly, I gave him encouraging pep talks. “You can do it, Peter! Hang in there!” I’d say. Or I’d sing the “Spider-Man” theme to him. Spider-Man, Spider-Man / Does whatever a spider can.
In the evenings, as the sun faded, the mosquitoes descended through the hole. The sound of the mosquitoes, an incessant drone, began to haunt me. Peter and his delicate cobweb were my only protection from their onslaught. I rooted for Peter to build bigger, more intricate, more complex webs, complete with their elaborate hidden meanings. I cheered for Peter to snare every mosquito in the vicinity. He was my protector and I hoped that Peter, unlike me, was eating well.
* * *
Allow me to give you a glimpse into those moments. I felt I would go mad; I wondered if it had already happened. As the days meandered into weeks and eventually months, my mind became my enemy. I would cry in solitude. Planning for the future was clearly a meaningless indulgence. I could see no hope in the current situation. The same four walls, the same endless hours, the same uncertainty. It’s both certain and uncertain: certain in that you know exactly what each dreary day will bring, and uncertain in that you can’t know when or if it will ever end. Either thought will drive you mad if you dwell on it long enough.
So instead you start to dwell on the past.
You obsess over it. Every mistake, every conversation, every decision, every argument. You wonder what you did that brought you to a circumstance such as this. Now I’ve a clear understanding of hindsight. If only I had listened to my wife. If I had adhered to my schedule in Dubai and not cut my trip short. I should have taken the SUV along with a guard to work! Your mind starts to dwell on the what-ifs. I became the prosecutor and the accused in my own endless trial.
You must have messed up big-time to end up here, you tell yourself. And you believe it. Otherwise why would God have let this happen to you? How else can you explain it? You do your best to resist these conclusions. But they begin to sound convincing.
Soon you’ve gone from wishing you’d stayed in bed one morning to regretting the entirety of your life. Every choice haunts you. You wish to go back and change it all. If the life you’ve led brought you to this windowless room, in the hands of these men, how can that life be defended?
All you do is judge yourself. And find yourself guilty.
Hindsight can be cruel, especially if you are judge, jury, and executioner.
I sat in darkness and thought of my brother Shehryar. When my father was assassinated, it felt as if the whole world were against us. We needed to present a strong face, but I confessed to him in private that with our father gone I didn’t feel as secure or as confident anymore. I wasn’t sure how to go on. My younger brother, the one whom I’d relied upon so much, said, “You and I … we’re one. We’re the same. As long as we’re together, no one can break us.” And I believed him.
On the night before my abduction, we got into an unpleasant altercation and a nasty verbal exchange. Afterward I’d knocked on the door of his room.
There was no answer, so I knocked again.
“I’m in the shower!” he shouted through the door. I went back to my room, thinking we’d sort it all out in the morning.
That was weeks ago.
I should have waited.
I should have stood there and told him I was sorry.
As I sat alone, I realized I was sorry for so many things.
The combination of heat, dust, and sweat had developed a fine layer of caked mud all over my body and matted hair. Limited movement and scarcity of water denied me the opportunity to wash myself. Despite many requests, I was denied this basic need. I pleaded and advanced an argument on religious grounds to no avail.
To distract myself from boredom, I began tracing lines in the dirt covering my arms. Eventually, Omar Turk noticed my artwork; taking pity on my lack of artistic talent, he gestured for me to follow him. We were leaving the room. I had no idea where this would lead to.
I obediently followed him to the adjacent courtyard. A communal bathroom was located off the courtyard. It took me some time to adjust to the strong morning light as I stumbled behind him. Turk had taken me the bathroom before, to unload the contents of my bucket. As I look back, the saddest part wasn’t the bucket’s smell, but my acceptance of the smell and not being repulsed by it. I realize now, I had already been dehumanized. Though I was living beside a bucket full of excrement, the stench no longer bothered me. I had become accustomed to it. The thought broke me and I began to sob.
* * *
Usually, after Omar Turk had accompanied me to the bathroom to empty the bucket, he’d give me a rag to wipe the bucket out. It was my job to keep it clean.
On this day, Turk had taken me to the bathroom without the bucket. The bathroom was an open place beside a wall, with no barriers, stalls, or showerheads, just a drain in the floor and a pail of cold water. A charpoy, a local kind of bed with a wooden frame and rope netting, was placed upright vertically on the other side. I was given a tiny bar of soap, the only luxury I’d had in weeks. He pointed toward the tap. It took me a second before I understood. I couldn’t believe it. He was going to let me take a shower. I started to quickly disrobe. Then I paused, waiting for him to give me a little privacy. He just sneered and stared. His face told me what I needed to know: He wasn’t going anywhere. I’d get my shower with him standing there, watching.
I doused myself with the frigid water, doing my best to scrub away weeks’ worth of grime. There was no electricity in this mud building, and no hot running water either. I felt humiliated, standing there scrubbing, with Turk’s watchful eyes on me, yet also grateful for a tiny measure of cleanliness. At the back of my mind, I was terrified that Omar Turk was having me undress in the shower room for a more violating purpose. My only experience with captivity was from watching movies, and I knew that shower rooms were notorious venues for all manner of despicable attacks. But Turk didn’t move. He just watched me.
I put on the same dirty shalwar kameez I’d been wearing. He led me to my room and chained me to the floor once more. My skin felt slightly cleaner but I felt dirtier than before.
To sum up my first weeks, they were flooded with loneliness and fear. Neither one ever let up, not for a second. Every moment was the same, yet my plight held the promise that the next moment might also be the last. The only people I interacted with had made it abundantly clear they didn’t care if I lived or died. I felt that Abdul Momin would be happy to hear that my family couldn’t pay, so that, at his hands, I would meet the same fate as the girls in Moscow.
Could my family pay? Had they even been asked to? I still had no information. Nothing had been clarified. All I had was the faint glimmer of hope I remembered from the day I was kidnapped: This will all be over in a day, maybe two. Of course, it had now been weeks. Three weeks, maybe four. I had only my scratches on the wall to give me a sense of how much time had passed. But I knew that if they’d wanted to kill me, they’d have done it by now. Instead, they took the trouble to hide me here, wherever “here” was.
Occasionally, I heard the chirp of a cricket, and in the silence of that place, even a noise that gentle would startle me. How could crickets even survive here? I wondered. They seem far too gentle for a place this wild.
* * *
Each day, I continued to scratch my faint mark. By now I had thirty, maybe forty marks. I knew over a month had passed. It was well into October. The weather had cooled a bit. I’d still heard nothing, but I hoped word would come soon. Assuming we were still in, or near, Pakistan, I knew we were coming to the close of the rainy season.
Maybe six weeks into my captivity, they told me.
“He’s coming,” one of my guards said.
Who? I asked. Who?
Muhammad Ali, they said.
I had no idea who that was. Or that he was the architect of my capture. Or that we’d spend the next four and a half years together.
Then, one night, in darkness, he arrived.
11
In the middle of the night, they entered my room, which was pitch-dark. I couldn’t see much as my eyes were adjusting to the flashlights. I was manhandled and pulled to my feet still in a daze from the commotion and fear.
My eyes focused, and I saw a group of men. They wore masks or scarves to hide their faces. One of them had nothing on his face. He stepped forward; I could see him clearly. His skin was deeply tanned. He was tall and menacing, with long black hair and a wispy, unkempt beard. He spoke in perfect Urdu, my mother tongue. These were the first complete sentences I’d heard in weeks. He conversed politely, at first, showing concern about how I was enjoying my stay: “How’s everything? You need anything?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Need anything? How about a bath? A hot meal? A key to unlock these shackles? A ride home?
“Do you know who I am?”
That’s when I recognized him. “I believe I saw you in Lahore. You’re the one who brought me here.” I remembered his face as he directed the mercenaries who pulled me from the car. I recalled his presence as they whisked me away. I will never forget how violently he struck me, causing a gash above my eye.
This must be Muhammad Ali, I thought.
He denied it. “No, that’s not me. You’ve confused me with someone else.”
For all his certainty of himself as a leader of great virtue, a man who lived in the good graces of God, the first thing Muhammad Ali told me was a lie. I recognized him. I knew him. I had seen him that day in Lahore. And he denied to me who he was.
