Lost to the World, page 7
I would remind him of this lie many times over the next few years.
Having summed up and measured his prize, he left me in the room, but not before he looked me over, in my anguish and pain, and smiled. I’d never seen such a sinister smile. My guards had been cruel juveniles, acting like bullies. Psychotic, yes, but mostly sad and scared, and clearly emboldened by the power of their situation to torment a total stranger. They seemed pathetic more than frightening, and opportunistic more than evil.
Perhaps I’m wrong, I thought at the time, but this man seems genuinely evil.
Over the next four years, I’d learn my initial instincts were spot-on.
* * *
After that brief encounter, I rarely saw him. Occasionally, he’d come in to talk to me, usually to give me an update on what he considered his ingenious plan. He admitted his lie to me, claiming he wasn’t ready to reveal himself as the mastermind. “I asked for you one day and they delivered you to me,” he said, boasting arrogantly. It had taken him six weeks to arrive at this house because, to escape detection, the kidnappers had split up and traveled separately. He’d sent me on while he and a few others arrived via another route. He claimed to have walked a considerable part of this journey. In his sharing of all this information with me, I finally learned where I was.
I was in Pakistan. In a city called Mir Ali, in the federally administrated areas of North Waziristan, straddling the western border with Afghanistan, as the crow flies about three hundred miles from Lahore.
With my limited knowledge of the terrain, I was unclear whether to feel relief or alarm. Knowing I was still in my home country was reassuring, yet in many ways North Waziristan was as far from Lahore as the arctic circle. The local government is controlled by a mixed batch of rival tribes largely overseen by the Pakistani Taliban. Mir Ali, with a population of under one hundred thousand impoverished tribal people, is a war-torn town. To an unfamiliar visitor, Mir Ali resembled a medieval village, with a bustling market surrounded by mud-wall buildings amid ruins of old. You’re as likely to see donkeys and carts as you are to see cars or trucks. A majority of its mud houses and mosques were destroyed during a 2007 military operation by Pakistan’s army against the Afghan Taliban. What remains, by the Tochi River, in between distant mountains and around a crumbling central bazaar, is in a valley crawling with militias from all over the region. This unsavory cocktail includes Turks, Chechens, Bosnians, Egyptians, Syrians, Saudis, Iraqis, Nigerians, South Koreans, Central Asians, Russians, Pakistanis, Afghans, Kashmiris, Burmese, and Uzbeks. All this made Mir Ali the perfect venue to secrete away a kidnapping victim such as myself, for an unspecified time.
The indigenous inhabitants are typically farmers and poor. Their lives and livelihoods depend on swearing allegiance to the Taliban. These peasants are pawns in an unending international war, and they live surrounded by some of the most ruthless men on earth.
This area was a breeding ground for multiple terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban. Many terrorist attacks were hatched in this area. The porous border with Afghanistan allowed a stream of new recruits to assemble here.
But as to who was holding me, that still remained a mystery.
My father often spoke of having studied at the university of life, and to my horror, I was now being exposed to the university of terrorism.
Muhammad Ali would often sit in my room and tell tales about the latest squabbles between rival factions or new plans to launch deadly operations. The moral of all of these stories was the same: to demonstrate what a brilliant and masterful tactician Muhammad Ali was.
I found Muhammad Ali to be erratic, easily swayed by the last person who had his ear. A masochist, he sadistically enjoyed physically and mentally torturing me.
He manipulated people around him with his religious and moral rhetoric, so that they would gladly lay down their lives for his cause. He claimed to be a religious follower of Islam, but was in fact a cult leader. He could recite Quranic verses verbatim but had no understanding of the words. His sadly perverse translation had little to do with the true meaning and spirit of Islam. He had a disarming wit and sense of humor that softened the monster inside him. To me, though, he only revealed the monster.
He would often visit me for an hour or so and pull up a stool to hold court. I soon learned he considered himself a strategist and the next big name in the ongoing jihad against the infidels. He outwardly appeared deeply devout, shaming me for hours about my allegedly sinful life.
He would carry an old laptop and show me video clips of his previous abducted victims, screening the clips with great pride. These disturbing videos often ended with a graphic beheading. He mentioned he had held a young man for almost four months, waiting for an agreed-upon ransom that never came, before executing him. In another case, they’d kidnapped a businessman and succeeded in claiming a $1 million ransom from his family. After the success of that kidnapping, Muhammad Ali had convinced his superiors to let him use some of that money to fund a more ambitious kidnapping. This time, he promised, he would deliver someone of national prominence. He would kidnap one of the sons of the assassinated governor Salmaan Taseer.
For Muhammad Ali, I was his crowning glory and his ticket to the big leagues.
As we spoke, I tried to figure out which group exactly had taken me. In most cases abduction off the streets of a large Pakistani city means you’ve been taken by the Tehreek-e-Taliban or by affiliates of al-Qaeda. The Afghan Taliban did not engage in kidnapping for ransom, and ISIS, while a growing influence, did not operate so far into Pakistan. The Tehreek-e-Taliban and al-Qaeda lacked any formal structure and were open to new recruits and factions operating under their patronage.
Muhammad Ali and the gang that had taken me worked independently. They were part of a very different organization, established and known for its barbaric methods.
* * *
After months of instant noodles, I began to lay out a strategy in my mind to try to force a change to my meal plan. Clearly, begging for something different would yield no positive result. Weighing my options, considering every angle, every possibility, I came up with a devious plan that could provide food fit for human consumption. In the worst case, if it backfired, there would be more beatings.
The plan kicked off with occasional complaints of feeling weak and suffering from chronic headaches. “My family has a history of diabetes,” I’d say if ever a guard showed even a moment of interest in my ailments. “I have to eat something different or I’ll get sick.” I hoped this would get Muhammad Ali’s attention. After all, a sickly prisoner is more trouble than he is worth, and I still assumed Muhammad Ali wanted me alive, to cash me in.
After several conversations, a guard alerted Muhammad Ali. I told him what was wrong, about the diabetes.
Upon hearing of my ailment, Muhammad Ali smiled. “If this dog has diabetes, let’s really give him something that will kill him and take him off our hands quick.”
He dispatched the guard to get me a serving of rancid goat fat on a slice of bread.
Thus began a horrible new regimen. In place of noodles, I was dished out a serving of goat fat and bread every day. The sight and smell turned my stomach. I nibbled on the bread and tossed the fat into my toilet bucket.
Some days later, the uneaten goat fat clogged the guards’ toilet. Upon discovering this, Muhammad Ali was infuriated. In a cold and menacing way, he ordered me to eat some goat fat immediately. I pleaded and said I’d gag.
Muhammad Ali not only made me eat it, he decreed that if the goat fat was ever recovered from my waste bucket again, I’d eat it in the condition it was found.
I ate goat fat every day after that for over six months.
* * *
Initially when Muhammad Ali visited me, he skillfully wore me down with his mind games. What’s more, he enjoyed it. He would talk about my siblings and how they were cheating me. How they were scheming to take over the business or steal our home from us. The worst for me, though, was when he’d simply say that my family had forgotten me. I knew in my heart that it couldn’t be true, but in my head, I wondered if it was.
The endless hours of loneliness ate at me. My only human contact was with men who despised and berated me. I had no one to comfort or reassure me, no sign at all that anyone I’d left behind still cared. They could be dead for all I know, I thought, just like my father is. He’d been murdered just a few months earlier by a religious fanatic. Now I’d been cast into this forsaken hellhole. How could I believe that any of the people I loved had been spared?
In my darkest moments, I started to think, Why should I believe they still spare a thought for me at all.
* * *
Death preoccupied my mind. I considered putting an end to this misery and taking my life. I wondered if choking myself with my chains was possible. I wrapped them around my neck and pulled tight, testing to see if I could go through with it. I couldn’t. I felt worse, alone and a coward, unable to end my torment. My self-preservation took over, not allowing me to inflict irrational harm, only elevating Muhammad Ali’s authority over me. Perhaps he was right, I thought. Either way, I felt dejected and a failure.
12
My family had not forgotten me.
They were safe in Lahore, anxious, afraid, and frustrated. They learned that the ISI had discovered the safe house hours after I had left, finding my broken sunglasses, some bloody ropes, and a used syringe.
My family hadn’t heard yet from the kidnappers. No ransom demands. No updates. No threats. Nothing. No idea as to who had taken me.
The silence continued for days. Then weeks. Then a month.
My mother was despondent but strong; after all, she had been through this once before. In the beginning of her marriage to my father, in her early twenties, he had been arrested and taken to the Lahore Fort, a notorious jail. She’d known where he was but got little word about his condition or when he might be released. She learned to be patient. She learned to carry on with her regular life each day, while never letting my father stray far from her mind.
There’s a photo I cherish of my father emerging from Faisalabad Jail after four months in solitary confinement to greet me, his toddler son. In the photo, I look so happy to see my abba, unaware of what he had gone through. I thought of that photo a lot during my own captivity. The relief on my father’s face and the happiness on mine. I wondered if I would ever get to feel those emotions, the joy that comes from regaining your freedom and once again holding your loved ones in your arms.
It’s the strangest thing to have a loved one kidnapped. It is so open-ended. You miss them but you can’t mourn them. They may come home tomorrow or never at all. You need to learn to live with that uncertainty. Every time your cell phone rings, you scramble to answer it while dreading what news it may bring.
Because of her previous experiences, my mother knew the lack of news about me was not good. My whole family understood that in most kidnappings the first forty-eight hours are crucial. This window of time can be the difference between a successfully resolved kidnapping, in which a captive is rescued or returned alive for ransom, and a botched operation that ends in the captive being killed or simply disappearing. The ISI had held out hope that they could still catch my kidnappers even though they’d slipped out of the city. Everyone understood that, once the kidnappers had escaped Lahore, I could be anywhere. There was little chance the ISI could find me, and even if they did, there was virtually no chance they could rescue me. All everyone could do now was wait.
So, they waited. Two days. Three days. A week. Then more.
In the meantime, the Pakistani media had a field day with my situation. The most outrageous rumors and speculation circulated. My kidnapping was connected to my father’s killing, they claimed. No, actually the kidnapping had been staged. I was hiding out somewhere on the run from a business debt or a family squabble. In the absence of real information, rumors ran rife and the internet was aflame with lies. The reality was, no one knew anything, not even me. All I knew was that I was in a room somewhere with no idea where. My family knew even less than that.
* * *
Another week went by. Then another. The news cycle moved on. The internet was awash with other things to speak of. Soon a month had passed. Still no news for them.
I hate to imagine what those weeks were like for my family, for Shehryar and Shehrbano, my brother and sister, for my grandmother Amy, my khala Tammy and my mamoo Ehsan, my wife, and of course my mother. Imagine that, every time the phone rings or a new email arrives, you answer it or open it with dread, wondering if this will finally be the one that carries some news, and whether that news will be good or crushing. Wondering each time if the message will be a demand for money or simply a video of your loved one being slaughtered.
They waited. Another week passed. Another month.
Nothing.
Then, one day, Maheen got an email on her phone. She didn’t recognize the sender’s address.
She sent for my mother and opened the email.
It was a link to a video.
* * *
I’d been in captivity for about two months. I’d come to expect the routine beatings from the guards and the sporadic visits from Muhammad Ali. He loved to boast of how he’d plotted to snatch me off the streets and, just like that, here I was. He thought he was a tactical genius. These sessions were excruciating for me but at least they broke up the solitude. The rest of my days were spent in loneliness, fending off insanity.
One day, Muhammad Ali arrived with a different message. It was time, he’d decided, to contact my family.
I couldn’t believe it. I was ecstatic. I could barely control my excitement. Maybe this was the beginning of the end. I’d finally get to speak to my mother, get to hear her voice for the first time in months. This madman would reveal his demands to my family and they would happily pay him, and I’d finally be on my way home. It was surreal, impossible to believe.
I shouldn’t have believed it. Muhammad Ali soon explained to me what would happen. We weren’t making a phone call. Not yet. We’d be making a video. Muhammad Ali had prepared what I was meant to read.
Two of his men came in carrying a video camera and a tripod. It was an impressively high-tech HD camera.
Bloody hell, I thought, I’m going to get my head cut off in HD.
They sat me up in my chains on a chair. They put me in a suicide vest. About twelve of Muhammad Ali’s fighters came into the room, their faces covered by scarves. They stood behind me, a show of force. My silent, anonymous abductors.
While I was discouraged when I found out I wouldn’t get to talk to my family or hear their voices, this felt like progress. There was still a glimmer of hope. This was the first step toward the endgame. Finally, I had a chance to send a message to my family to let them know I was alive, to reassure them that they should not give up on me, and to let them know there was still a way to bring me home.
Muhammad Ali handed me the sheet of paper. I glanced over the words and my heart sank.
The note was addressed to the president and the prime minister of Pakistan, not to my family. The speech was just lines of angry boasting and gibberish about how my abduction proved how strong Muhammad Ali’s group was, how he could bring Pakistan to its knees. Nothing about ransom, no demands, no instructions. I would simply sit there and recite this ridiculous message, a mouthpiece for their propaganda.
As I scanned the message, I felt an urge to laugh. Muhammad Ali’s ludicrous assumption that the government of Pakistan had shuddered to a halt because I had been kidnapped was absurd, and I knew it. My family cared enough about me to do anything to bring me home. I doubted the same was true of the country’s government.
The red light came on, indicating the recording had begun. I did as I’d been told. I read out the statement. We recorded the video once in English and once in Urdu. When we were done, I looked at Muhammad Ali and asked if it was okay. It must have been because his men dismantled the tripod and took the equipment from the room.
My mother contacted Colonel Kiyani right away. The email didn’t contain the video, but it contained a link to a website where they could download it, along with a password to access the file. They were concerned about blindly following this link, but anxious to see if it contained news. Gathering around my mother’s desk, they clicked to download the video.
The image of me in a chair, chained, was crisp and clear. My beard had grown and my hair was straggly. Behind me was a row of anonymous men, their faces covered by scarves and their hands clasped in front of them. One of the men was identified as the one who’d lost his thumb. The intelligence agencies had seen this kind of video before, in which an extremist group showcases their captive and makes their outlandish demands. Except in this video, only I was speaking, reading from a written script. The video gave no clues as to my location or demands for my release.
Colonel Kiyani noticed something. I read the statement in Urdu, but I seemed to look up at someone just off camera and say “Okay?” in English. As if I was asking if I’d performed correctly.
He thought this over. If I was reading in Urdu, but saying “Okay?” to someone in English, that possibly meant my captors weren’t native Urdu speakers. Which meant that even if they were holding me somewhere in Pashtun-controlled Waziristan, my captors were not Pashtuns.
There were other telltale signs. My mother picked up on the attire of the men standing behind me. Their clothes were worn loose, which isn’t the style of the Pashtuns, who wear their shalwar bound tightly at the ankle. These two clues indicated it was not the Tehreek-e-Taliban who had kidnapped me, which is what everyone had been assuming. It was someone else, not from that region.
This, they realized, might not be good news.
