by Nick Louth
‘You are not protecting me! I’m in pain sometimes, from my operation. I don’t have enough food. I can’t keep myself clean. I might get sick.’
That message seemed to have got through. On following days there was more food, but much of it leftovers. Lamb bones chewed but for the fatty skin, rice and gravy. Cold, meagre, greasy. Only when the Sidon camps were under siege in Lebanon had she been forced to eat worse.
There were victories though. She had persuaded Jabr to bring her a few sheets of newspaper to her cage, and those she didn’t immediately need, she had hidden under her mat. One evening, when Omar was away, Jabr had brought her a foot-high stack of old newspapers. She was eager to read them, but there was no light. She asked Jabr if she could have a torch to read them by. He hesitated for a moment, before saying that she couldn’t have a lamp inside the cage. However, he unlocked the door and allowed her out to sit by him at the mouth of the cave where he had a lamp.
‘You read to me,’ he said, pointing to the papers.
Jabr was illiterate. For all the recitation of the Koran, she had never seen him reading the great book. Nor any other, for that matter. The other, younger fighters seemed better educated.
She looked through the papers. There were half a dozen Egyptian dailies, around a month or so old. Most covered the political situation in Egypt, riots in Tahrir Square in January, the resignation of the cabinet and then the resignation of Mubarak himself. She started reading them, but found Jabr wanted to speak more than to listen.
‘This I know,’ said Jabr. ‘They should make an Islamic government in Egypt. With Sharia law. Mubarak should be executed. These rioters should be shot!’
He continued to interrupt Cantara as she read through various political reports, including an interview with the interior minister.
Cantara picked up another paper, dated November 20. It showed a big photograph of a crashed EgyptAir flight, which had come down near Cairo. More than 170 people had been killed, it said. Do you know about the air crash?’ she asked.
‘Yes! A great victory.’
‘What do you mean? Wasn’t it just a terrible accident?’
Jabr laughed. ‘No, this plane was full of crusader businessmen, Mubarak cronies, and western whores. One of our jihadis, a woman, gave her life to bring it down.’
Cantara flicked through the rest of the newspapers. Something familiar jumped out at her, from the inside pages of one Cairo daily from November. It was a small story, but it had her name in it. She gasped as she read it, and dropped the paper.
Cairo jet bomb jihadi was BBC woman
A 22-year old Palestinian woman who worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation was the suicide bomber behind last week’s terrorist attack on an EgyptAir jet, killing 176, it can be revealed. Cantara al-Mansoor, a newly-recruited trainee at the UK’s most prestigious media institution was identified from flight records and CCTV, police have confirmed. Egypt’s anti-terror unit, working in close cooperation with London’s famous Scotland Yard….
‘What is this?’ said Jabr. ‘Read it to me.’
‘I can’t,’ cried Cantara. ‘It’s lies, it’s lies.’ She burst into tears.
‘Read it to me,’ Jabr shouted, bringing the paper close to his face and scanning it as if he could absorb the meaning by mere proximity.
‘Someone’s impersonated me. To make it look like I killed all these people.’
‘Are you not proud, woman? This is a blow for Islam, for our organisation,’ Jabr said. ‘I would be proud,’ he said, thumping his chest.
The sound of a vehicle approaching ended the conversation. Jabr pushed the sobbing Cantara back into her cell and locked the door. ‘Do not say anything to Omar about the newspapers. Or I will kill you.’ He drew his finger across his throat for emphasis.
That night was the darkest moment in Cantara’s life. Captive to Islamist thugs in a remote area of Sinai was bad enough, but it was now clear that Rifat and perhaps even Irfan Tiwana had put her there. But why? They wanted to stop her finding out. She began to think again about the last day before the flight she was supposed to take to Egypt. Were they going to put a bomb in her luggage? And when they finally decided it wasn’t her, who would they use? The questions whirled around and around in her head, but the one thing was certain. Rifat, for all the friendship she had offered him, had betrayed her. He had been prepared to send her to her death. The fight in the musallah between Rifat and Bram, where she had heard her name being mentioned. It all began to make sense now. Maybe it was Bram who was trying to protect her.
She had read about a case like that, in which an Irish woman was duped into taking a bomb onto an El Al flight by someone who claimed to be her lover. But how could they make me set a bomb off? She couldn’t begin to think.
Then she felt a twinge of pain in her stomach. Could it be? Could it really be? She dismissed the thought, but kept returning to it. Is there a bomb inside me? Could that be possible? She examined her scar, touching the raised flesh, probing her abdomen until the pain responded. A sharp pain. Pushing as deep as she could bear, she could feel a denser mass, a hard outline.
That made it all the more important that she find a way to escape. She needed a plan. But her resources were miniscule. She hadn’t seen her backpack since the day she arrived. She had been given just one change of clothes, a mat and a blanket. No phone, no blade, not even a spoon. She had found an edged pebble whose scratches on the cave wall recorded her days of captivity, but that was all. There was nothing there which would allow her to escape. Her best hope, then, was to fake illness. Something convincing, that would mean she might be taken to hospital. But having seen Omar, he might just as easily decide to kill her on the spot. Whatever it was, she was certain that she would have to act quickly. Jabr now knew that she was aware of being part of an airline bomb plot. She reckoned he would not discuss it for fear of reprisals for letting her read the newspapers. Omar might just kill him for such an act. Jabr, being illiterate, may not realise how significant such knowledge would be for her.
That night, she couldn’t sleep for all the implications and possibilities tumbling through her mind. In the middle of the night, she heard a vehicle approach fast. It stopped sharply. A door slammed. Omar was shouting to Jabr, so loud that she could hear. The crusader princess, as he referred to her, was to be moved. The Egyptian Army had begun some kind of military operation nearby, and had killed some of their brothers in the north. Iyad and Hazim were scouting out a new location, but may no longer be able to trust the Bedouin. Omar cursed them as rogues and turncoats.
The lop-sided sound of Omar’s gait approached. ‘You are no longer safe here,’ he said, as he undid Cantara’s cage. ‘Put this on.’ He threw her a bulky plastic bag, and left a hurricane lamp just outside the cage so she could see. In the bag was a proper black cotton niqab, with a little silver embroidery. It was made up of an ankle-length abaya with poppers from chest to neck, and a flip-style niqab as big as a hijab, which tied around the head, and allowed the wearer to flip over the top layer towards the back of the head. This left a layer with coarse gauze over the eyes and a divider that ran over the bridge of the nose. Cantara tipped out the bag and found a biro, and a receipt from an electronic till, which showed the niqab had been bought in St. Katherine yesterday. She pocketed the pen, slipped the article about the plane crash into her blouse and then slipped the niqab over as best she could. She called for Jabr to let her out of the cage, and he did so. In the darkness, and with a narrow slot of vision she stumbled. Jabr guided her out of the cave and towards the sound of an impatiently revved engine.
‘We have a long drive,’ Jabr said, as she reached the vehicle. He gave her some flat bread. It was still warm, and smelt delicious.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and tore off a hunk to pass into her mouth under the veil. It was the best bread she thought she had ever tasted.
‘Hurry up!’ Omar yelled, grabbing hold of her, and pushing her onto the middle of the bench seat of the p
ick-up next to him. ‘It is bad enough we holy warriors have been given nothing more important to do than guard a stupid girl. But your complaining and ungratefulness are an even bigger insult.’
Jabr clattered around loading weapons into a box in the back. Once he had finished, he squeezed in on the passenger side, sandwiching her in the middle. Omar drove off immediately, gunning the engine, sending fans of gravel clattering against the chassis of the trucks. For all the odd sensation of wearing the niqab, and the restricted view it gave her, it almost made her cease to exist as a person. She continued to eat quietly, feeding pieces of bread under the veil, and listening to the unguarded conversation of Omar, who was fulminating against the untrustworthy Bedouin ‘fornicators with goats and camels’ who he believed had informed on them, and against the superiors in Al Qaeda who could think of no better use for his talents than as a gaoler.
‘Where is the Jihad in this?’ bellowed Omar to Jabr. ‘While Yemen allows Rifat to build suicide bombs to blow up some peace conference we are given nothing more important to do than guard this creature. We are running around like rats in a trap. The walkie-talkie has broken. And not a single leaf of qat to chew!’
Cantara was stunned by the revelation. Suicide bombs. Perhaps others like me. And Rifat really is behind it.
As they headed back through the canyons and mountains, she soon gleaned that they were heading back south to Sharm el-Sheikh, and didn’t expect to get there until the morning. After two or three hours, the conversation dried up, and Jabr began to fall asleep, his head starting to loll against her. Cantara could see that Omar had a pistol and a wickedly sharp-looking knife at his belt. Possibilities of escape wafted through her mind, but then she thought of Tofi, and how Omar hadn’t hesitated to squash him on the road like an insect. This man, for all his wooden leg, was too dangerous and terrifying to take on. Instead, she considered more subtle plans. She slipped the pen and receipt from the plastic bag and brought it under the long hem of her niqab. Quietly she braced the folded newspaper on her thigh, and turning the receipt over for its blank side. Then she tried to write, blind, the neatest Arabic she ever had.
‘Help! I’m Cantara al-Mansoor, kidnapped by Al Qaeda in Sharm. Feb 9th’
On the palm of her hand she wrote:
‘Kidnapped. Please rescue.’
She put the note in her pocket, and kept her hand clenched. Her heart was pounding. If she was found out she was certain they would kill her. After another hour she saw lights ahead.
‘Army checkpoint,’ yelled Omar. ‘Wake up, idiot.’
Jabr jerked awake. ‘There wasn’t one here before,’ he said.
‘This is the place where we martyred the incompetent,’ laughed Omar.
He’s referring to Tofi, Cantara realised. This is where Omar ran him over. She peered through the veil, trying to see how big the checkpoint was. Omar slowed down, and reached across her to the glove compartment, from which he extracted a sheaf of documents, including three credit-card sized plastic identity documents.
‘Jabr, sort these out. There’s one for our princess too.’ He then turned to her and said: ‘If you so much as squeak, I will cut out your liver, very slowly, and eat it raw.’ He brandished the knife, and waved it in front of her eyes.
Cantara nodded nervously. She didn’t doubt his willingness to carry out the threat. The checkpoint was a chain across the road between two concrete filled oil drums, guarded by two giant eight-wheeled Soviet-made armoured cars. A soldier sat on top of one, with a machine gun trained on them. Another soldier carrying a torch walked up to the driver’s door, and shone the light inside. Omar wound the window down.
‘Identity papers,’ the soldier said.
‘He has them,’ said Omar, pointing at Jabr.
Cantara was aware of a sharp point of a knife resting against her side. Jabr handed over the documents, and the soldier carefully looked through them.
‘Get out,’ he said. ‘All of you.’
There was a sharp intake of breath in the vehicle. Omar got out, grumbling and played up his disability, calling on Cantara to help him stand, and to pass him his crutch. It was cold and quite breezy. They made their way over to a well-lit metal booth, where the soldier and an officer sitting inside started to examine the cards. Cantara took the receipt with her message on it and dropped it behind her, praying that it would blow far enough to not be around their feet, but not too far so that it was never found. But to her horror, an eddy of wind immediately swept it forward, around Omar’s artificial leg then cartwheeling over to the feet of the soldier. For several seconds she was mesmerised by this slip of paper, which clung, trembling, to the shoelaces of the soldier’s boot, as she would dearly love to. It briefly inverted, flashing the message she had written, before being snatched away into the air with a shoal of plastic bags and dust as the wind picked up. The scrap of paper whirled high into the air before tumbling across the road behind the chain, and then into a ditch. There wasn’t the slightest sign any of the soldiers had noticed it.
Now she only had one chance. She shuffled forward so she was level with Omar and Jabr, and did something that put her life in the crosshairs of death. She yawned loudly, stood on tiptoe, and stretched both hands out in front of her, fingers interlaced, so that the message she had written on her palm might be visible to the soldiers in the light from the booth. If they turned to look.
They did not. She still seemed invisible.
Suddenly she felt a terrible blow on the cheek which knocked her to the ground.
‘Did I give you permission to yawn?’ yelled Omar. She could hear laughter from the soldiers in the background.
‘This unworthy daughter,’ Omar proclaimed. ‘Sits in my truck, eating my food, farting and snoring while I drive. And now she is so tired.’
She couldn’t see anything, and her head was swimming amid the chuckles of the soldiers.
‘Get up and do not speak,’ Omar whispered to her.
She tried to get up but then felt an even stronger blow which flattened her. In her mouth and nose she could taste the metallic taint of blood. All she had the strength to do was to put her hand under her niqab and rub the palm in the dripping blood, to obliterate the message. She desperately wanted to cry, in fear, in loneliness and in desperation, but didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of hearing it. Instead she held her sobs to the minimum, catching and holding each jagged breath. A kick followed to her midriff, and she gagged, drool and blood mixing on the inside of her veil. She was dragged to the pick-up and this time was put against the passenger side door, so that Omar and Jabr could sit next to each other.
Beating her up seemed to have cheered them both, and they now sang boisterously as they drove.
‘I think Rifat wasted his time with this one,’ Omar said to Jabr. ‘I don’t see what possible use she can be.’
Jabr laughed nervously.
‘Did you see the nerve?’ Omar said. ‘Stretching like a cat, in front of me. There is no respect. I was told she spent time in the West. Probably on her back.’
Jabr laughed again.
‘I think we should kill her,’ Omar said, emphasising kill. He leaned towards Cantara. ‘Would you like that Princess? I would enjoy slowly severing your head.’
Cantara tried hard to let no noise whatever escape her.
‘Are you going to call Yemen first?’ Jabr asked.
Omar sighed. As the silence stretched out she allowed herself to breathe again. They know they cannot kill me. Yet. They drove in silence for the next hour, stopping with the first light of dawn for Fajr prayers. Omar got out and, having given thanks to God for a return to phone coverage, made a call on his mobile. They were on the brow of a hill as the sun broke the horizon. Even through the restricted visor of her niqab, now stiff, darker and matted to her face by blood, Cantara could make out in the distance an arc of shimmering lights. Sharm el-Sheikh! Despite her predicament, and the throbbing pain of swollen eye, stomach and jaw, just seeing the town where she was
supposed to be raised her spirits. Against all knowledge and rationality, a part of her hoped that if Rifat was here there would be some explanation to show that her experience of him was the truth, not the lies peddled by these jihadis. The desire for a friendly face, a friendly word consumed her.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
February 9, 2011
Day one of his assignment in Sharm el-Sheikh, and Wyrecliffe could tell he wasn’t at the BBC any longer. Arab Satellite Broadcasting had given him a luxury suite with a four-poster bed at the top-rated Majestic hotel, and a freelance producer-cum-fixer with local crew already in situ.
Not everything could be smoothed over by lavish spending though. Conference bureaucracy was, as always, a nightmare. First there was the main accreditation process for the United Nations, which was hosting the conference and necessitated dealing with New York. Then another for the Egyptian Interior Ministry, which was issuing the security passes for access to the Grand Tutankhamun hotel, and another for the US State Department which wanted an additional layer of checks for the opening press conference that it was hosting in the grand columned ballroom of the hotel. The Israelis too had a separate accreditation process, even though they wouldn’t yet confirm whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would attend or not. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah wanted a checklist of attendees, but was still working only on faxes, and no one could get through. It turned out they had been waiting for an engineer to be given clearance by Israel to cross to the West Bank to fix their secure fax machine.
Final accreditation would probably not be finished until the day of the conference. By then he’d have a half dozen lanyards around his neck, each with a separate card. Getting past security would take hours.
His first scheduled TV report for ASB was the curtain-raiser for the conference. To introduce the audience to the event, and to outline how big the stakes were for Palestinians hoping for a two-state solution, and Israelis hoping for an enduring peace. But also the background of the many failed attempts to find common ground, going back more than half a century. He had also decided to home in on the extraordinary security measures that were being taken. The risk implicit in deciding to go ahead with the conference while mainland Egypt, just across the Suez Canal, was in such political turmoil.
