No matter how we framed it, things didn’t look good. I didn’t think the Niger armed forces were capable of flying search and rescue missions at night, if indeed they could get their helicopters into the air at all. Our captors were obviously avoiding any chance of running into a police roadblock by the simple expedient of avoiding all roads. Further, every passing minute extended the radius of the search area. Despite the fact that Niger is one of the larger countries in the world, the region from which we were taken in the extreme southwestern part of the country was only 100 kilometres from Burkina Faso to the west (although that would entail re-crossing the river, something they were unlikely to risk), about 160 kilometres from Benin to the south, and about the same distance from the border of Mali, due north. I knew, of course, that we were heading north, but anybody who might be looking for us could not be sure. Every hour, even as we crunched along off-road at only twenty to thirty kilometres per hour, would add thousands of square kilometres to the search area. Dredging up high school math, I applied ?r2 to our laborious progress and determined that at the end of six hours, as we approached the Mali border to the north, the search area would be over 70,000 square kilometres. I did not expect to be rescued soon.
So, when would our families learn what had happened?
This was a particularly acute issue in my case. It was Sunday evening in Niger, Sunday noon in Ottawa. Mary was leaving, unless her plans had changed, very early on Monday morning for Florida, where I was to meet her in six days’ time. Would she get the news before she left?
How would she and our girls handle the news? In short—would they be okay? Would the Canadian government apparatus be as supportive as I hoped? Would friends immediately rally round? How would Canada and the United Nations work out responsibility for any negotiations with our abductors and for getting us home? Would Mary and the girls forgive me for putting them through such torment? All these hugely important, very fraught issues and the attendant uncertainty gnawed at my fragile composure. I was terrified, sad, and desperate, and in no little discomfort. What further unpleasant surprises did the immediate future hold? I am sure that similar thoughts were also churning through Louis’ mind.
Mostly just to break the tension, we tried to make desultory conversation with Omar. I asked him to teach us his language, which turned out to be Tamasheq, the language spoken by the Tuareg, although none of our captors seemed to me to be Tuareg. We started with numbers, but I was so discombobulated that I could not remember the word for four by the time he got to six.
From time to time, Louis would say something softly to me in English, something he clearly did not want Omar, seated maybe seventy centimetres from him, to hear. The trouble, of course, was that this sounded sneaky and secretive, like my parents whispering to each other pas devant les enfants over Sunday lunch, and I tried to discourage him from doing so.
At one point, though, Louis asked, “Do you think we’re going to Geneva?” which even in my state of confused dread I could figure out meant did I believe we had been taken by rebels from the Mouvement des Nigériens pour la justice (the MNJ, or Movement of Nigeriens for Justice). The reference to Geneva related to the fact that we had arranged to return to that city in early January to hold a second series of meetings with the MNJ rebels, likely including their leader, Aghali Alambo. Thus, if our kidnappers were from the MNJ, not only would we be saved a trip to see them in Switzerland but we might also be on a roundabout way to freedom relatively soon.
Since conversation proved difficult and possibly dangerous, we gave our dark thoughts far too much rein as we defended ourselves as best we could against the torturous ride. Sometime near midnight, we approached an isolated collection of ramshackle buildings beside a roaring open fire. Omar stopped the truck a good distance away and left us in the hands of le Sénégalais and Hassan. As he approached the shadowy figures around the fire, one detached himself from the rest and he and Omar paced back and forth, silhouettes in front of the fire, deep in conversation. It wasn’t long before the dark figure briskly turned back to his colleagues and Omar returned to the truck. Without a word or glance in our direction, he threw it into gear and we were off again. I wondered if a death sentence had been pronounced and whether we would live another ten minutes.
A couple of hours later we stopped by a small, dark collection of low mud huts and a furtive figure materialized out of one of them. Omar consulted him briefly and we were off again. Some hours later we drove through another group of dark huts, which this time was not a way station of sympathizers but rather some kind of family compound. Once we had blundered among those huts, there seemed no way out. Omar turned on the headlights. Figures appeared, first two or three, then many more. African men, women, and children in various stages of undress flitted through the shifting, dusty glare of the truck’s headlights. Omar—clearly unsettled—charged about, cranking through the gears, looking for an escape route. He shouted something to the boys in the back, which I assumed to be an admonition to remain calm and keep their weapons out of sight.
The growing crowd was not overtly hostile but they were evidently curious about who we might be and, by their facial expressions, seemed to resent the abrupt and aggressive intrusion. These people did not seem to be aligned with our captors, and I yearned to call to them for help as we flashed past just a few metres away. Perhaps, I briefly considered, Louis could open his door so we could hurl ourselves at the feet of these simple villagers. I was certain, though, that our abductors would never allow such a ploy to succeed. The villagers were unarmed and I cringed to imagine what a couple of AKs, or “Kalashes” as our captors invariably called them, would do to this small crowd of innocent and defenceless onlookers so close at hand.
Omar spun the truck in a new direction and we smashed through a little shed made of sticks and thatch and out into a maize field. I wondered if the people we left in our wake, whose peace and sleep we had so rudely interrupted, would find a way to report the event to some authority as they certainly would have seen Louis’ startled, very white face in the truck window. Or maybe they would connect this event with news of our abduction. I doubted, though, that either would occur.
Around three in the morning, by my very rough calculation, we stopped for a tea break and brief rest. My back was in spasm and I was not sure I could even exit the vehicle, however much I needed to pee. But I also needed to see Soumana. I had barely been able to discern through the small back window of the cab what I thought were three dark figures in the truck bed but could not tell if one of them was Soumana. Unmindful of whether Omar heard or not, I repeatedly asked Louis whether Soumana was still with us and with mounting frustration Louis pointed him out two or three times. I suppose it was my disoriented state that caused me to obsess about him, coupled with the damage to my back, which made it difficult to turn around in my seat; and without my glasses I could see little. When we stopped and I was finally able to recognize him, I was hugely relieved. Soumana was not, though, in great shape either physically or psychologically. I could only imagine what punishment he had been taking as he was bounced about on the steel truck bed. When we had a chance to speak, he was uncommunicative, confused—nearly catatonic.
The moon had set. Everyone was tired. Nobody seemed to be paying much attention to me. Could I just wander off? We hadn’t seen any sign of life for a long time. There were a few bushes in the starlit lunar landscape. How easy would it be for them to find me? How far could I get in the heat of the following day in such vast and hostile emptiness without shelter, food, or water? Aside from feeling confident that I should head south, was I likely to find anyone who could or would help? Wracked with indecision and declining confidence, I just leaned against the truck and tried to rest—the inglorious path of least resistance.
On and on we drove until a couple of hours before dawn we skidded to a stop following a particularly difficult stretch. Omar announced, “I must sleep,” opened his door, and rolled under the truck. Hassan cut the tape binding our wri
sts, threw a blanket from the back onto the hard-packed sand and told us to rest. He led Soumana away to some other place. Le Sénégalais took sentry duty.
Louis lay down, exhausted, but my back pain was such that I could not stretch out. I was also very cold, clad only in a thin cotton shirt and trousers. I paced a racetrack pattern, taking care to remain well within the sentry’s sight and immediate vicinity.
After some minutes of walking the pain in my lower back subsided and I wandered over to where the sentry was brewing tea. He had a tiny fire going, on which he placed a small metal teapot. I asked him if I should call him le Sénégalais, as had Omar. With a surprisingly good-natured laugh he said, “No, my name is Ibrahim, but I am from Senegal.”
I was terribly thirsty but had got it into my addled brain that I must not drink the murky, sludgy brown water from their large ten-litre plastic container. If I did so, I was convinced, I would contract dysentery. My state of denial was such that I calculated I must avoid the trots so that I could take my place in the reviewing stand in just three days’ time in Tillabéri—an hour down the road from where we had been taken—to participate in the celebration of Niger’s fiftieth anniversary of independence. Surely all this unpleasantness would somehow be over by then.
Tea, however, seemed reasonably safe. Ibrahim was dropping handfuls of tea and sugar into the pot, and I hoped to cadge a glass or two. It was the Arab version: hot, green, very sweet, and served in minuscule glasses, which would not greatly alleviate my increasing dehydration. When I was standing above him, he looked up at me with a sardonic, fire-lit smile and asked, “So, have you figured out who we are yet?”
I had been dreading this moment for most of the preceding twelve hours and passively avoiding confronting the inexorably dawning reality. I asked, without conviction, “Are you not the MNJ?” When his facial expression suggested confusion and not a little disdain, I added, unnecessarily, “Le Mouvement des Nigériens pour la justice?”
Ibrahim snorted with derision. “I told you I was Senegalese. What would I be doing with a gang of amateurs like that?” I simply stared at him as the fire danced in his menacing black eyes. Finally, drawing out the moment with cruel anticipation, he fiercely spat the words, “We are Al Qaeda!” And the bottom fell out of my world.
As I walked away from the fire, reeling from the palpable enjoyment Ibrahim had derived from his revelation, I did not look forward to passing on this news to Louis. When I found a private moment to tell him, while our kidnappers had stopped to pray, he took it stoically enough, simply noting, “I’d rather be in the hands of people who prayed.” For my part, however, I estimated that our chances of emerging whole from this ordeal stood at about 5 percent, principally because I could not convince myself to accept a lower number.
CHAPTER 2
CENTRAL STATION
My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank.
Shortly after Ibrahim confirmed the worst of my fears by telling me that we had been captured by Al Qaeda, it was time to move after what couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours of rest. Omar rolled wide awake from under his truck. Once he had been served a tiny glass of tea and Louis and I had again been bound, we were underway.
Louis had slept a bit and was groggy, but my adrenalin-suffused brain was in search of something to take my mind off the Al Qaeda implications. I had again lost track of Soumana, who must have flopped down on the other side of the vehicle to grab some rest under the ever-watchful eyes of Hassan. And so I resumed my obsessive worrying. Where was Soumana? Had he escaped or perhaps been freed, or more likely, I thought, simply been killed? I was unable to quell my rising anxiety.
As we crashed ever northward through the gradually greying dawn, there was no sign of habitation or cultivation. Eventually, the sun rose to our right, and I drifted in and out of some kind of stupor, returning again and again to the wretched realization that this was no dream.
As the day broke, Omar produced two long pieces of thin, beige cotton material and we were instructed, “Turbanisez-vous.” Evidently we were supposed to use the material to create turbans but neither of us knew how to accomplish that, let alone with only one free hand. Omar gave us a brief demonstration while driving. As he unwound his turban, he revealed a closely cropped head with about a week’s growth of stubble. Suddenly he looked smaller, frailer, and ten years younger—a significantly less fierce and commanding person. Louis and I tried to follow his turban-tying example one at a time, as first one and then the other of us used a bound hand to assist in the process. The result was far from perfect, and Omar found this simultaneously slightly amusing and very annoying.
He then told us sternly and with more menace than he had exhibited to that point, that under no circumstances were we to talk to anybody we might encounter. Were we to attempt to do so the consequences would be cataclysmic for all concerned. Further, we were to avert our (pasty-white) faces without having to be ordered to do so, from any person we saw, no matter how far distant. In such circumstances Louis, by the window, was to bring his bracing arm inside the truck, again so that his telltale white hand would not reveal our identity.
For some hours Omar’s instructions about how we had to behave when people were sighted seemed rather abstract. But gradually, as we continued to claw our way north, we began to see the odd long, low black tent, usually tucked in against some brush and meagre trees, scenes right out of desert nomad central casting. Omar tended to give these tents and any sign of habitation a wide berth, but now and then we would see a young boy herding goats or sheep fairly close by in that vast emptiness. Sometimes camels dotted the landscape in widely dispersed ones and twos.
On a few occasions we saw, close at hand, shepherds in loose, dark, almost iridescent indigo robes and big grey or blue turbans, their arms draped over long, thin staves balanced across their shoulders. As we approached them we received a sharp glare from Omar to reinforce the no-speak, no-look directive. He would halt the vehicle thirty or forty metres away, exit and saunter over to speak with these fellows, often embracing them. They might then walk a bit with Omar’s arm slung about their shoulders, or they would squat together in the sand for a short chat.
All this was of course difficult to follow with our faces supposedly averted. But as it was happening, a brief glance through the small window in the back of the cab (often obscured by the immense clutter of junk—ammunition, bits of clothing, tins of motor oil, tools, bags, small backpacks, jackets, dates—between the backs of the bucket seats and the rear wall of the cab) revealed that Hassan, Ibrahim, and Soumana were rigidly quiet and watchful, but no weapons were in evidence.
These meet-and-greet interludes were obviously exercises in community relations, something our captors knew was important and were unfailingly good at. I suspect that the nomads saw far more of and received more support—however rudimentary—from Al Qaeda warriors than they ever got from government representatives.
We were told that we were headed to some sort of camp, and I convinced myself that such a place would include buildings and possibly a bed, on which I desperately hoped I might find some relief for my screaming back. I also hoped for potable water and food. I realized that it could mean a lot of less salubrious things, but in the main managed to keep such worries from becoming a preoccupation. Above all, I was desperate to see the journey end and the relentless pounding stop. I was convinced that my back was suffering possibly irreparable damage. Like a small child accompanying uncommunicative parents on a long drive, I was hard put not to whine, “How far now, Omar?”
As we crossed a particularly appalling stretch of rough country, one of the front wheels dropped into a deep hole, forcing us to an instantaneous stop. My face smacked into the dashboard with sufficient force that I partially lost consciousness, seat belt laws being improperly observed in the Sahara. For the first of many times, I contemplated the
irony of being captured by Al Qaeda only to die in a car accident.
We climbed a long, scrubby hill and without warning rocketed onto a wide, well-maintained, evidently much-travelled dirt road. Omar, very nervous, grew serious and again threatening. He reminded us that whatever happened and whatever the conditions that might cause us to stop, under no circumstances were we to say anything to anyone, or to look at anybody we might encounter.
As he swung the truck to the left, which the sun indicated was to the west, Omar reached across both of us to open the glove compartment and extract a fat, letter-sized manila envelope. It was not sealed, and while driving fast, he checked the contents, which seemed to be a thick wad of unidentifiable currency. He then tucked the cash-stuffed envelope behind his driver’s sun visor and jacked up the speed. Clearly this would be the first response to any roadblock or military search. The AKs of the thugs in the back would be the second. When Omar had retrieved the envelope, I thought I had glimpsed the butt of a well-worn automatic pistol partially concealed under a dirty rag in addition to a lot of other junk in the evidently unlocked glove compartment. This gave me something to think about.
We passed a couple of heavy commercial trucks travelling fast in the opposite direction. It was clearly a main highway and was marked by ill-maintained but recognizable bornes kilométriques, similar to those that adorn roadways in France. These were small, gravestone-like cement markers with rounded red caps showing the number of the highway. Below the red cap, the distances to the next and to the last town were marked against a background that once upon a time had been painted white. The stones visible along that road no longer occurred every kilometre, but they did indicate a name, and I simply cannot remember what it was. I know, though, that it started with “M,” so I assume we might have been travelling along the main east–west highway in the far eastern part of Mali, just north of the Niger–Mali border, toward Ménaka. I don’t know that this was the case, but it would make sense.
A Season in Hell Page 3
