To our left what was at first little more than the bank of a substantial wadi grew into a sharply rising cliff of rough, crumbling rock. To the right there stretched a wide, flat depression in the surrounding desert. The boundary of this depression, far to the right, was the opposite bank of the wadi, some seven or eight hundred metres distant. Rising out of the wadi floor in the middle distance, a couple of hundred metres to the east, were three long, thin, flat-topped, mesas. As the deep wadi began to narrow we saw another truck and some people moving about near the west wall. All three of the trucks in our group pulled in close to the parked vehicle, each seeking, not very hard, to squeeze under a sheltering and camouflaging acacia tree.
Everybody disembarked and Louis was brought over to where Omar and I were standing. We were told by Abdul Rahman, who we were informed was to be the camp emir, or commander, to collect our blankets and follow Omar to “your position.” This was located about fifty metres north of the trucks, about ten metres from what was by that point an almost vertical cliff face, perhaps fifteen metres high, to the west. The most salient feature of our position was a large, healthy acacia tree, which would offer us some semblance of cover as we placed our blankets on the narrowly focused spot of shade beneath its branches.
Omar traced the path of the sun for us, which at noon at that time of the year described an arc just south of straight up, so we threw our blankets on the ground on the north side of the tree, only later that evening learning that we ought first to have removed the myriad thorns that over time had fallen from the tree and embedded themselves, like sharp jacks, in the sand around its base.
He then very economically explained the rules.
“The UN is, along with the U.S.A., Israel, France, and Britain, in the first tier of our enemies,” Omar proclaimed. As representatives of the hated United Nations, we were considered prisoners of war, not (I suppose in a veiled reference to his previous Austrian victims) some tourist targets of opportunity. As prisoners, our activities and our freedom of action would be strictly curtailed, and if we abused their trust there would be unpleasant consequences.
Omar designated the rather limited area in which we could roam freely (a rectangle measuring perhaps forty metres east to west and sixty metres from our tree toward the north. He explained that we could find places within the northern reaches of that rectangle in order to go pas loin but would have to ask permission to go loin well beyond the designated limits. He reiterated that on such occasions we would be accompanied, and again stressed that only one of us could go loin at a time, while the other remained in plain sight.
The issue of appropriate toilet practices and etiquette was far more fraught than I had expected. Not only were our abductors a fastidious group, concerned about health and sanitary issues, including smells, but they were also a religiously inspired, dramatically prudish collection of young warriors. Despite living in relatively close proximity with our captors, we never saw even a naked torso—a far cry from the locker rooms and communal showers of my youth. Our kidnappers were very forceful in their demand that we respect their customs and beliefs in this regard and going loin meant just that, far and out of sight.
One day Omar Two strode toward us in a rage evident long before he had opened his mouth. “We told you to be discreet in your personal habits and there you go, Louis, shitting in full public view. It is unacceptable!”
“What are you talking about?” Louis asked, equally offended. “I did no such thing.”
Omar riposted, “You did, just this morning.”
Taken aback, Louis allowed, “I did go loin but I asked permission and was directed to go beyond [pointing] that far dune, well out of sight of the entire camp.”
“Not so,” answered Omar Two, triumphantly. Gesturing to a high, rocky promontory surmounted by a minuscule figure in silhouette some eight or nine hundred metres distant, he declared, “That sentry saw it all and was disgusted!”
Louis and I said, simultaneously, “We didn’t know a sentry was up there.”
“Well,” spat Omar Two, “it’s your business to be aware of such things.” I could hardly argue with that logic.
“So,” I said carefully, “let’s be very clear on this point. When we go loin we are to be absolutely certain that we are out of the sight of all sentries?”
“Of course!” Omar Two snapped as he stormed off, and immediately I began to revise our escape plans.
They hated any kind of physical contact with infidels. Our abductors were offended by immodesty of any sort and reserved a special place in their hierarchy of disgust for their lurid understanding of the nature of Western nudist beaches. Similarly, while some of the relationships between the older mujahideen and the younger boys seemed to me a little ambiguous, they expressed vitriolic contempt for homosexuality, considering the West to be one sprawling Sodom and Gomorrah. As a result, they drew the line at Louis and me washing together, which would have allowed us to be a little more efficient in our water usage. They finally compromised on those all too rare occasions when we were given enough water to wash our hair, allowing one to pour a trickle of water while the other scrubbed the layers of compacted grime from his own head.
So, we plunked ourselves down in that spot of shade—no wider than our blankets—under our newly designated tree and then chased that shady spot around that tree for about 90 percent of our waking hours. Of course we had no idea how long we would be staying at what Al Jabbar, one of our guards, some days later called, with a wry smile, “Camp Canada.” It was in every respect a good camp, where we were well protected from both wind and sun. Also, at Camp Canada we were neither too near nor too far from our keepers. For a while we had our own fire and we built our own latrines. Generally, we were largely left alone and were soon able to establish rules and routines, which mitigated the constant stress of our captivity.
But where were we? Until we could at least make a stab at establishing that, any thought of escape would be completely abstract, not to say foolhardy. We had tried to keep some track of where we were headed and how far we had travelled on the way north, but really to no avail. All our observation told us was that, after about fifty-six hours of hard driving, we had arrived at TV Camp and now we were four hours farther north, perhaps a hundred kilometres. Thus we had reached something like a thousand kilometres into the Sahara desert: the distance between Chicago and Atlanta, Paris and Madrid, or Fredericton and Ottawa.
We were not even certain that we were in Mali. Perhaps we had entered southern Algeria? But we didn’t think so, more in view of geostrategic considerations than as a result of any real understanding of how far north we had come. We assumed, therefore, that we were held somewhere within a vast area perhaps as much as 250 kilometres wide, stretching parallel to the Algerian border about 500 kilometres southeastward from just east of Taoudenni toward Tessalit, an area about the size of Portugal. It was therefore abundantly clear to us from the outset that we were not going to be able to walk to safety, even if we could get away from our kidnappers.
At Camp Canada we heard on four or five occasions, always during the day, the distinctive beat of heavy turbo-prop engines (Hercules C-130s, perhaps), sounding as though they were not very far off, somewhere to the south. The first time we heard it we were convinced that the cavalry was coming. When we looked about in panic, though, we saw our captors going methodically about their business, unconcerned by this evident and foreign racket. I could only conclude that they were used to it, and that we were located relatively near some irregularly used airstrip (perhaps the tiny community of Tessalit itself). If so, the airstrip orientation was such that, grouped against the wadi wall, we could not see the aircraft on either approach or take-off and, more germane, they couldn’t see us. But sound propagation across the open desert is limited so we must have been relatively close, perhaps effectively hiding very nearly in plain sight.
A camp was merely a place where we stopped in the depths of the Sahara. But the term had nothing to do with any i
mage that might be conjured up by a Westerner on hearing that word. There were no buildings or tents, no furniture, forks, plates, lights, cots, or anything resembling a toilet. And no women.
We were under neither roofs nor canvas, though for a while we were able to make a shelter out of a tattered bit of plastic tarpaulin. The only tents we saw were for the dreaded filming of videos. Thus we slept in the open, usually under an acacia thorn tree that offered varying degrees of protection from the implacable desert sun during the day and allowed the caterpillars to drop directly onto our faces at night.
Camps were chosen principally for the availability of a modicum of shade. A bonus was a little protection from the wind. On several occasions, though, camp was simply where we stopped along our route on an open stretch of desert where, usually well after dark, everyone threw blankets on the sand and slept by the trucks, before setting off again the next day at first light. The selection of camps seemed to have little to do with the degree to which the location was concealed or concealable.
Although we were ill prepared for the extreme conditions of the Sahara, Louis and I convinced ourselves that we were relatively lucky. Surely high temperatures are easier to suffer outdoors than while imprisoned in a rank, stifling cell with a fetid, overflowing bucket close at hand. We saw the stars at night and watched the moon wax and wane, and we stared at the contrails of high-flying jets carrying free, happy people—well into their second cocktail—to and from Paris, London, Rome, and Berlin. We discreetly waved at satellites and observed the antics of insects, reptiles, and migrating birds. Pretty basic exercise was readily available, and Louis and I were together and could speak candidly—if carefully—to each other. All things considered, the conditions of our imprisonment were preferable to many alternatives.
On arrival at Camp Canada in late December the weather was cold at night, usually, we estimated, in the single digits when we awoke before dawn. It rained eight or ten times in those early weeks, twice fairly heavily.
We had been captured as we were returning from what we had expected would be a relaxed Sunday outing in very warm weather and were dressed the way most Canadian men might be dressed on any Sunday in July or August. Louis, an efficient packer and traveller, was wearing the belted pants of the suit he wore to official meetings and a wash-and-wear, long-sleeved blue shirt, underwear and nylon socks, and his black leather loafers, along with the ball cap he had bought in a rural Niger market the day before. I had on what I wear most weekends (Mary would say most days): a long-sleeved khaki cotton shirt, tan trousers, a sturdy leather belt, light cotton socks, cotton underwear, my ball cap—without which my thinly thatched head would already have been fried to a crisp—and moccasin-type, slip-on brown leather lightweight shoes.
We wore these things twenty-four hours a day as they progressively fell to pieces. Our clothing was manifestly inadequate for the cool temperatures of the desert at night and particularly so when it was both cold and wet. My pants were the first to go, wearing through at the seat. As my posterior became visible, our prudish jailers sent one of the children over with a pair of cast-off, calf-length, clam digger–style trousers with a cloth tie around the waist. I still have a fetching indelible tan from mid-calf to the sock line.
Our shirts began to disintegrate next and were much repaired by Louis, who could see well enough to perform that task, using a needle and thread supplied by our captors. Eventually, my tattered shirt was replaced with a many-holed, hand-me-down jelabiyah tunic.
After some weeks the heat was such that the ball caps offered insufficient protection to our ears and necks even when we kept such exposure to an absolute minimum. Further, our kidnappers were concerned that ball caps looked “too Western,” so we were given lengths of grey cotton and, eventually, became competent turban tiers and big fans of that headgear for such circumstances. However prosaic, socks and underwear were our most immediate clothing requirement, bearing in mind that we were only rarely allowed to wash. Deteriorating shoes presented the most serious challenge to our health, and Louis’ skills as a cobbler were stretched to the limit as he sought, day after day, to keep our footwear in sufficient repair to allow us to maintain our walking regime: something we considered essential to both our physical and mental well-being.
Using thorns, bits of scrounged rubber, strands from twists of plastic rope, and pink, heavy thread provided by our kidnappers for our clothing, with a lot of painstaking work Louis kept the soles of our shoes more or less attached to their uppers. But the holes were inevitably getting larger, a few tearing through, and the leather of the upper parts was becoming ever less able to withstand being worked.
We often wondered whether AQIM was purposely keeping us in inadequate footwear to make any attempt at escape the more improbable. This theory gained credence when we subsequently learned that a big, very full bag they had buried in full view of our position had contained numerous pairs of new boots. We had observed that, a couple of days prior to their caching that sack, almost all our abductors were sporting new and sturdy hiking boots. Despite what must have been our annoying nattering about our need for new shoes, none had been offered to us.
As we settled in to Camp Canada, keeping warm at night and in the morning was our most immediate challenge. Up to this point we had simply crashed, exhausted, onto a blanket for twenty minutes or a few hours of desperately needed rest wherever we were so directed. But now we had to think about how best to proceed over what might be a very long haul. We had survived that horrible initial phase; now the challenge was to organize things so that we could do the distance, whatever that was to be. Instinct, which had served us well, would have to give way at least in some part to planning and calculation.
How should we make our sleeping arrangements? We had a blanket each, well, really one thin blanket and one cheap summer-weight quilt. We could each wrap ourselves in one of those, or we could put one on the ground and the other atop us both and thereby hope to generate additional warmth. We chose the second, deciding that our captors already viewed us as moral degenerates, so why disabuse them? Even this arrangement was far from adequate. We still shivered through the night and we would each wear one of the coverings around our shoulders as a shawl for our pre-dawn walk until the sun warmed things up by about eight in the morning.
Our kidnappers knew we were suffering from the cold and out of a desire, we guessed, to preserve their assets, or to gain points with Allah, or perhaps even out of sympathy, in our first days at Camp Canada we were lent additional items. First, Omar Two brought us a thick, deep-red, very large rug that looked to me as if it were Afghan. This was followed by a large, plastic woven mat from Suleiman, a young man from the Mediterranean coast. Then on 24 December, five days after our arrival at Camp Canada, Belmokhtar and his staff showed up, bearing all kinds of “gifts” and an exciting message, and the two seemed to be closely related.
With smiles and a little formality Ahmed unwittingly played Santa, distributing gifts: first, a blanket and jacket, still in their plastic wrappings, for each of us. Then cookies and candies, and a cherished bar of soap, tiny toothbrush, and minuscule tube of toothpaste each. The two synthetic, hairy blankets were large and welcome. One depicted animals, the other, tulips in various shades of grey. The jackets were windbreakers lined with fleecy material. The zippers of these windbreakers soon gave out, but they were a happy addition to our sparse wardrobes. We wore them every night and into the mid-morning until rising temperatures in the spring made that unnecessary. With the mat against the sand, followed by the rug, then the two blankets on top, we were warm enough and, on all but the coldest nights, we could roll the thin quilt into a pillow. The grubby green blanket was returned by our captors to its use as cover for a heavy machine gun. From Day 11, Christmas Eve, keeping warm at night was no longer a significant problem.
Keeping dry, however, remained an issue until the second or third of January when, in the midst of a heavy rainstorm, Abdul Rahman and Omar One arrived in the middle of the n
ight with an irregular, torn remnant of blue plastic tarp full of holes, which we hastily threw over our sodden blankets. From that point, the rain issue and the more benign sandstorms became manageable.
Sand was in and on everything, and we ate prodigious quantities. We were continually covered in a greasy, smelly slurry of sand and sweat. It was caked onto our scalps, packed into our ears, and seemed to collect in the places where it would be most uncomfortable. We were desperate to wash, but that happened all too rarely. Normally, the sand invasion was manageable but sandstorms were always a challenge, and I was surprised that our eyes did not suffer more. We experienced three major sandstorms and four or five less severe but still difficult ones. They were always dramatic; at worst it was difficult to breathe, and impossible to see or move even a short distance.
The tarp unleashed many of Louis’ hidden talents. First, he’s a natural scrounger. He would have put James Clavell’s King Rat to shame. He picked up and pocketed everything he saw: bits of string, rubber, pieces of cardboard drifting on the wind from their “kitchen” to our position, Mylar bags that had contained powdered milk, discarded and tangled pieces of plastic rope, glass jars, plastic bottles, simple tools (needles, a leather punch, a Second World War entrenching tool)—discarded or not, borrowed and not returned—containers of every kind. This talent served us well. Second, Louis’ Boy Scout training, coupled with his mariner’s instincts, came nicely together in erecting a variety of jury-rigged shelters with that bit of tarp, held together with a colourful array of fragments of rope attached with dazzling knots.
A Season in Hell Page 9
