B009G3EPMQ EBOK (23 page)

“. . . To get you out.”

“Okay. Um, is the family there, any of them?”

“. . . No. No. But we are in contact. And they’re doing just fine, Jess. They’re all together, where they are.”

What did he just say?
They’re all together, where they are?
My dad now lives in Virginia, my sister in Pennsylvania, and my brother in Tennessee. Erik’s family lives in Sweden. What’s he trying to say?

“Okay then.”

Erik’s voice takes on his negotiating tone. “But no one will be able to get in touch with us, any of the family, Jess . . .”

“I know,” I tell him. And I do know, now. As of about two minutes ago, I completely get it about not talking to loved ones on these calls. It’s a form of psychological torture that I’m certain would eventually break anybody who’s got a working set of emotions. But Erik’s warning is clear. There’ll be no more family calls; we have to win at this.

“But, Erik,” I add, “they need to understand, the leader here—he’s insane.”

“Oh, yeah. We understand that. But, ah, is the communicator for your side around? Jabreel? Or someone?”

“Yes, the leader is coming. Here he comes now. They’re going to put you on speaker phone.”

Abdi stumbles over to us still half asleep, face hanging forward, eyes puffy and nearly shut, chewing one of last night’s leftover
khat
stems. He chews and drools and listens while Jabreel steps close to me and I put the phone in speaker mode.

•  •  •

Erik made the call to Jessica while painfully aware it might be the last time they ever spoke. Still, there was nothing to do but try to
exchange a few pieces of vital information as quickly as possible. Now while the kidnappers’ leader came to listen in, there were no good choices. The only option was to stall while justifying that stalling to the kidnappers, hoping to get them to come back to earth with their ransom demands before the victims’ health was broken.

The sound of Jessica’s voice made him want to pour out his heart to her, but there was the extremely sticky job at hand of confirming to these fearful drug-addled thugs that the NGO’s official communicator, Mohammed, was actually speaking for their side with Erik’s full support. This process would never get anywhere if the kidnappers didn’t believe in whoever they communicated with on their ransom calls. Erik had to confirm Mohammed’s validity, show no fear to the kidnappers, and also make it clear to them that from now on neither Erik nor anyone else on their side would speak,
except
Mohammed. The kidnappers could not be allowed to begin worming their communications into the family structure. It felt like working on a bomb squad. He was certain of nothing except that he couldn’t allow the bizarre nature of the conversation to get to him.

The kidnappers’ phone was still in the speaker mode. Erik heard footsteps approach in the background and then the sounds of someone taking the phone.

“Allo?” From the first word, Jabreel’s gruff voice was inflected with a thick version of the Somali accent Erik knew so well.

“Yes, hello?” Erik prompted him, without introducing himself.

“All of the others are—they are—the leader of the militia only wants to know you. This is the reason for calling you.”

“Okay. Well, if he needs to hear it again, I can verify that Mohammed is our families’ communicator. He is the only one with information, the only one you will gain anything from.”

“Okay. So now we, the militia, can verify the family, you are
family, can communicate this one time, just for now, with Mohammed. So is okay now, we will be finish with negotiation.”

“Okay. And if this is Jabreel, I hope that you are taking good care of Jessica and Poul. Because we’re doing
everything
that we can to get them back. So, we cannot do more on our side, and you now have to do all
you
can on your side.”

“Okay, okay, I must tell you I am not one of them. Very difficult to reason with them. I must do as I am told. But if I have got the certification now, everything it will be soon. And they will come home to you as soon as possible.”

“Okay, that is very good, Jabreel, and I’m happy to hear that, because we need for Jessica and Poul to come back. We need to have them back here at home with us. Do you understand me? They came to your country to help your people. So now you must use your manners in the Somali custom and treat them as guests. Be nice to them, Jabreel.”

Through his foot-thick guttural accent and the crackling of a remote connection, Erik heard: “Yes I must be careful because I was just the NGO working that’s why they want me here helping. And anyway, to thank you for your calling, and to listen to all parties. Now everything it will be easy to come home to you for your wife.”

“Okay, I’m very happy about that. And now, I think, Jabreel, [after this verification] you can again talk with Mohammed here.”

Erik knew this was all he was supposed to say. Make the verification to them and get off the line before they can engage in any conversation. He found he couldn’t go along with the restriction.

“And Jessica!” he called out. “If you’re hearing this, know that we’re praying for you and doing everything we can to get you and Poul back! And I’m . . . we’re all so happy to hear directly from both you and Poul today. But . . . but this . . . will be the last time, Jessica. Until you come out.”

He couldn’t look at anyone while he spoke the words or his throat would have seized. He had to trust that she would understand that this hard stance was purely a negotiating tactic.

He had already lied to her during this call by saying her family wasn’t around, when in truth they were all right there in Nairobi, waiting with their lives on hold. And of course they wanted Jessica to know they were there for her, after coming all that distance. They wanted very much to communicate any sense of strength to her they could. But if he told her that, he had to assume someone else would hear it. And those men had made it plain they would try to put her family in play if they could.

Erik pitched his voice at a stronger level. “Mohammed will call you back in ten minutes! I’m now leaving the phone. I will not be on the phone again. So, Jabreel, please take care of my wife, and please take care of Poul.”

“Okay, but I am very, very, important. I must be careful. I must be careful. For the importance of my work, I must—”

“Yes, yes,” Erik cut him off. “Very good. Mohammed will call you back in ten minutes. So I’ll say good-bye now. I love you, Jessica, if you can hear this. Take care, both you and Poul.”

“Okay, I am listen to you. See? You love her, I must take care of her. Yes? Thank you very much.”

Jabreel hung up and it was done. Erik knew Abdi had been listening in the background and had heard the confirmation. Most important, Erik had been assured by Jessica herself, not some third party, that she wasn’t being harmed.

But to make their efforts effective and keep things from getting worse, he had to lie to her at a time when he knew without a doubt it would have given her real comfort to think of her sister, her brother, and her dad keeping the vigil for her, from right there in Nairobi. If something happened to her and this was the last conversation they had, he couldn’t see how he could live with the knowledge that he lied about something so important to her. Even
if they got her back without a hitch, he had to hope she would understand when he tried to explain the deceit.

She sounded good to him, though. He could live another day on the sound of her voice alone. It nearly made him laugh out loud to think of the stern tone she took with her kidnappers, demanding they go wake up their leader to listen over the speaker phone while Jessica made sure Mohammed got verified and negotiations reopened.

And as strange and unexpected as it was for Poul to jump on the line with his reassurances about Jessica, Erik was grateful to hear she wasn’t being harmed. Nobody had touched her.

Jessica:

I was getting better at turning off my instinct to scream. There’s nothing subtle to the technique. You know how to squeeze a tight fist? Just do it with your whole body.

When I stood there and listened to Poul on the phone assuring Erik “she hasn’t been touched,” the sensation was like being half encased in ice with the other half covered in flames. Because it was true I wanted Erik to hear that. I wanted to give him the mental picture of me in a reasonable state of safety. At the same time, it wasn’t completely true, and my abuser was standing right there beside me, nodding along:
no, no, she hasn’t been touched . . .

Even someone who lives a nonviolent life, as I have always done, has to practice the art of remaining both passive and silent in moments like this. I must restrain the urge to claw at someone’s eyes. I must ignore the desire to let him go right ahead and kill me, if he chooses, so long as I can take his eyeballs, first—and his other balls, second.

I didn’t need to stand there and smile, but I knew to keep my face neutral. These kidnappers made it plain how they hated the tears. Crying caused them to poke at me with the barrels of their
loaded guns. The first time one of them surprised me by shooting into the air a few inches from my head it practically knocked me out of my skin while it drilled home the ease with which any one of those things would spew death. And with the possibility of accidental discharge, it was a massive risk to do anything that would cause one of these goons to turn toward you with his weapon.

I had to learn to repress even the most basic of human urges, which would be to run from these brutal men, from their weapons, from their contaminated bare hands, from their shit-stained food bowls. My leg muscles were perpetually tight, as if waiting for me to fall asleep so they could propel me out of there before I realized what they were doing.

I hadn’t been raped yet, but I could see it was now a matter of limited time. It was like the sound of a large incoming wave rolling toward a beach at night. But in the dark there would be no way of telling when the wave would break. Even so, it was coming, as evidenced by a noticeable decay of Jabreel’s respect for my personal space. I had to avoid alienating the only English-speaking communicator here. He knew that, too. He traded on it. His unwanted attentions were more insistent every day, creating that old feeling of being slowly squeezed in the giant vise of someone else’s sexual pressure. I think this is something a lot of women understand.

After that one call with Erik, they chose to punish us by separating Poul and me completely. That went on for two weeks, and during that time I saw no sign of anyone besides the
khat
zombies. But Abdi, it turned out, was also circling me. He began to sleep next to me on my mat. I felt certain he was inching closer each night. He was a shark sizing up its prey. I knew him well enough by then to be certain he would kill me in a fit of rage if I humiliated him in front of the others by screaming at him and fighting him off.

But Jabreel, the lesser physical threat, was the one I actually feared more. I felt there was no choice but to allow him to take
advantage of me, up to a point, for the singular purpose of getting us out of there. The art of the dance was in maintaining a line that was not to be crossed.

Jabreel sort of played along. Once I woke up to find him sitting next to me. His hand was reaching under my blanket and touching my legs. I pulled away, “turning in my sleep,” and he faded off—for the moment.

So we found ourselves in a twisted and lethal version of a game: the casual avoidance of the sort of unwanted sexual advances that continue long past the point where the abuser might credibly claim a “misunderstanding.” Nobody was misunderstanding anything in my little corner of our makeshift camp.

His erratic behavior and level of drug use had long since convinced me he was capable of destroying half of this group’s investment of money and labor, namely me, over sex. I could tell something was holding him back from cracking open in a full-out sexual attack, but short of that, he behaved like a Billy goat crossed with a whiney adolescent.

Whenever Jabreel was in our company and had no opportunity to misbehave, he liked to draw attention by spinning tales of his important NGO work, expounding on the vast difference between himself and “these pirates.” But even in those obvious situations where I was a hands-off commodity, he tended to simper around me in childish intoxication. He was developing “hungry eyes,” staring at me while he stretched a toothless smile across his face and aimed it at me. It was like staring into a gaping wound.

“Jesses. I come America live with you.”

“No, Jabreel. I keep telling you, I’m married.”

“I live with you and Erik . . . you hear me, Jesses? You hear me?”

“Yes. I hear you, Jabreel. I’m still married. I love my husband.”

“But I love Jesses. When Colonel talk to me about you, we call you ‘lei,’ you know that? In Somali is ‘golden.’ I marry to you, all these men wish to be me!”

“Jabreel, think. Think! If you come to America, how will you get your
khat
?”

Blank face. Good. That shut him up while he mulled it over. The silence wouldn’t last, but out there we were taking what we could get.

•  •  •

After that quick phone call, we spent the next several days camping at that same nowhere site. We maintained the usual routine of being forced to hide under tree foliage by day and then force-walked out into the open at night, there to sort-of-sleep while I kept one eye open for Jabreel. When he came slithering around, the only control I could exert was to ignore his advances as much as possible, and then when ignoring him didn’t work, resist him with a gut-wrenching show of false humility.

“No, no.” I was careful to speak in a soothing tone. “I’m married, Jabreel. So are you.”

When he began to shrug at the mention of his wife, I switched to a religious appeal. “What does your religion tell you, Jabreel?” I hoped to engage him as a man of faith, since he did, after all, pray five times a day.

Now on the heels of seeing my hopes of having a baby vanish, I was dodging impregnation by a man with a strict prayer schedule—or any of these other men. To me, the cruel irony of a forced pregnancy from this would be too foul to endure.