Perfect Hell

1

Somewhere in Somalia

Laura

There are medications are dispensed to control the unease that prisoners develop from being chained inside tiny dark rooms, but there's no way for me to have them here. At this point, there is an incessant ringing that seems to have installed itself permanently in my ears. Perhaps it's a result of the dreadful noise of the bombs that seem to go off daily due to the various civil wars in the area, driven mainly by religious conflict. These wars have been present in Somalia for many years. Half a million people have been killed here, and today I am crouching in a cave, just waiting to become part of that number; hoping, perhaps, to become more than a just another statistic that will blend with the dust, be dispersed among the dead, and forgotten.

My heart has beat irregularly for months now, and this sense of impending doom terrifies me every damned day.

I have no idea exactly where I am or who my captors are, as their faces are always hidden behind dark scarves. They always leave me in the dead of night, and if they move me, I am always blindfolded, making it impossible to see who is around me or even where we are.

My long brown hair is hidden beneath an abaya — a thick piece of satin which covers my face — and the only thing that is revealed are my brown, and extremely tired, eyes.

What was to be fifteen days of reports on the new Somali generations born in the midst of religious conflict has turned into months of anguish and uncertainty. It was to be the story of the year; the professional realization of a true wartime journalist.

A fellow journalist who accompanied me on this trip as my photographer was taken captive with me. However, we were held in separate places. His name is Christian, and, like me, he truly loves what he does, and our mutual passion for journalistic adventures brought us here.

His family is well off and ought to be moving heaven and earth to rescue their son from his imprisonment. I don't know why he hasn't been released. Maybe they're negotiating. These negotiations can be long and detailed; this isn't the first time they've kidnapped Westerners. I confess that I never imagined I might be a victim, and this all still seems very absurd.

I know that they're slow to get in touch with the government. Just this week I was forced to kneel down twice and go through acts of torture in front of a video camera. They made me read a letter supporting their faith and their cause, and begging for mercy, asking that they not cut off my head. It was only then I was allowed to show my face. They want an obscene amount of money that my family would never be able to pay.

The fact is, my mother is dead, and my father, a retired Navy engineer, isn't someone I can count on. He has Parkinson's disease, and other health problems. The only thing I can really count on is the U.S. government, which only now should be getting the information that I'm still alive. It's likely that negotiations are already becoming a failure.

I've always been my father's caretaker, and to come here, I had to put him in a care facility. He didn't sound well the last time I called, before I was captured by these men. I wonder every day if he is being well taken care of. It makes me feel terrible to imagine him there with no one who loves him. That's what kills me, being stuck in this place day after day without the slightest news.

I left him in that place, but I never imagined he'd spend all this time without me. I've been isolated from the rest of the world for all these many torturous months. Our desire to score a huge story became, in the end, a huge nightmare.

I've lost count of how many people were hiding here, and it is my opinion that my lucidity is fading away, painfully, slowly. My dry skin and the lean, almost gaunt appearance of my arms and legs reveal that I've been here quite a long time and yet there is still more to go. I could probably die at any moment.