Amanda Lindhout book reveals Somalia captivity despair

Monday, August 19, 2013

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Amanda Lindhout, after a year of being starved, beaten and sexually brutalized in Somali captivity, says she was on the verge of suicide.

After about a year of being starved, beaten and sexually brutalized, Amanda Lindhout decided it was time to kill herself.

The Alberta woman, taken hostage in Somalia in August 2008, says she reached her breaking point after spending three days trussed up like an animal, her hands and feet pulled so tightly behind her back that she could barely breathe.

When her captors did untie her, they told her it was only a reprieve. They promised to use the same torture technique on her again each day until they got their ransom money.

Left alone, Lindhout resolved she was better off dead. She would take a rusty razor to her wrists.

But as she held the blade in her hand, a small brown bird flew into the doorway of the room where she was being held. It hopped on the dirty floor, looked at her and flew away. It was the first bird she’d seen since shortly after she was taken.

“I’d always believed in signs … and now, when it most mattered, I’d had one,” she writes. “I would live and go home. It didn’t matter what came next or what I had to endure. I would make it through.”

In her memoir, set for release next month, the 32-year-old details the brutal 15 months she spent in captivity along with Australian photographer Nigel Brennan. A House in the Sky is co-written with Sara Corbett, a contributing writer with the New York Times Magazine.

The book reveals how Lindhout and Brennan’s families eventually gave up on the Canadian and Australian governments and co-ordinated the pair’s release themselves. The final price: $1.2 million.

About $600,000 went as ransom to the kidnappers, who had originally asked for $3 million. The rest was spent on other costs, including a $2,000-per-day fee for a private hostage negotiator.

The two families split the bill evenly. While Brennan’s family was more well off, Lindhout’s parents needed donations to come up with their half.

Lindhout admits she was naive, travelling to a dangerous country for the thrill of adventure. The former cocktail waitress had saved her tips to backpack around the world before turning to freelance journalism to further fund her travels.

On earlier travels to Afghanistan, she had sold a story to her hometown newspaper, the Red Deer Advocate, and some photos to an Afghanistan magazine. She decided to take a chance on heading to Somalia.

“The reasons to do it seemed straightforward. Somalia was a mess. There were stories there: a raging war, an impending famine, religious extremists and a culture that had been largely shut out of sight.”

She knew it was dangerous but hoped it would launch her career. She called Brennan, a former boyfriend, and invited him to take photos while she did TV news.

They had only been in Somalia a few days when they got into a hired car and headed for a refugee camp outside Mogadishu. On the way, they were snatched by armed men.

Lindhout later learned the group had been watching their hotel and were actually targeting a writer and a photographer working for National Geographic. The kidnappers were surprised to end up with her.

Lindhout and Brennan had entirely different experiences in captivity. Brennan was kept in a room with windows, furniture and books to read. Lindhout was holed up in a dark room with rats. It was simple: he was a man; she was a woman.

Back in Canada, Lindhout’s family feared she was being sexually assaulted, but Canadian officials assured them Muslims were unlikely to do such a thing. However, she says one captor did routinely force himself on her.

Things got worse when she and Brennan tried to escape in early 2009. They ran to a nearby mosque for refuge but some of their captors caught up with them. No one there would help, except one older woman.

She clung to Lindhout as the men dragged her hostage out. Lindhout says she later heard a gunshot; she never learned the fate of her helper.

The kidnappers blamed Lindhout for the escape, even though it had been Brennan’s idea. The next day, in a prayer room, they put a sheet over her head, stripped down her clothes and took turns violating her body.

In November 2009, Lindhout was told she and Brennan were being sold to a rival group. As they were being passed over to strangers, Lindhout clung to a car door and had to be pulled away, screaming.

Moments later she realized they were actually being rescued. A ransom had been paid.

Lindhout was taken to a hospital in Kenya. She had broken teeth, aching ribs from being kicked and a skin fungus across her face. Her hair was falling out. She was malnourished and had trouble walking because she had been shackled for so long. Back in Canada she underwent extensive treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

What kept her going for 459 days in captivity?

Lindhout writes she got through the most painful times by constructing, in her mind, a house in the sky where she got to eat whatever she wanted and embraced her friends and family.

She made a promise to herself that, if she were ever freed, she would try to honour the woman who tried to save her at the mosque. In 2010, she founded the non-profit Global Enrichment Foundation to help support education for women and girls in Somalia and Kenya.

Now living in Canmore, Alta., Lindhout says she still thinks about her kidnappers but tries not to hate them, recognizing they are products of a violent environment.

“Forgiving is not an easy thing to do. Some days it’s no more than a distant point on the horizon. … Some days I get there and other days I don’t.

“More than anything else, it’s what has helped me move forward with my life.”

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