TWO FORMER BRITISH SPECIAL Forces soldiers with wide chests and salt-and-pepper hair had been tasked with being our guardians. The plan was to escort us from the dusty Libyan border to the Radisson Blu hotel in the Tunisian seaside resort town of Djerba, then catch a flight to Tunis, and eventually out of the country. In the moments after our release, any logistical tasks—even purchasing a plane ticket and going to the airport—seemed too overwhelming to take on.
Before we reached the hotel in Djerba, we stopped at a Western-style supermarket to purchase necessities to get us through the next few days. The massive grocery store—a North African Kmart—was like an emotional oasis. There was something reassuring about owning things. I reveled in selecting my own toothbrush, shampoo, face moisturizer, body lotion, and cheap, lacy Middle Eastern lingerie. I knew Paul would bring a suitcase full of my things to Tunis. But for some reason I wanted to use my freedom to buy something. Anything.
At the relatively extravagant Radisson Blu, the New York Times security team arranged for a physician to look us over for signs of assault. I was weirdly ashamed that the seven days of physical torture—getting punched in the face and having my wrists and ankles bound—had left no visible marks on my body, save for little red marks where the zip ties had dug into my wrists. Without physical evidence, I felt that there was no proof of how much I had endured.
Eventually we landed in Tunis. I walked through the baggage-claim area and out the doors, to where Paul and Nicki, Tyler’s girlfriend, were waiting for us. I collapsed into Paul’s arms. For seven days I hadn’t known if I would ever be able to hold him again. The relief, of course, was inexplicable—just like the morning in Pakistan when I looked up out of my morphine-induced haze to see Paul entering my hospital room with a clipboard after my car accident. I knew he would take care of me forever.
I looked around for my colleagues and prison mates from the past week, Anthony, Tyler, and Steve. We would be bound for life by this experience. As I hugged Paul, I heard in my mind Steve’s voice, Everybody here?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
CHAPTER 12
He Was a Brother I Miss Dearly
After I got out of Libya, Paul and I went to Goa for four days to decompress. The Zen destination that Indian friends had recommended to Paul was full, but the owner graciously offered us his private home on the resort grounds by a small creek. We were overcome with exhaustion. What might have been a celebratory, passionate several days was, in fact, a somber hibernation. Neither of us cried. We didn’t make love nonstop. We simply held each other, kissed tenderly, slept, walked, swam, ate, drank, and slept some more.
That handful of days was enough for Paul and me to recenter ourselves before heading to New York; by that time, after so many years of travel and distance, five days together was the equivalent of five weeks of rest. My colleagues and I had to debrief the Times and do press interviews. We didn’t realize it while in captivity, but our kidnapping had made a lot of news, and we had been asked to appear on several news programs and talk shows. Our first stop was the New York Times.
Walking into the shiny Times building, I was ashamed at what we had put our editors through with our kidnapping. I knew that countless hours of time and energy had gone into securing our release, and I steeled myself for reproachful glances. Journalists who got kidnapped several times were not necessarily heroes in our business. Bravery was one thing, recklessness another.
I went to find Michele McNally, the paper’s director of photography, with whom I had worked for almost a decade and whose job it was to decide whether or not to send correspondents to this war or that revolution. It was one of the most stressful jobs at the paper, and she cared for us as though we were her children. When she saw me, she crumbled in my arms. Everyone in the photo department and others from the foreign desk surrounded us, took pictures, and clapped and cried. Everyone celebrated us. I felt like an idiot for having caused so much grief.
And while I thought I was stable, seemingly meaningless statements or normal emotional reactions from friends or family turned me into a quivering mess. The four of us shuffled from a brief appearance on the Today show to an hour-long session—like therapy—with Anderson Cooper on CNN. We trudged dutifully from interview to interview because we felt, as journalists, it would have been hypocritical to turn down interviews with our peers. We spoke collectively about the guilt and sorrow we felt for possibly ushering our young driver, Mohammed, to his death. I spoke openly about being sexually assaulted but not raped; it was important to me to set the record straight, publicly, about what happened to me in captivity. We had been completely at the Libyans’ mercy. But we had lived. I felt lucky. I had interviewed suffering people all over the world, and they never felt like victims. They felt like survivors. I had learned from them.