Lorinda Stewart - One Day Closer: A Mothers Quest to Bring Her Kidnapped Daughter Home

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Simon & Schuster Canada

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Copyright 2017 by Lorinda Stewart

All photos are courtesy of the author, unless otherwise specified. Photos 13, 810, and 13 are courtesy of Jon Lindhout. Photo 16 is courtesy of Nigel Brennan.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Canada Subsidiary Rights Department, 166 King Street East, Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 1J3, Canada.

This Simon & Schuster Canada edition October 2017

SIMON & SCHUSTER CANADA and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-268-3216 or .

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Stewart, Lorinda, author

One day closer : a mothers quest to bring her kidnapped daughter home / Lorinda Stewart.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-5011-4318-2 (hardback).ISBN 978-1-5011-4315-1 (html)

1. Lindhout, AmandaKidnapping, 2008. 2. Stewart, Lorinda.

3. Hostage negotiations. 4. MothersCanadaBiography. 5. HostagesSomaliaBiography. I. Title.

HV6604.S662L56 2017 364.15'4092 C2016-906515-4

C2016-906516-2

Interior design by Carly Loman

Jacket Design by David Gee

Jacket Images Getty, Alamy

Photographs Of Lorinda Stewart and Amanda Lindhout by National Speakers Bureau

ISBN 978-1-5011-4318-2

ISBN 978-1-5011-4315-1 (ebook)

To my mother and my five childrenMark, Amanda, Nathaniel, Janet, and Tiffanywho have taught me that love has no limits and ultimately it is always love that brings us home. You are my heart.

Janet, although you left this physical world while I was writing this book, love is eternal.

The First Nations man leaned in to my right ear and said, Your name shall be Motherwind, because you have a Mothers heart, and like the wind you can be very gentle but also very powerful. So powerful that you can change the face of the rock.

Exactly one month after I received the gift of my native name, I would need that force.

L ORINDA S TEWART

O n the day my daughter Amanda Lindhout was kidnapped by outlaws in SomaliaAugust 23, 2008my life split into two parts: Before and After. That was Day 1, the day that catapulted me into a nightmare few parents can begin to imagine. Amanda, at age twenty-seven, was captured in the African country the United Nations has called the most lawless in the world.

In the seven years preceding the day that changed everything, Amanda was an intrepid, brave, spirited world traveler. She loved the intoxicating highs and freedoms of offbeat travel. Not for my daughter the paved roads and postcard sites beloved of tourists. Before going to Somalia, she had already traveled to more than fifty countries.

Amandas first traveling adventure to Venezuela at the age of nineteen with her boyfriend, Jamie, ignited a seemingly insatiable desire to keep exploring, to see and experience as many countries and cultures as possible. On their next trip, Amanda and Jamie traveled to Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Amanda has always been a gifted storyteller, and as she related her travels to me upon returning, I could almost see, feel, and taste my way along with her. I roared with laughter and felt her frustration at the misunderstandings caused by language barriers and cultural differences. I recalled the stack of worn and dog-eared National Geographic magazines that she had kept beside her bed when she was young. It made me happy to watch her realizing her dreams of travel.

Shortly after she and Jamie returned from Asia, they broke up. Amanda and I had conversations about how that would change her travels in the future. She was adjusting to living as a single person and sometimes expressed fears of being alone and traveling on her own. This opened a new possibility to both of us. I had more freedom to travel now that my children were all grown, so Amanda and I went on an incredible trip together to Thailand and Malaysia, after which Amanda continued solo into Myanmar and India.

She was scared of the solo part, and I was scared for her, too. After all, I am a mother. Any mother will understand that I worried for Amanda, even as I respected and admired her incredible wanderlust. And I couldnt help but be proud of her tenacity. I didnt know then that Amanda would come to love traveling on her own or that this same tenacity would lead her into dangerous countries and war zones.

After that trip, Amandas desire for exploration deepened, and she veered into unstable countries dominated by darker realities. Most often she traveled solo, and she sought assignments as a journalist covering war, poverty, and corruption, as she attempted to tell the stories of victims who had no voice. She willingly risked her life to capture the frontline stories she felt our complacent world needed to know about. I admired her for that then, just as I do now.

Over the course of seven years, Amanda established a pattern: she would work two jobs in Calgary as a bar server or waitress, living penuriously, with little social life, until she saved enough for her next trip. She would travel for months until her money ran out, then return to Calgary to repeat the cycle. She had made an art of living frugally, and she could stretch a dime as far as humanly possible, allowing her to travel for longer periods of time.

I often found myself defending her choices when confronted by people who thought she was crazy for risking her life for people half a world away, people she didnt even know. I had come to realize long before that my daughter did not belong to me. She belonged to the world, and God knows the world needs more people like her. I was determined to support the shining light I saw in her.

For my part, during those years, I learned how to remain sane and not become crazed with fear at the what-ifs. To do so, I had to stand vigilant over my imagination. I tried very hard not think of the risks involved when Amanda was abroad. That was not an easy task, especially when phone calls with her were punctuated by gunfire in the background and laced with her commentary on bombs and mortars exploding nearby or in neighborhoods she had recently visited. I remember her dangerous time in Afghanistanland of roadside bombs, suicidal terrorists, and the Talibans contempt for women, expressed in harsh sharia law. After that came Ethiopia and Egypt, then a second stint in Afghanistan, where a Global News team, shocked that as a freelancer she had no defense gear, kindly outfitted her with a flak jacket and helmet while she worked on stories for Afghan Scene and Combat and Survival . All this time, I forced a running narrative in my head: I would worry only if I knew something bad was actually happening to herthat was nearly impossible for a mother, but I really tried.