Robert Fowler - Season in Hell

T his is a personal story of a dramatic 130-day period in my life and despite my persistent use of the first person plural, I trust the reader will understand that at no point am I purporting to speak for my friend and fellow hostage, Louis Guay.

Louis decided not to play a role in producing this account. As I submitted this manuscript, he was still a public servant in the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), and he continued to be governed by the obligations that bound him in that capacity. I must make clear, therefore, that all the reflections and opinions in this memoir, indeed all the recollections, are mine alone. I have sought to limit the extent to which my narrative encroaches on Louis privacy and that of his warm and supportive family. I apologize to all the Guays for any transgressions in this regard. They will understand that half of this story is necessarily Louis and, therefore, telling it without regular and repeated reference to him, his steadfastness, stalwart support, and fine friendship would simply be impossible.

This account of extreme camping in the desert in dramatically life-threatening circumstances will describe what it was like and perhaps allow readers to come to their own conclusions regarding the issue that often seems to be on their minds: how would I fare in such circumstances? Most people, I suspect, would do a lot better than they assume.

This book is not, though, an academic treatise on Al Qaeda or Islamic fundamentalism and their catalytic role in causing what is ever more clearly a clash of civilizations. Nor will it be a primer on how Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) can become better kidnappers. As a result I will refrain from offering detailed comments on what the jihadists did or did not do well, on how they might have done better or, more generally, provide information that could permit them to prosecute their jihad (holy war) more effectively. Some aspects of this narrative may indeed seem to offer such guidance but have been included only where I know that they already possess such understanding. In the same vein, I have sought to avoid writing anything that might cause a future hostage to spend a moment longer in captivity than would otherwise be the case.

With these caveats, and while it is still reasonably fresh in my mind, I hope the reader will find this an informative account of a very particular though by no means unique experience. Many hostages have endured far longer and tougher trials than our four and a half months as Al Qaeda captives. Indeed, as we lay day after day under the unrelenting Sahara sun I recalledtrepidation quickly becoming naked terrorthe long, harsh ordeals of Terry Anderson, Terry Waite, Marc Gonsalves and his colleagues, Ingrid Betancourt, the staff of the American Embassy in Iran, and so very many others. And, of course, I was well aware that many had been killed or died in captivity.

A couple of months before our capture, Louis and I discussed with Isabelle Roy (then Canadas Ambassador to Mali) the eight-month long nightmare that Andrea Kloiber and Wolfgang Ebner, two Austrian tourists captured in Tunisia, lived as prisoners of AQIM. They were released just before our abduction by the same jihadi organization in late 2008. As we wondered whether there could be a happy ending to our saga, we were also well aware that other Canadians held hostage in other parts of the world were suffering a similar or worse fate.

We knew that the BBCs Alan Johnston had been held for 114 days in Gaza, two years previously, by the Army of Islam, but we did not yet know of the wrenching tale of David Rohde, the New York Times reporter who escaped from the clutches of the Taliban just after our release and made his way to freedom after more than seven months in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistans tribal areas, a story he and his wife tell so compellingly in their book A Rope and a Prayer. Ever-present in my mind, however, was the execution of Daniel Pearl, another brave reporter, held in similar circumstances by Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

A word on language: the languages spoken by the thirty-one members of the AQIM group that held us were predominantly Arabic and Berber, in what we took to be a variety of dialects, including Tamasheq, the language of the Sahara and of the Tuareg. Neither Louis nor I speak Arabic beyond a few stock phrases and words, and our captors had, for obvious reasons, no interest in having us learn their languages. Thus we spoke with our kidnappers in French. In this account, I have translated almost everything into English, using words and expressions that best convey both the meaning and what I took to be the intent of the speaker.