118 DAYS

Sojourners Magazine, Dec 2006 by Loney, James, Sooden, Harmeet Singh, Gish, Peggy, Berger, Rose Marie

How I survived captivity in Iraq.

On Nov. 26,2005, four members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq-Tom Fox, James Loney, Norman Kember, and Harmeet Singh Sooden-were taken captive at gunpoint near the Umm al-Qura mosque in Baghdad by men who later identified themselves as the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. Through videos and statements sent to the Arabic-language television network al-Jazeera, the captors threatened to kill the four men unless the Iraqi government freed its prisoners and U.S. and British forces left Iraq.

On March 9,2006, Tom Fox was killed and his body dumped in a residential neighborhood in western Baghdad. He died from gunshot wounds to his head and chest. After 118 days in captivity, Loney, Kember, and Sooden were released March 23,2006, when intelligence gathered by British forces led to a raid on the house where the men were held. The captors had left before the soldiers arrived. No one was harmed in the extraction.

During the four months that the CPT members were held, a worldwide coalition of supporters emerged-including Palestinian children, Iraqi peace activists, and Islamic political leaders. After their release, Christian Peacemaker Teams, in consultation with Iraqi partners, decided to transfer their operation to northern Iraq. CPT-which is a program of the historic peace churches in the U.S. and Canada, including Brethren, Quaker, and Mennonite churches-currently has 190 members working on projects in Iraq, Colombia, Palestine, Canada, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and along the U.S.-Mexico border, training people of faith in the principles and practice of nonviolence to enter conflict zones and promote peace.

-The Editors

We were taken, one by one...

... an abductor at each arm, into a living room and pushed onto a couch.

First Tom Fox, 55, American, full-time Christian Peacemaker Teams member and veteran of 14 months of project work in Iraq. Then Harmeet Singh Sooden, 33, a Canadian citizen living in New Zealand and a short-term CPT delegate. Then me, 41, Canadian, CPT Canada program coordinator and delegation leader. Finally, Norman Kember, 72, British, retired professor of physics and another short-termer.

The Quran was being sung from a 24-hour religious channel, illustrated with a slideshow of flowing water, green landscapes, blue sky, clouds. On the wall was a picture of a man with puppy-dog eyes, long hair, and beard, fingers pointing to a heart exposed through flowing robes. I grimaced. Being kidnapped, searched, relieved of our passports, handcuffed, and blindfolded-all under the provident eye of the Sacred Heart and the prayersong of the Quranwas surreal.

But the guns, the dog barking viciously in a room somewhere, the Iraqi man carried past our door and out of the house, his screams of terror muted by a gag-they were all horribly and irrevocably real. A 1,000-pound question mark dangled over our heads. Would we be killed, tortured, released tomorrow, held for years, or disappeared forever?

That first day, I turned instinctively, blindly, to prayer. I used my fingers to pray the rosary. I prayed the Jesus Prayer, over and over, until it breathed autonomously in me. I thought of each person I knew, held them in light, gave thanks to God for their lives. I prayed especially for those who would carry the burden of our captivity: our families and loved ones, the other CPT members in Baghdad, and the staff in the Chicago and Toronto offices.

I made up long litanies to the Sacred Heart of Jesus: "O most holy Sacred Heart" along with "Deliver me ... Free me ... Protect me." I didn't know God's will. I didn't know what I might be asked to give. I feared that I was too weak, too selfish to offer it.

As our captivity progressed, the acute, heart-pounding terror of those first days gradually phased into a chronic white noise. Boredom became the great enemy. I was lost in a universe of greywash, grey that invaded, infected, and debilitated every pore of my being.

Tom Fox became the prophet of the present moment. "All we have is the now," he would say. "The past is a fiction and the future doesn't exist." He would tell us about his meditations, how, as he passed through his fingers the chain that bound his wrists, he would receive and send God's light with the count of each breath. He strained with his whole being to let go of everything-even the hope of release-and just be present to the present.

An initial feeling of challenge and inspiration gave way to theological irritation. That's fine for ordinary times, I thought, but not when the present moment is a living, ineradicable hell. I became self-absorbed, irritated with everything: Harmeet's wiggling toes, Norman's burps, the way Tom chewed his food, the hours of feckless small talk.

I didn't dare tell them. Each day, each hour, each minute I was confronted with a choice: Withdraw, clench my heart into a fist, and conserve my widow's mite of emotional energy or open my heart, inhabit the moment, be generous with acceptance and conversation and listening.