I think the biggest thing that I’ve taken from being held captive is not the feeling of having everything ripped away from me but rather it’s the guilt. What keeps me awake in the nights when it’s not his face, his scent, or his steps haunting my thoughts, it is the guilt of the lives I watched get torn apart. Guilt is a strong catalyst for wanting to find a way to end the harsh realities of life. And yet, it’s that very guilt that drives me to find a reason to survive everyday and to do so on my accord without harming another soul.
From the little girl to the slaughtered confidant, to the innocent product of a blood vengeance, to the changed man, to the others. I feel as though their deaths are on my conscience, as though their blood is on my hands.
My first day, or what I perceived to be a day, there were two of us. Me and a little girl who had every intention of living, full of hope and aspirations. She wanted to grow up and become a nurse because she wanted to help the world. And she swore she’d do good in the world if it meant surviving. Her face turned into one of sheer agony as I watched Asif pump bullet after bullet into her. It was over for her all too soon: she had a whole life ahead of her.
My slaughtered confidant. This man, he’d been a bearer of chains, chains that were used to string one up and allow for the resistance to end. He was one of the six, and yet upon watching a little girl, the age of his daughter as he’d tell me, get gunned down, despite the ransom being paid, it changed his mind. And he sought to make my misery less miserable: he provided me with heroin. And he’d come in after the worse of the worse and apologize. He swore he’d find a way to get me out of there. He took the knife from my hands and slit his throat, the blood pooled out of his body and poured onto my hands. Slaughtered.
And then there were five. Cigarettes were the constant for one of them, he always had one. He would take these cigarettes and light them only to press them to your skin, searing his marks into you. My screams would prove to be too much for him; he’d silence me. And to do so, he thought of showing me the horrors of his mind. He brought in a man, a local doctor, and asked that he see to my wounds. He would do as told otherwise his wife and daughter, sitting on the ground in front of me, would be slaughtered. I was treated. His face changed as he saw the man lit a cigarette and motioned for him to sit down with his family. He plead for freedom, for his family and not himself. Instead, this man took a gun and pumped lead into his daughter ending her life. And then he took a knife to this man’s throat and let him bleed a slow death. And then it was the wife’s turn. A wife who had watched her husband bleed out to death as she held him, in her prior moments she had held her death as she was gunned down. And he let her leave. He let her live with the horror of having seen these acts. But she refused to leave, her words were merely, “I have nothing to live for if not this girl you’ve got tied up.” Me, she was referring to me. So be it, she was put into chains and left to rot with me. Five captors quickly turned to four as he was punished for allowing this woman to live, a single bullet in between his eyes ended every thought he’d ever have. Another piece of lead took her life away, but not before she was taught to never give one’s life up for another.
It would be these four men, months later that would once again take an innocent life. This time, I knew the “victim." The so called victim was my coworker and friend, M----, whose family would be informed by the NYPD that he had died a hero. He had died preventing another series of attacks. He had died for me, and that was something I’d have to live with. And his family, I watched as they searched for answers, as they searched for the young girl who had been missing when the police arrived, as they looked for the person who had answers. And they would get them in a letter the night of his funeral, but they’d never know who she was. Nobody would.
And the cycle of guilt would just continue day by day as the bloodshed grew, as the bodies dropped. For months, his need for bloodshed would not lessen, for he’d grown a taste for it. It would be the men, the friends and brothers who would lose their life in this battle for bloodshed. It would be the men who swore to come home every night to their kids; men whose families I’d known for ages, men who would sacrifice their lives for mine. Khuda ki maarzi, God’s will. It would be those hands I held as they bled out in the back of an SUV. It would be those final words that would be on my conscience and would leave an impact to say the least. It would be the funerals of my friends where I would lose it, where I would lose my cool and apologize to their families for the fathers lost in an attempt to make things right in this world. It would be those men that I would strive to find a better way to end this war of vengeance for. For their families. For the little kids who would grow up without a father, just memories passed on.
It would be the mother of a mutual friend whose face would haunt my nights, for she gave it all up for someone she barely knew. It would be her willingness to make a deal with the devil, so to say, that would inspire me. And yet, it was not the long nights spent on the road nor the dinners spent discussing the hell this world had brought upon us, but rather it would be her body in pieces that would remain the image in my mind. It would be her severed head found in a box on the night of our weekly dinner. It would be the screams ensuing in the family, the guilt of her son who felt at fault for not being the one who his family mourned. It would be my guilt for letting her do so. It would be her necklace given to me, that I would wear with pride every day in order to honor her memory.
And so, if it’s just bloodshed that’s left of this world, why let it be the captor of so many? When it could all be ended with one person, me. And so, I struck a deal with my own personal enemy. Myself for every single one of them that’d be left. It would be this deal that would drive me to hell and back, and yet it would be the only reason why I could live with myself. A knife in my heart was better than a knife near the people I cared about. Guilt turning into a sacrifice. The end of all ends. And to this life of happiness, I say goodbye.
