Serial S02 - Ep. 4: The Captors
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Previously.

sero taking my hand out.

thanks. I mean, good grief, if anyone was standing outside .

who cheat him up. A we did this little then wonder how long my .

voice has been going on. Impact stand and inst stand tewin boat to come home.

On your days, how do they get their? I thought he was kind like, tell that guy.

From this american life and wb easy chicago, it's cereal. One story told week by week. I'm Sarah ane. The way bow talks to mark about his time as a prisoner, it's almost as if it's divided.

There's year one when he's gathering intel planning escapes focused on getting away and then the rest of IT. And the rest of IT is four more years when his purpose is less sharp. His hope is blurrier. There's less action now he's got to endure. And that's in large part because after year one, after bose nine day escape, the taliban put him in a cage .

and immediately thought, there is no way of that cage. This is a metal cage, or woods cage, or what is like an iron one cage made for what purpose?

Both, says IT was six parts, four sides, put the top in the bottom, made of quarter inch bars who was collapsible. So when they moved him to a new location, theyd rebuild the cage in whatever room they put him in, bolt and padlocked together. Both says if he stretched out his arms, he could touch opposite sides of the cage with his fingers, figures that was about six feet wide.

When bow explained. Stuff like this, I can picture IT. I can, of course, understand what he's describing, but at some point I realized I don't actually understand what is going on.

IT was like, the whole thing was overlay with a scream. Where exactly is he? Who exactly is holding him? I couldn't tell what the taliban and the colonies wanted or expected.

Why is being moved? Why is he being ignored? I couldn't tell if his treatment was senseless and hap hazard, or if I was part of a plan.

Both descriptions are vivid. That's not the problem. The problem is they're mainly from inside a room boat, couldn't see what was happening outside, so I couldn't make order of IT because bow himself .

couldn't make order of IT.

But there's another guy who has a very good idea of both place in a hacon I world order. His name is David road. David is an investigative reporter for reuters now, but back in two thousand and eight he was on leave from the new york times researching a book about afghanistan.

He arranged to interview a taliban commander about an hours drive south of cobo. And he got kidnapped and handed over to the same people, and pretty much the same place as close to the same time as well. Once I heard David story, so much of both story clicked into place for me.

The logistics, the locations. He conies. Many aspects of David experience are really different from those.

David's a civilian, first off, his journalist who already knew a lot about afghanistan and pakistan. He got free after about seven months. First is nearly five years, and a huge difference.

David wasn't alone. He was taken with two afghans, assad, a driver, and tea here, translate atr, so he had someone to interpret whatever he didn't understand. Also, David wasn't blind folded all the time, really, only when he was being moved to a different location.

He wasn't chained or tied up inside the compounds. He could walk around in the court yard. He get up conversations with his guards. And i'm not breaking all that up to suggest some sort of grim hostage contest only to point out that while David was imprisoned wasn't in the dark, he wasn't in solitary confinement like bow.

So he had an awareness but didn't have about the system he had entered into after they were carjack David and assad in tahar. We're taken around afghanistan for a few days and then they were told to get out of the car and start walking over some mountains. The next morning is clear to David where he is. For one thing, the car that picks them up is driving on the left hand side of the road like they do .

in pakistan um and soon after that I saw a road sign in or do the national language of pakistan. And I knew we'd walked into the tributaries over the mountains, and I knew we were doomed. That's the worst place you can be taken in the afghanistan pakistan region.

David knew how utterly dangerous the tribal areas in western pakistan war in this place. It's really just over the mountains, right near the border. And if you imagining a wild deceit, inaccessible terrain, it's not like that, David said. Compared to rural afghanistan, in fact, a city like marm shaw, the capital of north weigh stan, where the colonies are based and where bow was kept most of the time in or near merum shaw, there are more paved roads, more large buildings, more schools. Its bustling, he IT said.

There's, you know a market with people selling, uh, goods from pakistan. Problem in my kidnapper's now brought me bottled nicely water that was manufactured from a plant in a in in law, pakistan, one of the main cities, uh, you know, but they were able to buy IT in the market.

In the tribal yers, they bought me copies of this, the most well known english language newspaper in pakistan, dawn, another ones called the news, and they would be two or three days old, but they could buy all these things um in the market in the middle of the tribal lery. There's kids, there's um farmers you know with donkeys and there bringing in their crops to sell. There's tons of toyota station waggons that people drive on their own, also service taxes. And you know, became clear in those for few hours and then days and weeks that this was a taliban many state that functioned openly, that you know repaired roads and ran schools and had some sort of basic form of health care IT IT. Wasn't this completely backward area as IT as you know, as usually described?

And it's not like the taliban are sort of smoking around dodging any pakistani military presence, David says, fully aware of each other, maybe wary at times, but also like waving to each other as they drove around the tribal areas in was zero stan, north and south. David said there will be regular checkpoints along the road that would Normally be manned by a pakistani security or army. And instead they're be Young taliban fighters with kasha kos letting traffic through, not letting traffic through. The driver of David car had to have the right password to get bye.

At one one time I was being driven in a car, and we ran into a pakistani army resupply convoy. And I thought, this is this great opportunity. Maybe, you know, the convoy will let us saw IT out of the car and we can make a run for IT and instead um you know our car, the tell moncar r just pulled over the side.

The road I remember in front of us was a car full civilians the civilians had to get out of the car and sort of put their hands up when the pakistani army kind of I went by. And the pakistani soldiers did seem to be really afraid that there would be a car bomb or some sort of attack from one of these, you know, vehicles on the side, the road, including hs, but you, they just drove bias. They never forced to get out of our car.

And then the a man driving my car, he was like the number two commander of the colony network. His name was bothered in colony. He explained me that that the colony had agreement with the pakistani army that the iconic vehicles just had to pull over to the side the road that no one had to get out of the iconic car um and in return the pakistani would not inspect the car .

and how do they know which one? How do they know which is a iconic car and which .

isn't no idea I just remember we know watching um but in hackney the number two community, the hakon's network, smiling and waving to pakistani soldiers, drove by their trucks you know in my heart thinking when I thought maybe they're not gonna rescue us .

oh my god so there is just like the word just like immunity is just jumping into my head like .

just it's a it's a truth so it's you know and you can ask me the question four times and i'll try give you a thier version. But the quick the easier way to explain this is.

Seems like anyone I ask to explain what gives with the hackney's Operating so freely in pakistan, they have to take a deep breakfast because IT is fraught, IT is complicated. And to do IT justice, IT would take a long time. So i'm just gonna you.

The basics of what i've learned here goes the hockey are a family run Operation and they're not one thing. Their islamic nationalists, their a militant group, and they have businesses. The new york time story compared them to quote the superos of the afghanistan war and quote, they've got their own alliances, their own source of funds, but they're also a part of the talian.

They they use the same stationary. I'm not kidding about that. One expert told me their statements come out under the seal of the islamic emerge of afghanistan, same as the afghan n taliban.

The colonies are the most military effective part of the taliban, and there are a part of the taliban that's most under control of pakistan. One expert told me, quote, you know, they're just very, very close to the pakistani's. And quote, a hakan, I family is afghan, a pashtuns.

The roots are over in coast province in afghanistan, but their headquartered in pakistan, back in the one thousand nine hundred and seventies, they were fighting the afghan government, and then later switch to fighting the soviet when they invaded afghanistan. And by the way, we, the us. Liked that they were fighting the communists.

So in the early eighties, we gave the millions of dollars to help them train fighters in north western an. We helped to build them up. As for pakistan, they tolerate all this because the hakon's are useful to them.

There are useful proxies in pakistan's decades long effort to influence events inside afghanistan to keep afghanistan a manageable neighbor and stay with me. They're useful because they help prevent pakistan's other neighbor, india, from establishing any serious foot holder influence in afghanistan. Pakistan has always seen india as its biggest threat. Here's David's valiant thirty second explanation.

The pakistani military, their goal is to stop india everywhere they can in south asia. So the pakistani government allowed the helicon's and the taliban to Operate because they saw them as allies. They saw conies is a forced that could allow pakistan to remain in defect to control of afghanistan and stop india from taking over afghanistan. I can see that. And like three sentences instead of ten.

Now I like your ten are good. And and this is also important. The hakon's is help pakistan deal with the other taliban in their country, the pakistani taliban, because the heliconias have good relations with the pakistani taliban, but the pakistani taliban does not have good relations. Pakistani government.

So that was the situation back in two thousand and nine, when boo and David were held by the in the past couple years, though, pakistani strategy toward the taliban has changed somewhat, their bombing was a stand probably right now, if you've been reading the paper, maybe your cut up on all this. If not, I have some phone numbers for experts you can call. David describes the hacon ise as an incredibly disciplines organized crime network.

They were super careful not to use cell phones or communications devices that could be tracked, he said. Boddered in her konni, one of the top commanders would sometimes show up at a house where David was being held, and he'd be completely alone because he figured the drones overhead would be looking for a commander moving around with body guards like bow, David and assad and ta ha removed all the time. As far as David can tell, the house to house system work, sort of like a franchise. Each family that took them would get some share in the prisoners, either some money, or maybe they had family members who were prisoners who they wanted released .

as part of a deal to exchange David moran houses from two to four to five .

weeks at a turn and is the um is their logic to the moving that you can desert? Is IT just like you can, you just can't stand one place for too long aging and to be found out? Or is IT like.

I think I think that I mean, again, I have a huge advantage because I have these two afghan have been kidnapped me and they're hearing all kinds of conversations. They're talking the boys who bring in bread um and so you know I was told now then families you know would get tired of holding us because he was very dangerous for them.

They were everyone was very afraid there would be a drawn start to kill me, and that all their family would be killed when they held me in densely populated neigh's ods IT was because that the nearby children, they hoped, would prevent, you know, the U. S. From Carrying out a drone struct to kill me, because I would kill so many civilians at the same time.

Are those like cari family members? Are they like, who are those people who are keeping you? Or do they just like busting at anyone's house and be like, we're going to hang out here for a while?

And I think I think they only kept us in the homes of commanders and families that they felt they could trust the most because they were constantly terrified of spies. Um they were rounding up local people and accusing them of guiding drone strikes, hanging them um the Young guards um particular when we were standing in the intelligence commanders house, would come home every day with the cell phones and possessions of men they had executed that day um for me, my god spies and guiding drone strikes um and .

is that like, did you know that at the time as that something you understood only later?

No, they told me, I mean, again, I was learning all the stuff to retire here.

At one of the last house his David was held in, he met mula sangean, the guy who would later take charge of bose custody. They only had one conversation, but David had sangean mean an impression.

He seemed more radical than my guards. He was, you know, deeply, incredibly and sort of angry anti n american and. And I can check, I think, that there was a joke one of his men made about killing me here, shoving my head off for something like that. That was, that was much more aggressive than other commanders.

认为 the execution videos， the sickness, the constant toying with you about whether they onna let you go, whether they are going to kill you, and the cultural casm between us and them, David talks about all that. And that echoes so squarely with what bosses as .

the my captivity went on, they were more and more angry me because they weren't getting the money or prisoners or fame they wanted. And they sort of became more and more disgusted with me that I was sort of um dirty because I was a non believer, because I wasn't muslim. I was in pure and the reason I was having stomach problems, and dia, was because I wasn't a muslim. IT wasn't because of the conditions we were being held in. And eventually they sort of ord me to stop washing dishes. That was one of things I did sort of appease them and stay alive, and then they stop wanting to eat near me because I was this sort of dirty animal in their minds and in one of the more amazing moments there was an older man um he uh he came in and he sort of lecture the Younger guards that they shouldn't see me as dirty ah really and he said, you know, David is god's creation and he took this he said he would take this piece of bread he was holding and I can eat IT David can eat this piece of bread and and take that out of his mouth without swaling IT. And the man said he would take that he is a bread and then placed in his own mouth because that's what the profit thought that you should treat all humans humanely.

God is so interesting. Why do you think he cared how they thought of you?

Well, I think that, I mean, this is the moment there's a civil war in the islamic world for the interpretation of this faith. And I saw examples of islam, the moderate islam. I saw a practicin in bosnia and pakistan and afghanistan and iraq.

So you, there was this one older man who said that to them, but he was surrounded by these Young, deluded man whose whole identity was, you know, that there was only the strict interpretation of islam, that anyone who didn't follow their interpretation of islam deserve to die. Anyone who lived, they literally told me that anyone who lived under the a karzai government in afghanistan are the musharaff in pakistan. Where were non believer s and deserve to die muslims?

Those are in s as well.

everyone and they were worse. They hated the my two afghan and colleagues more than they hated me because they were they were um faking. I can't remember all these words anymore, but they were traders.

Did you ever have like substantive conversations with anyone who was holding you about and the the .

first three days IT was all about the war and why the americans had come in nine eleven and my book and you know I told him about the reporting I am a buzz exposing the mash executions of thousands of muslims .

um I remember after .

I told him about my reporting in bosnia, they said that's good that means you're worth .

more money like that's not the point of my story. You missed IT but .

there was no I mean that was um you know um there was no kind of rational conversation.

Bow and David did not overlap in hackney custody. David escaped one night along with tae here from the compound where they were being held. And they made their way over to a pakistani military base, about half million.

They were rescued. David in tai here got out on june twenty, two thousand nine, but was captured just ten days later. David never met, but never talk to bow, but he says he feels linked to him.

In our interview, he kept coming back. Someone guilty lead to how much Better he had IT than bow. Obviously, he knows it's not his fault what happened to bow, but he feels bad, he said.

As soon as he heard the U. S. Soldier had been grabbed by these same people, he worried that he'd be treated harshly, in part because David was treated well, which helped him get away, samon use subside.

The afghan reporter told me he did here that after David escaped, there were all kinds of rumours and accusations flying around that someone had been paid off, infighting between the hakon's and the other taliban, that the colonies can be trusted. One news reports that the hackney suspected the taliban guards had taken a bribe. Maybe there was a trader among them.

So yeah, IT does seem they weren't planning on letting that happen twice. Then again, maybe bose rough treatment hand more day with the fact that he had tried to escape from them right away that first week. And also one intel guy told me the helicon's are saby enough to know the difference in terms of risk, in terms of danger, in terms of value between an american journalist and an american soldier.

In the beginning, IT seems that perhaps sangean in the hagan's were looking for a quick and easy deal to get rid of bow. Samon u subside did an interview for us in dubai with a high level taliban guy there. This guy wasn't directly involved with the negotiations for bow, but he heard about IT from the people who were involved.

What this taliban told sami, is that initially they wanted Manda maybe some prisoners from an afghan jail, which is what they're also been asking for in David roads case. But then somehow the taliban gets word from the americans. And it's not clear how or from whom exactly, but the story is they get word that the americans aren't going to pay ransom, which was true, by the way.

And furthermore, that they're not going to free any prisoners because they're not too concerned with getting bow back that if they can tolerate the depth of hundreds of american soldiers in afghanistan, one soldier in captivity isn't that big a deal for the U. S. Army in this message, if IT really came. But apparently sangean got upset in his position, was, will admire we wasting our time in our resources was just kill him. And that's when the sky, I told sami that someone, a well connected person in pakistan, told sungen, don't kill him.

Sit tight that, don't worry, keep the guy. This is a word day, you know, don't get upset, don't lose your patients, say this is important person. And after that, to the OK.

the onions are willing to wait, which means both also waited. One defense official told me if you could set aside the circumstances of both capture, which of course you can't, but if you could, boat would be a huge success story for the army.

This twenty three year old kid with no training managers not only to survive but to resist as A P O, W, and most extraditing perhaps he doesn't alone in isolation there is no one else in the recent history of the army with a story like that terrance Russell was principal debrief. Er, testified a military hearing in september. Rosell is an undisputed expert on this stuff during his career.

He's debrief ed or interviewed about one hundred and twenty five pw, possibly more than anyone in the country. At the hearing, Russell was asked, basically, how bad did both have IT? And Russell said, you'd have to go back to the jungle camps of vietnam to begin to compare, quote, surgeon bergdoll experience.

And I don't know, so that I can give you a percentage, but his experience ranks at the same ashland of the most horrible conditions of captivity that we've seen in the last sixty years. Unquote after bow was rescued and they took him to a hospital in germany, bow asked them to take the clock off the wall in the room he was in. He can deal with time, seeing IT delineated like that and had taken him years as a captive to win himself off of time. Often when he was locked in whatever room there might be a light on all the time or not at all, the clock and the calendar became bendy and troublesome.

A week for months don't really matter, because only thing you can really understand IT, how long the seconds are left in the minute is what that what hit you, the artist is just the second. What do you mean? I mean, as if you know you're not in tomorrow, you're not in next week, you're not in next month, you're in the second.

Can last an maternity it's just it's I litter feeling every second and the fact that there was nothing there I mean, you can forget about time when you were able to distract yourself with reading a book or doing something yeah that you that concentrate your minds but we need to have any of that yeah, you're just staying there and IT turned into a repetition like you might turn into broken record, almost gloopy. Because at some point you have only so much to think about right? You run out of ideas. yeah. You know, in that situation is that you're going to think about.

such as will I get food today? Who will give IT to me? Why did the girl who gave IT to me yesterday look annoyed? Why are they are giving IT to me? Is or something I can do to make them give IT to me but not make IT look like i'm trying to get IT in either way, depriving someone of any discernable schedule is a time on our method of keeping your prisoner compliant, both said IT was madding the obsessive thoughts maybe he'd do in abundant costell bit his head or that line from the juny cash song I fell into a burning ring of fire. He said he can remember the rest or he'd look and look and look at the room around him, not in search of something new, just because that's all he had to look at one thing.

And then I look another thing. You'll just keep walking back and forth for different things. You just keep getting the world, just keep getting you. Whatever is the door way, the crack, the darkness, you look at shadows. Are you not looking at shadows if it's too dark and you can see anything that you still, you know, you still moving, you still get, you know, you in at your hand, but you can see your hand so you touched in your face.

If you're thinking, maybe both went crazy, he didn't. He says he didn't. He might have been a little easier if he had, but he didn't.

In fact, a psychologist st. We talk to who was on a seer team that planned for those return. He said that they assume if you've survived captivity, you're more or less psychologically healthy.

Ptsd maybe, but not crazy. Because as soon as you start to lose your mind, your chances of surviving go down. If you spend, say, five years trying to get food, trying to get water, trying to escape, you need to keep your mind intact for all that. Still, sanity in both situation is psychologically exhAusting because you're simultaneously bored, afraid and hyper aware, a combination other po ws have described.

Mark asp, did you tell yourself stories? Did you try to disappear into your imagination? And surprisingly, both said, not really in fact, he said he'd forced himself to stay in the present, not to cum to what he calls his fantastic storybook tendencies since that's partly we've him in trouble in the first place in any way, even if he d wanted to drift off after he just couldn't says he would have a choice about IT pain, he said, is a great distractor. He might spend an entire day just dealing with his feet where the cramps from dehydration or from starvation, his body was demanding his full, immediate attention both says, even when he was kind of ready to give up, his body was stubborn, nagging, doing its own thing.

Tell you that only you, the lion still here is simply because my body been quit.

When food came, he added, his body just took IT. He would be so cold, but his body would struggle to get warm.

Yeah when they when they move around, they put a group dress lover in and they put a work of and then because you know anything I touch because i'm an intraday lor or am a cover whatever you wanted call IT everything I touches dirty. So they leave the painful ly. They left the dress in in the bank, in the room.

So I was able to use that as work. But even with that, I grab around my shoulder. Did, did you ever ask for more blankets? And like them, I never asked for one, but there was a guy who was, you know, he was in a bad guy. He ended up giving me an extra going to.

I don't know, I mean, everybody human has some some good dude, you know yeah uh, good qualities, especially if somebody's helplessness or hopeless. And in troubles in oin.

I can say for sure, of course, but I think it's possible. The guy who gave bow, the blanket, was a cook named ba rock. Sami interviewed him for Marks company.

Page won, who's an older guy, maybe fifty, unmarried. He'd known that hackney's a long time. He cook for them in their people for many years. He said he'd once made lunch for a summer in ladon. He'd retired and moved back to his village from harm shop.

But he told sami that one day a few years ago, he got a call to come to a job he's met by mula sangean, who takes him to our remote farmhouse. There is no road you have to hide way out to IT and i'm not sure, but it's possible this place with somewhere in the show well valley, couple hours from shaw sungei, gives them in A K forty seven and tells them the whole area is mind. Don't leave the house.

And if you see anyone, approach, shoot inside the house. Barrack says he sees his guests by guests. He means prisoners, a blue eyed foreigner in one small dark room and some rich afghan guy in another room.

He said they were all stuck out there in the wild. The two prisoners, three guards and bike the guards, were not allowed walkies, tuckey or phones. Couple of times a week, someone might show up. They use a code word to be let in in samyang notes, but broke sounds like he was more than a little freak out. He says, the only thing we could hear there was noise of drones, dangerous animal crime, dangerous animal cries at night, and scary deep darkness.

Yeah, yeah. This mountain is the night time is quite scary and very scary. You have all kind of bad animals and drawn is twenty four hours. Like making buds, buds, buds and were worried, you know, maybe there's red or something, you know, uh, but they could not leave everything like that, you know, because they were trusted by the command BBA .

k's first menu， he said, was potato with gravy, yogurt and non. He said they kept one plate aside for bow. Since he wasn't muslim, no one else would eat off that plate.

But brock said the afghan prisoner was chat and funny, but that he couldn't communicate with bow. He could see though the he wasn't doing well, wasn't eating much, which is an insult to the cook by the way. Brack told sami he wasn't sure if boden like the food or just needed to you tencel so he finds a spoon for um uh and he said.

I mean, every time, of course, he was trying to say something but we don't understand or our english was not good and he said, sometimes I really wish I could understand he was trying to say something and next time I brought a lot of thing for him and he didn't pick up nothing of them you all like I had brought to a pair like that he may be sick or some .

others that a the .

top killer he says in the notes as um one day he .

was asking me something I brought numbers of things at the next arrival but he did not take either of IT and was laughing I brought him salt a tablet of pain killer and blank out yeah so he's .

trying IT .

because he was .

an old man know he was trying to understand and to give him something .

american was, oh I think this means is sitting american was sitting ah in the beginning most of the time he put his head on his knees the number of times I entered this lockup room and he remained with his head down on his knees.

Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. Maybe, maybe he doesn't. I mean, maybe he was very so depressed. You know.

he says that, he said, he says, at the start, he was used to coming to the door to breathe fresh air and sea light. Then he gives up and stays in his play. Then he gave up and stay in his place.

There are lots of images out there, many of them horrifying of captives, usually westerners, about to be executed wearing orange jump suits. I like antonio bay. The symbolism is so clear and so loud.

But until I heard bow talk about his captivity, I hadn't realised just how present guantanamo and other U. S. Prisons are for these guys.

But IT comes up all the time, not just in displays of broad political theater. The topic is wow ve in all throo story. And in David roads, too.

Sam talked to another guy named butter's sam and butter, both mother and his brother abdo rahm musto st. They each spent a few years imprisoned guantanamo according to what bother told sami. His brother musto st. Met bow in twenty ten.

and he went to his room. And I should treat him like the way I was treated by american and he says the american way up in dedication was so strange so I I also asking him like exchanged question like um you .

know .

like like asking to how many dogs do you, how uh how many chicken, how how many eggs chicken give a day you know so just like .

nonsense question.

he said that what exactly he says he had a rest later as well. He said who could speak english little bit because he learned ah he says at some point he had a debate with a Better ada and told him why you are in ghani stan why you came to a hari's an and burger i'll said, i'm defy by american portions i'm not a decision maker .

and I will deploy I D yeah and he says.

I told told him you can simply said no and leave army and didn't come here.

Bother them on border happens to be a guy. I also talked to for a story I worked on back in two thousand five, his afghan, and he and his brother, a poet and journalist, were living in pakistan. They picked up some important people with their writing, much of which was a pakistani authorities, arrested them and turn them over to s forces, and we sent them to guantanamo.

Muslim dose wasn't much of a terrorist back then, but IT seems we might have turned them into one. He's reportedly working as an exist recruiter now. David said the people holding him would tell him, we're treating you well because we're Better than the americans.

We treat our prisoners Better than americans. Treat their prisoners in guantanamo and upgrade. In both case, though, that rationals seemed to work in reverse. For instance, the guy who repeatedly tortured bow, both as a man would come into the room he never saw face, because either bow would be blind folded, or the guy's face was covered with a cloth boat by handcuff ed sitting cross like IT on the floor, both as the guy would pin his legs down, push him against a wall and then cut his chest with a razor blade.

Don't think one or two cuts at a time. Think like proudly between sixty or seventy cuts at a time. Oh, my god. And IT did IT slowly IT hurts more.

Of course, if you do IT slowly go city, lost count how many cuts after IT reached six hundred.

And that he, he would, did he speak english enough to tell you why he was punishing you? Now he wouldn't speak in english in modern things. And plush too.

A lot of A A lot of like space and things like that. What is by siam in by the water, a dog like W I F A. I mean, i'm sure they got all the typical insulting dari.

Cover IT is more like there is more along the lines that were revenge type thing yeah for what though? That's asking for being americans for all the things that americans have been done in their country, for all the things that you know have we're done, the guys in guantanamo and background and all that, the water boarding, the dogs that you know, the the isolation chAmbers and on the the food deprivation, the sleep deprivation, all those things, those were that that was the list of things that they always talked about whenever he came around to animal, the ground and all. And what would you say in response to that? I went, I wouldn't say anything, usually with one way conversation.

So I just went to and making ally write IT out. You waited out. You'd like, you'd like not. Would you really say I understand, I hear you and so like that ah not understanding what they're saying, that's what they want to acknowledgement so that's what I give yeah 你好。

When bois in the cage again, it's a medal cage padlock together. He stomped one last impeding attempt at escape. He says he did IT because he was so angry he could not stand the idea of these guys winning. He says he was in a second till last year.

one of the guys that spoke english came to tell me, um basically came to law. I mean, you like you are not where in order to exchange you, the taliban is waiting for all the prisoners and all of the prisoners to be all the muslim in the world. They released.

So U. T, came there to just mess with me. So I got, you know, I got really angry about that. And so what they had done when they moved me to this last place where they actually put particle board down in the cage floor so I could actually walk around.

after the guy left boat decided to risk lifting the particle board away from the cage floor, he'd realized the only flaw in the cage was the chatty welding down there. He thought if he could rust the wilds with spit or water, he can maybe get a fewer the bars free and squeak out. But because of the cold and damp, the particle board had expanded.

So he gets IT maybe half way up, but then he can't get IT back down in place to hide what he's trying to do. So he thinks if he soften IT, maybe he can shave off the edges and get IT to go back down. So he puts water on IT, which just makes IT swell even more.

And that begins a fight with the particle board that last all night. All night. He's using a triple a battery he had. He'd popped off the top and flattened IT and shopping IT against the cage. Now is using IT to try to shave down the particle board and every noise he makes, he scared someone's onna hear and come in. And then who knows what the consequences would be, but very bad and you can't get the .

board back down the idea of losing that one chance. And I don't know how to explain IT, but in that way, he left me and exhausted and just drains for for like months and I don't think ever came back from IT. I never stops like putting water on the the bars.

I never stopped trying to escape bridges that night seemed to burn something out to me. Yeah, that never came back. I just lost the something inside of me that I don't know how to explain, but he was just things that matter anymore by his .

last year and a half as a prisoner goes, as his daily conversation had funneled down to a few words, he'd say, that's fine, that's good. Or he say, okay or understood that was that. In two thousand eleven, a diplomats named mark grossman came in as the state department special representative to afghanistan and pakistan.

At that point, the U. S. government. New bow was with honey in pakistan. Grisman ne said he'd often bring up bow with the pakistani's in those years in meetings with the foreign secretary, the prime minister, the president, the army chief of staff. According to growth man, their response was consistent. We're sympathetic, if we hear anything, will let you know, will do what we can, and makes you wonder, what are we doing to get bow out? How hard are we trying?

Yeah, had a bureacracy that was broken and they, you know A A feeling of what he's a trader anyway. So 我 IT， I mean, to me that was probably the most destructive part of getting up home was just that conclusion. I was a trader .

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In this week we've got a great 3d map that flies over north and south of zero stan， part of the tribal areas of pakistan where boo was held. If you want to know more about David roads, kidnapping and escape, he, his wife, wrote a book about IT called a rope Better prayer. You can find a link to IT on our website. Again, that serial podcast t stay tuned for a preview of our next episode. But first.

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a production of this american life and W B E Z chicago coming up on the next episode of cereal. We are talking about A, A recovery situation that was so complicated that nobody, even nobody, knew how to even begin to unravel at. Our niche job is to find hostages.

If you just want a few examples, N G A, D, I C I F B, I N S A, there to be some political pressure to make that happen. And that's where you come in. I want to know everything about, you know, a potential terrorist network here.

What are the captain networks look like? Where are the likely places that they would take a hostage? So anyway, I did pick up, and he's speaking in passed to was very obvious not I was not not able to understand IT except for he said so have a Better do Better doll. That's when I went out crap.