Kidnapped On The Front Line

In the perfect light of a crystal clear morning, I stood outside a putty-colored cement hospital near Ajdabiya, a small city on Libya‘s northern coast. Several journalists and I were looking at a car that had been hit during a morning airstrike. Its back windshield had been blown out and human remains were splattered all over the back seat. There was part of a brain on the passenger seat, shards of skull on the rear dashboard.

I picked up my camera to shoot what I had shot so many times before, and then put it back down. I couldn‘t do it that day.

It was March 2011, the beginning of the Arab Spring. After Tunisia and Egypt erupted into unexpectedly euphoric and triumphant revolutions against their long-time dictators, Libyans revolted against their own homegrown tyrant, Muammar el-Qadaffi.

This revolution, however, had quickly become a war. Qadaffi’s famously thuggish foot soldiers invaded rebel cities, and his air force pounded rebel fighters. We journalists had come without flak jackets. We hadn’t expected to need our helmets.

My husband Paul called from New Delhi. We tried to speak once a day, but my Libyan cellphone rarely had a signal.

“Hi my love. How are you doing?”

“I’m tired,” I said. I tried to steady my voice. “I have a bad feeling that something is going to happen.”

I didn’t tell him that the last few mornings I had woken up reluctant to get out of bed; that I was terrified from the moment I woke up.

The famous photographer Robert Capa once said, “If your pictures aren‘t good enough, you‘re not close enough.” In Libya, if you weren‘t close enough, there was nothing to photograph. And once you got close enough, you were already in the line of fire.

That week, I had watched some of the best photojournalists in the business, veterans of Afghanistan and Bosnia and Iraq, leave after those first bombs fell. “It‘s not worth it, they said.

“You should go back to Benghazi,” Paul said. “You always listen to your instincts.”

Captured

I was in Libya on assignment for the New York Times with three other award-winning journalists: Tyler Hicks, a photographer; Anthony Shadid, arguably the best reporter working in the Middle East; and Steve Farrell, a British/ Irish journalist.

We left the suburban hospital together and headed into town. As we edged down an empty road in the centre of Ajdabiya, artillery shells pierced the pavement nearby, sending shards of shrapnel in every direction. The few civilians on the streets ran with conviction, carrying their belongings atop their heads. I feared it was our time to leave as well.

But I said nothing. I didn’t want to be the cowardly photographer, or the terrified girl who prevented the men from doing their work. Tyler, Anthony, and Steve had all spent over a decade working in war zones; they knew what they were doing.

When we reached a roundabout in the road, Tyler and Anthony walked off to interview some rebels. I was directionless. Suddenly I heard the familiar whoosh of a bullet. I looked up at the rooftops: Qadaffi.

Mohammed, our driver, called us back to the car and we took off for the eastern exit of town. When I looked up and squinted into the distance, I saw something I hadn’t seen in weeks: traffic.

You have two options when you approach a hostile checkpoint, and both are a gamble. The first option is to stop and identify yourselves as journalists and hope that you are respected as neutral professionals. The second option is to blow past them, and hope they don’t open fire on you.

Mohammad was slowing down, sticking his head out of the window. “Sahaafi! (Media!)” He yelled to the soldiers. He jumped out of the car, Qaddafi’s soldiers swarming around him. “Sahaafi!”

In one fluid movement, the doors flew open and Tyler, Steve, and Anthony were ripped out of the car. Gunshots shattered the air. I knew I had to get out of the car to run for cover. I crawled across the back seat and out the open car door, and immediately felt the hands of a soldier pulling at my arms and tugging at my two cameras.

We needed to get out of the line of fire, away from the wall of bullets barraging us. We ran to a cinder block building, but within seconds, five government troops were upon us, pointing their guns and yelling in Arabic, their faces contorted into masks of sheer rage. They ordered us face down into the dirt. We all paused, assuming this was the moment of our execution. And then we slowly crouched down and we each begged for our lives.

“Oh God, Oh God, Oh God. Please, God. Save us.”

I raised my eyes up from the ground, and looked up the gun barrel, and directly into the solider’s eyes. “Please,” I whispered. “Please.”

I waited for the crack of the gun, for the end of my life. I thought of Paul, my parents, my sisters, my two grandmothers. Each second felt like its own space in the universe.

War zone work

That day in Libya, I asked myself the questions that haunt me: Why do you do this work? Why do you risk your life for a photograph? After ten years as a conflict reporter, it remains a difficult question to answer.

Journalists can sound grandiose when they talk about their profession. Under it all, however, are the things that sustain us and bring us together: the privilege of witnessing things than others do not, an idealistic belief that a photograph might affect people‘s souls, the thrill of creating art and contributing to the world‘s database of knowledge. When I return home and rationally consider the risks, the choices are difficult. But when I am doing my work, I am alive, and I am me. It‘s what I do. I am sure there are other versions of happiness, but this one is mine.

My father gave me my first camera when I was 13. I taught myself the basic with an old How to Photograph in Black and White manual. I photographed obsessively, continuing when I went off to college. In 1997, I became a stringer for the AP in New York. I covered protests, press conferences, city hall, accidents.

In 2000, I moved to New Delhi, India, to begin freelancing overseas. One day, the bureau chief of Dow Jones, Ed Lane, returned from a trip to Afghanistan with 15 Afghan carpets and some advice: “You should go to Afghanistan to photograph women living under the Taliban.”

“You are a woman, and you are interested in photographing women‘s issues,” Ed said. “There are few female journalists doing these stories there now. You should go.”

I spent two weeks there, and returned to Afghanistan twice more in the next year. Between trips, I found a photo agency willing to distribute my work. But for a long time no newspaper or magazine bought them. In the year 2000, no one in New York was interested in Afghanistan.

That changed on September 11 2001.Though I was young and terribly inexperienced, few photographers had worked in Afghanistan under the Taliban like I had. I also knew from my time in Afghanistan that I had a different kind of access, too. After 9/11 I used my gender to get inside the women‘s madrasas, (religious schools) to interview and photograph the most devout Pakistani women.

Later, the New York Times Magazine assigned me to work with in Northern Iraq… There, two or three bombs went off every day. We got used to it. My judgment of danger became increasingly skewed. I lost a sense of fear. I was no longer running away from explosions but running directly towards them.

In August 2004, I stepped away from America‘s war on terror, and my attention turned to Africa. Over the next five years, I returned to Darfur for about a month every year, photographing the plight of refugees, villages on fire, ransacked homes.

Between these visits, I made frequent trips to another civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Attacks from both government and rebel soldiers left millions dead and a countless number of Congolese women sexually assaulted. They raped women to mark their territory, to destroy family bonds (women were often ostracized from their families once they were raped) and to intimidate civilians as a way of establishing power.

The stories were unbearable. As a photojournalist, I felt there was very little I could do for the women in the DRC but record their stories. I hoped awareness of their plight might somehow save them.

With each new assignment—whether I was in Congo, Darfur, Afghanistan, elsewhere—I felt more fortunate to be an independent, educated woman. I cherished my right to choose my love, my work. I had the privilege to travel, and to walk away from hardship when it became too much to bear. Most people on earth didn‘t have an exit door to walk away from their own lives.

I was in Iraq for National Geographic in late January 2011, when David, my editor at the New York Times, called me in Baghdad and asked whether I wanted to go to Egypt, where was a revolution under way.

The more I watched the news - the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and apparently now Libya too - the more I realized how historic this Arab Spring would be. I got on a plane. I was headed to Libya.

“You will die tonight”

My mouth was cotton with fear, my hands numb from the tight cloth around my wrists. A soldier opened the door and slid into the car beside me. He looked at me for a few seconds.

For a moment, I thought perhaps he had arrived to offer me water. But instead, he lifted his fist, and punched me hard on the side of the face.

It wasn’t the pain that made me weep, it was the disrespect, the fear of what was to come. For one of the few times in my career, I feared the possibility of rape.

We sat in those cars for hours, the sky above us turning dark. At four a.m., they woke us up. A large, muscular soldier lifted me like a pillow into his arms, and loaded me into the back of the Armored Personnel Carrier. I tried to remain as still as possible when I felt a soldier climb into the vehicle and position himself against me.

The vehicle began to move and within seconds, the soldier spooning my back started tracing his fingers across my body. I squirmed and pleaded. “Please, don‘t. Please. I have a husband.” He covered my mouth with his salty fingers, and ordered me not to speak, as he continued groping. The soldier kept his hands on my breasts for the thirty minutes or so we drove, until miraculously, another soldier pulled me away from him.

I kept my eyes closed under the blindfold, and tried to slow my breathing. That‘s when I felt his hand on my face, caressing my cheek like a lover. He spoke to me in a low, steady voice, repeating the same phrase over and over.

“What is he saying, Anthony?”

Anthony took his time answering. “He is telling you that you will die tonight.”

Free at last

It was the afternoon when we arrived in Sirte, Colonel Qaddafi‘s hometown, halfway between Benghazi and Tripoli. Eventually they untied our hands and undid our blindfolds, and brought us a dinner of orange rice and plain, white bread rolls.

“Do you think anyone realizes we are missing?” I asked.

Anthony, Steve and Tyler were sure. “The New York Times is a machine,’ Steve said. “They will be doing everything they can to find us.”

Eventually, I closed my eyes. I breathed slowly. I took in the silence of our cell. My thoughts reverted to Paul and my family, who had no idea where I was.

We woke to the familiar clanking sound of our prison door. We heard them say Tripoli and we knew that was our fate. We were loaded on to a military airport, and landed in Tripoli in a frenzy. We were transported to an apartment with two bedrooms and told that if we attempted to open a door or a window, we would be shot.

The next day rolled into night, and then into another night. No one came to visit us. We spent most of our time sitting around the kitchen table talking, telling war stories, recounting what had happened.

Late afternoon on the 20th - six days after we were taken - we were blindfolded again, and transferred to another location in Tripoli.

The next morning, we were escorted down to a room on the ground floor, where TV cameras were set up on tripods. I began to believe we might actually be released.

While we waited for the formalities to begin, one of the Turkish diplomats handed me his cell phone. He had Paul on the line: It was the first time I had heard his voice since the ordeal began, and I fell apart.

“Baby?” I whimpered, between tears. “I am so sorry.”

“I love you baby,” he said. Pail was firm, loving, and reassuring. “You are going to be released.”

Then the Turkish and Libyan officials signed documents. We were officially in Turkish custody. We were escorted outside, and into the crisp March air. I hadn‘t seen the sun for six days, and as we walked towards the diplomatic vehicle waiting to take us one step closer to freedom, I looked up at the cornflower, blue sky, punctuated by fluffy clouds, and took a deep breath.

We landed in Tunis, I walked through the baggage claim area, out the doors, to where Paul and Nicki, Tyler‘s girlfriend, were waiting for us. I collapsed into Paul‘s arms.

© 2015 by Lynsey Addario, extracted from It’s What I Do by Lynsey Addario published by Corsair