Ace Investigative Reporter Peter Abel, Imprisoned in the Desert to Die

23 Aug Ace Investigative Reporter Peter Abel, Imprisoned in the Desert to Die

The pain never let up.

The beatings, the hours under the blazing sun and the agony became his only reality.

After two weeks as a prisoner in the desert, Peter Abel’s memory of his days in prison faded. The name of the paper that he worked for as an investigative journalist, The Zodiac, came floating into his head, the echo of another existence but he knew his days were numbered

Abel’s captors called his new home “Desert Storm.” Three of the five prisoners who were there when Abel arrived had emaciated and died. Abel himself had pneumonia, was partly blind, and could not eat the brown substance sprinkled with sand they were given twice a day. He felt he was living as if outside of his frail body. He knew death waited.

In truth, there were moments Abel would have welcomed death, a release the others had thankfully achieved.

He and his fellow captives – there was an unending trickle of them, the living brought in to replace the dead – were staked in the sun by day and confined to a large tent pitched in the encroaching desert of northern Nigeria at night. Or so Abel guessed. He had no way of knowing where they were exactly.

On the day they brought him to this place, he had tried to calculate the amount of time they must have travelled. But he had been unconscious much of the journey, after having been beaten savagely by his abductors. His head had ached too badly for him to think clearly. And as he tried to see out of the tent, he discovered he could not use his legs because they were chained to metal posts which were set wide apart. He had only managed to get a glimpse through an open flap. It was just turning to dawn, which meant they had driven him through the night, hundreds of miles but still inside Nigeria. For some reason, this thought had brought him comfort.

On waking that first morning, Abel struggled to sit up, clutching his ribs. He studied the other prisoners, all who were similarly chained. Bruised, emaciated and in rags, they looked like the human shadows Abel had seen in films of concentration camps. They lay on their backs, asleep. The tent itself was about the size of a volleyball pitch, littered with discarded chains. Abel lay back and shut his eyes, too exhausted to be scared.

Food was brought in the morning and in the evening, flung on flat aluminium plates. A tall, hooded man placed the filthy object between his parted legs. Abel forced himself to eat the rancid concoction, heavy in hot peppers, no doubt to help disguise the disgusting ingredients.

After morning meals, two hooded men arrived and unchained them. Brandishing whips, they marched Abel and his companions into the blazing sun. Life in the camp was a painful routine.

On the first morning, Abel had noticed a large blue Jeep parked a few metres away. It stood out, surreal in its brilliant, almost cheerful colour against the brown sand dunes. The lines from Shelley’s poem flashed through Abel’s head: “Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretched far away.”

They were chained to steel poles in the sprawling sand and left to roast in the burning sun. Abel tried to shake the pole, but noticed that it was his body that shook, not the pole.

Thereafter, he took a cue from his colleagues and lay face down in the sun. His back burned. His mouth dried out. Intense heat penetrated his body. But his greatest fear was that the shifting sands, already burying his feet, would soon smother him.

He tried to shift his limbs to keep himself above ground, but soon gave up, exhausted. A man to his right seemed to be in deeper trouble. Coughing and vomiting, the pathetic creature turned to lie on his back trying not to choke on the sand. But it did not seem to help. He let out a frightened cry, stretched his weak limbs and went limp.

By noon that first day, Abel felt his skin peeling off. His eyes were burning from the blowing sand. He was only saved from death because his captors returned. They undid the chains and ordered their prisoners to get up. Abel, like the others, did so slowly, but the coughing man did not. The two hooded figures threw his lifeless body down into the dunes, discarded as casually as a sack of garbage.

Back in the tent, they shackled them again and gave them water, bread and the same vile food. Abel forced himself to eat and fell on his back, groaning at the pain, his blistered skin scraping on the floor.

That was the first day. Every day since, they had repeated the same torturous routine. He had spoken to his fellow captives, but learned nothing. Most were disoriented from hunger, thirst and heat-sickness. Those who were still coherent had lost the will to speak beyond their monosyllabic pleas to God.

As he had every night since his arrival, Abel lay awake listening to the wind outside, the flapping of the canvas, the creak of the tent poles and the occasional bark of their captors. Abel wondered for the thousandth time if his kidnapping had something to do with the story he had been writing; but he knew the answer, since the story involved the most powerful members of the State. The governor and his ally, the party chairman, and the governor’ wife, whom Abel had insulted the night he was captured.

Perhaps, Abel thought, still capable of irony, he should have slept with the woman. It’s what she wanted. Maybe then, whatever he was investigating would not have offended her so deeply.

Abel tried to remember what he had been working on. He couldn’t let it all slip away. He had to remember every detail. If he got out of this alive, he was determined to see his story in print. The corruption of the government exposed. But that was an empty vow. He would be dead soon.

Finally, Abel could think of nothing else to do but pray. In this hell, only God could save him. As he prayed, Abel wondered if this was the one place in the universe that God did not inhabit.