Taken on Trust: An Autobiography

Rating:
Summary: A book from the perspective of a hostage
Review: This book caught my eye... What must it feel like to be captured by terrorists ? Or to be held in solitary confinement, day in day out not knowing when the situation will end ? This is not just a narrative to pick up because the news is full of hostages's lives being bargained with, in Iraq. It is also relevant because it shows how denying anybody access to the outside world when they are imprisoned, is an unacceptably inhumane way to treat another human being. Terry Waite began this book in his head - whilst coping with solitary confinement in Lebanon in the 1980's. The title is important: he was taken whilst trusting his negotiators to bring him, as a representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury, to meet the hostages they were already holding.

Don't therefore presume this book has a religious theme. It really doesn't push that. This book is important to read because you find yourself living the life of a particular hostage. You are with Terry as he is led, blindfold, from one hiding place to the next. You get pushed & fed like him, and humiliated by those imposed hand showers and the delayed toilet visits. Your eyes follow his as he studies with eager curiosity the feet passing by under his door and wonders who else is being led to that same toilet.. Shoved into a refrigerator for one departure, he panicks and you fall with him as he is bounced down, step after step to the street outside, scrambling inside to untie his hands to protect himself. And so the months go by. You sit cross legged beside him, eyes covered by a similar blindfold, feeling those empty minutes and hours pass with no pen, no paper, no conversation and a constant nagging fear that the next change in the schedule might bring pain. It makes the moments of fleeting kindnesses from the guards very special, and you become as excited as Terry is when at last he is given books. Though time may drag by for him, he keeps the reader from being bored by separating out his narrative into descriptive paragraphs of his childhood and then his rise in job opportunities until he travels around the world as an important layman emissary assigned at different times to both the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church (consulting for the Medical Mission Sisters). His descriptions of Africa are particularly interesting. With much negotiating experience behind him, this brought him to that moment of trying to negotiate the release of those hostages taken in the Lebanese conflict.

So just how do you remain mentally and physically strong for day after day when there is the loss of proper sunlight, minimal exercise and conversation ? Terry describes the basic methods he used to preserve his sanity and body. But how do you deal with the despair (and anger) which overwhelms you when hearing that hammer knocking in a position once again for your leg chain at the new hiding place? I particularly admire a person who writes so honestly about facing his own weaknesses which surface, and who even exposes his questioning of his own God. Reading Terry's book gives us all a chance to understand why it should be every country's moral obligation to make sure a prisoner in its care be treated as a human being, with legal rights that must, must be protected.

Rating:
Summary: A book from the perspective of a hostage
Review: This book caught my eye... What must it feel like to be captured by terrorists ? Or to be held in solitary confinement, day in day out not knowing when the situation will end ? This is not just a narrative to pick up because the news is full of hostages's lives being bargained with, in Iraq. It is also relevant because it shows how denying anybody access to the outside world when they are imprisoned, is an unacceptably inhumane way to treat another human being. Terry Waite began this book in his head - whilst coping with solitary confinement in Lebanon in the 1980's. The title is important: he was taken whilst trusting his negotiators to bring him, as a representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury, to meet the hostages they were already holding.

Don't therefore presume this book has a religious theme. It really doesn't push that. This book is important to read because you find yourself living the life of a particular hostage. You are with Terry as he is led, blindfold, from one hiding place to the next. You get pushed & fed like him, and humiliated by those imposed hand showers and the delayed toilet visits. Your eyes follow his as he studies with eager curiosity the feet passing by under his door and wonders who else is being led to that same toilet.. Shoved into a refrigerator for one departure, he panicks and you fall with him as he is bounced down, step after step to the street outside, scrambling inside to untie his hands to protect himself. And so the months go by. You sit cross legged beside him, eyes covered by a similar blindfold, feeling those empty minutes and hours pass with no pen, no paper, no conversation and a constant nagging fear that the next change in the schedule might bring pain. It makes the moments of fleeting kindnesses from the guards very special, and you become as excited as Terry is when at last he is given books. Though time may drag by for him, he keeps the reader from being bored by separating out his narrative into descriptive paragraphs of his childhood and then his rise in job opportunities until he travels around the world as an important layman emissary assigned at different times to both the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church (consulting for the Medical Mission Sisters). His descriptions of Africa are particularly interesting. With much negotiating experience behind him, this brought him to that moment of trying to negotiate the release of those hostages taken in the Lebanese conflict.

So just how do you remain mentally and physically strong for day after day when there is the loss of proper sunlight, minimal exercise and conversation ? Terry describes the basic methods he used to preserve his sanity and body. But how do you deal with the despair (and anger) which overwhelms you when hearing that hammer knocking in a position once again for your leg chain at the new hiding place? I particularly admire a person who writes so honestly about facing his own weaknesses which surface, and who even exposes his questioning of his own God. Reading Terry's book gives us all a chance to understand why it should be every country's moral obligation to make sure a prisoner in its care be treated as a human being, with legal rights that must, must be protected.