Author:
Publication: Harper's Magazine
Date: December 25, 2003
URL: http://www.harpers.org/MyBigAdventure.html
Note: From the thirty-five-page
handwritten prison diary of Omar Sheikh, a British Muslim from an affluent
London family. In 1992, while studying at the London School of Economics,
Sheikh became interested in the plight of Bosnia's Muslims. He traveled
to Croatia in 1993 and was unable to enter Bosnia but made contacts with
mujahedeen fighters who advised that he go to Afghanistan for training.
After spending several months in Afghan training camps, Sheikh joined Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen,
a terrorist group operating in Kashmir, and was sent to India on a mission
to kidnap Westerners who could be used in a prisoner exchange. Sheikh was
captured by Indian police in 1994 but was exchanged in 1999 for the passengers
of a hijacked Indian Airlines jet. In July 2002 Sheikh was found guilty
and given a death sentence by a Pakistani court for the kidnapping and
murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Originally from January
2002.
On July 26, 1994, I arrived at Indira
Gandhi International Airport. My instructions were to spend the first night
in some good hotel and then the next day call the two phone numbers I had
been given. I was to ask for a "Farooq." Maulana Abdullah (a Harkat operative
in Pakistan) had given me these instructions over the phone.
When I got to Connaught Place, I
stopped a passerby and asked which was a "good hotel" to stay in. He mentioned
the Holiday Inn, which I chose because the name was familiar. I registered
under my own name and gave my passport number. The bill was an astounding
$210 a night. I did not know I had picked the most expensive hotel in town
- I thought all Delhi hotels were this expensive and that my money would
soon run out!
Therefore I decided I had better
contact Farooq straightaway. I phoned both numbers from the hotel. Both
answered there was no Farooq there. This worried me even more, and I debated
whether to contact Maulana Abdullah in Islamabad but decided against it,
since it would have been grossly against principles to phone head office
from a hotel. Sultan (an accomplice) took me to a guest house in the Jamia
Masjid bazaar area. After we checked in, Sultan became much more friendly.
I asked him if Mr. Zubair Shah (the chief of my mission) had arrived, and
he said not yet but he would soon. He said he had been very pleased to
hear of him coming, since they had fought many battles together in Afghanistan.
Sultan was from Punjab in Pakistan
and had instructed several of the lads I had been a co-instructor with.
I asked him what they had in terms of weapons, and he said they had an
AK-47, a couple of pistols, and some grenades. I asked him where the stuff
had come from but he was evasive.
I said we should seriously consider
buying a house in Delhi. He reminded me that the instructions they had
received from Pakistan were that I was supposed to do the job I was sent
for, namely kidnapping, and not interfere in what they were doing.
Over the next month, I analysed
every place I visited from various points of view: as a "future conqueror"
- which I fondly imagined myself to be - as a social scientist, a traveler,
noting down the intricacies of a new country, and as an introspector. I
went to mosques and madrasahs and talked about ideas pertaining to jihad.
Among the madrasah students, I felt there was great potential for an Islamic
movement to emerge, but the great obstacle was that the students were generally
not capable of independent conclusions - they concluded what their teachers
told them to.
Nearing the end of August, I was
told by Sultan that "someone has come - meet me tomorrow at Jamia mosque
and we'll talk with him." I knew it must be Shah-Saab. Only it was not
the smiling, cheerful person I remembered from Islamabad. He had thinned
considerably. His first words were ones of reproach. He said all my traveling
and talking around had probably gotten us exposed already. He said if I
didn't pull my socks up he'd send me back. He said until we'd started on
our mission I ought simply to have stayed in a room and relaxed.
"Your responsibility is the foreigners,"
he said. "I'm pursuing the other channels also, but the people concerned
won't know about you and you won't know about them. Remember, American
first priority, then British and French."
Then he sent me on my first task.
I was to go to Agra on a tourist bus, noting on the way all the stops it
made for refreshments. I was to note the composition of the foreigners
at the monuments.
Next morning at about seven a.m.
I got on a bus that had a few foreigners. One of them, an Israeli named
Akhmir, came and sat next to me. I immediately started working out how
I could arrange to meet him later, and throughout the day I tried - with
no success.
It was late at night when the bus
broke down on our return journey to Delhi. All the passengers were worried
since there seemed no way to get back. Then a van drove by and I thumbed
it to stop. We got off at Delhi about ten minutes from Nizamuddin. I got
into an autorickshaw with Akhmir. As we approached Nizamuddin, I started
quarreling loudly with the rickshaw man. He retaliated and stopped the
rickshaw. I told the bemused Akhmir that the rickshaw man was mad and was
asking Rs 500 for the journey and that there was no knowing where he might
take us if we didn't pay. Akhmir hurriedly got off with me. "Never mind,"
I said. "I've got a friend near here who can give us a lift."
So, finally, at two a.m. I brought
him to the house. I hammered on the door and Farooq opened it. I winked
at him. Akhmir followed me up the stairs. I woke up Shah-Saab and told
him, hiding my excitement, that I'd brought back an Israeli and all we
had to do was overpower him. Shah-Saab gazed at me incredulously, peered
out of the door, and saw the 6'3" hulking Akhmir standing there, alarmed
at seeing so many bearded men sleeping in one room. "You fool," hissed
Shah-Saab. "You'll get us all killed. Take him back to his hotel at once
and come back in the morning."
Crestfallen, I went to Akhmir and
told him that my friend had lent his car out. I took him downstairs, woke
up an autorickshaw man, and went with him to his hotel.
Next morning, after everyone had
a good laugh, Shah-Saab gave me my next instructions. I was to go to places
of tourist interest inside Delhi and see if I could start establishing
friendships with tourists. Our next meeting was arranged for Jamia mosque.
From the outset, I found the friendship task next to impossible. How on
earth do you go up to a foreigner and suddenly become friends? Especially
when he has a female partner with him or a dozen salesmen calling out to
him. In our meeting at Jamia mosque, I told Shah-Saab that the only way
was the stick-'em-up-and-snatch style. But he urged me to keep trying.
The next day, I saw a foreign chap
wandering about. I asked him where he was going. He said Dehra Dun, and
I quickly made up my mind. So I said, "What a surprise! I'm going there
too!" and got with him on the bus. His name was Richard, and he was a British
student who had arranged to teach at Doon School, Dehra Dun. By the time
we got to Doon School, I had not only initiated a friendship; I had put
forward the idea of spending time together touring India. I spent the night
at Hotel Relax at Dehra Dun but failed to start up a conversation with
the foreign couple staying there.
Now, since I had been in India the
sight of emaciated beggars everywhere had posed a serious dilemma for me.
I had never seen so much poverty firsthand in my life before. But I had
soon realised that superficial help was only perpetuating the problem -
most of the money they received was spent on cigarettes or charas. But
they were genuinely needy people. Anyway, one night I decided that since
I had the room to myself, I would offer to share it with an old one-legged
man who sat outside the Markaz. I went and brought the old man to the room.
We had dinner, and I was enjoying one of his stories when Farooq arrived.
He declared that the old man had to leave the house. I tried to reason
with him, but he said that my "antics" were putting everyone at risk. I
lost my temper, packed up my stuff, and left - taking the old man with
me, and telling Farooq I was sorry I had such a cowardly set of companions.
It was about the third week of September
when Shah-Saab told me that he had finally managed to arrange a house in
a remote area in Saharanpur where the neighbourhood was Muslim and undeveloped
to the extent that it was unlikely to have an effective system of informers.
When I saw the house, my heart sank. How the hell was I supposed to bring
a foreigner all the way here? And unnoticed by the local people? Siddique
was jumping up and down in joy and making little gestures with the pistols.
Sultan beamed at me and said, "Like it?"
"No," I said sharply. He was surprised.
I didn't bother to explain. I told Sultan I wouldn't go back with him to
Delhi and would go out "on the hunt" straightaway.
Next morning, I went to Woodstock
School - an American school - and applied for a job as a teacher. I did
this partly because if I got it I could easily bring one of my co-teachers
down to visit my "relatives" and partly because I wanted to see whether
cutting short my academic career had greatly affected my competitiveness
on the job market. I had an interview with the vice principal, and I didn't
get offered the job!
So next morning I left. I went by
cycle rickshaw to Turkman Gate and took an autorickshaw to Paharganj. I
sat around at the four or five cafes in that stretch, slowly sipping or
eating something, and gradually developed a knack for opening up conversations.
I would introduce myself as an Indian-blooded British national who was
thrilled to come to India for the first time since he had left as a child.
Then I would go on to tell them that my uncle had died, and, because of
some grievance against his son, he had left me his village. Given that
the feudal system in India had died out a long time ago, I was amazed that
this story was greeted with such credible enthusiasm.
I made several acquaintances and
even convinced a British chap called Trevor to come to the village after
a few days. But the strongest friendship by far was with Rhys Partridge
and Graham Fox - we had many common interests, like chess, traveling, and
writing. Both were fascinated by the village story.
Later, I went to meet Sultan as
planned at Tilak Bridge. Shah-Saab then detailed the procedure. He said
that Sultan would accompany us and once we got to Saharanpur he would be
in charge, and I was not to interfere in the chaining up of the hostages.
Then we made a collective prayer for the success of the operation. When
I went to meet Graham and Rhys at the restaurant, I was a bit taken aback
because Graham's girlfriend, Kate, had come and she thought she was coming
the next day also. Later, when I was playing chess with Rhys, I mentioned
that the village elders might not appreciate a girl accompanying us.
He must have passed on the message,
because next morning Graham said that he was sorry - he and Kate had changed
their minds. After taking Rhys to the Saharanpur house, I started explaining
to him the facts of life. I told him that I was a revolutionary and was
here in India for a specific purpose and I wanted him to help me in that
purpose. He asked what I meant. I said I wanted him to be our guest while
we negotiated with the British and Indian governments. I was trembling
at that moment.
This was probably the strongest
friendship I had made for a long time (there is a great difference between
comradeship and friendship), and all of a sudden the reality hit me. "If
this is a joke," he said angrily, "it's a very poor one. I get very upset
at these things."
His aggressiveness made it a lot
easier. "I'll show you it's not a joke," I said simply. "Come in you guys."
And in rushed the three - Sultan, Sid, and Sal - brandishing the two pistols.
Sultan growled, "You are under arrest." Sid and Sal said, "Hands up." "All
right, all right," said Rhys. He looked at me and said, "Can I buy my way
out of this?"
I started explaining gently that
he hadn't understood the situation, but Sultan cut me short. It wasn't
until Rhys's ankle had been chained and Sultan had left that I got a chance
to explain to Rhys what was going on. I assured him that he was not in
any danger unless he tried to escape.
Naturally, though, he was still
very scared. I took his passport details and left the next morning for
Delhi. Amin came to me and said Shah-Saab would meet me in Nizamuddin Markaz.
He asked me, "Has the work been done?" I said, "Yes, it has." In the meeting,
Shah-Saab ticked me off, saying I should have replied, "What work?" and
shrugged my shoulders. Though I never really agreed with Shah-Saab's way
of doing things - I thought all this hush-hush nonsense was unnecessary
- I thought that Shah-Saab cared about me, almost in a fatherly way.
Shah-Saab's next instruction was
to hunt down an American. I set off for the YMCA. By evening I had established
rapport with a chap I thought to be American and had told him about my
village when to my annoyance I found out he was German. I was about to
leave when an American joined in the conversation.
The American, whose name was Daniel
Skinner, had been teaching English as a volunteer and was leaving India
because of lack of funds. I turned to him and said, "Hey, I need someone
to teach English at my village school." I arranged to meet him a couple
of days hence and confirm the details. When we spoke again, he agreed to
accompany me the next day.
At one o'clock I made my way to
the Markaz, and Amin took me to the van. We picked Daniel up at the YMCA
and started off for Saharanpur, but before an hour had passed Dan asked
to get off for cigarettes.
We stopped the car and he got off
with his bags and said he thought he'd better stay in Delhi for a few days
more. "What's the matter?" I asked in a surprised tone. "I've only known
you two days," he said. "And all of a sudden I'm in a car with you."
It was a tense remainder of a journey.
When we got to the house, Shah-Saab was alone. "What happened?" he asked.
I told him. To my surprise he started laughing. "Bachoo, you must have
said something to him to make him suspicious," he said. "Well, you just
have to get another." I went to talk to Rhys after that. He had calmed
down considerably. I told him about the American, and he was pleased that
someone had outsmarted me.
Back therefore to Paharganj. There
were Swiss, Dutch, Australians, Canadians - but not one single American!
I told Shah-Saab that I had combed the whole of Delhi. He said, okay, more
Britishers or a Frenchman would do. And who should I bump into but ole
Graham. He asked me how it had all been and I said terrific, Rhys had thoroughly
enjoyed himself and was now in Manali. And ironically, it was Graham who
introduced me later in the Hare Krishna restaurant to Paul Rideout and
Christopher Morston, two Britishers who had just arrived in India.
I didn't have to go through the
old village story because Graham told it for me. We played a game of chess
and arranged to meet the next evening at Hare Krishna. Next morning I told
Shah-Saab at the Markaz that I had two Britishers in the pipeline, did
he want them? He answered affirmatively, and we arranged to meet next morning,
when I would hopefully have made the arrangements.
That evening I met the two guys
and casually mentioned I was going down to my village the next day - would
they be interested in accompanying me? They agreed, so next morning we
all set off to Saharanpur, the two, the driver, and myself, and it was
almost exactly like the first time with Rhys except that I didn't talk
about revolutions on the way - we discussed more complicated issues like
women.
At Saharanpur, the door was opened
by Siddique. He saw that I was accompanied by two guests, and so he immediately
called the others to attention, telling them the Maharaja was here. The
same drama as before happened, except that this time there was an AK-47
in the picture. The two were shocked to see Rhys, whom we'd talked about
on the way. Rhys was rather pleased that he was no longer alone.
Next day, after taking their passport
details and reassuring them as best I could, I returned to Delhi. I met
Shah-Saab that evening at the Markaz and informed him of what had happened.
He said that I should make one last thrust for an American.
Next morning, I just sat at a cafe
opposite the Ankur Guest House and ordered a drink. The person in front
of me started talking to me and with a shock I realised he was American.
This was Bela Nuss. He was staying
at Ajay Guest House and was about to leave India. He was a lonely sort
of fellow who found in me someone he could talk to.
The next evening we had dinner at
some pizza place in Connaught Place. I told him I was having dinner at
an Indian family's house the next day and asked him whether he'd like to
come along. He was delighted.
On the way to Ghaziabad, Salahuddin
drove and talked respectfully to both of us. Shah-Saab and Siddique were
waiting on the fast road. The van stopped and they got in. I told Bela
that they just wanted a lift. All of a sudden, I felt terribly embarrassed
and asked Shah-Saab in Hindi to kidnap me also. He replied, "Don't kick
up a fuss." Soon Bela realized that we were leaving the city and voiced
his thoughts. Shah-Saab pulled out a pistol with a silencer and looked
at him the way a cat does a mouse. I held his hands and gave him the "everything
will be okay'' speech. Siddique went to the back compartment and slipped
the burka on him.
Next morning (October 21, 1994)
I met Shah-Saab at his place as instructed. He said he had contacted Pakistan
and had asked for money to be sent before the declaration was made so that
if things got rough we wouldn't have to look for money before we made our
escape. But he said we needed to plan our letters, so he sent me to find
out contact addresses and numbers for the prime minister, various ministries,
the BBC, the Voice of America, and the embassies of the U.S.A. and U.K.
I had only just obtained the information
when Shah-Saab said he had got news that Rhys had tried to escape and the
guys up there were alarmed. He said that the two of us should go there
and talk to the foreigners and our comrades.
Shah-Saab veiled himself, and the
two of us went to the Britishers, where I translated for Shah-Saab as he
told them that we were not far off from our goals and they had no need
to be afraid because we would free them whether or not our aims were met
through them. He stipulated a maximum time period of one month.
I returned to Delhi early morning
and returned to Shah-Saab's place. Shah-Saab dictated what he wanted, and
I put it into English.
Looking at the letters, I thought
the same could be sent without having done any kidnappings at all. I remembered
the Beirut hostages incidents some years back and how pictures of the hostages
with newspapers in the background were issued. So I suggested to Shah-Saab
that we do the same. He asked where we'd get the film developed. I told
him about the Polaroid camera. He agreed and gave me Rs 5000.
I bought a Polaroid camera at a
shop in Palika Bazaar, took a bus to the house, and told the guys there
that I had come to take photographs. Maulana-Saab went and bought a newspaper.
He and Khan-Saab stood in the background, veiled, with the newspaper and
AK-47. Sultan took the photos - six of them.
I went back by train and arrived
at Shah-Saab's house absolutely exhausted. Shah-Saab and I then sat down
to make adjustments to the letters for the photos. Our deadline was seventy-two
hours, starting from midnight.
I went off to Kashmiri Gate and
speed-posted one letter. Then I went to Daryaganj and faxed another, asking
the owner of the shop to turn his back, since the contents were confidential.
For the next couple of days, I stayed
with Shah-Saab. Amin was with us and would do errands like fetch dinner,
etc. Each morning Shah-Saab went off and came back saying that he had phoned
Pakistan and the comrades were still not freed.
Next morning I set off with the
last two letters. I went to the BBC office, Amin behind me, and gave the
letter to the rather nice girl at reception. "Tell the editor I want an
answer by three p.m.," I said, thinking tonight she'll be telling the whole
world that this big, monstrous, terrorist-looking chap came to her in person
and . . . Tomorrow I'll ring her up and say, "Actually, my dear, I'm not
like that at all . . ."
I left the building speedily and
went to Hindustan Times. I gave the letter to the chief editor's public-relations
manager and asked him to give it to him. To my consternation, he started
opening it. I speedily withdrew from the room and ran down the stairs (I
only just restrained myself from sliding down the banister!) and out of
the entrance and across the traffic-jammed road where Amin was.
For my part, I thought, it was finally
over, success or failure lay with Him above. Siddique and I wandered about
the nearby roads and talked philosophically and not so philosophically.
We talked about Afghanistan, Kashmir, Bosnia, and England. We talked about
Shah-Saab and the other comrades and the great days we had had in India,
the jokes that would be remembered for years to come. He told me about
the girl back home he was engaged to, I told him about the one I wasn't
engaged to. We talked about the comrades who were getting free any day
now . . . and what they'd be likely to do next. So evening came.
It was just after sunset that Shah-Saab
arrived to tell us that the American had stopped eating and that we were
to go and convince him that it was a matter of a few days only.
We boarded a bus for Okhla, and
at nine o'clock we got off on the main road and had turned into the lane
that takes us to the house when two armed policemen came toward me and
asked gruffly who we were and where we were going. I thought it was a routine
patrol and asked what the matter was. The policeman swore at me and tried
to drag me to one side by the collar, at which I got furious and started
hitting him. The next thing I remember, I felt a stinging blow on my back
and I looked around to see the other swinging his rifle at me - my comrades
had disappeared. I turned toward him and bang! I felt the anger being drawn
out with the blood. I thought it was the end. It was the end of one era
and the beginning of another.
