Lost to the World by Shahbaz Taseer

Author:Shahbaz Taseer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

* * *

My family received six videos over three weeks. A schedule emerged. One day of torture, two days to recover. I had no idea how the videos were being received or who was watching them. My life was reduced to being tortured, recovering from being tortured, and waiting to be tortured again.

The pain and humiliation remained constant.

* * *

Now, finally, it was time to make another phone call.

We didn’t call from the compound. Muhammad Ali had grown too paranoid, full of conspiracy theories. He believed the ISI or the CIA would triangulate on his cell phone and launch a drone strike against us.

I wished they would.

If I could only see the look on his face as a missile approached, right before blowing us all sky-high, it would make it worthwhile for me.

Omar Turk yanked me to my feet and dressed me in a burka. I recalled the first days of my captivity when I was in the ketamine haze being dragged from town to town. It seemed like a million years ago, as if it happened to a different person. That version of Shahbaz had felt the cosseting touch of his car’s luxurious leather interior only hours before. He was a citizen of a different world.

This Shahbaz, the one in the room, the one the guards only called Jee Bhai, or Ahmed, had only visited that world in fragments of half-remembered dreams.

They escorted me outside. After so many days and weeks in the dark indoors, I stumbled as I squinted against the bright sun.

Shoved into the back seat of a nondescript car, I was told we were going to the Mir Ali bazaar.

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