UN-Truth

In the first newspaper interview since his release, published today, Alan Johnston told The Guardian’s Decca Aitkenhead that: “In captivity he used to have vivid dreams about being in a London hotel restaurant, discussing his kidnap. Gradually the restaurant would begin to feel unreal and he’d realise he couldn’t get out, and then he’d wake and find himself still locked in a room in Gaza … He had given thought to the possibility of being kidnapped. ‘And I always knew I’d spend the first few hours trying to work out, are they one of these angry little clans with a problem that can be resolved by next Thursday, or is it going to be the Jihadi guys? And if it was going to be the Jihadi guys, then it would be the worst thing. I fell asleep towards midnight [on the first night of his captivity] thinking, well, still no Jihadis have showed up. But then I was woken up, and in came this Jihadi guy. He looked like he’d put the order in for somebody just like me to be taken, and now he was coming almost to see what he’d got. And from the moment I saw him it was clear what it was about. And then I just knew I was in the worst kind of trouble’.

The Guardian profile of Johnston continued: “As he came to terms with the fact that he might be there for a very long time, he feared he might simply be forgotten … ‘And anyone in that situation feels very alone, as if the world’s going to move on without you. The isolation of it is intense and you feel lost and that sense of being buried alive. And if a deal isn’t coming, then you think the world’s going to go, well that’s it then’. After 17 days he was given a radio and discovered the worldwide campaign to secure his release. During the following four months he heard reports of his execution, was forced one night to wear a suicide bomber’s vest, and once was told by his captors that he would be killed. He approached it as a psychological battle and describes marshalling the most extraordinary mental control. ‘The only thing I could control was my state of mind. From early on I strarted thinking, one day this is going to end and you’re going to need to look back, so try not to let yourself down, try to hold it together and take each moment and hour and day as calmly as you can. There were countless mental devices, but one of them was that I almost had in my mind’s eye a meter for the anxiety, like one of those things you get on a recording machine, and I could see it going up and I thought, you’ve got to work it down, to will it down to acceptable levels’…

The Guardian asked: “Did he hate his guards? ‘I felt if I gave way to hating these guys, that’s a hugely powerful emotion to release into your head, and it’s not about control. I don’t really hate very easily. It seemed much, much more important to regard them as a problem, just a cold, rational problem. So you try and figure them out, and what they might do next, and if there was any way I might be able to influence them. I always felt the best I could do was try and create a picture of myself in their minds as someone who was just a reasonable bloke’ … He thought about escaping, but never tried and worried about that. ‘I wasn’t brave enough. … I thought all it takes is for you to shove that guy when he comes in and you’re out of here. And then you could take your whole fate into your hands … But shoving him would be to introduce violence to the game. I’m the least violent guy I know, and he’s an urban guerrilla, half my age and twice as strong’. And besides, he points out, he probably wouldn’t have got very far. ‘You can’t have a westerner imprisoned at the top of the stairs without everyone in the building being on board’.”

The Guardian’s interviewer/writer reports that Johnston kept “stressing that he wasn’t always strong enough to control his bleaker thoughts. ‘It was a continual effort. Always. But I kept on thinking that in the great stories of human incarceration, yours of being locked in a room in Gaza where they don’t give you a hard time, and you’re reasonably fed, isn’t so bad. That was a large part of the business of thinking, come on, this is embarrassing if you can’t cope with this’ … ‘The night I heard there were claims I’d been executed, I had this sense that my whole way of life had pushed me further than could be borne, and I needed to think really hard about where I lived and how I worked. I thought about really domestic things … I thought I’d spend a bit of cash on the flat, and live more comfortably’ … He always used to think of Britain as rather dull. ‘I needed to go to more intense places. But for the first time, I’m just happy to be here’ … When he returns to work in January it will be to a desk job”.
The Guardian’s profile of Alan Johnston, published today, is here.

Filed under: Gaza, Journalism and Journalists