Impossible Odds

participate in any part of a rescue, because in the planning stage there would be no way to seal the flow of information in advance of the attack. They could never rely on an air strike or a proxy attack by local authorities. Options began to crumble away.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
    Jessica:
    I don’t think a person gets used to being forced to live in filthy conditions, but I found for the sake of my sanity that I had to give in to the idea of it, at least: using the “toilet” behind bushes, with men wandering in all directions, furtive body washing using a small bottle of water while huddled in a depression in the ground behind anything that could obscure the view. We had to use the same water for bathing they used for making tea or soup, and it all tasted as if they’d actually filled the cans without bothering to rinse out the traces of diesel fuel already in them. Eventually they must have realized diesel fuel can kill you, and began supplying us with bottled water for drinking, but the diesel water remained standard for any washing. The toughest part was trying to avoid the feeling that I was descending into an animal existence I would never escape.
    To raise my spirits and give me something to do, I capitalized on the fact that the men were getting too lazy to bake bread, so I persuaded them to let me do it. My fledgling efforts amused them no end, but I soon got the hang of it. What a relief to prepare food that might have some sand in it but was at least free of the communal bacteria line.
    I mixed several handfuls of flour with water and used my hands (washed as clean as possible) to knead the dough over and over again, then divided it into pieces about the size of a baseball. I pounded each “baseball” out into a disk shape, almost as flat as a pancake.
    Poul and I found an excuse to spend a few minutes together each time I did it because he volunteered to gather armloads of thin, burnable sticks for firewood. Even though they kept us apart most of the time, we were able to manipulate them somewhat by playing on their laziness.
    But what little conversation we could manage consisted mostly of mutual complaints, and yes, I believe the scale leaned hard toward my side. These angry thugs had managed to smear so many aspects of my dignity, of my sense of myself as a person. Somehow it felt as though I would have been cooperating with them by remaining silent and not complaining when I could.
    We could absolutely agree on a few things: Most of these guys were drugged-up morons. We made small exchanges of passing remarks, and I found that I needed this conversation. The topics were all shallow enough, but that didn’t matter at all. The power in it lay in simply having a few moments to speak with someone from your own world, all the while surrounded by so much that was not merely foreign, but also twisted and malignant.
    On some mornings they would allow me to walk in circles with Poul around our tree, stretching our legs and doing a little deep breathing. We couldn’t make noise or sing out loud for fear of drawing attention and causing somebody to get irritated, so while we shuffled along in those monotonous circles I sang under my breath, usually the same music we played at my mom’s funeral. The version I knew was done by the singer Rita Springer. “I don’t understand your ways, but I will give you my song  . . .”
    The familiarity of it put me in close touch with my mother, made me sense her energy. I always thought of her and Erik at thesame time. The combined sense of each one’s love for me formed a joyful wave. I felt it lifting me to its highest point every time I came to the lyric, “I’m desperately seeking, in faith still believing, the sight of your face is all that I’m needing. And I will say to you—it’s gonna be worth it, it’s gonna be worth it, it’s gonna be worth it all.”
    More than any other piece of music, this song was my soundtrack to those monotonous circular walks. I’m sure there are many other ways for someone to deal with this particular form of tedium and danger. I sang my way through it. I freely admit to using the uplift from that lyric as a load-bearing wall for my morale and for the connection it represented to powerful forces in my life.
    With the morning constitutional done, I made the bread dough for “Jessica’s Captive Campfire Sand Rolls” while Poul built a roaring fire, then let it burn down to coals. We threw the pancake-shaped pieces of dough