Adapting to Adversity

For as long as she remembered, Leesa wanted to be in the Army. It wasn’t just about defying what her parents had wanted for her (who were they to decide anyway?) but she genuinely wanted to do something that had a purpose. What could be more purposeful than representing your country and protecting others? 

She’d never been the best at school but once she put her mind to something, she would achieve it. Following orders wasn’t a problem for her in training because she understood the need for discipline. Perhaps because her own upbringing had been so haphazard? There were six children in her house, so getting anything done, or everyone out the door was always a mission. She’d tried to be bossy and impose some sort of order on them, but some of her siblings were quite unruly. Her parents didn’t seem to care,

“Let kids be kids,” they always said. Sure, but did that have to mean total mayhem all the time? It was no wonder she liked the order of military life.

Now she’d risen to the rank of Major, no mean feat for a woman. She knew she’d had to fight harder than most of her classmates, and she knew that she’d been shunned a few times because she wasn’t seen as one of the guys. There’d been one other girl in her bootcamp, and although they’d grown close because of the circumstances, Leesa wasn’t really surprised when Carmen had taken a desk job. She had been fine in action, but it was clear that she was more suited to duties that involved administrative tasks. Leesa was the opposite; she wanted to be in the dirt, in the grit and the long, hard days, and nights that it involved.

Leesa’s career had taken her far across the world to places that she couldn’t have imagined as a child. From a dull, unimaginative life in suburbia to dusty desert camps in Iraq and rocky plateaus in Afghanistan. She loved every moment. The irony was not lost on her that she wasn’t captured during war time and she wasn’t captured by an opposing army. Instead, as she was learning, it was a powerful gangster who thought that he would keep her if he ever needed a bargaining chip. She hadn’t known this immediately, of course.

Having built up strength, tenacity and a certain stoicism throughout her training and years in the Army, Leesa first tried to consider things logically when she was captured. She took a big picture approach and tried to discern what had happened in the world that she, an American Major, would have been captured in Egypt. It was true that things in the Middle East hadn’t been stable for long, and she knew there was much at play that could spark another war, but they hadn’t had any intel that they would be attacked, much less captured as prisoners in the days leading up to her being taken.

She wondered if she had been complacent, she recalled and replayed her every move over the previous seven days before she’d been taken. Her company had not felt threatened and they had not lost communication with any of their battalion. It was all so unassuming, yet it must have been a planned operation. Someone didn’t just bundle an Army Major into a van and drive them hundreds of miles from their station. Except they had.

Of course, Leesa had tried to resist - it was part of her training, her mindset, her personality. Then she realised that she’d been placed in a cage of sorts, something that restricted her from touching the others in the back of the vehicle that she’d been placed. She knew that if she thrashed and screamed, she would use a lot of energy, so she set about testing the bars, pushing against them gently then with more force, but as quietly as possible. She considered what she would do when she was released from the cage, but it took some time. When water was poured over her head, she opened her mouth and gratefully received it. When food was eventually slid into her cage, she got down on her hands and knees and ate, like a dog through the hole in her. They must have known she would bite a hole in the material over her head; they had allowed her space to do so.

When Leesa was given more freedom, she was hostile at first. She saw that she was surrounded by children, whom she’d never really liked, even as a child herself. She was suspicious, she looked to see if they had weapons. None spoke English and all were dressed in clothes that were either ill-fitting or worn out. As the days went by, the children brought Leesa food and eventually one of the mother’s appeared.

“You are kind to the children.” She said in a monotone. Leesa figured her English wasn’t too good, so she just nodded back.

“Will you teach…?” The woman gestured to the children. Leesa was surprised. Did they need a teacher that badly they had kidnapped one? She was puzzled, but she nodded slowly. 

How would she teach them? She had barely scraped through school herself.

Then she began, and slowly she adapted. Teaching these little children in the open air was different to school back home. They would bring her fruit - and she would teach them the names and colors. In time, they brought her to their little huts, where more learning went on. Then finally, a newspaper was presented. 

Ostensibly, it was to give her material to teach the children but she realised the women wanted to show her so much more. She learned the date, 14 months and nine days since she’d been kidnapped. She read about the gangster who had arranged her kidnap, and how he planned to use her as a bargaining chip. It threw up mixed feelings. Of course, she wanted to go home, but what then? Return to the Army? Train as a teacher.

Leesa wasn’t sure, but one thing she knew as she looked around at the children she’d grown to love. She had time. She didn’t have to decide now, she didn’t have to go home yet.