Captivity: 118 Days in Iraq and the Struggle for a World Without War [Paperback]

James Loney, author, peace activist and member of a team trained by Christian Peacemaker Teams for non-violent intervention in lethal conflict zones, shared his thoughts with me recently in his Toronto home. James Loney and three other men - Canadian Harmeet Singh Sooden, British citizen Norman Kember and an American, Tom Fox were taken hostage at gunpoint in Baghdad in November 2005. A day-by-day memoir chronicling James imprisonment transformed from a notebook during imprisonment has become a published book: `Captivity: 118 Days In Iraq And The Struggle For A World Without War'.

I tell James that while reading his book I was struck with how real and how vulnerable the captors seem and how he reveals the captors human side when most people would want to write about how evil and horrific they are without including anything that would make them seem human. James tells me that he wanted to see his captors this way. He wanted to see their human side, to make a connection, to survive. I add that I had a difficult time reading the book because I felt like I was right there with him in captivity. At times this was fascinating, but at other times, frightening and I needed to take a break. I quickly add that this is what is great about reading the authentic writing of another's experience, I have the privilege of vicarious travel, taking a break, releasing myself from captivity, where he didn't.

James laughs, "That's what I tell people. While writing `Captivity', I used to get up every morning and go back to being kidnapped and held captive again." I laugh, too. James tells me most people don't laugh when he says that. I think I know why. What he experienced is too graphic to laugh about. Maybe they think it would be rude to laugh at another's misfortune. I add, that the funny parts of the book helped me to overcome the more graphic scenes. The comic relief reduces tension so you can continue reading to find out what happens next. The handcuffs episode and watching American action movies with your captors, their comments and abrupt changes in your captors mood and directives were the funniest, I say. As I read `Captivity', I found myself laughing one moment and nail-biting the next. A wild manic-depressive episode cycling back and forth in minutes.

James Loney's writing and account of his abduction is that good. I rarely find myself tearing up and laughing wildly in two paragraphs. James is an exceptional storyteller, able to bring us on his journey back to a terrifying experience. With compassion for the human condition and self-analysis he combines humility with genuine, raw human experience.

And how does James Loney see his world now, post-prisoner? How does James view humanity in light of his kidnapping?

Some, including his rescuers have alluded to the Stockholm Syndrome, where captive views captor as a likeable person with human frailties. Attempting to help his captors by identifying with them, bonding emotionally with them, is an empathize to survive strategy. So convincing a survival strategy is the Stockholm Syndrome, that it is unknown to its sufferer, in a quasi-amnesiac state. Similar to a hypnotized mind, the Stockholm Syndrome resembles a sort of mental olympics, contorting and twisting the mind into pseudo-genuine compassion for and connection to those who are inescapably brutal. Faced with the possibility of mortality, and escape viewed as impossible, survival becomes any belief system that keeps you safe.

The will to survive is perhaps the strongest will. How far will you go to survive?

Find out in this compelling account, how the human will to survive combined with the strong desire to achieve peace with strictly non-violent methods, shapes action in captivity. Find out how one peaceful human being copes with the moral dilemmas of ever-present danger and imminent death. Carve out a few hours of reading time for `Captivity'. On this emotionally wild journey through hell, as you discover what you might do in captivity, you'll find this book impossible to put down.

James Loney has written a book about what it's like to live in fear of being killed on a kidnapper's whim, shackled to your fellow peace activists. At the same time he shows that the triumph of the human spirit can prevail amidst the conflicts between four friends literally thrown together during the most violent days of the American war in Iraq. The Christian Peacemaker Team activist manages the tricky feat of compelling storytelling whileat the same time sketches vivid portraits of the three men with whom he shared some four months of captivity. Deftly interwoven through this compelling tale are the author's passionate but sharp reflections on the nature of war and peace. "Every war needs a cloak...to conceal that it is really a rotten, stinking corpse....a reason, a story to explain why it is necessary." This personal story explains why a group of pacifists risked their lives to put an end to mass, organized violance.

Loney's book carried me away from the first page. It's a terrifying read, not so much because of the potential violence that hovers behind each page, but because of the emotional, political and ethical turmoil it provokes.

How do you create peace in the center of unrelenting violence and despair? How do you live day after day with fear? How do you deal with the boredom of captivity, shackled to the same people in the same room, navigating their coping strategies even as you develop your own? How do you hold on to your values, principles and beliefs as your world condenses to a few square feet and the ever-present threat that even that may yet be lost? How, in the midst of all this, do you maintain any sense of humor let alone sanity? And how, ultimately, do you love the neighbor that's too close, (the fellow captive), and the enemy that's too strong (the captor)?

The questions that 'Captivity' elicited for me are bigger than Loney's experience. They forced me to reflect on where we're going as humans, and what it means to truly live faith in our time. It's a book that defies summary. It's a book that needs to be read.