Mennonite Weekly Review

Do you remember the shock and anxiety we felt in November 2005 when we learned that four Christian Peacemaker Team members had been kidnapped in Iraq? They were Tom Fox, Norman Kember, Jim Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden. Daily we waited for news. Christmas was coming. Would they be released by then? As a one-time member of a CPT delegation, I recalled questions on the application form I had filled out. “Yes, I was aware of the risk.” “Yes, I was willing to take such a risk.” Now, I felt, “There but for the grace of God . . .”

Elaine Sommers Rich

Christmas came and went. No word. Lent began. Prayers in the churches. Some leads that went nowhere. Then on March 9 came the terrible news that Tom Fox’s body had been found. Increased anxiety. What would happen to the other three? It would be another 18 days before they would be released on March 23, 2006, in time for Easter.

A recent book, 118 Days: Christian Peacemaker Teams Held Hostage in Iraq (2008, published by CPT in Chicago and Toronto, edited by Tricia Gates Brown), tells the inside story of those days. Twenty-three people, including the three released hostages and their family members, contribute chapters. So interesting! Details of how they spent their routine days in captivity. Small details, such as Jim Loney’s feeling of loss when Tom’s purple toothbrush was not standing with the other three the morning after he was taken away. Anita David and Michele Naar-Obed’s trip to the morgue to search for bodies. Dealing with the news media, which quickly switched from sympathetic to critical after the release. The importance of the Catholic Worker Community in Toronto.

Dan Hunt’s chapter is especially poignant. What if your dearest friend, the one you had lived with for 14 years, were suddenly kidnapped, yet you were being pressured to pretend you did not exist, to just disappear? That was Hunt’s situation. I am sorry to report that both a Mennonite publisher and a Catholic publisher refused at the last minute to publish this book because of the Loney-Hunt relationship.

118 Days is both painful and triumphant. I recommend it highly for every Mennonite church library.