In my mind, I built stairways. At the end of the stairways, I imagined rooms. These were high, airy places with big windows and a cool breeze moving through. I imagined one room opening brightly onto another room until I’d built a house, a place with hallways and more staircases. I built many houses, one after another, and those gave rise to a city - a calm, sparkling city neat the ocean, a place like Vancouver. I put myself there, and that’s where I lived, in the wide-open sky of my mind. I made friends and a read books and went running on a footpath in a jewel-green park along the harbour. I ate pancakes drizzled in syrup and took baths and watched sunlight pout through trees. This wasn’t longing, and it wasn’t insanity. It was relief. It got me through.
Amanda Lindhout takes you through her captivity under religious extremists and her efforts to keep her hope and sanity alive during her ordeal. For all the dark, horrible things she went through, this book tells the story of a woman who’s not only brave and resilient, but compassionate and full of empathy for everyone around her. It was rather motivating, on the whole.
As she kept getting closer and closer to Somalia, I wanted to go back in time and yell at her “No! What do you think you’re doing?! Go back home!”