Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture Torture and Enlightenment
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About this book
An award-winning journalists extraordinary account of being kidnapped and tortured in Syria by al Qaeda for two yearsa revelatory memoir about war human nature and endurance thats the best of the genre profound poetic and sorrowful (The Atlantic). In 2012 American journalist Theo Padnos fluent in Arabic Russian German and French traveled to a Turkish border town to write and report on the Syrian civil war. One afternoon in October while walking through an olive grove he met three young Syrianswho turned out to be al Qaeda operativesand they captured him and kept him prisoner for nearly two years. On his first day in the first of many prisons Padnos was given a blindfolda grime-stained scrap of fabricthat was his only possession throughout his horrific ordeal. Now Padnos recounts his time in captivity in Syria where he was frequently tortured at the hands of the al Qaeda affiliate Jebhat al Nusra. We learn not only about Padnoss harrowing experience but we also get a firsthand account of life in a Syrian village the nature of Islamic prisons how captors interrogate someone suspected of being CIA the ways that Islamic fighters shift identities and drift back and forth through the veil of Western civilization and much more. No other journalist has lived among terrorists for as long as Theo hasand survived. As a resident of thirteen separate prisons in every part of rebel-occupied Syria Theo witnessed a society adrift amid a steady stream of bombings executions torture prayer fasting and exhibitions all staged by the terrorists. Living within this tide of violence changed not only his personal identity but also profoundly altered his understanding of how to live. Offering fascinating unprecedented insight into the state of Syria today Blindfold is a triumph of the human spirit (The New York Times Book Review)combining the emotional power of a captives memoir with a journalists account of a culture and a nation in conflict that is as urgent and important as ever.
