Former captive prays for peacemakers

Bob Burkholder is a modest, self- assured man with an open manner and a solid baritone voice. He sings in the Pax Christi Chorale, an amateur, mostlyMennonite choir. On Saturday night, half an hour before this season’s Christmas concert, he seemed preoccupied. He was sitting in a pew at the back of Grace Church on- theHill. He did not have stage fright. He was not unsure of the music. He was thinking of James Loney, the Christian peacemaker who was recently abducted in Baghdad.

In a few days, or perhaps hours, Loney and three other men face execution at the hands of their captors. And there it bluntly is: peace on earth versus life or death. News of the abductions hit Burkholder with particular force and intimacy, because 20 years ago, while doing similar work in south Lebanon he, too, was abducted.

In a soft voice he said, “ Peacemaking isn’t easy. There’s risk. The costs can be high. Jim and the others knew those risks were there. They didn’t go blindly. God keep them safe.” And he talked of his own experience.

“ We were at home. It was early in the morning, around 6 a. m. We’d just had coffee. Someone came to the door and said I was needed at the headquarters of one of the militia groups. My radar went up. I told them I’d come down later. They said I should come now.

“ I was with my wife. We had three kids with us. One of our staff was there in our home. I said we’d follow in a car.” He smiled at the memory. He was never going to follow. He knew he was going to be taken.

“ They said I should come in their car.” The men at the door were not obviously armed, but Bob knew they had weapons. “It didn’t seem to be a time for entering into any conflict. We drove away. We were transferred to a series of vehicles. I was blindfolded. I ended up in a kind of coffin structure underneath a van. I was taken somewhere in Beirut, a couple of hours away. It was a bizarre experience.”

That’s one way to describe it.

“ There were various political groups holding different pieces of the highway. I had lifted my blindfold. I could see the boots of the militia at the checkpoints. I could hear conversations.” Why didn’t he cry out?

“ I had been told to keep quiet. There was a gun put to my head.” Quiet it is, then. As he bounced along the highway, he considered his wife, his kids, his life; he weighed his circumstances; he parsed each moment. “ The fact that I was being taken somewhere was reassuring. We knew people who had been arrested and summarily shot.”

Eventually, he and his captors arrived in Beirut. “ I was taken into a warehouse, I guess. I was put in what I think was a shipping crate. It was barely big enough to hold a small dirty mattress.” And his interrogation?

“ They asked who I was, and lots of questions about my work, what we were doing and why, and whether we had links to the Israelis. It wasn’t aggressive. It was kind of methodical. I had nothing to hide.

“ We started in English. But I had reasonable colloquial Arabic, so we switched and the questioning went easier.

“ There are lots of phrases in Arabic that add colour to conversation. They asked about my children. They said, ‘ May God keep them safe for you.’ Would I see them again? Who knew? We talked about my wife. They said, ‘ May you have a long life with her.’ I didn’t know if I would.

“ I was given a home-cooked meal. I wasn’t hungry. I was allowed to clean up. I had been taken at 6 a. m. At 2 a. m. the next morning, they said I’d be released. I didn’t know what that meant. They put me in the back of a car. They said they’d drop me off in the city.

“ Beirut in the dead of night then was a ghost town. I told them not to let me off in the middle of nowhere. I had no papers. I asked them to let me off near a hotel I knew. They let me out and said I should count to 25 before I took the blindfold off. They said, ‘ God willing, we’ll drink coffee together again.’ And they drive away.

“ I walked to the hotel and said I needed a room. They asked if I was okay. They asked if I’d had a bad day.” He smiled again. The way things were in Beirut at the time, he could not place a call his wife, who was a mere two hours away. But he was able to call Mennonite headquarters in the United States, and his wife heard the news of his release over the radio that morning. He said, “ I was lucky. I am a person of faith. I had a moment of grace. Why I was released, I have no idea. Right prevailed. Those guys over there now are doing right. I don’t know if right will prevail. I’m worried for them. I’m praying for their peace.” And, in a private moment backstage before the concert, the choir prayed for James Loney and the others. And then they sang, in voices sweet and muscular, of peace on earth. Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@