Fr Tom Uzhunnalil was held in captivity in four different places. He has no idea where and for how long but only knows that two of those places were thickly populatedVatican: Fr Tom Uzhunnalil’s hand was surprisingly firm for a man who spent 556 days in captivity. How did he stay strong through the ordeal even as he saw the people around him gunned down?
“As the Lord lives, not one hair... will fall to the ground...,” the priest quoted the Bible. “That sentence stayed with me. That led me. I was not afraid.”
Fr Uzhunnalil had just celebrated mass on that distant morning on March 4, 2016. The priest who worked in Aden in south Yemen heard a commotion outside the chapel. He saw two men lying in a pool of blood and his gardener being shot down before he caught sight of the gunman who stared at him. “I am an Indian,” Fr Uzhunnalil told him instinctively.
The assailant asked him if he were a Muslim. The priest said he was a Christian. The terrorists herded the priest to the guard room and went inside the home. They nudged out two nuns and shot them in the head in front of the terrified priest. Two more nuns were brought out and shot.
Fr Uzhunnalil felt tongue-tied. “When they were done, they called me. I thought they were going to kill me too. I said my final prayers. I was not afraid of death but I was shocked by the bloody scene in front of me.”
He had just seen his companions die in front of him. The nuns, the gardener, the guard and the boy who hung around as a helper were all dead. He did not know that nine more people had been killed at the home that day.
The gunmen chose not to kill the priest. They dumped him into the boot of their car and threw a metal object into the darkness. “I thought it was the tabernacle in which the Eucharist was kept. Sister Saly now tells me that the tabernacle is still in the chapel. They must have thrown in money or something else from the chapel. Anyway, I felt that Christ was with me.”
'In safe hands'
Fr Uzhunnalil spotted only three gunmen but he suspects there were more of them. They drove him a long way. “I would not know how long or how far. It seemed like a long way. They handed me over to another group who blindfolded me and bundled me into the back seat of another car. It was a big car.”
He understood that he was being taken to a house. It sounded like that at least. One of them spoke to the priest in good English: “Welcome, you are in safe hands.”
“I was a bit relieved. They fed me and let me go to the washroom. I do not know how long I stayed there. Maybe 12 or 13 days.”
Malayala Manorama's special correspondent Jomy Thomas (left) with Fr Tom Uzhunnalil in Rome.They asked the priest a lot about himself. Fr Uzhunnalil realized that they had no intention to kill him. He was to be held as a hostage. They asked him for phone numbers of people close to him.
“I was never good at memorizing numbers. I could only remember my mother’s number, which had been canceled when she died. There was no use giving them that number.”
Their second question was a giveaway. “They asked me who would be interested to get me released. Will the Indian government get involved? Or was it the Vatican? What about the bishop in Abu Dhabi?” Fr Uzhunnalil said the bishop may be a natural choice since he worked under him.
The priest was held in captivity in four different places. He has no idea where and for how long but only knows that two of those places were thickly populated. “I could hear singing, children chattering and vehicles honking.”
The other places might have been close to a mountain because it was always breezy and cold. He was put up in a room with a window but was prevented from looking out the window.
He would have stayed in the second and third places for three or four months. “I figured it from the dates shown on the camera screens when they videotaped me.” The stay in the fourth place lasted for a year.
The Pope’s kiss
As soon as he was released on September 12, Fr Uzhunnalil went to Muscat. At the hotel room, he came face to face with a strange figure when he looked into a mirror after more than a year. He looked like a savage with long unkempt hair and beard.
He was allowed to bathe only once a week or even a month in captivity. He washed his clothes whenever he could and with whatever soap and shampoo his captors provided. The hair kept growing. He tried to thin it by rubbing hard while taking a bath.
The thick growth of mustache was an irritant. He could not trim it so he bit the strands to keep it short. He also chewed on his fingernails. The terrorists wanted to present their captive in a sorry figure whenever they shot videos of him.
At the hotel room, Fr Uzhunnalil shaved off his beard and mustache. Yet, he was far removed from his former self. His body was emaciated, his cheeks sucked in and his eyes weary but his spirit was unbroken.
How 18 months of captivity changed Fr Tom Uzhunnalil.He met Pope Francis the next day. “The Pope is the representative of Christ. I bowed in front of him. He held me in his arms and kissed my hands. When we see the Pope, we are supposed to kiss his hand but he kissed mine even though I did not deserve it.”
“He said he prayed for me. I also visited Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. He too said he prayed for me.”
Fr Uzhunnalil had not confessed for more than 26 months. He was in captivity for 18 months. He could not find a priest anywhere near his assignment before that. In Rome, he confessed before Fr Thomas Anjukandam, a former Salesian from Bengaluru. He also celebrated mass in Vatican.
(To be continued...)
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