LONDON (Reuters) - Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent kidnapped and held for nearly four months in the Gaza Strip, said the mental games he was forced to play to keep despair at bay made his mind stronger than ever.
For the 45-year-old, the first days after his capture in March by the al Qaeda-inspired Army of Islam were the worst.
"You no longer have any power over any corner of your life, almost, and that's a shocking state in which to suddenly find yourself," he said of his confinement, most of it solitary.
"Not only that, but you find yourself for the first time in your life with acres and acres of utterly unfillable time -- the dreadful expanse of ... a whole day of either sitting in a plastic chair or walking up and down a room."
Johnston, who has written a book about his experience called "Kidnapped And Other Dispatches", thought it likely he would be in captivity for a long period, perhaps even years, and engaged in a psychological battle to prevent meltdown.
"On the 11th night I will always remember suddenly emerging into a calmer, more philosophical mood in which I was able just to really begin to focus on what years in that place might mean and how I might get through it.
"Really, that kind of captivity for me at least was like a mental gym. Every day I was working on my state of mind ... I felt towards the end in more control of my mind than in fact I perhaps ever had been.
While stressing that dark times dominated his 114-day ordeal, and that psychological battles were interspersed with long "neutral" periods, he emerged from captivity in July in surprisingly good shape.
"If some people felt that I was composed to a degree when I came out then it was partly that, I was in strangely good control because I'd had to work at it so hard."
MUHAMMAD ALI IMAGE
