IN THE CELLAR by Jan Philipp Reemstma

Heir of a very large Tobacco Fortune and respected Academic was kidnapped on the way across the street from his own Home to the House across the street he used as a research and workspace , the beginning of a 33 day incarceration in which a stable , healthy , comfortable family life was shaken completely.

In this account of the disorientation , fear and deep uncertainty Jan recalls an experience that reminds us all of the tenuous flimsy fragility of homely relations and stability we easily take for granted. .As the acceptance of the situation takes the place of the initial shock , the various "personalities" of the victim based on the inter-relations of his close ones ; work colleagues and professional institutional engagements lend themselves towards a spare solitary interaction between him and his spare deconstructed self.

Throughout the crippling uncertainty and the not-knowing of the ultimate outcome he is drawn inscreasingly to seek to examine and resolve within himself the "incident" which caused this whole life-changing sequence of events " it was important to recognise what caused it , to know one is not insane , that it simply corresponded to the insanity of the situation in which one person was omnipotent and the other helpless."

After the experiences pass the phase of any reasonable expectation of an early release , from the utter helplessness and fever-pitch stress the victim feels it is not surprising a touch of despair clouds over " He was the object of exchange , with no role of protagonist.He was robbed of all spiritual resources from which he otherwise might draw strength." is one passage Jan describes about himself in the third person as he is now dealing with the thoughts of a Man he hardly recognises from the person who innocently crossed the road only a few short weeks ago.He goes on in page 192 " that guilt can declare itself so insistently in tandem with shame...difficulty of coming to terms in ones heart with the sudden irruption of forces."

After a while ones gets the feeling Jan shares the thoughts and feelings that must have gone through the Minds of Anne Frank , the Beirut Hostages , the Missing in Argentina and countless umnamed victims of individual and organised criminal kidnapping , many never to retell their story again.

On page 195 we hear the pain of not only victims of kidnapping the world over , but also the anguish of there Families " absolute helplessness....to being delivered over to other people."

Rather sadly , the kidnapping of innocents is a growth industry since the war on terror , with state-sanctioned kidnapping being the highest riser.The population of Guantanamo is said to be mainly composed of innocents kidnapped for the sake of gaining lucrative bounty payments who were then handed over to the US and still languish in jails without ever being charged or being able to clear themselves or have any contact with their families.

To be fair to him , Jan does seem to have developed his empathy for wrongly incarcerated victims and made this helpful statement about the tortures in Abu Ghraib "The disturbing Abu Ghraib photos remind us: Nothing justifies the use of torture in a democracy. No short-term gain, however urgent the cause, is worth undermining the bedrock democratic guarantee of rule of law and individual autonomy. Criminals and suspects may legitimately be incarcerated, but they may not be enslaved. They may be pressed to confess, but not physically coerced to do so. Whenever people are treated in a way that deprives them of their capacity to dissent, our very civilization is put at risk."