A Nation’s Unnoticed Abductees

Before his father was kidnapped and held for six days last month in a windowless storeroom somewhere in this labyrinthine capital, the toughest negotiation Robert Farho had ever handled was over a $3,200 Daewoo sedan.

So when a stranger called Farho and demanded $500,000 for his father’s life, the 26-year-old used-car dealer was understandably overwhelmed. But true to his profession, he started negotiating.

“I told him ... give me back my father’s car and I will sell it and give you the money,” Farho said last month, days after his father’s release.

The captor laughed, he said, and replied, “I tell you what, you arrange the $500,000 and I’ll give you the car back.”

Farho’s experience, which he and his family detailed in an extensive interview, is emblematic of the lack of security in Iraq today. Kidnappings have become commonplace, as both insurgents and apolitical criminals use hostage-taking as a way to raise money.

In recent weeks, kidnappers have released videotapes of American contractor Jeffrey Ake, who was captured in April, and of three Romanian journalists and their Iraqi American interpreter. Such high-profile victims have institutions to negotiate on their behalf and, at times, to pay large ransoms.

But the majority of those taken are people like Farho’s father. Kidnappers rarely bother to issue videotapes of these victims. Their plight is one of quiet anguish and helplessness. They rarely receive the help of professional negotiators or powerful institutions.

Usually their families talk with the abductors over cellphones or through intermediaries such as Muslim clerics. The Iraqi police rarely provide much assistance; many families don’t even contact the authorities. They scrape together the ransom by selling off prized possessions -- cars or even their homes -- and taking out loans.

Sometimes the negotiations succeed and their loved ones are returned, traumatized but alive. Other times, families are lucky to find a body to bury.

Religious and ethnic minorities such as Farho’s family, which is Christian, are particularly vulnerable. They don’t belong to a tribe that might deter kidnappers or avenge them. But the high numbers and the variety of victims make it clear that anyone is a possible target in Iraq.

The story of Farho’s father, Audish Farho Audish, is a testament to the quiet resolve of many Iraqis in the face of such crimes.

“I leave home every day at 8:30 to work in Kadhimiya or Karada,” said Audish, who manages two goldsmith shops in those Baghdad neighborhoods. “I was driving on Palestine Street when a car came beside me. The driver pointed and said that I have gasoline spilling from my car and it was on fire. So, of course, I stopped to look underneath.”

As he bent over, he was struck in the head. Men grabbed him, stuffed a rubber ball in his mouth and jerked a hood over his head. They dragged him to their car and sped away.

After a half-hour’s drive, the men hustled Audish into a building and bound his hands and feet with plastic cuffs. They removed his watch, emptied his pockets and took his wedding band. They left the hood on. Audish could hear the voices of three or four people. They wanted to know whom to call for negotiations. Eventually, they telephoned Robert Farho, asking for $500,000.

“I told them I couldn’t arrange that much money,” he said. “I started cursing them.”

It was a tactic he had employed many times as a car dealer: pretend you don’t want what you desperately need. He still doesn’t know whether it helped.

Audish said his captors beat him for his son’s insolence. From time to time, they would suspend him from a ceiling fan until his hands were numb, or give him electric shocks.

“They told me to lead them to one of my rich relatives, so they could bring him here and trade my life for theirs,” he said. “Or I could shoot [the relative] and become one of them. I told them, ‘I am a Christian, I couldn’t hurt a fly.’ ”

Some of the kidnappers told Audish they had worked for Saddam Hussein’s private guard. Others said they had been imprisoned by the former Baathist regime. They had all been working as professional kidnappers since the U.S.-led invasion, they said.

Audish learned that they had been casing him for some time. “They knew where I worked, they knew my house, they knew everything,” he said.

In fact, the kidnappers said his relatives were not strangers to them; they had kidnapped Audish’s niece last year. The family paid $15,000 for her release. She has since fled with her family to Syria.

There was one important fact, however, that the kidnappers had gotten wrong about Audish: They thought he was the owner of the goldsmith shops, rather than just a longtime employee, and could afford to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom. Audish’s family doesn’t even own the home they live in.

“I said, ‘Why should I lie?’ ” Audish said. “If I am rich and have the money, why would I go through all of this trouble? But they had exact information on me. They knew that I bought and sold gold in the market. They told me that the allas had been watching us.”

The Arabic slang refers to the kidnappers’ informants as “chewers of men,” and is one of several such words that has emerged to depict Iraq’s anarchic post-invasion society.

Though the kidnappers had his father’s cellphone, Farho refused to call them, despite the pleas of his mother, Dalila.

“I didn’t want them to know how scared we were,” he said. It was another negotiating tactic he had learned in business: The one who calls first will be weaker in the final deal.

By the fourth day, some family members were beginning to lose hope. Although Farho had managed to whittle the ransom down, it was still $250,000 -- an impossible sum. Even Farho grew desperate; he hadn’t started to collect the money.

“On one of their calls, I told them to wait two or three days,” Farho said. “I told them, ‘I will arrange the money for you by kidnapping someone else.’ They laughed and said, ‘Yes, why don’t you do that.’ ”

The next day the kidnappers lowered the price further, to $150,000. Farho was despondent, angry. He offered $7,000, then $12,000. They still refused.

On the sixth day, the kidnappers made what they said was a final offer: $30,000.

Farho set about asking relatives and friends for money. Hundred by hundred, the family raised the ransom.

The kidnappers had told Farho to place the money on a particular rock next to a Baghdad freeway. But an hour after he left the money, they called again and claimed that $400 of it was fake. “I told him that I have given you $30,000 -- $400 is nothing,” he said.

The kidnappers held firm. Farho borrowed more money and left it at a new spot.

After a sleepless night without being contacted by the kidnappers, his resolve crumbled.

“I called him asking about my father,” Farho said, “just to be told that they wanted an extra $2,500 for food and drinks they had given my father.” But the kidnappers ultimately relented.

In a windowless room, Audish heard the men celebrating. He also heard a disagreement between a kidnapper and the apparent owner of the house where he was being held.

“The owner told him that he would not let the kidnapper harm me,” Audish recalled. “Then I heard him talking on the phone. He said, ‘If you are man enough, you come and kill him.’ ” Then the phone rang again and someone said: ‘What’s up? Shall I release him?’ ”

Around midnight on his seventh day of captivity, Audish was driven to a deserted neighborhood in northeast Baghdad.

“They told me that I must leave the country within six weeks or they will kill me. They told me if I go to the police they would just bribe them. They would pay $20,000 and make them go away,” Audish said. “Then they took off my hood and let me go.”

Audish hobbled into his yard before dawn. He was bent over from so many days without a bed. His hair was matted and his beard unkempt. He smelled awful. He was such a miserable sight that his wife fainted when she saw him.

Despite the family’s massive debt, none of the men have worked since his release.

“I am afraid even to walk in my own neighborhood to stretch my legs,” Audish said. “I will not go back to the shop.”

Audish, who once considered himself a trusting person, now wonders about his neighbors, his business associates, even his friends. He sees watchful eyes everywhere.

The kidnappers have called twice to remind the family of their threat. The family is contemplating moving to Syria.