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Authors: Brigitte Nielsen
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of events. We started running towards the fence that separated the station from the check-inentrance. You normally had to make your way around it to get into the departure area but gunfire from somewhere behind us raked the ground and if we still had anything, we dropped it and screaming, fought our way over the fence and towards the door. The facilities at the airport were as basic as the resorts and the door we found looked like it might have belonged to a shabby office. As we pulled it shut behind us, the sound of bullets ceased.
We were definitely in some kind of administration area. It was quite a small room, certainly not big enough to comfortably contain the 40 or so people we were sharing it with and who right then were looking at us in terror. The furniture was old-fashioned and cheap. We were the only two white people in the room and given that the coup was being staged by whites, it seemed the others thought we were part of the attacking force. Although we tried to explain that we had nothing to do with what was going on, that we were just as much in trouble as they were, they didn’t look as if they believed us.
There was an old English guy there who had taken shelter with his daughter. When we got talking to him he said that the attempt to take over the island could get very serious; the gunmen hadn’t followed us but it felt like we had been thrown in a prison cell as surely as if the door had been locked. The heat would have been unbearable even if so many weren’t jammed in together. It was 37 degrees and 80 per cent humidity with the only light coming from narrow windows running around the top of the walls of the room. There was no ventilation, no air conditioning and even though we couldn’t see out of the room because thewindows were set so high up, we could hear constant noise. Gunfire, explosions. The room glowed dull red with each blast and our nerves were increasingly shredded as time inched by.
At last the door was kicked open without warning by two men, one a redhead – originally from Holland, as I found out later. They were part of the mercenary force and both had machine guns. The redhead seemed particularly jumpy, sort of pumped up and angry. It seemed as if he was on something, like he was only just hanging on to his self-control. He was clearly ready to kill anyone who so much as looked at him the wrong way. For no reason I could make out – he hardly needed to scare us more – he shot out all the glass in the little windows above us. The noise of the machine gun in such a confined space was deafening. The room shook with the sustained burst of fire and you could feel the vibrations from the weapon judder through you. Some of the other hostages put their hands over their ears, everyone ducked, some screamed. It was chaos. Shattered glass rained down on us and when at last it was over, not a single window was left. The two men disappeared, leaving the group dazed, sobbing, crouched by the walls and sitting in broken glass.
We were abandoned without anything to eat and, more tellingly in the stifling heat, without any water. Hours passed and we lapsed into a kind of trance. One of the other women just cried continuously, another kept getting cramps, another was rocking and humming to herself.
Some time later the same two men came back, kicking the door open before they entered as if they really thought wemight be ready to somehow overpower them. ‘Don’t try anything stupid!’ the manic redhead shouted in English. I don’t know how or if the locals could understand exactly what he was saying, but nobody had any plans to be heroes. ‘We’ve taken over the whole island. If you try to leave this room you will be shot!’ It was English and I didn’t need to be fluent to understand what he meant.
I wasn’t able to say exactly how long we had been held, but 10 hours or more must have passed. It was beginning to get dark outside and even from where we were lying on the floor we could
We were definitely in some kind of administration area. It was quite a small room, certainly not big enough to comfortably contain the 40 or so people we were sharing it with and who right then were looking at us in terror. The furniture was old-fashioned and cheap. We were the only two white people in the room and given that the coup was being staged by whites, it seemed the others thought we were part of the attacking force. Although we tried to explain that we had nothing to do with what was going on, that we were just as much in trouble as they were, they didn’t look as if they believed us.
There was an old English guy there who had taken shelter with his daughter. When we got talking to him he said that the attempt to take over the island could get very serious; the gunmen hadn’t followed us but it felt like we had been thrown in a prison cell as surely as if the door had been locked. The heat would have been unbearable even if so many weren’t jammed in together. It was 37 degrees and 80 per cent humidity with the only light coming from narrow windows running around the top of the walls of the room. There was no ventilation, no air conditioning and even though we couldn’t see out of the room because thewindows were set so high up, we could hear constant noise. Gunfire, explosions. The room glowed dull red with each blast and our nerves were increasingly shredded as time inched by.
At last the door was kicked open without warning by two men, one a redhead – originally from Holland, as I found out later. They were part of the mercenary force and both had machine guns. The redhead seemed particularly jumpy, sort of pumped up and angry. It seemed as if he was on something, like he was only just hanging on to his self-control. He was clearly ready to kill anyone who so much as looked at him the wrong way. For no reason I could make out – he hardly needed to scare us more – he shot out all the glass in the little windows above us. The noise of the machine gun in such a confined space was deafening. The room shook with the sustained burst of fire and you could feel the vibrations from the weapon judder through you. Some of the other hostages put their hands over their ears, everyone ducked, some screamed. It was chaos. Shattered glass rained down on us and when at last it was over, not a single window was left. The two men disappeared, leaving the group dazed, sobbing, crouched by the walls and sitting in broken glass.
We were abandoned without anything to eat and, more tellingly in the stifling heat, without any water. Hours passed and we lapsed into a kind of trance. One of the other women just cried continuously, another kept getting cramps, another was rocking and humming to herself.
Some time later the same two men came back, kicking the door open before they entered as if they really thought wemight be ready to somehow overpower them. ‘Don’t try anything stupid!’ the manic redhead shouted in English. I don’t know how or if the locals could understand exactly what he was saying, but nobody had any plans to be heroes. ‘We’ve taken over the whole island. If you try to leave this room you will be shot!’ It was English and I didn’t need to be fluent to understand what he meant.
I wasn’t able to say exactly how long we had been held, but 10 hours or more must have passed. It was beginning to get dark outside and even from where we were lying on the floor we could
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