BACK WHERE I BELONG

After six years as an AI Qaeda hostage he's finally home. Now Gerco and Shereen van Deventer can start rebuilding their life together 

- MEGHAN LAWRENCE

THE male voice on the other end of the line is familiar. “Babe,” he says. She thinks it’s someone playing a prank and is about to hang up.

“It’s me, babe,” the man says again. “It’s really me.”

For six years Shereen van Deventer has longed to hear her husband Gerco’s voice. Now, here he is, talking to her, telling her that he’s survived and that he’s coming home at last.

In October 2017 he’d travelled to Libya to work as a paramedic. The country was in the midst of civil war at the time and Gerco was aware of the risks, but work is work. The couple had no idea that it was the beginning of a nightmare that would last six years.

Within days of Gerco’s arrival in Libya, Shereen got a call telling her he’d been kidnapped by militants while on his way to work at a power station deep inland. It wasn’t shock she felt when she first heard the terrible news, but rather total disbelief.

She’d just spoken to Gerco the day before and he’d said everything was fine. Before they ended the call she told him how much she loved him – and it was this love that carried her through the next six years, never wavering as she waited for the day he would return home.

Even when it emerged that he’d been sold to Al Qaeda jihadis in Mali who were holding him for ransom, she never gave up hope – and in December last year Shereen’s patience was finally rewarded.

IT’S a scorching day in Swellendam in the Western Cape when a smiling Shereen (40) comes to open the gate for us. Wearing a long black and white dress, she seems different from the woman we met a year ago (YOU, 4 May 2023). It’s as if a mountain has been lifted from her shoulders.