The Will to Live

The riveting story of Shahbaz Taseer's abduction and five years in terrorist captivity

- Manjula Padmanabhan

LOST TO THE WORLD: A Memoir of Faith, Family and Five Years in Terrorist Captivity

by Shahbaz Taseer

Five years of being abducted and held by terrorists couldn't break Shahbaz Taseer. The story he tells of his captivity is riveting, horrifying and life-affirming.

The author's late father, Salman Taseer, was the Governor of Punjab (Pakistan) and a distinguished public figure. In January 2011, he was gunned down by fundamentalists for having championed the cause of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman accused of blasphemy.

Seven months later, in Lahore, Taseer left home for work, in his father's Mercedes two-seater coupé. Despite the terrible shadow cast by the assassination, the young man chose to dismiss his security guard. Why? Because the car's cramped interior would have made it uncomfortable. When five gun-toting masked men forced him to stop, his first thought was that they were carjackers. He dropped the car keys into the door panel, hoping to thwart them.

He was hooded, beaten and taken to a tiny, stinking chamber where he was dosed repeatedly with ketamine, a horse tranquiliser. "If I had known," writes Taseer, "on that very first day, that I would spend the next four and a half years of my life in captivity, I do not think I would have made it. The one consolation of my first few days was that I believed that my ordeal would soon be over."