Excerpt

Chapter One

On one day in 1982, high above the earth, a flight between Athens and Paris fell victim to hijackers.
Flight Engineer Antoine Bacha heard a commotion coming from the passengers’ cabin. He unbuckled himself from his station in the cockpit to see what was going on.

As he opened the door to the passenger cabin, he was shocked to see a man viciously battering a female passenger. Antoine’s first instinct was to lunge at the attacker to save the woman, but during the fight, he was knocked unconscious by a blow to the head.

Often, our first inclination when we see someone in distress is to help. However, action without forethought often yields unpredictable results just as it can for many of us who act impulsively - before thinking. For Antoine, his actions had put his life in jeopardy. His chances of survival now hung by a thread.

Days later, Antoine would awaken in Lebanon in a small cave-like hole measuring approximately two feet by two feet, and not much more than that in depth. This is where Antoine lived, as a prisoner of war in Lebanon for nearly nine months and sixteen days, confined to a small hole in the ground wearing nothing but his underwear.

It was a life of horror. The terrorists began to torture and beat Antoine. They ripped his fingernails from his hands with pliers. This man was a commercial pilot, he was neither a CIA agent nor an agent of the FBI, and yet they interrogated him using the most extreme, inhuman and vicious methods, accusing him of being a government spy.

The way the terrorists beat him, it was amazing that Antoine did not lapse into unconsciousness or even death from the pain. The beatings and actions of these men were those of determined murderers. Their intentions were to make their captives wish for death rather than to endure life in captivity.

Then one day, within the chaotic atmosphere and the barbaric behavior of the terrorists, something extraordinary happened; something that usually only individuals of strong faith can accept or relate to. That little miracle that we seldom think of as a miracle often results in a most remarkable thing: it enables us to understand who we really are. The endless torture forced Antoine to learn how to focus his mind and discover the truth of the ‘inner-self’.