A Conversation with Terry Waite

My friend, Jo, and I went to a talk last weekend at a local church. In the 1980s, as Special Envoy to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, Terry Waite had been in Beirut, in civil-war-torn Lebanon, negotiating with the captors of Western hostages. Then one day he had been kidnapped himself.

I had become interested in the plight of the Lebanese hostages during my travels around Australia in 1990/91, when a girl I became friends with talked about them. Her ex-boyfriend had worked with one of the hostages, John McCarthy. Suddenly it became more real, rather than just another item on the news.

When I returned home I continued to follow their plight and rejoiced as they began to be released. Several wrote books about their experiences and I read them all. John McCarthy wrote his with his then girlfriend, Jill Morrell. American, Terry Anderson wrote his with his wife. These also gave the view of the relatives on the outside, not knowing whether their loved one was even alive. Most harrowing was Brian Keenan’s account of the horrors and treatment experienced.

Terry Waite had spent most of his five years of captivity in solitary confinement. He saw no-one, no daylight and was chained, except for ten minutes a day when he could go to the bathroom. He did the only thing he could and kept his mind active by reciting hymns he knew by heart. He wrote stories and a book in his head. He had no paper or pen. Taken on Trust was published three years after his release and will be republished later this year to mark twenty-five years since then, with an extra chapter about his thoughts now.

Terry is a tall and gentle man with an air of calm reassurance and is very approachable. Just before the talk was due to start, I thought I’d best nip to the loo. As I left the church, I was confronted with him on his way in. “Hello,” he said, as if he was greeting a friend. I replied with the first thing that came into my head. “Hello, you’re taller than I imagined.” What was I thinking? What must he think? But he was very gracious in his response. I imagine he was very good in his role as negotiator.

He has almost no anger about what happened to him and bears no grudge against his captors. During the first half of the talk, he spoke about his work with the families of current hostages and with those who have recently been released. The charity he set up following his own release, Hostage UK, is about to become International.

During the break, a lady showed him a newspaper with its front page headline, which she had kept from the day he regained his freedom. He had not seen it before and was clearly touched. It reminded me of how important and wonderful that day had been.

After the break, Terry talked more about how he had come to be captured and what had then happened. At the end there were more questions and answers with the audience than there was time for. He had captivated the attention of the full church for over three hours and nobody wanted him to stop. We could have listened for hours more.