Only his wife’s salary as a nurse was left to support them.

And life grew even worse. No dinars, no food, the spread of the fundamentalists, ISIS and Daesh, taking over Derna, Sirte and other cities and towns, like an infection. Were they behind his kidnapping? Those men would certainly abduct and torture. Khaled and his family were moderate Sunnis, and believed in secular government. Yet he’d never vocally opposed the extremists. How could the mullahs and generals of ISIS even know he existed?

And the Libyan government?

Well, governments, plural. There was the House of Representatives, in Tobruk, along with the Libyan National Army. And then there was the rival General National Congress, based in Tripoli, whose questionable claim was enforced by the Libya Dawn militia. Yes, Khaled favored the House of Representatives but did so discreetly.

No, this kidnapping could not be political.

Then a bit of memory returned, like a kick. A boat…rocking on a boat. Vomiting frequently, burning in the sun…

The image returned of the tent…

And his daughter. Yes, his daughter. What is her name?

He carefully scanned the place where he was being kept. An old structure. Brick walls, beams overhead. He was in a cellar. The floor was stone and well worn, scarred and uneven. He looked down to see what kind of chair he was seated in and felt a pressure at his neck. A cord of some sort. He looked up.

No!

It was a noose!

The thin cord rose to a beam over his head. It continued to the far wall, over another beam then down to a weight, one of those big round ones that are attached to the ends of barbells. It was upright and resting on a ledge about five feet off the ground. The ledge was at an angle, and had the weight been free it would have rolled off and tugged the noose taut, strangling him. But thank God—praise be to Him—it was wedged in place.

He tried to make sense of this. Then he noted movement again, from the corner of his eye.

On the floor. More rats. And, like the others, they paid him no mind. They were much more interested in something else.

And then, to Khaled’s horror, he saw what drew the squirmy creatures, with their tiny red eyes and sharp yellow teeth: a block of something that was preventing the deadly weight from rolling off the ledge and tugging the noose up to strangle him. Pink, streaked with white. A piece of meat. That was what kept the weight from rolling and pulling the noose taut.

The first of the rats, moving cautiously, untrusting, approached it now. They sniffed with their pointed noses, they leapt back, then moved closer. Some were pushed aside by others—the more aggressive—and it was collectively decided that this addition to their lair was not only harmless…it was tasty.

The four rats soon became seven and then became a dozen, swarming the meat like huge, gray bacteria.