Jack Laurence

What is the life expectancy of a white Western man dressed as a woman?

So where Sean and his fixer are being held wasn't some sort of Haqqani prison camp.

It was a large Pashtun family home.

Living there was a grandmother and a grandfather, three or four of their sons plus their wives.

The family had been told by the Hakkanis that Sean and his fixer were spies, not believers.

They were bad men.

Now, as Sean has mentioned over his years working in these areas, he's learned their customs and how to conduct yourself around them.

And so his greatest weapon was to bond with this family, to show them he was just another human like them.

This bonding that he was doing with the family would eventually have a pivotal moment, a moment that Sean, to this day, still struggles to talk about.

It's now been three months at this point of Sean's captivity.

He's malnourished, suffering from the lack of vitamin D and living in darkness.

And mentally, he's shot to pieces.

When all of a sudden, he's chucked on yet another emotional rollercoaster, when he would be presented with the Taliban court's decision on what will happen to him.

However, at the start of his ordeal, alongside his fixer, his friend, he made a promise.

And a promise he was intending on keeping.

Chapter nine, a precious lesson in life.

So of course, the physical ordeal is over.

The captivity and the ever looming threat of being killed is done.

But now, the next challenge begins.

And that's the after.