Mike Durant

There's nobody around.

So they come back.

They get me out.

They bring me in.

And I call this the Hotel Nowhere.

It was basically like a Motel 6, this row of doors down a balcony.

And there was a woman that sort of kind of ran the place.

And I saw her the next day.

She showed up, and it was just bizarre.

There was times when people would come, and they'd open the door and look in, like, come see the American, you know, and little kids, and not a huge volume of people, but I'm sure, like, maybe it was her relatives or something or other people that lived there out of curiosity coming to look at me.

And, you know, again, I'm just trying to tread water and stay alive here.

And nothing happened for a couple of days.

And then things started getting weird.

I was being visited by this propaganda minister named Abdi, clean dressed, obviously a person of stature.

spoke pretty good English.

And I described it as he would come and try to tell me bedtime stories.

And he was trying to indoctrinate me.

This is where I learned about Adid's role in ousting Siad Barre and how Adid was really a national hero.

And I'm like, yeah, he's a freaking national hero, all right.

And they're basically just trying to convince me to sympathize with them.