On this weeks episode of from “our own correspondent” Alan Johnston talks about how earlier this year he was kidnapped and held for 4 months by Palestinian militants.
I read an edited version of the programme in The Times this week and I found his closing words really moving:
“And the kidnap’s legacy is not all bad. It was a kind of dark education. I lived through things which before I would have struggled to imagine and maybe, in the end, I will be stronger for that. I have gained a deeper sense of the value of freedom. Perhaps only if you have ever been some kind of prisoner, can you truly understand its worth.
Even now, more than three months after I was freed, it can still seem faintly magical to do the simplest things, like walk down a street in the sunshine, or sit in a café with a newspaper.
And in my captivity in Gaza, I learnt again that oldest of lessons. That in life, all that really, really matters, is the people you love.”
You can download the programme from the BBC website or read the article on the times website.
