Eleven years on since facing the most harrowing and traumatic twelve-day experience of my life–in police custody in Doha, Qatar for allegedly insulting Islam–I can say I have finally recovered from it. But, returning to Nepal following that back in 2013, I struggled immensely for a long time with the challenges of recovering from that compounded by the woes of repatriation — I had spent most of the preceding twenty-five years abroad, among other things. It wasn’t until eight years on, in 2021, that I decided and/or realized that I was finally on the path to recovery.
On Sept. 18 of that year, I made a post on Facebook about just that. On November 20, 2021, I reproduced the post on Instagram.
The following is a reproduction of that post and a little more.
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Eight years…after eight years of struggles, I finally feel that I am, truly, on the road to recovery from that #traumatic 12-day experience in Al Rayyan Police Station in #Qatar.
(I believe it’s taken so long mainly because I have had to do it alone; I have not had a single person in #Kathmandu around me helping me for any significant length of time.)
How do I know that? Two reasons.
1. I don’t cry alone as easily and as often as I used to (see images 1 and 2).
2. The urge to scream my lungs out, one perpetually fueled by the rage and the fire burning inside, has subsided, considerably. (See image 3 below, which is of a WhataApp text message I sent a good buddy of mine back in June 23, 2020 about that).
Though that urge has ALWAYS been there, I gave vent to it only twice. The first time was in #MonumentValley, UT, USA in the Summer of 2015 (of which I have a recording!), and the second time was in #Goa, India in October, 2019 (see image 4 below).
The first eighteen hours I spent in the private cell in Al Rayyan Police Station had been, until that point, the loneliest and probably the darkest and the most despair-filled time in my entire life.
Strangely enough, or surprisingly, the journey from when I was released on May 12, 2013 to now has also been a lonely, lonely, lonely one, some periods even very dark.
Regardless, from at some point, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as it were, I have been chugging along, steadfastly, heading towards it!
What a journey it has been…what a journey! It’s been an excruciating, revelatory, and liberating one all at the same time, among others!
It can only get better from here…I believe so anyway!
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NB. “Al Rayyan Jail” has been replaced with “Al Rayyan Police Station” because I was in police custody and never convicted.
Additional Notes
- When it came to my crying, while I did that mostly in private. One time in Nepal I was overcome with emotions during an interview with the DPA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) journalist Pratibha Tuladhar in January 2018. She ends the article Nepalis pursue overseas employment despite risks thus:
“I had it easy,” Gurung said as tears welled up in his eyes. “But there are thousands out there who have lost everything.”
However, I felt comfortable sharing the details of crying with the public in the form of a blog post called Freedom Cries only into the fourth year of my return to Nepal.
As for the March 19, 2019 Facebook post about the Iranian lawyer, I had actually read the article around 1:30 AM in the morning (see image below) while hanging out at a restaurant sipping beer, listening to live music, scrolling through social media, and had actually made a Google note about it.
Here’s the note that I had intended to share on social media.
Story of Iranian lawyer jailed for 38 years and over hundred lashes…
This is going to be my first really emotional Facebook post of mine! I have resisted making emotional posts.
I first came across links to this article some time ago but I refused to follow it and or even acknowledge it personally because even if it sounded really really unjust it was just too wayward. But of course I know too well about such “wayward” crimes and punishments.
And yet here I am, at 1:00 am, at a bar in Thamel, reading the article, unable to hold my tears!
And I have to ask myself, who in Nepal would care? Who in Nepal could care?
Yes, I appreciated the fact that so many in Nepal cared and campaigned on my behalf and got me out of Qatari jail!
Could you care? Should you care? Would you care? If you did, why?
As you can see, what I did end up sharing was a little different. Additionally, the link to the article is broken; click here for the archived version.
2. There was more to the WhatsApp exchange with my dear friend than what I shared on Facebook. Here they are. I share them here because they do contain more information.
What do you think?
