A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping from Two Sides
by David Rhode and Kristen Mulvihill

—Reviewed by Ellen O’Connell

In late 2008, New York Times reporter David Rohde went to meet with a Taliban commander. Rohde was writing a book about the faltering effort by the United States to bring stability to Afghanistan. When the reporter arrived at the purported interview site, however, he was kidnapped. For the next seven months, Rohde lived in captivity, getting moved from one safe house to the next. The result is a book very different from the one he’d set out to write. A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping from Two Sides is a collaboration between Rohde and his wife, Kristen Mulvihill, the former photography director for Cosmopolitan. The two authors alternate chapters to describe-often in brilliant detail-the negotiation process and the maneuvering of Rohde’s Taliban captors.

Mulvihill had only been married to Rohde for two months at the time of his kidnapping, and she juxtaposes the relatively superficial concerns of her magazine job with the very non-superficial concerns that accompany kidnapping negotiations involving the Taliban, the FBI, and the State Department.

The true power of the narrative in A Rope and a Prayer lies in the daily ups and downs we experience along with the couple. Rohde’s captors exhibit great hospitality one day and threaten to sell his bones to his family the next. Mulvihill must contend with a steady barrage of misinformation from both Washington and Islamabad, where she hires contractors to negotiate for her husband’s safe release.

Rohde and Mulvihill tell their tale in a flat reporting style that is well suited to describing physical details but less well suited to revealing emotion. Still, even a straightforward presentation can sometimes be effective, as when Mulvihill receives a letter from her husband in early 2009, more than two months after Rohde’s disappearance, from the International Committee of the Red Cross. “Thank you for our wonderful wedding on September 6, 2008,” Mulhivill reads. “Memories of that wonderful day and our beautiful times together keep me strong here. I love you so very, very, very much and thank you for all the joy you have given me.”

Rohde never got the book he set out to get on that fateful November morning. Instead he experienced a kidnapping at the brutal hands of the thriving enemy. That he survived is a testament to his fortitude, to his wife’s determination and love, and to the power of the United States, even in era of overstretched foreign entanglements.

Excerpt: “We are allowed to walk in a small courtyard that is the width of a city sidewalk. Direct sunlight reaches it for a few hours each morning. Throughout the day, we hear children playing and laughing on the other side of the walls but never see them.”

Buy the book: Skylight Books, Powell’s, Amazon

Ellen O’Connell has been published in several national literary magazines and is a contributing writer to the forthcoming book, The Moment (2011 Harper Perennial). This year she was nominated for the 2011 Pushcart Award and currently teaches creative writing at UC Santa Barbara.

*Photo courtesy of Hani Amir.