When the body is chained, the spirit finds freedom. That's the lesson learned by Antoine Bacha at the youthful age of 25. Captured by Palestinian terrorists while working as a flight engineer on a 747 that made routine flights between France and Athens.

"I loved flying," recalls Antoine. "For me it was freedom, like the birds who fly where they will," says Antoine. "At 25, traveling back and forth to Athens, Greece was a fun adventure."

Until one fateful day in 1982 when, on a routine flight, the cockpit was rushed by four armed men and the plane was hijacked.

"At that time, there were no locked cockpits," says Antoine. "The policy was, if hijacked, to follow directions and do whatever they said."

The men yelled in what Antoine and his fellow crew-mates recognized to be Arabic. Despite the gun to his head Antoine remained calm.

"One hijacker knew some broken English and gave us flight plans and coordinates to land the plane in Beirut," recalls Antoine. "At the time, Lebanon was a war-torn region in the midst of a terrible civil war. It felt like I was in the middle of movie. It was surreal."

In the back of Antoine's mind he held onto a hope that they would land the plane and release each of them. That may have been the plan however, a noise from outside of the cockpit made just after landing caught Antoine's attention. Hearing the screams of a female flight attendant, Antoine investigated and saw one of the hijackers ripping off her clothes and pulling down his pants.

"He was raping her, right then and there, in front of everyone," recalls Antoine. "I don’t know what came over me, I didn’t think I just reacted."

Knowing full well that his captors were armed with guns Antoine lunged at the man, grabbed him by the shirt and pulled the man off his crew-mate. The man turned and with one blow hit Antoine over the head with the gun so hard that it knocked him unconscious.

"When I regained consciousness, I had a massive headache and couldn't remember a thing," he recalls. "I was in complete darkness, sitting with my legs bent up to my knees surrounded by cold, concrete walls."

Though he didn't know it at the time he was in an underground cell that they used to hold hostages. Antoine could not even stand up or stretch his legs out. Completely surrounded by four walls, he had just enough room to extend his hands out to feel the confines of his cell.

"Above me was a chain-link top, which prevented me from standing up. It's only purpose was to allow air in so I could breath," says Antoine. "When I first woke up, I wasn’t even sure I was awake. It was dark, I couldn’t see and I couldn’t remember what had happened. I remember screaming and yelling, desperate to get out. I banged my arms against the walls and wire to no avail. It was madness. I was panicked. This went on for a while then exhaustion hit."

Antoine drifted in and out of sleep, not really sure of the difference between the two. In total darkness, seconds became hours and minutes became days. At one point he recalls hearing voices. He shouted for help but to no avail. Eventually those voices got closer and opened the top of his cell to drop in food.

"At that moment my instinct to survive took over and I ate the food like a madman," says Antoine. "I didn’t think about anything but eating. I can’t even tell you what I ate, I just grabbed the food and started shoving it into my mouth."

For the next nine months he was subjected to cruelty and torture beyond what most can even imagine.

"How one human being can do this to another I will never know," says Antoine. "I was dragged out of my hole for hours at a time and interrogated and tortured. There was always one, who spoke a little English and kept repeating the same questions. They would ask me if I was CIA, or FBI, if I was with Interpol. They wanted to know information about military plans. Being just a young pilot I knew nothing but they didn't believe me."

The torture included pulling out his fingernails with pliers. They beat the bottoms of feet with a wooden stick until they bled then shoved his feet into a bucket of ice water. Though it seems impossible, Antoine Bacha survived this torture for nine agonizing months and lived to tell the tale.

"I gradually learned that in order for me to survive I was going to have to understand that there was more to me than my body," says Antoine. "When I realized that my mind was my own and that whatever they did to my body they did not do to mind I realized that I could survive anything."


Antoine learned a lot about the power of his mind during that bleak period.

"There was nothing else I could do," says Antoine. "I refused to just lay down and die. When I truly understood that I was not my body, peace came over me and changed my perspective. I credit that great learning for surviving all the torture inflicted on me. They could do whatever they wanted to my body, but my mind was mine."

According to Antoine, "We limit ourselves by identifying only with the flesh and bones of our bodies. The truth is that we are so much more than our material form."

Nine months later the chain-link top was opened up by members of the Israeli forces who had taken over the compound.

"After all that time it was incredible to learn that I was not alone. There were hundreds of hostages in hundreds of cells. Most of them were from Israel; none of them were from the airplane."

A caged bird no more, Antoine had learned a valuable lesson about how precious life truly is.

To learn more about his story and his experiences with the voice be sure to buy his books: Cogito and Cogito: Part 2, The Dream. You can also visit his website Cogitobook.com.