Freed Canadian hostage Joshua Boyle and his father say the family is improving after years spent in captivity in Afghanistan.
The traumatized family arrived in Toronto on Friday, five years after Boyle and his American wife, Caitlan Coleman, were abducted by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network.
The couple and their three young children, born in captivity, have been staying with Boyle’s parents in Smiths Falls, Ont., about an hour’s drive from Ottawa.
Boyle has said that the couple’s captors killed one of their children, a baby girl, but the Taliban network claims Coleman suffered a miscarriage.
Speaking to CTV News’ Omar Sachedina, Joshua Boyle’s father Patrick gave a glimpse into what life has been like since his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren arrived home.
Patrick Boyle said his son’s family of five is sleeping together in the household’s smallest bedroom.
“They said (the room) was more than twice the size of the best circumstances they were ever in,” Patrick Boyle said Sunday.
In a written statement to CP24, Joshua Boyle said his boys, the two older children, are “improving.” He said Najaeshi Jonah, the eldest, has enjoyed exploring a closet and “declared he wants to sleep in it tonight and make a giant ‘mouse nest’ out of the clothes.”
The boys are learning basic North American customs, like table manners. At one point, the boys hopped onto the kitchen table to eat a cake with their hands because that’s how they had been used to eating while in captivity, Patrick Boyle told CTV News.
“We’re watching a two-year-old and a four-year-old adjusting from eating with their hands whatever food was dropped in front of them to seeing, for the first time, basic utensils,” he added.
Joshua Boyle wrote that the younger boy, Dhakwoen Noah, has gone from viewing his grandparents with “terror” to deciding overnight that he loves his grandmother. The boy’s grandmother convinced him with “a hearty breakfast of pancakes,” although he remains “incredibly troubled and stressed over everything.”
“She's the first person he's accepted since 2015,” he wrote. “Needless to say, thousands of times seeing the guards on a daily basis did not endear him to even one of them.”
Both boys speak English. Joshua and Caitlan “educated their children the best they could” while being held captive, Patrick Boyle said.
He said he was overcome by an “amazing feeling of pride” when he first saw his son’s family at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on Friday night.
“It’s bringing a whole family home,” he said. “Half of them you know well and half of them you’ve never laid eyes on before.”
“The next best thing is the rest of the day, I got to sit there and watch as almost everybody who’s really important in my life at the same time received the one thing they’ve wanted most for the last five years.”
Looking ahead, Patrick Boyle said things will not be easy as the extended family adjusts to having their loved ones back.
“It’s a tough adjustment for the Boyle family and the Coleman family who weren’t kidnapped,” he said. “To suddenly get such a high and quickly return to dealing with pressing and immediate challenges that are now the most pressing thing in your life.”
In his statement, Joshua Boyle said that while his own home is in Perth-Andover, N.B. and “there’s talk of returning to Breslau, Ont.,” where he grew up, he and his wife plan to stay with his parents in Smiths Falls.
Boyle was once married to Zaynab Khadr, the older sister of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr and the daughter of a senior al Qaeda financier Ahmed Said Khadr.
With a report from CTV News’ Omar Sachedina, CP24 and with files from The Canadian Press
