Inside my room there was one very large, locked wooden box. In there, I learned, were the most valued possessions of every member of the household. And there was not much. Trust me on that. But what they had they seemed prepared to share with me.

I’d been given a couple of blankets, and as the night drew in, I discovered why. The temperature plummeted from the searing heat of the day straight into the thirties.

I noticed there was also an old iron woodstove in one corner of the room, where I later learned they baked bread every day. The system up here is for the two main houses, like this one, to do the baking for everyone, and the bread is then distributed. I lay there wondering where all the smoke went when they lit the stove, since there was no chimney. But that was a discovery yet to come. Answer: nowhere. That wood smoke stayed right in my bedroom.

I drifted into a half sleep, my wounds still throbbing but thankfully not becoming infected. Hooyah, Sarawa! Right?

The door to my new residence was quite thick but ill fitting. It would keep out the wind and the rain, but the guys had to give it a mighty shove to open it. I’d already noticed that, and I knew no one could enter the room without waking me, so I had no need to sleep on high alert.

What happened next, however, took me by surprise. The door gave way to a kick that shattered the silence. I opened my eyes in time to see eight armed Taliban fighters come barging into the room. The first one came straight over to my cot and slapped me across the face with all his force. That really pissed me off, and he was a very lucky boy that I could not move and was effectively a prisoner. If he’d even thought about putting his hands on me when I was fit, I’d have ripped his fucking head off. Little prick.

I knew they were Taliban because of their appearance, very clean cut, manicured beards, clean teeth, hands, and clothes. They were well fed and could speak broken English. None of them was very big, maybe around five feet eight on average, and they all wore those old Soviet leather belts, the ones with the red star in the middle of the buckle. They wore Afghan clothes, but each one had a different-colored vest. Every man carried a knife and a Russian pistol jammed into his belt. Everything made in Moscow. Everything stolen.

There was nothing I could get my hands on to defend myself. I had no rifle, no grenade, just my own personal badge of courage, the Lone Star of Texas on my arm and chest. I needed some of that courage because these bastards laid into me, kicking my left leg and punching my face and upper body, beating me to hell.

I didn’t give that much of a shit. I can suck this kind of crap up, like I’ve been trained. Anyway, they didn’t have a decent punch among them. Essentially they were all very lucky boys, because in normal circumstances, I could have thrown any one of them straight through the freakin’ window. My main worry was they might decide to shoot me or tie me up and march me off somewhere, maybe over the border to Pakistan, to film me and then cut off my head on camera.

If I’d thought for one moment that was their intention, it would have been bad news for all of us. I was hurt, but not so bad as I was making out, and I was formulating a fallback plan. Up above me in the rafters, I could see a four-foot-long iron bar, just resting there. Could I get it if I stood up? Yes.

In a life-or-death situation, I’d grab that bar, carefully select the most violent of them, and smash it right through him. He’d never get up again. Then I’d lay into the front two, taking them entirely by surprise. At the same time, using the bar, I’d ram the whole group into a corner, crushing them together, as per standard SEAL combat strategy, making it impossible for anyone to draw down on me, pull a knife, or get out.

I’d probably have to obliterate the skulls of another couple of them before using one of those Russian pistols to finish anyone still alive. Could I have done it? I think so. My buddies back in SEAL Team 10 would have been mighty disappointed in me if I’d failed.

My absolute fallback position would have been to kill them all, grab their weapons and ammunition, then barricade myself in the house until the Americans came to get me.

The problem was, where would all this get me in the short term? What was the point of being a bad-ass SEAL, the way some guys would be? The house was surrounded by more Taliban, all of them with AKs. I saw those guards come in and then go out again. Some of the little creeps were right outside the window. Anyway, the entire sprawl of the village of Sabray was surrounded by the Taliban. Sarawa had told me so, and it beat me why I’d been left alone...unless they knew...unless they were indoctrinated...unless I really was in the hands of off-duty Taliban warriors.

But the guys at my bedside were not off duty. They were right on my case, demanding to know why I was there, what the American planes were doing, whether the United States was planning an attack on them, who was coming to rescue me (good question, right?). I knew that right now discretion was, by a long way, the better part of valor, because my objective was simply to try and stay alive, not to get into a brawl with knife-wielding tribesmen or, worse, get myself shot.

I kept telling them I was just a doctor, out here to help with our wounded. I also told them a huge lie, that I had diabetes. I was not a member of the special forces, and I needed water, which they ignored. The main trouble was, strangely, my beard, because they knew the U.S. Army did not permit beards. Only the U.S. Special Forces allows that.

I managed to persuade them I needed to go outside, and they gave me this one single opportunity, one last desperate try to slip away. But I could not move fast enough, and they just dragged me back inside, threw me on the ground, and beat me even more seriously than they had before. Broke the bones in my wrist. That hurt, and I’ve since needed two operations to correct it.

By now they had lit their lanterns, maybe three of them, and the room was quite light. And their inquisition went on for maybe six hours. Yelling and beating, yelling and kicking. They told me my buddies were all dead, told me they’d already cut everyone’s head off and that I was next. They said they had shot down an American helicopter, killed everyone. They were just full of bravado, shouting, boasting they would in the end kill every American in their country and then some...We will kill you all! Death to the Satan! Death to the infidel!

They pointed out with huge glee that I was their main infidel and I had mere moments to live. I took a sidelong glance at that iron bar, perhaps my last hope. But I told them nothing, stuck to my guns, kept on telling them I was only a doctor.

At one stage, one of the village kids came in, about seventeen years old. I was pretty certain he had been in one of the groups I’d passed on the way down here. And he had what I now call the Look. That sneering hatred of me and my country.

The Taliban guys let him come in and watch them knocking me around. He really liked it, and I could tell they regarded him as “one of us.” He was allowed to sit on the bed while they kicked at the bandage on my left thigh. He just loved it. Kept running the edge of his hand over his throat and laughing, “Taliban, heh?...Taliban!” I’ll never forget his face, his grin, his triumphant stare. And I kept looking right up at that iron bar. The kid, too, was a very lucky boy.

Then my interrogators found my rifle laser sight and my camera and wanted to take pictures of one another. I showed them how to use the laser to achieve their pictures, but I showed them the wrong way around and told them to stare into the beam with their naked eye. I guess the last favor I did them was to blind the whole fucking lot of ’em! Because that beam would have burned their retinas right out. Sorry, guys. That’s show business.