For all the jokes about feeling captive or succumbing to Stockholm Syndrome in the Age of Trump, few could have accounted for this. A Canadian man held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan for five years was rescued along with his wife and children earlier this month. The family spent virtually the entire period without books, newspapers, or access to the Internet, as the world kept moving—and accelerating—outside the often dark and tiny cells they called home. In an interview shortly after his return to Canada, Joshua Boyle told The Toronto Star that when his captors told him Donald Trump was the President of the United States, he never considered that it might not be a joke.

They didn’t know Justin Trudeau was Canada’s prime minister until after they were rescued. One of the captors told Boyle the new U.S. president was Donald Trump before he was forced to make a “proof-of-life” video. “It didn’t enter my mind that he was being serious,” he said.

Some days, we can all sympathize. In fairness, it was U.S. intelligence forces—now under the ultimate direction of one Donald J. Trump—that directed Pakistani security services to Boyle and his family's location. And thankfully they did. Boyle and his wife, Caitlan Coleman, were captured while on a backpacking trip through Central Asia in October 2012. In the years since, they endured unimaginable horrors, including Coleman's rape and forced abortion at the hands of their kidnappers and their three children knowing only a life of captivity.

Lars Hagberg/The Canadian Press/AP

Now, by the Star's account, everything has changed:

But outside Boyle’s father’s office where we spoke Saturday, there was little evidence of what his children had been through as they enjoyed their first full day of freedom in Canada. Jonah was fascinated by flushing the toilet, and had dirty pants and bare feet from digging in the vegetable garden. Noah, 2, played with wooden trains with his mother and aunt Heather. Boyle’s mother, Linda, found the best position to soothe her months-old granddaughter, Grace, was snug against her side, cradled like a football.

Sounds nice. Presumably they hadn't turned on any American cable news yet.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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