Lebanon Hostage Ch. 02

So if I've been here a couple of weeks already, I could go home any time. Maybe a little longer, if the situation's complicated. I could imagine... a month. Maybe a little more. At most.

Oh God, please don't let it be longer than that. Not a year. I couldn't possibly do this for a year.

* * *

From time to time, I try to count the other prisoners by counting the number of doors I hear close during feedings or toilet runs. The numbers I come up with change from one attempt to the next. Five. Four. Six. I go through periods when I am obsessed with trying to resolve or interpret the discrepancies.

Am I just mishearing because of the damn background noise? Am I counting the door at the top of the stairs by mistake? Did they skip someone this time for some reason? Did they go back to someone's cell twice?

Or: Have some hostages gone home? Will I be next?

Or: Have new hostages been taken? Could one of them be Bernie?

Or: Am I misremembering my last count? Or losing track in mid-count? Is my mind deteriorating that badly?

* * *

My cell is so compact that when I lie on my mattress, fully stretched out, the crown of my head and my toes barely fit between the walls. I'm 5'11". The cell, which looks like a cube, must be six feet to a side. My mattress takes up half the width of the cell. That leaves a 3' x 6' rectangle of open floor in front of the cell's very narrow door.

I want to walk on that open floor. I want to pace, even if it's just two or three steps each direction. I need exercise. I need activity. I need at least the illusion of being able to get up and go somewhere. The illusion of freedom.

But this open space is in front of the door, with its lethal barred gap. To pace, I would have to walk directly toward that gap. I could not help but look out. And then I would die.

Unless... I have permission.

I work out a plan. A pitch. At first it's a distracting fantasy, but the more I play it over in my head, the more convinced I become that I could persuade them to let me do it. Makmoud, I'm certain, would be the most amenable. But I need to ask someone who knows more English.

I decide that my best bet for finding an English-speaking guard is to ask when I'm taken to the bathroom, adjacent to the guards' living area.

It takes me a few toilet runs to build up the courage to speak. When I rehearse this scene in my imagination, I am calm and persuasive and the guards are reasonable and accommodating. But in reality, they're hurried, brusque, and I am too intimidated to pull back and say, "Wait. Please."

Finally I take the plunge. As soon as I come out of the bathroom, while the guards are handing me my refilled water bottle and taking hold of my arm to hustle me back to my cell, I raise my voice to speak to the room in general: "Excuse me, please. May I ask a question?" I am ashamed to hear my voice quiver. As soon as I've spoken, I feel like it was a mistake—I was instructed on my first day here not to ask questions—but there's no backing out now.

Neither of the two guards who are doing the toilet run responds to me, but another guard approaches. "What do you want?"

"Would it be all right, when I'm in my cell, if I walked in the space next to my mattress?"

He doesn't understand, makes me repeat the request. I use my fingers to illustrate what I'm asking permission to do.

"Why?" he asks.

"I'm afraid I'll get sick or go crazy if I don't have some kind of exercise. I promise I won't look out of my cell. I'll wear my blindfold while I do it."

A pause. "Show me," he says.

I take three blind steps forward, pivot, walk back three steps, pivot again. I repeat the operation. "That's all," I say.

He makes a scoffing sound, a breathy laugh. He says something in Arabic to the guards beside me, repeats it more loudly to someone else behind him, on the other side of the room. His voice sounds incredulous, disdainful. My heart sinks. Behind my blindfold, I blink back hot tears.

But he tells me: "Yes. Fine." He sounds amused. A second later, though, he adds in a deathly menacing tone, "Blindfold, always."

"Yes, I promise."

"You look, we shoot you."

"I understand."

He thinks to add another restriction. "Not in night. In night, you sleep."

"No. Yes. I understand. Thank you. Thank you very much."

I begin as soon as they've returned me to my cell. I am giddy, impatient to enjoy this sliver of freedom I have been granted. Blindfold in place, I guide myself by brushing the wall with my fingers. I take full-sized paces, but slowly and tentatively to make sure I don't collide with either the door or the back wall. I discover I can take two paces in each direction, then I have to pivot around. I pick up the pace, find an efficient rhythm. It feels so good to move. Thank you, God, thank you.

I can keep it up for several minutes, then my legs become unruly and I'm in danger of losing my balance. I rest, then resume. It occurs to me that I should remove my socks when I pace, so I don't wear them out. The soles have turned permanently black and are wearing thin in the heels. I have no idea if the guards would provide me with replacements.

I become a spectacle for the guards. They stand outside my cell, watching me through the bars. "Hey, where you go?" one of them asks. I have no idea how to answer that, but he doesn't sound hostile, so I wave, smile, nod: Yes, very funny... I've realized by now that I can't be the only prisoner who ever paces in his cell, but I must be the only one who's ever asked permission and can therefore afford to do it when the guards are around.

Then one day, as I'm approaching the barred gap, a guard reaches through and smacks my forehead, hard. At least that's what I realize, a second or two later, must have happened. I stagger back, confused. Evidently he wants me to stop for some reason, so I retreat to my mattress. "No," he says. "Go. Go." I don't understand what's happening, but he seems to want me to resume pacing, so I do. A few turns later, he smacks me again.

It's a game for him. He won't let me stop, he orders me to keep going, but he delivers random blows as I come within reach: to my forehead, the back of my head, my ears, my cheeks, my chin, my shoulders. I'm fighting hard not to shed more than an occasional silent tear, I don't want to give him the satisfaction. He doesn't laugh or make any other sound apart from telling me, "Go!" every time I stagger.

A blow strikes my nose, hard enough to whip my neck back. I think I feel liquid... I put my fingers to my nostrils, then my tongue. Yes, I'm bleeding. I stumble blindfolded to my mattress, gripping my nose with one hand, fumbling with the other in my tub for the package of tissues. I need to see what I'm doing, but I don't dare lift the blindfold because I can't tell whether or not the guard is still there. "Please, I need help," I call, as a test. When there's no reply, I tug the blindfold up. My fingers are covered in blood. Later I see where large drops have splattered onto my pajamas and my mattress.

It takes several minutes to stop the bleeding; I use up all my tissues in the process. Once the crisis has passed, I cry.

I still pace after that, but not as often or as enthusiastically. Never again when a guard is around. Pacing has become risky. The thrill of freedom—of having won permission to get away with something—is gone. What I am most conscious of now is how constricted I am: two measly steps, forward and back, over and over and over and over and over. This isn't freedom, how could I ever have felt like it was? I'm an animal, pacing in my cage.

I live with the persistent fear that the guard will return for another round of his game, although he never does. I hate him. He has ruined the pacing for me, he has smashed a hole into it that has drained the pleasure out of it. As I pace behind my blindfold, flashbacks of him hitting me alternate with flashbacks of being bullied in junior high and high school. That's what this guard is—a bully. A 20-something-year-old bully, with a gun, who has me locked in a cell, where no one can intervene for me.

* * *

Today I marked two full weeks on my secret tally on the wall. Estimating that I was here two weeks before I started counting, that makes four weeks total. A month. That would make it sometime in early April.

The real count may be even higher. Or lower. Sometimes during the day, I'm stricken with doubt about whether or not I remembered to mark a notch after breakfast. So there may be days I forgot to record. And there may be days when I made two notches because I forgot I'd already made one.

I'm not doing well. I don't have what it takes to survive. I can't even remember to be consistent about this one simple thing.

* * *

I talk to myself, out loud, for hours. With the ventilator running, no one can hear me, and when the power goes out I just have to whisper if I want to be absolutely certain the guards won't hear me over the static.

In my more disciplined stretches, I'm recounting stories, or analyzing them, or making them up, or practicing lectures on effective writing or rhetorical analysis or literary theory. When my discipline flags and my mind wanders where it will, my mouth follows along. I like to think that talking aloud helps me stay a little more focused, the mind can't jump around quite so quickly, the lips move more slowly, hold the mind back, prevent it, I hope, from spinning off into crazy. Plus, it's comforting to hear a voice, even if it's just my own, I feel less lonely.

I have an unstable relationship with myself. Sometimes I'm understanding and supportive. I give myself pep talks, assure myself, yes, it's tough, but you're holding up okay, you're going to be fine, this can't go on too much longer, and then you'll go home. But I can be harsh with myself, too. You've got to be better disciplined. Stop wallowing. Snap out of it. Pull yourself together. Why can't you be stronger? Why did you let your thoughts go there, you know that's not helpful. Stupid. Idiot. Weakling. Crybaby. Coward.

Sometimes I'll start talking to myself about something, and my mind will carry me down on a convoluted stream of consciousness, and then sometime later I'll think: Wait, how did I get onto this subject? This wasn't what I started thinking about. Did I finish what I started? But I can't remember what I started with. I've wandered so far afield that I can't trace my way back anymore.

I become distressed. Why can't I remember? I have to remember. It is vital that I remember. I cannot lose my ability to remember. My frustration can mount to the point of tears.

* * *

Parts of me shrink while other parts grow.

I'm losing the belly I packed on during college. That scares me. What will my body do to itself when those reserves are depleted?

My fingernails are longer than they've ever been. I used to be in the habit of biting them, but I don't dare do that here, they're filthy, I might get worms.

My unclipped toenails dig little holes in my socks.

My hair becomes shaggy and greasy. Sometimes I'm convinced that I feel bugs crawling on my scalp and scratch ferociously. Other times, I'm equally convinced that I'm imagining the sensation—which in a way is worse.

My beard grows in. I've never grown a beard; I started one my freshman year of college, but after a week the results were so sparse and splotchy and ugly that I gave up. I have no idea what I look like now. There's no mirror in the bathroom. Since my utensils are plastic, I can't even try to see my reflection in the spoon. My captors have taken even my face away from me.

* * *

If I were literally going insane, would I know it was happening?

* * *

I lie on my side, staring at the tiled wall next to my mattress, thinking how twisted it is that there is a person just on the other side of this wall—lying three feet away at most—with whom I have never had any contact. I know nothing about this person except that I think he's French. I don't know his name. I don't know how old he is. I don't know what he does, or used to do, in normal life. I don't know how long he's been here. I don't know how he's holding up. I don't know what he does to fill his days.

This is exactly how our captors want it. They don't want us to know anything about each other. Why? Why do we have to be kept in isolation three feet away from each other? Why can't we ever talk? Exchange names? Cheer each other up? Assure each other we're going to make it? Help each other fill the long empty hours? Don't our captors understand that would be better for our mental health? What are they afraid we'll do if we communicate? Plot an attack on the guards? An escape?

I am starved for human contact. I need another person to talk to, someone to keep me anchored in reality. One of these days, I'm afraid, I'm going to get so lost in my own mind that I won't be able to find my way back. Surely our captors don't want that. Won't a mental breakdown make me harder to look after—more work for them?

* * *

I don't remember when this happens in relation to other events, what few of those there are. But I remember crossing off week 4—which is really more like week 6, since I started the tally late—and thinking: In just a few more weeks, I'll run out of room on this patch of grime, I'll have to start another.

At this point, a voice in my head is supposed to say, "No, what are you talking about, you're not going to be here that long." But that voice doesn't speak up.

Apparently, I have stopped believing in my imminent release. I have lost that particular faith. I hadn't realized.

Should I feel good about this? Is it mature of me to achieve this acceptance?

From my position hunched in front of the wall with the tallies, I ease myself down sideways, onto my back, on the hard, cold, filthy floor in front of the cell door. I put my arm over my eyes and lie there, feeling empty. I don't cry, that's how empty I am.

The crying comes that night, during a power outage. Of course—I had to wait until a time when I was more likely to be heard and yelled at. Self-sabotage is what I do.

* * *

A new prisoner has arrived. A vociferously religious prisoner. I can hear him praying down the hall to my right. I hear him most clearly when the power's out, of course, but even when the ventilator's running, I can sometimes detect his voice, so he must be almost shouting. He sounds middle-aged or older. He prays in English, interspersed with phrases that I assume to be Arabic.

His language is florid, psalmic: Hear me, God! How long will you delay? You know how I have served your children. You know how vital my work is. Set me free, God, set me free!

I never hear the guards pound on his door or shout at him to be quiet. Their tolerance is baffling. It is unjust.

Over time, he prays less loudly. He fades into ambient noise. Like the static. Like the ventilator.

* * *

I stopped praying regularly, on my knees, some time ago. I no longer saw any point to it. It had become a meaningless routine. It didn't make me feel better. I couldn't sense anyone listening. Being up on my knees was just tiring and uncomfortable. Why put myself through that on top of everything else I have to endure?

I still pray by reflex, in my head, lying down, on occasions when my fear or sadness or tedium balloons to the point that I feel it's going to entirely fill the cell and suffocate me. Then I pray: Please, get me out of here, I can't do this anymore...

There are times, though, when I hate God. I hate him for abandoning me. I hate him because I increasingly suspect that he does not exist.

My hatred of God frightens me. I pray feverishly for forgiveness: Please, I'm sorry, I won't doubt you anymore. But help me! Help me, God damn you!

* * *

During a power outage, one of the guards comes into my cell, just to chat. He is bored, perhaps, in the absence of television. Or he magnanimously wants to boost my morale. Or he wants to exercise his English. Whatever his motive, it's the longest conversation I've had with anyone other than myself since my last aborted interrogation.

He sits on the foot of my mattress while I sit at the head, against the wall. Having him in such close quarters is nerve-wracking, even once his intentions appear benign. It's like sitting next to a wild animal, I can't predict what he'll do. With my blindfold down, I can't even see the animal.

"Hello, how are you?" he asks. The voices of other guards I've heard lead me to envision that they're in their mid or late 20s. This guard sounds like he's younger than me.

"I'm okay," I answer warily.

"You sad?"

"Yes." All the time.

"Not be sad. Soon, you go home."

An explosion of excitement. "When?"

"Soon."

Hard on the heels of my excitement is the sickening suspicion that he's just being vaguely comforting. He doesn't mean "soon," he means "eventually." I ask as slowly and clearly as I can manage in my agitated state, "Am I going to be released? Did you get what you wanted for me?"

"I don't know." He speaks as if it is a matter of indifference. Or maybe his English isn't strong enough for him to understand what I'm asking. I feel the ground crumbling beneath me. I'm going to sink even deeper now. If he intended to cheer me up, he has failed miserably.

"You American?" he asks.

"Yes."

He screams, "Death to America!" Blind, I flinch away, my hands flying up into the air between us. He laughs. He leans over and pats the top of my head reassuringly. Just joking. "I love America. American women, belle. You have girlfriend?"

"No."

"Why?"

I can literally feel my scalp crawling with fear, it isn't just an expression. "I don't know. I... just don't."

"I have two girlfriend," he says with adolescent pride. Later, I will reflect that this boast does not correspond to my mental picture of a Muslim fundamentalist. But that doesn't occur to me at the time.

Hoping to direct the conversation away from my lack of a girlfriend, I ask, "Are your girlfriends beautiful? Belle?"

"No." He laughs again. "Here, women not belle. American women belle. I want go America, have American girlfriend."

He keeps talking. He wants me to give him advice about how to meet and impress American girls. He names American TV and movie actresses he finds attractive, and he wants me to tell him who I like. I have no idea what to say. I am riding on the edge of panic. I want this threatening conversation to end.

Eventually he leaves. Before he goes, he pats my head again, as if I'm a dog, and urges me, "Not be sad." He leaves me alone, with my secret, in the dark.

* * *

I lie on my mattress, on my side, curled up in a ball, petting myself. My hair. My shoulder and arm. My leg. I never touch myself sexually—my nipples, my ass, my dick. I've promised God I won't do that anymore. I'm not even tempted, really. The sex drive that has hounded me since I hit puberty has vanished. Petting myself isn't about sexual pleasure. It's just about trying to comfort myself.

Sometimes, I imagine someone spooning behind me with his arm around me. He's bigger than me, stronger than me, more masculine than me. He can keep me safe, he'll watch over me.

I am not entirely certain I should be indulging in this... I won't call it a fantasy, let's call it a feeling... I am not entirely certain I should be indulging in this feeling because it does seem like it's approaching dangerously close to a gay fantasy. Wanting to be embraced by a man isn't necessarily gay, I tell myself; I could just be craving the protection of a father figure. But unfortunately, because I'm screwed up sexually, the one can bleed easily into the other. I mustn't let that happen. So when I do permit myself this... feeling, I'm careful not to give the man in my imagination a face. Not Dale. Not Adnan. No one specific, no one who has ever been for me, or could become for me, an object of sexual desire.