Lebanon Hostage Ch. 03

According to Allan, a few days passed before anyone claimed responsibility for my kidnapping, but the working assumption right away was that this was not an improvised crime of opportunity, it had been planned with political motives, and Bernie had been the intended victim. The day after I disappeared, Bernie went on television and pleaded with my kidnappers to exchange me for him; as far as Allan knows, Bernie's offer was never acknowledged in any way. Now that he was a known target, Bernie's order wanted him to leave Lebanon, but Bernie stayed on seeking audiences with Shiite clerics who he hoped were either connected to the hostage takers or could apply moral pressure to them. Everyone thought he was taking enormous risks; the American ambassador in Beirut stated publicly that Bernie ought to leave the country. In late March, Bernie's superior ordered him back to the States, and he obeyed. I'm relieved to know he's safe.

A few days after my kidnapping, a group named Call of Islam claimed responsibility by sending a photo of me to the Associated Press office in Beirut. (No news outlet published the photo, but Allan's seen a copy. I ask if I looked scared. More just stunned, Allan says.) Allan informs me that my kidnapping was one in a series, beginning in January, claimed by new groups no one had heard of before. Actually, in my case, the name Call of Islam was known, but it's the name of a group that had been operating in Iraq and Kuwait, not in Lebanon. What do they want for me? I ask. They didn't say, Allan replies—which bewilders me though he finds it unsurprising. In some cases, he explains, months have gone by before a group acknowledged it was holding a particular hostage and issued a demand. Allan assumes no one has claimed responsibility for his kidnapping yet, because no one has ever come to photograph him.

Even though Call of Islam didn't lay down conditions for my release by the time Allan was kidnapped, he says it's easy to guess what they want: the release of fourteen members of Call of Islam, some of whom are Lebanese Shiites, who are in prison in Kuwait for plotting a massive bombing there. That same demand has already been made for several other Americans held hostage in Lebanon by another group, the Organization for Jihad. In fact, Allan says, it's possible that I was also kidnapped by the Organization for Jihad; they may have just used a different organization's name when claiming me, to give the impression that militant groups are proliferating. It's widely believed that most of the Western hostages in Lebanon are actually being held by a Shiite militia called the Partisans of God. Under this theory, the names of the various hostage-claiming groups—Call of Islam, Organization for Jihad, People's Tribunal for Revolutionary Justice, Defenders of the Downtrodden of the Earth—are merely a smokescreen so that the Partisans of God can deny any involvement. Other people believe that there really are different hostage-taking groups, operating separately with different agendas, though they may have some kind of contact with the Partisans of God.

Allan thinks his situation is different from mine, or at least was initially. He thinks he was kidnapped by freelancers, professional criminals motivated by profit, not politics. He thinks this because in his first prison, all of the men in the cells around his were Lebanese, they spoke Arabic. Westerners are hardly the only people being kidnapped in Lebanon. Over the course of a decade of civil war between Christians and Muslims, thousands of men and teenaged boys on both sides have been abducted. Originally, the abductions were reprisals; increasingly, they're for ransom.

Allan suspects that his original kidnappers sold him to our current captors. Within a week of his kidnapping, Allan was visited in his cell by a fluent English speaker who briefly interrogated him to confirm his identity: his name, his nationality, his job; what contacts he had, as a journalist, in the Lebanese government or foreign governments; was he a spy (not a very clever question, that, Allan remarks). Allan theorizes that this man was from the politically motivated group who bought him. I wonder if it was the same English speaker who interrogated me. When I tell Allan that my interrogator sounded young, Allan says it might have been the same man then, especially since we now see that we're being held by the same people.

I ask: If I'm being held, along with other Americans, in exchange for the release of Shiite prisoners in Kuwait—what's happening on that front? Allan thinks before he speaks, I can tell he's preparing to soften the blow. He explains that the Organization for Jihad has been demanding the Kuwait prisoners' release for a couple of years now. They've kept taking more hostages because the Kuwaiti government keeps refusing to give in, and the hostage takers are hoping to pressure the U.S. government to pressure the Kuwaiti government. Of course, the U.S. government also keeps insisting it won't negotiate with terrorists. I feel sick. However, Allan continues—here's his optimistic spin on the situation—the Organization for Jihad did release one of their American hostages last fall. It's not entirely clear why, but the point is: hostages can go free even if their captors' demands haven't been met.

Allan is convinced, and I'm eager to be convinced, that I'm going to be released very soon. My kidnapping, he tells me, was big news. I received more media attention than any other Westerner kidnapped in Lebanon. This has a lot to do with my being so young: at age thirty, Allan would be one of the youngest Western hostages, who tend to be middle-aged, but I'm seven years more his junior. Also, I have what Allan, in his professional opinion, pronounces "a fantastic narrative." A student, an idealist, come to Beirut to spend his spring break volunteering in a Muslim school, kidnapped after a single day. There's been some tendency among the public to blame hostages for their plight because they continued to work in Lebanon despite the danger; but in my case, criticism along that line has fallen not on me but on Bernie for allowing me to come. Because Bernie was the presumed intended target, the American media have dubbed me an "accidental hostage."

As such, I've been the focus of widespread public outcry and shows of sympathy: prayer services across the States, especially in Catholic churches; pressure on the U.S. government to act despite its no-negotiations policy; pleas for my humanitarian release from religious leaders in different parts of the world, including Muslim clerics. An envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been meeting with the Organization for Jihad to negotiate the release of their American hostages, flew back to Beirut after my kidnapping, hoping to make contact with my captors. That particular effort didn't go very well, Allan concedes. The Organization for Jihad insisted they knew nothing about who was holding me, and they threatened to kill the envoy if he didn't leave Lebanon in 24 hours or if he returned before making progress toward getting the Kuwait prisoners released. But Allan's upbeat conclusion is that this incident shows people in high places are working to get me home.

It's bizarre to hear Allan talk about this. I certainly don't feel like the focus of international attention. For the past three months, what I've felt is utterly isolated.

My kidnapping has put my captors in a bind, Allan tells me. He becomes animated as he lays out his newsman's analysis of the situation. This is his joy, it lifts his spirits, he loves having somebody else to explain things to... On the one hand, he argues, my celebrity makes me highly valuable as a hostage. I'm getting lots of attention, which means my captors can get lots of attention for their cause. There's a strong political will to get me home, which raises the likelihood that my captors will get things they want.

On the other hand, my kidnapping risks alienating my captors from potential supporters in the Muslim world who would otherwise endorse my captors' aims and would even apologize, as a rule, for their methods. In the past, hostage takers have justified the kidnappings by claiming that they've "apprehended" the hostages on charges of espionage. That claim would not be remotely credible in my case: I'm so young, I had barely arrived in Lebanon, and anyway I'm not the person they meant to apprehend. Sure enough, Allan says, the communiqué that Call of Islam released to the media to claim my kidnapping said nothing about Western spies. Instead it was a speech about the thousands upon thousands of innocent victims of Western and Zionist aggression. Allan reads this as my captors' defensive reaction to media characterizations of me as an innocent bystander: Yeah, well, maybe he's innocent, but what about our innocents?

The bottom line, in Allan's view, is that my captors have to know I'm as much a liability to them as an asset. The most strategic thing they can do is release me on humanitarian grounds, then publicly pat themselves all over the back for it. They may delay a little to save face, or to see if they can gain some concession for my release. But they can't keep me much longer.

The more Allan talks about this, the more convinced he becomes that our captors purchased him precisely to be my replacement. It's clever of them: they burnish their public image a little by letting me go, but they're left with the same number of bargaining chips in hand. Doubtless they would have preferred to replace me with another American, but a Brit was on the market, so he'll do. That explains why they've put us in the same cell. When I go, Allan will literally stay behind in my place.

Caught up in the excitement of Allan's theory-spinning, I snatch for another piece of evidence to add to the case. The fact that we were kidnapped exactly one month apart: March 11, April 11, that could further show that our kidnappings are connected. Allan hesitates. Perhaps, he responds politely, but it seems more probable to him that the dates are just a coincidence. Instantly I realize he's right. What was I thinking? Allan must be concluding I'm a moron—or a lunatic. "You're right," I hurry to say. "That was stupid. I didn't think that through."

Our belief in Allan's theory inspires us to deliver noble speeches to one another, the memory of which will later make me writhe. I insist to Allan that I don't want to be free at the price of his captivity. He urges me not to feel guilty. His captivity is more bearable to him, it has a greater sense of purpose, knowing that he is being held for the sake of my freedom, not just the freedom of some terrorists in Kuwait. If I feel that I owe him something, then I should do something especially meaningful with my life—like the mission work I've expressed interest in. At Allan's request, I memorize his parents' phone number, together with messages to convey to his family when I'm free.

Eventually, the accumulated weight of passing days presses down on our belief in my imminent release, renders it flimsy. We start paying greater attention to facts that make Allan's theory less compelling. Allan discloses to me that there were other Britons kidnapped before him, including two who disappeared just a couple of weeks after I did; so there are possible motives for Allan's kidnapping that are more pedestrian, and therefore more likely, than an imagined desire by our captors to replace me. Even if they meant Allan as my replacement, they wouldn't need to put us in the same cell, so our being paired up doesn't really serve as evidence. Most damningly, if I'm about to be released, why would our captors move me out of Beirut? If anything, the move to a less obvious hiding place in the Shouf would indicate a desire to hold on to me. My celebrity may count more for them than the liabilities after all.

Allan finally concedes defeat: this business of him being my replacement was a strange idea. He apologizes profusely. He remains convinced that I will go home "sooner than later," but probably not as soon as he had been imagining. He doesn't offer to define "sooner" in numerical terms, and I don't ask him to. I know now from Allan that there are Western hostages who were kidnapped one or two years ago and who, as of Allan's last knowledge in April, are still being held. One or two years. And still counting. Jesus... It is a horrifying reality to face, a black pit in which I have to learn to live.

There are two things that keep me from curling up in a ball and going back to spending my days sleeping. One: Allan won't allow me to curl up in a ball and spend my days sleeping. Two: I know that Allan has even fewer scraps of reasons for hope than I do, so my guilt won't allow my self-pity to balloon unrestrained. I'm not that self-absorbed. And I'm able to feel a small measure of pride in that fact, which in turn affords a thin cushion to my plunging morale. I'm deeply, deeply demoralized. But thanks to Allan, I'm not demolished.

I'm not angry at Allan, I don't blame him for having led me to believe his "replacement" theory. Instead I feel stupid because I didn't see sooner what was wrong with the theory. Allan feels terrible for raising false hopes in me, but he doesn't feel stupid about it, the way I do. Because we're isolated from other people, he explains, we're naturally susceptible to being seized by strange ideas, because there's no one else around to signal to us that they find the idea strange. This happened to him when he was kept in solitary confinement in his last prison. He would entertain fantastic escape plans or harbor paranoid fears that seemed perfectly reasonable to him until he could recover some distance and recognize how implausible they really were. I am reminded of my fantasy, in my last prison, about Makmoud helping me escape—or more recently, my harebrained notion that it isn't just coincidental that Allan and I were kidnapped exactly one month apart.

Allan begins to talk about Strange Ideas as a proper noun, as a threat requiring our vigilance. Now that we're together, we have the advantage of being able to provide a check and balance for one another. If one of us thinks the other is having a Strange Idea, we need to speak up, say so, talk about it, take a close look together. It's one of the ways we can support each other. It will be one of our rules for survival.

To accompany his rule about challenging each other on Strange Ideas, Allan formulates a maxim: Don't lose hope, but don't get carried away by it. As the student of literature, I refine that to: Don't lose hope, but don't lose yourself in hope. Actually, Allan's version is probably better, it's clearer, but he always quotes mine.

* * *

Allan likes to draw up rules, routines. The faith I reflexively place in God, he places in structure. Structure, he maintains, is the key to surviving our time as hostages with our sanity intact.

The daily schedule in our new prison is identical to my old prison (but not, I will learn, to Allan's). Cheese sandwich and tea in the morning, followed by a toilet run. Rice and vegetables at night. Unlike in my last prison, here our food is never seasoned, but on the other hand it appears to be more recently prepared. If we get fruit—oranges or bananas—it will be during the first couple of days of what we come to realize is the guards' weekly shift, when they have first arrived from Beirut.

The bathroom is located here in the basement, across from the stairs. It's a cell, identical to ours, converted into a bathroom, which makes it twice as wide as the bathroom in my last prison. Like our cell, this bathroom appears new: when we first arrive, it's spotless, although it progressively declines into filth. A squat toilet again, the Lebanese norm, with a hose beside it for flushing and douching, but there's a separate pipe for us to stand under when we're allowed to shower, which by Allan's count is exactly every seven days. The most welcome improvement over my last bathroom is that here we're provided with soap! Also, this bathroom has a light bulb. We still have cold water only, though, and no towels. Near the bathroom door is an oversized sink, which I'm guessing is meant to launder clothes in, though it's never actually used for that purpose to my knowledge.

I ask Allan, embarrassed, if he can show me the proper stance for the squat toilet. He admits he's never been sure about that himself: he's been spoiled, both his apartment and office had Western sit-down toilets. We model for each other the stances we've been using, experiment with different ones, and end up laughing together. It's the first time I've laughed since before my kidnapping; once I've started, it takes me a while to stop. I lie on my mattress with my hands over my mouth, restraining myself from anything more than breathy laughter, so the guards upstairs won't hear. It's stress release—physically, it feels a lot like crying, but of course emotionally it feels much better. When I'm finally worn out, Allan says, soberly, "We need to try to do that more often."

Allan adds new rules and routines to our day. When the guards come to feed us, we have to be sitting up on our mattresses, waiting. At the evening feeding, the guards will find our bowls sitting just inside the door, waiting to be filled. When they come to take us for the toilet run, we'll be waiting on our feet, bottles in hand. I used to observe that last rule, in my first prison, in the hope of keeping the guards happy. Allan's rationale is different. These rules are for our own good: they prevent us from lying around despondent, and they assert our human dignity. We are showing the guards that they owe us food and toilet runs, we have a right, we are waiting for them to deliver.

Allan prescribes two daily exercise periods. He develops a routine for us that includes stretches, sit-ups, push-ups, jumping jacks (the ceiling of this basement is a few inches higher than in my last cell), and jogging in place. The first time Allan tips his mattress up against the wall so he can jog on the bare floor, I am astounded. He has performed a magic trick. It has never occurred to me that I could move my mattress at will. Allan has taken possession of our cell, he has imposed his will on it in place of the guards'.

I realize now, belatedly, that in my last cell I could have turned my mattress diagonally in order to stretch out more comfortably, without feeling crammed between the walls. Or I could have run the mattress across the back of the cell instead of down its side, for variety. I imagine the momentary confusion of the guards opening my cell and seeing the new arrangement, and the image gives me another laughing spell. Allan asks me what's funny; I explain. The thought doesn't tickle him the way it did me, he doesn't laugh. But he says, "Yes, I imagine they would have found that a little disorienting. Give them a taste of it, for a change."

I despise working out. I associate it with gym class and jocks, which I despise for other reasons, plus I have no endurance for physical discomfort. Also, exercising in our cell means being sweaty afterward—and rank, which I find humiliating—without being able to shower. Nevertheless, I follow Allan's exercise routine because I know it's good for me. I need to safeguard my physical and mental health. I enjoy the opportunity our exercise periods afford for a little physical contact: holding Allan's feet as he does his sit-ups, he holding mine. He pushes me to do more than I want to, which makes me hate him in the moment, in the midst of the strain. But I'm grateful to him for coaching me, looking out for me.

At the beginning of my time in solitary confinement, I had exhausted myself trying to fill each day with mental activity. Allan takes a different approach: he requires only that we alternate activity and inactivity. One of Allan's precepts is that getting "low" (his term, which I adopt, too) is a perfectly natural, sane response to our circumstances. Because it's natural, we shouldn't get down on ourselves for it. We shouldn't feel low about feeling low. It's impossible for us to be optimistic all the time, or energetic, to always act as if everything's fine, as if we're living a normal life—the only way we could do that would be to become disconnected from reality, which would be insanity. Getting low is like letting ourselves rest, emotionally, from the hard work of confronting life in captivity. But because it's rest, we always have to get back up again.