On other days I was emptied of that contemplative understanding, but the theatre of the unconscious played on. Once I dreamed I saw a crowd of people, all gaily dressed. Some laughing, some dancing, all animated and engaged with one another. They moved across the surface of the palm of a huge hand. They seemed unmindful and uncaring of the direction in which they were walking. In their ignorance they toppled from the huge fingertips. I was there among them, moving slowly. Why could they not see? Why were they oblivious to where they were going? I looked up to my right and saw a prone figure reaching out its hand. It gestured to me to take hold.
Slowly I moved towards it. I paused and tried to understand why everyone was unaware. I was drawn to them out of pity and concern and because I was unsure of this shadowy figure wanting to take hold of me and pull me up. In the end I had to go. Their oblivion was more helpless than the unknown hand that wanted to grasp me.
I experienced many moments like this which I have not recorded for to record them all is beyond me now. It would be difficult to build a coherent framework for them that would reveal something of what lay behind them.
For example, I tried to find sleep one afternoon, or the comfort of a daydream. But it would not come. I felt something building up inside me. What it was I could not understand, nor from where it came. With it I felt myself passing through every excruciating moment of birth.
An anguished passage along a dark tunnel, and I was moving through it. Towards what end I couldn’t tell. I was a creature without voice. In my half-consciousness I heard myself say ‘Oh no not again, please no more.’ But it was a journey that must be completed. I did not choose it. But I had to travel until it was done. I lay there wide-eyed, waiting for this thing to be over. But as it passed and I felt myself calm down and consciousness come back, I saw vaguely in my mind a newborn child. A voice inside my head spoke gently. ‘This is how it is. It is over and I give it to you.’ I thought of the lines scratched above my head from poems by W. B. Yeats: ‘Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. … A terrible beauty is born.’
Many days were filled with such experiences. Their assault upon me was less as my fascination with them grew. With that growth I gave myself to them. These moments now seemed pregnant with hopes of overcoming, welling up from the infinitesimal and drawing me back from the threshold of despair. I was living. Life was demanded from me. On fishing boats there is a device called a fail-safe fixed on the anchor chain. In storms or in strange seas, when the anchor is let down to measure the fathoms, and it seems the anchor will not find a bedding place and the ship is beyond hope, the anchor chain locks at its ‘Bitter End’. But it is not the end. It is simply a point of measure. It assures the crew that there is more. The bitter end is never the end. It is both warning and reassurance, from which we forge new hope and new determination.
Another day began, with the banging slam of the prison door and the voices of the guards. But this day was not to be like the others.
Something in the atmosphere outside my prison door told me that this was different. The prison doors below me clanged open. I could hear pairs of feet moving swiftly past my cell, one, two, three. More guards than usual and everything was rushed. I rose to prepare myself for that walk to the toilet. When my own prison door swung open I couldn’t reach the towel in time to cover my face. The guard looked at me and I at him. He seemed embarrassed by my nakedness and closed the door to allow me to dress. When the door was quickly opened again, the man I had christened The Grim Reaper told me ‘Today you go.’ The sudden shock of it made it meaningless. I was dazed and couldn’t comprehend what he meant or where I might be going to.
Two guards came in and a towel was tied around my eyes. I was walked out of the cell desperately clutching my old battered briefcase.
In it the diary I had kept with such fear and trepidation, and those poems of silent witness which meant so much to me. It seemed so
important to hold onto those remnants of my days in that deep and very small place.
I was walked carefully up those stairs I had descended many months before. Up three nights, carefully, holding the rough wall to steady myself and then at the top the sound of many voices. There was a brightness penetrating through the folds of my towel. I was sat upon a chair and told to wait. I could hear one or two men behind me so I asked them for a cigarette, desperately trying to crush out any anguished expectation, extinguish any thoughts of home or family.
Holding back the will to believe that this was the day of liberation.
Such thoughts I had already repressed in myself, allowing myself only to concentrate on getting through the day. There was too much pain in reflecting on people that I cared for.
A cigarette was given me and foolishly a cigarette lighter was flicked in front of my blinded eyes. I smiled, saying ‘I can’t see. The guard’s lighter was brought close to the cigarette and my hand placed upon his. Somehow I managed to light the cigarette. After a few puffs I asked in my incompetent French what day it was. I was told it was Wednesday. I asked the date. Either they could not understand or they did not know. The Muslim calendar is very different from our own. In any case I was not told. A hand gently patted my shoulder and I thought am I really going? Is it really over?
Two men came, lifted me from the chair, walked me out and helped me into some kind of van. The noise of the engine later told me it was a Volkswagen. I sat down along one side of the van. I sensed as I clambered in that other people were there, other prisoners. They were too silent to be guards. I squatted for some minutes, while doors banged. The guards made ready to drive us off. Waiting there, waiting to go to where I didn’t know, I felt a hand touch my foot. This was not the hand of a guard. Some other prisoner had reached out and touched my foot. I took some reassurance from it and I am sure that the man who touched me was reassuring himself. I fumblingly put my hand upon his and patted it gently. It was a strange first human touch conveying such warmth and companionship in such desperate circumstances. I remember it still, that first mutual reaching out of concern.
The van drove off, its old engine roaring, the smell of petrol fumes mingling with the smell of sheep. Our first journey had begun, the first of what were to be many journeys. The man beside me sat still and unmoved. But there was panic in him. His fast and heavy J
breathing told me how fearful, how nervous and how uncontrolled he was. I sensed a contained trembling in him. We drove for some twenty minutes, the loud noise of the streets piercing through the steel of the van. In the silence I absorbed everything, half-dazed, confused, half hopeful and desperately shoving back that hope. There seemed to be four of us in the van. We drove on, away from the noise. Beirut seemed to be petering out. I had no idea where we were going. We seemed to be somewhere on the outskirts but not yet outside the town. With much tossing and turning the battered roads of Beirut’s southern suburbs bruised us and we held our silence.
Finally the van came to a stop. The engine switched off. There were few street noises in the distance and the four of us waited in perfect silence. Only the panicked breathing of the man next to me filled the emptiness of the van. We waited for what seemed like an hour and a half in cramped silence, and as we waited the panic and the fear and the trembling of my neighbour seemed to grow. It disturbed and irritated the guards so much that they beat him about the head. His muffled cries suggested that he was a much older man than me. As the blows landed they made him cry out more in fear than pain. I recognized that tone from one of the prisoners who had been walked past my door and had attempted to speak Arabic with the guards. Certainly he was a Westerner and not an Arab, as I suspected that so many of the other prisoners in that dungeon had been. Several times this man trembling on the edge of hysteria was beaten as we sat there in that hot van. The idiocy, I thought to myself, of beating this old man who is so filled with fear he can not control even his breathing. The rest of us sat mute, cringing to ourselves as we felt the blows that only he received.
The street noises
receded and the heat of the van seemed to have lessened. It must have been early evening, with the streets becoming deserted. It was time to move us indoors. Out of sight again. The heat baking the van like an oven and our four cramped figures sweating, uneasy, apprehensive, waiting: what was about to happen? The quiet in the streets seemed to intensify the tense silence inside the van. Only the continual nervous breathing of the old man beside me seemed to disturb it. Then suddenly the noise of excited voices outside. The door was swiftly slid back and the voices dwindled to a whisper, still hurried, still excited. There were some orders being given and the first man was taken out. Some minutes later the second was removed. So many things were now happening. That build-up of expectation mingling with our apprehension and then the third man was taken and
I was left waiting, wondering who these men were, and where they were going. I felt an overwhelming desire to be with them, to go wherever they had gone. Perhaps it was that touch of a hand upon my foot, perhaps it was suddenly feeling people near me who were sharing my own anguish and apprehension; that community of suffering which brings men together even without knowing one another. This sudden isolation was unbearable after that simple communication, the touch of a hand upon my foot and my hand upon that hand. Two hands lifted, and pulled me out of the van and walked me quickly along a rubble-strewn pathway where I tripped and stumbled in my blindfold, a hand on each arm holding me and hurrying me.
I entered a building. I could feel the coldness of the walls. That sudden feeling of compression again. There was less light filtering through the folds of my blindfold. I felt no dread. Suddenly the two hands let go of my arms. One man now behind me, shoving me violently. It was the first real aggression. I was being run into darkness. I tried to lean back and resist so that I could feel my footsteps. He hissed something in Arabic and pushed me harder, until I felt myself being flung across a room, falling against something that later turned out to be a small camp bed. I began to slowly lift myself. I had long promised myself not to lie down in front of these men, and where possible always to stand. I became confident that nothing serious was imminent and I stood cautiously.
Two men were in the room, talking slowly and quietly. I stood still looking into the nothingness of my blindfold and again waiting for something. One of them came to me, said something aggressively into my ear and pushed me back into a sitting position on the bed.
There was silence. And I waited again, wondering. Then another voice spoke in my ear. Jerking the blindfold, saying something I did not understand, and then the door closed. This time a wooden door, not the clang of a prison cell door.
I sat still, then I stood up again, feeling along the edges of the bed to confirm what it was. I stood in silence trying to listen. Was there another person in the room? It was a habit with the guards to stand in silence behind you and wait until you tried to remove your blindfold, which would give them justification for beating or abuse. I stood desperately straining to hear if there was anyone else there. How long I stood I can’t remember. Then telling myself that they had left, I slowly raised my hand to my face and very slowly, very cautiously
lifted the end of the blindfold from my eye while lifting my head so that I could look from under it without removing it. Nothing happened, no-one struck me and as I peered out from beneath the blindfold I could see two feet. Raising my head slowly, I followed the line of the feet along the legs. Whoever was in this room with me was sitting on the floor. It could not possibly be a guard. They would not sit while I was standing. Fascinated, my eye followed along the bodyline. My head tilting ever so slowly backwards to allow myself to see more of this person. A smart blazer filled my gaze and as my eye travelled upwards I saw a man sitting on the floor doing exactly what I was doing. Slowly lifting the corner of his blindfold, taking in every inch of me as I stood looking down at him. Our eyes met from under the blindfolds, looking intensely at one another.
The confirmation that we were both prisoners was a relief to each of us. Both blindfolds were swiftly removed and for a split second we just gazed at one another. Who could this other person be? My companion sitting on the floor and staring up at me suddenly broke the silence and in most eloquent English he said ‘Fuck me, it’s Ben Gunn.’ My mind raced, Ben Gunn, who is Ben Gunn? I didn’t know anyone called Ben Gunn. I began to turn over all the names that I had known in Lebanon. Members of staff at the University, friends I had met, wondering: ‘Who does he think I am?’ He got up from the floor, walked towards me, shook my hand and said ‘Hello, my name is John McCarthy, I am a journalist… You must be Brian Keenan.’ It could almost have been that famous greeting of Dr Livingstone. I sat back on the bed. John stood looking around the room and then said ‘I came here to make a film about you. It was the worst mistake I ever made in my life.’ And I sat thinking desperately what film? What is this man talking about? John eagerly took in the room, walking around it.
Reaching into his smart blazer, he took out a packet of Marlboro and lit his last cigarette, saying calmly ‘Do you smoke?’ to which I said ‘Yes,’ and thus we shared that one cigarette, a sharing that was to be repeated for many years to come.
John quickly filled me in about his work with World Wide Television News, how he had come to Beirut for a month and had just completed a news feature on my own kidnapping a few days before he himself, on his way to the airport, was taken by the men who now held us both. I was fascinated by this. My first concern was that whatever news had been reported by him or by anyone else should have established that I was Irish. I questioned him about this. He
assured me that it was known I was Irish. John himself had interviewed a senior Irish embassy official I had known during my short teaching spell at the University. I drew great relief from this. We spoke quickly now, asking questions and exchanging information. I told John I had heard his arrival and had tried to contact him after some weeks by shouting through the bars of the grille in my cell door. He had not heard me, but he told me he heard me speak to the guards as he was being taken to the toilet. He said ‘I was greatly relieved to know there was somebody else in the place who spoke English.’
Perhaps the suppressed joy of being able to speak to someone, to have a meaningful conversation, perhaps also the fact that the room was quite large and we could walk about in it, made us both very relaxed. The conversation was one that I could imagine having with a friend whom I had not seen for a long time. I asked ‘Who is Ben Gunn anyway?‘John looked at me puzzled. ‘Ben Gunn, you know, Treasure Island,’ and I tried to remember the book, wondering what this man was talking about. John reminded me of the shipwrecked sailor who had lived on the island for so long and had grown a huge beard with hair hanging in unkempt folds and drapes about his shoulders. I remembered the character, but couldn’t think what Ben Gunn had to do with me. John said ‘Have you seen yourself?’ He came over and ruffled my hair and very heavy thick beard. I suddenly realized, as I had when I saw myself in the spoon, that I had not shaved nor combed my hair nor had access to scissors for some three months. I could see the association with the marooned and half-crazy sailor. And I began to laugh at the idea. Stevenson’s book was one of the many I had reshaped, but this character had not entered into my rewriting of the story. I had forgotten him completely. And here I was, Ben Gunn, the forgotten man.
In comparison, John looked very chic, very well groomed. Taking up the joke I told him ‘Well, poor Ben Gunn’s got the bed this time, I don’t know what you’re going to do.’ The size and the airiness of the room seemed to liberate our conversation. We talked without any meaningful reference to our situation and the danger of it. Then slowly we began to talk about the journey. We both agreed that there were two other prisoners in the van besides ourselves. John confirmed he was the person who had touched my foot and that he had also tried to touch the person beside him. But whoever that person was, he did not respond as I had done.
I remember in those first exchanges how calm we were with one
another.
Perhaps the presence of an absolute stranger, but one who listened and understood what I said was comforting in a very real and physical way. My whole body seemed relaxed, and the anxiety and tension melted away quickly and painlessly. I was reassured by this stranger whom I had instantly befriended and who had returned my friendship so warmly. We spoke about the conditions that we had experienced in our separate cells. The terror seemed, as we talked about it, to become less extreme. Much of that first conversation was disconnected. Perhaps coming together and talking in the way that we did, our minds had not yet structured themselves around this new experience. It was like little children swapping comics or playing excited make-believe games.
Our conversation was disturbed when we heard footsteps approaching and the key turning in the door lock. Calmly we pulled the blindfolds down from our foreheads. We waited in silence feeling our mood of relaxation quickly diminish. Two men entered, and stood in silence for a few minutes looking at us. They threw something on the floor and left. A key turning once more in the lock was somehow a signal of safety. We pushed the blindfolds up again and looked at what had been thrown into the room. It was a mattress.