An Evil Cradling

  It was necessary to write very small and on thin paper. Too much bulk would be discovered and hard to transport. The tissues we intended writing on were too soft. They either tore, or the tiny script became illegible as the pen imprinted onto it. We discovered a method of hardening the paper, thus allowing us to write as small as we wished. We separated the double layers of tissue into a thin single sheet. This sheet we soaked with water and held in front of the fan until it dried. It was now hard and resistant to tearing. We penned voluminous notes about world events, and the continuing campaign in America for the hostages. I was able to tell Tom Sutherland about his wife, as I had worked with her at the University. John and Terry, both journalists, had lots in common. The finished letter was then rolled around the pen and tied tightly with a thread pulled from our bedcover.

  We each took turns delivering and collecting the correspondence.

  With our first message we instructed the Americans to let us know the following morning that they had successfully collected the letter.

  Confirmation would be conveyed by rattling something against the spinning blades of the door fan. Every morning we sat waiting for that noise.

  Our anxiety about this exchange of letters soon made us change the hiding place. The wash hand basin rested on two hollow steel pipes. Into this we inserted the pen with its message tied around it. A short length of thread was left hanging out of the pipe so that the pen could be drawn out. For over a week the pen passed secretly across the prison. We devoured each letter as it arrived, but there was a limit to the amount of new information we had to exchange. Even the attempt to play chess by post soon petered out. Each letter ended with the words ‘Coppula earn, se non posit acceptera jocularum.’

  As the week progressed the letters were becoming more dangerous.

  Sooner or later someone would be caught. Then one morning John returned to the cell with a letter. There were only a few words on it.

  The pen had dried up, and it was impossible to replace. I felt empty and angry. Our game had come to an end. The little piece of victory that each letter represented was taken from us. For hours I sat with the pen trying to make it work. It was hopeless. We began again spelling out conversations.

  Terry Anderson came to the rescue. He had devised his own version of the deaf and dumb alphabet. He taught it to John and John passed it on to me. It was like learning to read and write again. For hours John and I would sit silent in the cell practising this strange hand-language.

  So intense was our concentration that frequently as we spoke we would automatically signal words. Our hands had become our mouths. They danced in the air, telling silent stories and jokes.

  But our written communication had not ended with the pen. We had continued to save the silver paper from the packet of cigarettes we were given every three days. The foil from the cheese we also squirrelled away. I would store anything and everything. ‘This place is like a rubbish tip,‘John would complain. ‘What are we going to do with all that silver paper? You’ve already made three chess sets and all those other daft games that only a daft Irishman could think of.’ ‘Well I might make some Christmas decorations. But I am seriously thinking of opening a shop!’

  Amongst the ‘pruck’ as I called it was a cigarette box and matchboxes, cotton buds for my ears, dead matches, stubs of candles and candle wax. One day I took some of the silver cigarette paper and a match. I was just about to begin imprinting some crude design on the foil when it struck me. ‘I’ve got it John-boy, I’ve got it. Fuck the bastards, we’ve beaten them again’ I burst out excitedly. John looked at me. He was used to what he called my ‘homebred Irish insanity’.

  ‘What are you raving about now? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear. You are more crazy than these halfwits who have locked us up. I am going to sue you for mental torment when I get out of here. Now what is it?’ John was fascinated. ‘Simply a piece of exquisite Irish genius,’ I said, mocking his accent. I handed over the cigarette foil with the words ‘Brits out’ scrawled on it. ‘Look, with this match, or anything pointed, you can write.’ I reached over and flicked my fingers against the fan. Tom Sutherland stood up across the passageway.

  I signalled the words ‘Tomorrow a letter.’ His puzzled expression made me laugh. Again I signalled him to watch. I held up the cigarette paper and the match. He could not see the match. ‘Wait,’ I signalled again. ‘John, quick, give me a cotton bud.’ He handed it to me and I held it up for the Americans to see. Terry Anderson was now also looking across at me beside Tom. I held up the silver paper again.

  They nodded. Then with my other hand I held up the cotton bud; again they nodded. I tore the cotton end off and pretended to write on the foil. Anderson instantly understood. His eyes blazed, he raised his two fists above his head, puncturing the air. His delight was rapturous and infectious. The postal service was re-established with tubes of silver cigarette paper being delivered to and collected from our hiding place under the sink.

  Our days of finger talk and the ‘hammam’ mail service slowly petered out. Again we had exhausted the news we could meaningfully share. Days went by when we did not bother communicating across the ‘Great Divide’ between ourselves and the Americans. John and I once more retreated into our endless games of dominoes. Long intense discussions on English and Irish politics were always given some light relief by our ‘telephone conversations’: John and I, sitting in separate corners of the cell with our hands on our ears holding imaginary telephones, as Margaret Thatcher and Charlie Haughey engaged in long exchanges.

  Charlie: Hello, hello, oh hello, Margaret. , . What’s that, Margaret, you wanted to speak to me about something important. You mean you’re thinking of … No, no of course you’re not thinking of resigning. I know, I know, Margaret, you don’t believe in that word. Yes I remember what you said about the divine right of Prime Ministers …

  Thatcher: Charlie, you do remember Boadicea?

  Charlie: Of course, Margaret… But she was a Celt and overcame the alien invaders. She was …

  Thatcher: An inspiration, Charles. But history has been rewritten since the British Empire. I am the new warrior queen and I will…

  Charlie: Yes, yes of course you will, your holiness … Now what exactly was it you wanted … at 4 o’clock in the morning …

  Yes, yes I know time stands still when the Queen is on her throne. But we lesser mortals need our sleep … There is a difficult situation in the Middle East, of course, Margaret. It’s been there since the British Empire. How can the Irish help you, Margaret?

  Margaret: There’s an Irishman who’s an Englishman who’s been kidnapped.

  Charlie: A what, Margaret? An Irish-Englishman, kidnapped …

  What’s that you say Margaret? The British Government’s going to take care of everything? Margaret do you think you should have a wee think about this first? The British Government’s been looking after Irish problems for a long time and there seem to be more of them than when you originally started out. Maybe a little bit of Irish charm might sort it out.

  Margaret: No! No! No! I will not tolerate …

  Charlie: Now, now, Margaret, don’t be getting yourself all worked up. Think of your poor husband. He’s too old for this. Do you think, maybe if we gave them a couple of hundred tons of Kerrygold … ;

  Margaret: No talks, no deals, no compromise, no surrender.

  Charlie: Easy now, Margaret, easy, easy. What about a few hundred cases of Irish whiskey or a few thousand gallons of Guinness? Do you think that might do the trick? And Margaret while we are at it, you know the new house you are building? How about if we sent over a few labourers to lay the drive, build a few walls and a few observation posts? Sure it would be a grand place. And haven’t the Irish been building English castles for centuries …

  And so we continued, crazily demolishing the hours. Occasionally we might pick up some snippets of news from the guards’ radio. This was eagerly transferred across the ‘Great Divide’ to our companions. On o
ne such occasion we heard that the British representative at the United Nations had put forward a proposal that the Israeli Army should withdraw from the occupied area of Lebanon. The resolution was passed unanimously. Our hopes soared. We were convinced that this was directly related to our imprisonment. What more could these men hope to obtain from our respective governments? But we knew nothing would happen immediately. It would be weeks before any release could be effected. We were prepared to wait without expectation, allowing hope to carry us through. But another event was to quell this new hopeful approach. They spoke softly in English to someone. A deeper, more mature voice answered ‘I’m okay.’ The newcomer was locked into the cell next to ours. The prison was filling up, not emptying. The latest arrival made our numbers eight, of whom we could communicate with only three. That evening as the guards slept, our neighbour began knocking on the wall. We knocked back. It was enough. We knew that in the morning we could establish some communication with him via Tom and Terry. But we were wrong. For days the man in the next cell did not show his face. Fear and confusion, even more than the cell that held him, imprisoned him. We knocked a nightly reassurance to him and he returned it. Each of us in our separate cells tried tapping messages but they were incomprehensible. In the early hours of the third morning after our neighbour’s arrival we heard him call out through the bars above his door. ‘Is there anyone Lebanese here? I am Lebanese. There are thousands of us.’

  The voice in those early hours was eerie, and so was the message it carried. Who could the thousands be? We had seen the pale skin of this man’s feet and legs as we looked through the fan as he passed our door each day. How could he be Lebanese? But more worrying was his attempt to communicate aloud to us. We would all be punished if he was heard. The guards still came to talk with us occasionally. But always we were instructed to speak in whispers. We tried listening when we heard them entering the next cell. We picked up only a few words. But why was this Lebanese man always speaking English with an American accent? We knew from Tom and Terry that David Jacobsen, another American, was in the first cell on our side of the prison. He had been brought with them but after a few days he had been removed to a cell of his own.

  Jacobsen, Anderson and Sutherland had spent a lot of time together since they had first been taken hostage. They had also shared cells with Ben Weir and Lawrence Jenco, two American clerics who they knew had been released. Sutherland and Anderson were sure that Jacobsen’s separation from them had nothing to do with their personal relations.

  Perhaps he was being made ready for release or the group may have wanted him to make a video message. The guards who visited us never mentioned the other prisoners to us. Whatever brief conversation we had was always limited and always terminated with ‘You want anything?’ We had long since learned that no matter what we asked for, we rarely received it. But there was one guard who we often heard in the passageway but who as yet had never come into our cells nor spoken with us. We always knew when he was about. He would parade up and down imitating the sounds of the cartoon character ‘The Road Runner’. ‘Meep, beep, whoosh’ would constantly echo throughout the prison. Other half-learned phrases from cartoon characters were added to his repertoire. The guard was called Said, as we were later to learn. He was the authority in the prison, a lower lieutenant in his group and extremist in his religious beliefs. He had a curious psychology. He told us some months later that he made these noises because he knew that in our condition we would find them frightening. It was strange reasoning, and as we were later to learn Said was a strange and frightening man.

  Occasionally our complaints about the food worked, and sometimes we regretted our requests. Fresh fruit when we were given it still delighted us with its colour and texture more than its flavour. Most times, though, the fruit was ripe rather than fresh. The ripeness was a condition that made the fruit unsaleable. Passion fruit I came to hate with a passion. It was given to us often with the usual lunch of rice and some vegetable or other. One day I rolled the soft fruit through my hands. It was more interesting to play with than to eat. It had lost its firmness and its sheen. It felt like a lump of rubbery dough. I broke it open to bite into its soft flesh. The skin repelled me. I told myself it had vitamins I needed. The slithery softness of it made me gag. I swallowed it quickly. ‘If these Muslims ate pork they’d probably feed their pigs better than us,’ I gulped, throwing the remains of the fruit into our rubbish bag and wiping my wet stained fingers on my towel.

  ‘There is as much passion in that piece of mush as there is in the dried up dugs of a witch’s ditty.’ I tried to bury my revulsion in language as foul as the fruit I had just eaten. ‘Can you really imagine anything sexual about this?’ I continued, tossing the other passion fruit into the rubbish. ‘Well not with these particular fruit,’ said John, holding his broken fruit before my face. ‘They’re full of maggots, look! And you just ate one of them.’ He was already roaring with laughter before he had finished his sentence. I began to burst into vituperative abuse but the infection of John’s laughter swept it from me. I joined him and laughed until it hurt.

  Our laughter soon degenerated into a childish malice. ‘Go ahead Brian, give the Americans a call and ask them if they enjoyed the fruit,’

  John suggested, his eyes laughing more than his face. I grinned in return. ‘You filthy malicious bastard, you ask them. I wouldn’t be able to keep my face straight,’ I admitted, collapsing into laughter at the thought of what the Americans might reply. We were filled with comic impersonations of the Americans. That night we planned the next day’s entertainment.

  The following afternoon, as John signalled the question ‘Did you enjoy lunch? How was the passion fruit?’ I sat in the corner choking with laughter as John stood straining and giggling surreptitiously while translating the answer signalled back to him. ‘Yes they enjoyed them. A little on the ripe side and a bit messy to eat, but a welcome change.’ John could hardly hold himself upright. I was already prostrate on my mattress in torments of laughter.

  This was only the first occasion that the Americans’ misfortune caused us to collapse in laughter. Our silent conversations with Tom and Terry had told us that their cell was extremely damp. They had spent several mornings mopping up the pools of rainwater that seeped in. After several days of continual rain the Americans demanded to be moved to another cell. We watched through the fan as they were led to another room carrying their mattresses, bed covers and piss bottles.

  Dressed only in shorts they stumbled out in their blindfolds, tripping on their dragging blankets. It was a pathetic sight. For some reason the children’s song Three Blind Mice came into my head. I hummed it as I watched the macabre procession. But my tune changed within the next half hour as I watched this same procession returning to the cell they had just vacated. This time I hummed The Grand Old Duke of York. We laughed cruelly at the senseless comedy that was being played out before us. We learned later just how black this comedy was.

  Signalling to us, Terry Anderson explained that they had been taken to a small room. After the guards left them and they lifted their blindfolds to see where they were, they were shocked at what confronted them. The cell was filthy and alive with cockroaches. ; Terry Anderson lost control. He banged and banged on the door until the guards returned. With his nerves frayed and anger choking him he ( told them he was not an animal and would not live in such filth. ‘Go ahead, why don’t you shoot me. You enjoy killing Christians. Your religion permits you to kill. Go ahead, shoot me. I am just an animal to you people.’ Such was the force of his despair that he challenged them and was fearless of the consequences.

  I watched his face as he silently signalled to us an account of this confrontation. In that silent exchange I felt guilty at my mocking abuse of his misfortune. I also felt his despair in myself. It was true: we were treated like animals. But self-pity is a measure of defeat. One has to overcome it with humour or with anger. It had long been apparent that the men who kept us feared both: they were con
fused by our laughter, and our anger about our conditions made them guilty. The worst of them, unable to bear such guilt, turned aggressive. We were prisoners, therefore we were evil, and if they felt guilty about what they were doing they displaced it into anger. Soon their anger was to work itself out in violence.

  Our silent hand signals across the prison passageway had become fewer as the weeks passed. There were weeks when nothing happened.

  We had nothing to talk about. Occasionally we would pass on odd snatches of news we had picked up on the radio. On other occasions we spoke of the guards, sharing our separate impressions of them.

  Tom Sutherland had a particularly stressful time. They frequently accused him of being an agent of the cia. Their hatred of this organization was intense and Tom took the brunt of it. Tom was a man who had spent all of his life in the teaching profession and nothing in his past experience had prepared him in any way to deal with the abuse that was now laid on him. Talking with us one day, signalling in the air, he informed us that the guards had proposed to the Americans that they be given a new cell. Tom was greatly distressed about this for it seemed to imply that they were to be separated into individual cells.

  Being alone is the most difficult situation to deal with as a hostage.

  Tom had not yet been held for any long periods on his own, and in the time he had spent with Terry Anderson he had become reliant on him.

  Both John and I tried to allay Tom’s fears. But we knew that our jailers could do as they wished.

  And then the dreaded day came. We were all unprepared for it. The usual routine of going to the toilet and being brought back changed suddenly. I sat one morning waiting for John to be returned from the daily ablutions. To my surprise the guards came back without him, telling me to come to the toilet. I wondered what had happened. It was normal for John to be taken and returned and then I would go after him. I walked along the passageway into the guards’ room and then up the high step into the shower room and toilet. I searched the toilet for any sign of what might have happened. There was nothing. I thought perhaps they had simply taken John off for questioning. If they wanted to question anyone they normally took them off on their own.