John and I sat amazed. It seemed he was determined to make life extremely difficult for himself. What, we wondered, could have prompted him to commit such a serious breach of their rules?
For this desperate gesture Frank underwent another round of beating from Said.
Perhaps because of these breaches of security involving Frank or perhaps because Said simply enjoyed his new-found occupation of beating and tormenting, he became a more frequent visitor to our cell.
On occasion he would stay in the prison overnight, his cartoon noises always betraying his presence. He would often indulge in conversation about Islam, and took great pleasure in describing the punishments to which criminals were subjected. The cutting off of heads.
The cutting offof hands for thieves. Boastfully he told us how in Iran, thieves would have only their fingers cut off because they needed their hands for praying. This was much superior to the punishment that was meted out in Saudi Arabia, where the whole hand was removed.
Said loved talking of these bloody rituals; he thought they frightened us. Often when he visited the other cells, we would strain against the door, our heads close to the fan to try and pick up some of the conversation. We knew that Said had met the Americans when they had first been taken, and that he would occasionally give them news about their situation.
We were now convinced that the fate of the Americans and our own were tied together. I remember saying to John that he would go home when the Americans’ problem was resolved. Margaret Thatcher’s ideas about dealing with terrorism were quite redundant. In any case her own engagement with the Reagan regime was so close that she or the British government would do nothing for the British hostages that might reflect badly on the American government.
We listened to Tom Sutherland complaining that he needed another bottle in which to urinate. He had a bladder or a kidney problem and spent hours in pain, trying to hold back the need to urinate until the guards came in the morning. Said listened but did nothing. ‘You must train yourself to toilet,’ he said.
It was during one of these visits with the Americans that we heard Said read a newspaper report of the visit to Beirut by Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy. This visit was to be the last that he would make and it would assure the release of the hostages. Said seemed quite excited as he relayed this news. We were convinced that Said believed that something was about to happen. We were not sure of the significance of this for ourselves, but as the news was also given to Terry Anderson we became more convinced that something was being set up for the Americans. Conversations with Tom and Terry Anderson told us that they had been measured for clothes and shoe sizes.
One night as we settled down, we heard many guards arriving.
They entered the American cells and left clothes and shoes for them.
The day had finally arrived for them. We all believed it. Terry was in the next cell, and he knocked furiously and for a long time on the wall.
It wasn’t a message. It was just sheer joy, exuberance that the moment had finally come. With the same kind of rapture we knocked back to confirm that we understood, and to express our own joy that the Americans at last would be getting out of this place. We felt no pity or concern for ourselves. To know that someone, anyone was going home was a kind of release for all of us. Our trio of friends had been held longer than us and had been through some traumatic experiences.
Some twenty minutes after the clothes had been delivered the guards again came in. Doors were banging all around the prison. And then the Americans were gone.
The prison seemed so empty. It even felt colder than before. Only the Korean remained. He never looked out of his cell and we had no communication with him. John and I were alone again. We spoke often about the emptiness of the prison and wondered how the Americans would be dealing with life outside. We convinced ourselves that it would only be a short time before we joined them. The lights went out early and we were left with our stubs of candles and our homemade ‘lamps’. These candles reinforced our loneliness.
Our thoughts turned more and more to the Korean now. He sat silent and alone, and often refused the appalling food. Few of the guards even spoke to him.
The removal of the Americans and the reduction in the hours of light prolonged the days. The light we provided for ourselves from the handmade candles did not diminish the long drag of each day. But the news about Terry Waite and our belief that the Americans had gone home was enough to push back the depression that was always hidden in those long hours of darkness. We spoke often of going home and the things we might now do in our lives. We wondered how much had changed, and what had happened to our friends and our families.
Surfacing periodically was that fear that members of our immediate family might have passed away; we knew it would take a long time for us to deal with that.
John spoke frequently of his mother and her illness. Sometimes we were convinced that our parents had died and we had to convince Jfl ourselves that such thoughts were irrational. But then both John and I were shown a video of his mother making an appeal to our captors. He was heartened by this and we talked about her appearance. He felt she looked a little older than he could remember, but otherwise she seemed to speak with the calm confidence that he had always remembered. I called her ‘The Dowager Duchess’. ‘Listen, John, how ‘ could your mother be dead, after all the Dowager Duchess has become a bloody TV personality and probably a movie star. In fact I’m quite’ convinced she is paying Islamic Jihad to keep you here, so that she can go prancing in front of the TV cameras.’ John would smile.
Cautiously, but with passion, we questioned each other about how our captivity had changed us. We both felt that our personalities had not changed, but the things we desired, and the dreams we wanted to pursue were very different from those we had known as free men.
These existential conversations went on long into the night. We were forced to whisper, more softly and lower than we had been used to.
with the power turned off and no fan turning and buzzing in the door, the slightest noise could be heard. We talked particularly of how long would it take for Waite to achieve his purpose. Nothing could happen quickly in these circumstances.
Suddenly, in the silent darkness we heard one of the guards cry out and jump up shouting, almost ranting. The barred gate was opened and Said came running furiously down the passage, opening the cell doors. What was happening?. We both knew that this man Said was extremely paranoid and neurotic, and that he frequently underwent mercurial personality changes. This outburst boded no good. We sat in our separate corners, waiting. In the darkness John whispered to me ‘Jesus Christ, I’m shaking like hell and I can’t stop.’ I answered ‘Don’t worry, the feeling is mutual.’ We both sat there shivering, trying to control this seizure of fear. I remembered on many occasions when I had scolded my dog how it would lie shaking and trembling uncontrollably and here I was trembling like an animal. Reason could not calm me. My mind seemed tranquil but no matter how I tried, or what thoughts I tried to force to mind, I could not overcome this trembling in my limbs. I tried to kick my legs and move my arms, pumping some sort of life through them in the hope that they would stay still, but I could not control them.
Then the door-bolt slid back and Said burst in. He stood beside John and said nothing. His silent anger filled the room. Often the guards would come in and stand, saying nothing, and look at us for long periods as if we were alien creatures. It was so dehumanizing to be studied like that. You sat in the silence, knowing their eyes were poring over every inch of you and you wondered what was in their minds, what thoughts passed through their heads as they gazed at you in your naked helplessness. Said lowered the tone of his voice, trying to disguise it. He said something to the guards who were with him.
They went away and in a few moments returned. Silence again. And then I heard it.
Said began beating John about the body as he lay on his mattress. The butt of his Kalashnikov thumped into him again
and again. John was silent. Said never spoke. He was panting like an exhausted runner. With the acceleration of his heavy breathing the blows became faster and harder, raining down on my companion. My trembling was now gone, my mind was fixed on something else. I could do nothing. To stand up or to protest would only drive this man into a fever that would make the blows more painful and prolonged. I sat listening and screamed silently in the darkness at this monster who thought we were parcels of rancid meat to be kicked and beaten. Then the blows stopped.
I knew that it was now my turn. In a way I was grateful for what was about to happen, for to be on the receiving end of this brutality seemed to me less painful than to sit in that darkness and listen to it happening to another man who had become so much a part of myself.
Said quietly walked the few paces over to where I sat. Again I felt that searing tension flash through me, waiting for the blows to come, not seeing them or where they would land. I hissed quietly to myself’Get it over,’ echoing the words I had heard Frank cry out days before. Said began by taking deep breaths, deeper and deeper, faster and faster he breathed in and out. He was working himself up. I sat and listened to him exciting himself into violence. Down it came, hard, on my shoulders, driving into my chest. Then along my thighs, banging against my knees, Said’s excited breathing becoming louder. Every part of my body was being insulted. I could feel the heat of this man beside me. I could smell the perfume that he always wore, mixed with his sweat. This man was the violent lover and his abuse of my body a kind of rape. I felt the closeness of him and knew that he was sexually excited by what he was doing. The blows rained down and I felt only anger; to be raped by a man so filled with fear revolted me. A man fascinated by violence and obsessed with sex. In that moment I hated him, I did not fear him. I made no noise as each blow landed and was driven into me. My resistance was a joyful thing. Said became more passionate, more vicious, always seeking out the tender parts and banging the butt of his rifle onto my flesh. He worked himself into exhaustion and finally, as a last humiliation, he pressed the butt of the gun tight onto my neck, pushing down hard till I felt the air being choked out of me. How long would he keep this up, and how long before I would burst out screaming for air? But it was his final insult.
The butt was lifted, and he stood exhausted and panting above me.
The smell of him, his sweet sickly perfume, the sweat, the garlic from his panting breath repelled me. The room was pungent with his violent aroma. I wanted him to leave, not because I was afraid of him, but because this man had violated me with a rifle butt and I wanted every trace of him and the air in which he stood sucked out of that cell.
His presence was being pushed down my throat and I could not abide it. The anger in me became a volcano in my chest and if I trembled now, I trembled with a subdued fury. It was an elemental anger and had nothing to do with who or what I was or that personality I had insisted on maintaining for myself. This was a rage that was greater than me. How long could I contain myself ? The blows and the bruises
and the kicks hurt me but I felt no pain, just this cold anger. And as I r felt it gather up its force in me and move towards the moment when it would explode, Said was gone.
The banging door confirmed it. But cautious that he might be standing there, I waited. I sniffed the air like an animal. His smell i lingered but it was less strong. He had gone. I slowly lifted up my 1: blindfold and looked at John, he looked at me. We could not see much .U in the darkness. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said and winked. For a few moments we were shocked and too frightened to speak.
Then slowly crawling through the darkness towards one another, we felt each other’s arms and faces. ‘Are you sore?’ ‘Not really.’ ‘No, I’m not either but I expect we’ll feel it in the morning.’ Our voices were now very, very low. We could hardly hear each other speaking. We whispered soft words of comfort and reassurance to each other.‘The man’s a fucking head banger! He is a wank-stain, an empty piece of ‘exhausted flesh.’
We both lay back in the dark to calm ourselves and flush out the arrogance of his violence. I thought, as the anger began to ebb back in great torrents, how I would take great pleasure in castrating that man and quietly standing over him as I watched him and made him eat himself. I spat out my anger in silent and foul abuse. This man had ceased to have any element of humanity. I could not consider him human. Twice now he had beaten me and sought to humiliate me and I wondered how many more times before I could contain myself no longer and try to wreak havoc on him. I remembered as I lay there how he had often quoted a phrase from the Koran, one that is copied I from the Christian Bible. ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’
As my anger diminished I felt a new and tremendous kind of f strength flooding me. The more I was beaten the stronger I seemed to become. It was not strength of arm, nor of body but a huge determination never to give in to these men, never to show fear, never to cower in front of them. To take what violence they meted out to me and stand and resist and not allow myself to be humiliated. In that resistance I would humiliate them. There was a part of me they could f never bind nor abuse nor take from me. There was a sense of self greater than me alone, which came and filled me in the darkest hours.
Because of it, their violence energized me and I felt nothing. As these thoughts somehow refreshed me, I whispered through the darkness to my invisible companion ‘John, don’t let this thing get you down, it doesn’t mean anything.’ A moment’s silence followed, then John replied ‘I got fed up with him beating and bruising me and I just thought to myself over and over again “That’s enough, away over and do that bastard of an Irishman in the corner.” ‘ We both laughed. The moment of violence was meaningless. It passed from us as our compassionate humour came flowing back.
In the morning before entering the shower the guards checked over our bodies, noting the bruise marks on arms, chest, legs and hips, even on our ankles and shin bones and our feet. They said nothing, only whispered to one another as they pointed to each blackening bruise.
The hot shower was a luxury, but not against the pain, as I stood in it, I remembered my thoughts of the night before: the stench and reek of Said, his perfume, his garlic breath panting over me, the wetness of his body, the whole sexually charged aura of him that seemed to lay layers of filth upon me. As I stood in that shower, languishing in the steam, I washed him away. I washed myself clean of his brutality and of his putrid sickness.
That day John and I spent joking and abusing one another. It was like a gentle lotion to our bruises. Our laughter rubbed against the ache in our limbs. ‘I’ve got more bruises than you anyway,’ John would say; and I would answer ‘That’s because your fucking white lily-livered-shilling-taking flesh marks more easy than us pureblooded Irish!’ ‘What blood? … You Irish don’t have any, you’ve just got pig shit and cow dung in your veins!’
Some time later we heard Said walking in the corridor, making his cartoon noises again. He passed our cell, his hands reached in over the grille and he pulled his face up to look in at us. We would not look back at him. He had become nothing. ‘Look at me,’ he said, ‘Look at me.’
We did not look. ‘Look at me,’ he said, ‘Look at me,’ and his voice was pleading. Said wanted us to recognize him, to acknowledge him. Did he want us to forgive him? But we would not look at him. His pleas fell on our deaf ears. ‘Look,’ he continued, ‘Is OK … no problems, no problems.’ He was pleading again, John glanced up at him for a second and turned his face back to me. I sat with my back to him, I would not turn, I would not look. He was not there. He was invisible to me and was nothing. He fell down from the door and walked away, whistling softly. ‘He’s got blue eyes,‘John said. ‘He looks older than his voice suggests.’ ‘Yes, a real centrefold that one,’ I retorted. We returned again to our dominoes.
That evening I told John of the dream that I had had when I was first kidnapped and held alone. I dreamed that I had been in a cafe
somewhere an
d that a friend had come to sit and chat with me. We talked of times we had enjoyed together. I listened but as I looked into his blue eyes I knew that this friend had come to kill me. His eyes told a story that made his words lies. He noticed the intensity of my watching, and knowing that in his blue eyes I had read the truth, said to me ‘You know! … Don’t you?’ and I said ‘Yes, I know.’ There was silence as we looked at one another. I was submerged in the blueness and softness of his eyes. Suddenly I saw something in the eyes and heard the bang of his gun as he shot me, then he wasn’t there. I was free of him and of his deceit and of his awful betrayal. I felt no pain or fear. If this was a nightmare it held no horror for me. It was so clear and I remembered it after all those months. John sat silently and listened. ‘You don’t want to read too much into these things, Brian.’ ‘I know,’ I said slowly, ‘I don’t, it’s just a dream I had.’
We saw little more of Said in the days that followed. Whether or not he was frightened of us and knew our anger, he was most certainly aware of our changed attitude towards him. Perhaps he was embarrassed. His violence had been without purpose or meaning. His absence was a relief for us. Had he come to talk or even to attempt to [ play games with us, the atmosphere in the cell would have told him how much we loathed him. We believed with Said gone that we would be left alone to eke out those long periods of darkness as best we might. We had become accustomed to the darkness. We had our candles and our games and above all we had each other, more defiant and stronger than before.
In those long dark hours we taught each other songs that we half remembered. We made up new lines for them. ‘The Boxer’ by Simon and Garfunkel became a favourite. We added many additional verses to the original song, extending the story and often drawing on our experience of imprisonment. Our feelings were transformed into verse and harmony, recreating what we believed was a better and certainly a much, much longer version of the original song. In this way we were articulating indirectly to one another some of the intensity and intimacy of our experience. It was a way of speaking confessionally to one another about our deepest emotional responses to what had happened over the past months. But this time of mutual reassurance, of shared imagination which was as comforting as it was stimulating, was to be short-lived.