An Evil Cradling

  The man who drove this truck was as mindless as my mind was full of terrifying and incomprehensible things.

  Finally the van stopped. My mind jumped with delight and with relief and it seemed that all those horrors were instantaneously washed away, but another kind of panic set in. I was impatient to be out. I could not bear waiting. My mind lay in smithereens inside my skull. I wanted to breathe again and blow away this creature-thing I had become.

  The doors opened. ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry … you bastards, you pieces of filth … hurry up.’ I snarled to myself’Hurry up, hurry up’ and then like a piece of bread from an oven I was slowly dragged out and carried to the ground. I lay gulping, choking myself with the fresh air. But the tapes about my face still restricted that full sweet inhalation. At last I felt a knife cut the tape that bound my hands and feet and the tapes on my face were ripped off. They bundled me into a corner against the wall and soon John was thrown in a heap beside me.

  I reached out to touch him ‘Are you okay?’ I asked. John’s answer puzzled me. He asked, with his mind half gone, ‘Are they going to shoot us?’ Now I understood that he too had travelled further than this truck had carried us. ‘No, John, they are not going to shoot us,’ I whispered. The guards were sitting around us. They were silent. ‘Do you want anything?’ one of them asked. ‘Water, give me some water,’

  I answered, angry, not caring now that they should know my anger.

  They gave me a bottle of water. I gulped it down, almost choking myself with another huge swallow of water. ‘John,’ I said again, ‘here, drink.’ I handed the bottle to him. One of the guards again asked ‘Do you want anything?’ and I answered with loud sarcasm ‘Yes, I want a swimming pool!’ I wanted to defuse myself in cool, clear, crisp water.

  I wanted to feel my body languidly move through it, to be alone and free in the vast sunlight with cool water caressing my flesh.

  The next few days we were held in the outhouse of a farm in the hills. Said spent all that time with us and revealed more of his paranoia.

  He could not sit with us in silence. He desperately wanted us to talk with him. He was always asking questions, making remarks or simply demanding ‘Talk, talk to me, speak, speak.’ It was then I knew for sure that this man was afraid of himself and of being alone with himself. John, having recuperated quickly from that dreadful journey, seized the opportunity, ‘Said,’ he asked ‘why were we beaten so many times in the prison?’ Said was silent, then answered, brushing the question away from him, ‘This man, he is crazy man.‘John coldly, defiantly answered, ‘Yes, Said, he is very crazy, he is also very evil.’

  Said was silent. Later that day he gave us his own plate of food.

  Never before had he shared a room with us. It was a gesture of appeasement and an acknowledgement of guilt. We devoured the roast chicken, forgetting nothing.

  After two days we were moved a short distance, again in the boot of a car, to a new hiding place. We found ourselves in a very large space, more like a barn than a room. We were placed in the corner, mattresses were brought for us and we were told to sleep. To our surprise the guards slept with us, only a few feet from us. We were warned not to look at them as they slept, but we had no desire to. More and more now we sought to live our lives exclusively to ourselves and as far as possible dismiss the existence of these men and create our own separate meaning.

  The next day, sitting, leaning against the wall whispering to one another as the guards watched television or listened to the radio, we realized it would be impossible to sit for twenty-four hours a day blindfolded with the guards beside us. It is difficult to live in a world when you can see no-one in it. Conversation dries up when you cannot see the response or the eyes of your listener. We decided to ask the guards to put a screen around us so that we could exercise and lift the blindfolds in order to eat. If they refused, we could refuse to eat, for we would not be animalized any more. We would eat as human beings and look at what we ate.

  Mahmoud, the gentle giant, as we came to regard him, hung bed sheets around us creating a barrier between themselves and us. We were in our own world again. Foolishly at night the guards would sit in the full glare of the TV and the light burning brightly in their half of this barnlike accommodation. We sat in our darkness, but we peered through the coarse weave of the fabric, watching our captors as they sat and stared at the television.

  From now until our release, for over three years, we were to be held with chains on our ankles and wrists. They came and drilled the wall, fixing steel bolts into it, to which they attached the chains by padlocks and then put the chains on us. The shock of being treated like this made us furious. We insisted bitterly that we were not animals. But our complaints fell on deaf ears. ‘It is our work,’ one guard would say, half apologetic, and another simply said viciously ‘It is not your business.’ These chains made it difficult to sleep and practically impossible to exercise. They were totally unnecessary. We could not escape and even had we done so we didn’t know where we were, nor how to return to Beirut.

  The proximity of the guards, with only a coarse cotton sheet separating us, was more and more disconcerting. We had to talk in whispers. We had to restrict our conversations for there were many things which we would not want them to overhear; things that we held precious to ourselves.

  We were aware that other prisoners were near us in other rooms, but, could not see them, only hear them move to the toilet in the mornings. We were sure that the French were amongst the other captives. The days were crushingly long though we had some relief in listening to the television through the curtain.

  We now received our first in-depth interrogation. We were given no warning. On one of those long boring days, the guards came and unchained my feet, and took me out from behind the sheet. They led If Illlll me across the room where two roughly made long wooden stools had been placed at right angles, and I was put behind them and rechained to a radiator. The man who came to speak with me was polite and well-spoken: his English was almost that of an academic. His accent suggested that he might not be Lebanese. He asked me how I had come to Lebanon, who had interviewed me for my position in the University, what courses I taught. I insisted on asking him why I had been taken and what value was an Irishman to the cause of Islam or the freedom of the Arab peoples. My interrogator was nonplussed by my interrogation of him. He sat silent, fumbling out his answers. In the end I sensed a genuine sympathy and confusion.

  ‘I do not know why you are here,’ he said. ‘It is not my decision, I promise you I will speak with my chief of your case,’ he concluded.

  ‘Do you want anything?’ Those words, so often repeated, had become intensely annoying. Knowing I had his sympathy, and that he could not answer my questions, I told him calmly, emphasizing every word, ‘Yes, I want something, I want my freedom, I want to live like a man, I am not an animal.’ His hand reached out and took mine, he held it for a moment much as a young lover would, then squeezed it firmly in a strong handshake. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked. I knew that to protest any more would gain me nothing. ‘I want books, many books.’ He asked, surprised, ‘You have not been given books?’ He wanted to know what books I would like. I could not think of titles and I did not expect that a specific request would bring me what I wanted. ‘Anything, bring me anything.’ He tapped my shoulder again. ‘I will return tomorrow.’ Across the room I heard him questioning John. He spent a long time talking, seeking information which John did not have.

  That evening a television was placed in the far corner of the room.

  Sitting in diagonally opposite corners, we could see the screen but not each other. The guards were out of sight in another room. The film was the usual Americans-in-Vietnam story, full of macho posturing and constant slaughter. Something struck me as I watched this. I was appalled at the violence of it and yet the movie was no more violent than anything I had seen previously, perhaps even less so; yet the violence in it burned deep into me and sickened me. I could not watch it, I w
as horrified and ashamed. After it was over I sat thinking why I had found myself so repelled by what I had watched. What had changed in me? Perhaps it was a combination of the futility of the mindless violence in the film and the way these men were entranced by it. But these are the reasons of the mind. Something deeper within me recoiled, aghast and unbelieving at the horror. I could not understand this passionate revulsion in me.

  The next day my interrogator brought me a gift. It was a newly purchased book about the history of Black Americans. I was grateful.

  He apologized for the violence of the previous day’s movie. That evening I was returned and chained up again with John. We spoke of our interrogations. John had been quizzed at length about his work, what he knew about the different paramilitary groups in Lebanon, and who his political advisor was in his news agency. It was obvious they considered John to be some kind of spy. We were all tarred with that brush.

  When this interrogator returned the following day, we complained vehemently about the chains and the many beatings that we had received. He was genuinely surprised. He seemed also to be angry that they had occurred. His simple answer to our anger at the chains was that they were for our security. His calm explanation that God was testing me brought my anger to a boiling point and I turned on him and asked ‘And who is testing you, my friend?’ To make God the justification for the way these all-too-human warriors had treated us was more than I could bear. It seemed the ultimate cowardice.

  Later we were offered the chance to write a letter to our families. We said we would think about this. At first I was not in favour of letters arriving home a year after our disappearance. It would be unbearable for our families. We discussed whether these letters, if we wrote them, would ever be posted, but concluded after a time that it would be better for our families to have some news of us. At least they would know we were alive. When the interrogator returned to collect the letters we asked him what was happening in the negotiations with our government. He answered ‘Nothing, your governments have done nothing for you.’

  We sank back into our separate silences. There was nothing to be said. One year and nothing, and how many more years? So many questions filled our heads. We retreated, almost grateful for our blindfolds, and lay back, drowning in our own thoughts. How long could our families hold out? To what extremes would these men go to achieve their purpose? What were they demanding? And what was in the minds of our respective governments, that they would not negotiate? We tried to console one another and compensate for the futility of those questions. After all, would these men know if there were negotiations? Even our interrogator with the authority he seemed to have might not know if negotiations were progressing secretly at a higher level.

  The immensity of our kidnappers’ conceit was beyond belief. They had murdered, maimed and taken hostage a handful of men, how many exactly we did not know, but we reckoned possibly fifteen.

  With these fifteen men, some like ourselves chained to walls in apartments, in prisons, or in underground cells, they hoped to hold the world to ransom.

  The cotton sheet that separated us from our captors also allowed us a deeper insight into their minds and their behaviour. Every morning before dawn Said would come and sit at the other side of our sheet with a portable cassette player and would play a tape of some holy man chanting and reciting the Suras of the Koran. The tape would be loud and blaring. Said would sit chanting in unison with his mullah and after hours of this he would become delirious. He would begin sobbing, then wailing. This self-induced morbidity seemed interminable.

  At times he would continue in this distraught and mind-jarring state literally for hours, and when he had finished another guard came.

  Said made his men pray, and they, like him, would work themselves up into a grief-stricken hysteria. Having to sit listening to this three times a day, day after day after day, was maddening. It was a kind of psychological torture.

  Both John and I were driven to distraction by this religious frenzy a few feet from us. It was becoming harder and harder to hold ourselves together. In its own way it had much the same impact as the radio tuned to static outside our old prison cell. It seemed these men could thrust themselves into the most pathetically morbid states, effortlessly, like throwing a light switch. They would move from monotonous repetition of the words of the Koran into hysteria, wailing and crying out to Allah. At first we tried to sleep through it, and since this was not possible, to plug our ears with pieces of tissue and tie towels around our heads, clamping our hands over our ears.

  Anything to put a barrier between ourselves and the moronic and If 1 ecstatic chanting. Then just as instantaneously they would finish, get up and walk away, talk and laugh with their friends or watch television. These prayers were not acts of spirit in grateful submission and contemplation of God, but rather of personalities massively unresolved. I now began to understand how it was that these men could effect such mercurial personality changes, one minute being affectionate and pleasant and then suddenly aggressive and violent. I could now understand how they confused need with revulsion, and .’! now much they were afraid of what we were. I understood why it was that they had this unacknowledged dislike, or in some cases loathing m of themselves.

  ™ It was becoming increasingly difficult for us to hold our own minds in balance. On each occasion when these prayers would begin it was as if we were innoculated with their hysteria. As hard as these man prayed I called out to God to shield my own mind from the contamination of this holy insanity. I raged with anger at the pain of m listening for long periods as one man after another displayed his V

  sickness in front of me. It was becoming impossible. Both of us were on the edge of screaming. I would much rather be beaten than be subjected to this more traumatic and emotional disturbance.

  To combat this onslaught we tried talking in low whispers to one another. The mind needed an exchange with another mind to overcome this oppression. As we tried to engage our minds in something that would release us from the grip of madness, we found ourselves bursting into giggling raptures. Each time these prayers started we would be caught up in a whirlwind of giggling. We were unable to speak for laughter, unable even to look at one another. It was our own hysterical defence, beyond our ability to control. We stuffed pieces of blanket into our mouths or bit tightly on the corner of a book trying to silence ourselves. We were not laughing at these men but protecting our own sanity.

  The guards’ ecstatic states were not restricted solely to the ritual prayer times. One evening they sat as usual beyond the curtain. The TV was blaring. They were enthusiastically watching the US serial The A-Team. Said was in his corner reciting the holy scriptures, then, as we had witnessed so many times before, he began chanting and slowly sliding into self-induced rapture. As we listened, it seemed he was in competition with the television. His prayers got faster, more intense, excited, building up, trying to rise above the gunfire and the screaming cars on the TV. Said wanted the attention of his men. He wanted his great but pathetic holiness to be admired. Then, suddenly, in the midst of his religious metamorphosis he suddenly looked towards Mahmoud and barked out at him to turn off the television.

  Mahmoud, calm and unawed by Said, answered something that we could vaguely translate as ‘Pray if you want to pray … God cares nothing about the television.’ Mahmoud returned to his viewing and Said to his prayers, at first feebly, but slowly again building to a crescendo. Beginning with deep sobs, he recited the chants hypnotically and he was again transported. Then just as before, he snapped out of his ecstasy. As if he had awoken from a dream and was still half dreaming, he called out to Mahmoud, his voice slow and distant: ‘What is the gunfire?’ Mahmoud answered uninterestedly ‘A-Team.’ Said insisted on making an impression and said he believed it was the Israelis or the forces of Geagea. He wanted to fight, he declared, he wanted to die for Allah. No-one was impressed. He returned sulkily to his recitation.

  One afternoon when the other guards had left Said alone
with us, John was dozing, tired from the constant early morning prayers which ripped into our sleep. I lay half awake, trying to enjoy what little sunlight filtered through the guards’ side of our room. The sheet that separated us from them was hung just above head height and with the high ceilings of this old Arabic building we could catch some light.

  Said was moving about restlessly. The radio was on; Said always needed noise, he needed to distract his mind, and this was common to many of our captors. He began talking to himself, speaking words in

  English, which he had obviously learned from TV from those violent films. For hours they all watched them in awe-struck wonder. Said spoke: ‘You bastard, I kill you … you bastard I kill you, bastard, bastard, bastard,’ he repeated, trying to imitate the aggressive manner in which he had heard the expression used. Then he was moving about the room again, distracted and restless. As if he was looking for something, anything to occupy him.

  My own mind was equally restless, seeking out something on which to concentrate and evade the crushing boredom of the coming hours. The room was flushed with the morning’s half-light. Birdsong sparked softly outside. Said and I were caught up in our mutual rapture, drifting heedlessly around one another like fish in a tank.

  Suddenly the dreaming silence was shattered. Said was weeping great shuddering sobs. This was a different kind of weeping from the automatic religious melancholia of his prayers. He walked around the room crying, the whole room seemed to fill up with his anguish. I felt, as I never had before, great pity for this man and felt if I could I would reach out and touch him. I knew instinctively some of the pain and loss and longing that he suddenly found himself overwhelmed by.