of ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ quietly to myself. Above us the film roared to its conclusion. The silence from the television room was followed by footsteps descending to our crypt. A key turned in the lock and the guards Ali and Bilal entered. They paused for some moments, then unexpectedly came first to John and myself. Normally the Americans were released first. Ali had been with us for some months and had also been at some of the other jails in which we were held. He was devout, a zealot. I knew he would have been enjoying what he saw on television. I sat waiting as I normally did, my back to the wall, my knees pulled up towards my chest.
Ali leaned over me. Normally he squatted down to unlock the padlock and chain and I waited calmly for the usual routine.
Suddenly he yanked fiercely at the chain, pulling my feet from under me, my head whiplashing back and banging against the wall. I knew instantly what this meant. Ali was drunk with the movie he had just seen. He wanted to replay it here in this place. ‘Don’t do that again,’ I hissed at him. My neck was bulging with anger. The words snarled out of me. Ali hesitated then with double force yanked once more at the chains on my feet. Again my head banged off the wall. Anger suffused me. I jumped to my feet. Not to attack but to make myself ready for what I knew was about to happen.
Ali ran from the room shouting and screaming. He disappeared into the silence upstairs. I knew the camera in the corner would be watching. Slowly I sank back to my squatting position. I felt that as I had not been attacked immediately, Ali would simply bring down a senior officer and I would be questioned. In the silence I felt the expectant fear of my friends. No-one knew what to say and as I said nothing, they sat silent. I heard the footsteps returning. The quiet about me seemed to calm and steel me. Ali ran quickly across the room to where I sat. Without warning, I felt it again, the dull thumping thud of the butt of a Kalashnikov banging into my shoulder, my arms, my chest. The man was kicking me and grinding the gun butt into my thighs. Crashing it against my knees, screaming something in Arabic, no doubt some street abuse. The gun continued to smash down. I had had this before and I could only grunt as each blow landed on me unexpectedly. My mind tight now, not caring. I was bored with it. I only wanted it to be finished and over and the foul presence of this man gone from me.
My friends sat in helpless silence, feeling pain with every blow. My mind reached out to them.
In a fit of beating and kicking, of spitting and screaming, the hysteria washed over Ali. Exhausted, he knelt down beside me, pushing and grinding the gun hard into my face. ‘Tomorrow for you I am returning.’ In the background I heard Bilal’s forced laugh. I was angry with him. I had liked this young man. He used to sit with us mimicking the song of the birds that lived around his farm.
They left and the door locked. Slowly, simultaneously we each pulled the blindfolds to our foreheads. Anderson was the first to speak. ‘Are you okay?’ ‘Yes, I’m a bit shook, but I’m getting awful fucking tired of this.’ ‘What happened?’ Anderson asked. I explained.
Each was silent for a while. Sutherland asked: ‘You know he is coming back again tomorrow?’ ‘Fuck him.’ Anderson walked towards me as far as his chain would allow. Tom Sutherland and John were closer to me and stood beside me examining the bruises. I stared with menacing vengeance towards the camera. Then quickly changed my expression.
I smiled. Not the smile of a valiant hero but someone who was smiling at themselves. Ali’s blows fortified me. Without knowing he had strengthened my resolve.
For the rest of that day, there was much discussion about what we should do. The ultimate sanction was to refuse to eat, but how long would our guards tolerate that without beating us into submission?
Yet there was a need in all of us to do something. To sit quietly and accept this animal humiliation was not worthy of any of us. All of us were aware that we had also to accept that we were powerless and anything that we might do they could do ten times worse.
The day passed into evening. Each of us said what we should do. It was a way of protecting ourselves from our utter hopelessness and futility. Each of us had to believe we could do something.
The next morning we each refused to eat. It was not a group decision, an ordered and collective response, though we had discussed it long into the early hours of the morning. It was only good to take this decision if we had a strategy we could follow through. By the morning this was not resolved, only that none of us could eat. We had to make some kind of gesture.
The guards had anticipated this and were prepared. They left the cell and after about half an hour returned with one of the junior officers.
He went immediately to Terry Anderson. ‘Why don’t you eat?’ he asked. Terry was silent. ‘Why?’ he asked. Terry calmly said ‘I don’t want it.’ It was obvious to our guards that it was more than a matter of not wanting food, and they were becoming angry.
Terry was unlocked and taken hurriedly from the cell. We heard his steps as he went up the stairs and crossed through our guards’ toilet and into their room. We looked at each other in silence. We heard the mumbled voices above us but could not make out what was being said. A long pause, then a gunshot. We smiled at one another. We knew this game. With the gunshot a voice let out a long moan. It’s pathetic, I thought. The guards returned, went to Tom and John and spoke with them. Their intention was obvious, to frighten each of us into submission and into eating. None of us would indulge in this childish game. Fifteen minutes later Terry returned and was locked back into his chains. Terry told us they had simply asked him what had happened and that if we did not eat there would be much trouble for all of us. 1 sat in silence and watched the faces around me and then said ‘Yes, they can make trouble for each of us, so each man decide only for himself, this cannot be a group thing, it puts too much pressure on everyone. Ultimately what you do you do alone because only that way will you be able to go through with what you choose, resting on no-one’s support.’ For the rest of that day we did not eat.
We were each prepared to continue our strike on the following day.
The next day the guard Mahmoud entered our room. He too went straight to Terry. ‘What is your problem?’ he asked. His voice was firm but not unfriendly, and we had come to like this man. He had not been involved in any of the brutality. And we could have a conversation with him, where he would as a kindness venture information he was not permitted by his chiefs to give. Terry’s angry response could not be contained. ‘I don’t have a problem, you have a problem … Look at Brian, ask him what the problem is … We are not animals in here, but you’ve got an animal! Get him out of here and keep him out of here.’ I was surprised at the vehemence of Terry’s words. Mahmoud came immediately over to me. The two days had brought the bruising out on my body. I looked a bit like a dapple cow or a Dalmatian. ‘Who done this?’ he asked. I quietly answered ‘You know.’ There was silence between us. His hands felt over my body, turning me around to look at where the bruises had come up. ‘What happened here?’ he asked. I explained quietly. I knew this man was listening not to my words but to how I was saying them. He was trying to interpret how I was feeling. Mahmoud rose, spoke some words with John and Tom, and they reiterated my story. He came back, and squatting in front of me, said solemnly and aloud for each to hear ‘I will speak with my chief, perhaps this man will be punished.’
That evening we were informed Ali would not be returning. It was enough. There were worthier things to die for.
No-one watched whether I ate or not when lunch arrived. My friends did not want to be voyeurs of my suffering. And I had calmly resolved to myself that to continue to refuse to eat would be an imposition on them. If I continued with this thing, I would be setting precedents that some of them would be obliged to follow, if something similar happened to them. Could I be so self-interested that I didn’t care for them? I had no choice. I lifted the food to my mouth but I could taste nothing.
There were many other incidents in this hole in the ground. But each of them was an affirmation of human
capacity to overcome despair. I could write at length and try to reveal each of those situations, some hilariously funny, some pathetic, others undignifying and ignoble, but that is not my purpose. For each of these incidents revealed what each and all of us are. We are all made of many parts; no man is singular in the way he lives his life. He only lives it fully in relation to others.
The Corn Crake (For John McCarthy)
Somewhere in Fermanagh it still survives
In the gentle grass, the corn crake,
Thrashing through the field as happy as Larry,
Its piteous cry its beautiful song.
One summer we were plagued by a corn crake,
Cracking its lullaby — harsh was the night.
Next door ‘Pat the Twin’ roared in unison,
The whole of Marion Park cursed the bird.
What would I give to hear its song now?
Value what you have, lest it’s lost.
Guardians of the air, birds of the earth,
If there be paradise, they live there.
They have seen the world. This solitary cell. As they fly, in chains, can you hear The corn crake surviving, singing in Fermanagh,
Remember me, remember me, remember me.
Frank McGuinness
.
Conditions in our cellar underneath Baalbek had been much alleviated towards the end of the Iran/Iraq war. In June 1988, the guards brought us the first copies of Time and Newsweek that I had seen since the early weeks of my captivity. We had not seen any newspapers for some three years. Our captors were careful to censor these magazines. Any articles referring to the situation in the Middle East, particularly the war, were torn out. Any articles referring to ourselves or the situation in Lebanon were also censored. But our captors’ strategy was a hopeless one. By simply reading the contents page of one issue and then reading the letters page in the following week’s edition we were reasonably informed about what they had prevented us from reading.
For the four or five weeks in which we received these magazines we devoured and discussed them at great length.
The ending of the first Gulf war and the fact that we were given these magazines assured us that something would happen in the very near future concerning our release. We asked for a radio and much to our surprise we were given a small portable. We listened avidly to the local news and French news from Monte Carlo. Only Frank remained uninterested in this new situation. He rarely listened to the news and never bothered with the magazines. Our conversation about what we read seemed to supply him with as much news as he required.
More importantly for me, these magazines brought more than printed news. They were filled with coloured photographs. It was the first time we had something other than the four bare walls and ourselves to look at. I looked at these magazines and read them with the kind of fascination a child has for his comic book. I still remember a large full-page ad for Singapore Airlines that depicted the faces of three air hostesses. They were extremely beautiful. On many occasions I sat in a stupefied torpor looking at the faces and into the dark oval eyes of these creatures. The holiday ads for the Far East and India transported me. The shapes and styles of the latest motor cars and the new incomprehensible world of computers fascinated and sometimes frightened us.
We read with some anxiety about the Vincennes incident. It was not the fact of the tragedy itself, but rather the genocidal potential of this new military technology that frightened us. We had no fear now for our own lives. The end of the Iran/Iraq war augmented our value at the negotiating table. We were confident that our release could only take a matter of months after the settlement of the conflict. The more relaxed attitude of the guards reinforced this view. For some of us hope of freedom brought its own anxiety. The dread of being so near and being let down again was a terrifying one. Once before, the Americans had been assured of their release. They had been given new clothes and shoes and were about to walk through the door to freedom, but after a few hours, the guards came and removed the clothes and shoes.
Whenever anyone had doubts we would gather around him, cajole and convince him that such doubts were groundless. It was a time when one had to be calm, patient and to believe in something we had neither the courage nor the energy to believe. It was agonizing to be standing at a doorway waiting for it to open telling yourself that it will open and you will walk through. Impatience is the brother to panic.
After some five or six weeks our deliveries of Time and Newsweek suddenly stopped. The radio was taken from us. No explanation was given. We did not press the matter. We had stored enough information to keep our imagination and our critical faculties well-oiled and working. Tom was greatly depressed by the loss of the radio. That contact with the real world was a great boost to him. The last item of news we heard on the radio before it was taken away was that Islamic Jihad had threatened the lives of the American hostages unless some of their demands were met. The following day when the guards came to unchain us, Terry Anderson quipped ‘Those who are about to die salute you.’
Frank Reed was the first to leave. One of the chiefs confirmed that he was going home. They asked Frank his shoe size and measured him for trousers. None of us believed that he would really be set free.
There was something not quite right about the situation. None of us would hint to Frank that these men were lying. Frank made no comment on what he had been told. A few days later he left us.
We were anxious for Frank because of what we had heard on the radio, but we were sure if our kidnappers were intent on carrying out their threat they would have taken more than one American, and they would probably have asked the Americans to make a video broadcast.
We decided to play up our anxiety about Frank with the guards to get back our radio. When we challenged them about the radio and Frank’s safety they became extremely anxious themselves. They were worried that if we believed Frank had been executed we would cause trouble for them. We had little to lose if we were going to be taken one by one and summarily shot. To placate us they returned the radio for a day. We listened to all the news reports, sure in ourselves that Frank had not been released. The news that we heard confirmed our suspicions. In the morning the radio was removed from us.
A few weeks after Frank left, Terry Anderson was taken away. This time there was no warning, and no suggestion that he was being released. No-one came to measure him for clothes or ask his shoe size.
The guards simply came into the room, unlocked him and said ‘Terry come.’ Terry went with them and never returned. Tom, John and I discussed the significance of this but could come to no agreed conclusion.
: Tom talked at length about his time with Terry Anderson. They had been together for many years. Tom had found Terry’s aggressive debating technique exhausting, and felt he could never win an argument. He was aware of his dependence on Terry. Yet a few days after Terry’s departure Tom admitted he felt a kind of relief that Terry had gone. Sometimes when two people spend all of their time in each other’s company, having nothing but themselves and their Own quality of mind or spirit to entertain themselves, they can without perceiving it become exhausting to one another. But, as we explained to Tom, it is a matter of mutual survival. Terry needed to talk and needed someone to listen and Tom needed to hear someone speaking to him. The sharing was reciprocal.
The companionship we had shared in this cellar restored Tom’s confidence. Now when the guards abused him for being cia or called him a spy, Tom simply laughed it off. He would say ‘Yes, I am the big chief cia, all Lebanon, Syria, Israel.’
When a person leaves a room, he becomes the topic of conversation for those remaining. It is a human preoccupation. So it was with us.
These men with whom we had spent so much time and whom we had come to know with such intimacy had left a deep impression on us.
That we talked about them in their absence was a measure of the mark they had left upon us. It was also a way of finding a point of balance in ourselves, understanding ou
r friends correctly, and in so doing assuring ourselves that we were worthwhile and had meaning; that our perception and our understanding had not been twisted out of all recognition. To love someone and know that it is meaningful one must be critical of the object of one’s love. Criticism gives it value. As it increases in value, our own sense of self-worth equally increases.
Terry and Frank, our absent comrades, became the object of humorous derision, admiration, sympathy and sometimes pity. We had known them as part of ourselves. We had identified much in them with our own experience. To be cruelly critical would be like brutalizing ourselves. Inevitably some petty frustrations with our departed companions surfaced, but we were always able to restore a more reasonable and humane perspective. In this situation of absolute denial we needed to feed off one another. It only mattered that we gave as much as we took.
It was a few weeks after Terry Anderson was taken from us that Tom Sutherland’s turn came. Like Anderson’s it was without warning. One day he was with us, the next he was gone. John and I were alone again. We found ourselves discussing the Americans as a group, and their relations with each other as compared with our own.
Our absent friends filled our discussions for many days. We talked a lot about how you would go about making a film of the experience we had undergone.
Our captors came to talk with us more often now. Perhaps with only two of us in the room, they felt safer. We were let off our chains for longer periods. With fewer people to talk to and the room less crowded we returned to our exercising. Knowing that the camera in, the corner was an eye unblinkingly observing us, we would sometimes perform for our audience upstairs. It was a way of ridiculing them and of restoring our own sense of resistance, defiance and strength. John would occasionally stand with his face pressed close to the camera grimacing and making faces. On other occasions he would mimic the departed Americans.