Lebanon Hostage

What you're about to read:

This is a work of historical fiction—recent history—inspired by actual accounts, so it's rather realistic though definitely fictional. The novella is built around themes I find erotic: captivity, sexual tension, male intimacy. However (disclaimer and spoiler), you won't find any full-blown sex here. This is the story of a queerly romantic, lopsidedly erotic, but unconsummated relationship between a gay man and a straight man held together as hostages.

Chapter 4 -- New prisoners, new problems

(July-August 1986)

On the last day of July, according to the calendar in Allan's head, the two of us are transferred one cell over, to the cell next to the bathroom. The move is a short but multistep process. It takes two guards four trips to complete, with repeated unlocking and relocking of cell doors on the way. First, they move Allan. They instruct him to carry his drinking bottle and pee bottle with him, as during a toilet run, which at the outset is what I imagine this must be—an unprecedented extra toilet run. In the next trip, they move his mattress, blanket, and tub. At this point, I plunge into a despairing panic. They're separating us, they're putting us back into solitary confinement! But immediately they return to move my mattress and things, after which they move me.

I am so relieved to be reunited with Allan after our two-minute separation that I throw my arms around him before I have time to censor my impulses. He returns the hug, slapping my back the way straight men feel they need to do. "Happy to see you too, mate. That gave me a bit of a scare," he confesses.

We hear the guards pulling additional mattresses and tubs out of some kind of storage area at the far end of the basement. They drag mattresses into two cells. One is across the way; Allan, peeking through the fan, reports that it's the cell next door to the Handcuffed Hostage. The other cell is in our row, off to our left. Judging from how far away the door sounds, we decide it's the cell at the end of the row, not the cell we were just moved out of.

More hostages will be joining us, it appears. Allan is antsy, eager to steal a look at the future new arrivals. By contrast, I feel queasy. I don't welcome these disruptions to our miniature universe.

The new hostages arrive that night, waking us from sleep. We're expecting two of them, one for each of the newly equipped cells, but the guards make three trips into the basement, opening and closing cell doors three times.

I've begged Allan to spare my nerves by waiting at least one day before trying to see the newcomers' faces, I'm already feeling so stressed by this change as it is. So the morning after the newcomers arrive, Allan counts toilet runs by ear, without peeking through the fan. He counts that, yes, there are three new hostages. It sounds like two are sharing the cell farther down our row.

This discovery leads Allan to reconsider his mental map of our prison. Perhaps the cells on our side of the basement are all intended for double occupancy and are therefore bigger than the cells across the way. If so, then instead of our row containing three cells for hostages, plus the bathroom, as Allan has always believed, it might contain only two cells for hostages. That would mean that the new pair of hostages are in our old cell, right next door to us, not separated from us by our old, now empty, cell, the way we had been thinking.

To test this theory, Allan pleads my permission to tap on the wall dividing our new cell from our old. He needs permission because it's "my" wall, the wall alongside my mattress. I grant it only because I feel guilty about making him wait to peek at the hostages' faces. Allan promises he will tap softly and will desist the moment I tell him I can't endure any more risk-taking. He tries two sets of taps, the first very soft, the second quite a bit louder. The second set panics me—needlessly, I realize later—and I demand that he quit. Because there's no response from the other side of the wall, even to the loud taps, Allan concludes that there probably is an empty cell between us and the new pair after all; the guards moved us to ensure that. He's disappointed.

Over the next couple of days, Allan manages to glimpse the new hostages' faces through the fan during toilet runs. Since all of the newcomers are housed in cells to our left, Allan can do the peeking from his own mattress, not mine. All three men are middle-aged, he reports. He can't be more specific than that, although the one in solitary, next door to the Handcuffed Hostage, is graying. They're already wearing summer uniforms—tank tops and shorts—but they haven't had their hair or beards cut in months. "Veterans," then, not new abductees.

When the guards feel the need to communicate verbally with the new hostages, they give orders in English, so the odds are that the newcomers are American, not French. But, Allan observes, they could also conceivably be British or even some rarer nationality like German. Well, I think sarcastically, that certainly narrows it down. Allan's enthusiasm about the new hostages is wearing on my frazzled nerves. I resent these men for having come here.

The new hostages are taken upstairs for buzzcuts within a day or two of Allan seeing them for the first time. One of the hostages, speaking in an American accent, demands that the guards leave his mustache intact. When the guards can't get the hostage to shush right away, they close the trapdoor, so we're not able to hear what they say after that, just the sound of their angry exchange passing down through the floor.

Astonishingly, the hostage prevails: peeping through the fan later, Allan reports that he still, in fact, sports a thick mustache. Allan gushes about the incident, as if the Mustached Hostage has won a great victory for all of us, hostages versus guards. The Mustached Hostage is one of the pair occupying the cell at the end of our row.

Despite Allan's excitement about the new hostages' arrival, the overall effect of their coming is to make the atmosphere in our prison tenser. The guards become stricter, as if they're feeling more outnumbered and therefore need to beef up security. During toilet runs, they grip our arms more tightly or make a point of reminding us they have a gun by poking us with it. During power outages, the guard on duty in the room at the top of the stairs will still come sit in the cool of the basement, but it's usually only him now. If a second guard comes down, too, the two of them won't do more than chat quietly—no music, no games. I guess they're afraid that if we hear them relaxing, we won't be as intimidated by them as they want us to be.

The guards want us to stay perfectly silent. Allan gets hissed at or smacked constantly now for his routine thank-yous—but he won't back down, especially after having seen the Mustached Hostage stand his ground. Allan's only concession is to deliver his thank-yous in a very low voice, which eventually satisfies most of the guards. Even the Praying Hostage loses his immunity: the guards will rap on his door and

hssst

if he prays loudly enough for them to hear.

As part of the tightened regime, the English student and Makmoud stop talking to us. One morning, when I feel a gentler-than-usual grip on my arm for the toilet run, I ask, "Makmoud?" and he shushes me softly. "Ssh. No talk." I am hurt, both by the reprimand and by the fact that he didn't address me by name.

Another unwelcome change is that the guards reduce yet further the amount of time they're willing to give us in the bathroom. This change has nothing to do with security, it's sheer laziness. The guards now have almost double the number of toilet runs to complete, seven instead of four, but they don't want to dedicate that much more time to the chore.

The guards become more intrusive about monitoring us during the day. Periodically, the guard sitting watch upstairs will come down into the basement and walk slowly up and down the two rows of cells. Allan and I learn to pull down our blindfolds as soon as we hear someone coming downstairs, in case the guard randomly opens our grate cover to check up on us.

With these unpredictable check-ins, we have to go back to always wearing our briefs under our boxers, to keep the guards from berating us for immodesty. For the same reason, Allan starts wearing his tank top more regularly, and I follow suit. Before the new hostages arrived, the guards were in the habit of starting the feedings and toilet runs at the Praying Hostage's cell, right by the stairs, which afforded Allan and me time to "get decent" before they crossed the basement to our cell. Now, however, the guards work around the basement in a circle, starting with Allan and me and ending with the Praying Hostage. Consequently, Allan and I have to already be decent as soon as the guards come down the stairs.

Under the new strictures, I'm afraid to chat. Allan maintains we'll be fine, just like before, as long as we keep our voices down—and, of course, as long as we stop whenever a guard comes into the basement. Allan knows that all these changes have left me stressed. Precisely for that reason, he insists, it's all the more important for us to preserve our established routines and habits as much as possible.

***

Several days after the new hostages have arrived, the house overhead suddenly seems to be full of men; we hear substantially more footsteps than usual through the floor. The novelty alarms me. When the

basement

fills with men, my alarm escalates to terror. The men do not speak, not even to each other, which makes the situation more suspenseful and therefore more nerve-wracking. I hear the trapdoor close as the last man comes down the stairs. The guards never close the trapdoor while they're inside the basement. Oh God, what's going on?

They're doing something with a chain, a long chain, running it from the floor to the ceiling. Allan crouches on all fours on his mattress, trying to see through the fan while maintaining a distance of a few feet to avoid detection. I tug his arm and shake my head, begging silently: Don't risk it. He raises a stern hand in response: Wait, give me a minute.

A cell door on the opposite side of the basement opens. I hear a man—American, but not the Mustached Hostage—say, "Please, what's going on?" Someone

hsssts

at him. A moment later, the volume on the radio climbs even higher than usual. The man shouts to make himself heard over the static. "Abdul? Are you there? Abdul, I told you, I didn't mean anything by it, I had no idea—"

His voice is cut off by the sound of blows, landing so hard that I can hear them despite the radio noise. The hostage cries out. When he speaks again, his voice comes from down at the level of the floor. "Please, it was just a mistake, I told you... Abdul! Oh Lord, oh Lord...

Augh!

" As he cries out again, the chain rattles vigorously.

Allan gets up slowly, silently from his crouch. He stares me hard in the face. Then he pulls his blindfold down over his eyes. I do the same. I am sitting against the back wall of our cell, hugging my knees to my chest, trembling. Allan seats himself gingerly beside me. He's trying not to make the slightest sound, he doesn't want to attract any attention...

They beat the hostage for what feels like a very long time. I don't know what they're hitting him with—fists, or booted feet, or clubs, or the butts of their guns—but I hear the blows falling again and again. The chain rattles with every thud. In the beginning, the man tries not to cry out, but soon he's shouting and screaming nonstop. First he keeps pleading that he didn't do anything; then he's begging them in the name of God to stop; then he's screaming directly to God for help, but God doesn't do anything, anything at all, doesn't even allow the man to go unconscious. I too am praying, in my head, just as compulsively and uselessly as he is, I've been doing it since the beating started: Please, make them stop, make them stop, make them stop...

Finally, they decide they've done enough. The beaten man falls silent; at least, he doesn't make any sound that I can hear over the static. Dear God, have they killed him? More rattling of the chain, they're bringing it down from the ceiling, it tumbles onto the floor. I hear what must be the guards hauling the hostage up from the floor and carrying him back into his cell. They close his door.

I am terrified that they may beat someone else now. At least it won't be Allan or me—will it? We have nothing to do with whatever it is the hostage kept insisting he didn't mean to do... Allan has to stop with his goddamn thank-yous, though, there's no question of that, we see now what these men are capable of. Jesus God, don't let them hurt us...

No one else is slated to be beaten, the guards are done. Half a dozen men or more file up the wooden stairs, out of the basement. As they go, someone lowers the volume on the radio back to its usual level. They leave the trapdoor open. Overhead, heavy footsteps pass into the front portion of the house. I feel only slightly safer.

I lift my blindfold, look at Allan; he looks at me. His expression is shaken but mostly grim. I need comfort, I am desperate for him to touch me, any gesture, however casual. But he doesn't make a move, and I can't ask for it.

One of the new arrivals paired up at the end of our row is trying to get the beaten hostage's attention by tapping on the inside of their cell door. "Robert!" one of them says, loudly enough for his voice to carry over the static. "Robert, talk to us!" I'm pretty sure it's the Mustached Hostage.

I clench my fists and whisper, "Shut up shut up shut up shut up!" Allan, crouched beside our fan, waves me silent with a frown: he's trying to listen.

The Mustached Hostage calls out to the Beaten Hostage again, even louder. "Robert! Say something!"

Overhead, we hear footsteps running toward the trapdoor. Two guards, at least, thunder down the stairs. They freeze at the bottom, straining to hear what we all are doing, just as we are all frozen straining to hear what they are doing. Suddenly, I hear a guard yank open the grate cover of the Praying Hostage's cell, across from us. The guard must have caught the hostage with his blindfold up, because he screams, "No look! No look!" Allan and I rush to pull our blindfolds down before a guard can cross over to our cell to do the same.

"It was me!" the Mustached Hostage shouts to the guards. "I want to know how bad you hurt my friend."

The guards open the Mustached Hostage's cell and start raining blows on one or both of the men inside. We hear loud grunts and an occasional yelp but no screams.

Mercifully, this beating is short. When it stops, the Mustached Hostage speaks again, in a determined voice. "How badly hurt is my friend? Does he need a doctor?"

More blows and grunts. The hostages' cell door slams shut. A second later, their grate cover is flung open, as if the guards want to catch them in the act of lifting their blindfolds. Silence: they must have passed the blindfold test.

A guard growls, "You talk, you die. American shit fuck." The grate cover drops, the guards stomp back up the stairs.

The Mustached Hostage doesn't call out to the Beaten Hostage again.

When the guards reappear for the evening feeding, I sit as far away from the door as I can while they scoop our dinner into our waiting bowls. The additional men who came for the beating seem to have left, so presumably we're back to being with the usual guards. Makmoud is on shift this week; he might be at our door right now, either doing the scooping or standing watch behind the scooper. But I no longer feel safe even with Makmoud. Did he participate in the beating? Did he watch? Did he remain on guard upstairs? Two of those possibilities might—

might

—be more forgivable than the other. In any case, though, Makmoud is complicit. He has left me a savage reminder of whose side he is on.

That night, I can't sleep. I lie in the fetal position, shaking. Allan tells me to stop, to lie down flat, on my back, instead. He does the same. His hand is mere inches away from mine. I want so badly to reach out and hold it. Underneath my fear, I'm becoming angry that I can't get the physical comfort I need.

During the toilet run the next morning, the guards help the Beaten Hostage make his painful way to the bathroom. They proceed slowly, but he keeps begging them to go even slower. At one point, he says in a feeble voice, "I think I have a hairline fracture on my leg." Whether out of pity or to spare themselves inconvenience, the guards transfer the Praying Hostage to what was the Beaten Hostage's cell so that the Beaten Hostage can have the cell next to the stairs, immediately across from the bathroom.

Based on the name that the Mustached Hostage called out, Allan is persuaded that the Beaten Hostage is Robert Berg, a hospital administrator who was kidnapped in May 1985, very shortly after Allan started working in Beirut. Allan theorizes about the identity of the Mustached Hostage and his cellmate. Berg's kidnapping was claimed by the Organization for Jihad, so it would stand to reason that the other two hostages are also Americans held by that group, especially since we can see that the three of them know each other. In that case, there are three options for who the other two hostages might be: Paul Watts, an AP reporter. McFarrell, a professor at the American university, Allan doesn't remember his first name. And then there's a priest, whose name Allan is completely blanking on, something Italian. The Mustached Hostage's gutsiness would be in character for Watts, based on stories Allan has heard about him from other journalists.

Incidentally, Allan points out, the fact that I'm being held with hostages claimed by the Organization for Jihad, when my kidnapping was claimed by Call of Islam, lends support to the theory that the different hostage-taking groups are really the same, or at least work in close collaboration. Clearly, the Organization for Jihad lied to Edward Adams, the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy, when they told him they didn't know anything about who's holding me. If Allan is right about the new hostages' identities, then they're being held for the release of the Kuwait prisoners, the same thing that's probably being demanded for me.

In fact—Allan's excitement swells—since only three of the Organization for Jihad's remaining American hostages are here, not all four, maybe they've released another one...

At any other time, I would be sucked into his excitement at that prospect. But not now. All I can think is how reprehensibly cerebral Allan's theorizing is. How can he sit there analyzing all this? It doesn't fucking matter, I tell him, what these men's names are, or who is or is not holding them, or whether there's three or four of them and what else that might or might not mean. We heard a man get brutally beaten a few feet away from us—he's over in his cell suffering as we speak, he could be

dying

for all we know—and Allan wants to play goddamn guessing games?

Allan tells me, in a tightly wound up voice, to stop brooding over the beating. It won't do me or anyone any good. Think about something else.

He tries to draw me into a distraction, but I refuse to go along. I am not going to spin theories with him. I am not going to chat with him or tell him a story. I am not going to exercise. I'm not going to do any fucking thing that might get the guards' attention. We have been playing with fire all this time—doesn't Allan see that? I shouldn't even be whispering to him right now.

Allan tries to be soothing, but he himself is tense, so his voice comes across as hard: It's understandable that I'm afraid. It's natural. But I have to control the fear, I can't let it control me. We have to keep going, we have to maintain structure, we have to keep following our rules for survival, more now than ever.