Captivity (35 page)

He looks at us, his face shining. “I think it was God, saying, ‘I am here.’ I don’t know how long it went on, but I’ve been meditating on those words ever since. I’ve never felt more at peace.”

There is a long, glowing silence. I look over at Tom. He’s serene, alert to everything, almost buoyant. I smile, then bow my head. I think I hear it too, the same voice resounding in my own heart.
I am here, I am here
.

The captors come with news. Medicine Man is on his way. We’re going to be released, possibly even today!

It’s an all-day, nail-biting wait. Wild with the hope of freedom we seize upon every step, voice, door opening and closing. Darkness falls; the diesel generators in the buildings around us come purring to life. “He’s not coming,” Norman says glumly. As if on cue, we hear the kitchen door slam. We look at each other, hardly daring to breathe.

Medicine Man enters with joking and laughter. Then, facing us, he’s suddenly serious, a man of important business. “News good. Everything finished. Our negotiator is back. Everything complete. Today, tomorrow, you will go.”

We ply him with questions. He’s slippery. Getting specific information out of him is like trying to catch a fish with bare hands. He skates around our questions with generalities, vague promises, soothing pacifications. The negotiator is in Baghdad—he just got the call, two hours before now.

So the negotiations are finished?

Yes.

And the prisoner release?

Medicine Man looks puzzled.

There were two women to be released as part of the negotiation, we remind him.

“Oh yes,” he says, as if suddenly remembering. “I think we do something else. Today, tomorrow, I don’t know, I carry you, one by one, in the car to the other house.”

“In the boot?” I say, alarmed.
Oh God, please, not that again
.

“Yes, in the boot. There is no other way, it is not safe. We have some checkpoint. But this is not a problem. You do this before. We carry you back to the first house, one by one. You will have some shower, we take some picture, we prepare you for you release. Then we take you, all together, in a car, no blindfold. We take you to some mosque. It is not far. I think you know this place.”

I groan.
Not the Muslim Scholars Association, the place where we were kidnapped!

“It is the safest place. We will let you out and you will walk to the mosque. Your negotiators will come and meet you in five minutes.”

“What about our things?” Norman asks. “Glasses, passports, cameras …”

“Everything is there.”

“So today or tomorrow we will go—even tonight,” I say, trying not to sound too hopeful.

“I don’t know. If it is safe. I will go now and make the trip, see if it is safe to bring you.”

“Has Medicine Man ever told us the truth?” Norman’s question rings in my ears all night. “We’ve never been so close,” Tom keeps insisting. “I have a bad feeling about this,” Harmeet said, pulling me aside during night lock-up, making sure the others couldn’t hear.

I don’t know what to think. Harmeet and Norman are right to be skeptical. I know it’s foolish but I can’t stop myself from being hopeful. The desire to be free, like a wild and sovereign beast, will not be tamed. Let it be now, today, this very minute. I am ready.

FEBRUARY 12
DAY 79

For the first time in captivity, Tom tells a joke. “What’s the difference between a Marine and a mushroom?” he asks. We think for a moment and then give up. “Nothing,” he says, grinning like a little boy. “They’re both kept in the dark and fed bullshit.” We laugh, astonished by Tom’s levity. We are all of us vibrating with excitement—even Norman. It can’t be helped. The hope of release is irresistible. Finally! we tell each other. Finally! We are going home.

“I’m going last,” Tom declares. We all agree, without ever having to say it; this is the unbearable thing, to be the one left alone waiting to the end.

Harmeet objects. “I was last the last time. I don’t mind. I’ll go last this time.”

There’s no point in arguing. Tom’s resolve is incontestable. He changes the subject. “We’ve moved from being an asset to a liability. Until the deal is done, they’re on the hook for us. If something happens to us in the interim, they’ll have no credibility for future hostage negotiations.”

“I hope to turn into a personal asset very shortly,” Norman says.

“Pat’s personal asset?” I say.

Norman chuckles. “Yes. She’s likely to hit me with a frying pan.”

“You’ll have to do some extra chores around the house to make it up to her—things you’ve been putting off that Pat’s been after you for,” I say.

“I’ll beg weakness—or should I say feebleness,” Norman says.

“We aren’t out of the woods yet,” Tom says. “Anything can happen. There are a number of nightmare scenarios, you know, like what happened to Giuliana Sgrena when they were taking her to the airport—”

I roll my eyes. Norman explodes. “We don’t need to hear any more nightmare scenarios,” he shouts. “We’ve been through enough nightmare scenarios!”

Tom continues undeterred. “The communication link between the Italian and the American governments broke down. They didn’t know what was happening, so when they were rushing Giuliana Sgrena to
the airport, the Americans opened fire on her car. One of the Italian security officials threw himself on top of her. He was killed, but she was okay. And that was with only two governments. Our case is much more complex. We’ve got three governments involved, plus the Iraqi government. That increases the chances that something crazy can happen. It means that when we’re released and we’re talking with the third-party negotiator, we need to be checking. Do the Americans know about this plan? What about the Canadians and the British? Do the Iraqis know? We need to check that the governments are in communication with each other so that what happened to the Italians doesn’t happen to us.”

“Fine,” Norman says, “but I don’t want to hear about any more nightmare scenarios.”

“Should we have a meeting to discuss what we’re going to do?” Tom asks. “I mean, we have no idea what’s going to happen—if we’re going to be whisked to the Green Zone right away—we’re going to need money in Amman—we should decide who we’re going to call first—”

“Tom,” I say, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice, “we’ve been through all this. We all have Doug’s number. It’s all so unpredictable. What we’ve already decided is all we can really plan for.”

“We have to expect the unexpected,” Tom says.

“Yes, and then expect it to change,” I say.

I write a poem in my notebook for my friends Raffi, Tonnan and Sephie, aged 1-and-a-half, 5 and 8.

I wonder, how are you? What are you doing today? How I miss you! It has been seventy-eight days. Will I ever see you again? Soon, may it be soon.

Cramps, gut squeezing, a tight, hard fist. I long to lie down flat, ease the stress out of my body. I wave it away but always it comes back, the question buzzing in my head like a horsefly,
Are we going to be taken somewhere to be shot?

Sometime between Christmas and New Year’s, Tom proposed that we issue a joint statement upon our release. He recited the statement from memory, over and over, sentence by sentence. We spent hours cutting, pasting, editing, refining. Tom remembered every word, every change we made. The statement was addressed primarily to citizens of the United States and Britain, calling upon the American and British governments to respect the will of the new Iraqi Parliament by seeking its legislative approval and clearly defined terms for the continuing occupation of their country.

I was never enthusiastic about the statement. It felt like an obligation, a responsibility, something to organize. I imagined having to write a press release, arrange a press conference, call media outlets, follow up with interviews. It was the last thing I wanted to be doing upon our release, if it ever happened. I told Tom I would be part of the statement and I would attend a press conference, but I wouldn’t do anything else; he, or the CPT team, would have to do the rest. That was fine with him.

Tom wants to go over the statement one last time. He has it written in his notebook. Harmeet takes a deep breath as if to gather his courage together. Of the four of us, he is the most conflict-avoidant. He has an objection. He doesn’t like “Our experiences in captivity have strengthened our commitment to Jesus’s teaching of ‘loving our enemies’ and ‘praying for those who persecute us.’ ” His objection is threefold. One, he’s not sure it represents him. Two, it implies that Christianity has the
power to say what everybody, including Muslims, should believe, and if you don’t, then you’re on the wrong side of the truth, and of course we know what happens then. And three, he’s not comfortable using religious language in a public document. The first and third objections are secondary, he says, the second is primary.

I understand and accept the first and third objection, I say, but I have difficulty with the second. We’re not saying what Muslims should believe, we’re saying what
we
believe. We’ve talked about how, because of liberal guilt, people don’t want to make any claims because they’re afraid they might exclude or offend somebody, and so they end up trading away their identity altogether. If we take this out, it means we’d be censoring ourselves, that we can’t say who we are without offending somebody else.

“But this is being addressed to Muslims,” Harmeet says.

“No,” I say, “it’s being addressed to Britons and Americans.”

“Jim’s right,” Tom says.

“Oh, I must’ve forgotten that,” Harmeet says. “I don’t mean to censor anybody. Now that I understand better, it’s the first reason. I’m just not comfortable with it. I’m not really a Christian. It’s not a claim I can make.”

“Then we have to change it,” Tom says. Tom asks Norman for his opinion. Norman says whether or not people understand what the quotes mean, they are instantly recognizable, especially for Christians, who are the majority of the population in Britain and the U.S. That gives them a certain amount of power. Using them might make Christians think about their faith in a different way, that it must not be used to justify violence. However, if Harmeet has an objection, he doesn’t mind changing it.

We revise the statement to read: “Our experiences in captivity have strengthened our belief that the real enemy of peace is violence undertaken for any reason, regardless of whether it be the violence of an occupying army, or the violence of an insurgent group who uses kidnapping to finance their resistance to that occupation.”

“I like it,” Harmeet says. “It moves the focus away from our captors. I’m not sure they’re my enemy. I feel lighter now. I didn’t realize how
much it was affecting my mood. I should’ve brought it up a lot earlier and gotten it over with.”

I apologize. When we wrote the statement, I say, we just assumed this sentence included you. Harmeet says he should’ve said something at the time. We still should have checked with you, I say. It’s always hard having to push against an assumption. It puts the onus on you and there’s a weight behind it that can be really hard to move.

“You’re right,” Harmeet says. “It’s funny how it took me so long to figure out what I was feeling and why.”

I feel lighter too. Now we are ready to face the world, I think.

At five in the afternoon, Junior arrives dressed in a pink shirt, natty suit jacket, pressed trousers, his hair perfectly coiffed.
“Shid ghul?”
he asks, smiling irrepressibly.

My spirits leap madly. Has the time finally come? He gently removes our handcuffs. “Yes Tom, yes Harmeet, yes Jim, yes Norman,” he says, cooing our names as he bends over our wrists. He kisses each of us. The quick brush of his cheek against mine is strangely comforting. Then his smile vanishes. He stands tall, shoulders back, points to each of us—a commander issuing an order. “You all go. In car. Tom, then Norman, then Jim, then Harmeet.”

We’re in terrible danger, I suddenly realize. I sit on my hands to keep from shaking. Everything reduces to fact. Emotion must not exist. It is verboten, unpredictable, a wanton danger. Whatever happens, I am only a video camera recording.

Tom and Norman are told to get ready to leave. Tom changes back into his own clothes and forces his size-twelve feet into his size-nine sneakers. He carefully folds his captor clothes into a neat pile with his notebook, pen and toothbrush: the only things he has left in the world. “You have Doug’s phone number memorized?” I ask him. He nods, his poker face dissolving into apprehension.

“Am I going to be able to get my stuff at the CPT apartment?” he asks Junior. Junior looks at him, puzzled.

“My luggage, my clothes, all my things. At the CPT house.” Junior does not understand. “The CPT house.
Beit
CPT. Where all my things are,” he says, arms reaching urgently through his voice.

“He doesn’t know,” I say as gently as I can.

Uncle enters briefly. He points to the clothing on Tom’s lap. He asks Tom how he’s going to carry his things.
“Chees, chees?”
Does he want a bag to put them in?

Uncle’s reference to a bag makes Tom think of his luggage. “My bags,” he says. “Am I going to be able to get my bags at the CPT apartment?” Uncle shakes his head and repeats his question. “My bags at the CPT apartment,” Tom pleads. “Am I going to be able to get my bags at the CPT apartment?”

“He doesn’t know, Tom,” I say gently. “He’s talking about a bag to put your clothes in.”

“Oh, okay,” Tom says. His shoulders slump forward and he sits forlornly with his hands folded between his thighs like an obedient child waiting for a cherished permission. He looks so vulnerable, bewildered, lost. My emotion surges. No, force it back, lock it away.

Junior gives Tom the signal that it’s time to go. Tom bounces up, his face full of boyish expectation. Junior bends down to look Norman in the eyes. He speaks slowly and deliberately, his face mere inches away. He says he’ll be back in half an hour to take him next. Then he turns towards Tom with a pair of handcuffs.