Lebanon Hostage Ch. 08

"Wherever we go, I just don't want to dothat again." My voice catches as I say it, but I don't have enough strength to cry.

"No, that's over." He speaks bitterly. "They wouldn't have undone us if they had to do us back up again. Too much work for them."

* * *

The guard told us that we will be going "soon." On this occasion, "soon" turns out to mean well after nightfall. We spend all day lying on the floor of the barn.

Exhausted, I drop off shortly after Allan's conversation with the guard. When I wake, a guard brings me lunch. It's my first meal of the day: a sandwich containing both jam and cheese—a weird, unwelcome combination—and some kind of cola, Coke or Pepsi, I can't tell the difference. I literally can't remember the last time I drank any kind of soda.

Allan's awake. He tells me that he, too, napped for a while. Then he woke up, at least half an hour ago, he thinks, and a guard fed him while I kept sleeping. While Allan was eating, he asked the guards what time it was; they told him one o'clock. I'm surprised they told him. Guards never want us to know anything.

More than twelve hours have passed since my last real toilet run, not counting that business with the tin can before we left the apartment. My stressed-out bowels are at a crisis point. If there are toilet facilities nearby—a farmhouse or an outhouse—I'm not allowed to go outside to use them. Instead, a guard leads me into a back corner of the barn, where I blindly squat over the ground. I feel immensely relieved afterward, but also dirty and degraded. I'm at a point where I don't care if we're being released or transferred, I just want to get the hell wherever we're supposed to end up.

Allan and I nap some more in the afternoon. When we're awake, we lie around, silent, nothing to do. Because we're not restrained, the guards go on alert anytime we move, so we try to stay still. I don't want the guards to feel the need to tape us up again, not even just hands and feet.

I'm recovering from the hellish trip, emotionally as well as physically. The fresh, cool air rejuvenates me, lifts my morale. My God, I'm outdoors! The apathy I've been feeling about our fate gives way to cautious, anxious stirrings of hope. I pray in the conditional tense: God, if they released us, that would make this horrible experience worth it...

When night falls, the temperature falls with it, from cool to cold. I shiver in my still slightly damp sweater. Allan and I roll ourselves up in our respective blankets. "Let's huddle," he proposes. "If they don't like it, they'll tell us." So we scoot close together, facing each other. The guards don't object. In fact, the one who talked to Allan earlier produces a third blanket, which he spreads out over the both of us. We'll be going soon, the guard promises again. He sounds almost apologetic.

I'm hungry as well as cold. It doesn't look like we'll get dinner until we arrive wherever we're going next. Could it be my first meal in freedom, do I dare to hope for that?

Eventually a car pulls up. Two new men have arrived. The guards take the blankets away from us, shake them out. Allan and I are left sitting on the bare ground with two guards standing watch over us, while it sounds like the other two move some things from the truck to the car. That activity doesn't seem consistent with the car having come to drive us to a release site.

Preparations complete, all four guards walk Allan and me out to the car together. They help us climb, groping, into the trunk, Allan first. A welcome surprise: we are not bound or gagged in any way, merely ordered to be silent. Might that be a sign that this is a release after all?

Allan is spooned behind me as we face toward the rear of the car. Earlier, while we were huddling under the blanket, with our hands out of the guards' sight, I had been tempted to reach over and touch Allan's arm, for comfort. I didn't do it. Now that we're spooning in the trunk, I wish he would reach forward and wrap his arm around me. I crave an embrace, both after the trauma of the journey in the truck and now in the face of this new trip to God knows where. The uncertainty is an agony. I'm hoping, I'm afraid to hope...

I find the courage to reach back and lay my hand on Allan's thigh, hoping the intimacy won't make him too uncomfortable. After several seconds, he lays his hand on top of mine, pats it, and withdraws. Not wanting to abuse his tolerance, I withdraw shortly afterward as well. I cross my arms over my chest, hugging myself for warmth.

The car labors down the rutted dirt road that brought us to the barn. At least this time we can use our hands and feet to brace ourselves against the sides of the trunk. We reach paved road, pick up speed.

The drive proves short, five or ten minutes. The last leg climbs uphill on progressively more primitive roads.

When the car stops, Allan and I are left in the trunk while the guards unload things from the back seat. Again, this activity seems to point to a transfer, not a release. Still, I'm not quite willing to relinquish hope yet. Maybe the unloading is an errand they have to complete on the way to releasing us. Maybe instead of unloading us, they'll get back in the car and resume driving. It's conceivable. I'm steeling myself, though, for the more likely alternative.

The trunk opens. My heart sinks, but I am resigned.

Men help us out of the trunk, more men than the two who drove us here. Through my socks, I detect grit-flecked concrete underfoot.

I am led up a flight of stairs. Steered through a series of rooms. When we stop, a mattress is waiting for me on the floor.

It's official—we've reached our destination.

They want me to lie down on my back instead of sitting. Allan is being made to lie down just beyond my feet; in the process, he accidentally steps on my shin.

The inevitable chain, this time around my right ankle. Jesus, it's heavy.

Someone presses down on my eyes through my tape-wrapped blindfold and gives me an incomprehensible order, something like"Naray gadaypa."

"I'm sorry," I say, "I don't understand."

Someone else standing a short distance away says, "You cannot look. Never."

You've got to be kidding me. Never?

They don't even give us anything for dinner. A shitty end to a fucking shitty day.

* * *

I see why they never want us to raise our blindfolds early the next morning, before sunup.

I'm awakened by the guards praying in another room, and I can't go back to sleep, even after they've finished and the building falls silent, presumably because they've gone back to bed. I hear Allan breathing like a man dead to the world. Roosters crow occasionally in the distance.

I've been blindfolded for 24 hours straight now, I've got to have a break. I'm certain the guards aren't in the next room. They're farther away, in some other part of the building. I'll need to keep a careful ear out for them, but I feel safe enough to run the risk of stealing a look around.

Working my fingertips under the edge of my tightened blindfold, I pry at the cloth until I manage to create some slack in the layers of tape wrapped around it. The slack isn't sufficient for me to tug the blindfold up onto my forehead, but I am able to pull the blindfold the other way, down onto my nose, so I can peek over the top.

Allan and I are being held in a narrow room, our mattresses crammed end to end along one of the longer walls. In the short wall that faces me, at the far end of the room from me, is a window—uncovered, but with frosted glass, so I can't discern what's outside. The passage to the next room is also located at that far end, in the long wall to my right, opposite the wall we're lying up against. In the dim, gray light of the early dawn, I can confirm what my ears had told me when the guards retreated from our room last night: there is no door, just an open doorway. That's why they want us to keep our eyes constantly covered.

No question of it, we're fucked. I could probably get away with lifting my blindfold, if they would take the tape off, since the angle from my head to the doorway doesn't allow me much of a view into the next room—and, by the same token, won't allow the guards to see much of me from that room. But Allan's head is located directly across from the doorway. He could see perfectly whatever there is to see.

So we're going to be kept blind the whole time we're here. Blind, in a room where we'll have sunlight for a change, assuming they're not planning to cover the window. How cruelly ironic. Maybe we'll at least get to feel sunbeams on our skin, if the building is oriented the right way.

At my feet, Allan is sleeping with his soles pointed toward mine. He's coiled underneath his blankets, only his blindfolded face peeping out; it's colder here, wherever we are, than it was in Beirut. Somehow, seeing Allan curled up in his nest of covers with his blindfold on makes me think, despite his beard, that he resembles a little boy. I am seized by a fierce tenderness for him. Thank you, God, for keeping us together in this new place. Thank you for getting us both here safely. I depend on him so much. Help me be a better companion to him. Less needy, more conscious of whatheneeds. More supportive. Less self-absorbed.

I need to retreat under my own blankets to escape the cold—try to get a little more sleep before feedings and toilet runs begin. I pry my blindfold back up over my eyes. The blindfold fell completely off one ear when I pulled it down, and now I can't manage to squeeze that ear all the way back under the cloth. As a result, the blindfold is lopsided. Shit. I can't keep fiddling with it, the tape crinkles, I'm afraid the guards will hear. At least both my eyes are covered. Maybe the guards won't notice the lopsidedness. Hopefully the blindfold won't suddenly slip down around my nose again.

What a fuck-up. Leave it to me to start off on the wrong foot in a new holding place.

It's the morning of March 11. Exactly one year from the day I was taken hostage. One year and counting.

* * *

Author's note: Okay, folks, think of that as a season finale. We're about halfway through the novel. All the remaining chapters are partially drafted. New developments are coming in Allan and Jeremy's relationship, and some other characters you've met will return. However, other projects demand my attention, so I'm afraid I need to take a break from this one.

Thanks to everyone who has invested time in reading this story! Thanks especially for the generosity of everyone who has offered encouragement—whether in the form of votes, favorites, public comments, or anonymous emails.