Lebanon Hostage Ch. 07

When I try to get Waleed off my back by telling him that I agree with him about X or Y, he uses my remarks as the opening for yet another speech denouncing X or Y, as if I had disputed him. It's a relief when he finally decides he's done and leaves us alone. Unlike his critiques of immoral Western culture, Waleed's political diatribes never end with a shift back to Friendly Waleed. He leaves either boiling angry, slamming the door, or nastily self-satisfied because he feels he has put us in our places.

I resent Waleed for the anxiety he causes me. The conditions of my hostage life have improved in so many ways in this apartment—why does Waleed have to keep injecting stress back into my life with his ranting and sneaking around? Thank God I have Allan to support me and books to console me.

Between unstable Waleed and unbending Sayeed, I miss Abed and Fadil all the more. I devise the idea of lobbying the guards for permission to write a letter to Abed and Fadil, formally thanking them for their treatment of Allan and me. Beyond wanting to write this letter for the sake of Abed and Fadil's feelings, I have the notion that the letter would show the chefs, who I presume would vet the letter before transmitting it, how appreciative hostages can be when our treatment is humane. In my imagination, I see the chefs instructing other guards to follow Abed and Fadil's example, thus making life better for all the hostages. I imagine, too, that this commendation would be good for Abed and Fadil's "careers" within the militant group. I would like to do them that favor.

When I ask Allan if he'll help me convince the guards to let us write this letter, he wastes no time pronouncing this a Strange Idea. He deems it servile, the eighth deadly sin in his book, maybe even approaching the level of the Stockholm Syndrome. Furthermore, Waleed would undoubtedly read the letter, and he would likely interpret my compliments to our previous guards as an indictment of our current ones, in which case he would retaliate against us in some way; he certainly wouldn't pass the letter on to the chefs. I don't admit to Allan that my fantasies included a scenario in which Waleed would read the letter and experience a pang of conscience. I had realized thatthat scenario was a silly fantasy (probably—I didn't want to altogether give up hope), but I had trusted that the basic idea of writing the letter was reasonable. After Allan nixes the entire idea, I feel extremely foolish.

* * *

Waleed tells us, "Say hello to my friend."

Hello, we say to the person we neither see nor hear.

Waleed instructs us to tell his friend where we're from. I'm from the United States, I say. What city? Waleed prompts me. I name my hometown, adding that it's near Chicago.

Waleed says, "Shee-cago. Al Capone," and expertly imitates the sound of machine gun fire. I'm surprised he's heard of Capone.

Allan says he's from London, a city for which Waleed has no associations to offer.

Waleed's friend says in proudly enunciated English, "Hello. Pleased to meet you." Like Waleed, he sounds to be about my age.

Pleased to meet you, we reply.

At first we assume we've been introduced to a new guard or a temporary substitute. But we're not given a name for the newcomer, and we never hear his voice again, not even later that same day. Allan's theory, bizarre as it would be, is that this was simply, literally, a friend of Waleed's—maybe a relative, possibly not even a member of the militant group—who wanted to gawk at Western hostages and try out his English with them.

* * *

Despite the frustrations and stresses we experience here, there's no question that the physical conditions in this apartment are much improved over the two prisons where I spent the first eight months of my captivity. I'm in a regular room, not a tiny cell. I get three meals a day, hot showers, weekly clothing changes. A toilet that flushes, light bulbs in the bedroom and the bathroom, candles, sounds from the normal world. The books make a dramatic difference, as far as I'm concerned. I can put up with a lot as long as I have a book to escape into.

Even the fact that Allan and I are kept chained on opposite sides of the room has its silver lining. We have just enough distance from each other—enough privacy—that we start masturbating.

For me, anyway, masturbating is something new to this apartment. If Allan did it in previous holding places, I've been oblivious. I assume the urge has returned to me because of our improved conditions. There's relatively more good feeling in my life now. That had been the case under Abed and Fadil's supervision, too; but for some reason I didn't get the urge back in the office, despite the return of my erections during the huddling.

Being chained is only a minor obstacle, since the chain is on my left wrist. Even though I'm left-handed, I've always masturbated with my right, I don't know why. I have to risk some chain-clinking, as I'm starting, to get my left hand into position under the blanket, since that hand holds the folded-up tissue into which I catch my ejaculate to make clean-up quieter. I regret that I can't use my left hand to manipulate my nipples; the extra stimulation would intensify my pleasure and let me finish sooner. I'm always in a hurry because I worry that Allan will wake up and catch me in the act.

I have one iron-clad rule: I cannot picture Allan while I'm masturbating. Otherwise, I allow myself free rein. I will not feel guilty for indulging in gay fantasies. Guilt would be counterproductive. It would undo the benefits that masturbation offers for my survival: the release of tension, the relaxation, the treat. I don't know what God wills me to do about my homosexuality in the long run, but I've arrived at a point where I don't believe that he begrudges me the pleasure that homosexual fantasies yield me in my current circumstances. God wants me to feel better, I'm confident of that. While I insist on keeping Allan out of my fantasies to avoid complicating our relationship, my libido can turn to anyone else it wants.

The reason I know that Allan masturbates, too, is that on one occasion I overhear him. The night it happens, we're both lying awake, unable to sleep, but I'm breathing as if I'm asleep to try to make myself drop off. Apparently I've convinced Allan that I really am asleep. I hear him shifting around for a little while. At the time, I imagine he's tucking the edges of his blankets more tightly under him to make a warmer cocoon. He settles down, falls silent. A few minutes pass, during which I'm focused on the sound of my own breathing, trying to empty my mind of thoughts that would keep me awake. Then, out of nowhere, Allan breathes loudly and heavily through his nose, several times, rapidly. He falls silent again.

I lie in the dark with my eyes open, wondering what just happened. I'm considering whispering to ask Allan if he's all right when I hear his blankets rustle, followed by the soft dry scratch of tissue being rubbed on a surface. Oh... Duh.

I am embarrassed. I am titillated. I resume my fake sleep-breathing so Allan won't realize I've caught him. My imagination uses x-ray vision to generate a picture of Allan lying on his back under his blankets, his bottoms pushed down around his thighs, his top pulled up to expose his stomach, his chained hand propping his blanket up like a tent, his free hand closed around his erection. What happens to his uncircumcised penis when it gets hard? I have no idea how that works, physiologically. Do the head and shaft come poking out through the opening in his foreskin... kind of like when a dog gets aroused? Or does the foreskin stretch along with his cock? Does his erection have a mushroom-shaped head, like mine, or does the end still look tapered, as it did when I glimpsed him soft?

Leaving those details blurry in my imagination, I picture Allan jerking his erection rhythmically, coaxing himself to climax. His eyes are closed, he's thinking about... what? A woman, of course. Or women. I wonder if he thinks about Emily, or if the pain of the breakup precludes that. Does he prefer to fantasize about normal women, women he knows, or does he conjure up some artificially enhanced Playboy ideal? What parts of women's bodies does he focus on in his mind's eye as he tugs at himself? What does he envision doing to them, or them doing to him? What image or imagined sensation tips him over the edge? What is his ejaculation like? Does it fly out in long arcs, or does it well up out of him in gooey burps? Flying arcs could be impressive, but the picture of Allan gushing white ooze onto his fingers instead doesn't strike me as any less virile, any less appealing. Plus, the latter would be easier for him to clean up...

Okay. Despite how intellectual this inquiry into Allan's sexuality has been, it nevertheless qualifies as a fantasy about him and is therefore in violation of my rule. I can't ever think about this again.

I am mortified to realize that if Allan mistakenly believed me to be asleep, I may have been under the same misapprehension about him on other occasions. Doesmy breathing give me away when I'm having my climax? I've never been aware that I breathe heavily—but it's not like I've ever stepped back to observe myself in the moment of orgasm. God, I hope Allan has never overheard me.

After this incident, I become even more cautious about masturbating. I force myself to wait longer between sessions than I'd really like: the less often I indulge, the less likely I am to be caught. When I do indulge, I listen more carefully before concluding that Allan really is asleep.

I don't catch Allan again. In part, that might be because soon after the occasion on which I do catch him, I give him yet more reason to be vigilant in safeguarding his privacy.

I reveal to him that I'm gay.

* * *

My "coming out" to Allan—I know that term from my surreptitious reading on this subject back at school—is indirectly triggered by Waleed and a new rule regarding the bathroom.

The bathroom is located just a few steps to our right as we're escorted out of our room, apparently at the end of the hall. Most importantly, we suspect, for explaining the new rule, the bathroom looks out of the apartment building. The little window has been plated over with metal, but there's a ventilation fan embedded in the outer wall, the back wall, through which we can see natural light. Standing on the lip of the bathtub, we could peek out through the fan—if the rule weren't in place to prevent that.

Although filthy and decrepit, the bathroom is equipped with most everything I could reasonably wish for in hostage life. It would be nice if they hadn't removed the mirror that used to be screwed onto the wall above the sink. (Why won't they ever let us have a mirror? So we can't break off a shard as a weapon?) It would also be nice to have a sit-down toilet for a change; on the other hand, I've come to realize that the squatting position somehow speeds the process of emptying yourself, which is helpful since we're back to being rushed by the guards. We have a bathtub here, in which we stand to shower. I would kill for the privilege of soaking in a hot bath one day, assuming I could scrub the tub first.

The new rule—the obnoxious, humiliating new rule—is that in this apartment, we cannot close the bathroom door. It remains open as we squat over the toilet and clean ourselves afterward. It remains open as we stand naked in the tub, showering without a shower curtain. It remains open as we towel off and change our clothes. If the guards didn't use our bathroom on occasion, I suspect they would simply remove the door from its hinges.

To keep us from seeing the guards' faces or looking down the hall through the open door, we are allowed to hike our blindfolds only partway up. So we're half blind the whole time we're using the toilet, or toweling off, or changing our clothes, or rinsing out our pee bottles, or refilling our water bottles. We are allowed to remove the blindfold entirely while we shower, but we have to keep our eyes closed or our back to the door, which is problematic since the shower head and taps are oriented in such a way that to face them, we need to stand with our side to the door.

Presumably all this inconvenience and humiliation is to prevent us from peeking outside through the fan, so there's no chance we could identify this building after we're released. One more paranoid security measure. An additional consequence of the open-door rule is that Allan has no chance of planting messages on foil somewhere in the bathroom for the French hostages to find.

While we're inside the bathroom, the guards who are conducting the toilet run stand at the doorway, monitoring us—in theory. However, I can see from under my hiked-up blindfold that their feet usually aren't pointing into the bathroom at me. The guards stand, rather, with their backs turned toward me. They could easily turn their heads to check what I'm doing, but I doubt they do as a rule. They often chat with one another while I'm taking care of business, which gives the impression they're not paying attention to me. That in turn makes the situation a little bit less shaming for me. Perhaps also for them.

Fundamentalist Shiites are highly averse to nudity, Allan tells me, even in same-sex situations, so the guards are probably as embarrassed about seeing us naked as we are about being seen. They must be doing this because they're under orders, for security. Probably they would prefer to let us close the door just as much as we would prefer it.

That holds true for all but one of the guards. The exception is Waleed. When he's on toilet-run duty, he stands at the door looking into the bathroom the whole time. If I don't keep my head turned constantly away from the door, he'll bark. He's most vigilant, of course, when I'm showering with the blindfold off, when he knows perfectly well that I have to open my eyes a crack to be able to find the taps. He keeps making warning noises, with a note in his voice that tells me he's enjoying this. It's a game to him. I tell myself to ignore his harassment and just do what I need to do. But if he senses I'm ignoring him, he adopts an extremely threatening tone that my body finds hard not to react to even though my mind knows it's just bluster. Probably.

Allanloathes being watched by Waleed. He complains vehemently—not to Waleed; to me, when we're alone. Allan's fury about being watched is different from his outrage about our poor treatment at the abandoned office, or about Sayeed taking away our blankets. There's something unstable at the base of Allan's anger at Waleed. Waleed's gaze on his naked body jabs at something raw inside Allan. I assume that Waleed watches us because he enjoys hassling us, but Allan interprets it as something more. Waleed, he thinks, is a repressed homosexual. That's a polite paraphrase, rather. What Allan actually says is: Waleed's a fucking closet queer.

If Waleed has administered that morning's toilet run, Allan seethes through the rest of the exercise period. He works out with a vengeance. At times I hear him breathing, "Fucking queer, fucking queer," in time with his exercise. After a while, his rage will cool. He'll read or take some closed-eyes "alone time," recover his equilibrium. Later that day, if necessary, he can manage a perfectly controlled exchange with Waleed during one of Waleed's political soapboxes. Allan never shows Waleed how upset he feels about being watched. He never challenges Waleed, never insists that Waleed should stop looking. This surprises me, as Allan hasn't been shy about pressing the guards when it comes to other grievances.

Although I'm not convinced that Waleed is watching us for prurient reasons, I want to be supportive, so I ask Allan if he would like to protest together in some way. We could demand that Waleed respect our privacy. We could report him to Sayeed if he's violating the group's religious strictures about modesty. Allan smacks these proposals down emphatically: We cannot let Waleed know for a second that he's getting to us. We cannot look vulnerable. Anything we do to try to put a stop to this will only make it worse. We can't say a word, not to Waleed, not to anyone. Stone face, do I understand?

I feel confused and unfairly lashed out at. I tell Allan I don't understand why he doesn't want to at least try to do something given how much this upsets him. His answer is fierce. "I'm just venting, all right? That's all we can do about this. Will you just let me vent, for Christ's sake? I put up with all your whining. Can you return the favor for once?"

He apologizes abjectly for that later. It was completely uncalled for, he was very upset at the moment, he doesn't really feel that way about me. He felt put on, but that wasn't my fault, he shouldn't have taken it out on me.

Wanting to show Allan I don't bear a grudge, and thinking that maybe he rejected my earlier proposal merely because he was upset, I repeat the offer now that he's calmed down. Would Allan like to protest, if not directly to Waleed, than to Sayeed? Allan's face clenches. I've triggered him again, but he's holding back. "No," he replies, strained. "I'm serious, Jeremy. We have to play this perfectly cool." I don't understand, I tell him. What is he afraid will happen?

He stares at me like he can't believe my naiveté. Belatedly, it clicks: I know what Allan fears. I've feared it myself at times—just never here, in this apartment. Since I haven't understood Waleed's watching us as something sexual, it hasn't occurred to me to be afraid of rape. I'm still not experiencing that fear, even now that Allan has raised the possibility. I see enough difference between our current situation with Waleed and earlier situations, such as the Bully harassing me at my first prison, that the fear I felt in the earlier situations doesn't transfer over to our current one. I've come to realize that in some situations where I feared being raped, the fear was sheer paranoia; I'm inclined to pass a similar judgment on Allan's fear of Waleed.

"Allan, I really don't think you need to be afraid of that." In my head, I start assembling a reasoned argument in support of this statement. Even if Allan is right about why Waleed is looking at us, I don't see how Waleed could do anything further to either of us without another guard's help, or at least complicity, and clearly none of them are interested in that...

Before I've said any of this, Allan himself appears to have second thoughts. Maybe just knowing that I disagree has prompted him to place his fear under suspicion of being a Strange Idea. He says, "You're probably right." He adds, "But we're still safest not doing anything that would let the queer know he's making us nervous."

Every time Allan calls Waleed "queer," I feel stabbed. I am paranoid enough to briefly wonder, at the outset, if Allanintends me to feel stabbed. Has he come to suspect that I, too, am a closet queer? Is he taking this opportunity to warnme against ever looking at him the wrong way? I quickly assure myself that Allan wouldn't do such a thing. If he had a problem with me, he would take it up with me directly. So, on the contrary, the fact that he freely expresses to me his contempt for Waleed's suspected homosexuality means that Allan must not suspect mine.

Knowing that Allan doesn't know about me is an enormous relief. But I am also nagged by guilt, seeing how deeply it threatens Allan to be the object of homosexual desire. Whether or not Waleed is homosexual, the point is this: What Allan suspects that Waleed is doing to him, I have, in fact, been doing to him. I haven't done it with the impunity that Waleed does, if that really is what Waleed is doing. But I've stolen glimpses. I've indulged in illicit fantasies—including my recent visualization of Allan masturbating. And as I always knew he would, Allan resents being exploited that way. He would feel toward me the same rage he feels toward Waleed. If he knew.