Lebanon Hostage Ch. 07

In the conversations we've had about my sexuality since my coming out, Allan has never asked if there's anything romantic or sexual about my affection for Hikmet. He's never asked if I have those kinds of feelings for any specific individual, himself included. Nevertheless, Hikmet is the reason I become flustered the time Allan asks me what my physical type is: I don't want Allan knowing that Arab men fit my type.

I am physically attracted to Hikmet. To be absurdly precise, I am attracted to his hands, the only part of his body I can see, peeping under my blindfold, that isn't covered by clothes. The backs of his hands are covered from wrists to knuckles with long, black, arched hairs, miniature versions of which sprout on the base of his fingers. His forearms, beneath his sleeves, must be equally hairy. His chest, too, I imagine, though my sliver of vision doesn't climb that high. Not that I'd be able to view any of his chest hair, anyway, bundled up as he always is in a sweater or coat—no open-throated shirt to afford me a peek inside. I imagine, though, that I might be able to see a few stray hairs arching out, grass-like, from under his clothes at the base of his throat, a tantalizing promise of the lawn concealed underneath...

Images of Hikmet—invented images—come to me as I masturbate at night. My fantasy isn't set here, in the apartment. I picture the two of us in some other room, under an entirely different set of circumstances, an alternative universe. We're in the United States. I'm back at graduate school, Hikmet is a foreign student. He's come to my apartment, or I've gone to his. We're in the bedroom. He's laughing quietly, eagerly, that pleasant, pleased laugh of his, as he undresses, as he watches me undress. I leave his facial features vague, but I give him a tidy beard, trimmed close enough for me to find sexy. A hirsute body to match his hands—profusely furry chest, a more modestly fuzzy stomach. Dark hair covering his forearms and legs and thighs and ass. A virile patch growing at the base of his otherwise smooth young back. The gumdrop-shaped head of his dick (Muslims are circumcised, right?) looks plump and heavy, but the shaft isn't hard yet. I find dicks more appealing to look at while they're still soft, curled up endearingly like a sleeping animal you want to pet...

I end up shoving these images aside, I don't allow myself to hold them in my head while I climax.

I can't be entertaining these thoughts about Hikmet. They're perverse, they're sick, they're wrong—for multiple reasons. He's my captor. He's my student.

Mohammed wants English lessons, too, but I have no interest in teaching Mohammed. I don't like Mohammed. I resent the way heordered me to teach him. He doesn't show me the respect that Hikmet does. He's dull, without a sense of humor. I conduct myself professionally toward him, but I don't go out of my way to be encouraging. Fortunately, learning English turns out to be harder than Mohammed expected, and he lacks discipline. After a couple of lessons, he stops coming. I make a token effort to ask if he wants another lesson, partly out of guilt, partly out of concern for offending him. When he tells me, "Soon," I don't follow up.

I feel like Mohammed was muscling in between Hikmet and me. Mohammed wanted to take something from me that I want to share only with Hikmet.

In the end, though, it's Sayeed, not Mohammed, who comes between us.

I've just brought another lesson to a close. Not at Sayeed's insistence—Sayeed doesn't appear to be around at the moment—but because we've done good work, and I can feel it's the right moment to call it a day. Hikmet knows he did well today. He's happy. I'm happy.

We face each other, cross-legged, drifting down from the high energy level that my teaching style generates. This is the moment when normally Hikmet would thank me and put on his shoes. But instead he keeps sitting there, and in the silence, an intimate atmosphere grows up around us.

"I like you teacher me," Hikmet says. We practiced "I like/I don't like" statements during an earlier lesson, in the context of food; he's taking the initiative to stretch the grammatical form to this new purpose. I'm proud of him for that.

"I like teaching you," I reply, enunciating carefully. "You are a good student."

I can hear, in his voice, his flattered smile. "Thank you," he says.

And then he reaches over to hold my hand.

It's not a handshake, his right hand clasping my right hand—it's not that. Instead, his left hand reaches straight across to grab my right hand, my unchained hand, which is resting on my crossed legs. He closes his fingers around the side of my hand and pulls it a little toward him, off my leg, so that our clasped hands are at a more equal distance between us. And then he just keeps holding my hand, not saying anything.

I know that Arab men hold hands—as a wholly permissible intimacy, not as something gay. I picked that information up sometime before I came to Lebanon, probably when I was covertly reading scholarship on homosexuality in my college library. I saw the custom for myself during the brief window before I was kidnapped. Boys at the primary school held hands or draped themselves over one another's shoulders. The night before my kidnapping, as Youssef was driving Bernie and me from the mission office back to Bernie's apartment, we stopped at an intersection, and two men, probably in their thirties, both conventionally masculine, crossed the street in front of us. They weren't walking hand-in-hand, exactly, but one had his arm tucked languidly into the other's—the only thing about them that didn't look masculine to my Western eyes. Bernie noticed me looking at them and smiled. "It's not what you're thinking," he said.

So I don't imagine for a second, I don't even wonder if Hikmet might be holding my hand because he's gay. I know that's not what's going on here.

Hikmet is holding my hand to express how much he likes me. I am moved by the gesture at that level. But I'm also thinking: This doesn't make sense. He's my guard. Just as I shouldn't be feeling sexually attracted to him under the circumstances, he shouldn't be feeling hand-holding friendly toward me. It's unnatural. It's complicating.

Surely his affection for me must make it harder for him to do his job: to keep me captive, to keep me chained, to keep me by force from my home. How does he reconcile himself to that? Does that question prod at him? Is he thinking about it now, as he sits here with me, silent?

I tip my head back a little so that I can see, under the blindfold, my slender academic's fingers folded into Hikmet's hairier, rougher workingman's hand. Dale and I must have interlaced fingers at points during sex, but I don't remember it. Anyway, I've never before just sat holding hands with a man. So this is what it feels like—

I jump when Sayeed snaps at us from the doorway, a sharp order in Arabic. Hikmet drops my hand, leaps to his feet. He doesn't wait to put on his shoes, he snatches them up from the floor and carries them as he scuttles out of the room. The bedroom door is pulled harshly closed.

"What happened?" Allan asks, tense.

"I don't know, I guess we went too long." I can tell I sound unnerved, but I can't tell if Allan doubts my truthfulness because of it. He doesn't probe further.

The shift changes that night, so Hikmet is gone for a couple of days. When his shift returns, he doesn't come for more lessons. He doesn't even talk to me except as necessary during feedings and toilet runs. Finally, during an evening feeding he's administering with Mohammed—not with Sayeed, that's crucial—I ask him: Will he come tomorrow for an English lesson?

"No," he says, brusquely. A few moments later, he mumbles, "I'm sorry."

I push: When? When can we do another lesson? But I already know what he's going to say. "Never." Or, since he hasn't learned that word, some intended equivalent.

Actually, he says something worse: "Soon." Which in this context is clearly the same as saying "Never," but with the added indignity of denying me an honest answer. It's not Hikmet's fault, though. English lessons have become a taboo subject, something he has been forbidden to talk to me about.

Fucking Sayeed.

That's it, that's the end of my "romance" with Hikmet. How long was I teaching him? Between three and four weeks, it must be. But only on the days when he was on shift, so really half that time, the equivalent of one-and-a-half to two weeks.

Why did Sayeed put a stop to our lessons? What exactly did he disapprove of when he saw Hikmet and me holding hands? Does he know about me, or suspect, from hearing about what happened at the office? Did he think I might be coming on to Hikmet? Trying to seduce my way to an escape? Or is homosexuality not a factor in Sayeed's thinking? Did he simply disapprove of Hikmet fraternizing that closely with a hostage? Did he want to prevent Hikmet from developing the pangs of conscience I wondered if he might be experiencing?

I miss Hikmet. I mean, he's still here, he still works as one of my guards. But that makes things harder. I wish he didn't work in the apartment anymore. I wish we didn't interact at all.

I become low. I lie under my blankets doing nothing, unable to take pleasure even in a book. Allan asks me what's wrong. I don't know, I tell him, it's just a mood.

He knows better. "Is this about Hikmet?"

My heart skips a beat. By this point, definitely, I've come out to Allan. So I should hardly be surprised if he has come to suspect.

I'm ashamed to respond to Allan's question. I don't need to, my silence is answer enough. Allan says, gently but in his "lecture" voice, "They're guards, Jeremy, not friends. I'm sorry you got hurt. But you need to stop brooding about it."

Fuck you, I think, but I don't say it out loud. I owe Allan too much. He's been too supportive—most recently about my coming out—for me to snipe at him, even in a moment of weakness.

The emotional burst of my silent "Fuck you" sends a single tear trickling out of each of my eyes and down the sides of my face, into my ears, as I lie on my back. That's as much as I'll ever cry over Hikmet. Later I'll feel mortified that I shed even those two tears.

Allan's right. How moronic, how pathetic, to become attached in that way to a man who's helping to hold me hostage. Captivity fucks with your emotions, twists them into grotesque shapes.

* * *

Sometime around the middle of February, a stomach flu makes all the hostages in the apartment diarrheal for a couple of days. While we're sick, the guards consent to give us extra toilet runs. We signal we need the toilet by knocking on the wall; we're forbidden, as usual, to bang our chains or call out. The guards dislike being at our beck and call, though, so if they feel we're requesting toilet runs too often, they'll ignore our knocking and leave us to squirm for a while.

During our sick days, the guards administer a final, rushed toilet run to all five hostages just before going to bed—the guards are in their stocking feet and sleepwear, I can see under my blindfold. After this toilet run, we're expected to suffer through until morning.

On the first evening of our special toilet-run dispensation, I become desperate to go to the bathroom while the guards are watching TV out in the front of the apartment. They don't respond to my knocking; they want me to wait for their shows to end, when they'll administer the last-call toilet run to all the hostages. At the time, though, I don't realize that they're planning a final toilet run, and anyway I'm not sure I could have waited that long. Frantic, I resort to clanging my chain on the floor and shouting, "Afwan!" Sure enough, this flagrant violation of the rules brings someone running. He punishes me with blows to the shoulders and upper arms, but when I beg him to let me use the toilet, he does.

While I'm in the bathroom, the guard retreats down the hall so he can keep watching the show. Finished, I stand waiting in the open doorway for a while before Waleed sees or remembers me and orders the guard to return me to the bedroom. The guard—Ameer or Moustafa, I can't tell which—rechains me so hastily that he doesn't squeeze the padlock hard enough to actually click it shut.

With the guard safely away, I lie propped up on my elbow, twisting the base of the padlock back and forth as it hangs unattached from the hooked portion. "Allan," I whisper, "he didn't close my padlock."

I whispered too softly, I have to repeat myself before Allan understands. He's silent for a few moments. Then he whispers back, "Don't close it. Don't fall asleep."

I lie down with my head propped against the wall, to keep myself uncomfortable and awake. There's no danger of my falling asleep, though, not with my adrenaline racing the way it is. What does Allan have in mind? I'm excited and nervous to be unchained because I feel I'm getting away with something, but I don't see what good it can actually do us. Clearly, however, there's something Allan wants me to do. Something more than eavesdropping on the guards' bedtime movements? The suspense is maddening.

Finally, the guards turn off the television. They come down the hall to administer the last toilet run of the night, which we hadn't yet known to expect. They skip me since I went not long before. As they hustle Allan to and from the bathroom, I lie very still, heart pounding, so as not to attract the guards' attention. I don't want their eyes falling on my padlock...

Waleed forbids us to knock on the wall again for the rest of the night. The guards retire to bed. The house settles into silence.

Allan whispers my name. Moving very, very carefully—now it's me, not the guards, who's paranoid about small noises—I extract the padlock from the chain links. I soon give up trying to unwind the chain from my wrist slowly, realizing this will merely prolong the inevitable sound. Better to remove it in one swift motion. I figure that won't make any more noise than I would produce turning in my sleep.

I crawl slowly, blindly, across the floor to Allan. I follow the edge of his mattress toward his head. To avoid rattling his chain, Allan doesn't sit up, but he uses his free hand to locate first my arm, then my shoulder. He tugs me down so that our heads are close together. He whispers slowly, exaggerating the pronunciation of each word so that he can be understood while releasing hardly any breath. "Go... see... if the door... is... unlocked."

Ohhhhh, no... He's asking me to go miles beyond the limit. This is far, far riskier than stretching to the end of my chain during a toilet run to eavesdrop under the door. If the guards catch me trying to get out of the room, they'll do worse than yell at me. They'll do worse than "thump me." This could get me shipped back to the Shouf, or my first prison, or some other place where they can beat me the way they beat Robert Berg, without having to worry about anyone hearing me scream.

What is Allan expecting me to do in the unlikely event that the door is unlocked? Sneak down the hall, past the guards' bedroom, open the apartment door, and make a run for it? Does he want me to sneak around the apartment looking for keys? Guns? This is crazy, he's having Strange Ideas. I'm going to crawl back to my mattress.

"I can't do this," I whisper.

Allan's hand, still on my shoulder, gives me a squeeze. The gesture feels more insistent than encouraging. "One... step... at a time. Just... go... check... the door. Turn... the knob... very... very... very slowly. Then... come back... here." Another squeeze. "You... can... do this."

Allan is dreaming, there is no chance the guards could have been so careless as to leave both my chain and the door unlocked. Or could they? Since the guards know—or think—we're securely chained, they could conceivably let themselves get sloppy about locking the door. Maybe it's left unlocked more often than we realize. Or maybe more often thanI realize, maybe Allan has noticed something I haven't...

However remote the chance that the door is unlocked right now, we have to check. Which means I have to check. I wish it was Allan's chain that had been left unlocked, not mine.

If I find the door is unlocked, maybe I should interpret the improbable coincidence as an act of God, screw my courage to the sticking place, and do whatever Allan's plan calls for next.

Or not. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I inch to the door on my hands and knees, pausing repeatedly to rebuild my courage. I feel light-headed. I arrive. Next stage of danger. I kneel upright, supporting myself with one hand on the wall. I pause again. My free hand, the one I'm going to place on the doorknob, is shaking. I close my fingers slowly, slowly, around the knob. I turn it by tiny increments.

It's turning, it's turning—it stops.

I'm relieved, actually. I'm relieved to be spared the decision of whether or not to lie to Allan.

I crawl back to report. "It's locked."

Allan takes a long, disappointed breath. He tries to put his hand on my shoulder again, but in the darkness he lands on the back of my neck. "You did good anyway," he whispers. He's not pausing between words anymore.

He squeezes my neck. I relish his warm, heavy hand on my skin. "I'm really stressed," I tell him. "Could I just lie down next to you for a while? Until I calm down?"

He doesn't reply right away, but he keeps resting his hand on my neck. "You'd better not. They might hear my chain."

That's... a plausible excuse. But not a convincing one. No guard woke up and came investigating when I rattled my chain taking it off. I'm grateful, I suppose, that Allan is trying to spare my feelings with his semi-honesty. And I'm grateful that he's still willing to touch me the way he's doing now. But I feel spurned. I get it, he's not comfortable having a gay man lie next to him in bed. It's understandable. It also hurts.

I start to turn to crawl away. Allan's hand on my neck holds me in place for a final message. "You have to lock yourself back up. They can't find out."

I crawl back to my mattress. I loop the chain as quietly as I can around my wrist. I thread the padlock through two links. I hesitate, feeling the degradation, the injustice of what I have to do next.

I relinquish my scrap of freedom. I become my own captor. I snap the padlock shut.