Well, he’s certainly talking like a spy. “Human intelligence.” At this moment, as I think about the possibility that my father could have been saved and wasn’t, humans seem pretty fucking stupid to me.
THEN
November 2014
I opened my eyes, rolled out of bed half-conscious, and grabbed my phone to check Twitter, as I usually do first thing in the morning. Being a journalist means you have to monitor the news pretty much every waking hour. It was Sunday, November 16, 2014. My boyfriend Jeremy was still sound asleep next to me.
I looked at my phone and immediately burst into tears. Jeremy sat up, alarmed.
“Baby, baby,” he said sleepily. “What’s wrong? Calm down.”
“He’s dead,” I gasped between sobs. “They killed Pete.”
It was a little over a year after ISIS stole my friend from the world. Until October 2014, everyone in his circle, who were mostly journalists, had observed a complete media blackout of his kidnapping; meaning that no reporter with a conscience would have touched the story. We were told that was the best way to make Pete less valuable to his captors, which made sense to me, given that my father was the most-publicized, longest-held U.S. hostage in history. But then ISIS released a video of British aid worker Alan Henning’s beheading. After they had killed Henning, they pointed the camera at a slight young man clad in the orange jumpsuit the terrorists used as a cruel mockery of the Guantánamo Bay prison uniforms. They threatened to end Pete’s life if the U.S.-led airstrikes against them didn’t stop.
I couldn’t watch the Henning video. Apart from not wanting to witness poor Alan Henning’s life end so brutally, I couldn’t see another person I loved thin, wasted, and powerless. Some news outlets published screenshots, though, and those were enough.
Suddenly everyone wanted to know all about Peter Kassig, the new ISIS hostage. A handful of his friends, including me, wrote about our relationship with him in hopes of sending a message to his captors. I published an essay, knowing it would get a lot of publicity because of who my father is. We all called Pete “Abdul-Rahman” in our writing, because we knew he had taken that name when he converted to Islam at some point during his captivity. We were clinging to any reason they might let him live.
The essay did as well as expected, and I got lots of interview requests, which I turned down. As well intentioned as we all were, Pete’s family didn’t want any of us going on TV and saying something that could upset their efforts to free him. But of course, the second his death was announced, every outlet I had rejected and many more wanted to talk to the daughter of Terry Anderson about her friend who had just been beheaded by ISIS. That’s how I found out Pete was dead. I looked at my phone and saw all the e-mail notifications from journalists asking me for interviews. In that moment, I hated us all.
I knew I would only talk to the media about my friend once. Apart from the emotional exhaustion of giving multiple interviews about something like that, I wasn’t about to ride Pete’s death to publicity as I’d seen other “hostage friends” do. I went on Anderson Cooper so that people would know how wonderful Pete was and said no to all the other news organizations.
Josh and I traveled to Indianapolis a few days later for Pete’s memorial service. I met his parents at his childhood home. The photographs of a young, grinning Pete all over the house pressed into me like thumbtacks.
As we were preparing dinner after his memorial service, Pete’s mother, Paula, told me that while he was in captivity, my friend would make game pieces out of tinfoil and play chess with the other hostages, just like my father did—exactly the way I had described to Pete on the night we first met. Learning that detail broke something inside me. I held on to her and we both cried.
The next couple of months were not easy. Jeremy and I had discovered I was pregnant right before Pete died, which would have been great—unexpected, but great—were it not for the fact that the psych meds I was on pretty much guaranteed the baby would not be in good condition if I carried it to term. I had to have an abortion, and I couldn’t get the little phantom image of the child we could have had out of my mind. When my friend died, I melted down a little for a while. No terribly self-destructive behaviors—just a lot of crying and trailing a mental finger across old scars, tracing the outlines of the places that used to hurt.
Obviously, I didn’t watch the video of Pete’s execution either, but the inevitable media analysis pointed out that he wasn’t shown giving one of those scripted speeches before he died, as the other hostages were. Pete’s supposed executioner, “Jihadi John,” as the media dubbed him, made a comment about how Pete didn’t have much to say, and they cut straight to his decapitated head. I read that the other hostages, like James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Henning, were compliant before their deaths because the murderous bastards who killed them forced them to act out mock executions many times before they died. They had no reason to think the last time would be different from the others, so they didn’t resist.
But the general consensus was that Pete had fought back, and he was likely shot in the head before they desecrated his body. I remembered something Josh had told me after Pete was taken; during one of their many conversations about what they would do if they were kidnapped, Pete said something prescient:
“If they take me, I’m going to fuck up their beheading video. I’ll punch one of them in the face and yell, ‘Obama, legalize it!’”
I knew Pete had lived up to his promise, minus the joke about weed, which I’m including to give a sense of who he was as a whole person, not just the one-dimensional posthumous portrayal you can read in the news. Pete was incredibly noble and self-sacrificing; none of that has been exaggerated in the slightest. He was also hilarious. I thought about him punching one of those disgusting human beings in the face and felt so proud of my friend I could barely hold the feeling inside my body.
My year up to that point had been strange, exciting, and painful all at once. The borderline treatment center was a valuable experience, but the best thing that came out of it was the referral they gave me as I was being discharged. I finally found a shrink I couldn’t bullshit, and he showed me things about my mind I’d been completely unaware of.
One of the most useful concepts he taught me is called splitting, a common thought pattern among people with BPD. It occurs when one hasn’t developed the psychological skills to bring together positive and negative ideas of oneself and other people. It’s also known as black-and-white thinking, and it’s characterized by conceiving of oneself and others as either good or bad (respectively), with no understanding of nuance. Once he explained it, I realized it was something I had struggled with since before I hit puberty.
For example, in my relationship with my mother, I either thought of myself as worthless, disgusting, and inadequate and of her as a paragon, or I’d despise her as a monster who had ruined my life while I was the perfect child. I couldn’t grasp the concept that Mama was a flawed human being who had made many mistakes—including unconsciously raising me with a belief that she was infallible and I was incompetent—but she had in turn been raised with an unhealthy pattern of interacting with the world. She also has many wonderful qualities and adores me past reason. Mama is a complex person; not simply good or bad, but like most of us, a little of both.
The same goes for Dad. I learned to stop vacillating between thinking of him as a hapless victim of circumstance or a terrible father who didn’t care about me. I realized Dad was both a good man who loved me and he also hadn’t been a particularly effective father. I started to understand that many of my parents’ behaviors, which I had always interpreted as responses to my deficiency, were actually a product of their own unhealthy thought patterns.
I saw that I had always engaged in splitting during my relationships with men, which led to an intensity and tumultuousness that alarmed many of the more stable ones and caused things between us to burn out quickly. Those who fed off that dynamic were usually pretty messed up themselves. I ha
d never really dated in a healthy way, with a sense of self that wasn’t warped or insubstantial.
My doctor also taught me to critically examine my own role in all my relationships, a process less about blame than about honesty and self-awareness. I learned how to be curious about myself without being judgmental. I saw that I had always held two distinct people inside me: a lonely child of seven desperate to be held and comforted, and an independent, strong woman in her twenties who would constantly berate the little girl. Shut up, stop whining. You’re pathetic, grow up. As I began to heal, those two parts of myself stopped battling and began to integrate.
I also learned that years of therapy had left me with a sense that I was much more fucked up than I really am. My doctor pointed out that I had managed to get through college and grad school despite everything, build a promising career, and make huge strides, both psychologically and professionally, in the last couple of years. It was a revelation: I wasn’t broken. Maybe I had never been more than a bit cracked and chipped. And really, who isn’t?
All of these realizations were extremely calming, a new sensation for me. I finally managed to start forgiving my parents as well as myself for the way things turned out with us, and my love for them became less tangled and confusing. I would look at myself in the mirror and see someone worthwhile, capable, and resilient. It felt like coming home to a house I’d only ever been inside while dreaming.
One day I asked my doctor what my exact diagnosis was at that point in my treatment. He looked at me thoughtfully.
“You certainly used to have borderline personality disorder,” he told me. “But I wouldn’t diagnose you with it now. You don’t fit the criteria anymore.”
I was stunned. BPD had been such an integral part of my identity for so long; I scarcely knew how to understand myself without it. But I thought about what it was like at the bottom of the endless, light-swallowing cyclone of shame that had trapped me during my worst moments. I remembered how completely devoid of hope I used to be; how impossible this moment had seemed at the time.
I wasn’t “cured.” That doesn’t actually ever happen, to me or to anyone, really. But I knew I was becoming a whole person, and I cried, not out of sadness. My tears were the mountain-scaling, race-finishing kind.
I met Jeremy at the end of April 2014, on a dating app, of all places. He told me he had grown up Orthodox Jewish and lived in Israel when he was younger. I said I was half-Lebanese and worked as a journalist in Beirut. His response was all I needed to say yes to a date.
“Hey, that’s cool,” he sent me in a message. “Let’s do it on the Temple Mount.”
Our relationship didn’t begin without some hitches. I wasn’t the only one who had developed ineffective behaviors over the years. Jeremy spent most of his life pretending to be someone else: a devout Orthodox Jew. He was married at twenty, had a child, and suddenly found himself trapped in a world that still felt like an alien planet to him. Although he never stopped being a great dad to his son, he left his wife and the Orthodox community a couple of years before we met—something I felt took an extraordinary amount of bravery. But over many years he had developed two distinct personalities as well, and it made things difficult for a while. He had trouble being honest with me at first, and given my trust issues, that was not easy to overcome.
Nonetheless, by June, we realized we had fallen in love. I could see him changing, becoming more sincere and open. I began to let him in more and more as I learned to believe he would not hurt me. It was the first time I had ever allowed a man to see everything about me instead of just certain aspects of who I was. I was half-stunned to realize my imperfections didn’t chase him away, that he loved even the parts of me I was most ashamed of.
But there was also the fact that we’d been raised with two completely different worldviews. My opposition to Israeli policies in the Middle East and his Zionist upbringing caused many clashes at the start of our relationship. But we both felt strongly that what we believed and where we came from didn’t change our human connection with each other.
That June, in the midst of the 2014 Gaza War, a friend asked us to take part in a small campaign meant to promote dialogue between both sides of the conflict. We snapped a picture of us kissing while we held a sign that said JEWS AND ARABS REFUSE TO BE ENEMIES, which was the name of the campaign. I posted the photo on Twitter with the caption He calls me neshama, I call him habibi. Love doesn’t speak the language of occupation. Neshama means “my soul” in Hebrew; habibi means “my darling” in Arabic.
Two days later, my tweet went viral. We were suddenly all over the news and I was drowning in interview requests. The campaign exploded with dozens of other Arab-Jewish couples, families, and friends sending in photos holding the same sign. I wrote about the campaign and gave interviews at first, because I believed strongly that we needed to encourage empathy in the face of such violence and dehumanization, and that the best way to do so was through social media.
It was a very moving experience, and it often made me feel hopeful. But it was also weird and unpleasant some of the time; I was called a publicity whore and worse. After a while I took it hard and stopped giving interviews. Name-calling aside, I felt strange becoming “famous,” even briefly, for an impulsive photo of me kissing my boyfriend, regardless of the intent behind it.
I doubt many people even remember the campaign now; such is the nature of viral phenomena. But for just a moment, I had a voice in this discussion. I still sometimes look at the other photos people posted for the campaign: an Israeli-Palestinian gay couple, two parents and a child, other interracial couples kissing. I see them and know we helped build something brief but beautiful.
Funnily enough, my father played a huge role in bringing Jeremy and me closer together in our understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Shortly after the campaign, Dad was visiting me and we had an introductory dinner. My mother had immediately loved Jeremy upon meeting him, which was pretty momentous, considering she almost universally hated every boyfriend I brought home. But Dad was different, for obvious reasons, and I remember being quite nervous. I was worried my father would make an insensitive comment or that Jeremy would inadvertently offend him. Instead, I watched in disbelief as they sat and talked for hours about every topic imaginable.
Of course, the conversation inevitably turned to Israel and Palestine. Jeremy said something irritating and I jumped in to argue with him, but Dad immediately cut me off.
“Sulome,” he said sharply. “Butt out. I’ll handle this.”
The next thing I knew, Jeremy was being thoroughly schooled. Because he was so impressed by my father’s experience and knowledge of the Middle East, he barely put up a fight as Dad patiently explained why much of what Jeremy had been taught to believe about this conflict was simply factually inaccurate. I sat back and watched my father change my boyfriend’s mind—something I had tried to do for months with little success—and realized Dad was . . . well, kind of a badass. Afterward, Jeremy looked somewhat stunned, as if he didn’t know what had hit him.
“Babe,” he said to me after Dad left. “Your father is the most fascinating person I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “You know what? Me too.”
10. THE RELEASE
The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.
—DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
NOW
Nobody does pompous like a retired Lebanese army officer.
I’m eating lunch at the Le Gray Hotel in downtown Beirut, listening to him tell me things about my father’s kidnapping that I already know. I can’t identify him, but he used to be about as high up as you can go in the Lebanese army during the eighties—in other words, he’s a solid source.
He’s barely letting me get a word in edgewise. It’s hot as fuck outside and I had an unpleasant interaction with a taxi driver on my way here as we sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic. He wouldn’t turn on the AC until I threatened not to pay him, after which he drove
slowly in sullen silence, making me late for my appointment. The officer is obviously unaccustomed to waiting for people, so the interview is off to a rocky start. I try to stifle my irritation as he lectures me about how Iran is responsible for all of Lebanon’s woes—it’s exactly the kind of oversimplification and lack of nuance that characterizes most political discussion about the Middle East.
The army officer does provide some insight into the difficulties faced by the Lebanese government in wartime. The little country was caught up in proxy wars that involved much more powerful governments such as America, Iran, and Israel. Because of Lebanon’s fractured nature, every sect was affiliated with a foreign sponsor, a state of affairs that continues to this day, at the expense of nationalism. Lebanese politicians are still usually too busy nursing their bitter little vendettas against each other and pursuing the interests of other nations to consider what’s best for their country.
He also tells me how he witnessed the stormy relationship between U.S. officials and the Mossad during the Islamic Jihad’s terror spree, adding further credence to the theory that Israel had intelligence on the kidnappings and chose not to share it with the United States.
“I met with a U.S. delegation to find out what had happened to Buckley about three days after he was kidnapped,” the officer explains. “I said Buckley was in the Anjar camp but we didn’t have details and weren’t a hundred percent sure. So I told them the Israelis could help because they had a secret service in Barouk and they knew everything that was happening in the area. [The Americans] went to Israel. They came back and one of them told me the Israelis were very impolite, very unhelpful, and he was shocked. So was I. I told him, ‘You give them billions of dollars a year.’”
He pauses to sip his drink.
“When I met William Casey, he was very angry with the Israelis,” the officer remarks. “He called them sons of bitches and said they were watching Americans die.”
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