The Shattered Lens

by Jonathan Alpeyrie

  I asked Flic where the bathroom was. He pointed and said, “Just go.” He didn’t even walk me. Still cuffed, I went to the bathroom and then washed myself. The old policeman eventually came by to see if I was okay. My ribs were killing me and I winced with every breath. I saw him in the mirror and could tell he felt bad about it.

  I went back and talked to Fares for a few hours. Flic was also there and he didn’t say anything. He just sat smoking. I asked about the progress of the war, where the enemy was. And among the questions I’d casually drop one like, “Why do you think they brought me here?” Fares kept his responses vague enough to give the impression he knew little, but I got the sense that what little he did know involved me being part of some deal. And by the way his eyes looked downward I also got a sense that he wasn’t entirely optimistic.

  He noticed I was in pain and asked what had happened. I explained to him that Abu Talal had challenged me to a wrestling match. Fares didn’t seem at all surprised.

  Flic offered me cigarettes as he watched TV. One after another, like he wanted company smoking. Fares didn’t smoke and I couldn’t keep up with Flic. I was on the verge of passing out from exhaustion. I’d been in that other house for three weeks, blindfolded. Here it was just me, Fares and Flic—no one else. So I was very hopeful as I crumpled into the couch with my hands still cuffed.

  * * *

  I WOKE UP the next morning and saw everyone from the Dark House surrounding me. Mentally, my universe collapsed. Whatever hope had wormed its way into me while smoking cigarettes with Flic dissipated in the daylight. I almost wanted to be blindfolded again so I wouldn’t have to look at their crusty mugs.

  Almost. Because as soon as I looked outside the window and saw the sun, I knew I could regain some of my psychic strength, and one way or another that would lead me to a way out of there.

  In the daylight I got a better look at the location. We were in a fairly large compound, about a hundred yards by eighty. There was the house in which we stayed and an adjacent swimming pool, which was empty. The compound was surrounded by a cement wall along the road, and the wall turned into a fence as it wrapped around the back of the house. Behind the house was an orchard of apricot trees, and the land sloped downward to the west, where you could see the Qalamoun Mountains on the border with Lebanon about a dozen miles away.

  They put me in the room next to the TV room and chained me up to the bars on the window, a long chain so I could sleep better. But every time I moved you could hear it. Sometimes when I needed to piss I’d rattle the chains out of frustration and make a lot of noise so they would come to me.

  One of the windows in my room looked east onto the road. On the other side there were twin villas, apparently built by two brothers to house their families. One of them hadn’t been occupied for a while because it had taken a direct tank hit.

  Farther up the road was a four-story building with an empty swimming pool. I later learned that the building was being used as a headquarters by the rebels holding me. From my window I could also see the main entrance to our house.

  There were plenty of new faces in this new location. One was Noor, the man in charge of the house. He was in his early thirties, balding, with a thick black beard and big crazy eyes. He’d created a little garden of potatoes and salads in the yard and spent a lot of his time tending to it.

  Then there was Rabiyah, a skinny kid in his twenties who usually did the cooking. We ate a lot of potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants fried in a rather disgusting cooking oil—which I assumed was vegetal rather than industrial, though I couldn’t be sure. In the kitchen there was a propane canister for the single-burner stove where the meals were prepared. They were very fattening, and I could feel myself gaining weight each day, which I needed because the three weeks blindfolded had stressed me to the point where my appetite had started to wane.

  Another guy living in the house was Mahmoud, a short, stocky man who actually looked like a Westerner. There were so many Mahmouds that I referred to him in my mind as Pech, because his weapon of choice was a Russian-made PKP “Pecheneg” machine gun. He was very friendly with me and explained how his wife was in a refugee camp in Lebanon with their children, but he had to fight. When I first asked Pech about his weapon, he lay on his back to show me how he liked to shoot at passing MiG jets.

  In those first days at the new house there were weapons and ammunition in every room, all over, including the Pecheneg and RPG launchers. At one point, just a few days after I’d arrived, I was in my room, and the Pecheneg was there, fully loaded with the belt cartridge and ready to go. I knew I could just pick it up and mow everyone down in a few seconds. There was also Mej’s RPG, which was harder to use and less effective for my purposes, but ready nonetheless.

  I quickly assessed where everyone in the house was. There were only four or five people. But there were people in the houses across the street. I hadn’t been to the headquarters yet, so I didn’t know how many people were there. There was a car in the gate, but I wasn’t sure where the keys were. I could see a dirt road heading west, and I assumed it would eventually lead to the Lebanese border.

  I could have grabbed the loaded Pecheneg and pulled a Rambo—taken out the two men in the next room, snatched an AK-47 and a 9 mm pistol, shot through my cuffs, and made a run for the Lebanese border. It would have been spectacular, worthy of a Hollywood action-hero movie. But it was pure fantasy.

  I’d never fought in a war or shot at people. But I’d already seen enough combat situations to know that such acts of heroism are rarely choreographed. Rather, they tend to spring up from a chaotic maelstrom—the proverbial fog of war. I hadn’t thought out my escape, at least not in any realistic way. And as soon as I started to think about how to mow everyone down—with no previous training—I knew it wouldn’t happen. Such skills come from training and repetition aimed at developing muscular memory. Professional soldiers are drilled to confront danger and cut it off. Repetition combined with indoctrination make that attitude second nature. On top of all that, with my ribs still broken the heavy breathing involved in any run would have been painful to the point of paralysis.

  Over the years, by dint of sheer curiosity, I may have developed a second nature to walk into danger, but I didn’t have the muscle memory when it came to handling weapons. I’d need to develop a plan, an escape route, work it out in my mind, and imagine it over and over.

  Shortly after I began imagining my escape, they moved the weapons out of my room. It was as if they could see me studying their potential.

  * * *

  I LIKED TALKING TO FARES. With me he’d build up his French and English vocabulary, and I’d learn some Arabic. The men would greet each other with “Shlaunak.”

  Fares wasn’t a fighter. He just volunteered to help those who did fight. He talked about his student days before the war in Damascus, where he studied French and engineering. He and Mej got along well, so that little alliance helped keep Baby Donkey at bay, who always risked becoming a nuisance. My world was confined to that room, and I wanted to ensure that the vibes in there were as sympathetic to me as possible. My ribs still ached and I needed to focus on them healing. But that wasn’t always easy since this new house saw a lot of traffic and men would walk in and out looking at me very suspiciously.

  As I sat on my mattress, chained to the window, I noticed that the red paint above my feet had flaked off in places, creating little patches by exposing the previous layer of white. Out of boredom I started scraping some of the looser bits off. There was one little patch that had the shape of Syria. I imagined I was looking at a map and following a time-lapse progression of territory being conquered by the rebel forces. In my own fantasy universe I visualized a victory for these men holding me captive. Slowly the areas to the east of Homs and Hama would get flaked off and fall into rebel hands. Then, from the northern part of the country, near Aleppo, the rebels would push southward, and even encroach on the Alawite stronghold of Latakia and the coast. I chipped away sectio
ns with my fingernails till all that was left was a little rump state run by Bashar al-Assad.

  But I knew that was wishful thinking. What seems clear-cut and simple when you analyze a political situation from behind a desk starts flaking apart as soon as you hit the ground and get mixed up in the mud and rubble of so many conflicting aspirations.

  I remembered the first time I’d been to the Syrian combat zone, in the summer of 2012. I was with a Greek journalist, Giorgos Moutafis, and we crossed over the northern border from Turkey. After spending a week and a half in northern Syria we ended up staying two days in the worst part of an enclave, holed up with a dozen or so rebels trying to contain whatever government troops there were. The fighting was very intense, getting closer and closer. I no longer felt comfortable because I didn’t trust the rebels’ tactical sense. They kept saying how everything was okay. But I didn’t buy it. Giorgos and I discussed bailing out. Then we were attacked in a raid by government troops and all the rebels just rushed out of the house, basically leaving us to fend for ourselves. We had to make a decision quickly and it was hard to understand what was going on since very few people spoke English. When the fighters came back they said they’d pushed Bashar’s troops back. But now there were twelve tanks five hundred yards away and we had no idea how these rebels would react to another assault, so we decided to leave.

  I found out later that, about twelve hours after we’d left, our entire position had been destroyed.

  We wound up walking to the Turkish border with a wave of refugees. It was a real scoop for us because up to that time there were very few pictures of refugees fleeing. Most of the images had come from the camps across the border. There were many children and at one point I had to carry one of them because they slowed everyone down. Then they had to put us on a truck to speed everything up. We walked through the mountains with them to the Turkish border, but eventually we had to split up because the refugees at the border could just go to the Turkish army and get channeled through, whereas journalists had to be smuggled back into Turkey illegally so as not to get deported and possibly blacklisted.

  At that point in the war, after it first broke out, people were predicting the quick overthrow of Bashar and the rise of a new Sunni-dominated government, probably linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was supported by Turkey and had just come to power in Egypt. Even Western countries were considering arming the rebels. Over time, the United States and the West would choose not to support the rebels too enthusiastically, partly because they just assumed the rebels would overwhelm the Bashar regime with sheer numbers and partly because of concerns that they were becoming increasingly Islamist. That resulted in foreign policy paralysis.

  From my point of view, I could see how ragtag these fighters were. All I had to do was take a look at Baby Donkey’s dim-witted expression. Our positions were getting hit by heavy artillery, helicopters, even jets. The Alawites backing Bashar may have been outnumbered, but they knew they would probably be massacred if they lost, so you could be sure they would fight to the death. Moreover, the area we were in was already having to deal with Hezbollah, the well-organized and battle-hardened Shia troops from Lebanon who supported Bashar militarily and were financed by Iran, the country that had created Hezbollah back in the 1980s.

  Many of the rebels had already become disillusioned. Fares kept asking me when France and America would set up a no-fly zone, like they had done in Libya. I tried not to be too pessimistic, but I’d been to Libya less than two years earlier, right before Muammar Gaddafi was killed. From the ground it looked highly unlikely that those rebels could bring order to a country like Libya—full of tribal rivalries—without some colonial power stepping in. And none of the NATO powers that bombed Gaddafi’s forces were even remotely inclined to occupy that tar baby. So based on the Libya experience it was clear that Barack Obama, who was gun-shy to begin with, would look for any excuse to stay out of Syria. I didn’t want to put it so bluntly to Fares, but I knew they were on their own. And from the continual shelling getting closer and closer, it felt like it would be a long, drawn-out war.

  * * *

  AFTER TEN DAYS, they stopped tying me up during the day and would only cuff me at night. Most of the soldiers were just kids and the war was wearing on them. They wanted a sense of normality. Having a tall foreigner chained up in the house must have struck them all as a bit awkward. If he’s a prisoner or hostage, then you bring him to an isolated room and interrogate him, after which you lock him up. It wouldn’t have been unusual because I’d occasionally see them taking prisoners to the house across the road, or to a room below mine in the one where we were staying. I could even hear the interrogations: crying, pleading, beating, and then, when the dogs started barking, the full-on screaming. In short, torture.

  But I’d been with Mej and Abu Talal and even Baby Donkey long enough to have garnered at least a modicum of sympathy out of them, and it probably disturbed them to see me sulk and brood in the room. If I were a fresh hostage—and therefore less human—they could beat me with little remorse. But I was gradually seeping into the fabric of their existence. I represented the world beyond the war, and they were reluctant to antagonize that world. So they let me roam somewhat free through the compound, at least during the day.

  I’d lie by the empty pool and take my shirt off to get some sun, letting my leg dangle off the edge. We were already past mid-May and the weather was getting hotter. You could see apricots ripening on the branches throughout the orchard. The sun on my face and the faint smell of slightly burnt skin felt miraculous. It picked up my mood like a drug. Like everything was going to be all right. In a strange way these were my brothers-in-arms. We were in this together, on the same side, and whether they realized it or not our well-being was intimately connected. Or at least that’s what I told myself.

  Those first few hours of sun made me giddy, like when I was six years old on the beach in Normandy and had just discovered the sea at Madame Poudardin’s vacation colony for the first time and listened to the waves while walking below the cliffs. I felt so good there by the pool because I could actually see something beyond my mind conjuring all sorts of unseemly fates and unlikely escapes.

  Then the novelty wore off. It was like a drug, and I soon needed more. After a few days, lying by the pool and sucking in the sun just didn’t cut it anymore.

  Now that I could see the lay of the land, my escape fantasies whittled down to more realistic scenarios. I noticed there were two big white dogs (I was never sure if they were the ones I would hear during the interrogations). If I ever hoped to run away from there I’d have to make sure the dogs became my friends and didn’t bark at me. Occasionally I’d give them bits of food or offer to feed them. I’d pet them, scratch their necks, and get them used to my presence.

  At times I’d test my captors to gauge how far they’d let me go. Behind the house there was a cherry tree that gave me cover. I figured I’d put a chair down and sit beneath it to see what their reactions were. Sometimes they wouldn’t say anything; other times they would grab me and throw me back in the house. Or they would call to me and point at the building down the road, as if to say it’s not cool to sit there because people could see from the top floor and they were always watching. I tested them to see how far I could go with my freedom.

  Soon I started just walking for hours. I’d get myself so tired that I’d pass out at night. It would take me about five minutes to walk the perimeter. Then it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard any of my own music in weeks. All I had was the dross coming off the TV—pop and Arabic songs. My computer had hundreds of tracks with an emphasis on hard rock, especially bands like Uriah Heep, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. So, as I started walking, the Scorpions song “Still Loving You” welled up spontaneously from my lungs: “Time, it needs time to win back your love again . . .”

  I was in between serious relationships when I left for Syria, so there was no woman I was particularly pining for, which oddly enough made the lyrics ev
en more poignant because it became an anthem to my lost freedom.

  As I repeated my Scorpions mantra, I eventually overstepped my bounds. I’d started out by the brick barbecue oven where they often cooked and walked down the side of the house, continuing along the fence. Usually I’d turn back at one point, but this time I kept going, to get a little farther from sight. Suddenly Mej and another guy, who were sitting in the orchard, started calling me and waving. I came back and they were very angry. They grabbed me, brought me to the TV room, and chained me up as punishment.

  * * *

  I ALWAYS TRIED to make the best of my punishment. Here at the new house I could at least look out the window and imagine. Otherwise I could continue scraping the red paint.

  There was a patch that vaguely resembled the shape of Germany after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, with East Prussia as an exclave of Germany. I started chipping away at the gains the Third Reich made during World War II. First I chipped off Austria, which was annexed by Germany in the Anschluss of 1938. Then I lifted a sliver of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, which was easier. After that I scratched off the Danzig Corridor and started dividing Poland by gradually flicking off significant paint chips. It was a bold move at the time—signing a secret pact with Stalin—and now, with our historical perspective and access to so many archives, we know that Hitler’s plan was to colonize all the Soviet lands up to the Ural Mountains.

  Then came the invasion of France. As I chipped away at the French border my uncle Theo came to mind. Theo was probably my first encounter with a real war hero. I met him several times when I was a kid and my father would take us to the South of France. My childhood was filled with stories of his exploits and he became a cornerstone of my own personal mythology.