The Shattered Lens

by Jonathan Alpeyrie

  Usually Mej was responsible for filling up the water tank, so I offered to do it for him. He told me to go right ahead, happy to have one less chore to do. The plastic cylinder took about twenty minutes to fill up. So as I was transferring the water I looked all around the house, surveying the fence and trees and slopes, and did my best to memorize the whole thing: road here, walking path there, this is where I’ll hide, this is where they’ll come and pick me up, and so on.

  After I filled the water I ran back down and drew two maps on the paper I’d stolen, both maps exactly the same. I drew exactly where we were. I also drew a stick figure of myself . . . the house here . . . the road there . . . the promised land of Lebanon to the west. Then I drew their car with uncle beside it, wearing his baseball cap, indicating exactly where he was supposed to wait for me. I drew little lines to show my path. Then in the upper right of the page I drew a clock face, saying two, with a crescent moon on top, so they’d know it was nighttime. I wrote two in the morning because midnight was too early.

  After I finished the two maps, I kept one on me, again folding it up and tucking it into the cuff of my pants. (I’d eaten the previous note that uncle had given me bit by bit, so as to not leave any evidence.) I hid the second map under a rock beside the house.

  The plan to escape set my mind on fire. I came up with a new idea. I’d stolen some pieces of charcoal and started drawing an encrypted map on the marble balcony looking out toward Lebanon. So just in case the uncle came and I didn’t have any paper on me, I could bring him up to the balcony so he could see the drawing.

  All that creative energy, combined with the heat, the regular shelling, and an already heightened state of paranoia, was causing me to lose my grip on what was real. I had no way of being objective. I didn’t understand the language beyond a few basic words and I had to extrapolate volumes from the little information I got from Fares or Mej. Planning my escape was the only way to keep any focus apart from the brief moments of prayer on the balcony at sunset. But even that prayer was directed at Lebanon, which I could literally see.

  I started walking around the pool like a madman, memorizing over and over how I was going to do this, repeating the plan to myself like a mantra. This path is a hundred and fifty meters. If I’m walking five klicks per hour it will take me about two minutes. Then the plan would ramify as soon as I inserted contingencies. If I take this route it’s going to take me less time but they can see me more. If I go through the orchard it’s longer, but I can hide. But then I have to go through the fence . . .

  I walked around that pool for hours memorizing every minute of my plan to escape. From time to time there would be shelling in the distance and I’d have to remember to go into the house so as not to seem too crazy and raise suspicion, even though I knew a direct hit on the house might be the very thing that allowed me to escape.

  Inside the house, for more than a week, I physically prepared myself for how I was going to escape. I repeated the exit routes dozens, maybe hundreds of times, trying to look casual as I calculated the number of seconds it took to get from my bed to the door. I would walk against the wall to avoid passing in front of the curtain through which they could see movement. I’d walk to the main door, open it, and exit through the little alley to the main porch. One problem was that the door creaked. And they would lock it at night. I solved the problem by taking some olive oil from the kitchen and dripping it onto the hinges. The creaking stopped immediately.

  The alternative to the main door was going through the kitchen and then the back door. I calculated how many seconds it took. They used a tall propane canister to keep the door shut, so I trained myself over and over to move it without actually lifting it off the ground. I would tilt it toward me and roll it once or twice in the sand, then go around it, open the door, walk out, and close the door behind me. Once outside, either I went one way, back toward the orchard, or the other way, alongside the house, then through the alley and onto the porch, after which I’d get out onto the road and either hop in a car or simply run. So I trained up to the porch. But of course I wasn’t allowed outside of the porch and onto the road. To complicate matters, I had to be able to do all this in the middle of the night, when it was dark and there was always the chance of dogs barking at me.

  For days I kept repeating the routine, over and over. But no one seemed to notice. They thought I was going crazy, always walking around the pool, absorbed in my own thoughts. But my behavior was innocuous enough to keep me somewhat invisible.

  * * *

  MEANWHILE, I KEPT WAITING for either uncle or the smuggler to show up again. Then, in the middle of my mad pool laps, the smuggler finally showed up in a beautiful SUV. He milled about the house a bit. When he got a chance to exchange a few words with me, he said, “It didn’t work. But it’s okay, we’re going to make another plan. We have to organize. In a couple of days we’ll come get you again.”

  By this time I didn’t trust him as much. I asked Fares about him, and Fares said, “This man is dirty. Be careful with him.” I started to suspect he might have helped set up my kidnapping in the first place.

  The following day the smuggler came back. But Noor and Abu Faras—the commander of the small unit I hooked up with the day I was kidnapped, the man who in all likelihood organized my kidnapping—had already told me to come with them in their SUV into the mountains. Abu Faras had been appearing more and more during the days I was planning my escape. It only heightened my paranoia. So when I got into the car and sat back, I was convinced that they knew what I was planning. They knew I had maps drawn out, and the smuggler had to be in on it.

  The drive into the mountains took about an hour. Abu Faras sat shotgun and kept looking into the mirror at me. I felt like he could see right through me, that they were just toying with me. It was all about psychological torture now. They were going to let me go through with the plan and hook up with uncle and the smuggler until they could catch me red-handed.

  Once we were well into the mountains, they parked the SUV and led me into a huge cave. That was it, I thought. They were going to execute me right there and dump me in the cave. But Abu Faras didn’t seem to have any bad intentions in his eyes. In fact, he was inordinately friendly.

  Inside the cave I saw two older men who had been digging and were now just resting beside their shovels. Next to them were piles of ceramics and greenish bits of metal. I recognized them immediately as Roman artifacts.

  Abu Faras pointed to odd bits and asked me what they were. Fares must have told them that I had a background in history and archeology and knew about these things. I assumed they were looking to sell the objects for the war effort, so I gave them the thumbs-up to let them know that these objects were valuable. Especially a few coins I’d noticed, on which you could barely make out what looked like the head of an emperor. They went back to at least Byzantine times, if not pre-Christian.

  From the cave we went to the village where Fares was from, which wasn’t far away. I recognized the landscape. As we drove along the dirt road, up and down hills, I saw a white car coming toward us. It was the uncle. Noor and Abu Faras stopped to say hello. Uncle exchanged a few words with them. Then, when he got a chance, he made a discreet gesture to me with his fingers together, which means “wait.” Everything was about waiting and it was slowly driving me insane.

  When we got to our destination, I saw a small house still under construction with a big tent pitched beside it. The car smuggler was there. I looked at him and he greeted me like a long-lost friend. He invited us all to sit and have tea. It seemed like he was trying to talk as much as possible to the others to buy time. While I was in the tent, he came up to me and said, “Let me show you something.” Abu Faras and Noor looked at us very puzzled. We walked away about fifty yards and he pretended to show me the foundations of the house. “We tried to do it the first time,” he said, “but it didn’t work out. We’ll try again.”

  I quickly told him that I had a plan, I’d drawn a map, I could g
ive it to the uncle. But just as I was about to elaborate, Noor and Abu Faras showed up, a bit suspicious because we were speaking English. I couldn’t prolong the talk. It was very frustrating.

  Once we were all back in the tent, the smuggler skillfully managed to lead everybody out. So it was just me and the uncle. He was standing right in front of me and he said, “Bad bokra.” Bokra means tomorrow and bad is after. Just to make sure, I added another day, “Bad bad bokra?” He said no, and corrected me: “Bad bokra”—the day after tomorrow, in forty-eight hours.

  * * *

  WHEN I GOT BACK to the house I waited, still rehearsing my escape every chance I got, just in case the smuggler didn’t show up in forty-eight hours. I waited for him, but this time without too much optimism.

  The forty-eight hours passed and no one had shown up. But a couple of days later the smuggler returned. He came up to me and said, “It’s okay, I’m going to get you out today. I’ll talk to Essad and get you out.” I asked him if he’d been to the French embassy? He said yes, he had, but it was complicated. It sounded like a lie. But I was still willing to grasp at lies.

  He left the house and walked across the road to the headquarters building. On top of the building there was a balcony, and I could see from my window that he really was talking to Essad, so at least he wasn’t lying about that. After his conversation with Number One Man, the smuggler came back to the house and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll get you out.” But he didn’t take me with him in the car.

  I thought of giving him my map, but by now, exhausted from all the paranoia and false alarms, and crippled by so many letdowns, I felt like it would be futile. Something deep down told me I’d never see this man again. And I was right.

  A couple of days later the uncle came back. He was sitting on the porch with Fares, and if I’d ever had any doubts about whether Fares was in on the escape plans, they were dispelled. Fares insisted that his family would try to get me out. At that point I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

  * * *

  RAMADAN STARTED ON JULY 9. I’d already been captive for nearly two and a half months. For the start of the fasting month they had a big get-together at the headquarters and I was invited. We all ate together: soldiers, officers, volunteers.

  I was mentally exhausted: all my escape preparations, the worry that came with it, the disappointments, the lies, and all the underlying fear that at any moment someone could change his mind and have me killed or turned over to a crueler group.

  Eating the hummus and cheese and lamb with the others was the closest thing I had to any sense of community—and that was tenuous at best. But for their part they seemed to accept the presence of this foreigner, this infidel (although Christians were very common in that part of Syria). At times I suspected they’d gotten so used to me that they were reluctant to let me go, like some sort of mascot. Their lives would have lost that tinge of cosmopolitanism had they not been able to say “Hey, Jon . . .” a few times a day.

  Letting me take part in their pre-Ramadan festivities and prayers meant I was in their good graces. After their holy month started, though, I don’t remember any of the men fasting during the day, as Islam required. I assumed men fighting a war were exempt because they needed to keep up their strength. And I know from history that Ramadan has never been a serious impediment to war among Muslims.

  * * *

  BY NOW THE WEATHER was hot. The headquarters building had a pool attached to it. And unlike the pool at the house, this one was now full. The cistern truck that had spent all morning there must have been filling it up.

  Noor brought me over there once and I noticed some of the men were diving in to cool off. I asked Noor if I could go for a swim, pantomiming a breaststroke. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, Why not. I stripped to my boxer shorts and dove in.

  At first I did a whole length of the pool underwater, to block out the world around me. In the water I was in another reality, free—no one could touch me. Then I did a few lengths of freestyle and eventually backstroke. I fell into a good rhythm, looking up at the sky, my breath in sync with my strokes. I noticed the men watching me from the edge of the pool, but as long as I was in the water they didn’t really exist. I swam for at least fifteen minutes. I could have easily gone for an hour but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. This was a privilege I was hoping to repeat.

  When I got out of the water, Noor and the others said, “Very good, Jon. Good swimming.” I’d told Mej that I used to compete in races and played on a water polo team, but this was the first time they saw me in action. He relayed to the others that I was an Olympic swimmer, or some such, and they all nodded in approval. Then one by one they showed me their respective freestyle techniques and asked me to give them pointers. As with most people who don’t swim well, it was a matter of keeping the body perfectly horizontal and synchronizing the breath—both very hard to do if you’ve never been properly trained.

  A few days later, in the late afternoon, Noor came into the TV room and said we had to go. Essad wanted me. We walked up the road to the headquarters and straight to the pool. Everyone was there, and Noor explained to me that Essad didn’t know how to swim. He wanted me to teach him. At that point Number One Man stepped out of the house, a fat hairy lug wearing a ridiculous pair of red and orange Hawaiian-print bathing trunks that came down to his knees. All the others were practically doubled over in laughter until he scowled at them self-consciously.

  He waded into the shallow end. I was already in the water. I urged him to show me what he knew, so he splashed around helplessly. He knew nothing. He would have easily drowned despite the fact that he was built like a buoy.

  I had him lie on his back with my arms underneath so he could get comfortable floating. Once he was relaxed I had him turn over and do a few strokes while I was holding him. Then I stood him up and corrected his arm motions.

  As uncoordinated and out of shape as he was, Essad was determined to wipe away the friendly derision of his men. I stood beside him and studied his strokes, then stood with him to show him what he was doing wrong. I tried to get him to relax, to keep his back parallel to the surface of the water and time his breathing with his strokes—all the while holding him in the water like a baby whale. And like a true warrior he was eventually game to try on his own. With me guiding him ever so slightly, he managed to put together a few steady strokes.

  “Relax,” I explained to him with pantomime. “That’s the key to everything. Don’t tense up everywhere. Only the muscles that need to be tensed.” The others translated what didn’t get through, but I could see Essad was picking it up rather quickly.

  Our swimming session was interrupted when one of the men came to the pool to tell Essad something. Essad lifted himself out of the water like a walrus and told me to come back the following day for a second lesson. In the meantime I was instructed to get dressed.

  Twenty minutes later a man who was obviously some sort of sheikh arrived, accompanied by a soldier. His fat face was framed by a gray beard that somewhat mitigated an idiotic smile on his face. His turban gave him an air of authority, but there was something about his mouth that telegraphed bad breath, even though I wasn’t close enough to detect it. By the way everyone was deferring to him, I understood he had a lot of clout. The soldier accompanying the sheikh took an interest in me and even filmed me a bit with his iPhone. I couldn’t tell if it was just out of curiosity or because he’d been specifically ordered to film the foreigner.

  After that, the sheikh went to talk to Essad alone and I was escorted back to the house where I stayed.

  The next day he was already in the pool warming up when I got there. We worked on his breathing, and he managed to swim back and forth the whole length of the pool on his own. Once he’d figured out that by relaxing he would simply float, you couldn’t get him out of the water.

  I was proud of him. And he was beaming with a sense of accomplishment. I’d never taught anyone how to swim before and it gave me great pleasu
re to offer someone else the sense of freedom that swimming gave me. Of course, I couldn’t help but hope that he would return the favor by setting me free.

  * * *

  IN THEORY, THE SWIMMING lessons should have solidified a certain bond between me and Essad. But I was growing more and more numb by the day. My capture had slow-baked me into a fragile shell that used to hold feelings. I was now just a friable effigy of the person who’d lost his freedom, skittish of flames like a scarecrow would be, grasping at the very straws I was made of to make I don’t know what.

  I latched on to anything that could change my position—though change it to what, I wasn’t sure. I was gradually forgetting what freedom meant, or at least doubting that I’d ever known.

  At about the time that my escape plans had become a perpetual tease, a man came knocking on the door early in the morning. I opened it for him. He had a bag filled with ancient Roman coins that he must have collected from the ruins and caves all around that part of Syria. He was giving them to the rebels so they could sell them in Lebanon and make money for the cause. I took the bag from him and he left. My immediate impulse was to take a fistful of those coins for myself—for when I was freed. So I took about half a dozen and put them in my pocket, then gave the bag with the rest of them to the men when they woke up. I took the coins and placed them under a rock where I’d been hiding shrapnel pieces gathered from around the house. I kept thinking, When I get freed I’m going to take these with me. But what for—as souvenirs, sources of cash? I tried not to ask myself too many questions at this point because I knew that I was already losing my bearings.