by Sam Farran
Abeer says that after some surprisingly pleasant conversation, this uncle of Abd el-Malik al-Houthi went to pick up his phone, as if he were going to make some calls or perhaps issue the magic order to free me. But the phone rang right then, right in his hand, even as he was dialing it, and everything seemed to stop in the room.
Abd el-Malik’s uncle looked at Abeer, his eyes narrowing to slits.
“No,” he said, still holding the receiver of the phone to his mouth. “No, we can’t release your friend Mr. Sam. We still need to interrogate him.”
That was the first and only confirmation that Abeer received about my location, my captors, or even the fact that I was alive. But it was crucial.
She knew who had me.
She knew that I was alive.
With my mother’s efforts having stalled—after such a promising start through Nabih Berri to the leadership of Hezbollah—I believe my family felt a breath of fresh air, relief just to know I was alive and had been located, and that someone had the keys to let me go, even if they—the Houthis—were still unwilling to do so. Abeer had discovered a starting place, a piece of information that could be sent back through official channels in order to lend oomph to whatever negotiations were under way for my release.
Abeer says she doesn’t know whom that call came from, but she guesses it must have been someone high up, perhaps even Abd el-Malik himself, since the uncle’s opinion and stance changed so much, and since, other than the Houthi leader himself, probably only a few people would be willing to countermand that uncle.
But I have a different theory. Looking back on it, I think this all occurred exactly at the same time that Scott made his confession, exactly at the same time that I was getting my worst grilling about Scott and about Transoceanic. I think the call came from the interrogators at the prison and that renewed suspicions based on Scott’s confession may have ruined an early opening for a release.
What’s more, from this point forward, the Houthis and their partners in the NSB started treating Abeer more like a hostile player.
“What’s in the bottle?” one of them asked. “Is it really medicine?”
Abeer tried to point to the label, clearly stating that it was, indeed, critical heart medicine, showing them and explaining the contents and my need for the medicine for what felt like the twentieth time. But they didn’t care. Now they let their suspicions and imaginations run wild.
“Is it poison? Cyanide pills? Are you trying to smuggle this in to Mr. Sam so he will be silenced, so that he can kill himself and not spill American secrets? Are you working for the CIA?”
They took the pills (and never gave them to me, as evidenced by the heart attack I had a few weeks later!). From that point on, the Houthis blacklisted Abeer as well. When she showed up at the headquarters building, they wouldn’t see her. Sometimes they’d let her into the waiting rooms (such was the treatment of a woman and especially the daughter and niece of powerful men), but if anyone saw her, it was either for another round of interrogation or just to placate her. Never again did she have the chance to meet and plead with the sort of senior leadership who could have done something for me.
But she kept coming back, over and over, all throughout my time in prison.
And, in fact, even after I was let go, they still held a grudge against her, planning to pick her up and take her to prison the day after I was at last freed. Fortunately for her (and us), she had snuck away—heading first to Amman, then to Egypt, on the pretense of seeking medical treatment for her grandmother, going along as her grandmother’s nurse and helper. Hers was the very last commercial flight that left Sana’a before the Saudi coalition grounded Yemenia. From that day on, no one could get in or out of Sana’a, as all the air carriers had ceased operating or were prevented from flying by the coalition, and the ports and harbors were blockaded.
▪ ▪ ▪
ON THE 120TH DAY since I’d been thrown into the NSB prison, a new thing happened. Our guards came, opened up the cell door, and instead of taking one of us for questioning (and beating), they handcuffed us altogether, blindfolded us, led us from the room, and—with more chains and locks—cuffed us together en masse with a larger group lined up against a wall in the hallway. This made us nervous. Everyone felt it, that nervousness. New and different didn’t mean—in fact seemed highly unlikely to mean—anything good.
Are they transporting us to a new facility?
Has something happened to this prison?
Is an attack on Sana’a imminent?
Are they ridding themselves of us, like the Nazis did as American and Soviet forces seized their concentration camps? Will we be shot with these chains binding us all together? Dumped in a mass grave, unknown and unknowable, made to disappear?
But none of that happened. (Later we learned that they had decided, for whatever reason, to check the cells for contraband, all at once, with all us prisoners vacated from the premises.)
They simply took us outside, into the sunshine, and made us sit with our backs against a courtyard wall. Then they instructed us to take off our blindfolds.
Sunshine and fresh air for the first time in 120 days!
At first the brightness, and also the freshness, hurt the eyes and seemed to scour the nose after our confinement in the dank concrete darkness for so long. Thrust out there, suddenly, with no warning, no preparation, you see the sun, but your brain takes time to adjust, time to see straight again, and even more time—after that—to believe and not fear what you are seeing and sensing.
As my eyes adjusted, I looked around and drank in my surroundings—hoping for but not finding a clue as to where we were. The place looked like the totally nondescript, moderately large courtyard of a moderately large building, just like a hundred or even a thousand other government buildings in and around Sana’a. On one side, where we propped our backs, the wall formed an L-shaped protrusion, perhaps fifteen by twenty meters. On the other side, a hill, or a cut in a hillside, or even perhaps a manmade berm, twenty-five or thirty feet high, created a barrier and prevented us from seeing anything beyond the building and the sky directly above that little enclosed space.
The building was three stories tall, without too many windows, just a couple looking down into the courtyard. The door we came out of remained the only one I could see, though I was sure a couple more must exist on the other side, as it appeared we had been given this bit of freedom at the back, enclosed, hidden end of the building. The ground beneath us was composed of cement for a certain distance around the building, a first few feet, then became gravel. I did not see a fence, though it would have been tough to climb the berm and impossible to escape the five or six armed guards who watched us, even if we weren’t still chained together.
The idea of escape flitted through my mind, sure, just as it probably did for all of us. But no one acted on it. We all seemed content enough to admire the patch of sky above us, a truly beautiful blue. No clouds marred it, just a blue brightness almost frightful in its radiance.
As I lowered my eyes from the heavens, I saw Haitham and the others from my first cell. I nodded to them in recognition and smiled.
More importantly by far, though, for the first time in 120 days I saw Scott Darden.
He sat against the opposite side of the L-shaped wall. Almost without thinking of possible repercussions, I asked the guard, “Is it okay if I go sit next to him and talk to him?”
The guard thought for a moment but then said okay and uncuffed me from the chain-gang mass. He guided me to a spot next to Scott and rechained me back to the main line of grouped men. By that time I was so weak that I presented absolutely no threat to the guards. I think that made it easier for them to grant my request. I’d also been interrogated so much that they had gotten what they wanted out of me, out of Scott too, and I don’t think they felt overly concerned that we might collude in our stories or hatch any sort of plan.
As I was led over to him, and as I sat and looked at Scott and he looked at me, we st
arted crying, hugging, then crying more, hugging more, a sort of affection I never would have expected to share with him 120 days previously, when we were both simply employees of the same company.
We started talking all at once, both of us at the same time: What’s going on? What happened? What will the future hold? What’s the possibility of being released?
After a moment Scott’s pale face took on a serious expression, and he held me at arm’s length, both of his hands on my shoulders, looking me in the eyes. “I don’t know, Sam,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get released. I think they know too much about me. I don’t think they’ll ever let me go.”
▪ ▪ ▪
I DIDN’T KNOW THIS at the time, but more third-party attempts to obtain my release were being made by various groups. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the US Embassy didn’t do much, at least not officially. It was the Omanis who began negotiating with the Houthis for my release on behalf of the US government, though the US government couldn’t say they were doing anything, even through a proxy.
The US government didn’t, and still doesn’t, officially recognize the Houthis, making it hard for them to negotiate. How do you negotiate without first recognizing the other party’s authority? Or how do you negotiate without accidentally recognizing that authority? Additionally, US policy with regard to hostages is never to negotiate or pay for release, because to do so tends only to encourage the act of hostage taking. From what I understand, the Omanis volunteered to serve as a go-between, just as they often do between the United States and Iran, and it was their efforts—especially now that the authorities knew I was in the custody of the NSB—that started to gain traction.
Hezbollah, as mentioned previously, wouldn’t get involved because of my American citizenship. They had also found out I was a retired military officer. They didn’t want anything to do with the situation on those grounds, in addition to actually having a pretty valid and empathetic concern about what it would look like for me if they got involved. They are Shi’a. I am Shi’a. We share a Lebanese connection. But they’d opted out for good reason. Still, they had opened some channels for communication and were willing, if all else failed, to try to get me released, even if that created political problems.
All of this was going down in the background, of course. I didn’t know anything about it. But one release scenario did play out in my mind as I was being held; it played out in Scott’s, too, it turns out. This involved mind games our captors liked to play with us, telling us the United Nations was negotiating our release, or the Red Cross, or Russia, or Denmark, or whoever. They did this to many of the international prisoners. I remember one specific guy from Rwanda detained there with us. They took him and told him he was being released, but a few hours later they just brought him back, and the prison cell—as I know from my own experience of being told similar things—seemed only smaller and bleaker to him because of it. They did the same to a guy from Syria, Abdel-azziz Azzou, telling him his release was happening and even putting him in a vehicle and driving him around Sana’a for a while before bringing him back to the same old cell.
Of course, even after I spoke with Scott in the courtyard about the futility of release, scenarios like this played on a constant loop in the forefront of my mind. I felt just as skeptical as Scott, but not quite as worried as he was about my connection to Transoceanic; he worked directly for them and had admitted to something onerous. I had admitted nothing, had nothing to admit, and only worked as a consultant. Still, I felt that my chances for a release were almost nothing and that if they decided to kill Scott, they’d most likely do away with me too. One less witness.
▪ ▪ ▪
A WEEK AFTER THAT DAY in the courtyard, the guards brought me to the interrogation room again.
As well as the cessation of the beatings, due to my heart condition, another change had occurred over the last month in terms of the tone and content of the questions posed, as well as the time of day. Now they came for me in the evenings, during qat time, and they even permitted me to chew it with them. They were trying to play nice, of course, trying to make me more comfortable in the hope that I might slip and say something. Qat naturally makes you talkative. It stimulates conversation. And I think my questioners were somewhat bored, using me as a way to liven up their evenings, and they held on to a slim hope that they could get me to loosen up and admit to things I hadn’t yet. Part of this new attitude involved a willingness to let me sit, though still handcuffed and blindfolded. I was able to get much more comfortable and could even use my hands to pick qat branches from the communal pile and feed the leaves to myself, my hands shackled together in the front, almost like a penitent praying.
During this session and several more similar, semifriendly “conversations” that followed (I hesitate to call them interrogations, since the tone and technique were so different), they would ask me things like “What would you do still for Yemen? Would you help work with us to make Yemen a better country, just as you used to do? Would you negotiate on our behalf?”
This put me in a spot. “Of course,” I’d say, “I’ll do anything to help the country. You know I’ve been helping Yemen for a long time, bringing aid, doing business, helping introduce people to each other and bridge cultures. Anything that is legal, I’m willing to do it. If you want me to be a conduit, to talk to whomever you like, I’ll do it.”
This type of accommodating and open response encouraged them. “Would you be willing to work for us?” they even asked.
“No, not willing,” I’d say (over and over, drawing this fine distinction between help and co-optation).
This angered them somewhat. They were trying to recruit me, no doubt. Gently but definitely, they wanted me to join them. They were dangling the potential for my release and doing so with a condition attached to it, which is something we had studied and trained for—never to allow ourselves to be compromised by favors, favoritism, or deals of this sort.
Still, having sensed some openness on my part, they kept trying, using leverage from a similar but—they thought—deeper angle: “Your heritage, you’re from southern Lebanon. We believe in the Twelve Imams. You believe in the Twelve Imams. We’re both Shi’a.”
This struck me as incredible. Though I kept my tongue and my patience, as I listened to this—still blindfolded and handcuffed—memories flashed through my mind of all the things they’d done to me, from stealing my money and my gun to the beatings and this unending imprisonment, even accusing me during those beatings of not being a good Shi’a. I couldn’t believe that they’d now try to forget all of that, pretend it hadn’t happened, pretend everything was and had been normal, and hope for me to play nice.
Being a Shi’a means being truthful and honest with yourself about your beliefs. The whole concept of Shi’ism started with and remains founded on the actions of Imam Hussein, alayhi as-salaam, remembering and acting on the reasons why he was sacrificed, why he was killed, dying for his belief in what was right. He didn’t give in. He didn’t give in to the nonbelievers—even if they still were Muslims—and he died a martyr’s death for his principles.
So when they said, “You’re Shi’a. We’re Shi’a,” it came through loaded with five months of mistreatment and a lifetime of me working to understand who I was. This made my response clear to me, maybe not an easy response, not with the threat of beatings still there, not with my body so very much weakened during the preceding months of torture, but still the response came to my mind and my tongue with perfect clarity.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’m Shi’a. But I’m also a US Marine.”
CHAPTER 16
HOMECOMING
ONE NIGHT, a few days later, the guards came around to my cell—the third cell of my time in captivity—passing out new clothes, the traditional dishdasha robes. Many of the early prisoners, those with al-Qaeda backgrounds who had been caught and (sometimes) tried in a court of law, thereafter to be imprisoned by the previous government, wore these uni
form dishdashas already. They were a strange sky-blue color (most dishdashas are white, gray, or brown) and included matching overalls or medical pants, like scrubs, underneath. Because this uniform remained so strongly associated with long-term imprisonment and with al-Qaeda, I refused to exchange my clothes for the new ones. I didn’t want to be marked as part of the institution. I didn’t want that deeper level of association. It would have taken away a last bit of hope, making me more permanently part of the situation, somehow legitimizing my incarceration as if I were a common criminal or a terrorist rather than someone who had been taken hostage and detained illegally by what amounted to an unauthorized, unelected, coup-based government.
The two other prisoners with me in this new cell took their dishdashas without much protest. Their spirits had been broken. But I refused. In fact, getting just a little crazy, I screamed at the guards. I really made it a big thing, a big moment for me. It felt like it might perhaps be a last stand, at least for my psyche. In the end the guards just threw my dishdasha into the cell with those of the others and told us all to hand our civilian clothes out to them the next day.
When morning came, I hadn’t touched the dishdasha.
The guards made their morning rounds.
They saw me in my civilian clothes: that same set of Bermuda shorts and that same collared shirt I’d been forced to wear since the very first day.
I ignored them as they opened the food hatch.
I knelt on the prayer rug, reading the Quran by the light that came in through the ventilation hole above the door, and I did not move or acknowledge the guards.
Speaking through the food hatch, the first guard somewhat calmly said, “Mr. Sam, what’s your pant size? What’s your shirt size?”
“No,” I said, ready to fight him, them, all of them, again. “No, I’m not changing clothes. I’m not giving up these clothes. I’m not wearing that dishdasha or anything else.”