So he’s denying any shame for what he did. But he’s lying to himself about it; that much is clear. Otherwise, why would he be talking to me? What could he possibly be getting out of this?
“If you asked me today if I would do it again, I would tell you no—” he begins.
“Because it didn’t work,” I interrupt. “It made everything worse for your people.”
“But we were beset on all sides,” he explains. “The Israelis were attacking us, the New Jersey attacked us; the Lebanese army and the Christians were attacking us because they sided with the Israelis. We thought we had no other choice. If no other methods worked, perhaps this would.”
The Masuul pauses for a moment, thinking. “What a coincidence,” he says with an amazed smile. “I can hardly believe it. We had put all of this behind us, and now I’m sitting here with Terry Anderson’s daughter.”
“But it’s healing in a way, isn’t it?” I ask. “At least, it is for me.” And this is true; there’s a strange catharsis in hearing how the Masuul could have told himself that this was the way to save his country. I’m not sure why, but it’s helping me to understand how his mind works. I never justify what he did; I never forget what this man put my father through. I’m speaking to my own personal boogeyman, one of the villains who haunted my childhood—and he looks so much less scary with the light on. His evil is all too human, now that I can see it; but then again, that in itself is frightening.
“If I tell you everything about the hostages, I want you to know one thing,” he says intently. “It wasn’t personal.”
“I know,” I reply. Does he think that makes it any better? I turn to my fixer. “Tell him, honestly, I can’t sit here as a human and tell him I approve—obviously, this is my father—and I never approve of making civilians pay for what their governments have done. But explain to him that I’m also different from most people. I want to understand more than I’m angry. Obviously, there’s anger there, because I know what my father went through and how hard it was for him. But I’m not trying to get revenge—nothing like that.”
My fixer translates. I continue. “And for me, it’s hard to talk to him because I can see that in many ways, he can be a good man. So it’s difficult for me to put those things together. But I’m trying to do that—”
The Masuul gets my fixer’s attention. They talk rapidly in Arabic—I can only understand some of it; something about the Masuul telling another man who was involved that he was speaking with me and the man’s reaction, which doesn’t seem to have been positive.
“Tell me what he said,” I demand.
“He’s saying he talked to a guy who was involved,” my fixer replies. “He asked him to meet you.”
“The guy said no?”
“[The Masuul] told this guy, ‘Since you were there with me, I want you to come sit down and talk to this man’s daughter.’ The guy told him, ‘You are crazy, you’re a lunatic talking to her.’”
“Of course he did,” I say. “He thinks I’m going to turn them in.”
“This guy was telling [the Masuul], ‘You must not be in your right state of mind, talking to this girl when you know who her father is,’” my fixer continues.
“You know why your friend said that?” I tell the Masuul, looking him straight in the eye. “Because he doesn’t know who I am. You know me.”
“But it’s hard because this man was my partner,” the Masuul complains. “We have history, me and him, I can’t just sit there and lie to his face, not telling him that this is happening, that I’m talking to you. For myself, I know that yes, Susu is a good girl. She’s honest.”
“Of course you had to tell him,” I reply in Arabic, though the prospect of another terrorist afraid that I’m going to turn him in to the FBI somewhat worries me. “And of course he went nuts. But what I’m saying is that he’s scared because he doesn’t know me. This is me. It’s clear who I am. I’m an open book.”
I think that’s what I have going for me here—the fact that I have nothing to hide. I have no intention of turning either of these men in, and I do honestly want to understand them.
“[His friend] still has bad views about Americans—” my fixer begins.
“Sometimes I have bad views about Americans,” I counter.
The Masuul’s phone goes off, playing a mournful Arabic song.
“He says he can’t even discuss it with his friend because his friend hates Americans so much,” my fixer whispers to me while the Masuul takes the call. “He’s being so honest with us, really. It’s incredible.”
“Explain to him that no matter what he did to my father, I’m not going to turn him in,” I whisper back. “That’s not my job . . . to do the government’s work for them. I’m a journalist.”
My fixer translates. He and the Masuul chatter for a minute. My fixer turns back to me.
“He says his body is paying the price for what he did. His shoulder still hurts from those days. He was in the room with the hostages once. He was wearing plastic shoes and slipped on some diesel fuel, broke his shoulder. He says maybe God was punishing him that day.”
“So it was a battle injury?” I say, trying to disguise the bitterness in my voice. It’s very sad that the Masuul broke his shoulder, but he and his friends brutalized my father for seven years. However, I need this man to trust me because I want something from him. I don’t understand what it is yet, but I know it’s immense and powerful, and I think he wants something equally momentous from me.
But my fixer and the Masuul are deep in conversation again, and I can barely get a word in edgewise. I finally manage to get their attention.
“Tell him—and I’m going to be honest here—that this is my problem with what he did,” I say. “To this day, my father has nothing against the Shia. He defends them. Explain to him that my problem with what he did is that it wasn’t personal. My father had nothing to do with anything.”
“But your dad used to talk very big,” the Masuul says, laughing. “He used to curse us all sometimes.”
“That sounds about right,” I reply, not without some pride.
Another woman comes in with something that needs to be done, and my fixer gestures for us to leave. But before we say good-bye, the Masuul stops us and says something to my fixer.
“He doesn’t want to tell you too much because he doesn’t want to upset you,” my fixer tells me. “But he says the next time we come, he’ll tell you everything.”
12. THE JOYFUL ENTITLEMENT
Make no mistake: peaceful madmen are ahead of the future.
—GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
NOW
When we call him a couple of days later, the Masuul doesn’t pick up. We keep trying, to no avail. In the meantime, I file stories as the days inch into weeks, and suddenly it’s time for me to return to New York the next morning. Desperate for some closure, I tell my fixer to pick me up and we head to Jnoub. The asshole can try dodging me when I’m outside his door. That tactic worked once; why not give it another shot?
We travel the long, familiar road through green-smelling hills and towns strewn with Hezbollah martyrs’ posters. It’s well past dark by the time we roll up to the Masuul’s home. My fixer calls him as soon as we arrive.
They chatter on the phone. My fixer hangs up, looking somewhat concerned.
“He’s not home,” he tells me. “He said to meet him a couple of towns over.”
So we drive down winding backstreets, get lost, and call the Masuul for directions a couple of times before pulling up to what is unmistakably a Hezbollah headquarters, fortified and set bunker-style into the side of a hill. There must be more than ten trucks and cars parked around it, all military-type vehicles. They’re clearly having some sort of meeting. There’s probably an Israeli surveillance drone honing in on us as we speak; I imagine waving it a winking smile and suppress a slightly hysterical giggle.
My fixer calls the Masuul; he says he’s coming outside. We wait nervously for a few minutes until we s
ee him stride out of the bunker. He’s holding a pistol. He saunters to my window and motions for me to open it, which I do.
The Masuul leans on the car door, pistol in hand. I’ve never seen him like this. His eyes are hard, his smile lost.
He laughs, a short, bitter sound, devoid of humor, then looks at me long and appraisingly. My fixer is whip tense beside me. Jnoub holds its breath.
Finally, the Masuul points the gun in my face with a smile. “Pow,” he says playfully, but this is no game. This is a message, a test—one of those moments in which my reaction is absolutely pivotal. The word hangs in the air.
Without allowing myself to calculate for even a second, I take the gun from his hand. Perhaps surprisingly, he allows me to take it. I’ve held guns before and they always seemed so heavy, but I don’t feel the weight of this one.
I point it back at him. “Pow,” I reply calmly, smiling into his eyes.
The moment shatters like glass and the tension is sucked from the air. The Masuul relaxes and laughs, shaking his head. He takes back the gun, then turns to my fixer. They chuckle to each other in Arabic. The Masuul gestures at my fixer to translate.
“Holy shit, that was crazy,” my fixer says through a clenched smile. “I never saw this man looking that way before. Okay, Susu, he says he’s going to give you what you want. He says to tell you he hasn’t spoken about this to another person in his life; he swore an oath on the Koran never to speak of it again. They’re all being hunted for what they did. He says he needs to know that his name won’t be in any of this and no one will be able to identify him. He says he’s trusting you.”
I don’t hesitate. “Tell him he can trust me. I am not here to take him down. That’s not my job.”
My fixer communicates this; they confer.
“He says he’s going to call me in a month or so and tell you to come,” my fixer tells me. “He says he’s going to tell you things that will turn your hair gray.”
I make the familiar trip home to see Jeremy. We build a little more of a life together, then I have to break a piece of it off by flying back to Lebanon again. My fixer says the Masuul is ready to meet again, and he has the perfect excuse for a trip.
Apparently, the Masuul, a hunting enthusiast, ordered a dog from a “breeder” in the Beqaa, and my fixer has agreed to deliver it to him in Jnoub, thinking that would be an opportune time to deliver me as well. I use quotation marks for breeder because the place we are supposed to pick up the dog is more like a canine torture chamber. The Middle East is not known for its respect of animal rights. The dogs are cringing, skeletal, and smell like the ninth gate of hell. While showing off their wares, the animal abusers masquerading as breeders chase the puppies down, grab them by the scruff of the neck, and shake them or hit them as they cower in trembling heaps.
I am horrified past words. Animals are my red line. I have zero tolerance for the trendy Brooklyn vegans more concerned with humane slaughtering of cows than inhumane slaughtering of people in other countries. That kind of preoccupation with animals seems to me a luxury of the ignorantly privileged. But as far as I’m concerned, the animal kingdom has far more to offer this planet than humankind. Destroy and brutalize each other if we must, but why not leave the animals out? This isn’t their fight. They have nothing to do with any of it. I rescue an animal practically every time I’m in Beirut; I’ve palmed off several scrawny kittens to friends and family over the years. Seeing puppies kicked around like soccer balls makes my blood boil.
My fixer gestures to the Masuul’s dog, with clearly no intention of coming any closer. Arab culture is not dog-friendly, and I have a feeling delivering the animal was a task that sounded better to him in theory than it looks in practice. The puppy is a boisterous, friendly fellow, well built and scrappy. The men show off his pointing skills as I try not to look visibly disgusted with them. They confer with my fixer and indicate that we’re to take the dog. He picks the poor thing up like a sack of potatoes and heads to the back of the car. I see him fumbling for his keys.
“Wait a second,” I call to him. “You’re not actually going to put him in the trunk, are you?”
“Sure, why not?” my fixer asks. “He smells like shit. We can leave it open a crack so he can breathe.”
“What are you, nuts?” I yell. “That poor little guy isn’t getting bounced around like that. Look at him; he’s terrified. I’ll keep him off the seats but he’s not going in the trunk, I can tell you that much.”
My fixer grumbles but acquiesces. The dog shivers uncontrollably at my feet. He does smell foul, but he looks so small and afraid. I put my hand on his little head and whisper soothingly to him as we turn around and begin the drive to Jnoub.
We’ve been driving for about an hour when the engine starts to smoke. The brakes have been squealing uncontrollably for some time now; every time I express concern, my fixer waves it off until we hit a hidden speed bump and the entire car gives an exhausted, rattling jump.
“Susu,” my fixer says, worried now. “I’m not sure if this thing is going to make it there. This fucking car is destroyed.” Concerned for the cleanliness of the seats, he’s left our usual SUV behind in favor of his beat-up little sedan.
“Doesn’t help that you drive it like a tank,” I offer. “What should we do?”
We hit another bump; this time I’m certain the vehicle has given up.
“Stop the car,” I hiss at him. “Let’s please not end up stuck in the middle of nowhere with a dog that smells like ass and no way home. Turn around. We can take him to [the Masuul] tomorrow. No way am I dying in a car crash for this shit.”
“I think you’re right,” he concedes. “But what do we do with the dog?”
I look at him. “Habibi, you wouldn’t know the first thing to do with this creature. I’ll take the fucking dog.”
A hair-raising ride home later, I’m leaning over the bathtub scrubbing the smelly puppy clean. He stands there quietly, shaking like a leaf, as I soap him up and rinse him off. He doesn’t stop quivering until I put some dog food my fixer bought at my behest into a bowl, after which he eats like he hasn’t been fed in weeks. Then he proceeds to attach to me like Velcro for the rest of the night, removing himself from my lap only to do his business all over the house. When I try to put him on the balcony, he howls like he’s being murdered and won’t stop until he’s pressed up against me again.
So I find myself in bed with my father’s kidnapper’s dog, whom I decide to call Daniel, after having scrubbed his shit off the floor three times.
How in the blue fuck did I get into this situation? I ask myself.
But it’s not the puppy’s fault his new master kidnapped my dad. He’s so pathetically happy to be shown a paltry bit of kindness that I want to cry a little, but probably not just about the dog. I feel like I’ve been watching the events of the past six months on TV. Everything feels scripted, as though someone else wrote my life a long time ago and I’m just rereading the pages. For whatever reason, I feel deeply that I’m supposed to be here, in this bed, with this man’s dog.
The next day, we deliver the dog to the Masuul. I walk Daniel up to his new house on the leash I bought him before we left. Just before I hand him off, I look at the Masuul dead in the eye.
“I have demands,” I tell him in Arabic. “We can negotiate.”
He gives a startled guffaw, then thanks me and leads the dog away, motioning for me to go into the house, where his son greets me. The boy can’t be more than eight years old. There are two younger girls, one just a toddler. The Masuul’s wife is a stocky woman with a friendly, if wary, smile. It’s clear the Masuul has shared his past with them; when he comes back, he speaks freely in their presence.
He invites us to sit down with them for supper, a simple meal of labneh (yogurt) and meat pastries. We eat as I ask him questions.
“Why my father?” I begin. “Are you sure there was no reason you chose him?”
“He could have been anyone,” the Masuul replies. “
It wasn’t personal.”
“Don’t you see how wrong it is to hurt someone just because of where they were born?” I ask. “It wasn’t Dad’s fault that the Americans and Israelis attacked your people.”
The Masuul sighs. “Today, I can see it wasn’t your father’s fault, and it’s certainly not your fault. But it wasn’t our fault we were attacked either. We felt we had no choice.”
“Everybody has choices,” I say quietly. “You could have made different ones.”
“But sometimes people aren’t free,” he replies. “They think they are, but they’re not. We were little people, but there were much bigger players in this game.
“If your father comes here, to my house, I’d have all the village come and greet him,” the Masuul continues suddenly. “All the men who kidnapped him would come and say they’re sorry. If you ask me now whether I would do this again, I’ll say no. It was a very different time; things have changed now.”
That reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to ask. “How much was Hezbollah involved in the whole thing? Tufayli says he had nothing to do with it, that the orders were coming from elsewhere.”
“He’s lying,” says the Masuul immediately. “It’s true that Hezbollah wasn’t cohesive at the time and our orders were coming from somewhere else. But they all knew and were benefiting from this.”
Perhaps Hezbollah believed they were gaining something from the terrorism in the short term, but as I’ve come to find out, it did much to damage the group’s reputation over time. And the Masuul is confirming what I already suspected: that Hezbollah—at least part of its leadership at the time—bears a hefty measure of responsibility for what happened to my father.
Hezbollah says it played no role in the hostage-takings, while conventional narrative dictates that the group engineered the whole thing. As usual, I find that the truth is probably somewhere in between.
We go over some of what we discussed on earlier visits, then the Masuul pauses midsentence and looks at me.
The Hostage's Daughter Page 23