by Steve Israel
“Big fuckin’ deal,” the General mumbled. He thought that if you had nothing to hide, you shouldn’t mind Uncle Sam cupping his ear to your gossip about the office, or your plans for tomorrow’s carpool, or your argument with “Brad” or “Megan” in India about a discrepancy on your credit card bill.
And now this! The report that the Colonel had dropped on him like a bunker buster bomb, destroying the General’s day and maybe even blowing up his career.
“Hunger strike,” the General read aloud. His stomach gurgled.
Hunger and strike were the only two words that rattled the medals on the General’s tree stump chest. Hunger strikes attracted celebrities, candlelight vigils, speeches at the United Nations, and questions from the President. Hunger strikes meant lawyers from the Pentagon and the Justice Department breathing down the General’s thick, stiff neck. Worse, the Department of Defense’s Public Affairs Office would dispatch those annoying little gnats called “public information specialists.” The General could tolerate jihadists at Gitmo, but not the public information specialists.
Altogether, a hunger strike meant the one star on the General’s collar might never get company. He’d be pushed into retirement, landing as a consultant to some defense-lobbying firm on Capitol Hill. Worse than getting shot at by terrorists was getting shaken down by congressmen.
All because of an enemy of the state who decided to go on a no-calorie diet.
This fast had to be stopped, and fast.
“Who is this . . . Feldstein?” he asked.
“High-value detainee, sir. Hasn’t accepted a meal. Refuses to cooperate.”
The General rolled back his squeaky chair and stood, towering over his desk. “Let’s get Mr. Feldstein something to eat,” he said.
In what he thought was a dream, Morris heard, from the depths of his nutrient-starved oblivion, an explosion followed by angry voices barking his name. His eyes opened onto a small army bursting into his cell. They surrounded his bed and shook it. They barked commands and spat sharp pellets of saliva. Then, dozens of rough hands locked under his arms and pinned him against the wall.
A face approached. Oversized, red, and snorting like a bull. With thick lips and hot breath that stank of chewing tobacco.
By way of introduction, the General screamed at Morris: “You wanna starve yourself, Feldstein?”
Morris groaned weakly.
“I’m giving you two options. Option A: I drag the scrawny remnant of your ass to the clinic. I strap you in a chair. I stick a feeding tube so far up your nose it hurts your brain. I pump fucking blueberry Pop-Tarts up that tube. And I keep you strapped there so you can’t try to puke anything back out. Not exactly a picnic, Feldstein.”
Morris’s mind locked only on the word picnic.
“Here’s option B, Feldstein. You cooperate and I’ll give you a more pleasant dining experience. How about a nice pastrami on rye? We can fly it in from Miami. With sides.”
This tempted Morris.
“What do you say, Feldstein? You gonna cooperate or you gonna give me trouble?”
Morris struggled to straighten his back, which involved stiffening a spine rarely used.
He lifted a limp, bony hand. He wriggled a finger, inviting the General to come closer. The General put his ear to Morris’s dry lips, so close that Morris could see the soft nicks and stubble on his scalp.
Morris searched for whatever strength was left in his malnourished body. He felt something swelling in his otherwise empty belly.
Morris croaked into the ear of the Brigadier General:
“Fuck the pastrami.”
There was a time in his life when Morris couldn’t muster the courage to send back a lukewarm cup of coffee at the diner, much less tell a Brigadier General to perform a sexual act with his favorite cold cut.
But, as Hillel might have said, if not now, when?
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION
JANUARY–MAY 2009
The world premiere of Caryn’s feature documentary film took place in the Feldsteins’ den on Soundview Avenue. The audience was Caryn and Rona. Jeffrey was in Chicago, and Morris was—well, no one really knew where Morris was.
Caryn fed a disc into the DVD player and joined Rona on the couch.
The RoyaLounger was empty, like a riderless horse at a funeral.
“I hope you like my film,” Caryn said. “I wish Daddy could see it.”
The film was Caryn’s final exam at a New York University adult education course called Documentary Filmmaking. Her professor was best known for the not-so-blockbuster exposé: Chase Lounge: Inside the Patio Furniture Industry. It took third place at the Lackawana Independent Low-Budget Film Festival.
The professor had coached his students to use their lenses to search for justice.
Caryn, of course, had the perfect subject: her missing father. So she pointed her digital video camera at the strange life and the alleged crimes of Morris Feldstein. A documentary in black and white but mostly gray, with occasional splashes of faded color: the Betamax footage of long-ago trips to Disney, and the station wagon rides upstate. She interviewed the people who had major and bit roles in Morris’s life. Here on the screen was Rona, whose shoulders now slumped and who sighed constantly, not to convey guilt but because she was miserable without “My Morris,” as she said on camera. Here were the Soundview Avenue neighbors and the people behind the take-out counters that lined Middle Neck Road. The members of the Men’s Club. All nodding their heads and saying, “It couldn’t be” and “He couldn’t have,” except for Colonel McCord who said, “I knew it!”
She interviewed Victoria, who said, “I’ve dated some real sleaze balls in my life, and was married to Jerry, the king of all sleaze balls, but never have I dated a terrorist.”
Caryn even managed to get an interview with a Senator from New York, a man physiologically incapable of declining any request that involved a camera. He had a ravenous appetite for publicity; and even when he consumed massive amounts, he still felt malnourished.
Publicity made his heart beat. And a documentary about a constituent from Great Neck—an area he had won with a less than overwhelming margin—made it beat even faster.
Caryn set up her camera in the Senator’s Manhattan office. He entered with outstretched arms, bear-hugging her as if they were friends for life. Caryn noticed a thin veneer of makeup on his cheeks, either from a prior interview or for this one. The Senator was perpetually pancaked.
She trained the camera on him.
“Senator, some say that my father, Morris Feldstein, is an innocent victim in the War on Terror. That he was falsely accused and unjustly imprisoned.”
The Senator nodded empathetically. He had mastered empathy on demand.
He responded with a brief but salient history of the tension between civil liberties and national security. And concluded with: “I take no backseat to keeping us safe from terrorists who would do us harm. At the same time, we must be vigilant in protecting our own precious freedoms. And I vow to do both.”
Caryn continued. “But, specifically regarding Morris Feldstein, is he to spend the rest of his life in detention without even a trial? Isn’t that a massive injustice, Senator?”
The Senator proclaimed, “Justice must be done. And I pledge to look into this issue and get back to you. Forthwith!”
“When?”
“Forthwith!”
“There are reports that this may extend beyond Morris Feldstein. That the government may be secretly spying on innocent Americans. Are you aware of such a program? Are you willing to call for oversight hearings?”
The Senator loved the sound of “oversight hearings.” The clack of the gavel, the glare of the television lights, the condemnatory questions fired at witnesses who cocked their heads toward lawyers who whispered responses. An oversight hearing meant elevating this story from the Great N
eck Record to the Washington Post; from an obscure film hardly anyone would watch to gavel-to-gavel coverage on CNN!
“You read my mind,” said the Senator, imagining the headlines as he spoke.
When the film was over, Rona wiped tears from her eyes and sighed. She said, “Morris loved watching his television. Now he’s on it! If only more people could see this beautiful movie.”
“They will,” Caryn promised.
Her NYU professor was well connected in the documentary film industry. He knew someone who knew someone else who once worked at HBO and still had a connection with an executive there who might be able to arrange for Caryn to pitch her film to another executive.
Her hopes were high.
They were quickly dashed.
In filmmaking terms, things didn’t pan out.
HBO passed on the film before Caryn could get past the door to their Manhattan office. The Independent Film Channel also declined, along with the Sundance Channel, Current TV, Al Jazeera, the Jewish Television Network, and so on, up and down the cable channel lineup, from basic to the premium package and back.
But finally, after weeks of effort, Caryn landed a deal.
A one-week airing on the Public Access channel of Great Neck, wedged between High School Sports Review and Great Neck Restaurant Recap.
And a commitment for a one-night screening at the Great Neck Cinema.
It was a very limited engagement.
The White House Counsel in the newly installed Obama Administration disliked two particular words: oversight and hearing. Put together, the words made him tremble. When an unhappy aide reported that the Senator from New York was preparing to investigate the case of Morris Feldstein, the counsel acted quickly.
First he planned a strategy to prevent the hearing.
Second, he asked: “Who is Morris Feldstein?”
He called the new Attorney General, who checked with the Secretary of Defense, who referred the inquiry to the new Secretary of Homeland Security. Her staff identified an official who survived the transition from the Bush Administration by burying himself deep in something called the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, Division of Intermunicipal Affairs, Bureau on State, Local Cooperation, Region Three (which the new Administration didn’t even know existed, much less in multiple regions).
His name was Jon Pruitt.
Pruitt wrote a report to the Secretary of DHS, who shared it with the Department of Justice, which referred the matter of Morris Feldstein back to the White House Counsel, who called the White House Chief of Staff.
Said Chief of Staff, enraged that he had been pulled out of a strategy meeting on something called Obamacare, ordered that “this fucking problem be fucking taken care of right fucking now!”
In so many “fucking” words.
One night soon thereafter, the Brigadier General at Guantánamo received a phone call. It was from one of the Defense Department lawyers he loathed. After listening to a quick question he asked, “Feldstein? The guy with a tube up his nose?”
The White House Counsel called the Senator to talk him out of the hearing. He knew exactly what to do.
“Senator,” he purred into a phone. “I have good news. We have reviewed the case of Morris Feldstein. And we believe it’s time for him to be reunited with his family.”
“That is good news,” said the Senator, emphasizing the word news. “But I still have some concerns about how my constituent ended up imprisoned in . . . wherever he’s imprisoned. And about whether there’s a secret surveillance program that’s spying on innocent Americans.”
“Well, first, I can assure you that there is no such program. But of course, it’s your prerogative to convene hearings. No need for subpoenas. We’ll cooperate.”
“Good.”
“Or—”
“Or?”
“Perhaps, rather than the Administration announcing your constituent’s release, you could do it. You know, reunite him with his loved ones. At some kind of press event.”
“Let’s talk,” said the Senator.
*REEING *ELDSTEIN
SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009
The black sedan, arranged courtesy of the Department of Defense, slipped through a gate at the Stewart Air National Guard Base.
It turned south on the New York State Thruway, leaving behind the distant ridges of the Catskill Mountains. Sitting alone in the rear, Morris smiled. It seemed a lifetime ago when he brought Jeffrey and Caryn camping in the Catskills (as well as Rona, who succumbed to the kids’ entreaties but not without leaving them with a full weekend’s worth of guilt scars about being “eaten alive” by mosquitoes). The car drove across the Tappan Zee Bridge, then through low hills that skirted the Hudson River. Before long Morris was winding through the suburbs of Westchester. Then the car crept across the Bronx, brakes squealing in stop-and-go traffic. Morris felt asphyxiated by the boxy apartment buildings that loomed everywhere, by the subway cars that rattled back and forth, by the dull yellow lights that peeked at him from the grimy walls of bridges and overpasses plastered with graffiti. Still, it could be worse, he thought.
It could be Guantánamo.
Finally, Morris saw it. He was almost free.
It welcomed him to Long Island with both of its massive steel arms stretched across Little Neck Bay, green lights twinkling their familiar greeting from end to end, all the way to the top of its graceful towers, so high they seemed able to touch planes as they approached LaGuardia Airport. The Throgs Neck Bridge. Joining Long Island and the Bronx geographically, but no more than that. Because one end had nothing to do with the other. It wasn’t simply a bridge.
It separated two worlds for Morris.
Halfway across, Morris smiled as the car veered right, under the green-and-white sign that said EASTERN LONG ISLAND. The car curved onto the Cross Island Parkway, where Morris gazed at the tiny lights of a few boats in the cool water, hovering near the protective embrace of the bridge.
Close. They were getting close.
They exited onto Northern Boulevard, in urbanized Queens. But with every block eastward, it became more gentrified, until Morris saw the glittering familiar storefronts, the clothing stores and bakeries, and the little Italian restaurants. The places that fed Morris his dinner almost every night, ladled from white cartons, aluminum tins, and Styrofoam containers.
Morris thought, Five more minutes and I’ll be home. Maybe Rona and I will have a little bite to eat. Because almost five years without a pastrami on rye had to set some kind of record. And after dinner, maybe I’ll relax a little. In the RoyaLounger 8000. Maybe watch a movie. And I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
But Great Neck had something else in mind for Morris.
“Gottenyu!”
Middle Neck Road looked like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Thousands of people blocked the street, whooping and chanting and laughing in the crisp night air. They waved signs that said FREE FELDSTEIN!, WELCOME HOME, MORRIS!, and WE MISSED MO! The Nassau County Police, New York State Troopers, and Village of Great Neck Police were out in force, the lights of their vehicles flashing constantly, so that the whole thing looked like disco night to Morris.
The police parted the crowd away from Morris’s car as it eased forward.
“Mor-ris! Mor-ris!” He heard them chant.
The car pulled to the front of a red carpet unfurled from the curb to the entrance of the Great Neck Cinema. Morris had to shield his eyes from the glare of the giant marquee:
*REEING *ELDSTEIN. A *ILM BY CARYN *ELDSTEIN
WELCOME HOME MORIS!!!
The theater had run out of Fs and was low on Rs. Times were tough in the movie theater business.
A figure appeared at the car window. It was vaguely familiar to Morris. A wide grin spread across fleshy cheeks. Giving Morris a thumbs-up with both hands.
The Senator from New York.
/> The Senator opened the door. Dozens of cameras jostled for position behind him. Morris squinted at the lights. He felt the Senator’s hands lock around his wrists and pull him from the car. He remembered for a moment the last time he had strepped out of a vehicle in Great Neck.
The Senator wrapped Morris in a bear hug (making sure that the Senator’s face was to the front of the cameras). Then he pivoted Morris toward the press and shouted, “Let me be the first to say, Welcome home, Morris Feldstein!” He locked hands with Morris and thrust them into the air. As if they had just been nominated to a presidential ticket.
The crowd roared. Morris smiled meekly, and waved as if it were only Colonel McCord standing across the street instead of half of Great Neck.
Morris had never had a receiving line. So many machers! The Senator stood shoulder to shoulder with Morris, refusing to cede any ground in the war for camera angles. The Mayor of Great Neck Village and his entire Village Council was there, presenting him with a parchment proclamation affixed with a gold seal and red ribbon, saying whereas this and whereas that until resolving that the day was officially “Morris Feldstein Day.” It was nearly nine PM, and there wasn’t much left of Morris Feldstein day for Morris to enjoy. The Great Neck Village Merchants Association pressed some discount coupons into his hand, just in case he felt the urgent need to stop off on the way to freedom to procure a home audio system from Great Neck Audio or a leaf blower from Village Hardware. There were hearty congratulations from the Rotarians, the Kiwanians, and the green-jacketed, silver-haired members of the BPO Elks. The Rabbi and the entire board of the Temple presented him with a golden shofar and a nice plaque referencing the call for freedom. And all of this activity unfolded to the accompaniment of the Great Neck High School band’s rendition of the theme song to Rocky.
He stepped into the theater lobby, where Rona was waiting, across the room, looking no different from when he had last seen her. A lifetime ago.