The Shattered Lens

by Jonathan Alpeyrie

  Psycho, on the other hand, scared me. He was barely eighteen and looked like a kid who needed to prove something. In the context of a war with little discipline, that factor, combined with his nervous, suspicious nature, spelled trouble for me. He had that look on his face of someone who is constantly having an argument with himself, battling inner demons that seem to spring up from nowhere.

  The officers were more aloof. They could be frightening or kind, depending on their mood. The alpha male of the house was Abu Talal. The commander of the entire unit was a man called Essad. Mej always referred to Essad as “Number One Man, the chief.” Mej said he was a good man. I didn’t see much of him because I was usually blindfolded, although I assumed he was there, in and out. Whether or not Number One Man was a good thing, I’d have to find out.

  * * *

  AFTER THE FIRST FIVE DAYS all the young men left the house to fight. The government forces, backed by Hezbollah, were pushing in from various directions. I was left alone with Flic, and the area surrounding our house suddenly started getting shelled. Then helicopters arrived to bomb us. They launched rockets and the windows shook. Flic came into the room, took off my blindfold, and fed me as the shells hit all around us. You could hear a hissing noise just before the explosion. When the bombing got too close, Flic and I would hit the ground and cover up. One time I saw a pickup truck pull up next to the house with a machine gun bolted into the bed. It started shooting at the helicopters. Then just as quickly it went away.

  After the first few times we survived the shelling, Flic began taking me in his arms and giving me a big hug and kiss, the way effusive Arab men do. His beard smelled like burnt tobacco.

  Then there would be a lull and we’d smoke cigarettes together. I was never a real smoker, but whenever I was in a conflict zone I’d start bumming the occasional cigarette. In captivity, I’d smoke every chance I got and I’d regularly steal cigarettes from the men—especially Baby Donkey. They were harsh, local brands that reminded me of the dark Gauloises in Paris. But occasionally some of the men would score Gauloises blondes, which everyone liked.

  * * *

  THERE’S SOMETHING TRULY FEARSOME about an artillery barrage. All you can do is hunker down and hope you don’t take a direct hit. The terror generated by loud explosions and shaking earth are enough to unhinge anyone—hence shell shock is not just a metaphor. And the heroism that springs from an artillery battle usually involves a willingness to risk getting blown to pieces in order to drag out someone unluckier than you who got hit with shrapnel. No stealthy Rambo-style prowess through the jungle involved, just a crapshoot in the midst of a hailstorm.

  I’d first experienced getting shelled by artillery in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. I was on the Georgian side and the shells were coming from Russian troops firing out of South Ossetia.

  I waited it out in an abandoned house, then linked up with a group of independent Russian journalists in Gori, Stalin’s birthplace. I hopped on a Russian tank and went deeper into the Kartlia Valley with them. A lot of the villages were bombed out. Many tanks were destroyed. The Russians were convinced I was a spy because I’d left my documentation behind in Gori, where all I had was an American passport. Being an American is not a good thing when you’re riding a Russian tank through a country that wants to be part of NATO. Fortunately the Russian journalists were able to convince the soldiers that I was actually French. I told them I’d lost all my documents in a direct hit. They felt bad about it and gave me permission to shoot photos around the valley for about three days.

  The shelling, both in Georgia and Syria, was terrifying. But in both places, during the lulls, I couldn’t help think about what troops in the trenches during World War I had to endure, especially on the western front. It was beyond my imagination, even though so many of my childhood fantasies were fed by stories of ace pilots and French heroes during the First World War. I kept having to remind myself that what I was experiencing was just a training exercise compared to what the soldiers in the Battles of the Somme and Verdun went through.

  * * *

  AS THE DAYS PASSED I spent less time with the blindfold on and my feet were cuffed only at night. So much of my time was spent just sitting, watching, trying not to think too much, and keeping my spirits from plummeting.

  I thought of my father. He was no doubt worried by now, and as his concern grew, he would have called my mother. I was supposed to have been back in Paris. I’d even set up a date with a woman through Facebook. She must have assumed I’d stood her up. But I couldn’t dwell on these things.

  Usually the officers, like Ali and Abu Talal, woke up at around ten or eleven. I would have been awake and anxious since five or six, just waiting to gauge their moods.

  Meanwhile my parallel universe consisted of a gentle young man with a mullet who kept telling me everything would be okay, an adolescent imbecile, an aspiring psychopath eager to vent his rage on me, and a bunch of bearded men for whom I was just merchandise to be traded in the name of a cause that had nothing to do with me.

  But that was also to my advantage. As merchandise, they needed to keep me healthy.

  The most immediate danger, however, was the bombing all around us. Every day our position looked more vulnerable. Hezbollah had sent in reinforcements from Lebanon in support of Assad’s army and were pressing against the rebels. The men holding me fell under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army, a relatively moderate group of rebels compared to the organizations fighting throughout the rest of the country. A good number of the officers had deserted from Assad’s army. They’d been secular before the war. Many of them probably used to drink and smoke hashish. Then, when the shooting started, they grew beards and became devout. Not only did they want to get rid of Assad, but many were no doubt sympathetic to a new state grounded in the teachings of Islam. War has a way of bringing tepid believers closer to God. Since virtually everyone in Muslim culture believes in God (the only Muslim atheists I’ve ever met have been educated in the West), it’s only a matter of how zealously they uphold Islamic principles.

  Being surrounded by believers made me wonder about my own relationship to God. I had certainly been brought up in a secular world: France until I was fourteen, and thereafter in New York. My mother was nominally Catholic but not religious, even though she sent me to a private school run by Jesuits while we lived together in Paris. My parents divorced when I was four, and at the age of fourteen I went to live with my father, who had moved to New York, where he worked at one of the premier international headhunting firms. My father’s father was a secular Jew (Alperovich was the name before he francofied it), and he had emigrated from Minsk (then part of the Russian Empire) to France as a child just before World War I broke out; my father’s mother was French, and a devout Catholic. Ultimately my relationship to religion was more or less an intellectual and cultural one. I never spat on it or even disregarded it completely the way most of my peers did; I became interested in it from a historical and political perspective. I didn’t doubt that there was some metaphysical force out there, but it was never something I truly felt I had access to. Prayer, the way it was taught in the Jesuit school, always struck me as somewhat contrived. I tended to rely on my intellect and intuition. I felt I didn’t need the benefit of so many stories the way others did.

  Now, though, I needed to tap into whatever wellspring of strength could get me through this ordeal.

  FIRST INTERROGATION

  MEJ SEEMED TO RESPECT ME. He kept telling me that the authorities in Yabroud wanted to kill me because they thought I was a spy. But I was under the protection of Essad and his troops, who were about a thousand strong. “Jon is very safe,” he’d say. “Number One Man friend to Jon.”

  Seven days into my captivity I was sitting in the room blindfolded and handcuffed when Mej came up to me and said, “Hey, Number One Man here. This good for you. You go home.”

  All of a sudden I was full of hope. He uncuffed me, grabbed my arm, and walked me from the bedroom to the
TV room. I was still blindfolded and had no idea that there were about twenty or twenty-five people in that room until they finally took the keffiyeh off my head. All the men except for two were in uniforms. Most of the older ones had beards. It was the first time I saw that room. I looked into the corner and there was all my gear in a pile. Everyone was calm. I thought, This is it, I’m finally going to be released. It’s all just a misunderstanding.

  I looked at Mej and he was smiling at me. There was a translator on my left: no beard, wearing jeans and a leather jacket. He introduced himself in French and had a smile on his face—not an ambiguous grin with sinister implications, or one meant to disguise fear or some other emotion. He was genuinely friendly.

  “Your name is Jonathan.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You’re French.”

  “Yes, I’m French.”

  I often get asked how a Frenchman got the name Jonathan. My father’s name is Jean-Louis. I was concerned they might think mine was a Jewish name and I’d get penalized for it. Actually, my mother named me after Jonathan Harker, the main character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the hero who is taken prisoner by the vampire, then escapes, and later returns to hunt him down.

  “Jonathan,” he repeated. But he didn’t seem to notice any incongruence in the name.

  I asked him how he knew French. He said he taught it in a school.

  A puffy-faced bear of a man was sitting to my right, smiling. I noticed that he was wearing my belt.

  Two men sat on the ground because there weren’t enough seats in the room. One had a beard and wore a uniform. The other was clean-shaven, blond, and dressed in civilian clothes. At first they just stared at me. Clearly, they didn’t have my best interests in mind.

  After a few questions from the translator the two men on the ground started asking questions in Arabic, back and forth, with my translator relaying them to me in French.

  “Where are you from?”

  “France.”

  “What are you doing in Syria?”

  “I’m a photojournalist. I’m covering the Syrian revolution against the Assad government.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “I work for Polaris Images.”

  It was all matter-of-fact. Bureaucratic.

  “Where are you from?” they repeated.

  “France. Paris.”

  “Are you Jewish?”

  “No, I’m French.”

  “Why did you come to Syria?”

  “I’m a photojournalist. I’ve been to Syria before. Two times since the revolution began. I’m here to cover your side. I want the world to know about your struggle against Assad.”

  There was a man sitting beside the burly bear to my right, and he was looking at me sympathetically. I sensed that he’d been in the house before, but there was no way I could be sure because I’d been blindfolded.

  “Are you a spy?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m a photographer.”

  “Are you CIA?”

  “No. You can look me up on Google and see I’m a photographer.” Unfortunately there was no Wi-Fi in the house.

  The translator was very mild-mannered. Even the original questions in Arabic from the men sitting on the ground came out mildly. It all felt like a formality. Something that would settle the issue for good, and then I could be on my way home. Everyone seemed to understand. There was no ill will apart from the odd stare.

  “Do you work for the CIA? Or the FBI?”

  They kept harping on the American spy angle, but I’d made a decision to insist on the French card. “I’m French. I live in Paris.” I knew the fate of American hostages was usually worse than those of most Europeans because, in general, European governments (the French in particular) were willing to go to greater lengths to accommodate hostage takers, even if it meant paying an exorbitant ransom. The Americans refused to pay ransoms, and their citizens tended to get used for propaganda purposes. In places like the Middle East, which was a hotbed of anti-Americanism, it didn’t matter who the United States was supporting with covert aid. Killing Americans amounted to credibility on the Arab street.

  “You say you’re here to help our side. What side is that?” the translator asked, spinning variations of the same questions over and over.

  “The side fighting against Assad, the dictator.”

  I was under the impression they were all Free Syrian Army; at least that was who I was told I was going with on the day I got kidnapped. But I couldn’t be sure. And the two men asking questions so seriously from the floor could have been anyone, although I assumed they were part of the rebel administration from Yabroud.

  “And you want to help?”

  “I want to bring your story to the world. I’m a photojournalist.”

  “Do you work for the CIA?”

  And back they went, to the same questioning. They asked me so many times that I started hearing a creak of doubt in my own voice. Maybe I am CIA? Maybe they know something I don’t?

  Then after an hour the burly bear-faced man left and the translator walked out with him. The door was still open and I saw them talking for a while. I expected them to come back in and for the whole ordeal to be over. Then suddenly all those new people walked out and drove away. The blindfold came back on. I was led back to the other room and cuffed to the bed.

  I felt totally deflated. My world was dark again. Mej didn’t say anything. I could have used his reassurance, but I knew he didn’t count for shit in this situation. I needed to deal with the darkness on my own.

  * * *

  I MADE SURE to always stay aware of the date and count the number of days; losing track of time would cut me off from the world outside of captivity. The house was fairly spartan, but there were arabesque designs on the curtains, cushions and wooden molding. I’d count the repeating designs over and over. On one stretch of wood there were eighty repetitions of a geometric pattern, and I took it as a sign that I’d be there eighty days. Maybe it was wishful thinking. But it gave me a time frame to elaborate a strategy for getting my captors to liberate me, to somehow penetrate their psyches so they could see me as person, a human being who needed to be free—or at least a human whom they needed to set free. It didn’t matter. Whatever worked. After the interrogation they left the cuffs off my feet for most of the day, and even on some nights.

  Mej and I continued our exchanges. He revealed to me that the bear-faced man was Essad. “Number One Man still helps you, Jon.” He was the one wearing my belt and I wasn’t sure whether to be pissed at him or take it as a good sign.

  Repeatedly the outside world would break into my handcuffed and blindfolded bubble in the form of Bashar’s bombs. That in itself put us on a level playing field, since the helicopter pilot or artilleryman couldn’t tell the difference between captive and captor.

  But one morning, while everyone was sleeping, I lifted my blindfold and walked around. I peered into the TV room and saw my gear in the corner. My cameras, my computer. Not much stuff, but it felt like a limb I’d lost along the way. In many respects, those cameras were extensions of my eyes. At the moment, though, I had more pressing issues at hand—like simply staying alive. For once my stuff didn’t matter.

  Still, I tried to imagine what I’d do if I could hook up to the Internet that instant. Contact family? What would I say? Help me, I’m screwed. Don’t let these bastards cut my head off. The mere sight of Facebook’s blue layout might launch me into a tailspin. All those people taking photos of what they were eating and farting their thoughts to the world at large. I could post a picture of my tomato and rice dinner, night after night, along with the occasional goat meat. I’d comment on how the portions were getting smaller because they were running out of food. The pressure from Bashar’s troops was building and everyone seemed more and more preoccupied with holding their positions. The kids would spend the night on the lines and whole days would go by with just me and Flic. My secret hope was that Flic’s kindness or inattention might offer the key
to my escape.

  I started to develop scars on my wrists because of the handcuffs. I kept complaining, so they made them much looser, to the point where I could basically remove them if I wanted to. After about a week, though, Abu Talal realized what I was doing, that the cuffs were too loose. He didn’t say much, but he looked at me like, You sneaky punk, then had the cuffs tightened again.

  * * *

  INITIALLY I WAS RELEGATED to the children’s room. But one of the first times the officers allowed me to hang out with them in the other room was when Abu Talal grabbed me and showed me a little bottle full of liquid. He was losing his hair and the contents of the bottle must have been a product that helps slow baldness. There was something written on the label in Russian.

  “Is this good?” he asked.

  I said no. He paused a beat, assessed my attitude, then nailed me with a punch to the solar plexus. It knocked me on the ground and I couldn’t breathe for about ten seconds.

  Then he picked me up off the ground, laughing, and said he was only joking. I looked at him like, Sure, joking just like when you were kicking me in the head and stomping on me that first day. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I detected a little regret in his smirk while I was trying to catch my breath.

  Either way, that little exchange between us meant something. He had revealed one of his insecurities to me—his thinning hair. That was a lot in a macho culture.