The Shattered Lens

by Jonathan Alpeyrie

  SECOND INTERROGATION

  SEVEN DAYS AFTER my interrogation with the French translator, the two men from Yabroud and their entourage came again to interrogate me. This time it was different. There were fewer people. Mej was there. Essad wasn’t there, and I didn’t know what to make of it, but it couldn’t have been good. They had another translator, one who spoke English, a soldier. His English was good, but not as good as the French translator’s French. He wore khaki desert camouflage, which seemed to be the unit’s standard uniform.

  I was sitting with the entry door to my right side. No one seemed to be in a very good mood. I attributed it to an uptick in the bombing campaign. Occasionally I could make out the word Hezbollah in their conversations, and I asked Mej if they’d encountered any Hezbollah, which would have been bad news for the rebels. He never gave a clear answer, but I could tell from his facial expression that they probably had.

  Just as we were settling in around the table, a guy came in with two kitchen knives and sat right across from me. I felt my esophagus tense up and tried to brace myself by showing no emotion. He started sharpening one knife against the other, the metallic clang cutting through all my thoughts. Then he came up behind me, pulled my head back, and set the blade against my neck, withholding just enough pressure to keep from drawing blood. My diaphragm seized up in terror; I stopped breathing. He could feel my fear, milked it for a few seconds, then let go and swaggered back to his seat with a satisfied grin.

  They started the interrogation. This time there were hardly any questions.

  “Okay, we know you’re CIA,” the translator said. “We checked you out. We know you’re working for the American intelligence service.”

  “It’s not true. I’m a photographer; you can easily find out.”

  “You’re lying. Why did you come here?”

  “I’m a photojournalist. I came to Syria to cover the war. This is my third time. I wanted to follow rebel troops to get their story out to the world.”

  “You’re lying. You’re CIA, you came to see who we are. Your government wants to know who we are, who is fighting, what kind of weapons we have.”

  “I’m French. I’ve never met anyone in the CIA.”

  They kept rehashing the same line of interrogation, sometimes with slight variations.

  “Just admit it. You’re FBI.”

  “I’m not FBI. I’m not CIA. I’m a French photographer who wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m on your side in this,” I told them, trying not to sound like I was pleading, or desperate. “I want to help your cause.”

  “That’s what the Americans always say. But we get no help. Only spies. You’re a spy.”

  They repeated it so much that the seed of doubt started growing as I got tired. I kept trying to remember if I’d written any address in my French passport. If I had, it would have been my New York address. I tried to remember what was written about me on my online profile. Maybe they’d found out that I was based in New York. I could cover that lie by saying it was my father’s address. He’s still in New York. I was concerned that I might break down, but surprisingly I kept believing my own lie: that I actually lived in Paris (even though I hadn’t lived there since I was fourteen).

  However, along with my growing conviction in my own half-truth, an insidious doubt kept growing way beneath the surface of my words. I started to wonder if perhaps I wasn’t actually an unwitting informer for the CIA. Maybe one of my contacts in Lebanon or a colleague I’d met on a previous assignment had given me away, and this was a matter of guilt by association. And if they kept up the interrogations, if they kept putting knives to my throat I would eventually break down and tell them I lived in New York. Not only that, but it might become so harrowing I’d start admitting to anything, that I was not only in the CIA, but I was also Napoleon’s right-hand man, that I was a reconnaissance scout for a Crusader force bent on retaking the Holy Land and all of the Levant.

  I needed to focus on the facts. Keep it simple: I’m a nobody. I’m a misplaced pawn. I’m a small enough fish that you won’t get much out of me, but I’m valuable enough to use as bait. I tried to lock myself into an unflappable mode, always aware of the knives at the opposite end of the table.

  “What about your parents? If you’re a famous photographer, why aren’t you on television? Why is nobody talking about you?”

  The reasoning was logical. But I had no way of knowing why. I had no clue as to who knew what outside my bombed-out little bubble.

  “I don’t know. I’m not that famous. I don’t know how these things work. Maybe I’m not that important. I’m just a photographer.”

  They kept at it for almost two hours. On the one hand, I was exhausted; on the other, it was a sign that things were moving. In which direction I didn’t know, but it could have meant an opening. I tried not to get my hopes up like the last time. Instead, I did my best to analyze the situation and spot any signs of progress.

  The fact that they were worried about me being CIA could go either way for me. They might trade me off to the Syrian government in exchange for some concession somewhere along the convoluted line. Or they might hand me over to a more fanatic group, one that has an ax to grind with the United States as an enemy of Islam. The bottom line was that I was better off staying French, a more low-key player in the context, one that was known to pay out ransoms.

  When the men finally got up to leave, I felt like I was about to pass out. As he was walking out of the house the knife guy smiled and patted my shoulder, as if to say, Nothing personal. I shot him a massive fuck-you with my eyes while trying to keep my face relatively expressionless.

  BEFORE THEY PUT THE BLINDFOLD back on I caught a glimpse of my boots by the entry. Every time I looked at them I thought I’d definitely be set free. Strange how something these men deemed as unclean as any shit could become another man’s symbol of freedom.

  Back in the dark, I felt the pressure of the knife on my neck suddenly come back to me. During the interrogation, in that airless fraction of a second when I had the blade up against my skin, I got sucked back into one of the most traumatic episodes of my childhood. Now, alone with the tension lifting, I could delve into the unpleasant memory.

  Throughout elementary school I had a best friend, David. I was a skinny, gangly kid, a late bloomer, and David was bigger, more at ease in his own skin. He was popular with all the other kids, and their parents would hold him up as an example. If an adventure ever presented itself to us, he was the one to insist on taking the invitation, whereas I was always hesitant. And I loved David because every time I deferred to his sense of adventure, I grew, I learned more about myself, and I was that much closer to becoming a man. Little things: jumping over a ditch, walking down a street where a gang of other kids were taunting us, defying their disrespect. He always confronted such situations head-on.

  But David, I’d gradually come to realize, was unable to control the violence that seemed to run in his blood, under the surface, a violence that gave him a glow that drew me to him like the fated moth to a flame. He didn’t suffer fools easily, and I was often foolish. One time, when we were about eight or nine, I was at his house and I saw a packet of gum on his night table. When he went out to talk to his mother I casually took a piece of gum and started chewing. Then, when he came back into the room, he said, “Where did you get that gum?”

  He asked in such a menacing way that I just lied. “I had it.”

  “No, you didn’t. You took mine.”

  Suddenly his voice turned scary. The logical thing to do was say, Yeah, I took some gum. Big deal.

  Something sinister welled up in his face and he pulled a hunting knife from out of his desk drawer. He gave my shoulder a quick poke, and suddenly I was bleeding.

  “Tell me the truth!” he said, grinding his teeth with a feral look in his eyes.

  “Okay, I took your gum.”

  I was holding my shoulder, terrified by the sight of blood. I wanted to scream, call his mot
her, who was in the house at the time. But this was his world. We had to play by his rules.

  In any case, he’d made his point and put the knife away. Then he went into the bathroom and came out with bandages and disinfectant and cleaned me up like a little nurse. I probably needed a stitch or two, but I didn’t want to betray him.

  Later, when my mother saw me without my shirt and asked me about the cut, I looked at her like I didn’t know how it happened. She looked at me suspiciously.

  “Did you do that to yourself?” she asked.

  I said, “No. Why would I do that to myself?” And then let it sit as a mystery. Because I was loyal. I didn’t want to betray my best friend. And I felt more like a man for having sucked up that fear and dealt with it.

  So at the interrogation, with the knife up to my throat, I distinctly remembered the tone of David’s voice. Only this interrogation was much easier to deal with because I had no emotional attachment to my interrogator. I was able to become impassive, despite the initial fear that overtook me.

  Over the subsequent days I played the two episodes back in my mind, almost conflating them, and it shed some light for me on why I’d always been so attracted to violent conflict. It was more than just a way to test my limits and confront my fear. The fear that sprang from random violence was connected deep down to a sense of loyalty and devotion.

  * * *

  I REALIZED THAT MY CAPTORS must have gone through my gear with childlike curiosity. Already I’d noticed Essad wearing my belt.

  A few times they brought my computer to me and told me to type in the password. They went through various files. As I guided them through the contents of what was essentially a memory bank for me, I could see I was becoming more human in their eyes. I remember my mother telling me, before a previous trip to Syria, that if I ever got the chance I should show Muslim fighters my pictures with the Ogaden rebels on the Ethiopia-Somalia border. In 2009 I went to the Somali region of Ethiopia for three weeks to photograph the rebels of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, who were all devout Muslims. One of the first chances I got, I showed my captors those pictures, and that scored me a few points with them.

  But one time while they were going through my medicine kit and checking out what brand of toothpaste I used, the mood suddenly changed. The laughter shifted to harsh sounds of indignation.

  Abu Talal lifted my blindfold and put a foil packet up to my nose. “What’s this? What the fuck is this?” That much I could figure out in Arabic.

  It was a stray condom that had probably been sitting in my medicine kit for months. He’d ripped it open just a little.

  I caught a backhanded slap to the face. My cuffed hands were too slow together to raise them high enough to protect me. Ali came around, too.

  How could I explain to them that I’d never had any intention of going to Syria on a sex holiday? The condom was just an oversight. One of these you-never-know type things. And even though I didn’t understand any Arabic, it was clear as day what they were thinking and saying: You come here to fuck our women? Take pictures of our dead and then fuck our women?

  I tried to explain to them that it was a just-in-case precaution, but it was hopeless. I’d have needed a translator. These people probably didn’t have the kind of casual sex with women (at least women who weren’t prostitutes) that we Western men were used to. I knew it was best to just shut up, take my beating like a man, and hope to earn some respect from it.

  I reproached myself for not having packed with more attention. I hadn’t expected to fall hostage to Arab men jealous of their women’s honor, though.

  Turned out the beating wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated: just a few smacks and a perfunctory punch in the gut. I accepted it as a matter of course. No point pleading or whining. I gave them a look that said: Do whatever you want. I wasn’t interested in fucking your women. If you need to smack me around to feel good about your honor, then go ahead. There’s nothing I can do about it.

  That attitude seemed to register with them on an animal level. After the last few halfhearted slaps, they lost interest and left me to my darkness.

  * * *

  I WONDERED WHAT Abu Talal’s woman might look like. Or even if he had a woman. Was she as chubby as he was? He looked like he’d crush a skinny girl if he got on top of her.

  The others must have had mothers, sisters, aunts, but I hadn’t seen anything feminine since the barbecue with Alfarook’s family. The young men were very affectionate with each other. By American standards it would seem gay, but in the East, and even in parts of Europe, men touch and kiss each other much more readily as a sign of friendship. If the boys had sex with each other or just jerked each other off, then it tended to be a functional homosexuality—there were no women available, so they needed to make do with what was there. Inevitably some of them come to realize that’s what they prefer.

  In the back of my mind, though, I kept thinking I was what was there. If they wanted, they could make do with me. I knew if I broke down, I could wind up one of their bitches. So far, though, there was nobody who seemed interested in me. And they were all fairly busy with the fighting. But in my bleaker moments all kinds of worst-case scenarios floated to the surface.

  They had families. We all had families. Now we were stuck under the same roof, at times with the same fear of falling under the same mortar or rocket fired from an airplane. If I could get the sense of family going . . . Already Mej had become my lifeline. He reassured me every morning. He’d tell me who was a good man, who was a bad man. He spoke some words of a language I understood. I needed to become their brother, but I was like a helpless embryo cuffed by my umbilical cord. That image helped. Especially when I imagined myself floating in all that amniotic fluid, as if in some huge ocean where my troubles seemed insignificant in the greater scheme of things and I realized that my freedom—everyone’s freedom—was merely an illusion; because real freedom entails the ability to remain fully human even in that embryonic state of captivity we’ve all been subject to. In particular, this illusion tends to afflict those who believe they are absolutely free, like I used to before I got captured.

  These men had to become my brothers. But that was something else I needed to learn. I never grew up with brothers. My father had a daughter, Lauren, with his second wife, but I’m ten years older than my sister. In a sense, my father was somewhat of a brother, in that I’d always confided in him. I tried not to think of him, but there was no getting around how much I missed him. He used to tell me stories, read to me: Jack London, Moby-Dick, the Knights of the Round Table. All the notions of freedom, honor and chivalry he helped instill in me were now coming in handy. I sensed somehow that the language of honor and courage was something these pseudo-brothers holding me captive understood—despite the linguistic gulf.

  My mother, for her part, imbued me with a stoicism that helped me deal with the daily sense of deprivation. She’d had a very harsh childhood, which she never talked about, and escaped by traveling the world. Her capacity for solitude and ability to adapt to foreign cultures had rubbed off on me.

  But now my parents were each on opposite sides of a continent that was an ocean away from me. I couldn’t afford to worry about them worrying. I needed to cultivate this new family—even though I hated them and would kill them if I could.

  * * *

  EVERY MORNING I’D SAY “hamam,” bathroom—usually to Mej, who was watching me. He would always say he didn’t have the key. Later they cuffed me to the bedpost and I could only sleep on one side. I would motion to them to uncuff me. And they would make the gesture that means wait. Sometimes Mej would agree and sneak into the other room and get the key, then he’d open the cuffs and I would go to the toilet. They would wait for me outside and I would go out. Then we’d come back quickly and he’d cuff me to the bedpost again.

  Throughout the day they would give me water. I had a gold-colored glass sitting on my right side, from which I would drink. But of course the water would make me want t
o piss, and they wouldn’t let me go to the toilet unless I pleaded with them and looked like I was about to explode. So I would just piss into the glass. The window was usually open, so I’d toss the piss out the window, but often I’d miss and some would spill onto the sill and the outside wall. The acrid smell of dried urine would waft through the room. I didn’t care. I was leaving my mark like a dog. If for some reason I disappeared from the face of the earth and wound up buried in an impossible-to-find Levantine hole, at least I had left a mark for some other dog; at least I had created some discomfort for the fucks who took away my liberty.

  I piss, therefore I exist.

  It was a minuscule consolation, possibly even more fodder for despair, but any little act of defiance gave me strength, made me feel a little more alive, a little less pliant. And that somehow might translate into respect on their part.

  * * *

  PSYCHO WAS ALWAYS an immediate concern. One minute he was a squirrelly teenager, the next a rabid assassin. And with no life experience to speak of under his belt, he needed to make a name for himself.

  One day I was only cuffed with my hands in front of me, and not to the bedpost. So I stood up. It was early morning and everyone was sleeping. Sometimes the younger guys would sleep in the TV room with Abu Talal and Ali, and I’d be on my own. I liked that.

  I was already thinking about how I could escape. I stood up, opened the curtain, and looked into the kitchen to get a sense of the layout. The bathroom was on the left. I tried to figure out the doors leading outside, and how my captors blocked them with metal bars, which I heard every night. They were probably closing it for safety reasons, not necessarily to keep me in. But it made a lot of noise. In planning my escape I kept imagining different scenarios, different exit routes. I drew the curtain a bit and ventured into the kitchen. There was a drape and another drape and then the TV room. I looked in and saw that they were sleeping—everyone except Psycho, who clearly saw me.