The Shattered Lens Read online

  That said, there’s no doubt that now, frustrated, often scared, but mostly bored in a house I knew I might die in, whiling away the time by chipping paint off the wall and teaching kids how to kiss, caress and fuck the woman of their dreams, I would have loved to have a female companion who understood all the risks I’d taken and, moreover, all the ones I’d avoided.

  * * *

  NOOR WAS ALSO A SEX fiend. But unlike Rabiyah, who had a romantic streak and was secretly preparing for the arrival of some princess conflated from an MTV video and the Arabian Nights, Noor was a veritable pig. He would come up to me with his thick neck and bon-vivant smile peering through his beard under the receding hairline and spew the English word ass from his mouth. He was a self-avowed ass-man. Pussy and tits, too, but he was definitely in the big-butt school of women. “Nice ass,” Fares and I taught him to say.

  I’d echo his sentiments in Arabic. “Kess,” I’d say, which meant pussy or ass. I was never quite sure.

  Noor’s was a fiendishness based more on a reality-tempered aesthetic than Rabiyah’s. Noor was married, with children, so I assumed he had experience. I had no idea what his wife looked like, but tastes in the Arab world tended toward chubby women.

  If we were watching some variety show with dancers, or Jennifer Lopez on MTV, Noor would let out his Neanderthal grunt: “Keeessssss, I want keeesssss. Cuunnnt.”

  From time to time he’d spit it out like machine gun fire. “C-c-c-c-cunt!” It was as if he were acutely aware of the similar thrills involved in coming into a woman (or man, for that matter, or, who knows, even a goat) and shooting a gun—and he was acknowledging as much in the face of the young virgin boys’ starry-eyed dreams of conjugal bliss.

  Noor probably had a wife who was tired of his sexual appetite, even if she may at one time have enjoyed it. I could picture him coming home from work, scarfing his dinner down, belching loudly, smoking four or five cigarettes, then grabbing his chubby wife and lifting up her abaya. One, two, three . . . twenty pumps at the most and he was done. Then he’d roll over and leave her there . . . not so much “unsatisfied,” as you’d imagine a Western woman, but resigned. That’s the way it is. That’s how men are. And then she’d tend to the children and household chores.

  At times sitting around in the second house I felt like I’d gone back in time. Soldiers’ lives—if you disregard the technology involved—have always been extremely primal. Maybe that’s what drew me to conflict photography: the opportunity to spend time with soldiers without being forced to take orders. Sort of like a spectator at an orgy. I wondered how many photographers before me had traded in their cameras for Kalashnikovs.

  * * *

  RABIYAH MADE ME SHOW him how to dance a few times—always at night. Once it was just me and him watching TV. Some of the guys were in the other room. He put on the Lebanese channel that played music videos from the West and started busting a move. When I laughed at how he danced, gyrating his hips like a spastic Elvis, he ordered me to the dance floor to show him how it was done.

  There were a lot of Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull videos for some reason. The boys were in love with Jennifer Lopez. I taught them how to say “J-Lo,” and Noor, of course, turned the name into an obscenity: “J-Lo’kess,” like some half-wit brute waking up with the name of his Irish whore, Jail O’Kiss, on his lips. I taught him to say “booty” but it didn’t have the same impact.

  So Rabiyah and I were both standing in front of the TV, with no one watching. We danced together and he imitated me. He didn’t have the natural groove of Africans, and I wasn’t exactly Fred Astaire, but I’d been to enough clubs in New York and Paris to feel totally comfortable dancing.

  I actually got into it. J-Lo was moving on the screen and I was swaying my hips in sync with her. A couple of the other boys came in from the next room and joined us, each pretending there was a girl twerking away uncontrollably in front of him.

  Then suddenly, from under the music, I could hear the familiar whining and pleading. Directly across the road from the TV room, in the villa, there was a room where the troops used to carry out their interrogations. Until about a week earlier they’d been doing it in the lower floor of the house, right underneath us. A couple of times I saw men being dragged out of our house in the evening and taken up the road to the headquarters.

  So while J-Lo was shaking her booty and lip-syncing whatever the song was about—the magnetic power of her own booty, I presume—the voices across the road begged and pleaded. Since I couldn’t hear the sound of anything being struck, I assumed some even more sinister torture was being applied, like cattle prods, or cigarette burns, or some sort of testicle twist. Then I heard the dogs barking and those unmistakable screams.

  I danced to drown out the sound. Even the boys were disturbed by the torture. Noor tried to gloat: “Assad something-or-other,” he said. I gathered they’d caught some of Assad’s men, or people they thought were spying for the government. When he said, “Christian man,” a chill cut through me.

  And all the while, J-Lo was on the verge of something resembling a twerk on TV and I was boogieing down with Rabiyah and the boys. As I moved to the music I wasn’t sure how much longer I could last before I started whining and screaming like the guys across the road. Something in me would have preferred to join these people in their fight rather than wind up pleading under their torture.

  * * *

  THE TV AND BOREDOM brought us closer and closer. One night we were sitting around: me, Mej, Noor, Baby Donkey and Abu Talal. They were zapping the channels between Arab variety and talk shows. Abu Talal had the remote and landed at the beginning of The Green Lantern dubbed into Arabic. Everyone wanted to watch it. But when the star of the film, Ryan Reynolds, came on the screen, they all did a double take toward me. For several years now, I’d been getting stopped in clubs and on the street by people asking me if I was Ryan Reynolds. I didn’t think we looked alike, but I could see how other people did. We had similar height and build, and both of us had short hair and elongated facial features.

  Abu Talal, though, was convinced I was on TV. He started blabbering something at me while pointing to the screen. All the others kept studying my face, going back and forth to the movie.

  At first I laughed and took it as a compliment, the way I would if I were on a New York street. But when my denials weren’t swallowed right away, it occurred to me that if they suspected I was a Hollywood star, then my ransom price would go sky-high and I’d never get out of there. So I had to deny it vehemently and present my case: “No, no, look at my nose. That’s not his nose. Look at these eyebrows. Not the same.”

  They all got a kick out of my little panic flare-up and eventually bought my denial. Then we all settled back down to watch the film.

  I’d seen it before, so the Arabic didn’t bother me. I remember thinking that the emotions they tried to draw out of the film were overly sentimental: a young pilot coming to terms with his own fears in order to save the universe. But as is often the case with Hollywood films, they’re done so well that you can’t avoid getting absorbed. Now, as a captive, all that superhero business made me a little queasy. I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t need to come to terms with my own fear. I needed to eliminate it. And I wasn’t interested in saving the universe. I was determined to save my ass. Everything was so black-and-white in the film. In real life, though, apart from surviving, everything is one big muddy gray zone: good and evil, courage and cowardice. The only thing that’s relatively clean and simple is the division between life and death.

  * * *

  SEVERAL NIGHTS LATER I was dozing off in my bed. I could hear the TV on in the background. I was in that half-dream state where I wasn’t sure whether a nightmare was coming or not, but I instinctively tried to stuff whatever was happening and get as close to comatose as possible.

  I felt a presence come into the room, but it could have been the dream. Then I felt Abu Talal nudge his butt against my legs and I woke up completely. He was sitting at the f
oot of the bed in his ratty boxer shorts. My reaction was pure instinct. I raised my voice loud enough to be heard in the TV room. “No, no, no. Get out. Don’t even think of it.”

  Abu Talal tried to shush me, but not violently. As if he had something important to tell me. But with the language barrier there was nothing to say. He put his hand on my lap and I recoiled. “Don’t even think of it,” I said even louder.

  He must have been embarrassed, because he didn’t pursue it. And a few days later he was joking about the incident in front of me to one of the other officers, imitating the panicky way I said “no.”

  I’d been waiting for something like that to happen for a while. I was surprised he hadn’t tried earlier. Occasionally I’d see Abu Talal with a handsome young visitor, another soldier still too young to shave, and they’d horse around, very touchy-feely, even tickling each other. It’s hard to say if they were romantically involved. It could have gone either way. Arab men can be very affectionate with each other without there being a sexual vibe.

  I was somewhat used to it from growing up in France, where it’s common for men to greet each other with a kiss on each cheek. Boys would hang out with their arms around their buddies. Older men would walk down the street arm in arm. In America you just couldn’t do that without it being equivocal. A bro-hug and pat on the back was cool, but kisses were for faggots. Any other kind of touching was borderline.

  But I think it would have been safe to assume that Abu Talal was interested in more than just a bro-hug or a kiss on the cheek. In fact, when I brushed him off and embarrassed him, instead of getting all alpha-male on me and trying to turn me into his bitch, he just waddled out of the room disappointedly. I started to suspect that he might, in his own awkward way, be falling in love with me. I realized it was a double-edged sword, but one I could play to my advantage.

  * * *

  ONE OF THE BEST developments since I’d been captured was simply the weather. In the first house I was always cold. It was May already, but there was no heating. Cold tends to compound fear, and vice versa; both make you shiver.

  Now in the new house, with the blindfold off and a little more mobility, I could feel the sun. The light led my thoughts along a more rational track. For example, I could assess my possibilities for escape much more clearly.

  Back at the first house I was fairly irrational: I’d convinced myself that the reason I was still there and not free was that there were helicopters above us. I started to obsess about clouds, lifting the blindfold to check how overcast it was. Because under cloud cover, they could take me to safety, to freedom—though I wasn’t exactly sure who “they” might be. All I knew was that the menacing sound of helicopters and its potential to rain fire from the sky was what kept us inside that little jail. It kept me inside a mind warped by fear.

  I started to make halfhearted vows. If I ever get out of here I’ll change my line of work, I’ll be a better person. Something within me knew they were halfhearted, but that’s how my mind was working. I was grasping at anything, knowing full well that I was grasping, but hoping nonetheless to effect a change in my situation.

  But now it was early summer and the backyard was full of apricots ready to fall off the trees. I’d walk around and eat the ones that looked ripe, even help the men pick them off the branches. A few times Abu Talal drove me to the fields a few miles away where I would help the local peasant men gather the fruit into big bushels.

  To me it seemed as if the trees needed to be picked and the aim of their natural profusion was to draw me out of captivity. Those sweet, succulent apricots tasted just a little like freedom, because otherwise I might be stuck inside a room watching bad Arabic TV—or much worse.

  At the height of the apricot season, Noor and his brother took me with them for a drive about an hour into the mountains, where entire slopes were full of orchards and the apricot trees were exploding with their little orange grenades.

  As I was picking the fruit and putting it into the bushel, I could see two peasant girls in the distance. It was the first time I’d seen any females (apart from on TV) since I’d been taken. They were shy, but they didn’t bother covering their faces, and I was struck by the girls’ dark eyes and sultry gaze. I had a weakness for dark women—New York was full of Latinas and black women who seemed to still have that charge of femininity that many of the Waspy white women have lost in their drive for equality or career or whatever. The girls kept looking at me, obviously a foreigner, and I felt exposed, as if a sniper could hit me at any moment. I ran my thumb over the slight fuzz covering an apricot and tried to imagine what stroking their faces might be like. After all this time surrounded by beards, I missed being near feminine energy. At one point I imagined they could read my thoughts, and I didn’t want Noor or his brother to think I was ogling one of “their” women. Then Noor gave me a friendly nudge saying, They’re looking at you.

  That little nudge broke the spell for me. There, in the mountains, near the border with Lebanon, in the proximity of the peasant girls, I caught a glimpse of what freedom in its deepest sense might mean. Not that I was in possession of it—or ever had been. Not by a long shot. But I could get a taste of it somewhere in the sweetness of the apricots I kept stuffing into my mouth.

  Then, as if to confirm (or maybe to poison) my epiphany, Noor offered to let me shoot his AK-47 into the mountain. I took him up on it, and that little ballistically induced rush only amplified my taste of freedom. And that kept me going.

  * * *

  I STARTED SEEING ESSAD more and more often. In total I met him about ten times. He was Number One Man, and whenever he came the men liked to have him join them in prayer.

  Depending on the military situation, the men prayed five times a day. These were the so-called moderate rebels. They weren’t ISIS, which had just begun to form out of al-Qaeda in Iraq while I was captive. They weren’t Jabhat al-Nusra, which was allied with al-Qaeda. Still, they were devout. Many of the men were almost secular before the war (in the Muslim context that would probably mean they believed in God but didn’t follow all the precepts and proscriptions of Islam, such as praying five times daily or not drinking alcohol).

  They knew I was Christian, but in the first house they made it clear: “You’re not here because you’re Christian.” It had nothing to do with faith. Yabroud had twenty-five thousand people, of which anywhere from a quarter to a third were Christians. There may even have been Christians among the fighters, but I never met any. The only person who was Christian for sure was the one getting tortured along with two other Muslims—at least according to Fares.

  They always prayed very late at night—often in the room where I slept. They would go in separately. More often than not I was asleep and they were quite discreet about it. Old man Flic had a very soothing voice when he prayed, which lulled me to sleep if I wasn’t already passed out. But Abu Talal’s voice had the opposite effect; I’d feel like ripping his tongue out of his mouth.

  In the first house I never prayed. I was in a constant state of agitation. In the second house, though, I developed the habit of going to the balcony that overlooked Lebanon. I would pull up a white plastic garden chair in the late afternoon and just sit, staring into the distance. There was a peak on the mountain and the sun would hit the peak just before dusk. As soon as the sun touched it, I would start praying—always the same prayer, the only one I knew by heart: “Our Father” in French. I’d repeat it over and over until the sun disappeared.

  Several times I prayed with the men on the balcony, facing Mecca—which was almost due south, so the mountains that symbolized freedom for me were to my right and slightly behind me. I joined them and just imitated whatever gestures they made. When it was over they would give me a smile.

  One of the times when Essad and his lieutenants were there, an artillery round hit the eastern side of house. We all ran to the sheltered area under the balcony because it was safer; the strikes were coming from the east, and the slope in the yard behind the house
offered extra protection. There were at least fifteen of us waiting it out, and I was sitting among them. One guy looked at me and said, “Johnny, are you scared?” So I said “Bein Allah.” God help us. They all started laughing and even threw me a few cigarettes in approval. They were very pleased that I remembered these things. Bein Allah was a pious way of saying it. I kept hearing it, so at some point I’d asked what it meant.

  After that incident they asked me a few times if I wanted to convert. They taught me the Basmala in Arabic, which opens every sura of the Quran: bismillahi rahmani rahim. (In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.) But the last thing I wanted was to convert to Islam. Not only would I appear to be opportunistically ingratiating myself to them, but I also saw Islam as a threat to my own culture. In any case, I had my own faith (weak though it may have been) and I didn’t want to betray it. I believe they respected me more for that.

  * * *

  PRAYER USUALLY HAD a soothing effect on me. But not always. On occasion, the calm it induced would unexpectedly lead to waves of hatred welling up from my belly. I wanted to kill all of them. But especially Abu Talal—for his grating voice, his troglodyte eyes and Neanderthal brow, for snoring in front of the TV, for making swinish sounds when he ate, for having taken away my precious freedom with a smile on his face.

  I imagined myself walking the streets of New York, very specific spots, like Thirty-fourth Street, right around Broadway: I bump into Abu Talal by pure chance. He smiles and tries to greet me as if we’re friends who haven’t seen each other in ages. But as soon as he comes toward me with his arms open for a hug, I throw him to the ground and start beating on him. I kick him in his ribs and then rain fists and elbows across his face until it’s full of gashes. People start crowding around and I’m turning his fat face into a pulp. Police come but they can’t hold me back. Everyone is amazed by the fury in me and they can’t help but understand that such fury must be justified somehow. Everyone asks themselves: What did that fat Arab do to incite such rage? And everyone knows he’s getting what he deserves.