The Shattered Lens Read online

  * * *

  IN THE BEGINNING of June the fighting flared up. Fares and I often wound up alone in the house, so one of those times he invited me out for an excursion. He put me on his little motorcycle and rode up into the mountains, toward Lebanon. It was very near where I was captured. He said he had cousins there.

  On the sides of the little road the gentle slopes were cultivated with orchards surrounding modest houses. At one point we stopped and he greeted two men—kiss, kiss—who were watching their children run around. They prepared a meal for us. I assumed Fares hadn’t seen these relatives in a while.

  I almost felt like I was free. Fares and I simply relaxed, eating casually, lounging out in the afternoon sun. Then we walked behind the house and went to an area on the side of a hill. Fares told me that before the war he and his friends used to hang out there and drink Coca-Cola. We climbed up the hill, which got quite steep, over an outcropping of rocks until we hit a plateau that seemed to lunge toward Lebanon.

  From that height you could see the village where I was being held. I studied the layout and eventually made out the very house. I tried to mentally photograph the image and lock it into my memory. This was just one of the hundred times every single day that I wished I’d had my camera. Everywhere I moved among these men—no matter whether they were sympathetic, like Fares, or assholes, like Abu Talal or Baby Donkey—I had become privy to their most revealing gestures and expressions. If I’d had my camera I could have recorded all the nuances they were sharing. And it’s a rare privilege when soldiers caught up in fighting open themselves up to that extent with a noncombatant.

  A pleasant gust of wind kicked up as the sun began to drop, setting free the dandelion puffs that were strewn across the plateau. The sun skirted the grass and cast a yellowish light filtered through the swarm of fluff. It was like a salve for my eyes. I had to accept that I couldn’t capture it with anything but my memory. Sort of like accepting my own captivity.

  Nevertheless, the image of our village from above was seared into my mind as though it contained photographic film, and my subconscious was already elaborating an escape route.

  I followed Fares along the edge of a meadow and felt the last rays of light soothing my face. He pointed to a rock. There were rectangles carved out of it and I immediately recognized that these were ancient Roman tombs carved into the rocks. They had been emptied, so they were just holes now. But they were in good condition. Perfectly carved. Obviously the top had been removed. When I was an aspiring archeologist I’d taken part in some digs in Spain, so I’d already seen similar artifacts. I examined the tomb and imagined myself inside. I wouldn’t have fit. The average height of an ancient Roman was five feet five inches.

  We walked down the hill with the wind kicking up. The last light silhouetted Fares in front of me as it sifted through the dandelion snow to caress my face.

  It was already dusk when we got back. Everyone had returned to the house. As soon as we got off the motorcycle, Abu Talal scowled at us and said, “Where the fuck have you been?” Fares just told him he’d taken me along with him on an errand. It didn’t seem to matter as long as Essad didn’t know.

  Just before it went completely dark I retrieved the bird’s-eye view of our village and looked out toward the hills to calculate where we’d been. I closed my eyes and saw the rays of light streaming through the dandelion fluff, as if refracted by a shattered lens, each floating seed one of us.

  ESCAPE

  MEJ AND I WERE WATCHING TV like an old couple: hardly aware of the other’s presence, though just aware enough to know it wouldn’t be the same without someone to share it with. The Egyptian actor Adel Imam was in an old black-and-white movie trying to weasel his way out of a comical misunderstanding—that much I could understand.

  A very Western-looking man came into the house: clean-shaven, polo shirt, jeans, armed with a couple of cell phones, exuding the air of someone who is always conspicuously busy. He sat down on the couch beside me and kept looking at me, almost staring. Then in English he asked, “What are you doing here?”

  I looked down at my own body, then back at him as I shook my head.

  “I’ve been kidnapped.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I’ve been kidnapped’?”

  “Just what I said. I’ve been a hostage for two months. I’m just here because this is where they’re holding me—against my will.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said, digesting the information as he turned back and forth from the TV, watching the movie like he’d seen it before. Mej was somewhat put off by us speaking a language he didn’t understand and went outside.

  “I’m Fares’s cousin,” the man said. “Are you a journalist?”

  “Yes. A photographer.”

  “A photographer. I see.”

  The way he said “photographer” made me suspect the questions were just a formality, that he’d already heard about me and was trying to make the planned visit seem spontaneous. But there was no way to be sure. Every day I had to struggle with flights of paranoia concocting all sorts of conspiracies.

  “So what do you do?” I asked.

  “I import and export cars . . . between Syria and Lebanon.” Probably a smuggler, I thought.

  We made a little attempt at small talk, but it wasn’t going anywhere. He’d come for a purpose and I was anxious for him to spit it out.

  After a few more awkward exchanges he finally said it: “We have to get you out of here.”

  I agreed, trying to rein in my enthusiasm. “Yes, you have to get me out of here. As soon as possible.”

  So he took his newest-model iPhone out and started filming me.

  “Just say who you are.”

  “I’m Jonathan Alpeyrie, a French photographer kidnapped by Free Syrian Army troops in Syria. I’m being held captive in a village between Yabroud and Damascus, near the Lebanese border. I’ve been held hostage since April twenty-ninth, 2013.”

  “Okay, that’s good. I’m going to go back to Lebanon tonight and I’ll bring this to your embassy.”

  Then he stood up and left.

  Fares came in right afterward and I told him his cousin had just been here, but he knew that. Fares had asked him to come in the first place.

  “He’s going to help you.”

  I was still wary and didn’t want to get my hopes up, only to be let down.

  “Why would he help me?” I said.

  “Because this is not good for the Syrian people. It’s not good that we’re doing this to Westerners. We need your help. Why are they doing this if we need your help?”

  * * *

  SUDDENLY MY HOPE LEVEL shot up. It was almost unbearable, because it conflicted with the fact that I couldn’t really do what I wanted. I imagined myself free, wandering through other people’s lives invisibly, the way I’d trained myself, armed only with my camera.

  Then two days after my visit from the car smuggler, I was back to doing my regular laps around the swimming pool. Fares had just returned from a visit to his family’s country house; with him was a small man wearing glasses and a baseball cap. I greeted Fares near the main door of the house. The man in the baseball cap looked at me very intensely, like he wanted to tell me something as soon as Rabiyah and Mej were beyond earshot. I understood he wanted to communicate, so I winked at him and he sort of winked back, confirming my hunch.

  Apart from Rabiyah and Mej walking around, it was just Fares, myself and the new man there. It was afternoon, right about the time the temperature started to cool down. Noor and the other men were away fighting. We went inside and Fares told me that the man was his uncle. He sat on the couch in the living room and kept looking at me, a little jittery. It was clear he wanted to tell me something, but Mej and Rabiyah were continually coming in and out of the house. He kept reaching into his pocket, like he had something to give me, but Rabiyah and Mej were always too close.

  Finally I decided to go into the kitchen. I caught the uncle’s attention and cocked my head a bit for h
im to follow me. He sat down at the table and I took a seat right next to him. He then reached into his pocket and was about to pull out a piece of paper, but Fares walked in. I assumed Fares knew about whatever he had to tell or show me, but suddenly I wasn’t even sure of that. Then Rabiyah and Mej came in and joined us, talking and laughing so he couldn’t give me what was in his pocket.

  After a while he went outside, back to his car, and returned with a hookah pipe. That way we could gain some time with a leisurely smoke. The uncle filled the bowl with tobacco and lit an ember to place it on top, hoping everyone else would find something more useful or pressing to do. But Mej and Rabiyah wouldn’t leave. There was a new face at home and they wanted to enjoy a little break in the routine. So they kept coming in and out.

  Then at one point, when the younger men casually stepped out for a second, I finally found myself alone with the uncle. He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, placed it in my palm, and closed my fist with both his hands. I put the paper into my pocket. The uncle stood up, went through all the salaam-motions of excusing himself because he had to leave suddenly, then grabbed the hookah and was off in his car.

  Within a few seconds I was in the bathroom slowly unfolding the paper. I felt like a genie would suddenly manifest itself from out of the creases. But I was also paranoid. Every crackle of paper sounded like thunder that could incriminate me. If anyone found me with a piece of paper in my hand, it would mean that I was doing something wrong.

  I opened it up and saw there was writing in English. The printed letters had a very deliberate posture, as if they were written by someone not totally comfortable with the Latin alphabet: “I come for you at midnight. 48 hours after you have this note stay outside house and this man will come in white car to go with you to Lebanon.”

  I kept reading the note over and over in the bathroom, trying to understand. Why did he say exactly forty-eight hours and also midnight? I thought one of them might be idiomatic, similar to how we say “eight days” to mean a week in France, or “fifteen days” to mean a fortnight. What if I get the wrong date? What does he mean by forty-eight hours?

  I folded the paper and hid it in the rolled-up cuff of my pants. As soon as I got out of the bathroom I was waylaid by anxiety, constantly checking if anybody was looking at me strangely. The only people in the house were Mej, Rabiyah and Fares. In all likelihood, nobody noticed anything weird, but my mind was racing and I could hear every blink around me.

  * * *

  THE OTHER MEN CAME back later that evening. For the next two days I was hiding a lot and taking the paper out to read it again. I was constantly worried about them searching me. Twice since we’d come to the second house they had told me to empty my pockets and given me a gentle pat down.

  During these days the area around the house was being shelled. Assad’s forces were increasing pressure and toward the end of May a major battle had been raging around Al-Qusayr, about forty miles north of us. Hezbollah was now backing Assad openly, and the rebels holding me were sandwiched between Assad’s troops to the east and Hezbollah to the west in Lebanon. A government offensive in the Qalamoun Mountains was imminent.

  The very evening after uncle had left, Abu Talal walked in and told everyone to pack up. We were moving back to the first house, where I’d been blindfolded and handcuffed for three weeks. I started to panic a little and asked Fares why we had to leave. They felt that the second house was too much of a target, so they were moving some of us back to the first one.

  I loathed that house and tried to tell them politely that I didn’t want to go there, but Abu Talal wouldn’t even take my dissent into consideration. I was little more than a heavy bag they had to lug around. I started complaining more vocally. “No, I don’t want to go. I want to stay here.” But Abu Talal was already pushing me into his car. I looked at Fares, but he said he had to go back to his own house, with his family, so he couldn’t stay with me. There simply weren’t enough men. Abu Talal wasn’t going to stay just because of me. The others were already at the first house and I would have been on my own, which was a nonstarter.

  So they forced me into the car and drove me back to that dreaded Dark House. It was the middle of the night. Not only was I beginning to relive that darkness and fear, but my whole plan for escape was crumbling between my fingers.

  By the time we got back to the first house I was already in a foul mood—brooding, irascible, practically throwing a hissy fit. I couldn’t find my socks. I bitched about the belt they’d stolen from me. I felt like spitting in the back of the car. I had to piss.

  Then once we were inside the house I caught a waft of something rancid and it triggered an avalanche of memories: the mock executions, the beatings. I took a deep breath. My ribs still hurt. I complained so much that Abu Talal couldn’t stand me anymore. I was like a nagging wife tormenting her husband—easier to satisfy than to cross and be subjected to death by a thousand cuts. He got on the phone with Fares and ordered him to go back to the villa and wait for us. Abu Talal drove me back. So it was just the three of us at that house, and the odd shell landing very close to our position. Every time we heard an explosion Abu Talal glowered at me. You see? It’s because you’re a whiney little bitch that we might get blown up. But I’d rather have been anywhere than that first house. I’d won my little battle—maybe not in the noblest manner, but I got my way.

  Eventually, when the shelling subsided, Abu Talal drove back to the other house to mind Baby Donkey and Mej. Fares and I fell asleep in the TV room. And whenever I could, I’d sneak the note out from my cuff and imagine the escape panning out.

  * * *

  BECAUSE OF THAT SUDDEN attempt to move me, I became convinced that they knew someone was planning to pick me up and usher me to freedom. Paranoia became my default mode. My confused mind shifted into overdrive and I even mistook the day the car was supposed to come. I calculated twenty-four hours instead of forty-eight, and realized that I was losing my sense of time.

  In order to wait for midnight I needed to know what time it was. But the only working clock in the house was on top of the door in the TV room. That was the only way I could tell the time, and after a certain hour, if there were others in there, it would seem suspicious for me to be constantly checking the clock. I’d noticed that Rabiyah wore a nice watch, which he’d hide at night. And I knew the hiding spot because I’d seen him stash it there. The house had a couch that you could lift up, and there was a storage area built into it, which was divided into compartments.

  They were all in the living room chatting, so I went to the corner of the sofa and lifted the cushion where he hid the watch. In one swift move I grabbed it, put it in my pocket, and walked outside. I hid it under a rock, then took it out in the evening so I could check the time without having to walk into the TV room.

  That evening I stayed up past midnight, well into the morning, but the guy didn’t show up. After waking up, I realized I’d miscalculated. Only twenty-four hours had passed, not forty-eight. I felt like along with my grip on time I was also losing my mind. I wasn’t even certain the note was real, so I kept touching my cuff to make sure it was there.

  The following day it was just me and Abu Talal in the house. I was waiting for midnight, wondering if this was going to work, if this man would ever show up. I was tired, but I couldn’t let myself fall asleep. I had to stay up until midnight. So I went into the TV room. Abu Talal was watching TV on his own. I sat down and smoked cigarettes with him. I kept watching the clock. Then I decided to go to bed—not too late, not too early, because I wanted Abu Talal to fall asleep. By eleven I said good night and I was in the bedroom, just waiting. One hour went by. From my bedroom I could see the big porch and the street and anyone walking in. I was constantly looking up from my bed, then checking Rabiyah’s watch in my pocket. Midnight—no one. Twelve thirty—no one. Twelve forty-five, forty-seven, fifty—still no one.

  Finally, a little after one, the uncle suddenly showed up. I was ready to go. I
slipped out of the bedroom very discreetly, hoping Abu Talal would be sleeping. I opened the door where the man was standing and I was ready to scurry out to the car. But he stopped me and said no. “Not tonight. It’s too dangerous.”

  As he was telling me the bad news, Abu Talal walked up to the door a little groggy and looked at us like, What the fuck is going on? I feigned ignorance, shrugging my shoulders, I don’t know, some guy was knocking on the door and I just sort of opened it. The two men started speaking in Arabic and I caught Fares’s name. Basically he was saying that he was looking for Fares. Abu Talal, still grumpy from getting woken up, said something to the effect of I don’t know where Fares is so get the fuck out of here and shoved him out the door.

  I slipped back into my room like nothing happened, but I was expecting trouble. Abu Talal walked in and I was already numbing myself in preparation for a long-overdue beating, but instead he just scolded me. “No, no, no!” He made it clear that I was not to open the door or talk to anyone. That was all. He didn’t even seem to suspect that visit was about me.

  * * *

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS nothing happened. I kept waiting for the uncle. But the prospect of escape took control of me and I began hatching a new plan in my mind. I’d stolen some paper and a pencil, and set out to draw a map of exactly where we were. Enough with the fantasy maps made out of scraping paint chips off the wall. Now I was going to confront reality head-on. But the only way I could draw this map accurately was if I had a 360-degree view from the top of the villa. Since we had arrived at the second house I’d noticed that every couple of days they would bring a water cistern pulled by a tractor and link it up with big hoses, then somebody would have to climb to the third floor of the villa, which was still under construction. Up there they would transfer the water into a big plastic cylinder.