The Shattered Lens Read online

  At first I wasn’t even sure that the man in the polo shirt was the man who’d bought my freedom. Then he flat-out admitted it: “You know, Jonathan, I only wanted to pay two hundred thousand dollars. But Mr. Atrash, whom you met earlier today, said that I should pay more, because they originally wanted seven hundred fifty thousand. He said, ‘You should pay more, it will be good for you. It will help your reputation.’ That’s how he explained it. So you see, Atrash saved your life. Because he convinced me to raise my offer.”

  I had the urge to ask him, So what was I worth? But I kept quiet.

  “Eventually we settled on four hundred fifty thousand.”

  At that time I had no idea who these people were, but from the looks of his private Shabiha army protecting the villa, I assumed he was an important ally of the Bashar regime. As the conversation continued, he told me he was a parliamentarian. As for Atrash, Aboud himself said that the man was a Lebanese politician with close ties to Syria, a member of the Druze minority that has historically had to maneuver among countless factions with extreme caution—all of which merely confirmed my status as a pea in a very complex Levantine shell game.

  “You see, I was actually looking for two other French journalists. Someone had told me Essad’s group were holding a Frenchman, so I sent the sheikh and his men to verify the information. They came back with a video of you.”

  “So what do you intend to do with me?”

  “Like I said, as soon as we work out a few things, we’ll take you to Lebanon, where I’m counting on you to tell the French government that Mr. Aboud helped you and paid your ransom. You see, in this part of the world every action is in reality a transaction. I expect your government to return the favor and help me.”

  “Well, if you get me to Beirut, you have my word that I’ll tell them exactly how much you’re helping me.”

  “That’s all I need from you, Jonathan. Here, take my phone and call your family. Tell them you’re safe and you’re going to be free soon.”

  I took the phone and thought, I can’t call my father. He might break down and have a heart attack. Years earlier I was with him in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and he had a severe heart attack. I practically saved his life. I couldn’t risk it. And even if I had been sure he could handle it, that call would have been too emotional for me. So I called Yann, my best friend in Paris.

  “Salut, Yann. I’m in Damascus. I can’t say much, but I’m going to be freed soon. You have to call my dad.”

  As soon as Yann heard my voice he started weeping with happiness.

  “I felt it. This morning I felt you were going to call. When the phone rang I knew it was you.”

  I got off the phone quickly because I wasn’t ready for so much emotion, especially since I wasn’t entirely convinced that the ordeal was over.

  * * *

  ABOUD AND I CHATTED for a while. He told me that even though he was a parliamentarian, he’d been arrested by the government years back and jailed—but only briefly—so he understood my situation somewhat. He also suggested that when this whole ordeal was over, I could come back as his guest. He could even get me access to rebels in the Jobar area of Damascus if I wanted to do an exclusive reportage. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Everything was so murky, and I just didn’t have the strength to dig into his connections and find out who he was for or against, or even what he really wanted from me. I was in pure survival mode and didn’t want to ruffle any feathers on my potential flight to freedom.

  As we were talking, his son showed up out of nowhere. He was very Westernized, with short spiky hair and glasses, wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt. There was something slightly goth to his look.

  Aboud introduced him and said, “My son likes photography. Since you’ll be here for ten days, most likely, would you teach him something?”

  “Sure, I’ll teach him. No problem,” I said. And to myself I thought, I’ll teach him teleportation if that’s what it takes to get me out of Syria.

  They took me to a small house on the grounds of Aboud’s lavish manor, and as soon as I walked in I saw an array of camera equipment. D800 Nikons and other very expensive cameras, lenses and attachments. I got a sudden impulse to ask, “Can I have this stuff? Not all of it. Just some of it.” At that time I had nothing. But what I felt wasn’t envy; it was like seeing a lover from whom you’ve been separated for a long time. You just want to touch her, remember the magic you can make with her.

  We set up a time for a lesson the following day, then went back to the tent to sit down. There were many servants hovering over us and they brought tea and little sweets. At one point in the early evening three men came in to negotiate a metal scrap deal with Aboud. He told me to stay and just keep quiet. The three of them were fairly young, in their thirties, and they must have assumed I was a very important person because they bowed to me deferentially. I had to restrain myself from saying, Easy on the formality, boys, I’m just the hostage here. So for a half an hour I sat there drinking my tea, not saying a word while they did the dance that captains of industry do.

  As the evening progressed Aboud became increasingly nervous, and at around nine o’clock he said, “Let’s go out for dinner.” His wife came and we started walking to the driveway where all the cars were parked. We got into their Mercedes sedan, which looked so heavy that I assumed it was armored and bulletproof. Aboud drove, with his wife sitting in the passenger seat. There was no escort or bodyguard that I could see.

  We drove to the luxury hotel that Aboud’s friend owned and took a table in an open-air lounge where people sat drinking, smoking and playing cards around long tables. A server in the hotel came up to me and asked if I wanted a cigarette. I said sure and he came back with a whole carton of Marlboro reds. I tried to sit as nonchalantly as possible and some strangers started up conversations. No one really asked me why I was there, and I didn’t reveal any information. Still, I noticed Aboud getting more and more fidgety every time someone exchanged a few words with me. We all ate dinner. But his wife left before dessert. Suddenly Aboud said, “Listen, I think I’m going to take you to Lebanon tonight.”

  My eyes opened wide and I tried to keep from fist-pumping the air. “Yes, please take me there tonight,” I said, almost trying to convince him that Damascus was not a good place for me.

  “I’m worried that people are going to talk. Even though I know many important people in the government, that didn’t prevent me from being arrested in the past. You see, I have friends on all sides. And this can lead to misunderstandings.”

  * * *

  WE LEFT THE HOTEL at around eleven. Aboud drove us back to his house, where he made some phone calls. Ray-Ban turned very serious and went about organizing everything. As he took care of the details, Aboud and I sat back down for about another hour or two. By now it was past midnight. I was anxious to leave, and a part of me was expecting someone to come in and say, Sorry, but things have changed.

  Aboud saw I was nervous and explained: “We’re preparing your exit now.”

  “How are you preparing it?” I asked.

  “Well, I’ve sent a car ahead with men and a few thousand dollars, and we’re going to pay off the Lebanese customs. Because, you know, the Lebanese love money,” he explained with a grin. Then he looked at me and said, “What about you? I don’t imagine you have any money on you.”

  “Zero.”

  Aboud casually pulled out a green wad of bills and said, “Just take it.” I shoved it into my pocket with no questions, just a thank-you. It was about four thousand US dollars in cash.

  After a couple of hours, once all the preparations had been made, we got into that same Mercedes sedan and I rode shotgun next to him. They threw my massive soft-shell roller suitcase into the trunk. Ahead of us they sent two cars, about a mile apart, to the border to pay everyone off and tell the Syrian army soldiers manning the checkpoints that a parliamentarian was on his way to Lebanon, so they shouldn’t stop his car.

 
Once we were moving, we went through checkpoint after checkpoint, about a half a dozen of them, and nobody stopped us. All the soldiers simply waved Aboud onward, some actually saluting him. I thought there might have been another car farther behind us but couldn’t see anything, and I had no way of knowing.

  As we approached the border, I asked if I should hide, but Aboud said not to worry. At the Syrian side of the border they didn’t even stop us. Then the road started winding, with switchbacks and steep hills on each side. He pulled over after one of the turns, opened the trunk, and told me to get in. I climbed in and he shut the hatch.

  We drove for ten or fifteen minutes with me bouncing around in my little coffin. It was pitch-dark. Then we stopped and I heard people speaking Arabic. I knew we were on the Lebanese side of the border. They talked for a few minutes and then let us go.

  Aboud drove another five or ten minutes, then pulled over. When he opened the trunk the first bluish light of dawn washed my eyes and I realized I was in Lebanon. I recognized how the little shops were laid out, just slightly different from Syria, but a world away. We were parked in front of a bakery that was just opening, and a waft of baking bread caressed my frayed nerves.

  Two of Aboud’s men were waiting in another car. Both wore suits and one of them had a pistol handy. They’d no doubt been sent ahead and had probably been waiting for a while.

  Aboud led me to them and said, “Listen, I’m going to go back to Syria now. Remember what I told you. You have to tell the government I helped you.”

  Then he gave me a hug and just drove away, back toward Syria.

  * * *

  THE TWO MEN TOLD ME in Arabic to get in the car, and I sat in the back. As we drove over the mountains, I could see the sun coming up behind us. Soon Beirut came into view in front of us, then the Mediterranean Sea.

  We drove through the city and I felt almost free. But that almost was like a fishbone stuck in my throat. At one point I considered just opening the door and running. Then we got to the harbor and the marina, with its posh high-rises. We parked right in front of the Marina Towers, which I remembered as a landmark from previous trips to Beirut. The men helped me with the huge suitcase. We got into the elevator and went all the way up to the top floor. As we entered the vast penthouse furnished with modern décor, I was greeted by two African maids. The men in suits led me to the balcony, where we each smoked a cigarette. The Mediterranean shimmered softly in the distance and some of the yachts moored in the harbor were getting ready to set sail. What a contrast to the shrapneled house I’d woken up in the day before.

  The maids brought us breakfast. They were from West Africa, so we exchanged some small talk in French. “It’s beautiful here. You must be hungry . . .” Nothing too specific or committal. I ate, drank tea and smoked cigarettes. They showed me my bedroom. I wanted to take a shower but decided to lie on the bed for a few seconds and fell asleep almost instantly.

  I woke up a couple of hours later in that plush bedroom with a view of the sea, constantly probing at the fishbone in my throat—that feeling of being almost free. I wanted to leave, but I wasn’t sure where I could go, and I was worried they could easily send me back across the border and sell me to someone else. The two men tried to tell me in very broken English that I couldn’t go out because I didn’t have any documents and might get arrested. But I didn’t believe them. I’d been to Beirut a few times and nobody ever checks documents on the street.

  When I walked out of my room, the two men were still there. They asked if I’d slept well. I nodded contentedly. I noticed one was sitting near a telephone, a proper landline. So to gauge how free I was I asked them to write down the number—just in case someone wanted to call me. I didn’t expect them to do it, but they wrote it down. Then they asked if I needed a cell phone. I shrugged my shoulders as if to say, Yeah, that might come in handy. So one of the guys went out. Twenty minutes later he was back and handed me a brand-new BlackBerry.

  “Okay,” he said, “now you can call your family.” I said okay, I will. But I waited for a while, then went back to my room.

  When I came back out the two men had left. They weren’t on the balcony, so I assumed they had gone out to run some errands.

  I decided to call my father. But I was worried about the BlackBerry they had given me. My paranoia kept conjuring images of Hezbollah operatives listening in. So I decided to use the landline.

  “Papa, I’m in Beirut. I can’t talk much,” I said, hoping my tone would convey a sense of urgency. “But I’m safe. This is my number. Have someone call me.”

  I waited impatiently near the phone. Five minutes later I got a call from a woman named Mila Jubin, who asked me in French if I was Jonathan Alpeyrie. “Oui, c’est moi.” She said that someone from the French embassy would call me. I told her to hurry because I didn’t know how long I’d be able to answer the phone.

  Immediately afterward the phone rang.

  “Monsieur Alpeyrie?”

  “Oui.”

  “This is Patrice Paoli . . . Where are you exactly? And are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m being held in a penthouse apartment in the Marina Towers.”

  “Are you able to leave? Can you make an escape?”

  I looked around. The men weren’t there.

  “I think so.”

  “In twenty minutes be at the Four Seasons hotel; it’s just down the street about a hundred meters to the east. Ask and you’ll find it.”

  I knew exactly where it was. I looked around the house. The men were still out. I could have just walked out. But for some reason I felt I needed all that stuff they’d gotten me, so I went to get the suitcase. I should have just left it there, but I had nothing, and I figured it might give me some sort of protection. I moved as stealthily as I could, wheeling the suitcase behind me, through an area next to the kitchen. There was a back door leading to a service elevator. As I approached it, one of the big African maids tried to stop me.

  “Où allez-vous, monsieur?” Where are you going, sir?

  “Il faut que je m’en aille.” I have to get out of here.

  I couldn’t let anything block me, so I shoved her out of the way, practically a punch, and pressed the elevator button. Fortunately she didn’t raise much of a fuss and the elevator was already at the floor.

  Once out of the service elevator on the ground floor, I cut through the lobby and walked out the main entrance. They were all looking at me as I shlepped that hulk of a suitcase behind me.

  As soon as I was outside I walked toward the Four Seasons and even asked a passerby to make sure I was headed in the right direction. He pointed to a building within a stone’s throw. I walked toward a huge area where the cars and taxis pull up. There was an overhanging glass ceiling above the revolving door of the entrance. I walked in, checked out the lobby like I was looking for someone, then walked back out through the revolving doors. I looked around again, then went in and took a seat in the lounge. In less than half a minute I felt someone put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Jonathan Alpeyrie?”

  “Oui.”

  “Venez avec nous—vite.” Come with us, quickly.

  There were two men dressed in casual polo shirts over jeans. One of them took my suitcase and put it in the trunk of the car, a bit surprised by how heavy it was. The other led me into the backseat.

  We started driving. They said they were taking me to the French embassy. But first we had to stop at a passport photo shop to take some pictures of me for my documents.

  After the photos they brought me to the embassy. It looked like a marvelous Ottoman palace, with arabesque motifs and arches straight out of the Arabian Nights. The gates opened right away and as soon as I got out of the car I was greeted by the ambassador and his staff, one of whom helped me with my suitcase. I was free.

  BOOK 2

  SAVING THE SCAPEGOAT

  MY FATHER GOT THE PHONE CALL at around seven in the morning, eight days after I’d gone missing. He was walking down
Fifth Avenue, near the synagogue on Sixty-second Street, on his way to an appointment. It was May 6, a sunny Monday morning already drawing Manhattanites into Central Park as the streets crescendoed toward a frenetic rush hour with taxis slaloming down the avenue between the cars.

  From the first day I was captured, I tried to think as little about my life back home as possible—especially about my father. Whenever I was in New York, we saw each other regularly and spoke almost every day. Since his heart attack in 1997, I’d always been careful about him hearing any shocking news about me. So the thought of him getting wind of my kidnapping involved images of his heart failing him, and I couldn’t afford to feel that much emotion in my situation. Later, as we spent time together, he gradually filled me in on what he went through and how he tried to get me free.

  He first started worrying after four days of not hearing from me. Normally when I was in a combat zone I would send him short emails or texts, just to let him and my mother know all was well. He stopped getting texts after I’d crossed the border into Syria because my phone no longer had reception. Still, I managed to send off an email when I was filing pictures. “Tout va bien.” All is well.