TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082790/0827510.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 13.0 KB | 311 lines

                                                                                INTERVIEW, Page 50

Terror And Tedium


Haunted by the images of those left behind, ex-hostage FRANK
REED describes the pain of his nearly four-year ordeal as a
captive blindfolded and chained in a Lebanon cell

By ROBERT AJEMIAN/BOSTON and Frank Reed


    Q. You were held captive for almost four years, from 1986
to 1990, half of that time in total isolation. A blindfold
always covered your eyes, and often you were chained to a wall?

    A. In 44 months I never saw the face of one of my captors.
I even slept in my blindfold. Alone in the cell, when I heard
no sound outside, I sometimes would raise the blindfold enough
to see and then kept it at half-mast. If observed, that meant
a beating.


    Q. Two of those four years you were together with other
hostages?

    A. For most of 1987 I was in the same room with Terry
Anderson and Tom Sutherland. For five months in 1988 two others
joined us, Brian Keenan and John McCarthy. The five of us were
held in a hideout a couple of hours south of Beirut. But even
while together, all of us wore blindfolds.


    Q. Did treatment improve when you were part of a larger
group?

    A. Somewhat. Still, we always had to cope with the slow and
endless passage of time and sometimes our own brittle feelings.
Each of us had different ways of dealing with confinement.
Sometimes those differences even caused friction among
ourselves. For example, I didn't speak to one of my fellow
hostages -- chained right next to me -- for three months over
some minor personal argument. Another time two of the hostages
got into a fight over some trivial disagreement and started
hitting each other. The constant tension led from time to time
to irrational behavior.


    Q. You are speaking out more bluntly than other released
hostages. You seem less willing to contain your resentments.
In prison, for example, unlike the others, you refused to
accept books and television and even exercise privileges. Why
so different?

    A. I tried to escape twice. I suppose that says something
about me too. I've always been dogged and independent-minded.
Sometimes my fellow hostages pleaded with me to take books or
special treatment. The way I saw it, privileges from the guards
only reinforced their hold over us. I tried hard to get into
their consciences, to make them feel guilty. Sometimes that
invited harsh treatment. Even then, when they beat me, I was
determined never to cry out.


    Q. The President and the State Department did tell Americans
to get out of Beirut. You chose to stay. So weren't you asking
for trouble?

    A. I keep hearing that question, almost as a challenge.
Look, I ran a school for 600 Arab children, right through a
horrible war. That school meant everything to me. My wife is
an Arab. Yes, I put myself at risk. But I had important reasons
for staying. Incidentally, the President's order was issued
after I was kidnapped.


    Q. How clearly do you remember the first months of
confinement after you were seized in September 1986?

    A. I was put into a basement cell 6 ft. by 6 ft. A thin foam
mattress covered two-thirds of the floor. I was always in
darkness. After a while, you begin to accept the blackness,
like being blind, I suppose. Your hearing becomes more acute.
I could literally hear mice move around the cell. I learned to
identify approaching footsteps. I was able to figure out the
time of day by outside sounds: for example, the various calls
to prayer in the minarets. To hostages, time of day meant only
how soon we were going to eat or sleep. At first I tried to
track time by making charcoal match marks on the wall. One day,
after a month or so, the marks were noticed and scrubbed off.


    Q. What did that mean for you?

    A. The feeling of endless time is crushing. A sentenced
prisoner knows the limits of his sentence. He sees his captors.
A hostage knows and sees nothing. I began to feel I had no
future. I've always been a person who lived to plan and push
ahead. That was gone.


    Q. You were able to control your thinking?

    A. I fought to create systems to maintain control. I tried
to think of beautiful things, like Barbra Streisand's voice or
Jack Nicklaus' golf swing, or how to introduce new rules for
pro football. I thought up a new golf board game. Out of
cigarette boxes I made a pack of playing cards, marked the
different suits by dots of orange shampoo and played solitaire
for hours. I hid them in my underwear, which is all I ever had
to wear. Physically, I made a daily routine of walking my cell,
one, two, three sidesteps, bump my shoulder against a wall and
then return. By my count, 525 crossings made a kilometer.
Whenever I got really rattled, I'd step off a kilometer,
although sometimes they prohibited exercise for months at a
time. They could be vicious. I learned from doctors later that
they fed me arsenic to keep me weak. Once they put a snake in
my cell.


    Q. What about food and medicine?

    A. In the morning they brought a cheese sandwich, for lunch
a dish of rice and vegetables and at night another cheese or
jam sandwich. Meat was a rare event. I had a plastic dish and
spoon, a plastic bottle to hold waste, and a small stool. If
you complained about an illness, they brought antibiotics, but
only if you knew the exact type. I never in four years saw a
doctor. Still, I knew they wanted foremost to keep me alive,
so that helped. At the same time they never failed to remind
me I'd be there for 20 years.


    Q. When did the idea of escape come into your mind?

    A. After several months alone, I began to think more
desperately. I could hear the guards lock my cell door and
routinely leave the keys hanging in the outside lock. Then they
walked down the cellblock and passed through a second steel
door -- again leaving the keys hanging in the lock -- to an
adjoining guardroom. There I heard the click of weapons. That
was my target since the guards slept upstairs. For weeks I ran
the escape plan through my mind. Finally, one night I stood on
the stool, stretched my arm through the bars and down to the
keys. Suddenly, I was in the main cellblock. I hurried to the
second door, reached through the bars again but discovered the
keys were out of reach. I was crushed. I got back to my cell
but was unable from inside to close the steel door tight. I
tried for hours. Exhausted, I fell asleep, knowing because of
the door ajar they would realize I had tried to escape. As soon
as they brought the morning sandwich, they knew.


    Q. What did they do?

    A. Several of them rushed into the cell, furious. They beat
my bare feet with an iron rod, bashed my nose and jaw. I lost
half the hearing in my right ear. They attached live wires to
my fingers. Two days later, a couple of sadistic guards beat
me again, banged my feet and face. When I saw my face reflected
in a metal ashtray, I was horrified.


    Q. You still tried to escape again?

    A. Four days later, on the daily walk to the toilet, I tried
to tackle one of the guards and take his gun. He easily beat
me off. This was a futile act, but by then being holed up alone
was so abject. I was punished again. Now my kidneys started to
bleed badly.


    Q. You stayed in solitary?

    A. For two more months. Then suddenly I was moved to another
Beirut hideout. There, even under the blindfold, I could tell
that other people were in the room. Goosebumps almost jumped
off my skin. But we were forbidden to make a sound. Guards
stayed in the room around the clock. It was three weeks before
I dared to peek out. There were Terry Anderson and Tom
Sutherland sitting beside me. We spent the next 10 months
together in four different hideouts, once all chained to the
same refrigerator. One day, without warning, I was returned to
solitary, still constantly in darkness, still beaten
periodically. That isolation lasted another six months, until
the spring of 1988.


    Q. Now, for the first time, you were put into a room with
four hostages: Anderson and Sutherland as well as Keenan and
McCarthy?

    A. This was my best time. Five of us were together for five
months, though always chained to the walls. Here we got a
radio. Often we wore our blindfolds at half-mast. We made a
Monopoly game and another set of cards. We used to talk and
debate a lot, about Ronald Reagan, about the Israelis, history
dates, even things like the specific gravity of milk. The radio
put us back in touch with the world. Every so often I'd hear
the names of other hostages but never mine. That added to my
isolation. Hostages feel so vulnerable to outside events. When
we heard news about author Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, we
worried. That meant a harder line by the guards. Now U.S. troops
in Saudi Arabia will mean the same.


    Q. That togetherness ended abruptly?

    A. One day they told me I was going home. I was taken back
to Beirut. Instead they put me back into solitary. It was
devastating. I had no idea what lay ahead. For the next 13
months I was kept alone, until October 1989.


    Q. Was your thinking still under control?

    A. My defenses really began to weaken. Nothing I did
mattered to anyone. I began to realize how withering it is to
exist with not a single expression of caring around you. For
the first time I began to fear dying alone, in this awful
place, with no trace of personal concern.


    Q. You say after 13 years of living in Lebanon you feel you
understand the Arab mind. After what you've gone through, do
you still understand?

    A. I never believed anyone capable of this kind of cruelty.
But I have come to learn that "hostaging," the whole ritual of
taking and holding hostages, is an accepted practice of the
Arab culture. In their minds, hostaging means trading -- and
trading means talking. Throughout Arab history, hostages have
been seized, and thereafter it is the duty of their patriarchs
to talk and trade. The American patriarch, to Arabs, is the
President or his designee. There is no dishonor in this ancient
process. That's why I disagree with the U.S. policy of not
talking to hostage takers. Talking and trading does not
automatically mean seizing more hostages. Arab history does not
support that. So long as Westerners stay out of the Muslim half
of Lebanon, the danger disappears. Arabs have not seized and
transported hostages from distant places.


    Q. Have you expressed that view of hostaging to President
Bush?

    A. No, the President has not talked to me. I know he rejects
that view. I'd like very much to tell him what I think.


    Q. Do you feel you understand the Israeli mind as well?

    A. I do understand their security fears. But their thinking
has become oppressive. Somehow anyone who opposes Israel is
labeled a terrorist. The word terrorist has been distorted out
of all reality. When the Israelis resort to violence, they call
it patriotism. When others resort to violence, the Israelis
brand it terrorism. They turn the word on its head. And much
of the world has been intimidated into accepting Israel's
definition. Over there, to the man in the street, the Israelis
are terrorists. They have modern weapons, and they use them.


    Q. Was this a hot subject among the hostages?

    A. We used to talk constantly about Israel's use of force.
Back in America, I've been startled at the fear of such talk.
Here, criticizing Israel is somehow off limits. Concealing
opinions has never been our way. That's something new for
America. Are we so mesmerized by the Israeli cause that we
can't truly debate whether the Palestinians might also have a
cause? It seems like mind control. Arab hatred springs heavily
from what they consider America's unqualified and unquestioning
support of Israel.


    Q. How has captivity altered you?

    A. I've become much too self-centered. In captivity you
learn to concentrate totally on yourself. On the outside that
doesn't work. As a hostage, I learned one overriding fact:
caring is a powerful force. If no one cares, you are truly
alone. I see it today in the faces of people I meet. Often they
look at me and start to cry. Then my own eyes fill up. They
care that I suffered. And I feel their caring.


    Q. Are you able gradually to get the awful experience out
of your mind?

    A. There are too many reminders. I might be out on the golf
course or somewhere drinking a beer, and suddenly I know that
what I'm enjoying -- at that very moment -- is what we hostages
used to fantasize about. I get angry and sad and guilty. The
other hostages, in fact, may not even know that I'm free. That
always stuns me. So my mind quickly turns back to that cell and
the others. I wonder what they're doing and thinking.


    Q. What's ahead for you?

    A. Now one of my life purposes is somehow to keep the
hostages in the public mind. They're so powerless. They're so
pathetic. I know I can't ever be really free until they are.