The Ordeal Lives in Limbo

By Jill Smolowe

Terry Anderson may have lost 2,455 days of his life, but he has lost none of his journalistic instincts. "The worst day?" he said in response to a question from the reporters gathered in Wiesbaden. "The worst day I had was Christmas of 1986." A veteran storyteller, Anderson first set the scene. He was in solitary. Similarly confined but within eyeshot were fellow hostages Tom Sutherland, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan. "We had nothing, no books, nothing."

Anderson unfolded the tale, offering his colleagues a bit of a scoop. "One thing we could do -- and my captors may be surprised to learn this -- was talk to each other." Anderson explained that he had learned sign language in high school, a one-handed alphabet that he taught the other captives, improvising new signs for those he had forgotten. On this bleak day, Anderson was relaying silent messages to Sutherland, who would pass them on to Keenan, and so forth. Then calamity struck. "I took off my glasses and dropped them and broke them," he said. "My eyes are very bad. Couldn't see." End of silent, cell- to-cell dialogue. End of story. "That was a bad day," he concluded, the sorrow returning for a moment with the memory.

With Anderson free, the harrowing tales that were once too risky to tell for fear of bringing harm to the remaining Western hostages may now be told. True, the final installments must still await the freeing of two German captives. But Anderson's release last week seemed to unburden other American ex-hostages of their "survivor's guilt" and uncork fresh memories of physical pain and mental anguish. If a single thread ran through the recollections, it was the abject despair each man experienced when confined in solitary, and the mutual appreciation, gratitude and respect each felt for his fellow hostages when they were penned together. As for their own fortitude, they left the marveling to others. "You just do what you have to do. You wake up every day, and you summon up the energy from somewhere," Anderson said, without dramatic effect. "And you do it day after day after day."

Of the three men freed last week, only Anderson, 44, appeared to emerge whole, albeit somewhat thinner, somewhat balder and with a hint of a limp. Journalism professor Alann Steen, 52, who suffered permanent neurological damage when he was kicked by his captors for unwittingly prolonging an exercise period, will remain on medication for the rest of his life to control seizures and blackouts. University administrator Joseph Cicippio, 61, whose skull is still dented from the clubbing he received at the time of his capture five years ago, will live out his life with a burning sensation in his fingers and toes, the result of the frostbite he suffered during a winter spent chained on a partly exposed balcony.

It was hard to imagine surviving even a single day, as the details of the hostages' living conditions piled up: airless, windowless cells barely larger than a grave, in which the men could not stand upright. Extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. Constant battles with mosquitoes. The same clothes year after year, sometimes only underwear and socks. Filthy blindfolds that infected their eyes, but could not be removed when a guard was in the room. Steel chains that were never unlocked, save for the 10-minute daily visit to the "toilet," a fetid hole in the ground. Months without baths. Then bathing privileges that forced filthy men to share not only the same water but the same towel, sometimes unlaundered for months at a time. Meals that never varied: bread, cheese and tea for breakfast and dinner; boiled rice and vegetable-something-or-other for lunch. All this savored without benefit of a light bulb. Sometimes without benefit of even a candle. Often alone.

To this nightmare were added moments of indignity that scorched the soul. Father Lawrence Jenco's first glimpse of Anderson back in 1985 was through a crack in a partition. There was Anderson, blindfolded and chained to a bed, surrounded by guards who kept walking around him, tossing off mocking salutes and shouting, "Heil Hitler!" Jenco had his mouth sprayed with deodorant to stop his snoring. More than five years after his release, the Roman Catholic priest can still vividly remember the cruel games his captors would play, spinning him around and around, then laughing when, dizzy and disoriented, he would bump into things. One of the most searing moments came when a man in copper-tipped cowboy boots stood on Jenco's head. "I am not an insect!" Jenco cried out. "I am a person of worth!"

But to their captors the hostages were often pawns in mind games of stunning cruelty. Several of the hostages, Anderson among them, were led on occasion to believe that they would be released imminently -- only to have their hopes callously dashed. "One night they said I was going home, and dressed me in nice clothes," Jenco recalls of his 564-day captivity. "When I dressed, they said, 'Just kidding,' and laughed. I started to cry." There were also divide- and-conquer ploys: at one point, Anderson and Sutherland were given crates of books and a radio, while two other captives were given nothing.

For different reasons and at different times, some of the hostages surrendered to despair. Anderson's former cell mates recall how in December 1987, when the journalist was forbidden to send a Christmas message to his family, he slammed his head against a wall until the blood streamed down. "There were times when I was near despair," he said last week. "I don't think I ever quite gave up." Sutherland, who shared a cell with Anderson through most of his 2,353-day captivity until his release last month, revealed that he had attempted suicide three times. "I tried to pull a plastic bag over my head and suffocate myself," he said on ABC's Nightline. "But I found out on each try that it got very painful."

What pulled the men through such moments of hopelessness? For Sutherland it was thoughts of his wife, three daughters, and a granddaughter he had never seen. For Anderson it was a Bible and a photograph of his daughter Sulome, now six, whom he met for the first time last week. Men with strong religious affiliations relied heavily on their spiritual muscles. Three bare wires hanging from the ceiling evoked for the Rev. Benjamin Weir the fingers of the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. "That became to me a representation of the sustaining, purposeful hand of God," he recalls. Others discovered a faith they never knew they had. "Before, I didn't believe in God, and now I do," Frenchman Roger Auque told the British press after his 319 days in captivity.

The daily trauma of imprisonment presented psychological challenges that tested both endurance and creativity. Most days -- days that ran together, month after month, year after year -- were marked only by boredom. So the men privately explored the mental paths that would lead them from their cells, backward or forward, to happier times. Anderson said he fantasized a working farm and a newspaper operation, "working out economics and staffing." At one point he befriended a mouse, which he fed bread crumbs and which perched on his shoulder. He also wrote poems, 32 of which he carried to freedom. Math and computer-science professor Jesse Turner, released in October, worked out elaborate equations in his head. Hospital director David Jacobsen, released in 1986, mentally drove the entire freeway system of Southern California. Several kept journals, which were confiscated by the guards.

Their ingenuity knew no bounds, especially when they had cell mates with whom to share their explorations. Anderson was the great provider, fashioning chessboards, decks of cards, and even rosary beads crocheted from the string of foam-rubber sleeping-mat covers. Games of Twenty Questions could go on for hours, as could the elaborate guided fantasies that they shared. "One day Father Jenco would take us through Rome. Another day Terry Anderson would take us through Tokyo," Weir recalls. "I'd take us around Lebanon or Turkey. Tom Sutherland was very good at teaching us something about animal husbandry."

Humor leavened more than a few low moments. Each night when the guards would ask if they needed anything before going to sleep, Sutherland would suggest a fighter-bomber, Jenco would ask for a taxi, and some wise guy would inevitably pipe up with an order for a glass of wine. A big, heavyset guard who dragged his feet was dubbed Lurch. Several of the men took delight in thwarting Anderson's competitive zeal in their games of Hearts. "Every time he left the room," Jenco laughs, "we'd get together and make sure he never won."

Sometimes the ribbing and competition carried a harsh undercurrent, which may have been the safest way of venting the anger that the hostages could not afford to direct toward their captors. In one instance, a group of hostages coaxed their guards into getting a birthday refreshment for Sutherland. When the guards returned with cupcakes, Sutherland protested, "How come Father Jenco got a big cake, and I only get cupcakes?" Jenco insists Sutherland's distress was real. On rare occasions, tensions erupted in hostility, such as the well-known episode in September 1985, when captors invited a group of hostages to select among themselves who should go free. Anderson and Jacobsen nearly came to blows over the sweepstakes, which Weir won -- by the captors' choice.

Inevitably, rivalries and antipathies developed during the hard, long months of confinement. Sutherland's recollections of British church envoy Terry Waite, for instance, are particularly sharp. Calling Waite the "bane of our existence," Sutherland told TIME that when the large Waite moved, "it was like a goddam herd of elephants." When Waite joined Sutherland, Anderson and others after enduring four years of solitary, he understandably hungered for companionship -- but he had a hard time adapting to the courtesies of a shared cell. "Other hostages had a sense of when people needed privacy and didn't want to talk," Sutherland said. "Waite wanted to talk constantly, ask stupid questions."

Waite's asthma also posed problems. With everyone sleeping so close together, his chronic wheezing kept the others awake. So every night Anderson would calm Waite, keeping up a hypnotic patter of "Take it easy, breathe easy, exhale," until Waite fell asleep. Anderson was also more forgiving of Waite's insatiable appetite for information after so many years of isolation. Initially, when they were still separated by a wall, Anderson would tap out dispatches on world events he had culled from radio reports by using one tap for a, two for b, three for c and so on. When it was suggested to Anderson that this must have taken an incredible amount of time, he laughed. "We had nothing but time."

The greatest open rivalry was between the politically liberal Anderson and the conservative Jacobsen. Anderson, along with Jenco, tweaked Jacobsen, an Episcopalian, about controversial passages in the Bible, particularly scriptures dealing with homosexuality. Jenco recalls that Jacobsen, in turn, often sabotaged Anderson's attempts to elicit new information from their guards. Jacobsen apparently remains conflicted in his feelings about Anderson. On one occasion he told the British press, "I didn't like him," while on another he told TIME, "I love Terry Anderson." Last week he allowed only that his career as a medical administrator was built around guarding people's $ privacy, while journalist Anderson wanted to know everything. Anderson says of Jacobsen that he "gave something to me, helped me."

Relations with their captors were far rockier. Nine men died in captivity. Last week Anderson disclosed that he believes CIA station chief William Buckley perished right in the cell with him in June 1985. Though the blindfolded Anderson could not see him, he must have heard him, since the pneumonia-ridden Buckley died choking on his own fluids. And almost all the ex-hostages have at least one tale of a savage beating to tell. Of the survivors, educator Frank Reed, released last year, received the harshest treatment, and still endures head, foot and rib problems. Jenco suffers a 20% hearing loss, the result of a beating he received for not returning his spoon after a meal.

Both Sutherland and Anderson said last week that they had suffered some "physical abuse" early in their captivity, but that such treatment subsided quickly. In a television interview, Sutherland said the guards left Anderson alone because they were "in awe of the fact" that Terry had served in Vietnam as a Marine staff sergeant. Steen was beaten more than once, but to hear fellow captive Robert Polhill tell it, at least one of those beatings was worth it. Shortly after Steen attempted an escape in 1987, a Lebanese guard who knew karate tried to kick him. Steen sidestepped the blows, then decked the guard with a left cross and a right hook. "They got even later," Polhill says, "but it took a Kalashnikov and a length of chain to do it."

Most of the time the guards and their captives had a mutual understanding. "We had to do anything they said," says Sutherland. "If they said stand up, we had to stand up. If they said sit down, we had to sit down. They wouldn't tolerate any disobedience." If hostages obeyed the rules -- no peeking out of blindfolds, no talking -- they were left alone. Although conditions were unhygienic, the captors could be roused to action when real illness threatened. Polhill received regular insulin injections for his diabetes. Cicippio was hospitalized for two months for a stomach ailment. Waite was given both an air-conditioner and medicine for his asthma. After Buckley died of pneumonia, the captors even "borrowed" a Lebanese Jewish doctor -- also a hostage -- from another group of kidnappers to care for a dying French hostage. The doctor was later murdered.

There were a few flashes of human compassion. Jenco was taken to a roof one & night. Thinking that he was about to be shot, Jenco says he was astounded to discover that "the guard merely wanted me to see the moon." In 1985 at Christmas -- again and again cited as the most dismal day of the year -- some hostages were presented with a cake while two guards sang in broken English, "Happy birthday, Jesus."

It is a testimony to their strength of character, forged in the greatest adversity, that many of the ex-hostages speak of the need to forgive their former captors. "I'm a Christian and a Catholic," Anderson said last week. "It's required of me that I forgive, no matter how hard it may be." Father Jenco, by contrast, argues, "Anger is a very good emotion. Even Jesus got angry." While there is little evidence of the Stockholm syndrome, wherein captives begin to identify with their tormentors, several of the former detainees seem to have some empathy for the plight of the underpaid men who held them. Weir recalls that one of his guards lamented that he was as much a prisoner as Weir. "We've got to spend our time here looking after you, and we're not free," he told Weir.

Similarly, many of the ex-hostages harbor no bitterness toward the Bush Administration for its failure to secure their release sooner. "I think the United States took the right policy in not negotiating with my captors," Anderson said. But he admitted with a laugh that there were times when he "wouldn't have cared if they used an H-bomb to get me out of there." Sutherland also applauded the U.S. policy, stating, "I didn't want those guys to get a nickel for me."

Now the newly released hostages must turn their attention to the rest of their lives. After so many years in captivity, the smallest tasks excite and bewilder. Sutherland says he washes his hands a hundred times a day. Turner says the hardest adjustment is "getting used to freedom, deciding what I'll do next." Anderson admits, "I've forgotten what it's like to have appointments, to have to be organized." History has flashed along at astonishing speed in their absence, and they must catch up. Sutherland already has a fax machine, which he must learn to operate. Both Turner and Anderson have daughters, born during their captivity, whom they must get to know. "I have a whole new life," Anderson says. "It's going to be happy, I'm going to enjoy it, God willing."

With reporting by Lara Marlowe/Wiesbaden and Jeanne McDowell and James Willwerth/Los Angeles