An Evil Cradling (31 page)

John and I whispered ‘Christ, I hope that he doesn’t try and open our cell. How in the name of Christ will we ever get the thing closed again.’

We were now more fearful of what Frank had done and might do than we were of the guards. Suddenly Frank’s voice started up again but this time he was not calling for the guards to come and take him home. This time he was praying loudly perhaps knowing that the consequences would be grim, praying loudly, recklessly, fearfully.

‘Tomorrow’s really going to be an eventful day, the House of Fun will really hot up tomorrow,’ I whispered to John. He was silent. We did not want to talk about tomorrow. We needed to think and prepare.

Breakfast came and we were routinely led to the shower and back to our cell. Nothing seemed to have happened. The other prisoners were taken to the ‘Shit, Shave and Shower Shop’ as normally as on all the other days. Had the guard not noticed that Frank’s door had been opened? We knew he had returned to his cell the previous night, closing the door and hoping foolishly that they would not notice.

It was not till the late afternoon that the expected retribution began.

Frank was taken from his cell. We heard a voice, which was not one of the regular guards, speak to him harshly. ‘Who did you see? Who did you speak with? What did you speak with them?’ This was a voice of some authority and of an officer more senior than Said. Frank quietly answered in the negative. ‘I did not speak to anyone, I did not see anyone.’ Before his sentence was finished we heard the thud of a punch land upon him and we heard him fall to the ground. After some moments the question was repeated. Frank repeated his answer and again the blow landed on him. Then more blows, no questions, only the sound of a man being beaten slowly and deliberately.

After some twenty minutes of this, Frank was locked away in the small cell that adjoined the guards’ room. It was set apart from all the others, the same cell to which Tom and Terry had been taken earlier when their own room flooded with rainwater. We heard the door slam, the whispering of the guards and orders being barked at them, then silence again. There were some fifteen minutes of silence, in which John and I anxiously planned what we might say if we were questioned about the events of the previous night.

It was obvious to us that this matter would not be allowed to rest with the simple beating of Frank. We would all be interrogated. We needed to have some reasonable answers that endangered no-one else.

Quickly we talked over the possibilities of what they might ask or do.

Always in the back of our heads was this thought: will they separate us? They would be worried that they might come in one morning and find all of us loose. It would be very easy for six men to overpower three guards. As we plotted nervously, the silence was abruptly smashed again by Frank shouting and beating on his prison door, his voice loud and hysterical. ‘Come and get me, come and get me …

I’m ready … I’m waiting … Come and get it over with, come on … Come on, do it, do it.’ He banged and banged, crying out ‘Come on, come on … Get it over with, shoot me. I’m waiting … Come and do it, come on, get it over with.’ The fear and panic in Frank’s voice was like a hot poker being pushed slowly into our own flesh.

The shouting brought the guards back. We heard them descend into the room. Two of them, perhaps three, they seemed excited. They were talking quickly. They were not sure what to do. A man out of control with unholy expectations can be a fearsome thing to face. One of them went over to Frank’s door and shouted at him ‘What you m want? What you want?’ Frank was silent. His voice lower this time but I still the same words. ‘I’m waiting, I’m waiting … do it, do it.’ The short sentence growing louder. ‘Do it.’ Now the guards were afraid.

We heard them lift their guns and noisily slide the magazines into their weapons. Perhaps they were hoping to frighten Frank into silence, and they were really frightened themselves.

Frank’s door opened and the guards went in. It was quiet. No more shouting. We could hear the guards talking, the sound of their voices but not the words. Seemingly calm, they relocked the door.

That evening, the expected visitors arrived. John and I were unable to work up any enthusiasm for our game of dominoes, thinking over and over again what might happen and what Frank might say. We heard the shuffling feet approaching, the padlock opening, the bolt sliding back. One of the Brothers Kalashnikov and another guard entered. They spoke to one another, then began rummaging around our cell. What they expected to find we could not imagine. They looked everywhere, tossing cups, toothbrushes, towels about the floor, lifting and throwing the mattresses against the wall, shaking them and throwing them at their feet. John was taken out and I followed quickly behind. We were stood in the passageway. Carefully hands traced over our bodies, searching our fingers and fingernails.

Obviously they were looking for cuts or abrasions which would suggest that we too had attempted to get out of our cells. Quickly we were shoved back inside and the door was locked.

Within minutes the guards were back and John was jostled quickly out of the cell. I knew that he had been taken to be questioned.

John and I had decided how to deal with this interrogation. ‘Say whatever you like, but whatever you say, say fuck all, John.’ That old Belfast axiom was helpful now. It was necessary only to admit that we heard banging and that we heard a man shouting. We knew nothing else, spoke with no-one else and saw nothing. Half-truths are always more convincing than whole lies. So we agreed and I waited. I prayed not for John’s strength nor for his courage but for his safety. There is something terribly frightening about sitting half naked and alone and knowing that men around you are about to beat you. You never see the punch coming, never know where it is going to land. The tense nervous waiting is more frightening than actual blows. So I prayed again. One needs-to believe that someone, somewhere is thinking about you when you are in a dangerous situation. John was only gone some ten minutes and then he was brought back. We had agreed that if there was any serious physical abuse he would cough as he entered the cell to warn me to be prepared. I listened as he came in and sat down.

There was no cough.

The guards marched me aggressively, obviously to impress their waiting chief. I was made to sit down. I knew that some five or six men stood around me. A voice speaking excellent English, very soft and calming, asked ‘What is your name?’ For a moment I thought, do I crack a joke or do I answer him directly. ‘My name is Brian Keenan, what’s yours?’ I asked. A calm voice replied ‘It is not a matter.’ I waited. ‘What did you see last night?’ It was time for a joke. ‘It’s very difficult to see when you are asleep.’ I tried to force a smile. My interrogator seemed nonplussed at my poor attempt at humour.

‘What did you hear last night, my friend?’ I answered with the story that we had prepared. ‘I heard someone banging, I thought it was the guards upstairs. I heard a man shouting, and then I heard a man praying.’ I concluded, trying to afford Frank some protection, ‘This man is very stressed… this man is very confused.’ There was a short silence. My interrogator whispered something to the guards around me. He leaned forward and took my hand in his. ‘Do you know what we have done with this man,’ he said. I said ‘I do not, and how could I?

I am stuck in a small cell twenty-four hours a day.’ I was becoming confident. Again silence. I sensed my interrogator move closer to me, for an instant it flashed across my mind that he was about to slap my face. I held myself still, tried not to let the tension reduce me to a nervous trembling. Again a voice soft and low came at me. ‘This man is dead, we have killed this man!’

It was my turn to be silent. I knew they lied and I knew now that they would only try to frighten me. Slowly, speaking softly like the man who questioned me I said with great deliberation ‘I do not believe this, for it serves no purpose.’ The atmosphere changed. The questioner’s tone of voice altered, not yet angry but less relaxed. ‘Why do you say this,’ he said speaking quickly. ‘I did not hear a gun and I did not hear a man scream and I do not believe that you would do such a thing.’ My interrogator’s hands laced around my throat, his thumbs gently, slowly, pressurizing my adam’s apple. His voice was no longer low again as he spoke. ‘We do not kill him with a gun, we kill him like this,’ and gently his thumbs pressed into my neck.

I thought in that instant that this bastard was a real ham actor. I said nothing. I sat still, tried not to flinch. Again the soft voice came at me, the pitch of it higher. ‘Do you want to see this man?’ I wondered why m he would ask this. I knew if I said yes that it would cause me problems. ™

They would consider my desire for such knowledge a dangerous thing. Quietly I said ‘I am from Ireland, I have known many deaths, I v do not need to see another. What is a dead man? He is nothing.’ The hands were slowly taken from my throat. ‘Why did you not try to get out of your cell?’ the voice asked. I quickly answered ‘I am one, you are many, you have guns, I have none… Where can a naked man go if he leaves this building? … Where could I go wearing only these rags?’ I stopped and paused, then said ‘I am not a fool.’ Said, standing behind me, liked what I had just said. I heard him laugh and felt him pat my shoulder. But my interrogator was not yet finished. ‘Do you stand up, do you look?’ Vehemently I answered now ‘Of course, I am a man, I need exercise, a man is not made to sit on the floor all day.’

‘What do you see?’ came the voice again. And I answered ‘Occasionally I see the head of a man in the cell opposite as he exercises, but I have not seen his face.’ I searched out the last piece of humour. ‘It is not possible you know to exercise walking around the cell on your knees, a man must stand and a man must walk.’ No-one laughed. I felt a cigarette being pushed between my lips. Through the blindfold I saw the flash of a lighter and a voice saying to me ‘Smoke.’ I drew in the smoke, it was a Gitane. I commented ‘Gitanes, very good!… Here I only have Cedars … they are the worst cigarettes in the world.’ I smiled. Voices behind me laughing slightly. I felt myself being lifted.

Two guards walked me back to the cell, and now there was less force, less pushing. I had passed the test.

That night John and I discussed the interrogation. Our stories were the same, and it seemed that we had been believed. The fact that we

were still together suggested that the guards had no intention of separating us but the next few days would tell. John told me Frank had been returned to his original cell. We tried knocking on the wall.

There was no answer. We hoped it was over for him but hardly believed that they would let him off so lightly. The evidence of this came within the next few hours. Said entered Frank’s cell. At first we heard him speak, his voice rising. Then we heard something slapping against skin. Obviously Frank was being beaten with a belt, or perhaps as Tom had been, with a piece of rubber hose. I felt physically sick. I wanted to scream ‘Leave him alone, you miserable bastards…

He’s had enough.’

The next day, lying on my chest, looking through the whirling fan at the foot of the door, I saw Frank exchanging cells with Terry Anderson. We heard the guards speak with him. ‘Do you want anything?’ asked the guard. ‘I want to go upstairs, I want to have a bath,’ Frank said.

For the next few days Frank’s face did not appear at the grille. We speculated on how it was possible for him to get out of his cell. Had he opened all our cells, we might as a group have overpowered our guards. We discussed how we could all have waited in the second cell and when the guards had entered the first, we could have burst out, locking them in. But there was always the problem of clothes. We knew the guards kept the changes of clothes in their room. Would there be enough for all of us? And how would we go, in twos or threes? Would we take guns? Could we kill anyone if it was necessary?

In part these discussions were like playing adventure games and in part they were explorations of a very real moral question.

Two days after his first escape attempt Frank again caused havoc.

When the guards came to take him to the toilet for his daily wash, Frank emerged slowly out of the cell, then burst loose and ran along the passage, up into the guards’ room. The guards ran after him shouting and calling back to one another. Frank had no hope of getting out. Within minutes he was brought back to his cell and locked in.

John and I sat amazed. It seemed he was determined to make life extremely difficult for himself. What, we wondered, could have prompted him to commit such a serious breach of their rules?

For this desperate gesture Frank underwent another round of beating from Said.

Perhaps because of these breaches of security involving Frank or perhaps because Said simply enjoyed his new-found occupation of beating and tormenting, he became a more frequent visitor to our cell.

On occasion he would stay in the prison overnight, his cartoon noises always betraying his presence. He would often indulge in conversation about Islam, and took great pleasure in describing the punishments to which criminals were subjected. The cutting off of heads.

The cutting offof hands for thieves. Boastfully he told us how in Iran, thieves would have only their fingers cut off because they needed their hands for praying. This was much superior to the punishment that was meted out in Saudi Arabia, where the whole hand was removed.

Said loved talking of these bloody rituals; he thought they frightened us. Often when he visited the other cells, we would strain against the door, our heads close to the fan to try and pick up some of the conversation. We knew that Said had met the Americans when they had first been taken, and that he would occasionally give them news about their situation.

We were now convinced that the fate of the Americans and our own were tied together. I remember saying to John that he would go home when the Americans’ problem was resolved. Margaret Thatcher’s ideas about dealing with terrorism were quite redundant. In any case her own engagement with the Reagan regime was so close that she or the British government would do nothing for the British hostages that might reflect badly on the American government.