Alone Together
Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me by Frank McGuinness
Theatr Clwyd, 1997
John McCarthy and Brian Keenan had been held in solitary confinement, in separate cells in the same prison, for about ten weeks before they were finally brought together. On 25 June 1986 (or as nearly as he could compute it) John McCarthy was moved to a proper room on the outskirts of Beirut. His guards brought in another man, and when they had gone, the two prisoners cautiously raised their blindfolds. “Fuck me,” exclaimed the Englishman, responding to the sight of the shaggily bearded Keenan, “it’s Ben Gunn.” They immediately toasted each other in Pepsi and shared John’s last cigarette.
At first they were wary of each other. Keenan was fearful about exposing too much of himself to this stranger after so many weeks of nothing but his own company. But each man’s psychological and emotional need for the other soon overcame any sense of reserve, and conversation flowed like a burst dam. “Once we had begun and realised that each was listening to the other, then there was no need to hold back,” Keenan recalls.
With scant reading matter to distract them, there was nothing else to do but talk. Their debates often grew heated, especially over the Britain/Ireland conflict, and they would take refuge in humour. McCarthy claimed that his line had been traced back to a 14th-century Irish chieftain which made him more Irish than the Protestant Keenan. Keenan called McCarthy a snake and, later, “one agitating bastard”, which provided the nickname Oab. Otherwise they would talk incessantly about their families, their pasts, and their hopes for the future. For entertainment they played dominoes, sang songs, and acted out scenes from their favourite movies.
The differences in their approach to their captors was to become a much-discussed issue over the four years they were kept together. Keenan tended to be aggressive, standing up to the hostage-takers, determined to preserve his dignity and identity no matter how harsh the treatment it cost him. McCarthy was less combative, thanking the guards for any small concession, laughing at their jokes, trying to keep things light. He says, “As we got to know, love and respect each other, we could modify our normal reactions to help the other. Sometimes Brian might be furious but would hold down his anger if he sensed that I didn’t have the energy for a conflict. For my part I would reject my usual conciliatory tone when I knew Brian was much distressed and needed my support. We learned to use our different styles to make forceful, yet restrained, points to the guards while denying them their usual angry response to criticism.”
When they were moved to a custom-built prison in August, the sound of cockroaches and mice scuttering about their cell at night disturbed Keenan less than McCarthy. The Irishman slept while the Englishman swatted and cursed. For Keenan, it was the sound of the two rickety old fans in the door that was the main bugbear. They would play fierce games of volleyball with a rolled-up pair of socks, listen helplessly to the cries of their fellow inmates being beaten, console each other for their own beatings, and plunge ever deeper into their pasts for more confidences, more shared experiences. In all, they were kept in thirteen main locations – cells, back rooms and apartments – transported from one to the other in sacks, in the boots of cars, or tightly wrapped head to toe like mummies. “Hope for everything but expect nothing” was the creed they lived by.
In May 1988 they were incarcerated in an underground room, fifteen feet by twelve, which they nicknamed The Pit. Here they were joined by the three Americans, Terry Anderson, Tom Sutherland and Frank Reed, whom they hadn’t seen since they shared a prison corridor six months before. At first the Americans couldn’t understand the comically aggressive banter that McCarthy and Keenan carried on between them. Sutherland and Reed in particular did not get on, and eventually stopped speaking, while Anderson and Sutherland had frequent fallings out, and all five spent many hours a day swapping ideas, points of view and information about their countries… until they were once again separated.
When Keenan learnt he was to be released after four and a half years he was given no opportunity to share a final private moment with the man in whose company he had endured so much. At first he was torn between duty to his family and his friend: “And as I review it all… I see his face stare at mine. I had watched this man grow, become full and in his fullness enrich me. And I know that if in my defiance I walk back into that room and have myself chained, refusing to go home, I will have diminished him, for he is a bigger man than to succumb to the needs that isolation breeds. I cannot do this, I cannot belittle him. I know that in going free I will free him. He will not surrender, he has gone beyond it. I know that the deep bond our captivity has given us will be shattered if I return. Our respect for each other demands of each that we take our freedom when it comes.”
A few minutes after Brian Keenan was taken from him, Terry Anderson and Tom Sutherland were placed in McCarthy’s room. In November 1990, Terry Waite joined them for the final months of his captivity. He met John McCarthy in the boot of the car taking them to their new destination. In the dark they managed to clasp their bound hands together, the first direct contact Waite had had with any human being other than his guards for nearly four years. They called him TW to avoid confusion with Terry Anderson.
They were being held in some kind of large house in the country. They sat on mattresses, each with their feet chained to an iron staple driven into the bare floor. The sudden enforced intimacy brought Waite both relief and apprehension, as he would now need to learn to communicate again, and adapt to the four companions’ way of being with each other. But he had met their families and friends before leaving England, which gave him a starting point.
For a while TW’s laboured breathing, the result of his bronchial condition, caused them concern and discomfort in equal measure. Both Anderson and McCarthy gave up smoking for his sake, and his incapacity put a great strain on them all. Eventually he was given a Ventolin inhaler which eased his condition and made life easier for everyone.
Occasionally Waite’s bluff personality would jar with the mood, and in the end the others had to explain to him that as they had no private physical space, it was vital that each should respect the others’ desire for emotional and mental peace when they needed it.
To pass the time they played chess (Terry Waite, to his surprise, had forgotten how), and Sutherland taught them all to play bridge. They had two radios, a TV, and Time, Newsweek and The Economist to help them keep up with outside events. They scanned each avidly for news bearing on their situation, and listened to the BBC World Service “twenty-five hours a day”. When the time came for McCarthy to be released, he too was denied a private leave-taking. He only had time to embrace Anderson briefly and say goodbye. “No speak,” the guard admonished him.
Terry Waite was eventually released with Tom Sutherland on 18 November 1991. Sometime later he recalled the words of a prisoner scratched on the wall of a cellar in which a victim of Hitler’s persecution had died:
“I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love where feeling is not.
I believe in God even when he is silent.”
(This article was compiled with reference to the following books:
Some Other Rainbow by John McCarthy and Jill Morrell
Taken on Trust by Terry Waite
An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan)
PS
Some articles require more commitment than others. Frank McGuinness’s play was inspired by the capture and detention of over one hundred mainly Western European and American hostages throughout the so-called Lebanon hostage crisis of the 1980s. This article deals mainly with the experiences of the British hostages John McCarthy, Brian Keenan and Terry Waite.
The subject here was so intense that it required the most careful and considered approach I was capable of; these men deserved nothing less. I note that three source books are mentioned as providing the background material. I can’t remember now, but I’m sure I wouldn’t have had the time to peruse all three thoroughly. What I got from scan reading was probably the most I could bear to hear about their experiences anyway.
The men were held for over four years so there was a lot to take in, but as well as having to convey the horror and brutality meted out to them, I also wanted to celebrate the bonds they developed in their confinement. Telling details would have to do the work of paragraphs. The most emotional moment for me was the first meeting between Terry Waite and John McCarthy, in the boot of a car on their way to a new place of detention: “In the dark they managed to clasp their bound hands together, the first direct contact Waite had had with any human being other than his guards for nearly four years.” It’s literally impossible to imagine; you can only hint at the horror, and hope it’s enough to make the reader to feel the same as you.