<p>With the last of the American hostages now home, Anderson and
other former captives share memories of physical pain, mental
anguish and extraordinary human endurance
</p>
<p>By Jill Smolowe--Reported by Lara Marlowe/Wiesbaden and Jeanne
McDowell and James Willwerth/Los Angeles
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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!"
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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
