As she and the girls walked toward the exit with their luggage, a somber looking man and woman in their mid-sixties approached them.
'Mrs. Hawthorne?' the man asked, requesting confirmation.
'Yes,' she answered, a bit surprised.
'My name is Joshua Rosen. This is my wife, Liana. We're friends of your husband.'
'Yes, I know,' Elizabeth responded. 'Decker has mentioned you. Did he send you? How did he find out that I was going to surprise him?' she asked, not discerning the seriousness of the situation.
'Could I speak to you for a moment in private?' Joshua asked.
Suddenly Elizabeth realized that something was wrong. She wanted to know what and she didn't want to wait. 'Has something happened to Decker?' she demanded.
Joshua Rosen preferred not to talk in front of Hope and Louisa but Elizabeth insisted. 'Mrs. Hawthorne,' he began, 'according to the clerk at the Ramada Renaissance, Decker and Tom Donafin left their hotel in Jerusalem five days ago.'
'Last night Bill Dean from NewsWorld called me on the phone to ask if I had any idea where they were. He said that their editor had been trying to reach them for three days. He tried to call you at your office but they said you were on vacation. He couldn't reach you at home either.'
Elizabeth was growing impatient with Rosen's explanation. She wanted to know the bottom line. 'Please, Mr. Rosen, if something has happened to my husband, tell me!'
Joshua understood her anxiety but hated to just blurt it out with no explanation. 'I'm afraid that Decker and Tom have been taken hostage in Lebanon.'
Elizabeth was struck with disbelief. 'What?! That's crazy. That can't be,' she said, shaking her head. 'They weren't even supposed to be in Lebanon. They're in Israel! There must be some mistake!' The denial in her heart hid itself behind the authority in her voice, as if by sufficient insistence she could alter what she could not bear to face.
Joshua and Liana looked on sadly. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'This morning the Hizballah, a group of militant followers of Ayatollah Oma Obeji, announced that they were holding Decker and Tom hostage. They sent a note to a Lebanese newspaper claiming responsibility and included pictures of Decker and Tom.'
Hope and Louisa were already crying. Elizabeth looked for some place to sit down but finding none, accepted the offer of support from Liana Rosen who held her as she wept.
Somewhere in northern Lebanon
As near as Decker could tell, he had now been held hostage for six and a half months, which would make it about June 24th, his wedding anniversary. Twenty-three years. He tried to remember if he had ever heard what the traditional present was for the twenty-third anniversary. He hadn't. He tried to imagine what Elizabeth might be doing that day. He could almost endure the separation. But the isolation – and not knowing if it would ever end – was more than he could bear. Feelings of total helplessness filled him both with self pity and with rage at his captors. He just wanted to be able to tell Elizabeth that he loved her and that he was alive. He knew he might never go home. He might never see his wife's face again – or his children. In his anger and frustration, he pulled at the bonds which held his hands and feet. He could not have broken the ropes even when he was in peak condition, but in his weakened, half-starved state it was doubly futile and only added to his despair.
He had not seen Tom since that night in Israel when they were blindfolded and gagged. For that matter, he had not truly seen anyone. The men who held him captive wore masks every time they came into the room and they almost never spoke to him. He had not seen anything outside the locked door of his room, but he perceived that he was in an old apartment building. The ropes on his feet were tied manacle-style with about twelve inches between his ankles so that he could take small steps. To prevent him from untying himself – an act which would have resulted in severe punishment – the ropes that held his hands provided no slack at all. He was, however, able to hold his food bowl and take care of most of the necessary toilet activities. Personal hygiene was impossible, and he was only allowed to bathe every other week or so. He took some consolation in the fact that things could be worse. His captors had not tortured him since early in his captivity. All of the cigarette burns had healed by now. Only the most serious ones left noticeable scars.
At first his captors seemed to enjoy threatening him with knives and razors. They were not all just threats, however. At one point, one of the men had gone to elaborate lengths for sadistic satisfaction. He began by tying Decker so that he could not move and then told him he was going to cut off his ears for trophies. If Decker moved at all, the man said in broken English, he would slit his throat instead. Starting at the top-most point of Decker's left ear the man made a deep, bloody gash, then pulled the blade away, laughing uncontrollably at the pain in Decker's eyes as he gritted his teeth, trying not to flinch. When the man left the room and closed the door, he was still laughing under his mask. Decker was left tied in that position overnight. With some effort he managed to shift his weight, roll onto his stomach, and turn his head so that he could lay it on the floor with the weight resting against his partially severed ear. The pressure was agonizing but necessary to stop the bleeding.
Despite his fear and pain throughout the ordeal, Decker had found it amazingly easy to not cry out. His surprise and curiosity at this fact was an extremely propitious distraction from the pain. Lying there, he remembered a short poem he had read years before by Nguyen Chi Thien that explained his silence under torture. Nguyen, a prisoner of the Communist Vietnamese for twenty-seven years, had written a volume of poetry about his life called Flowers From Hell. The particular poem Decker recalled was:
I just keep silent when they torture me, though crazed with pain as they apply the steel.
Tell children tales of heroic fortitude -
I just keep silent thinking to myself:
'When in the woods and meeting with wild beasts, who ever cries out begging for their grace?'
Several hours later Decker woke to find that the pool of blood had dried, gluing his ear to the floor. As he tried to pull free he felt the scab begin to tear. He knew he couldn't just lie there. If he didn't move himself, his captors would, and they would not be gentle about it. For the next three hours Decker let spittle run from his mouth, down his cheek to the floor to soften the dried blood while he carefully worked his ear loose. Still, some fresh blood was added to the pool.
Now Decker's biggest problems were boredom and depression brought on by the feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and anger. Decker had read about an American P.O.W. in Vietnam who handled the boredom and kept his sanity by playing a round of golf every day in his mind, but Decker had never had time for sports. For the last twenty-three years it seemed that all he had done was write and read.
For a while, he tried to recall every article that he had ever written. Then he hit on the idea of rereading novels from his memory. When he couldn't remember how the story line went, he'd make it up. Somewhere along the way, like Nguyen Chi Thien, Decker began to compose poetry. Silently he'd recite each line of the poem over and over in order to be sure to remember it. Mostly he made up poems to Elizabeth.
Moments lost, I thought would last; Promises broken that cannot mend; Dreams of days from a wasted past; Days of dreams that never end.
Nights and days form endless blur. Walls of drab and colors gray, Pain and loss I scarce endure, While dirty rags upon me lay.
I've wasted such time that was not mine to take, Leaving sweet words unsaid, precious one. Now walk I on waves of a limitless lake of unfallen tears for things left undone.
There are many things a man can think about when left alone for so long, and it seemed to Decker that he had thought about them all. Usually he thought about home and Elizabeth and his two daughters. He had missed so many things because he had always put his job first. And now, because of his job, he might never see them again. So many chances and opportunities lost.
As he lay on his mat in the room, illumined only by the light which came through the cracks in the boarded-up window, it suddenly seemed strange to him, almost funny in some pitiful way, that he had always called his wife Elizabeth and never Liz or Lizzy or Beth. It wasn't that she was somehow too proper to be called by a nickname. It just seemed that they had never had enough time together to become that informal.
