When it was time to sleep, Ode gave him a broom handle and told him to hit the door if he needed anything. Queen lay awake that whole night. He was afraid to fall asleep for fear he might try to turn over, which would make him vomit again. The retching had bruised his insides and become extremely painful.
The next morning he was half carried to a passenger van. Queen felt he was dying. He lay supine in the vehicle’s backseat, his long, skinny legs bent at a sharp angle. After being locked up for eight months it was his first trip off the compound, and he lacked the strength or will even to lift his head and look out the windows. Inside the hospital he was helped to a bed. His head was swimming and the heat and odors of the place aggravated his nausea. The hospital, renamed Martyr’s Hospital after the revolution, was not up to Western standards. The bathroom in his room was unclean. Cockroaches ran on the walls. There were flowers alongside his bed, and when Queen asked Akbar about them he was told that they had been sent to the Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkali, the revolution’s notorious hanging judge, who had been treated in that same room earlier in the day for injuries from an auto accident. Queen noticed that Akbar had a .45 shoved under his belt, the first time he had seen him armed. He asked what they were worried about, since he couldn’t even sit up. Akbar said they weren’t worried about him trying to escape, they were worried that a rival group might kidnap him.
Queen observed that Akbar and the other guards were despised by the hospital workers, especially the women. When one of Queen’s armed student guards sat in a chair in his room, a nurse tending Queen snapped at the young man angrily, “Can you get rid of that thing,” pointing at his weapon. “This patient is not going anywhere.” The guard took a towel and wrapped it around his weapon. The nurses complained to Akbar about the white head scarves they were now required to wear, arguing that they interfered with their ability to work.
“Why do you torture us with these new requirements?” one nurse asked.
Queen was surprised by their anger and by the fact that they saw Akbar as responsible, which meant they saw him as an important man. The afflicted young American amused himself by softly singing old marching songs he had learned in the military. There was nothing else he could do. The doctors tried several treatments, which just made him feel worse. One set of shots caused violent spasms of the muscles in his head, causing it to turn violently from side to side. He began grinding his teeth uncontrollably.
“Akbar! Look what’s happening!” he cried fearfully. When he put his tongue between his teeth to stop the grinding, he involuntarily bit into it.
Five days of tests and various treatments led finally to the surprising announcement, by Akbar, that Queen was going home. The hostage assumed he meant back to the chancery.
“With all this?” he asked, horrified, nodding at the tubes plugged into his arms.
“No, you are going home. To your home,” said Akbar.
Queen still looked mystified.
“America,” said Akbar. “Ayatollah Khomeini has decided to release you to your parents.”
Later that day Gaptooth, Hussein Sheikh-ol-eslam, the student captors’ black-bearded leader, came into his room for a last political harangue.
“My people and the American people get along well,” he said, “but the government…the CIA is trying to destroy our revolution. No one tried to harass or kill the Americans who were leaving Iran at the time of the shah’s overthrow. The people had nothing against America, but the United States is trying to destroy the revolution. When you go back, speak the truth.” He apologized for any misbehavior by Queen’s guards, particularly in the first two months. “We tried to treat you well. The first two months were chaotic here—it was so disorganized.”
Hours later, Richard Queen was being carried off a plane in Zurich, Switzerland.
6. The Braying of Donkeys
On the night of July 27, John Limbert heard car horns honking all over Isfahan. At first he thought it was a wedding. Iranians often celebrated by honking horns, but it was Ramadan, and there usually weren’t weddings during the holy season. Besides, the horns seemed to be sounding not just in one place but all over the city. Out in the yard the students had a television in a tent, and at night sometimes they would sit around it and turn it up. Limbert could stand by his window and pick up bits and pieces of the report. He heard the phrase, “vampire of the age,” and “bloodsucker.” Later, when one of his guards came in, a young man named Mohammed, Limbert asked about the car horns.
“It’s a wedding,” Mohammed said.
“Really? A wedding during Ramadan? These people must have been in an awful hurry to get married.”
Mohammed spent a lot of time talking to Limbert. He was twenty-two, and Limbert judged him to be a pretty good student. He was thoughtful, well spoken, and eager to learn. Most important, he didn’t seem to have a completely closed mind as so many of the other young Iranians did. They had struck a deal: Mohammed would play chess with Limbert in exchange for English lessons. They discussed religious ideas, and Limbert asked Mohammed to tell him about some of the characters in Iran’s long history. Once the guard asked a question that intrigued Limbert.
“Whenever you leave us here and go home, what are you going to say about us?”
“I will tell people that some of you were decent human beings and that some of you are filth,” he had said and then explained that, no matter how many decent individuals were involved, their action would be remembered in the latter category.
The offhand assumption behind the question intrigued Limbert, however, and gave him a sense of hope and relief at a time when he desperately needed it. It showed Mohammed was concerned that Americans not get the wrong idea about him and the other hostage takers, because he hadn’t given up hope of visiting and studying in the States.
“After all this is over, do you think I could get a visa?” he asked.
Not a chance in hell, Limbert thought, but said, diplomatically, “Well, Mohammed. All you can do is apply.”
Mohammed caught his captive’s drift and seemed crestfallen. That suited Limbert fine. He hoped he would worry about it.
On reflection, Limbert realized that he knew why horns were honking, and why Mohammed had been thinking about an end to this ordeal. His mind had assembled the clues—celebration, “bloodsucker,” “vampire,” and Mohammed’s unexpected question. The shah was dead. But what did it mean? That had been the pretense for holding them, but it had been apparent for months that the shah wasn’t coming back. Still, his death removed an important obstacle. The students would have had a harder time releasing him and the others if the shah were still lounging on a beach somewhere.
There was another demonstration in Isfahan during Limbert’s long summer. It was a Friday, the day of communal prayers in Iran, and after the usual chanting and singing outside, a group of young people, some portion of a local
“I understand you need Type A blood,” Limbert told the next guard to come by his room. “I am Type A, and I’d be perfectly happy to donate some if your soldiers in Kurdistan need it.”
His offer upset the guard. Limbert was not supposed to know of the fighting in Kurdistan or the need for blood. He was concerned about a breakdown in their security system at the villa.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“I just know,” Limbert told him unhelpfully. What he wanted was for the guard to think that one of his own had been talking. He kept renewing his offer to donate blood but was ignored.
Mohammed brought him a fresh towel, some comfortable Iranian-style pajama pants, and a small cassette tape player with recordings by Gordon Lightfoot, classical Iranian music, recitations of classical Persian poetry, and, for some reason, music by Mikis Theodorakis from the sound track of the movie
Eventually Limbert was moved to another room with its own bathroom, so he lost his message drop and all
