Hostages The Lost Life Of Terry Anderson

By Scott MacLeod

Imagine it. You are chained to a radiator in a bare, dank room. You never see the sun. When your captors fear that a noise in the night is an impending rescue attempt, you are slammed up against the wall, the barrel of a gun pressed against your temple. Each day you have 15 minutes to shower, brush your teeth and wash your underwear in the bathroom sink. Your bed is a mat on the floor. One of your fellow hostages tries to escape, and the guards beat him senseless. Another tries to commit suicide. One day you too reach the edge of your sanity. You begin furiously pounding your head against a wall. Blood oozes from your scalp and smears down your face.

Life has been like that for Terry Anderson ever since March 16, 1985, when the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press was kidnaped in West Beirut. The men who grabbed him, members of the Shi'ite Muslim fundamentalist group called Hizballah, were intent on swapping Western hostages for 17 comrades imprisoned in Kuwait for a terrorist spree. Four long years later, Anderson is still held hostage. From accounts by his former fellow captives, TIME has pieced together a glimpse of the life he has led.

The first day: Terry Anderson lies on a cot in a dingy apartment in Beirut's sprawling, bomb-ravaged Shi'ite slums. A blindfold is tightly wrapped around his head, and chains shackle a wrist and ankle, biting into the flesh. He can hear the roar of jets; Beirut airport is near. The former U.S. Marine is % stunned and sobs constantly, frustrated, angry and afraid that the kidnapers intend to execute him. A guard bursts in and threatens him merely because he creaked the bedsprings. "I am a friend of the Lebanese," Anderson had told his family. "They won't kidnap me. I tell their story to the world."

Anderson is lost in the bowels of Beirut, but he is not alone. In the same 12-ft. by 15-ft. bedroom, also shackled hand and foot and crouching on the floor of a dirty clothes closet, Father Lawrence Martin Jenco of Catholic Relief Services (kidnaped Jan. 8, 1985) peers under his blindfold at the new arrival. A month later, they are led down to the dungeon, a basement partitioned into cramped cells with thin plasterboard, and held prisoner with others: William Buckley, Beirut station chief of the CIA (kidnaped March 16, 1984), the Rev. Benjamin Weir, a Presbyterian missionary (kidnaped May 8, 1984), and eventually David Jacobsen, director of American University Hospital (kidnaped May 28, 1985).

The hostages are repeatedly threatened with death. Their meals consist of Arabic bread, foul-tasting cheese and tea. Buckley's treatment reveals the full cruelty of the kidnapers. He catches a bad cold that develops into pneumonia, but the guards show him no mercy. "Mr. Buckley is dying," Father Jenco pleads one day. "He is sick. He has dry heaves. Give us liquids."

Speaking to one another in whispers, the hostages listen to Buckley's moans as he grows weaker, and finally delirious. On June 3, Buckley squats on the tile floor believing that he is sitting on a toilet seat, and food fantasies fill his head. "I'd like some poached eggs on toast, please," he mumbles. "I'd like an order of pancakes." That night Buckley starts making strange grunts and the others realize they are hearing the rattle of death, and a guard comes and drags Buckley's body away. Anderson's first letter to his family contains his last will and testament.

Out of the blue comes hope. At the end of June Anderson learns that TWA Flight 847 has been hijacked and 39 American passengers are being held. Hajj, the chief guard, arrives with word that a package deal is in the works. "You will be going home," he says.

Nothing happens. The guards, however, improve living conditions for Anderson and the others, apparently in fear they might fall sick and die like Buckley. "Christmas in July" brings dinner of Swiss steak, vegetables and fruit, medical checkups by a kidnaped Lebanese Jewish doctor, and the chance to start worshiping together. Anderson, once a lapsed Catholic whose faith now grows stronger by the day, wheedles permission from Hajj to make his confession to Father Jenco. Later, all the hostages are allowed to hold daily services in their "Church of the Locked Door." They celebrate Communion with scraps of Arabic bread. Anderson tells the guards to shut up when they mock the Christian service.

After the first worship, Pastor Weir reaches out and grasps Anderson, and the two men hug. Perhaps worried that the frail minister might be slipping, Anderson urges him to be strong. "Don't give up," he tells him. "Keep going."

Another new hostage has arrived, Thomas Sutherland, dean of agriculture at American University (kidnaped June 9, 1985). Eventually the captors permit their prisoners to be together all the time and to remove their blindfolds when the guards are out of the room.

One day in September, Hajj raises everybody's hopes again by announcing that a hostage will finally be released. He has them play a cruel game: they must choose for themselves who will go free. "Think it over," he commands as he walks away.

The hostages drag their agonizing discussion late into the night. Pastor Weir and Father Jenco make no effort to put themselves forward, and Sutherland is too much of a gentleman. But Anderson nearly takes a swing at Jacobsen as the two men engage in a bitter contest to be chosen. Anderson wins the vote, but then is devastated when Hajj refuses to abide by the decision. "Terry Anderson will not be the first to be released," he snaps. "He might be the last one." A few nights later, Hajj tells Pastor Weir he is going home.

On Christmas Eve the hostages hear on the radio that Church of England envoy Terry Waite has failed to negotiate their freedom, and has returned to London. Anderson is crushed. Father Jenco tries to sing carols but is too depressed. Jacobsen draws a crude Christmas tree on a piece of cardboard and sticks it on the wall.

Anderson fights back boredom and depression by throwing himself into habits and hobbies. Each morning he obsessively cleans the sleeping mats and takes spirited 40-minute walks around and around the room. When he fashions a chess set from scraps of tinfoil, the guards take the game away. Anderson takes French lessons from Sutherland, and stays up all night reading the Bible and novels by Charles Dickens that the guards provide.

After solitary confinement, the camaraderie is energizing. From memory Sutherland recites the poetry of his beloved Robert Burns, in the brogue of his native Scotland (he once played professional football with the Glasgow Rangers). Father Jenco takes the hostages on an imaginary tour of Rome and the Vatican. Anderson makes a deck of cards from paper scraps, and they all play cutthroat games of hearts.

Like sophists, Anderson the liberal Democrat and Jacobsen the Reagan Republican constantly provoke each other into arguments to keep their minds alive.

More than the others, Anderson challenges the guards, although for some reason he is beaten less frequently. He goes on a seven-day hunger strike when they suddenly ban the radio and the occasional copies of the International Herald Tribune. He does not know it, but the news blackout is imposed so he will not learn of the deaths of his father and brother back in the U.S. He does find out, however, that since his kidnaping his second daughter, Sulome, has been born.

In July 1986 Father Jenco is freed. Jacobsen goes home in November, but the public revelation of a secret U.S. arms-for-hostages deal with Iran torpedoes any further releases. Two months later, Waite the mediator is himself kidnaped.

Feeling increasingly abandoned by his government, Anderson spends much of 1987 in isolation. In December he gets a new roommate, French diplomat Marcel Fontaine (kidnaped March 22, 1985). Anderson is denied permission to send out a videotaped Christmas message to his family. The frustration becomes unbearable, and one day he walks over to a wall and beats his head against it. Blood seeps from Anderson's scalp. "Terry!" Fontaine pleads. "Think of your family!"

All the hostages find the cruelty too much to take. Sutherland, who had gone to Beirut passionately hoping to help Lebanese farmers, is treated worse than the others. He tries to kill himself by putting a nylon sack over his head. A more recent kidnap victim, Frank Reed, director of the Lebanese International School (kidnaped Sept. 9, 1986), attempts to escape but is caught. The guards beat him viciously and break his spirit, leaving him prostrate on the floor.

In 1988 Anderson and Fontaine find themselves in an apartment that has carpeting, heat and hot food. Are they being fattened up in preparation for their release? Despite the constant disappointments, Anderson is determined to think about his future. He ponders quitting journalism to take up farming. At last on May 3, after he has spent more than three years as a hostage, his time appears to have come when a guard tells him to get ready.

"You should do the same as I'm doing," Anderson says, trying to improve the Frenchman's chances. At midnight they come and take Anderson away. Two hours later, Fontaine learns that it is he who is being freed.

Fontaine remembers a conversation with Anderson. Feeling ill and more depressed than usual, he had turned to Anderson and said, "Terry, I am not afraid to die. But I don't want to die here and have them throw my body into the sea like they did with Buckley."

Anderson thought for a moment and replied, "I don't want to die anywhere."

Five months ago, Anderson's most recent videotaped message was dropped off at a Western news agency in Beirut. Signing off, he said to his family, "Kiss my daughters. Keep your spirits up, and I will try to do the same. One day soon, God willing, this will end."

With reporting by William Dowell/Paris and Edwin M. Reingold/Los Angeles