Two Rooms
By Lee BlessingMichael is beind held prisoner by terrorists. He is blindfolded and wearing handcuffs. He is "writing" to his wife, Lainie. He used to be a teacher at the University of Beirut, before he was kidnapped.
MICHAEL:
Mathison had a gun. Under his jacket. A little automatic pistol or something - I'd never seen it before. Silver. I remember it gleamed in the sunlight when he pulled it out. It was just as they were forcing us into the car - just as he put one hand on the roof of the car. He was right in front of me, there was nowhere I could go. And suddenly this shining little fantasy pistol appeared. Can you imagine? I taught for two years with the guy and never knew he carried it. As though that was supposed to save us. As though that pitiful gun - that absurd, miniscule tribute to one man's utter lack of realism... I mean, he had to know what the world can do - if it feels like it - to a man. To any man. And to carry a gun? The size of a cigarette case? In Beirut? He starts to laugh, then stops because it hurts.) He didn't even know what to do with it once he pulled it out. I think he really believed that all those kidnappers would take one look at this mighty weapon of the West, drop their AK-47's and flee. "Run! It's a trap! He's got a tiny gun!" (Starts to laugh again, stops.) God, Lainie, I love you. I wish this was a real letter.
What Mathison forgot was these people have been taking hostages for thousands of years. They know how to do it. He yelled, "I'm armed!" I remember, and that same instant one of them shot it out of his hand, along with some of his fingers, and they slammed us into the car, did the old Kalashnikov-to-the-forehead routine, wrapped Mathison's hand up in his own shirt, blindfolded us and drove us... wherever this is. No one spoke. The only sound was Mathison weeping. I wasn't paying that much attention. I was counting my own fingers. And toes.
...OK, this is a digression, but I'm suddenly thinking of your toes. Really. I'm remembering them on the beach at the ocean. First few dates - somewhere in there. We were lying on towels and you dug your toes down in the wet sand. You dug them around very slowly, and suddenly I felt overwhelmed by this powerful image of... a sea turtle, coming ashore, digging in the sand and laying millions, or hundreds - you'd know - of eggs. And it's stupid, but it made me feel connected in a way I'd never felt before, to amphibians. I mean, there they are - forever faced with the choice: go on land and risk their life to lay their eggs, or stay in the sea where it's warm and safe and eventually die out. And it occured to me in that moment that marriage is exactly the same proposition. And I looked at your toes in the sand once more, and... married you anyway.
I wear a blindfold. I can take it off, but if I do they beat me. Sometimes it doesn't look like I've taken it off, but since I'm an American and they're sure I must have, and they beat me anyway. Their voices are so young. I'm sure it's a delusion, but sometimes I think I've had one or two of them in my class. (Beat.) Now I'm in theirs.
MICHAEL:
I have new guards now. It's been more than a year, hasn't it? They don't tell me exactly. I've discovered some things here. For example, your hands can become friends if they're in handcuffs long enough.
I once saw a hand just lying in the street. You remember that day I came home, after walking past a car-bombing? I didn't tell you at the time, but I saw it. Just a hand, lying there, unclaimed. It wasn't even horrible so much as... terrifyingly lonely.
I ask myself all the time, "Why did we stay here? Why did we stay here? Why?" I look back now and can't believe we stayed. Can't believe we actually sat there at the University and said, "One last term. Then we'll leave." One last term. I wonder if we would've left even then. I wonder if somehow, some part of us even liked the danger. Or was in awe of what we were witnessing. I mean, why does anyone stay? This city's in the hands of boys. Teenagers roam the streets carrying AK-47's and somebody stays? I don't know if there's ever been a city that has for this long been such a horror. That's taken itself apart brick by brick, life by life. And so many of us stayed. We walked down the street, through the rubble, past the checkpoints, past the bombings - we had days full of ordinary moments. Amid - what? - devils from Hell. Boys who might shoot you the next moment. Cars that might drive up, park and explode. (With a growing tension that finally breaks through.) And none of us seemed ready to say, "Leave it. Let us out of here! Please God anything but this! Stop it!!"
(He recovers himself.) And none of us was ever quite ready to leave.
MICHAEL:
One night someone came to move me. It was no one I knew - none of my guards. I was blindfolded, but I could tell by his voice. He spoke English better than any of them. He said I had to be moved at once - that the Syrian Army might have learned where I was. He was nervous, but there was a softness in his voice, too. I think he was young.
Some clothes were thrown on me and I was hustled into the back seat of a car by three men. All the voices were new. It was actually a cool night. The feeling of being outside was incredible. I listened for anything - any sound, any voice - over the noise of the car. Not because I was planning to escape. Just for the sheer, sensual pleasure of it. A sound, at random. A voice. Anything that was completely disconnected from being a hostage. That just... existed in the world. And I thought for some reason about all the things that always exist in the world simultaneously - with or without us. Innumerable parts of a system designed to not even recognize itself as a system. Dogs barking in the streets, wind in the shop awnings, people talking on corners, flowers letting go their fragrance, people riding bicycles, pigeons mourning nobody we know, people driving in cars, people buying oranges, distant explosions, people carrying guns, people dying of poison gas, oceans rocking on their stems, people making love for the first time in their lives, people designing clothes-hangers, people designing the end of the world, people in movie theatres, people singing in languages we don't understand, insects filling the world - filling the world - people in restaurants ordering the best meal of their lives, people using the phone, petting their cats, holding each other.
All of it, at once.
They drove me to a quiet neighborhood and shoved me into a building. I was taken down, still blindfolded, to a small, cramped room that smelled like... clay, and I was shot to death.
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