Kidnapped in Gaza

Chapter 4 - Life Under Siege

Inside the stifling cell with the shuttered windows that we are instructed to never touch, my eyes are drawn inexorably to the orange jumpsuit hanging in the corner. It fills me with a sense of dread I've never known before - a visual reminder that this is our own personal Guantanamo and as far as our captors are concerned, we are enemy combatants in the War on Terror.

Peeking through the slats, the early morning light reveals nothing but a crumbling, concrete wall. Without a cell phone or a watch between us, watching the sun move across this wall will become our only way of telling the time, of marking the days of captivity. I just hope we don't end up like American journalist Terry Andersen who was blindfolded and imprisoned in a dungeon of a ruined building in the southern suburbs of Beirut for seven years!

"We never even made it to the hotel!" Drew exclaims without preamble, his face swollen and blue.

"I know," I say, shaking my head, "but he said they knew everything so they must have been expecting us." My brother looks at me askance - as if something has just dawned on him.

"Are you telling me everything, bro? Mom always thought you were actually working for the CIA and so did Aunt Pepper, as a matter of fact. They thought your teaching gig was just a cover. Look, if there's ever a time to come clean, it's now."

I laugh. "I wish it was true because then there would be an extraction team being mobilized as we speak." He's still eyeing me incredulously, looking at me a bit sideways. "Dude, I'm about as Jack Ryan as Mr. Bean is 007. " He laughs and shakes his head; it seems I may have finally convinced him.

As the sun rises, we sprawl out on the cold, tiled floor with exhaustion. Despite the stench, and the breaking dawn moving through the slats of the shuddered window across the walls of our cell, fatigue overwhelms me and I finally fall asleep.

I'm a little kid again at a house party with my brother in Flour Bluff. It's the eve of moving to Jakarta, Indonesia with my dad and new step mom. After an ugly divorce and bitter custody trial, we're off to start a new life overseas, leaving my brother, sister and mom behind in Texas.

Over the hooting and hollering of drunken revelry and Billy Squire guitar rock blasting from a HiFi Stereo in the background, Drew introduces me to his half baked friends by yelling into their ears, telling them that I'm leaving for a long time, that his family is splitting up.

The musky, piney reek of marijuana lingers in the air at the party, reminding me of when my aunts and uncles would come by and smoke out my parents while doing their laundry at our place on Padre Island in happier times.

Big haired teenage girls there at the party, drunk on Everclear and high themselves, say I'm cute and hug my brother in sympathy. He catches my eye and winks, trying to reassure me. I feel sad for him, for us, and guilty for just about everything. Then I see it.

In the dark wood paneled corner of the kitchen, behind the group of long haired stoner dudes playing quarters at the table, stands a faceless figure in an orange jumpsuit. The hair on the back of my neck stands up and everything except the malevolent presence loses focus. With a rush of fear that pinholes to black, I'm suddenly transported to my grandparent's two story brick townhouse in Corpus, years before.

I'm at the top of the green, shag-carpeted stairs looking down towards the entrance. My brother is laying at the bottom, moaning in pain - blood pooling around his head. He had laughingly pleaded with me not to push him backwards down the stairs in the cardboard box we had been sliding in just moments before. The same box is now obscuring his body the way the police do with blankets at a crime scene. The feeling that the wicked presence has followed me here creeps up on me as I watch my brother lie motionless on the ground at the bottom of the stairs, the pool of blood around his head widening. Holding my breath in fear of what's to come next, I feel a cold hand come to rest on my shoulder. Willing myself out the nightmare, I wake up with a gasp.