Set Free (7 page)

At that time of year, temperatures in the Atlas Mountains can regularly reach the low nineties—higher when magnified within the confines of my sun-soaked prison. Only a small portion of the area, beneath a lean-to type of construction—maybe one-sixth of the rectangle—was shaded from the brutal intensity of the Moroccan sun. It was there that I spent most of my daylight hours. I only dared venture out to drink water from the dribbling spigot of a pump at the opposite end of the enclosure, or to collect the plate of bread and sometimes olives that was shoved through the door twice a day by a faceless entity—man, woman, Hun, camel, goat; I didn’t know.

In the center of the space, rising seven feet off the ground, was a stone pedestal, the approximate length and width of a double bed. I had no way to know what it might have once been used for, but my distressed mind imagined it as some sort of sacrificial altar. For some inexplicable reason, I was unusually drawn to it. On the third night I found myself attempting to hoist my pitifully weakened body atop it. It wasn’t until the eighth night that I succeeded.

The top surface was unlike the rest of the rough-hewn plinth. Here the stone was worn smooth, and felt surprisingly cool against the skin. At its center was a slight but noticeable indentation, as if some great weight had lain there for centuries, wearing down the rock face, by happenstance molding it perfectly to fit my body. I didn’t know when I awoke the next morning, comfortably nestled into the depression, that I would sleep there every night thereafter, even when it rained. I didn’t know that I’d found the center of my existence, the one place in hell that I would love.

There were many things to recommend my spot atop the pedestal. First, it was the rectangle’s highest point. Every king, ruler, lord of every land seeks high ground—preferable for defense and safety from all manner of foe, be it mankind or animal, natural or unnatural. Second, because of its height and nearness to the sky, it gave me the sensation of
almost
being outside the box. The grate, securely fastened to the top of the structure, ensured the impossibility of freedom, but even being a few feet closer to it was exhilarating. Finally, and most importantly, it was in this magical, mystical spot that, every night, I visited with my daughter.

Lowering my body into the soft embrace of the welcoming stone, I would close my eyes and Mikki would be there, cuddling up next to me as she often had as a small child. Jenn believed, for everyone’s good, that children should stay out of their parents’ bed. I understood and agreed. I also believed that some rules are meant to be broken when only one of the parents is around.

On those nights, our routine was unvarying. Mikki would ask what I had written about that day. It was her way of requesting story time. Clever girl. And as it just so happens, telling stories is my specialty. We had our staple favorites that I’d recite if I was tired or not feeling particularly creative, but often I’d just start talking, making things up as I went along. Some of these tall tales were markedly better than others. But her favorite kind, and mine, was when I’d hit on a particularly outrageous, outlandish saga, and just keep chugging along like a stubborn locomotive, any hope of a coherent storyline or rational ending fading further with every passing word. We’d hold out as long as we could, pretending to follow the plot, until one of us could stand it no longer and broke, both of us descending into fits of uncontrollable laughter at the ridiculousness of what had come out of my mouth. None of this helped with adhering to bedtime schedules, but these moments with my daughter are among my most cherished.

And so, night after night, as the sun fell below the roofline of my rectangle and heat began to seep from the day, I would strain fading muscles to hoist my deteriorated body into my spot. I would close my eyes and await my daughter’s arrival. When she appeared, settling in next to me, I would retell those old stories as I remembered them. Her petite, delicate body would relax in my arms, where she felt safe and protected. I was comforted by the gentle up and down of her shoulders and chest as she breathed easily, without a care in the world. I delighted in the sniggers that burbled up in her whenever I said something especially silly, usually for that express purpose. I smelled the fresh fragrance of berry-scented shampoo in her flaxen hair. I ran my hand over exuberant curls, held back from her face by her favorite pink barrettes.

Those fucking barrettes.

I couldn’t decide if these things were what I wanted, needed, or simply missed. But as the days of my captivity multiplied, their overwhelming desirability grew and took root inside my brain, refusing to budge. Clean clothing. A close shave. Red licorice. Wine. The smell of Jenn’s perfume. Just about anything on a computer screen. The sound of voices. The sound of someone laughing at something I said or wrote. Traffic. Reading. Someone touching me. Hot water. Coffee. A ringing cell phone. A mirror. Happiness.

By any standards, the conditions of my habitation were deplorable. I relieved myself through a hole in a wooden bench. There might have been an access point outside the rectangle through which someone could clean out the refuse, but to my knowledge that never happened. After my first full week, I stopped noticing the permanent stench permeating the area. My hair grew; my face itched from an unruly beard. Growing a beard was something I’d never done in real life. I was vaguely curious to see what I looked like—until I remembered that no reflection in any mirror could show Jaspar Wills. He was gone. My teeth felt spongy from weeks of going unbrushed; my nails grew long and unkempt, my skin tight and dry. I was in dire need of a change in wardrobe. Not only were my clothes—the same jeans and shirt I’d set off in from Boston—filthy and torn, but the pants only stayed around my shrinking waist if I held them there. My kingdom for a belt.

With patience, and sustained up and down motion, the water pump would provide enough trickles of water to keep me reasonably hydrated and clean. But without so much as a pail or basin, the process was often painstaking—and on bad days, of which there were many, exhaustion easily won out over a full bath.

I worried about my health. As a tourist in Morocco, I would never drink water from a tap. As a prisoner, I was forced to. In the early days I constantly experienced diarrhea, which contributed to my already feeble state, but not so much any longer. I don’t know if my system eventually adjusted, or if there was just too little of anything left in reserve for my body to expel.

Prolonged near-starvation is never a good thing. I could tell from my decreasing levels of energy and my sustained lethargy that its frightening effects were overtaking me. Although generally a person who enjoyed robust health, in the real world I reinforced it with a daily intake of vitamins, various supplements, and medication to control a genetically-induced cholesterol problem. Without those pills, who knew what was happening to my body. Wouldn’t that be a farce? If, despite everything else, I ended up being taken out by a coronary attack caused by unchecked low-density lipoproteins.

The only aspect of my situation that could be judged as improving was the state of the injuries I’d suffered at the hands of Hun. Despite the conditions I was forced to endure, with no beatings to perpetuate or aggravate my legion of cuts and bruises, they were slowly beginning to heal.

Physically, I was holding on. My greatest concern was for my mental health. In the real world, I was bombarded by mental stimuli. If I wasn’t writing, I was researching. If I wasn’t interviewing someone, I was planning a book tour or outlining a new idea or communicating with readers, booksellers, agents. I enjoyed challenging conversations and the odd feisty squabble with my wife. I watched movies and TV, read books and magazines, listened to news radio and a wide variety of music. I thrived on travel. Sure, on occasion I enjoyed a rainy Sunday afternoon catnap or a mindless walk in the park, but generally I was the kind of guy in a perpetual dance with the world around me—the more stimulation, the better.

Now my dance partner was monotony. The same rectangle. The same shitter. The same begrudging water pump. The same stone pedestal. The same metal grate. The same dry bread. I spent every day huddled in my lean-to, hiding from the harsh rays and blistering heat of an unrelenting sun, and every night on top of a rock, curled into a fetal position, reciting stories to a ghost, tortured by my own mind.

Why didn’t Mikki’s captors pick up the money?

It was a question asked millions of times. By me. By Jenn. People who knew us asked the question. People who only knew us by our story asked the question. The unspoken answer haunted all of us. Only one seemed likely: somehow, Mikki had died. Perhaps from injuries sustained during the initial abduction; perhaps by accident during her incarceration; even, perhaps, by her own hand. With nothing left to trade, the kidnappers had disappeared. Gone to find another payday with another victim.

Now, I knew better. For reasons I’d probably never know, the kidnappers had decided that picking up the money was too risky. They were right. They’d spotted the police and FBI on the first attempt, and maybe the second. They knew that they would have been caught, eventually. Maybe this had been their first time. Kidnappers have to start somewhere, and no library or bookstore I know of stocks a copy of
Kidnapping for Dummies
. They realized they were on the losing side of the game and needed to cut their losses and run.

No one could be so monstrous as to kill Mikki, an innocent thirteen-year-old girl. Who could have so dark a heart? Even the Huns hadn’t been able to kill me. Mikki’s abductors would not have hurt her either. No. They would have broken camp and run, taking Mikki with them, eventually stashing her someplace. Just as I’d been stashed in a rectangle in the Atlas Mountains.

Where was she?

Finally, something worthwhile to think about.

After three days with no bread being delivered through the doorway, I knew the plan.

With only water left to sustain me, the Huns—or whoever was on the other side of the locked door—were waiting for me to starve to death. It was perfect, really. And who could blame them? All they’d wanted was to make some quick cash by kidnapping a rich, spoiled American, and instead they had ended up with a lifelong dependent. Not a good deal for them. They didn’t have it in them to outright murder me. But to let nature take its course once food was out of the picture? I guess, after weeks of thinking about it, they’d decided their consciences could live with that.

I didn’t really mind anymore. What had been happening in the rectangle wasn’t life. It was merely inadvertent survival, one breath following another. Still, I’d kept on drinking the water and eating the bread, feeling grotesquely euphoric when it arrived accompanied by olives, the flavor exploding in my mouth with near-hallucinogenic vividness.

At most there were three of them. The first one, a perfect, salty-meaty-oily orb, would disappear down my gullet before my eyes had time to register its existence. The second soon after. By the third, I’d attempt to exert self-control.

With the olive soaking in its bed of succulent juices and the shorn crust of bread carefully arranged on a cracked ceramic plate, I’d scurry to the shaded comfort beneath my slanted roof. Once settled, I’d pick up the slippery drupe and admire its dark color and the sensual texture of its skin, glistening with translucent oil, pungent and spicy. My trembling fingers would hold it out in front of me, as if it were the world’s last remaining Fabergé egg. I would extend my tongue and wait for the intoxicating impact of taste buds against olive, savoring the sensation for as long as I could.

Eventually I would rub the olive against my teeth, as if testing a pearl. Finally, sinking it into the fleshy nest of my mouth, I would suck away the olive’s oily residue from my fingers, then bite down and consume the tantalizing fruit. Immediately after, I would toss a morsel of bread into my mouth. I’d let it sit there, absorbing whatever essence remained of the olive and its flavors. Although nowhere near the heavenly sensation of the olive itself, the subtle replica had its own gifts to share in prolonging the experience.

I don’t even like olives.

Ordinary and commonplace become extraordinary when commonplace is gone. And in the extraordinary are moments of joyous escape.

Could a man who got so excited over olives be prepared to die?

My most fervent hope was that whoever had Mikki would give her an olive. Just one. Or, better yet,
Reese’s Pieces
ice cream. It was her all-time favorite.

I had grown used to waking up every morning, high atop my stone perch, with Mikki gone. We had a routine. Every night she came to me, and as she lay cradled in my arms I would tell her my stories. Then, sometime after I’d fallen asleep, she would silently slip away. So when I awoke on the fourth day since the bread deliveries had ended, I was stunned to see her staring down at me.

It was true. I was right. They hadn’t killed Mikki after all. She’d been alive all this time. Kept from us, but alive. And now here she was. With me. Everything was going to be alright.

At first all I could manage was a stupid, crooked smile. My body had grown very weak. I’d barely been awake for more than a few hours the previous day. I didn’t feel hungry, but I was still aware enough to know that my body must be.

Mikki smiled back. I felt the soft, warm palm of her hand rest against my forehead, then move slowly down my left cheek.

“Mikki.” For some reason, the best I could manage was a hoarse whisper.

“Isaque ihla wawal?” The words flowed smoothly from her mouth. I couldn’t quite make them out, but it sounded as if she was asking me if I was okay. Typical Mikki, always thinking about someone besides herself. She was the one who’d been imprisoned and kept from her family for months and months. Me? I was a relative newbie at this. Besides, I was her father. I should be looking after her. I should be the one asking if she was okay. But somehow I couldn’t quite get the words to work in my mouth.

I struggled to sit up. The best I could do was to pull myself up far enough to rest on my elbows, the bone aching and skin burning where they rested against the stone. I stared at my lost daughter, delirious with happiness. It was back. Happiness was back. God, how I missed it. God, how I missed her.

At thirteen, Mikki was tall, almost the height of her mother. But on our nights atop the pedestal, she was still a child—sometimes nothing more than a wriggly baby, sometimes her six-year-old size. This worked well, making it easier for the two of us to fit within the stone’s indentation. Not to mention that the thirteen-year-old version I knew from back home was no longer keen to cuddle with her old dad.

Beholding my daughter through a feverish haze, I idly wondered how and why she came to be here this morning, taller than ever, towering over me, gazing down at me with the eyes of a Madonna. With some effort, I turned and craned my head to see over the edge of the pedestal. I saw that she’d dragged over a collection of old crates and piled them against the stone platform in order to climb to the top. I also noticed that not only was she bigger and older than she’d been last night, or any night, but her face… it was different.

More words I couldn’t understand burbled through her lips.

Suddenly I was concerned. “Mikki, what’s wrong with you? What’s happened to you?”
My God, what did they do to her?

She responded, her voice calm, loving.

Alarm bells began to clang. I tried to sit up, and again failed. Something was wrong. This was not my daughter! “Where’s Mikki?”

My brain began to clear. The soupy gobbledygook that now resided there most of the time disappeared into the recesses like murky dishwater down a garburator. I studied the face, so close to mine. How had I ever mistaken this person for Mikki? This woman’s hair was dark and shiny, like wet coal. Her eyes were those of someone twice Mikki’s age. Her satin-like skin was the color of weak tea. She wore a colorless shawl of delicate material—silk, maybe—that felt pleasingly cool whenever it brushed against my skin.

I fell back and stared up at my grate roof, bitterly disappointed. I wasn’t so far gone as to be unaware that, at times, I’d been falling into periods of lack of focus—delusion?—thanks to the combination of starvation, extremities of heat, mental anguish, and boredom. But I was okay with that. At times like these, delusion can be a dear friend.

I closed my eyes and counted to ten.

She was still there.

It was clear that this woman did not speak my language. Nor could I speak hers.

My eyes followed as she placed a small hand against her chest, skin glistening as if oiled, nails smooth and short. She said one word. She was telling me her name.

“Asmae?” I repeated the word to confirm.

“Naȃm,” she responded, her voice so beseechingly sweet and kind that it nearly made me weep. She then spoke at length, hurriedly, until her words stumbled, and then she looked away as if embarrassed to have gone on for so long.

I had no idea what she was talking about, but given the circumstances and my condition, I made an educated guess: “I suppose you thought I was dead?”

She shrugged and said something more, slower, as if that would help.

We weren’t getting very far. Wincing with the effort, I positioned my hand on my chest, as she had done, and croaked my name: “Jaspar.”

She smiled and did her best to repeat it. I did my best to smile back, feeling self-conscious about my teeth, my breath, me in general. It hurt to smile. The skin of my lips had grown permanently chapped and cracked from too much sun—not to mention unaccustomed to the act.

Asmae made a motion as if using a spoon, and then pointed down. She wanted me to come off the pedestal to eat. I was happy to think bread might be back on the menu. Maybe even olives? I nodded feebly, but barely moved.

She pulled back. I watched as she took full note of the state I was in. When she was done, her eyes reaching out for mine, she silently took my dirty, rough hand in her tiny, tender one, and squeezed—lightly, but enough for me to know that she was doing it. Then, very carefully, she lowered herself off the pedestal and was gone.

For long moments after, I could still feel her touch on my forehead, my cheek, my hand. Touch. Such a small thing. It had been so long since anyone had touched me without intending to cause pain.

I knew how powerful small things could be. For Jenn and me, it had been nothing more than a plastic, pink barrette. That one small thing that gave us something we wanted, and then took everything else away.