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Show Page THE HERALD, Provo, Utah, Sunday, December 8, A6 1991 Anderson was despc Sc 4f WIESBADEN, Germany (AP) Terry Anderson desperately feared the blindfolds, chains and cells of captivity would kill ; the one thing he had left: his mind. Tedium and isolation compelled u. the former hostage to bully and badger both cellmates and captors into turning their bleak surroundings into an eerie oasis of imagination. "I was desperate to keep my y-da- brain .. r rain acnv e during captivity V'rvBaisKmsimii Ally nmuj'W."1 ijtT knew their personalities. Andersen said the hostages gave them nicknames, "pretty rough nicknames" for the bad ones. British journalist John McCarthy, whom Anderson called a Eur dev-astatin- accurate mimic, skew- 'I " "" ered the worst guards with dead-o- $ !' 1 f i i alive," Anderson, chief VV ... n s ri.itew.j I . impressions. The books that Anderson steadfastly demanded showed up about 2xh years ago, a period when ' 'treatment markedly improved. "We got boxes of books ... bad books, cheap books, thrillers, Bar- V AV t Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press, said in an inter-vieconducted when he made a telephone call to the AP staff here. "I was deadly scared that I would w bara Cartland, political science textbooks ... we must have got over a thousand of them over a period of a year," said Anderson. "You can imagine the difference it makes in your life when you're lapse into some kind of mental rot." Anderson, 44, I "J was freed Wednesday after 2,455 days in captivity, the last of 13 U.S. hostages to go free in Lebanon. He is resting and undergoing medical tests at the U.S. military hospital in Wiesbaden. Military authorities have not allowed journalists to interview freed hostages in person at locked in a room 24 hours a day. " This was nirvana for Anderson, who said he routinely read 300 to 400 books each year before he was captured. But the books and occasional radios also became powerful tools of punishment for the Shiite Muslims holding the hostages. "When we got in an argument (with the guards) they would take the radio, the books and we would be left in the bare room again," he said. the hospital. Anderson was opinionated, eloquent, blunt and confident in the interview Friday. The stocky says he regrets that he initially saw fellow hostages, such as American Thom- AP Laserphoto 40-min- as Sutherland and Irishman Brian Keenan, as potential learning tools instead of human beings. "I will be blunt," he said. "I am a very domineering man at times. I can be arrogant and I can be, I guess ... I can be very force- ful." "Brian said to me once that he felt like I was just kind of sucking everything out of his brain," Anderson said. ' He says he got Sutherland to teach him French until he became fluent. He badgered his captors for books until they brought them by the boxload. He bullied Sutherland 'to learn the sign language Anderson He argued long and passionately with his cellmates about selected topics, then baffled them by abruptly pursuing the opposite view, an exercise to keep his mind limber and fit. "Tom couldn't understand. He didn't know what the hell I was doing. He was trying to have a half-invente- d. '; ; conversation, and I was doing mental gymnastics. ' ' Last year, Anderson taught a te- - n Associated Press President Lou Boccardi, left, points to a reporter asking a question while sitting next to former hostage Terry Anderson during a news conference in Wiesbaden Friday. Anderson said he was ordeal. desperate to keep his brain active during the almost seven-yea- r dious language of taps against the wall to a hostage chained in the next cell: Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite, who was captured while trying to free the others. Then, when Waite could understand the makeshift language, Anin a stunning, derson unloaded one-hothe news that burst Waite had missed during four years of solitary confinement: Communism fell in Eastern Europe. Germany was reunifying. Free elections were being held in the Soviet Union. Apartheid was ending in South Africa. War had broken out in the Persian Gulf. "All at once boom, boom, boom all through the wall," Anderson said. "He told me later it all kind of numbed his mind." Anderson described the agony of a life in chains and blindfolds, food flung on the floor, a prison for the innocent, a sentence of unknown length, empty days evolving into years. It was a life of rigid rules enforced by brutal guards, a life in a small cell devoid of daylight. He was allowed to go to the bathroom only once a day . "Once I beat and hammered on the door ... a couple of hours be- fore someone would actually come," Anderson said. "I tell you what, that's not only humiliating, it's damn painful. "Probably the biggest impres- sion all the hostages will take away, that will not much be talked about, is the relief at being able to go to the bathroom when you want to." Anderson says he constantly demanded better treatment, and that the captors slowly, gradually improved the hostages' living conditions. "There are assaults on your dignity as a human being . . . that you just can't accept," he said. "A man throws you food on the ground, throws a sandwich on the floor. I mean, I'm not a dog. I'm not going to eat off the floor," he said angrily. "These are the kinds Anderson and other hostages had a radio during the first year of captivity. It was taken away, then another one arrived three years later. "After a while, they took it away again," he said. "We finally got the radio back after much argument, much discussion, many, many requests. I would ask every single day, they would tell me no. In the last year, the books stopped coming but the magazines began, regular deliveries of Time, Newsweek, The Economist, U.S. News and World Report and the occasional Fortune. Among the Americans Anderson was held widi at various times were Presbyterian Rev. Benjamin Weir, American University of Bei- His captors finally "at least recognized that I was going to demand to be treated with at least a minimum amount of dignity and re- spect." Anderson and other Western hostages were moved 15 to 20 times during captivity. Sometimes they were in solitary confinement and sometimes they were together, sometimes in small cells and sometimes in a fortified apartment. Some guards were relatively de- cent and some were "very vicious," kicking, slapping or shoving hostages if they violated the strict rules of behavior. "When somebody came through the door you put your blindfold on," Anderson said. "You never, ever allowed your blindfold to slip or to not be put rut hospital administrator David Jacobsen, Frank Reed, Roman Catholic priest Lawrence Jenco aH William Buckley, the former Cl station chief in Beirut. into place immediately upon the first sound from the door. ' ' That rule continued "right up to the day I left." The hostages were not allowed to see their guards, but v Anderson believes Buckley died in the room they shared. ' David was there , too, " Ander 4 son said. "We interpreted what happened by sound. He was at the time extremely ill." "I could hear him talking to the guards occasionally," he said. "He was delirious and I could hear him moaning and saying tilings." Anderson spent most of his time with Sutherland, sometimes chained together. During one period, Anderson said he suddenly recalled the rudiments of sign language he learned in high school. He approximated what he could a full not remember to alphabet, and felt compelled to teach Sutherland. "We didn't need it. But for some reason I got fixated on it. Tom didn't want to bother, but I sort of bullied him into it. " Then the two were put in solitary confinement. Anderson said he was able to see hostage McCarthy and Keenan and taught them ; the sign language. For months, the four looked at each other from their individual cells and, silently, continued their long conversations. "I still have no idea to this day what made my mind light on that idea or what motivation I had, when Tom and I were in the same cell, to almost literally force him into learning this dumb language that I made up," he said. "But, by God, it sure saved our butts. We talked for hours and hours and hours across the way. We kept in contact with each other while we were in solitary.. And from time to time we all needed it. And that's a miracle." tv 5' Anderson said the bleakness of captivity was frequently broken by bursts of laughter. He said Sutherland, Keenan and McCarthy were genuine wits with vast stores of jokes. Among the books the prisoners had were some volumes from a 1973 Encyclopedia Americana.; While paging through the "u" vol4 ume, Anderson said he came across Pope Urban I, a saint, of whom there is "absolutely nothing known." "That sent John and I off into absolute hysterics," he said. For weeks, they created a comic history for the phantom saint, with Carthy supplying the voice. Mc- f ' M of arguments we had." 1 Fever doesn't keep Anderson from jogging WIESBADEN, both sufjust before Anderson fered permanent ailments from Germany (AP) Terry Anderson went Mass and unattended jogging, derwent more medical tests on Saturday. Doctors reported the freed hostage was running a slight fever, but that a minor lung ailment was clearing up. Even though he was the longest-held American captive, Anseemed to derson, an be more fit than many who were freed before him. However, he was expected to spend a few more days recuperating at the U.S. military hospital at Wiesbaden. Alann Steen and Joseph Cicip-pi- o the two hostages released their captivity. Steen left Wiesbaden on Saturday, waving to reporters through the window of a van as he headed to Frankfurt airport, where he and his family boarded a commercial airliner n correspondent for The Associated Press, for nearly seven years in Lebanon before freeing him '",f on Wednesday. Anderson, who had gone jogging on Friday, ran again early Saturday around the hospital grounds, the U.S. military said $aoo u.s. in a statement. His "low-grad- e bound for Detroit. fever" would not prevent him left on and Cicippio Thursday from jogging again on Sunday, was welcomed home in Norris-towofficials said. Pa. The military said Anderson's Roman a Anderson, Catholic, attended Mass at the chapel of fever was related to a sinus infecthe military hospital, and tion, which is being treated. 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