Former hostage describes life in captivity

HOSTAGE: My Nightmare in Beirut, by David Jacobsen with Gerald Astor, Donald I. Fine Inc., 308 pages, $21.95.

Former Beirut hostage David Jacobsen shares his views on U.S. policy on the hostage issue and tells how he and other hostages were able to survive the horror of captivity and torture in his powerful story “Hostage: My Nightmare in Beirut.”

Jacobsen, an American, was the director of the American University of Beirut hospital when he was taken hostage May 28, 1985. He was freed after 17 months in captivity as part of President Reagan’s arms-for-hostages deal.

Jacobsen’s story reads like a thriller and reveals how fellow hostages — some now free and others heading toward their seventh year in captivity — handled their ordeal.

This fast-paced book explains the daily routine Jacobsen and the other hostages followed to survive. Praying, exercising and arguing were their favorite ways to pass time. Jacobsen spent much of his captivity with other hostages, including Terry Anderson, Tom Sutherland, the Rev. Ben Weir and Father Lawrence Martin Jenco.

In one memorable scene, Jacobsen describes the day he told one of his guards that he wanted some ice cream. “You’re crazy,” said Anderson. The guard will go nuts and “could kill you for this,” Anderson added.

Jacobsen told Anderson, “If I have to die, I would prefer it to be over ice cream and not by accident.”

After 15 minutes, the guard brought them both some ice cream.

Although some of the kidnappers showed compassion at times, no amount of ice cream could make up for what they put the hostages through. Beatings, mock executions and other forms of terror were more frequent than acts of sympathy.

Jacobsen’s book will help readers understand the hostage situation and what those still bound by chains face each day as the United States continues its impotent policy.

Jim Emple is an assistant design editor on the NEWS display desk.