We were led, one guard in front, one behind, back down the corridor and through a heavy metal door to the cells. Norine kept repeating, “Something’s not right, something’s going on.”
All I could do was pray that we weren’t about to be separated.
Every door we passed in the corridor was strong, solid, and shut tight. The guard leading the way unlocked the final door and pointed us inside. “We’ll be back with some food,” he said. “And don’t worry about the noise you’ll hear from next door. He’s a bit different.”
Norine and I exchanged glances. The sound of the key turning in the lock was heavy and dull.
We both looked around. The room was almost empty, with four bunk beds, a dirty tile floor, and two dirty sinks with a small bathroom off to the side. A window above the sinks had heavy bars across it. It was basic, but at least we were together and alone in it.
I stared at the toilet. Every place we’d ever lived in Turkey had included a typical Western toilet, the sort you could sit down on. This traditional Turkish style was different—a hole in the ground that you were supposed to squat over, and a little faucet attachment beside it for you to clean both yourself and the drop-toilet. I glanced at the little window and realized this was where the flies were coming in. There was no glass in the frame. I tried in vain to close the toilet door to keep them contained.
Within minutes another guard arrived with blankets, sheets, styrofoam boxes of food, and a couple of loaves of bread.
“Can we get some more drinking water?” I asked, looking at the four little water bottles.
“Not on the weekends. Do you need soap? I can get you that. And toothbrushes, a towel, and pajamas.”
This was a help because we had no clothes other than what we were wearing and a T-shirt and hoodie in my backpack left from the recent beach trip.
We thanked him and opened the styrofoam containers. A tomato, a little wrapper of cheese, a bit of jam. Breakfast. The next box had rice and some vegetables.
“Norine, we haven’t had anything since this morning, we need to eat something.”
She quit after a couple of bites. I forced half the meal down. We were both exhausted from all the events and emotions of the day.
“Allahu Akbar!”
The sound of a man wailing in Arabic filled the room. It was coming from next door and his voice was so full of passion that he was almost screaming. It was dark outside by now and the single overhead light was dim. We looked at each other in silence. Norine’s eyes were wide with fear.
I broke the silence. “I hesitated to tell you, but after what happened today it makes sense. I don’t understand why, but I think God is involved in this, and that our time in Turkey is over for now.” For the first time I explained to Norine about It’s time to come home, the thought that I had wrestled with the last few days. Her first reaction was to ask, “Are you sure this is from God?” But as we talked it through she started to feel a sense of relief that God was in this sudden turn of events.
But it was still hard to wrap our minds around the fact that we really were on our way back to the US. Why would God allow this when there were so many encouraging things happening in our ministry? Besides, God had told us in 2009 to prepare for spiritual harvest in Turkey. Were we really going to see it only from a distance?
The more we talked and thought about it, the worse we felt. We thought about one person after another whom we would be leaving behind. We were both grieving. The sense of being separated from all these things that I had poured myself into was so real I could almost feel it in my bones.
Norine was staring out of the window. After a few minutes she spoke up. “I think we should ‘go with thanksgiving.’”
I immediately understood. A friend had sent us a message just hours before: “Don’t look at all you’ve lost or everything that is difficult about today. Just be grateful.”
Norine continued, “Let’s remember all the good things God has done over the years in Turkey, starting with keeping us here for twenty-three years.”
And so we did. We started listing all the things we could think of that we were grateful for. But for every memory that made us smile, the hardships surrounding it came to mind as well. It was as though a grace that had been there for years had suddenly been lifted. We’d seen so many victories over the years, but there had been a cost to each and every one of them.
IT WAS LATE. We were wiped out and needed sleep. “You know what’s strange,” I said to Norine as we made up the beds. “Usually when they deport missionaries they just throw out the husband and assume that the wife and any children will follow. But the deportation order is for both of us.”
Norine slept that night like she always did, deep and sound. I tossed and turned in the bunk across the room, waking up every time the metal slot in the door clanged open and a flashlight shone through.
When the dawn call to prayer rang through the walls and open windows, voices from other cells started to wail along with it. I felt a chill run throughout my body.
Living in a Muslim country, we were used to the call to prayer coming from the mosques, but this felt different. Izmir is known in the rest of Turkey as Infidel Izmir. It was definitely cosmopolitan, and many people dressed like they belong in Milan or Miami rather than in a strict Muslim country. While headscarfs were increasingly common, it was still unusual to see a woman completely covered in black with only her eyes showing.
We had been told that Isikkent was the worst of the two centers, but my guess was that “worst” didn’t relate just to the quality of the food or the standard of the bedding. It was also about whom they detained there. I suspected Isikkent must handle the more serious cases. And in Turkey in 2016, that could only mean one thing: ISIS. So I figured that if Norine and I were locked up with terrorists of the worst kind, that couldn’t be good.
“HOW ARE YOUR LENSES?” I asked Norine when I finally heard her stirring. She never slept with her contact lenses in her eyes. She said they were sticking and wondered how she could last until Monday without any solution. I knew she could not manage without them.
In the daylight we located the cleanest-looking mattress and pulled it onto the floor so we could sit up straight. As we pulled out breakfast I reminded Norine of the bag of snacks our friend Ali had brought us the day before as we were being led to the police car. Our world had been turned upside down, but his act of kindness warmed our hearts now. We wondered if any of our friends even knew where we were.
“I’m concerned about the kids,” said Norine as she stared at the uneaten food on the styrofoam plate. “Jordan will have told them about the deportation but they’ll be expecting us home. When they don’t hear anything by tonight and can’t get through to us they’ll start to worry.”
On the way back from getting fingerprinted, we had sent a quick text to Jordan for his birthday, saying we were about to be deported and would be in touch when we knew more.
“Oh Lord, we have no way of letting our kids know where we are. Please help them. There is nothing we can do.”
One prayer request led to another . . .
“But Lord, we also want to worship you in this place. We choose to praise your name . . .”
Lunch arrived—noodles in a sauce, some vegetables, and of course a half loaf of bread each. It would not be a meal in Turkey without bread.
BEING LOCKED UP behind a big, metal door in a foreign country, hearing the keys turn and the bolts slam for the first time, is sobering—you can’t be sure about anything anymore. Now everything happens to you—it is a sudden loss of control and plunge into uncertainty.
Just when we’d exhausted all speculation about how our deportation might happen, the door’s locks clicked and it slowly opened. “We are taking you for air,” said a guard we had not seen before. “Come.”
Norine looked as unsure as I felt as we followed him out of the room, down the stairs, and into a small courtyard outside that was blocked off by high walls. “You have twenty minutes,” said the guard as he watched us from a chair in the corner.
“Look,” said Norine quietly, pointing out several signs listing the rules of the facility. “There’s Turkish, but this is Arabic, this is Russian. Farsi. Urdu. That’s who we’re in here with.”
The rest of the day was spent back in the room behind the locked door. We prayed, we sang, we talked. Round and round we went with the same conversations. Our kids. The church. Our future. The only bright spot in leaving Turkey was that we would be closer to our kids. We asked every guard who came to our door when we were going to be deported, but all we got was “Wait until Monday.”
Dinner arrived, and breakfast with it. We sat, we paced, we stared out the window into the darkness. Norine slept again, but just like the first night I was too wired to do anything other than doze fitfully.
Finally the door swung open for the morning window-and-bars inspection. Norine spoke up, “Do you have any more soap or shampoo so I could wash clothes?”
“Sure, do you want a bucket to wash them in?”
It was something to be thankful for. Norine busied herself with laundry as I paced from the window to the door and back again, dozens of times.
Norine was hanging a shirt on the window bars. “Isn’t that the church van parked way over on the dirt road?” she exclaimed. “And look, there’s Mert!”
At last, some good news. Our friends really did know where we were, and they were letting us know. The sight of people who cared, friends we would miss so much, made me cry. I loved these people and it hurt to have to leave them.
I turned to Norine. She was silent, her face free from emotion.
“Are you holding back?” I asked.
“No, my love,” she said. “When we are on the plane leaving Turkey I’ll cry.”
WHEN MONDAY finally came around we got dressed in eager anticipation of something happening. After a whole weekend locked away, we were ready to go.
I stood staring out the window at the empty streets beyond the razor wire. The front gate was just out of sight, but I saw a man in a suit approach, heard him talk and recognized him as Robert, the consular official who had warned me about Isikkent. He left soon after, and I wondered if he had been turned away. As Robert wallked off I watched a car pull up, and a well-dressed couple I did not recognize got out and exchanged a few words with him. The couple marched toward the gate, but it seemed like they too were turned away.
We banged loudly on our door, hoping to get someone’s attention, asking to see Melih Bey.
“I’ll have to get permission,” said a weary guard.
An hour later he walked us to the office. Melih sat behind his desk like he had before, but there was another man with him. He told us his name was Burak and he handled all the talking.
“We wanted to make sure you know we do not want to appeal the deportation at this time.”
He paused. “Okay,” he said eventually. “You can put that in writing. Something like ‘I, Andrew Craig Brunson, want to return voluntarily to America. I am giving up all my rights.’”
I nodded. “You don’t even have to deport us,” I added. “Just take us to the airport and we’ll get on whatever flight’s available.”
Burak winced and shook his head. “We have a procedure. Deportations are always from the Istanbul airport and the flight must be a direct one to the US. First, though, there is some official communication back and forth with Ankara. The paperwork should not take too long. A day or so. Maybe even by the end of today.”
TUESDAY MORNING, the same well-dressed couple showed up outside, accompanied by a couple of church members. This time I could hear the man and the woman talk, and they were insisting that they had the right to visit us. I heard one of them say “lawyer.” Were they trying to stop the deportation, not knowing we had decided to appeal only after we were Stateside? Without attracting attention from the guards below, Norine and I tried to motion to our church friends that we didn’t want a lawyer.
Within a minute our door burst open and two guards were shouting at us. “What were you doing? Were you talking to someone on the street?”
“It is forbidden!”
“We’re sorry, we did not say anything.”
As they left, Norine and I looked at each other, hoping nothing would come of this. The last thing I wanted was for us to be separated as a punishment—and to be put in the same cell with one of our ISIS neighbors. We stayed clear of the window.
Our door soon opened again and a different guard came in. “You’re coming to the office.”
We followed in silence as he led us down the hall. Burak stared intensely at us. “Are you appealing the deportation? If so, you could be here for months.”
Months? It was supposed to be two weeks. We certainly did not want to be here for months. We would appeal later.
“No,” I answered. “We want to go to the States.”
“Then write that you don’t want to see a lawyer.” He handed me a blank sheet of paper and glanced at Melih, who nodded back at him.
I picked up the pen and wrote what he dictated. “I want to return to America as soon as possible. I do not want a lawyer.”
“Add that you do not want to meet with a lawyer.”
I did what he asked, signed, and gave the pen to Norine. When she’d finished, Burak took the paper and handed it to Melih.
He gave it back to us. “Write down the time, 10:30.”
When we’d done that, Norine spoke. “Is the deportation paperwork in from Ankara?”
Burak waved the guard to take us back. “We’re still waiting to hear from them.”
As soon as we got back in the room, we heard shouting from the street outside.
“Andrew! Norine! Are you there?”
A couple of guards were telling our friends and the couple to leave, but as they backed away I heard our friend shout out. “We have a lawyer for you! Andrew! We have lawyers but they won’t let them in to see you.”
I wanted to yell out and tell them that it was okay and that we didn’t need a lawyer, but I did not want to risk getting in trouble. We sat, our backs to the wall, and held hands. Now they would have no excuse to keep us here. Soon we would be on a flight home.
But another thought intruded: Melih and Burak were not friendly men. We could not trust their intentions. Had we made a mistake?
That night we took a couple of mattresses and placed them side by side on the floor. For Norine, sleep was an escape—because she could sleep. But I was having trouble, and wanted to be close to my wife as the hours crept by. When daylight finally filled the room and Norine woke up, we quickly put the mattresses back on the bunks before the heavy door clicked open.
Surely we would see some movement today.
BY LUNCHTIME there had been no news. We had both had enough. We banged on the door and asked to see Melih again. This time he and Burak came into our room to talk to us.
“What is going on?” I asked. “Is there some problem?”
Burak looked away, but Melih carried on staring at us both. The silence that settled on the room was agony.
Eventually, Melih spoke, “Ankara will make the decision.”
Norine drew in a quick breath. “What do you mean, they will make a decision? You mean it’s not sure that we will be deported?”
He paused. “You will most likely be deported.” He let the words hang in the air. “It’s . . . 95 percent sure.”
For the first time, a Turkish official was telling us we may not be sent home. I didn’t want to think about what this could mean. I slumped onto one of the bunks, feeling weighed down.
Burak and Melih walked away and the guards took us out for air. We followed them in silence. Instead of pacing in the courtyard, we sat on a bench, quiet and subdued. The last thing I remember was my vision narrowing, fading fast. I felt my head roll back, and everything went dark.