Everything had faded. All my strength had gone. I couldn’t even speak or shout out to ask for help. I was powerless as I tried to swim up through this fog, desperate to get back to consciousness.
Someone was standing over me. A guard, perhaps? I wanted to reach up and grab hold of his arm, but I couldn’t. My body had locked me out.
I heard someone else shouting, but quietly, as if they were in another room. Was it Norine?
“I am NOT going to lose you! Satan, you can’t have him!”
It was Norine, all right. I recognized her voice. I tried to break back through whatever this was that had washed me away from her. I had to get back to her, I couldn’t leave, I fought from going under again.
I saw the colors and shapes gradually return. Norine was leaning over me, still shouting about not losing me, and a guard was staring at me.
I could see the fear on Norine’s face.
It took time, but eventually I could breathe more easily. I couldn’t speak, my heart was still beating just as fast and I felt weak, but at least I was back. At least I was able to see Norine again.
I had been out for several minutes and was still too weak to walk on my own. Two guards half carried me back to our room, and I lay down on the bunk, soaked with sweat, drained and exhausted.
Burak came in and stared at me before delivering his verdict. “You don’t look well. We’re taking you to the hospital.”
“No!” I was adamant that was not going to happen. Weak as I was, I was still aware of the risks of being separated. Once they split us up, who knew if they’d let us be together again? I did not want Norine to remain alone in the cell. “Just . . . let me sleep.”
How long Burak stayed around I don’t know, but when I opened my eyes again he was gone. I was cold and shivering, and Norine told me that she’d asked one of the guards for a heater, but it wasn’t working. She piled blankets on me.
“Let’s not complain,” I said. “I don’t want to give them any reason to separate us.”
Burak came back soon after. This time he was insistent about sending me to the hospital.
“I don’t want to go. I don’t need it.”
“It’s not your choice.”
I knew he was right, but I was desperate not to be separated. “Okay, I’ll go, but please, let my wife come with me.”
He shook his head. “I would have to send two extra police officers to guard her. No, you’re going alone.”
Within minutes I was being put in a police car. I was too tired to complain about being in handcuffs for the first time in my life. I was too weak to care that I was being treated like a criminal. I kept trying to sit up straight but finally slumped into the policeman next to me. At the hospital what little strength I had went into walking without stumbling, or talking to people when they asked me questions. I felt as ill and as weak as I ever had, but I did not want to give anyone a reason to keep me in the hospital any longer than necessary.
After an MRI they took me back to Isikkent, though without the handcuffs this time. They had realized I was in no shape to resist in any way. The hospital had found nothing wrong with me and offered no explanation for what had happened.
It was dark by the time I was returned to the room and left alone with Norine. Hearing the lock click on the door behind me was strangely comforting.
THE NEXT DAY was a blur of half sleep and daydreams. I tried to eat the food that they brought but had no appetite. When much of my strength had returned we tried to make a schedule to help pass the time.
We talked a lot in the beginning, but as the days slipped by we had less and less to talk about. We sat in silence—glad to be together, but with a growing sense of dread. We just could not talk with much enjoyment, or hope, or confidence about things that might now be in jeopardy—our children, ministry, future.
What remained was prayer and walking. These times became our focus, and as we walked in an oval, Norine often in front, me behind, we’d sing songs, try to remember verses, and pray. We varied our routine too, using the mornings to focus on things we were thankful for while in the afternoons we often prayed for our kids and the church. At night we’d try to get in the right frame of mind to sleep, often praying through the words of Psalm 23.
We were midway through one of our morning sessions when the door opened and a guard told us that Melih wanted to see us.
He was standing behind his desk when we entered. It was covered in some of our clothes from home.
“Your friends brought these in for you. You can take them if you want.”
We started putting them into the empty bag that lay on the floor. The clothes and toiletries were all welcome, but when I saw my Bible I felt my heart race. I reached for it, so glad that finally we would be able to spend our time reading Scripture, but as my fingers brushed the cover, Melih reached out and pulled it away from me.
“No,” he said, casually putting the Bible on a shelf behind him. “We won’t give you this.”
I was genuinely surprised. “We are Christians, we should be allowed to have our holy book. Why won’t you let us have it?”
Melih shrugged. “You can only have books that we have provided for you. That’s the rule here,” he said, with a touch of disdain and cruelty.
As well as the desperate hunger for the Bible, I could feel the anger surging within me, but I knew we were at his mercy.
“Please,” Norine said, much more calmly than I had spoken. “It’s a Turkish Bible printed in Turkey. There is nothing illegal about it.”
Melih sat down and waved us out.
HAVING A CHANGE OF CLOTHES was a relief. Not only did we smell better, but Norine found that doing the previous day’s laundry helped kill a couple of hours each morning. Besides, the evenings were getting chilly now and we needed the extra layers. We had been trying to cover the broken window in the bathroom with a trash bag but that was not enough to keep the cold out.
My admiration for Norine grew. I had the seminary degrees and a PhD in New Testament. I had been preaching and teaching for years. But Norine seemed the stronger one at Isikkent. Over the years I had been like the hare, sprinting ahead and then slacking off, but she was the tortoise, every day setting aside time to pray and read the Bible no matter how busy or tired she was. Now she had a deep reservoir of time with God to draw from. It calmed me to be with her.
THERE WAS ONE TOPIC of conversation with Norine that didn’t help me feel calm or peaceful. The state of emergency that Turkey was under.
Three months earlier, in July, there had been a failed attempt to overthrow President Erdogan. It had been totally unexpected, but in the aftermath Erdogan appeared to have a clear plan of how to respond to it. He publicly called the coup “a gift from God.” He imposed a state of emergency and now ruled by decree. His grip on power was absolute, and tens of thousands had been arrested and could be held for years without trial. We had heard stories of people simply disappearing.
Norine was in the States visiting our kids when the coup attempt occurred, and I had joined her right after the coup. We’d had no qualms about returning to Turkey in August. The coup had nothing to do with us.
Now, we wondered how much the state of emergency had to do with our being kept here, with no access to legal or consular visits. This was a different Turkey than we had known.
“SO, ANDREW,” said a policeman one day when we were out for air. “We’re all wanting to know, when does the helicopter arrive?”
I had to look at his smirking face to realize that he was trying to make a joke. I ignored him.
“Your country has forgotten you, Andrew. Why is that?”
“The problem isn’t my country,” I said. “The problem is your country.”
That comment aside, most of the guards weren’t unfriendly to us as our time in Isikkent dragged on. Some were easier to talk to than others, and those we spoke with seemed genuinely confused about why we were still being held. We looked for opportunities to tell them about Jesus and to pray for some of them, knowing that most Turks have never met a Christian.
MOST OF THE TIME I took comfort in the grace and peace that Norine showed. But when we finished our twelfth nighttime prayer session, there was a tangible heaviness on us both. After almost two weeks of uncertainty, stress, and fighting in prayer, our words felt weak. The room was overpowered by our fear-driven thoughts.
Right from the start I had feared being separated from Norine. I hadn’t wanted to give voice to the dark thoughts I’d been having—as if by speaking them out loud I would in some way make it more likely that they would happen. But by the end of day twelve I could not hold it all in anymore.
“Norine, what I’m really afraid of is that we will be separated. I won’t know what’s happening with you. And I don’t know how I’ll cope if I’m alone, without you. We don’t know how long this will go on, or where it will end.”
Norine wrapped her arms around me. The silence stretched out. What could she say? We lay on the mattresses we’d placed on the floor, holding each other.
NORINE DID NOT TELL ME at the time, but she was actually concerned that we might not be getting out anytime soon and was bracing herself. Was it possible we would simply disappear into the Turkish prison system as was happening to others? Would we ever see our kids again? Could it be that God wanted us in prison so that we could share about Jesus with the people there? Would the spiritual harvest that God had shown us for Turkey actually start in prison?
But she kept these thoughts to herself, not wanting to worry me.
WE WERE BOTH QUIET the next day. As we both sat on the mattress, picking at the food, Norine shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sending me a half smile. “I’m at the end of myself today. I don’t have anything left to say.”
“It’s okay. We’ve said everything already. What else can we say?”
We did not walk or pray as usual that morning. We both just sat on the floor as the hours passed.
“I’m picturing just sitting before God. He’s quiet and I’m quiet, but he knows I’m there,” said Norine at one point. “It might help you to do the same. No need to say anything to him. Just sit in his presence. And wait.”
We were just as quiet when we were taken out to the courtyard later that afternoon. We sat together on the bench.
Norine kicked at a stone with her foot. “This has been my most difficult day. I’m really struggling.”
A few minutes later she spoke up again. “Do you know what today is?”
I shrugged.
“It’s my mom’s birthday.” Norine smiled sadly. Her mother had died years earlier.
The doorway into the courtyard opened and a female police officer came in with Burak. I wouldn’t have paid them any notice, but I was sure that I heard Norine’s name mentioned. The moment I did, I felt my body surging with adrenaline.
The woman came over and stood in front of us. “We’re releasing you,” she said, looking straight at Norine.
“Wait,” I said. “What are you doing with her? You’re deporting her?”
“No, it’s just an order for her release.”
I looked at Norine. She looked just as confused about it all as I did.
“Well,” I said, “can I go too?”
“No. We’re taking her to the hospital now to be checked. When she comes back you can see her while she collects her things. Then she’ll leave.”
The next minute, Norine was gone.
I was taken to the cell and locked away on my own for the first time. I started pacing. I was relieved for her, so glad that she was finally being released, and glad that someone outside would finally be able to fight, but I was terrified as well. I could feel my throat start to close and my heart race. How was I going to cope now that the one thing I had been fearing all along was about to happen?
The room felt all wrong.
As I steeled myself, and prayed desperately, I resolved to dedicate this time to God, to sing songs of praise and worship, to focus on trusting and holding on to God. I wanted to make good choices. I wanted to get through whatever was coming as well as I possibly could.
I knew I needed to think clearly too, not be paralyzed by fear. So even though my breath felt fragile and my hands were shaking, I reached in the trash bag for some of the styrofoam plates we’d eaten off and used my fingernail to scratch the passwords to our various online accounts, as well as a list of all the people I could think of who might be able to help me get out.
The lock turned in the door and Norine was back in the room.
“You have ten minutes to get what you need,” said the guard. “Then you can say goodbye.”
The minutes sped by in such a rush. I had a headful of things to say, but no time to say them.
“Fight for me,” I said as the guard moved her toward the door. “Fight for me.”
The guards let me go with Norine to the main office. Burak was waiting there, and as they processed her, had her sign papers, we divided her things out from mine. When they started to pull her away Norine turned to argue with Burak. “Wait, I want to stay with my husband. Please let me stay.”
Burak dismissed her. “No, that’s impossible. You need to leave.”
“Why can’t I stay? I don’t want to leave him. Let me stay with him.”
Burak ignored her and nodded to the guards to hurry her out. Before she was out of the door we hugged one last time.
Hearing her say those words meant so much. I knew what it cost her to risk not being released. When she’d been so low that day and the night before, the choice to stay with me was beyond hard. And I also knew they would not listen to a word she said.
“I love you!” I shouted as the guards pulled me down the corridor to my cell. “Keep fighting, Norine!”
“You know I’m going to storm heaven and earth for you.”
The door clanged shut and locked. I was all alone.
I ran to the window and looked through the bars. I could see her standing on the street. I waved one last time.
And then she was gone.
AFTER I BACKED AWAY from the window, I went through our usual routine of singing, praying, and reciting Scripture, trying to convince myself that this wasn’t so very different after all. I got into bed, dreading the long night.
It must have been midnight when I heard footsteps in the corridor outside. Instead of the usual routine where the hatch opened and a guard shone a flashlight in, the lock clicked, the door opened, and the room was suddenly full of light.
“Gather your things,” said the guard. “You’re leaving.”
“You’re deporting me?” I felt a whisper of hope inside.
“I don’t know. All I know is that you’re leaving us right now.”
Burak was waiting for me in his office. He looked tired, like he was in no mood for a discussion. “We just got an order to transfer you to another facility. Let’s go.”
I followed him out into the night.