For days the media feasted on my story, accusing me of being a terrorist and calling me “Spy Priest.” It was as if they were starving wolves and I was an injured lamb.
What really scared me was knowing that the government was orchestrating this onslaught. They had pointed the media in the direction they wanted them to go, and set the wolves loose. Later on I heard from someone who had actually been at the summit when President Trump asked for me. “I was watching Erdogan and I saw his face change when the president asked for your return. I was looking at him—his face changed! He had just calculated that he could leverage you for more.” So this was his answer to Trump. I was devastated.
The media dug up the story about the time the gunman had marched toward our church and tried to shoot me. They announced that I was able to defeat my attacker by relying on what they ridiculously alleged was my advanced CIA training, and started calling me “Rambo Priest.” Another report declared that police had raided our apartment—they hadn’t—and found a stash of special forces training manuals proving that I was a US military officer secretly commanding many other US special forces in Turkey.
As the story dragged on the claims grew wilder. I was accused of helping to organize the attempted coup, then of being the CIA’s agent in charge of Turkey, and even the whole Middle East region. And others reported as fact that I had even been offered the job of director of the CIA if I had successfully brought down Erdogan in the coup.
I could almost have found it funny except that they were deadly serious, and this sent fear swarming all over me. Each morning, as soon as the guards opened the door to the courtyard, I was outside, pacing the seven steps by five steps over and over again. I wanted to tire myself out, hoping that if I walked enough during the day I’d then stand a chance of getting some sleep at night. I was desperate to sleep.
It was more than a choice, though. I was unable to stay still for even the shortest time. I had to keep moving, because whenever I tried to sit panic would start to rise within me and I’d find myself on the edge, ready to attack the walls to claw my way out. I walked constantly, and in all the months I was in Sakran I only sat down to eat a dozen times. I was like a shark: constantly alert, constantly on the move. It was the only way I could survive.
In spite of the hardline response from Erdogan, I clung to a sliver of hope that something still could happen. May 22, the sixty-eighth day I had seen in my dream back in March, was still a few days away. The next night, I had a dream in which I heard a beautiful song with an intricate arrangement and layers of voices unlike anything I had ever heard before—as though a choir of angels were singing. The music pulled me in, so that as I surfaced from sleep I found that I was singing the chorus—Haleluya, the chains have been broken, haleluya. This was clearly from God. I couldn’t have made this up—in fact it was the very opposite of what I was thinking after this vile media sliming: that I would be in chains forever. In contrast this was liquid hope flowing down from heaven. Surely God was reassuring me.
ON THE MORNING OF MAY 22, my friend Kaya told me he had just dreamed that I was going to be released, and that it would happen quickly. This was supposed to be my day of deliverance, but when I saw Norine at our visit a few hours later there was nothing to celebrate. She tried to encourage me not to give up yet—something could be going on behind the scenes, and we should give it a week or two. But I was starting to break.
I knew that I would much rather be in heaven than hang on for years in a Turkish prison with the terrible isolation and oppressive spiritual environment. I was willing to force the issue.
“Norine,” I said, my eyes feeling almost too heavy to keep open, “I want to go on a hunger strike if something hasn’t happened by early June.”
I had thought this through. It wouldn’t be as immediate and irreversible as a rope, so it would give time for something to happen. And if nothing changed, then I was ready to go.
Norine looked at me. Shaking her head she said, “Don’t, my love. Please wait.”
Soon after I saw Norine and told her of my proposed plan I asked to see the prison doctor. I’d been aware that I’d lost weight since the previous October and wanted to know what kind of shape I was in before I started out on a hunger strike. But as I stood on the scales and saw the dial settle, I was shocked. I’d lost fifty pounds since the arrest. If I stopped eating altogether I probably wouldn’t last a month, and that might not be enough time for diplomacy to work.
It sobered me up.
But it didn’t change my outlook. In fact, it left me feeling even worse. Yet another way out was closed to me.
AFTER HARMANDALI I had crashed so badly. I felt betrayed, felt that God had allowed me to be deceived about expecting to get out on December 12. Over the last few months I had slowly crawled out of that pit. I thought I was hearing God speak—that I would not be here during Ramadan, the month of fasting, and that I would be home in the summer for Jacqueline’s wedding. And the dream about the sixty-eight days—was that not from God? Why was God allowing me to be deceived like this—again? I could feel it all slipping away. I felt like I was in a slow-motion crash.
But the roller coaster was not over. After she’d left me on May 22, Norine received a phone call telling her that an agreement had actually been reached and the presidents were going to shake on it at a NATO summit in a few days’ time. “Get your bags ready,” she was told the next day. “And make sure you have some clothes packed for Andrew.”
I was astounded when she told me all this. I hadn’t been deceived. My dream had been right. Who else but God could have done this? Who else could arrange events so that precisely on the day predicted—sixty-eight days later—two governments would move?
But two days later, the Turks broke the agreement. The deal was off.
ALL MY LIFE I’d believed that God was all-powerful, that if he so much as lifted his finger in command the universe would flip. I still believed it. But the only thing I could think was that somehow God had been thwarted. He had planned to get me out—hadn’t he orchestrated everything so that there was an agreement, hadn’t he given me signs?—but for some reason at the last minute he just couldn’t get it done. The only conclusion I could come to in that moment was that God had limited himself, that there was only so far he would go, and because of this his plan had been defeated. Either that, or he had changed his mind. Which was worse—that he changed his mind, or that he was thwarted? Both of these possibilities terrified me.
I did not even want to think about the implications. But I could not escape them. If God had decided to leave me here, or could not rescue me, then what hope did I have of ever getting out? I found myself plunged into the greatest crisis of faith and doubt that I had experienced in my life. I wasn’t angry at God. I wasn’t shouting at him like I had in December. I was stunned, I was dazed. I was broken—thoroughly broken.
And I was back to thinking about the rope. Although I knew it would be a shameful defeat, and I knew it was not at all what God wanted for me, I couldn’t escape thoughts of suicide. Lying on my bed one day I whimpered in half-hearted defiance, “God, I don’t care about my reputation. And you can worry about your own. After all, you’re the one keeping me here in prison.”
I was free-falling. And heaven was only a rope’s length away.
I SAT OPPOSITE NORINE, separated by reinforced glass, and listened to her as she tried to encourage me.
“Promise me that you’re not going to hurt yourself this week, my love. I need you to promise me that.”
I leaned my head against the glass, my hand pressed up opposite hers. I was so weary in every way.
“Andrew, I speak LIFE over you. You’re going to live, and not die. Our kids need a father!” She continued, “Andrew, there are so many people—so many kids praying for you. God is putting you on their hearts. They’re constantly reminding their parents to pray. They won’t eat until they’ve prayed for you. I’ve just heard about a little autistic boy who never forgets you. Some of them have fasted from candy or electronics. Do you know how faithful kids’ prayers are and how full of faith they are? This isn’t the first consideration, but it would really be a blow to all these people if you did something to yourself.”
I heard her. And I promised not to hurt myself that week.
WHEN THE VISIT WAS OVER I asked the guards to take me straight to the prison director. They sat me in a chair in front of his desk. I broke down, sobbing into my hands, my body shivering violently. “I can’t handle it,” I said. “I have constant panic, I don’t sleep. I have lost fifty pounds. I have fought for eight months to control myself, and I can’t go on anymore. I need help—I need medication.”
Back when I first arrived in Sakran I would have been terrified that the director would see me as a problem and remove me from the cell and put me in solitary. But anxiety had changed me. For months stress had flooded my body with adrenaline. By now it had gone on so long that my system was worn down. Panic attacks rolled in like waves. It was not just in my mind, a matter of disciplining my thoughts. No trigger was necessary. I didn’t choose panic—it crashed over me. And panic mixed with despair is a deadly combination. This is why I couldn’t trust myself any longer.
The prison director leaned toward me and managed a half smile. “Okay. We’ll get you to a psychiatrist.”
I wasn’t done. “It’s so hot in the cell that I can’t sleep and I’m always covered in sweat. My body is worn down—I’m having a breakdown. Can I please have a fan by my bed?”
I had tried to buy a fan from the prison store before—it was on their list, so it should have been possible—but my requests had been ignored. The director told a guard, “Look in the storage area—find a fan and an extension cord and make sure it gets to him.”
That afternoon the fan arrived.
This provided some immediate relief. I set it up on my bed and kept it blowing straight on me. Turks are notoriously afraid of catching cold from any draft, and some of the men in the cell started to complain that the fan was going to make them all ill. I tried to adjust its positioning according to who complained, and was relieved when the ones closest to my bed began to ask that I turn it toward them. The heat had defeated their initial misgivings.
The usual waiting time to get an appointment with a psychiatrist was a couple of months—she came to the prison once a week, and there were around ten thousand prisoners. The director must have been worried about me, because he put me on the list for an immediate visit. But the psychiatrist just didn’t show up that week. Instead I was taken to see the prison doctor. He had no interest in my pleas for meds. “I don’t want to listen to you anymore,” he said, waving his hand like he was swatting away a mosquito. Take him away.” Then he hesitated, “But give him a shot of Valium first.”
I’d never taken Valium before, and the speed with which it worked surprised me. Within a minute I was slumped on my chair, only able to get back to the cell by being held up and half dragged along by two guards.
It felt great. My panic was capped off, as if it belonged to someone else. I took up my usual routine in the courtyard, stumbling like a zombie for the next couple of hours.
As much as I liked the feeling of Valium working in my body, when it wore off I wanted more. The panic returned and the shaking resumed. When the guards next came to the door I knelt at the hatch and pleaded with them for help.
The next afternoon I was taken back to the clinic and given another shot of Valium. I spent the hours until the evening feeling numb and kind of relieved until gradually the drug wore off and panic started to eat its way through and grip me once again.
ON JUNE 5 Norine and I had our next open visit. It was her birthday, and we sat side by side on the bench. I’d brought a juice box and cookies with me so we could have Communion together. At the sight of Norine looking at me, the worry and pain etched deep on her face, I knew it was torture for her to see me like this, but I couldn’t stop shaking.
“Norine,” I said, my arms wrapped around my chest. I could feel between my ribs with my fingertips. “I don’t trust myself anymore. I can’t promise that I won’t hurt myself. I need help. I’m trying to get medication.”
After a week of daily shots, I finally got to see the prison psychiatrist. The drugs that I was prescribed—Xanax for my anxiety, antidepressants, plus something else to help me sleep—started working quickly. I felt calmer. I could still feel anxiety bubbling under the surface, but for the most part it didn’t cross the Xanax barrier.
AT OUR NEXT VISIT, I could tell that Norine was relieved to see me looking better. I could even feel a smile forming on my face, and when I asked her how she was, she looked surprised.
For months I had used all my energy and focus to fight off the panic that was consuming me, but now with the meds restraining it I was able to look beyond myself more easily. The last few nights I had studied the picture we had taken together during the open visit on her birthday. She was the only woman in the world for me, the most beautiful one, but in that picture I could also see the tiredness, the pain, and knew she was in the fire with me. Now my heart was breaking for her too.
And for our kids. I cried as I thought of the time I was missing with them. I had not heard their voices in nine months. I knew it was hard on them too. Blaise especially was having difficulties, and I longed to be there for him. For the first time I heard that Jacqueline had married Kevin in a civil ceremony a few months before. Norine knew that I approved, but had kept this back from me because she thought it would make me sad. They would wait for me to have the wedding ceremony.
My wife had been reduced to praying, “Lord, if you don’t do something, Andrew is going to take his life. I have prayed what I know to pray, others are praying, what can I do? You need to do something.” Now, today, I had seen her cry for the first time in Sakran as she said, “I don’t want to lose you.” I couldn’t bear to see her cry.
AS THE WORST OF THE PANIC SUBSIDED, so had the intensity of the suicidal urges. I was still on a daily roller coaster, but the highs and the lows were less jagged. Hundreds of times a day I breathed out, “God, I have no strength left. The only thing I can do is look to you for mercy. I can’t hold on—you have to hold on to me.” At the same time, I began to fight against the dark thoughts that had driven me to the edge. Every time I thought about suicide I declared the phrase Norine gave me—ordered me—to say: “Andrew in Christ chooses life.”
What the Xanax could not do was deal with the grief deep inside of me. I very much wanted to live—but not like this. I would not kill myself, but I continued to ask God to do it for me: either send me home, or take me to heaven.
Several times I had heart palpitations. After the initial surge of adrenaline and fear, I would quickly switch to an expectant mode—maybe this was God answering my prayer.
The day the earthquake struck Sakran Prison most of the men ran out to the courtyard, but I stayed lying on my bunk and waited to see if the building would fall down on me. I just didn’t care.
BUT EVEN AS I ASKED GOD for a mercy killing, I did not do it in anger or spite. I just couldn’t imagine going on.
A tug-of-war intensified.
One Andrew started to pray, “Since I am suffering anyway, may it not be for nothing; complete the work you want to do in me.” The other Andrew would say, “Who cares? Release me to my family or to heaven; I can’t take this anymore.”
These two Andrews were in a daily wrestling match with each other. And while one was wrestling with God, the other was trying to line up with God.