The rising tension in the cell underscored a worry that had begun to weigh on my mind.
When the foreign minister appeared on TV in May and accused me of supporting both FETO and the PKK, he painted a bull’s-eye on me. It was one thing to hear my accusers make up stories about me being a Gulenist. My cellmates all knew very well that this could not be true, especially since some of them were linked to Gulen. Besides, they are an Islamist movement, meaning my work was completely at odds with theirs. But in previous years our work with refugees had brought Norine and me into contact with a lot of Syrian Kurds. Turks are very open to conspiracy theories, and the media was full of stories about me supporting the PKK and being a spy. I would be surprised if some of my cellmates were not starting to have doubts about me.
As soon as we had started working with Syrian refugees in 2014 we knew that we were taking a risk. We understood that it could cause us problems, result in more scrutiny for our ministry, and potentially be misunderstood, especially since many of them happened to be Kurdish. But we also saw an unusual opportunity. Syria was a closed Muslim country. It had been mostly inaccessible, but now several million Syrians had flooded into Turkey, fleeing the fighting in their country. We did not want to pass up this opening to reach them with our faith. The worst that we believed the government would do would be to deport us.
In 2014 we’d traveled to Gaziantep, a Turkish city close to the Syrian border, to lead a conference for around twenty Christians making the journey from Syria and Iraq. Some had been held at the border and beaten, only to make it through eventually by crawling through drainage pipes. Others had even walked through a minefield to get there. Their spiritual hunger really stirred me, but I was even more impressed that after the week of sessions they went back across the border to very difficult and dangerous places so they could minister to others. If they were willing to take such risks just to get training, then I should be willing to invest in them, even if it meant risk for us.
When the refugee crisis hit a few months later we started to work both in Izmir and on the Syrian border. Over the next two years I returned to the border area often, several times with Norine, and it always moved my heart to meet people who had lost so much in such terrifying circumstances. With a team that could speak Kurdish and Arabic we gave food and support, talked openly about our faith, had Bible studies with those who were interested, and when eventually some of the new Christians decided to return to Syria, we did what we could to send them back equipped. In Izmir our team started a refugee church and a number of people became Christians and were baptized. Right before our arrest we had joined around seventy refugees for a church retreat.
I have never sympathized with the PKK. Our goal is what it has always been—to tell people about Jesus, that’s all. But the government was now lumping all the Kurdish refugees with the PKK, and I knew there were photos of me with Kurdish refugees. Given the political climate in Turkey, and considering all the lies being spread about me, I knew that our ministry could be used to harm me. And I could not be sure that everyone in the cell would think me innocent. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I no longer felt completely confident that I was safe in the cell.
WHEN I COULD, I read books by others who had been imprisoned to see if there was some secret I could learn. Kenneth Bae in North Korea seemed to have peace. Brother Yun in China said he experienced joy every day. Even though Dan Baumann in Iran had attempted suicide, he was later enthralled by a vision of the beauty of Jesus. There were Russians who had patiently endured the miserable prisons in Siberia.
This was not my experience.
“God picked the wrong man,” I told Norine more than once.
“No,” she’d say. “I think maybe he picked the right man. This was not an accident.”
I knew that I did not measure up. But then I began to discover that some of the great Christians I admire had struggled. Adoniram Judson had thought about jumping off a bridge when he was being transported between prisons in Burma. Haralan Popov in Bulgaria and Helen Roseveare in Congo—in different places, but both with guns to their head—had begged for the trigger to be pulled.
I hadn’t thought much about their despair before, but now I could relate in a new way to Elijah, Job, and Jeremiah, who had each wanted to die because of their troubles.
Although I would not put myself in the same league as any of these, I was relieved and strangely encouraged to know that I was not the only one to struggle.
EVEN SO, I WAS STRUGGLING to motivate myself to keep up my routines and disciplines. From early on at Sakran I had done some exercise at Norine’s urging. I had filled a couple of small water bottles and used them as handheld weights to help strengthen my neck muscles after surgery. I did push-ups against the wall and walked for at least four hours a day. The walking was not to stay in shape—I needed to fill time, to wear myself out for sleep, to keep panic down. This was when I’d talk to God constantly. I worked out that at my average speed of three miles an hour I’d clocked up enough miles to get me from our home in North Carolina just about all the way to LA.
But when the mouth of hell opened up and the deal fell through, it all ground to a halt. I quit my calisthenics. I read my Bible less. I prayed less. I stopped writing letters to Norine every day. I stopped writing in my journal.
Walking was the last thing to go.
WHEN RAMADAN ENDED and my cellmates stopped sleeping most of the day, our relationship took yet another dive down.
I was no longer the only one who wanted to use the courtyard. My cellmates wanted to sit out in the shade and talk for hours on end, and they made it clear that they didn’t want me pacing up and down. “Andrew, you can’t go outside any more.”
“What? Can’t I just walk in the sun while you sit in the shade?”
“No. You’re done here. We don’t want to see you walking any more.”
The meds stopped the panic from overflowing, but I could still feel it rise and surge inside me. If I was no longer allowed access to the courtyard I would effectively be confined to my bunk. I’d be trapped in a prison no bigger than my mattress.
I tried to persuade the men to reconsider but they refused. I asked to see the prison psychologist and pleaded my case with her, hoping that I might be able to use a different courtyard on my own for just a couple of hours a day. The best she could suggest was that I move to a solitary cell. “And if you’re in solitary you only have access to a courtyard for one hour a day.”
I had no choice but to stay. My world had been reduced to me, my bunk, and my fan. And even this was not secure. One of the men started talking in front of the others—“Andrew, we’re going to take your fan away.” I just stayed quiet. I’d soak my T-shirt under the tap, lie for an hour while the breeze cooled me down, then get up and wet my shirt again. Hour after hour I lay there and read.
I had just read that many people go into times of testing but do not make it out. I could imagine the valley of testing, littered with dry bones, the skeletons of those who had failed. I was so close to ending up there. I prayed, Please, God, help me finish well.
“Andrew!” I tried to ignore the voices calling my name. I focused on the fan—the sound of the blades in the air, the feel of the breeze on my skin. My T-shirt was almost dry. I’d have to wet it again soon.
“Andrew! Get down here.”
It was a guard shouting this time, not one of my cellmates. Slowly I hauled myself up from my bunk and carefully walked downstairs.
One of the head guards was at the door. “Your transfer has come through.”
I looked confused. I hadn’t spoken with anyone about a transfer. I didn’t want a transfer. Transfers were always bad news.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What do you mean?”
“We’re moving you. You’re going to Buca.”