Former hostage Terry Anderson, smiling behind his six-year-old daughter Sulome—the author—reaches out to shake hands upon his arrival at the Associated Press headquarters in New York on Wednesday, December 10, 1991. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
From the forthcoming book The Hostage's Daughter: A Story of Family, Madness and the Middle East by Sulome Anderson. Copyright © 2016 by Sulome Anderson.
I actually remember the moment I met my father in startling detail.
Exhausted, I had fallen asleep on a couch in a waiting room at the American embassy in Damascus, Syria. A thin, pale man in thick glasses woke me. He was smiling. Mama was sobbing. He hugged me and my mother hugged him. Dazed, I held on to his hand as we walked outside into a sea of people, all cheering and shouting their congratulations.
The cameras flashed constantly, hurting my eyes. I noticed that despite his smile, my new father flinched at the noise and the lights. I wondered at his hand shaking in mine.
Over two decades later, a man I dated for a bit slept over at my house. Forgetting he was there, I began counting out the handful of pills I take every night before bed. He saw what I was doing and asked what medication I was on. Thinking an abbreviated version of the truth would suffice at that stage in our relationship, I told him I was on antidepressants.
"Wow," he exclaimed, only half joking. "Baggage."
I looked at the picture hanging on my wall of the night I met my father. He's beaming in it, clutching an enormous bouquet of flowers in one arm. I'm attached to his other hand, wearing a little red coat and a confused smile. It's a famous, almost iconic image of the 1980s Lebanese hostage crisis—the man, the flowers, the little girl.
I wanted to put my hand to that child's cheek, wrap my arms around her, and never let go.
Former hostage Terry Anderson grins with the author, six-year-old Sulome, as they leave the US Ambassador's residence in Damascus early Thursday, December 4, 1991, to board a plane to Germany. (AP Photo/Santiago Lyon)
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