Hostage Situation by Adam Brownstein

According to my childhood friend Will, an accomplished publisher, 2020 was a banner year for book sales.  He is not alone in his view, given both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal ran long form articles noting that the 8.2% CAGR was the “. . . best year in a very long time.”

It is easy to see why this happened.  Idle time coupled with pangs of guilt for binge watching The Queen’s Gambit and What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim, led many of us to hunker down in our SIP zones with books.  As the son of a published author, I felt that 2020 was the universe’s way of telling us to “wake up and read”.  

Despite the temptation to seek comfort in the chucklesome, I somehow spent the year inhaling tombs of a more serious nature.  There was Reaganland, Rick Perlstein’s mammoth capstone piece on the rise of the neoconservatives.  This was soon followed by IF/Then, Jill Lapore’s masterful account of the Mad Men’esque inception of the big data movement.  Next came Stamped, Jason Reynold’s accessible, hard hitting work on the history of systemic racism, For good measure I mustered the courage to take on My Antonia, Willa Cather’s prescient period piece of the trials of immigration. 

One work that stood out for me was Black Wave. Expertly researched and written by Kim Ghattas, it recounted the 40 year sturm and drang rivalry of Iran and Sauid Arabia.  As a padawan student of Middle East History, I was unable to put it down (the constant glow of my Kindle after hours piling on dog-house demerits tallied by my wife).  

As a deeply researched work, Black Wave took time to unpack the social, political and spiritual drivers that led up to the 1979 revolution in Iran and the hostage crisis that ensued.  I learned things I had never known before. For example, the students who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran had no designs for a long, drawn out ordeal.  Indeed, even the Ayatollah himself initially conjectured that the whole thing would be over “. . . in about a week.”

“Hmmmmmm,” I mused, vocalizing a moment of curiosity and discovery one night while reading Black Wave in the living room.

My seven-year-old son, perched on the sofa with me was curious about me being curious.  So much so that he paused “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” to engage.

“What is it, Dad?” he asked with the frank inquisitiveness made famous by school-aged kids.

“Oh nothing,” I offered.  “Just something I’m reading.”

“Dad, ‘hmmmm’ means something is INTERESTING,” my son issued, his voice layden with interest.  “What’s up?”

“Well . . . if you must know I’m getting the back story on the 1979 American Hostage saga in Iran,” I elucidated. 

“HOSTAGE!?!?” he responded.  

“Correct,” I confirmed.

Then, in a low whisper, as to avoid a KGB-era bug planted somewhere in our living room he went on to inquire, “You mean like Frosty?”

In that moment, I felt a shuddering wave of dread in my very pith.  I was Verbal Kint, stricken with fear at the first utterance of Keyser Söze’s name.

“Yes,” I offered in a hushed tone.  “Just like Frosty.  Poor little guy.”

Frosty’s sad saga was well known in our little hamlet of Higashigaoka, sitting at the western edge of Meguro Ward in the vast expanse that is the world’s largest metropolis.  Loaded with single family homes, leafy green roads and two bakeries of note (Bread Plant Oz and Quatre for those who must know), it is tenderly referred by some as the “Shire of Tokyo”.  Such is its quiet demeanor. 

The houses in Higashigaoka are all about the same.  Typically three floors.  Typically 1,500 square feet.  Typically home to nuclear families of four.  There are outliers, of course.  Having once been home to enclaves of onion farmers, it is easy to find family-owned orchards and vineyards tucked in amongst the townhomes.  Soen-ji, the neighborhood Buddhist temple has been around (for centuries, I believe), and holds sway over a few coin parking lots.  But, for the most part, the architecture is as modest as the people therein.

That all changed in the Spring of 2020.  

Like 25 million other people in Tokyo, we were advised to stay at home.  Our lazy walks after dinner became a ritual of decompression and an opportunity to get to know the nuances of our neighborhood. One day, while shuffling along our street my wife issued a gaze I had come to know well.  It was an arrangement of equal parts intrigue and judgement.  Fortunately, her eye was cast not on me, as is often the case, but high in the sky.  There, towering over us was a construction crane.  

It was not the typical, Japanese-sized crane that you would find in a housing start.  This one looked as if some diabolical crane kidnapping cabal had seized it from central Shanghai and dropped it in our village. 

“What the frick!?!?”, my daughter exclaimed.  I found myself both sensitized to her use of a gateway curse word and pleased that she had employed it so correctly. 

The site of the crane drew us towards it, like Han, Luke, Leia and Chewy being gripped by the Death Star.  We could not look away nor go away despite some sixth sense that something was rotten in the Village of Higashigaoka.

The crane was housed in a massive construction site, fully half the expanse of a soccer pitch.  Like all such projects there was a placard describing the specifications, design firm and building company.  Despite its kraken size it was not five small homes but one enormous project.  A nearly 8,000 foot single-family home was in the works.  

As the pandemic languished on, our summertime strolls afforded observations and speculations on the progress of the neighborhood castle.  The foundation of deeply poured cement gave rise to a massive structure ensconced in ivory tumbled limestone.  Smaller cranes arrived one day to hoist up windows that seemed to belong in the shark tank of the Singapore Aquarium. 

One autumn day, when the castle was nearly finished an armada of men clad in somber black suits arrived early. There seemed to be enough of them to field a rugby side, including substitutes.  Some of them clasped clipboards laden with lists written in eight-point font.  All of them harbored a sense of purpose, their countenance visible above the fold of their covid masks.  

Soon after, the suit brigade was joined by a gaggle of technical workers.   Equal in number, and a bit more jocular in their demeanor, the artisans were clad in light green siren suits that are de rigueur for their trade. 

Finally, the swarm of foot soldiers was met by one, chiseled faced man.  Fixed on the lapel of his midnight blue Vitale Barberis suit coat was the pin of Japan’s most venerable private security company.  The castle would forever be made safe, and this was the ringleader and related minions on the hook to make it happen.  

Over the next week cameras were fixed in abundance to the sides of the house.  A biosensor locking system that looked like it was left on the cutting room floor in Minority Report was installed in all entrance ways.  The garage featured a main door designed by the architect firm of record for Mordor, and beyond that was an additional barrier that seemed to be able to deliver a punishing electric shock to any intruder that made it that far.

Most notable of all was the front door.  Forged from the same Barad-durian alchemy as the main garage, the main entrance featured an additional security gate that could be lowered and raised at the command of some dark magic spell.  

In mid-October we were amazed to glance at light emanating from the fourth (or fifth?) floor of the castle.  This was big news given that no one in the neighborhood had actually ever spied the denizens therein.  It was as though the Great Gatsby had at last arrived at his estate, hidden from the view of the unwashed masses like us.  

Exactly one week before Halloween, a charming, and curiously cheap-looking plastic jack-o-lantern was placed by the front door.  Perhaps the newly arrived potentates had a soft spot in their hearts for symbols of the season?  On November 1st, the jack-o-lantern vanished indicating the owners’ sense of not only occasion, but respect for the flow of calendar. 

The chilling rain of Tokyo November gave way to the miracle of our late foliage of December.  In the neighborhood a burst of red maples was matched by the radiantly rich golden leaves of the gingko trees.  With the covid numbers in relative check all of Japan, Higashigaoka included, was looking forward to the blessings of winter.  These included, in order of magnitude, a promising 180 cm base of early-season powder in the Hakuba Valley, the festive Shou-gatsu Japanese New Year celebration and, ecumenically, Christmas. 

Regarding the latter, on December 18th, where our dear friend, the jack-o-lantern, had once squatted, someone new was perched at the front door of the castle.  Frosty the Snowman.  

Crafted from the same plastic polymer as the pumpkin, Frosty stood no higher than a Venti Americano, strangely out of proportion to the Thanos-like scale of his new abode.  Frosty’s fizzog was laden with yuletide cheer, and it became somewhat of a ritual for children in the neighborhood to bid him good day on their way home from school.  

“What a charmer,” my daughter noted one day while saluting Frosty.  “But he must be kind of lonely there, you know.”

Indeed, despite the smile perpetually fused on Frosty’s face, there was a certain melancholy vibe afforded to his circumstances.  For while he was close to the riches that lay within the castle, he was, to the best of our knowledge, never invited inside.  Not one yu-nomi of tea offered, mug of eggnog poured nor snifter of Taketsuru Whisky charged for the man in white.  Frosty remained in the cold, dark recess of the entrance way.

Epilogue

At the time of this writing, Japan is turning its gaze to a new hope of early February plum blossoms and the joy of getting poked in the arm, twice no less.  Springtime is around the corner for all of us in little Higashigaoka.  All of us save for Frosty.

Nearly a month after Christmas, poor Frosty unwillingly remains trapped as a hostage between the front door of the castle, the menacing security gate and the humbler, free world that lays just steps beyond.  His enduring smile fills the heart with a sense of irony.  
Such a shanda.