What's Farsi For F*** Off?

Those of us who have deigned to criticize the conduct of the recently released British sailors--who appeared to behave if they were at the Iranian version of Disney Land ("Having a great time Mum, wish you were here")--have ourselves been attacked by those of the "don't judge until you walk a mile in their shoes" camp. "How would you have behaved in similar circumstances?" they challenge.

But as Scott Johnson, the high voltage flowing through Power Line, reminds us we already do have a perfect example of how other hostages behaved in a very similar, yet much longer situation. He provides a link to this book review of Mark Bowden's "Guests of the Ayatollah" by Reuel Marc Gerecht:

This is perhaps the most striking and underreported part of the hostage crisis: how angry the Americans became toward their jailers. Some of the Americans were treated very roughly indeed--periodic beatings, mock executions--and they lived with the constant fear that in the end they were going to die. But the Iranian actions led to ever more American defiance.

John Limbert, an academically trained, Persian-speaking diplomat--who probably has the softest heart for Iran among the hostages--is in solitary confinement in the city of Isfahan, 200 miles from Tehran, after the failed Desert One rescue mission. (President Carter, after long delay, had sent fuel-tanker planes, gunships and helicopters to recapture the embassy; in a night-vision-goggle debacle set into motion by a sandstorm, a helicopter and a plane collided in the desert; the aborted the mission left the burnt remains to be toyed with by revolutionary clerics.) Mr. Limbert has no idea regarding the whereabouts of his compatriots until an Iranian guard, whom he is tutoring in English, asks him the meaning of the words "raghead," "bozo," "m-----f---er" and "c---sucker." "Limbert laughed," Mr. Bowden writes. "It warmed his heart. Someplace nearby, his captors were still coping with the United States Marine Corps."

Mike Howland, a Persian-speaking security officer marooned in the Foreign Ministry, starts to wander naked around the building at night, to show his disrespect for those who were keeping him in confinement and to give him an advantage if spotted by bashful Iranian guards. Anticipating an eventual rescue mission, Mr. Howland cleverly figures out a way of sabotaging his guards' guns.

The most brazen and hard-edged of the hostages is Michael Metrinko, a streetwise former Peace Corps volunteer and Persian-speaking diplomat who declares war on the gerugangirha, the hostage-takers. Using his vast knowledge of Persian culture, psychology and slang, Mr. Metrinko fights back. Beaten repeatedly, held in solitary confinement, hooded, tied up and denied food, he never stops searching for means to annoy and emasculate his captors. At one point he tries to derail the interrogation of an Iranian friend before him by baiting his interrogators to beat him (he succeeds). Even on his last day of captivity, on the bus to the airport, Mr. Metrinko verbally lashes out at a guard's offensive behavior by making a very Persian reference to the guard's mother and the procreative act; he is again beaten and then thrown off the bus. (A last-minute intervention by Iranian officials gets him on the plane to Germany.) Throughout, Mr. Metrinko is a proud, outraged man whose anger grows more intense precisely because he loves Iran so profoundly.

The guy is held captive for 443 days. He's finally getting released to freedom and what does he do? Taunts the guards until he's beaten and thrown off the bus, possibly endangering his chance of finally getting home. Talk about stones.