Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds

In this article featured in the New York Times issue of July 1st, 2011, A. E. Hotchner, Hemingway’s close friend and the author of “Hemingway and His World”, shares some valuable information that might provide an explanation to the mysterious death of Ernest Hemingway. I was fascinated by this article and decided to share it with this blog’s visitors.

By A. E. HOTCHNER. Published: July 1, 2011

EARLY one morning, 50 years ago today, while his wife, Mary, slept upstairs, Ernest Hemingway went into the vestibule of his Ketchum, Idaho, house, selected his favorite shotgun from the rack, inserted shells into its chambers and ended his life.

There were many differing explanations at the time: that he had terminal cancer or money problems, that it was an accident, that he’d quarreled with Mary. None were true. As his friends knew, he’d been suffering from depression and paranoia for the last year of his life.

Ernest and I were friends for 14 years. I dramatized many of his stories and novels for television specials and film, and we shared adventures in France, Italy, Cuba and Spain, where, as a pretend matador with Ernest as my manager, I participated in a Ciudad Real bullfight. Ernest’s zest for life was infectious.

In 1959 Ernest had a contract with Life magazine to write about Spain’s reigning matadors, the brothers-in-law Antonio Ordóñez and Luis Miguel Dominguín. He cabled me, urging me to join him for the tour. It was a glorious summer, and we celebrated Ernest’s 60th birthday with a party that lasted two days.

But I remember it now as the last of the good times.

In May 1960, Ernest phoned me from Cuba. He was uncharacteristically perturbed that the unfinished Life article had reached 92,453 words. The contract was for 40,000; he was having nightmares.

A month later he called again. He had cut only 530 words, he was exhausted and would it be an imposition to ask me to come to Cuba to help him?

I did, and over the next nine days I submitted list upon list of suggested cuts. At first he rejected them: “What I’ve written is Proustian in its cumulative effect, and if we eliminate detail we destroy that effect.” But eventually he grudgingly consented to cutting 54,916 words. He was resigned, surrendering, and said he would leave it to Life to cut the rest.

I got on the plane back to New York knowing my friend was “bone-tired and very beat-up,” but thinking he simply needed rest and would soon be his old dominating self again.

In November I went out West for our annual pheasant shoot and realized how wrong I was. When Ernest and our friend Duke MacMullen met my train at Shoshone, Idaho, for the drive to Ketchum, we did not stop at the bar opposite the station as we usually did because Ernest was anxious to get on the road. I asked why the hurry.

“The feds.”

“What?”

“They tailed us all the way. Ask Duke.”

“Well … there was a car back of us out of Hailey.”

“Why are F.B.I. agents pursuing you?” I asked.

“It’s the worst hell. The goddamnedest hell. They’ve bugged everything. That’s why we’re using Duke’s car. Mine’s bugged. Everything’s bugged. Can’t use the phone. Mail intercepted.”

We rode for miles in silence. As we turned into Ketchum, Ernest said quietly: “Duke, pull over. Cut your lights.” He peered across the street at a bank. Two men were working inside. “What is it?” I asked.

“Auditors. The F.B.I.’s got them going over my account.”

“But how do you know?”

“Why would two auditors be working in the middle of the night? Of course it’s my account.”

All his friends were worried: he had changed; he was depressed; he wouldn’t hunt; he looked bad.

Ernest, Mary and I went to dinner the night before I left. Halfway through the meal Ernest said we had to leave immediately. Mary asked what was wrong.

“Those two F.B.I. agents at the bar, that’s what’s wrong.”

The next day Mary had a private talk with me. She was terribly distraught. Ernest spent hours every day with the manuscript of his Paris sketches — published as “A Moveable Feast” after his death — trying to write but unable to do more than turn its pages. He often spoke of destroying himself and would sometimes stand at the gun rack, holding one of the guns, staring out the window.

On Nov. 30 he was registered under an assumed name in the psychiatric section of St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minn., where, during December, he was given 11 electric shock treatments.

In January he called me from outside his room. He sounded in control, but his voice held a heartiness that didn’t belong there and his delusions had not changed or diminished. His room was bugged, and the phone was tapped. He suspected that one of the interns was a fed.

During a short release he twice attempted suicide with a gun from the vestibule rack. And on a flight to the Mayo Clinic, though heavily sedated, he tried to jump from the plane. When it stopped in Casper, Wyo., for repairs, he tried to walk into the moving propeller.

I visited him in June. He had been given a new series of shock treatments, but it was as before: the car bugged, his room bugged. I said it very gently: “Papa, why do you want to kill yourself?”

“What do you think happens to a man going on 62 when he realizes that he can never write the books and stories he promised himself? Or do any of the other things he promised himself in the good days?”

“But how can you say that? You have written a beautiful book about Paris, as beautiful as anyone can hope to write.”

“The best of that I wrote before. And now I can’t finish it.”

I told him to relax or even retire.

“Retire?” he said. “Unlike your baseball player and your prizefighter and your matador, how does a writer retire? No one accepts that his legs are shot or the whiplash gone from his reflexes. Everywhere he goes, he hears the same damn question: what are you working on?”

I told him he never cared about those dumb questions.

“What does a man care about? Staying healthy. Working good. Eating and drinking with his friends. Enjoying himself in bed. I haven’t any of them. You understand, goddamn it? None of them.” Then he turned on me. I was just like the others, pumping him for information and selling him out to the feds. After that day, I never saw him again.

This man, who had stood his ground against charging water buffaloes, who had flown missions over Germany, who had refused to accept the prevailing style of writing but, enduring rejection and poverty, had insisted on writing in his own unique way, this man, my deepest friend, was afraid — afraid that the F.B.I. was after him, that his body was disintegrating, that his friends had turned on him, that living was no longer an option.

Decades later, in response to a Freedom of Information petition, the F.B.I. released its Hemingway file. It revealed that beginning in the 1940s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Ernest under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s activities in Cuba. Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones. The surveillance continued all through his confinement at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is likely that the phone outside his room was tapped after all.

In the years since, I have tried to reconcile Ernest’s fear of the F.B.I., which I regretfully misjudged, with the reality of the F.B.I. file. I now believe he truly sensed the surveillance, and that it substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide.

I was in Rome the day he died.

I did not go to Ketchum for the funeral. Instead I went to Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, one of his favorite churches, and said goodbye to him there. I recalled a favorite dictum of his: man can be destroyed, but not defeated.

Elmhurst College: Modern Lessons from an Ancient Faith.

Papering through the first 2010 issue of “Le Soir” newspaper, I came across what seemed to be too ambitious an article about the various strategic plans that the Moroccan government has engineered for the future socio-economic development of Morocco. The article elaborates with some statistical details on some of the pressing concerns of the Moroccan government in the sectors of ecology, tourism and IT (information technology). “Maroc Vert”, for instance, is one of the optimistic plans initially suggested by an American institution/think tank named “Mc Kinsey.” This ten year plan aims at doubling agricultural production to 100 billions Dirhams in 2020, creating one million new agricultural enterprises. Another amibitious plan mentioned in the article is “Maroc Numeric.” As the name suggests, this plan carries the same vision as “Maroc Vert”, only in the field of information technologies. With a total budget of 5.2 billion Dirhams, this plan will deal with three main aspects, namely: the e-government, Internet and creating an estimated 26,000 IT jobs.

Apparently, 2010 will be the starting point for an unprecedented economic development…or not. I have been reading similar articles and hearing the same stories on national news about a coming outburst of the economy for years. Unfortunately, the result is always the same, stagnation: economic, political, cultural, social, and what is infinitely worst, intellectual. Years of strategic planning have not given much of a result. Except for some exceptional success stories here and there, the Moroccan economy is lagging behind in comparison to its Tunisian and Libyan counterparts. The Moroccan political field has become a masquerade where the wealthy few are mercilessly and carelessly robbing the taxpayer, whose money goes to the Suisse accounts of our despised politicians and ministers instead of creating enterprises and jobs, improving education, building roads, extending the railway, and fixing a health system that only benefits the wealthy.

Culturally speaking, the government of Morocco, which takes pride in being a top destination of European and American tourists, still fails to understand that tourists could care less about the service in a five star hotel or about the friendly atmosphere at a VIP cabaret in Marrakech. Most tourists come here to see the Morocco they read about in the books of Paul Bowles, the birth place of Ibn Batuta, to whose study they have special classes in history departments of the most prestigious universities. They want to see “Sahrij”, the oldest school in the city of Fes which was established in 1321. The same school has now become a dumpster after the budget allocated by the World Bank to the renovation of the historic city cites was stolen.

I hope that 2010 will be a year of change, at least in the conscience of those who are robbing this country.

Several intertwining meanings make up spirituality today. Spirituality was previously seen within the realm of religious devotion from almost all religious traditions. In Buddhism, the spirit is looked at as an arena for spiritual growth through meditation and devotional practices that lead to a state of inner peace and tranquility. In the Christian tradition, spirituality comes through animating one’s life with faith through the application of the beliefs of and values of the tradition. The person of Jesus Christ is central to the Christian conception of spirituality, because he is the embodiment of the values of love and sacrifice, which are central to Christian beliefs. Likewise, Jewish spirituality comes from applying observing Jewish teachings in accordance with the Halakha; Jewish law. It is also loving and worshiping God faithfully. The Islamic tradition does not differ from the other Abrahamic faiths in its view of spirituality. In Islam, spirituality is God’s love and consciousness. The concept of Tawheed is central to understanding Islamic spirituality. The worship of one powerful God who is exalted from having any partners is seen as the faithful act of devotion to God. This devotion to the Sustainer culminates in a direct connection with him that uplifts the heart into a state of purification and soundness. In the Muslim Scripture, Judgment Day is described as “a day in which neither wealth nor children shall be of any benefit [to anyone], except one who comes to God with a sound heart” (Quran, 26:88-89). In a commentary on this verse, Hamza Yusuf, an American Islamic scholar mentions that “the sound heart is understood to be free of character defects and spiritual blemishes. This “heart” is actually the spiritual heart and not the physical organ per se, although in Islamic tradition the spiritual heart is centered in the physical.”

Modernity has often looked at religious spirituality as a decaying practice. This is mainly because religious traditions generally marginalized modernity. The twentieth century was the bloodiest century in the history of humankind. The wars that people were engaging in left little room for people to think about spirituality. Accordingly, spirituality, be it institutional or otherwise, witnessed a severe decline. As Chang Khong mentions in the opening chapters of her autobiography, social work that stems from spirituality is an efficient way out of the civil strife that communism and other political ideologies brought about.

I believe that spirituality goes hand in hand with religious devotion. The idea that one may achieve spirituality outside of a religion seems unlikely to be plausible. There are certainly spiritual people who are not associated with any religion. An example would be Sue Monk Kidd who, although Christian, went in pursuit of her own spirituality while detaching herself from the religious institution she belonged to. In my opinion, this type of spiritual quest is crucial for self-introspection and growth. It lacks, however, a substantial component in a spiritual journey. In fact, the spiritual journey that does not put God’s servitude at the vanguard of its priorities is less likely to be successful than the one that does. Seeking spirituality with an imperative other than knowing God is a vain pursuit. Thus, the centrality of the divine in any spiritual endeavor is pivotal.

There are several spiritual paths within Islam that deal with achieving Taq’wa or God’s consciousness. Among those paths there is Sufism. Sufism, also referred to as the “path of love”, was described by Mustafa Naja, an Islamic Scholar, as “absolute uprightness, being with Allah, having presence of heart in one’s slavehood [to Allah], and conformity to the Qur’an and Sunna [tradition of the Prophet Mohammad] in every breath, step, spiritual experience, and state.”

This type of spirituality which positions God’s servitude, worship, and consciousness at the top of its list of priorities may be achieved through the purification of the soul through prayer, kindness to God’s creation, fasting, and constant remembrance of God. In this way the “heart” becomes polished and pure.

In the Islamic tradition, there are several ailments of the heart that blemish ones spirituality. Miserliness, wantonness, hatred, inequity, love of the world at the expense of the Hereafter, envy, blameworthy modesty, fantasizing, fear of poverty, ostentation, relying on other than God, displeasure with the divine decree, seeking reputation, false hopes, negative thoughts, vanity, fraud, anger, heedlessness, rancor, arrogance, antipathy towards death, obliviousness to blessings and derision are but a few of the many ailments that can afflict the heart, preventing it from reaching its full potential. In this respect, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said: “surely in the breasts of humanity is a lump of flesh, if sound then the whole body is sound, and if corrupt then the whole body is corrupt. Is it not the heart?” Jesus Christ also said: “Blessed are the pure at heart, for they shall see God.”

I vividly remember the tumultuous turmoil I, among other kids, had to endure throughout our elementary education. The pressure to do well at school, coupled with a rooted fear from the wrath of our teachers was weighting upon me as were the  pounds of textbooks, copy books and pens, neatly arranged in my colorful backpack, weighting on my tiny shoulders. Students were not the only stress victims in the process of producing tomorrow’s eager minds. The teachers were also under pressure to produce students of an excellent caliber; and it showed.

I was a student as the Nour Primary School, a small private school with an all women staff. Thinking back about all those young women among whom we took our first steps on the road of formal education, I believe some of them were very good and naturally predisposed to teach young restless kids, others were average, while a minority were mediocre. Some of those had very peculiar ‘disciplining” methods that would seem by today’s educational and psychological standards extreme and often sadist. In fourth grade, for instance, one teacher used to seclude a row of students. She made only “stupid” students sit in the notorious “stupid row”. How did she decide who was stupid? Based on exam grades… I had the “privilege” to sit in the stupid row for a couple of weeks following a mediocre performance in an Arabic grammar quiz. Although sitting might seem beneficial in that it encourages kids to work harder to get out of the embarrassing situation of being labeled stupid and becoming the laughing-stock of childishly evil pupils. This can be devastating to an eight year old’s self-esteem.

Another teacher had championed an even more extreme method for addressing misbehavior, she had card board made “donkey ears” that she crowned a kid with whenever need be. The unfortunate kid had no choice but to wear his pair of ears throughout the day. Amidst the laughs of classmates, he could only sob in humiliation.

Physical violence was also omniscient throughout my elementary education. Each teacher had a stick made either of wood, plastic or iron. Mischievous kids used to fervently argue whose stick was the most painful to be hit with. I tried all of them, but I will never forget the beating I received in fourth grade. I was sitting in the front row discussing with my elbow partner a popular contraceptives television commercial I had seen. During our childish discussion the word “contraceptive” was uttered. The teacher had heard it and all hell broke loose. Both my partner and I got beaten on the tips of the fingers with a stick until our fingers got swollen. To this day, I still entertain myself with the idea that I received a beating for uttering a word that all Moroccans heard, day and night, alone and with their families in the most conservative national TV channel of that time.

It’s surprising that even with so much physical and psychological violence, most kids survived the ordeal to excel in their professional careers. Some are now engineers, salespeople, mechanics, teachers, journalists and doctoral students. Some are living and blooming abroad in Europe and North America while others have chosen to settle down in their homeland and have careers and families. Is it the strength of these individuals that made them survive the turmoil of the Nour Elementary School intact? Or are the “disciplinary measures” they were subjected to only a speck in the titanic norms of the bizarre world of Moroccan elementary education? That is the million dollar question.

The dozens of conversations around me distracted my attention from the book I was reading. The coffee shop was on the second floor of the bus station and it was crowded and busy.  Most people sitting there were travelers who were too keen on catching the first bus home that they sat there passively sipping from their coarse coffee glasses. To kill the hours before their buses arrive, they carefully watched an action movie. It was in English but had Arabic dubbing. My roommate’s words suddenly  broke the silence of my  observations. “What’s propagation in Arabic?,” he asked. He was carefully studying his cellular phone, tediously scribbling some notes on a napkin.

I wanted to ask him what he was doing, but decided to mind my own business. “Intishar,” I replied and went back to reading the book I brought for the trip: Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. That was the fourth or fifth time I read it. After reading it for the fourth time, I came to realize it was overrated, but then again, who am I to judge a noble prize-winning chef-d’oeuvre? I was growing more and more irritated by the smoke of the cigarette coming from the guy sitting to my left. He was in his middle forties, skinny and with a thick mustache. He nodded his head when I looked at him as if recognizing I was annoyed by the smoke of his Marquise cigarette, but he was determined to finish it to the last breath. I remembered an article about passive smoking and the hazards it has on one’s lungs. “That’s why smoking should be banned in public spaces,” I thought “as is the case in the United States,” but I quickly reminded myself that I was not in the United States but in Morocco. Banning smoking in Moroccan cafes would defy their very purpose; doing so would certainly bring their stagnation.

I looked at my watch. It was 11:07 p.m. It was high time we got into the coach to find us some premium seats, otherwise we’ll have to sit on smuggled winter sheets and what not. “Shall we?” I said, slowly reaching for my hand bag. “Let’s go,” my friend replied, reaching for the bill.