Forbidden View

By Philip Mongeau

Forbidden View is the story of an improbable bond between a photojournalist suffering from PTSD, following an acid attack in war-torn Syria, and a very independent woman who has an aggressive form of breast cancer. Beginning with voyeurism, their unusual encounter leads them to interdependence based on their fears, binding them through cancer treatments in Montreal and the protagonist’s return to Syria to face his demons. While working with an NGO, Journalists for Human Rights, to capture images of life in a refugee camp, our protagonist becomes sexually involved with the agency's leader, and ends up being kidnapped with her by an ISIS cell, where they are held for ransom. This timely story sheds light on Donald Trump’s decision to allow Turkey free rein over the fate of the Kurds in northeastern Syria, while bringing life to some of the personal tragedies of this civil war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Mongeau
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781777363208

Philip Mongeau

Philip Mongeau is a retired commercial photographer and copywriter, former senior partner of an advertising production company with offices in Montreal and Toronto. He lives with his wife in Montreal, Quebec and Sarasota, Florida.

Book preview

Chapter one

While watching the young woman as she placed a dinner setting on the open kitchen counter overlooking the living room, Paul Williams adjusted his elbows on the windowsill so that he could hold the powerful military binoculars steady. He was across the street, watching his neighbour from his own apartment, one story higher than hers, giving him a perfect view of most of her unit. The flickering light from a television highlighted her full lips that appeared like a permanent smile. She set a bud vase with a single flower in front of the flatware. She turned the violet flower to face the single place setting.

Her delicate hands folded a paper napkin that she laid beside the fork. Her fingernails were natural in color and appeared burnished from the reflected light. Some strands of her auburn hair fell forward onto her face, which she swept back behind her ear with a single practiced gesture as natural as breathing. She appeared to be in her late twenties, making her five or six years younger than him.

She paused for a moment to look up at the television then came around from the back of the counter for a closer look. As it was just after six, Williams assumed something on the evening news interested her. He thought that if he turned on his own television, he might be able to tell what she was watching, based on the flickering of the image, but didn't want to break the spell he felt from observing her. He could now see that she was wearing black tights with a plain white t-shirt. He looked at her chest to try and see if she was wearing a bra, but though her breasts pushed up, he wasn't able to distinguish her nipples. He dropped his gaze to her partially covered tights to see if there was a panty line but couldn't hold the binoculars steady enough to determine if she was commando. He felt a stirring in his groin as he imagined reaching out to touch her body.

From Williams's angle he couldn't see the image on the television but after a few seconds, she shook her head as if in disbelief and turned back towards the kitchen. She went to the fridge and opened the door to remove a bottle of white wine that was half filled. The shape of the bottle suggested that it could be a sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio. She poured a generous glass that she held by the stem and quickly swirled its contents before sipping it. She laid the glass down and reached back into the fridge for a small white bowl, then dumped the contents into a pan on the stove. Williams couldn't see what was in the bowl as her back was now towards him. There was a saucepan beside her shoulder that was emitting steam, into which she threw a handful of pasta and stirred it with a fork.

Williams suddenly realized that he hadn't eaten since breakfast and was starting to feel hungry. He had spent the day organizing the apartment he had just moved into and had neglected to eat, or even buy any food. He glanced around at his sparsely furnished apartment and the colorful prints he had bought at a poster shop to add some life to the plain white walls.

None of his own prints were displayed, images that had won so many international awards for photojournalism. Those pictures were too painful to live with. He wanted to leave that experience behind.

He returned his gaze to his neighbour's dinner preparation as she stirred the pasta and the contents of the pan while taking occasional sips of her wine, no longer paying any attention to what was happening on the television.

After draining the pasta and spreading it onto a white plate, she poured the contents of the pan over the steaming pasta. It was a red sauce that appeared to be tomato based. She then reached for a cheese grater and grated what looked like parmesan over the dish.

She picked up a remote and pointed it towards the television and the light stopped flickering. She picked up another remote and shortly began moving her head as if in time to some music tempo. Williams tried to imagine what kind of music she liked.

When she sat on a high stool at the kitchen counter to eat her meal, her back was toward him again and he dropped the binoculars and turned toward his own kitchen. He knew that he had nothing with which to create a meal but opened a bottle of rich Italian red wine and poured himself a glass.

He logged into the laptop that lay on the kitchen counter and did a search for some delivery food. There were a lot of choices in the district where he had just moved. This was Griffintown, an area in the southwest of downtown Montreal, that had once been a poor area occupied by Irish immigrants. The name was inherited from a Mary Griffin who had illegally obtained a 99-year lease on the area in 1799, then subdivided it into a low cost housing community where poor immigrants lived. They were the ones pressed into the backbreaking and often deadly work required to build the Victoria Bridge and the Lachine Canal. In recent years Griffintown had been gentrified and was now the fastest growing area of the city as developers built high-rise condos that were growing like weeds. Aimed at young professionals, these condos offered short commutes to the downtown office buildings. Chinese investors had recognized the advantage of modern dwellings in close proximity to the heart of Montreal and were buying them up faster than the developers could build them. The result was a high-density area where the buildings were so close to each other that privacy was non-existent.

Williams could have easily walked around any corner to a good choice of restaurants offering food from many ethnicities, however he was too conscious of the terrible scar on the left-hand side of his face. People would stare at him then turn away self-consciously when he would notice their gaze. Before the attack, Paul Williams had been a handsome man, to whom many women were attracted. He was tall with black hair and dark features. His deep brown eyes seemed to absorb all the light, giving him an almost fierce look. His easy smile contradicted his intense appearance

Today he appeared shocking to some and he avoided being in public as much as possible. The acid burn had left his cheek puckered, pulling down on his left eye and up on the corner of his mouth, creating a scowl with his eye and a freakish half smile to his mouth. There was a dark patch in the middle of the burn that resembled a huge birthmark. Sometimes he might notice an admiring look from a woman seeing only his right profile, who would then would turn away in surprise when he turned to face her. He felt like the Phantom of the Opera.

Scrolling through restaurant menus online, he finally chose Chinese from a place that allowed him to pay for his meal with a card in advance, thus avoiding the awkward encounter while trying to make up the right change to pay a delivery person. This way he could take the food, tip the deliverer and close the door with minimal human contact.

After placing the order, he scrolled through the emails in his in-box. There were some from friends who had heard that he was back in town and wanted to get together. He presumed that they didn't know what had happened to him and wouldn't be looking forward to seeing him in his current condition. There were some from various picture agencies offering him photojournalistic assignments. Some were for jobs in hot spots like Afghanistan or Yemen where he had built his reputation. Since his return from Aleppo in Syria, he had no desire to return to the horrors of wars that had no end, nor clear pathways towards achieving resolution.

Images of children's bodies being shredded by barrel bombs falling indiscriminately from the skies terrorized his dreams at night, causing him to wake shaking and sweating at all hours. He had tried sleep-aids to no effect. Sometimes he would suffer flashbacks in the middle of the day that would cause anxiety attacks, as if he were in the midst of another attack. He had viewed bombings and continuous raids through the perspective of his camera lens, constantly framing the shot and timing the shutter release at the peak of action, somehow separating himself from the true horror of the reality. His images could fill warehouses with reasons to avoid war.

He deleted the job offers without reading them through because he was not nearly ready to go back to what he did best. He had made quite a bit of money recently because his images had been in demand and agencies were willing to pay more for dangerous assignments. In the past few months, the demand for photos from Syria had declined because people were tired of seeing the repeated inhumanities of this civil war. He had saved enough money to allow him to take a few months off without having to work and he needed to take that time to decide what he should do next.

Before he noticed that time had passed, the intercom buzzer rang from downstairs. He checked the video feed from the entrance and buzzed the man in. After a few minutes, a knock came on his door. In one fluid movement, Williams opened the door with his face turned to the left, took the package from the man's hand and handed him a tip.

Merci, monsieur, the deliverer said, without looking Williams in the face. Bonsoir, he stated and turned to leave.

By the time Williams finished poking through the various cardboard boxes of sweet and sour offerings with his chopsticks, and putting away the leftovers in the fridge, he turned his attention back to his neighbour across the street. He turned off his lights before taking up his binoculars.

He could see that the young woman had finished her meal and left the counter bare. The television was back on and she was sprawled out on the sofa facing it.

Now curious to see what she was watching, Williams turned on his own TV and began flipping channels, then paused to watch to see if the screen flicker matched his own. He began to think how pointless this was as his phone began to buzz. It was laid on the counter dividing the kitchen from the living room. When he got to it he could see that it was his sister calling.

Hey, Megan, how are you?

I'm great. The question is, how are you? Are you finally settled into your new digs?

Pretty well, thanks. I didn't have too much to put away.

I'm sorry I didn't get to come and help you but Andrew has an awful cold and has consumed all my time today. He's been horribly grumpy and needs constant attention. His sister was referring to the youngest of her two children, Andrew, three, and Amy, five. Megan had resigned from a promising law career to be a stay-at-home mom until both children would be settled into school. Her husband, George Huvos, a forensic accountant, examined companies' true values before mergers and acquisitions. His firm was hired by Wall and Bay Streets' bankers to look under the skirts of companies that were being reviewed for takeovers. He spent a good part of his life away from his family, leaving Megan with the major burden of raising their kids.

Like I said, there wasn't much to do and I didn't need any help.

Why don't you come over for dinner tomorrow night? I'll keep Andrew out of your way so you don't catch his cold.

Thanks, Megan, but I've got lots to do.

Like what? You're avoiding me and I won't stand by and watch you become a hermit.

I'm not avoiding you.

You've hardly been out the door since you came home.

You don't know that.

Your friends have been asking me why you're ignoring them. What have you been doing all day?

Settling in and taking my time to decide what I want to do next.

That's all fine, but maybe seeing some friendly faces might help with the process.

I don't want to scare them off with mine.

Oh, stop being foolish. You're starting to sound like Andrew with his cold; feeling sorry for himself.

I'm not.

Fine. Then come for dinner tomorrow. George is away again so we can catch up.

Okay, then. What time?

Six is good. I'll have fed the kids and you can see them before they go to bed. You're their favorite uncle.

I'm their only uncle.

Still works. See you tomorrow.

Chapter two

When he hung up the phone, Williams returned to the window to see what his neighbour was up to. She was still lying on the sofa with the television on but rather than looking at the screen, she was busy typing on her smartphone.

Her boyfriend, he thought. When she stopped typing, she paused, watching the phone as if waiting for a reply. After a few moments, her face broke into a smile and she resumed typing. He realized she was texting.

Her face looked very pleasant in the glow of the evening lamplight, with flickering highlights from the television. He decided to take some pictures of her.

He went to the small utility room where he had stored the waterproof Pelican travelling case for his cameras. He rolled it out into the living room and had to release the equalization pressure valve so that it would open, as he hadn't been inside it since returning to Montreal. The case had become tightly sealed by the vacuum created during his flights home.

When he opened the case, it released the air held in place since his departure from Syria. Williams was overcome by the familiar smell that brought back the memory of his time there. A rush of emotions filled his senses.

For a moment, he was back in Aleppo, wandering around in the broken streets with his camera, prepared to record the next attack that would rain down from the skies, with only moments of warning. The attacks usually began with the scream of jets coming in at high altitude, with the sound bouncing off the rubble and half-destroyed buildings, making it impossible to determine from which direction a raid was coming, or whether the missiles were coming from Syrian or Russian jets. The Russians were said to be testing their new weaponry in Syria while claiming to only be attacking ISIS positions. Williams was attempting to provide proof to debunk those claims.

He marveled at the locals' strength of character, continuing with their normal activities under the constant threat of death or maiming. The worse sound was that of helicopters, for they meant barrel bombs. These were oil drums filled with high explosives and shrapnel mixed with enough oil to catch fire and cling to victims' skin, consuming them in a fiery death. The Assad government had dropped tens of thousands of barrel bombs, along with multiple gas attacks.

He recalled the day when he was photographing the aftermath of a missile attack when he saw a young girl trying to dig through the rubble with her bare hands. Too moved by the scene to continue photographing it, he had thrown his camera aside and knelt down beside her to try and help. Her hands bled as she continued to dig. Without tears, she looked up at Williams and said clearly in Arabic, My mother and my brother, then returned to her digging.

Though realizing that it was futile, Williams nevertheless dug alongside her. After a few minutes, members of the volunteer search and rescue team, known as the White Helmets after their headgear, arrived on the scene in a battered pick-up truck. They arrived with shovels and pickaxes and a power saw and fell upon the carnage to work as a coordinated team to remove the rubble.

After only a few minutes, it became clear that there was nothing they could do but recover the broken bodies of the girl's mother and baby brother from the wreckage. The young girl's mother was folded over the baby in a final act of maternal protection. The girl covered her face with her bloody hands and sat back on her haunches shaking quietly.

Williams knelt down in front of her and asked, Where is your father?

He is dead, came the quiet reply.

What is your name?

Amal.

Let me help you, Amal.

The White Helmets surrounded them quickly and talked all at once. Though Williams spoke Arabic, they were talking too fast for him to follow. He quickly realized that they were taking over and that they would be the ones to find some family members to look after Amal. Williams explained in broken Arabic to the White Helmets that he wished to follow them until she was safely united with caregivers.

There was some argument about an American being involved in a local issue. Explaining that he was actually Canadian didn't help resolve the problem. They simply wanted to take care of things in their own way, without any foreign intervention.

They softened their stance when they discovered he was a photographer, sharing images of their plight with the world. One of them who spoke English explained to Williams that the little girl had an aunt who lived nearby and that they were going to take her there. Williams insisted on following them so that he could be assured that the girl was safe. They finally agreed and two of them took Amal by her hands and led her down an alleyway strewn with smoking rubble toward an area that appeared untouched. The acrid smell of explosives still clung to the air, along with the lingering dust.

Williams stood back as the White Helmets delivered the news to the woman who answered the door that her sister had just been killed and her daughter was now homeless. The woman embraced the child, who finally burst into tears as they cried together.

Now, in his new apartment in Montreal, he reached into his camera case to remove his beat-up professional Canon camera, and recalled the second time he had encountered Amal, on that quiet day when no bombs had fallen. Despite the indefinite peace, dust was a constant that hung in the air and clung to anything it touched. He could always feel it on his skin and his throat was continually parched. He had been walking through the same neighbourhood looking for a café where he could sit and have a cup of tea, when Amal came from the opposite direction, wearing a school uniform and carrying a backpack over one shoulder. She recognized him and smiled.

They stopped in the middle of the broken street and he asked her how she was in his broken Arabic. She replied that she was well but very sad about the loss of her mother and brother. She said that her aunt had taken her in and that she was still attending school.

Williams couldn't get over the resilience that this young girl displayed. This was something he had witnessed so often among the people of Aleppo. Though their lives were in constant turmoil, they seemed able to continue on with relatively normal living when tragedy struck, always finding a way to cope.

As Williams questioned her about her school, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, looking around her as if she was uncomfortable being alone, talking to a foreign man without the presence of a family member. Williams could sense this and backed away from her, wishing her well as she turned to go.

As he began to walk away, he heard a terrible scream from behind. He turned on his heel to see that a bearded man had just thrown some liquid in Amal's face, yelling curses at her as she screamed in pain. Williams ran up to them and kicked the man solidly in the groin, lifting him off his feet. As the assailant fell backwards, he reflexively threw the rest of his container of acid into Williams's face. The shock was immediate as it hit the left side of his cheek, instantly burning through his skin. He turned to Amal who was trying desperately to wipe the acid from her own face. He grabbed the bottle of drinking water he always carried clipped to his waist and poured the contents over Amal's face, flushing the acid away. His quick action would save her from scarring but there was no water left for his own face.

People gathered around them quickly and a couple of men grabbed the attacker and began savagely beating him in the street. Some women gathered around Amal and water bottles suddenly appeared as they continued to flush her face. Though her eyes were tearing, it was more from fear than damage. She could still see.

In the meantime, Williams's face continued to burn. The adrenalin had kicked in reducing the sensation as he continued to worry more about Amal than his own needs. Finally someone noticed that the skin