Authors: James Loney
DECEMBER 26
DAY 31
There’s a big aluminum tub full of hot water sitting on a ledge at the back of the bathtub. Curling fronds of steam rise and disappear. It’s my turn to bathe. Norman and Tom have already gone. Harmeet and I will share this tub of water.
I search out the cleanest, driest part of the floor and set my new wardrobe down. I take off my clothes and drape them carefully over a towel rack affixed to the wall near the door. I stand in front of the mirror for a moment, shivering in the stark ceramic air, amazed at the emergence of ribs and pelvic bones, the muscle my body has retained despite so much inactivity and so little food.
The tub is filthy with grime and hair. I frown irritably. Norman and Tom never bothered to clean it. There’s a small pot with a handle lying next to the aluminum vat. I fill it with water from the tap and clean the tub as best I can. It exhilarates me to do this, one small thing to change and improve my environment. I step into the tub and dip my finger into the vat. The water is scalding. I fill the pot halfway and add cold water from the tap. I hold my breath and pour the water over my head.
Oh my God! It’s beyond describing, the euphoric pleasure of hot water pouring down my body. I grab the soap and scrub my body with my hands. For a moment I’m alarmed—I’m suddenly covered with long, stringy black worms—until I realize it’s just my skin. This must be what happens when you don’t bathe for a while, the friction of your hands rolling up dead skin.
When I’m done, I squeegee myself dry with my hands. I move quickly so the remaining water won’t be cold for Harmeet. I step over to my clothes then stop. For a moment I am paralyzed. The thought
of putting on the captors’ clothes repulses me. My clothes are all I have left, the last physical link to my stolen life. They looked like rummage sale derelicts when they emerged from the bathroom in their captor outfits, the violent clash of colour, fabric, design, Tom in the purple track pants and hideous grey sweater, Norman in his tweed jacket and the baby blue sweatpants. What will I become if I put on these slave garments? I wonder. Is this another invisible step in a continuing process of losing who I am?
I rub the sleeve of my shirt. The fabric is brown, saturated with grunge, impregnanted with oils from my body. I consider the clean clothes lying on the floor. Socks, underwear, undershirt, track pants, sweater. Nothing of my own. I pick up the sweater and finger the Sacred Heart zipper tab. It’s okay, I tell myself. I’m a child of God. As long as I remember this, it doesn’t matter what I wear.
DECEMBER 27
DAY 32
Using the
zowagi
cube as a desk, Norman meticulously folds and rips the cardboard backing our socks came packaged in. We are fascinated. What are you doing? we ask him.
“Something for our amusement. Perhaps a game,” he says.
“What kind of a game?”
“I don’t know, we’ll have to see,” he says.
He tears the cardboard into twenty-five pieces. One side is blue, the other manila. Norman, Harmeet and I work together to create an elaborate version of tic-tac-toe. The first one to lay down four cards of the same colour (blue or manila) within a five-by-five grid wins. Do you want to play? we ask Tom.
“I guess I could try.”
It’s okay, we say, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.
“I’m sorry,” Tom says. “I’m just not much of a games person. But I can try.” He never does.
–
When Nephew sees us playing the game, he’s immediately suspicious. “What this?” he says, frowning.
Norman holds up one of the cards. “It’s a game. Would you like to play?”
Nephew takes the card and examines it carefully. He wants to know where it came from. Norman shows him a remaining piece of the packaging. Nephew sits wearily on the folding chair. He looks at the floor, arms cradling his round gut. “No happy birthday. No
kineesa
. I am sorry,” he says. We don’t understand. Nephew repeats the phrases. We still don’t understand. Nephew forms a cup with his hands, drinks from it, then offers it to us. “No
kineesa,”
he says. “No
kineesa.”
I suddenly get it. “Christmas, he means Christmas.”
Nephew nods. “I am sorry. No happy birthday
Issau.”
His face suddenly brightens.
“Bacher
, tomorrow,” he says, “I bring cake for happy birthday Jesus.” Thank you, we say. I won’t hold my breath, I think.
Nephew asks each of us if we’re married. My chest tightens. No, I tell him. He accepts my answer without comment. We ask him if he is married. Yes, he says, smiling. We ask if he has any children. Five, he says, holding up his hands. He whinnies like a horse and pumps his pelvis. We ask how old they are. He shifts in his chair, suddenly uncomfortable. He answers reluctantly. The oldest is fourteen. A boy. Does he go to school? He’s in grade eight. How old are the others? Nephew shakes his head. This is a secret. His wife, his children, his parents don’t know that he is a
mujahedeen
.
“I am sorry for the English,” he says. He used to be good at it when he was small,
“talib, talib,”
a boy in school. But he was conscripted, got married, became a father, and now he can’t speak it anymore.
Were you in the Iran–Iraq War? we ask. Yes, he says.
Clatha sena
, he says. Three years.
We ask him where he’s from. His face darkens. Fallujah, he says. The Americans bombed his house. Now he and his family are forced to stay with relatives in Baghdad. He holds his head as if he has a headache. The house is too small, there are too many people, too many children,
always too much noise. “Mooshkilla, mooshkilla.” We are cursed to have oil, he says. We have fruit, we can grow food, we have water—we don’t need this. Let them have the oil and let us have peace. All this fighting
—mooshkilla
, he says.
He stands up heavily.
“Bacher
, I bring happy birthday Jesus cake.” Then he leaves.
DECEMBER 28
DAY 33
Evening. As usual, the power is out. The cacophonous jostling of Baghdad traffic disappears as dusk turns into night. The hum-throb of countless diesel generators, broken by sporadic gunfire, rises from the city like an industrial keen. The lantern Uncle brought for us is sitting on the floor, just out of our reach, the lens clouded with soot.
My body is suddenly alert. The captors are coming upstairs. Junior enters first, carrying a lantern. Nephew follows with an oval slab of cake on a metal tray, and Uncle behind him with a bottle of Pepsi. Junior leads the singing of “Happy birthday to you,” his head bobbing like an enthusiastic choirboy. They unlock us and put the
zowagi
cube in the middle of the room. Nephew sets the cake down on the cube and stands solemn and erect with his hands clasped behind his back. The cake is decorated with a thick layer of white icing, pink and blue flower-edging, a palm tree with green leaves and a brown trunk, a pink and blue slab of crystallized sugar with Arabic writing. Harmeet asks what the words mean. “Happy birthday,” Nephew says, beaming with pride. His wife got the cake in the market.
We sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”
“Zane! Zane!”
Junior exclaims, clapping his hands with delight.
Uncle tears a piece of cardboard out of a box in the barricade and gives it to Nephew to cut the cake. He serves us in the order of our age: Norman first, Harmeet last. Uncle pours Pepsi into one of our beakers and shares it around. Cake and Pepsi. Sweetness explodes like a fireworks of pleasure in my mouth. I can feel energy surging through my body. It is almost too much.
After we’ve eaten, the captors each take a piece for themselves. Junior wants us to sing again. The captors become very still with listening. The melody flows out of us like a prayer.
Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright
. No more bombs, no more guns. Then we shall all live as one.
Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace
.
Uncle shakes his head sadly.
“Issau salam. Messiahiy. La kineesa, la kineesa.”
He cuts each of us a second piece of cake. Then, grunting like a pig, he plunges the great paw of his hand into the remaining slab and shoves fistfuls of cake into his mouth. Nephew and Junior laugh so hard they have to grip themselves.
Then, just as if a switch has been thrown, the party’s over.
“Hamam, hamam. Nam!”
Junior orders. We stack our chairs and move them out of the way. I reach for the broom to do a quick sweep. There are cake crumbs all over the floor.
“La, la,”
Junior says. The cleanup will have to wait until tomorrow.
We go to the bathroom and Junior locks us up. “Sorry, Harmeet. Sorry, Jim,” he says, stopping to look at us before he leaves, four men lying on a ragtag bed, faces peeking through hats and a carpet-like blanket. The omission of Tom’s and Norman’s names hangs ominously in the dark. Good night, we say.
DECEMBER 29
DAY 34
“Shlonik?”
I ask Junior as he hands us our
samoon
lunch.
He looks pained and shakes his head.
“Mozane, mozane.”
“I am sorry,” I say.
“This
mozane,”
he says, pointing to himself. “This no Fallujah. No mother, no father, no madame.
Kool yum
in
beit
. George Bush
najis
. Bush
mozane. Jaysh Amriki
in Fallujah, Baghdad, Ramadi.
Kabir, kabir.”
“I am sorry,” Tom says. “What my country has done is very wrong.”
Junior nods. The Iraqi government is dominated by the Shia, he says, traitors and collaborators who are controlled by Iran. There’s no hope. Armed resistance is the only option. His face is dark and fierce with hate. He explains with his hands how he’s going to drive a car packed with
explosives next to an American Humvee and blow himself up. He points to the ceiling.
Jenna
, he says. He will go to heaven and join his family, his fiancée, his best friend. He points to the floor and stamps his foot.
Jehennem
. The Americans will go to hell. I look at him dumbly. This can’t be happening. He repeats the same sequence of gestures. No, it really is. I am listening to a young man tell me he wants to be a suicide bomber.
There is a sudden high-pitched whirring sound, a loud metal clang.
“Isma!”
Nephew cries. Junior freezes. Nephew bolts to the window to peek through the curtains. He turns from the window, their eyes lock, Nephew runs out of the room. Junior grabs the handcuffs and locks us up as fast as he can. His eyes are cold and round like beads of steel. “What’s going on?” Tom says.
“Shut up!” Junior barks.
“La killam, la killam!”
He forms his hand into a gun and points it at his head.
This is what will happen to you if you talk
. He hurries from the room.
“It sounds like a tank,” Tom says. “It must be some kind of patrol.” Fear courses full-throttle through my body. Is this the nightmare scenario, a military rescue, the open-fire, gun-and-bomb fight to the death we’ve been dreading?
I strain to catch every sound. The whirring moves closer. Downstairs, furniture scrapes across the floor. Nephew’s and Junior’s voices are urgent, panicked, arguing, then silent. I look helplessly at my handcuffed hands. There’s nothing we can do to protect ourselves. There are clipped shouts, voices in the street giving orders. The whirring moves away slowly and fades into the night. Junior and Nephew return shortly afterwards. Junior looks at us intently. His eyes are sinister, almost crazed.
We could’ve been killed
, they seem to say.
The soldiers, the occupation, the danger we’re in, it’s all your fault. You’re going to have to pay for this
. He’s holding something in his hand. I can’t tell what it is. It’s not a cellphone. Nephew steps forward to unlock us.
Norman begins the rotation through the bathroom while Harmeet and I start setting up our bed. Tom approaches Junior. “What
happened? What happened outside?” he asks, pointing to the window. Junior gives him a menacing look. “This soldier?
Jaysh Amriki? Britannia?”
Tom presses.
Junior steps towards Tom and jabs him in the chest. “No Amriki. No
Britannia
. This no
hazeem
—no escape.”
Tom shakes his head.
“La hazeem,”
he says. He turns away from Junior and busies himself with setting up our bed.
Junior sits down. He stares vacantly at the object in his hands. I can’t tell what it is in the dim light. “Shuhada
bil Arabi?”
I hear Harmeet ask.
“Romana,”
Junior answers.
“In English we call that a grenade.”
My head turns and my eyes lock onto the object in Junior’s hands. Oh my God, he
is
holding a grenade! Junior looks up and sees me watching him. There’s a mad gleam in his eyes. He stands up and makes as if to pull the pin. “Boom,” he says, opening his arms in a slow-motion display of a bomb exploding. “Amriki
mot.”
Nephew holds out his hand for the grenade.
“La mezjoon, la mezjoon,”
he says, holding up his wrists as if they were handcuffed. He points at us and repeats the action of throwing the grenade. If they try to take him prisoner, he will fight to the death and take us with him.
Nephew gestures towards the grenade. He is calm, friendly, cajoling. Junior shakes his head. He doesn’t want to give it to him. They talk back and forth. Nephew waits patiently. Junior reluctantly gives him the grenade. Nephew continues to hold out his hand. Junior, petulant, takes a second grenade out of his pocket. Nephew flashes me a look as he turns towards the door and leaves the room. He too is relieved.
Sleep is impossible. I can’t get it out of my head. “This in car and BOOM,” he’d said.
This is my body. Exploding for you. Take this. What you have done unto me, I shall do unto you. Limb for limb, life for life, ash unto ash. It is necessary. It is righteous. It is just. For my family’s blood I will be a martyr
. At least then it will be done, I think. He won’t be able to kill anymore.