Captivity (31 page)

“Would anyone care for a drink of water?” Norman asks.

Yes, Harmeet says. Sure, Tom says. I can’t answer. Not yet. The words won’t come. Jim? Norman asks.

“I’d love some, thank you,” I manage to say.

Norman pours the water and we pass the cup. He suggests we play the tic-tac-toe game. I turn my mind to the task of laying my cards in rows of five. We play three rounds. When we’re done, I take a furtive glance in Tom’s direction. He’s looking down at his hands. I’m calm now. It’s time. I ask him if we can talk. Sure, he says, but not right now. Sometime this afternoon. Our eyes meet. Thanks, that would be great, I say. He nods.

I’ve prepared my words carefully. Something that’s open-ended and doesn’t accuse, something that invites. “You reacted really strongly this morning,” I say. “I’m curious to know what was going on for you—why you reacted so strongly.”

“I felt like I was being verbally assaulted.” He pauses. “But I guess really it’s the frustration of this chain. Night and day, for sixty days or however long it’s been. I try not to let it get to me. At night sometimes the chain gets all knotted up. I’m not sure how it happens—maybe it’s the way I sleep, or maybe the chain is too short—and then I can’t get
my arm in a comfortable position. Anyway, last night I cracked the door open so I could have a bit of light to use the
hamam
bottle. I was listening to hear if the captors were coming and I didn’t hear anything, so I knew everything was fine. When I closed the door and tried to rearrange myself in these crazy blankets, the chain got all knotted up. I thought maybe I could quickly untangle it. I guess I should’ve asked everyone to lock up first.”

“You said it a few times: ‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’ What did you mean by that?” I ask.

“I just meant that it’s all right, next time I’ll make sure the chain doesn’t get knotted.”

“My concern is that your hearing isn’t very good, especially lately. I thought I could hear something downstairs and I wanted you to stop making noise so I could make sure.”

“It’s all right, I—”

“Would you
please
stop saying that!” I shout. “It’s not ‘all right’! We were—” I force myself to lower my voice. “We were unhandcuffed. If they had found us like that, it would have been game over. I asked you to stop doing something that I thought was putting us in danger. And you kept on doing it!”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that the chain was—”

“I know—all knotted up, and you could hear what was going on, and everything was fine.” I stop to take a breath. “You’ve had it the hardest of all of us, the way they treat you, especially Junior. I have no idea what it would be like to be chained up all the time. You’re in the most danger of all of us. But none of us has all the information we need, and our survival depends on being able to make the best decisions that we can. And that means having the best information we can get. Your hearing isn’t very good, which means there’s stuff you’re going to miss. So next time, when someone asks you to stop so that they can hear what’s going on—please—for God’s sake—STOP!”

“Okay,” Tom says. His shoulders fall and his face is contrite. My anger starts to relent.

“Well, for next time,” Norman says, “we should just lock up if we are at all worried. Don’t wait.”

I am staggered. He’s right. By hesitating, I put us in more danger than Tom had. “I’m sorry. I never thought of it. I don’t know why. That’s what I should’ve done—locked up right away.”

“Better to be safe than sorry,” Harmeet says.

I turn towards Tom. “Is there anything else? Your reaction was so strong. I’m wondering if there’s something else going on, if something’s been building up.”

No, he says. But there is something else for me. The Valium. I decide to wait. There’s been enough turmoil for one day.

JANUARY 31
DAY 67

Late in the afternoon, Medicine Man enters our room accompanied by Junior and Nephew. He pulls eight hard candies wrapped in gold and silver foil out of his pocket and puts them on the
zowagi
cube. Junior gives us each two.

“I bring you some copy book,” Medicine Man says, presenting us each with a child’s school notebook, each with a different cover. Mine is an arrangement of plastic purple flowers ringed by a diamond-studded gold necklace. I flip through 120 pages of breathtaking blankspace freedom. I can hardly contain myself. I want to start immediately, playing, leaping, wild cartwheeling-around-in-words.

Junior points to Harmeet. “Father in television,” he says, laughing. “This
Hind
.” Junior and Nephew mock, ridiculing with their hands his father’s turban and handlebar moustache.

“My father was on television?” Harmeet asks.

“Yes, he make some appeal for you,” Medicine Man says. Then to me, “Your brothers also on television. And I think maybe your sister-in-law? Is that the proper word?”

“My sister-in-law? Donna? On television?” I ask, incredulous.

Junior points at me excitedly.
“Umma
in television. Umma
hazeen.”
My heart breaks. My mother on television? I can’t imagine what this must
be like for my parents. What comes next I don’t fully understand—something about my mother pleading and crying, and a rally for me, “In Canadi! In
Canadi!”
with lots and lots of people, all carrying signs, chanting “Jim! Jim!”

Nephew tilts his head and makes a sad face. “Your daughter on television,” he says to Tom. Tom nods, face expressionless.

“And you, Doctor,” Medicine Man says to Norman. “Your madame on television, and your daughter, and baby.”

“That must be my grandson, Benjamin!” Norman cries.

“You very famous. Very famous, all of you,” Medicine Man says.

I’m astounded. Communication is happening through the television, an electronic message in a bottle for each of us, released by our families and beamed around the world, received by our captors and delivered to us in person. All through the television.

“We don’t want to be famous,” Norman says. “We want to go home.”

“Three day, four day, and you release,” Medicine Man says. “Now I must to go. Is there something else?”

No, we say. Medicine Man says goodbye and the captors leave.

“I wish they hadn’t told us,” Harmeet says, referring to the appearance of our families on television.

“I concur,” Norman says. We fall into a silence bitter with remembering.

FEBRUARY 1
DAY 68

It’s 8:30 a.m. I’m sitting against the wall with my notebook open on my right thigh. Harmeet is lying next to me with his left arm bent into his chest so I can write. I grip the pen in my fingers. How does it happen? It is astonishing, miraculous even, the invisible current of mind that moves through arm into hand, the dexterity of hand holding pen, the rolling-up-and-down-looping-around flow of pen that lays down letter, the accumulation of letter into word, word into sentence, sentence into paragraph.

Gross!
I write.
We’ve been here over nine weeks. MM came to visit yesterday. Says three or four days more. They’re waiting on some money from Canada, and maybe the release of two more women … and some other vague “small things.” The same song and dance he’s fed us since the beginning of our captivity
.

For the first time since our abduction I am excited about the day ahead. I write furiously, breathlessly, greedily. It is pure balm and sheer relief. To move beyond and outside the stifling prison-world of mind. With my pen I can go anywhere, do anything. My notebook is like a magic carpet.

I will have to be careful. I must assume they will see whatever I write. I will write sloppily, in point form, with lots of idiosyncratic abbreviations. Reading it will be difficult, especially for anyone whose first language is not English. Hopefully it will require so much effort they won’t bother to try. I must not become attached to keeping it. They will almost certainly take the notebooks away.

Now, with pen and paper, everything about the captivity is suddenly charged with a new significance. The light filtering through the curtains, the sounds of Baghdad outside, the paint-peeling walls, the strange collection of things in our room—I must document everything, every gesture and movement, every interaction and word.

I begin by itemizing the fifteen things that make up our bed. I draw a diagram showing how it is put together and the way we are shackled at night.

Junior enters the room. “Hamam!” he barks grouchily. I discreetly close my notebook. “What this? Copy book?” He takes the book and opens it. He bursts into laughter. “What this?” he asks, pointing to my drawing.

It’s us, sleeping, lying in bed, I say. He laughs delightedly. Then, seeing the chain I’ve drawn between Tom’s and Norman’s feet, his face folds into a frown. “What this?” he asks. My face turns red. It’s the chain, I say. Junior shakes his finger. “No,” he says. “Mujahedeen good.” He points to the picture. “This give copy book to
shorta
in Canada.
Mooshkilla.”

“This no
killam
. No
killam
police in Canada,” I say.

“Zane,”
he says, satisfied.

We emerge from our room into the foyer for morning exercise. Junior is sitting on the blue folding chair, absorbed in playing a game on his cellphone. I begin my stretching routine. “What this?” Junior asks, suddenly looking up. I’m standing on one leg, foot braced against the inside of my thigh, arms reaching above my head like an arrow.

“Yoga,” I say.

He gets up and stands in front of me, so close I can see traces of red in his beard, flecks of gold in his eyes. He makes a smooching sound and pinches my waist. I lose my balance. “This yoga?” he asks, pointing his arms above his head in imitation of my pose. Our eyes meet. He’s standing so close. If I wanted to, I could kiss him on the cheek, or smash him with my head.

“Yes,” I say. I look away, pretend he’s not there. He drops his arms and steps back.

The sensation of his touch lingers at my waist. It’s a strangely intimate encounter. It’s as if, for a moment, the boundary between us disappeared, and he was simply a friend spontaneously expressing affection. Who is this man? I wonder. He is my captor and enemy, but he is also a flesh-and-blood human being, a child of God just like me. He’s volatile, erratic,
immature, in one instant playful, enthusiastic, singing, the next sullen, contemptuous, abusive. Prone to rages at any moment. At times more boy than man. Dread and trepidation follow in his steps. I can hardly stand the sight of him. We sit on eggshells whenever he is on guard duty.

Today is the perfect example. At breakfast I ask if we can write in our notebooks. His face lights up.
“Na’am, na’am
. Copy book, copy book!” he says. He removes our handcuffs and calls our names in a prim schoolteacher’s voice as he distributes our books. He paces back and forth with his hands held pedagogically behind his back, stopping now and then to ask a question or to comment.

“What this?” he asks Harmeet.

“Email. For mother and father.”

“This
shwaya,”
he says, referring to the size of Harmeet’s handwriting. “What this?” he demands of Norman.

“It’s a letter to my wife. For madame.”

“Good Doctors, good copy book,” he says.

He takes my notebook and shows it to Nephew. They snort and laugh at the diagram I’ve drawn. The
mujahedeen
are good, he tells me. I must only write good things about them, that they bring us tea, cook us good food and are always nice to us. Yes, I promise, I will only write good things.

“
Talib
good,” he says, handing my book back approvingly. He turns towards Tom and puts his hands on his hips. “This
talib
no good,” he scolds marmishly, clicking his tongue as he leafs through Tom’s notebook. I want to roll my eyes at this stupid game.

In the early afternoon we hear him whistling in the stairway.
What now?
I think. He enters bearing an ornate aluminum tray, our lunch, a large bowl of steaming soup ringed with four spoons and four
samoons
. Can this really be for us? It is!

He sets the tray on the
zowagi
cube and points to himself proudly. “Write this in copy book. Mujahedeen make soup.” He folds his hands like an altar boy, closes his eyes and makes us repeat, “Bismillah
al-Rahman al-Rahim.”

Though starving, we sit with our hands on our laps. No one wants
to be the first. “How are we going to make sure everyone gets a fair share?” Tom asks.

“It’ll be okay,” I say. “Just keep an eye out for the slowest person and eat at their pace.”

Junior glares at us. “Eat,” he barks irritably. We fill our spoons and eat. It’s extravagantly delicious: tomato-mutton soup flavoured with basil and
numibasra
. I could eat a thousand bowls of it. We thank him profusely. He smiles grandly, as if pleasing us is his only purpose. Then, seeing Norman eat his bread with his left hand, he explodes with gestures and lecturing.

In the long of the afternoon he appears twice more, first with a small plastic bottle. He wants to know what it is. The label says
Men’s Gel
. “Maybe it’s for your hair,” I say, spiking my bangs. He looks at me blankly. I turn the bottle over. “ ‘Directions,’ ” I read. “ ‘Apply before sexual intercourse.’ ”

“
Shoo?
What this?” Junior says, tugging my arm, unable to repress his curiosity.

“We call it lube,” I tell him. Junior doesn’t understand. My face reddens. “Lube. It’s for sex.” His eyes widen.

“With madame,” Norman adds.

Junior’s face lights up like a Christmas tree. “Sex? With madame?” he cries. He wants to know how it works.

“Well,” I say, grasping for words. “You … ah … put it on before sex.” He doesn’t understand. I use my hands to demonstrate. Junior runs joyous out of the room, as if he’s just won the lottery.

He returns ten minutes later looking puzzled. “Friend, friend,” is all we understand. He mimes a big belly and points downstairs. He’s talking about Nephew. He rubs his groin, armpits and wrists, showing us where Nephew has applied the men’s gel. There’s some kind of problem. It’s not working.
“Mooshkilla. Leaish?”