Guantanamo Boy (17 page)

When they push him into a dark room, so cold that even the man in the black suit in the corner is hugging himself for warmth, Khalid knows something’s up. The room’s so dark and gloomy, he can barely locate the slanting plank behind him, an old cloth slung on top, let alone the tap on the wall.

The suited man glances at Khalid as if he’s scum. Khalid raises his head to stare back but his eyes soon close, his mouth runs dry and he can’t stop shivering. Then a burning sensation starts up in his stomach.
What the hell are they going to try now?

The sound of gurgling water from the tap echoes round the room. On the floor, a dirty glass jug stands beside a stinking drain. They’ve run out of toilet buckets, Khalid guesses.

Get on with it
, he thinks, as they rip off the shackles and tear off his crumpled T-shirt and navy trousers, stripping him naked. The full force of the freezing temperature throws him into such a shivering fit, he can hardly cover himself with his hands.

Suddenly wide awake, Khalid’s shocked by the steely gaze of the suited man, who clearly means business of some awful kind.

“You spoke in a secret code when online?” he says.

“No, it was normal computer chat,” Khalid says. “We were playing a stupid game.”

“Ah, so you did communicate by code?”

His mind is so scrambled his words come out slowly and exaggerated. “We all talked in text lingo. Don’t, please stop. I can’t take it.” Khalid shudders, remembering so many past conversations just like this. “Please.” He stares up at the man, his eyes red raw from lack of sleep.

“Who’s ‘we all’?” the man says, ignoring his pleas.

“Us gamers,” Khalid stutters. “Let. Me. Go. Please.
Please
.”

“You insist on dragging this out,” the man says, casting a shadow over his ugly face with a fat hand. “Unless you start talking now, we have no choice but to take stricter measures to loosen your tongue!”

“Help me,” Khalid whimpers.

Three guards shuffle closer to Khalid. In this state he can barely stand up, but he knows the guards are baiting him in the hope he’ll lash out and they can have some fun “restraining” him. The sudden whiff of body odor makes Khalid want to heave, while something worse than fear lodges in his chest.
Quickening his heart. Crushing him. Emptying his mind, while his teeth chatter noisily on and on.

“Don’t. Don’t.”

All it takes is a nod and the guards reach for him. Their sudden warm breath prickles the hairs on Khalid’s neck as they shove him towards the plank, which they straighten with a kick. Then remove the cloth. Taking either end of him, they lift him up and hold him down until his feet, neck and hands are straight.

Gasping, Khalid cries out, “What are you doing? Don’t hurt me. Don’t . . .” A smiling guard slaps his face with the back of his hand.

They don’t need to use the ropes to keep him on the plank thanks to the built-in straps underneath. They unfasten them like leather belts before throwing them over his body to bind his forehead, chest and feet with clamp-like force.

When they tip the plank back, Khalid’s thrown upside down with a sickening thump. Blood rushes to his head, cold feet in the air.

“This is your last chance,” the man says, standing over him, holding his ankles. “Tell us what you know and we’ll let you go home.”

“Please. There’s nothing . . . Don’t.”

Eyes closed, their hands pressing down on his shoulders, Khalid hears the jug being filled with water at high velocity. A cloth lands on his face. More hands hold it down, so that he breathes in the smell of gauze bandages, and at the same time a trickle of cold water pours through the cloth and down his nose and mouth.

At first, Khalid coughs and splutters, gags, sucks the cloth into his nose and mouth, which suffocates him. Struggling, his hands jerk and tremble to get away from the straps and he tries to vomit. Groaning. But the rough hands clamp him down more. A split-second memory of Dad’s ghostly face passes through his dying mind as water floods his face.

Dad, help me, help me. Don’t let them kill me.

A flicker of breath sits there—just that bit out of reach. His mouth opens to grab it, battle for it. Spitting. Gurgling the pouring water, but his neck goes rigid with the effort to breathe—with the effort to cough. A slush of water hits his ears.

“Tell us what you know!” the mad man shouts.

Dad, they’re killing me. Help me.
And still the water comes. Drowning him in slow motion. Choking him. Suffocating him. His swelling, bursting lungs force his neck muscles to go limp and he swallows and swallows.

“Are you ready to admit your involvement with al-Qaeda? That you and others planned to bomb London?” The man’s voice sounds a million miles away.

With a clack, the plank straightens. The water stops and Khalid spews violently, coughing up his guts, spluttering for breath, opening his sore, bleary eyes. Through the gauze, he sees the suited man standing over him.

He leans down right into his face, his stinking warm breath washing all over Khalid. “Admit your part in the plot and we’ll let you go.”

Khalid yelps, choking violently. Mumbling a watery something even he can’t understand, because he’s soon tipped
back, gagging for breath under the cloth again, and even though Dad’s face is there in his mind he can’t reach him.

A few seconds pass before the next wave of water bubbles down Khalid’s nose and rushes down his throat. Blocking air. Mouth closed until he splutters. Choking. Gagging wildly before he loses consciousness with the smell of open drains drifting up from the floor as they kick the plank straight with a thud. The shock of a sharp elbow in his stomach makes him vomit again.

“Are you ready yet?”

The stupid question is worth nothing more in response than a thin, gray, watery stream of sick from Khalid’s mouth and nose and a violent ache in his belly. Gulping for breath, grabbing for air, trying to store oxygen to breathe, he groans and coughs, watching over himself as he chokes to death while time stands still and they tower above him.

The sound of a dog barking outside loops round the dark room as they force Khalid down again. He’s shivering worse than ever as they tip the plank up—feet in the air. Sending the blood to his head in another sickening rush.

“This procedure will continue until you confess your part in the worldwide bombing campaign you planned with known accomplices,” the man says firmly.

The ice-cold water floods Khalid’s face again. The slow-motion drowning starts again. But he’s ready this time and he closes his throat, spits out the bubbling water leaking down his lungs. A bolt of air sticks in his throat—suspending him in a long, still moment between life and death before he gags, struggling for air he doesn’t even want any more. His life flashes past him like a fast-moving film. Sinking. Falling. Dying.

It’s OK, Dad. I don’t care.

They swing him back up the second he goes under, the sudden movement shooting his body back into place with a violent thump to his chest. Blood rushes from his head to his heart. Fists pound his belly to bring the water up again as he vomits the racking pain in his head, wringing himself inside out. A sudden wave of air tears his chest from his body as the plank wobbles.

Gasping for air, on it goes, this hell on earth, only this time, the moment Khalid begins coming round, he gives in and holds up a shaking finger to show he’s had enough.

“I did it,” he whispers, voice red raw from coughing. With a sharp pain at the back of his nose, his naked body falls to the slippery floor the moment the straps are undone. The suited man looms over him with half a grin on his ugly face. A grin that Khalid reaches for with a blue, trembling fist. Waggling his hand with the serious intention of punching his smile out, his teeth too. But then he falls, cracking his forehead on the wet floor.

“Bring him through,” the man says to the guards, barely noticing the twisted body floundering and crying in watery sick next to the drain. Khalid trembles, the blood from his head running down his face as he gasps and gasps for air. The pain is so deep and sharp, all he can do is wipe his weeping eyes with a damp wrist and give up on everything, on life, on the whole of mankind.

The guards do their best to dress Khalid while holding on to his shivering body. One clutches his small waist with an elbow, while the other pulls up the prison overalls.

“You only lasted ten seconds. The last guy did twenty,” one of them sneers.

There’s no towel to dry him, wipe the blood from his head or clear his waterlogged ears. What animal is worth a towel when he’s been deemed a dangerous terrorist?

Once the shackles are safely in place, they drag Khalid next door, throw him into a chair and tie his feet to rings bolted on the floor. Sitting opposite him, on the other side of the black table, his torturer curls his thin lips.

“Let me go now,” Khalid begs, but the man smiles.

He’s smiling
, Khalid thinks.
How can he smile?
Spitting more water from his lungs, breathing rapidly while doing his best not to choke, he tries to swallow normally even though his throat hurts, his nose aches, his eyes feel raw and he wouldn’t mind dying.

“These are the crimes you’ve confessed to in the presence of four witnesses. Read them before signing and make the changes you want.” He pushes the pages towards Khalid, along with a pen.

Khalid tries to breathe but his throat snaps shut, his mind spins and his eyes feel sprinkled with sand. Then, finding a last tiny drop of dignity and pride, instead of crying he pulls himself up and says in a state of breathless shock, “How come this is already printed?”

Narrowing his eyes, the man pauses before running a chubby thumb over his bottom lip. A steely look begins creeping over his face again and Khalid gets the message.

“Sign these, then you can go home.”

You can go home.
Finally, the words he’s waited so long to hear. Quickly, Khalid signs all eight pages, his sore, streaming eyes barely able to focus on the words swimming in front of him.

Back in the cell, it seems that having him sign the confession after drowning him isn’t quite enough for them. The lights are still on, blazing down as always, and it’s colder than ever, the air-conditioning unit on full. The green light’s blinking on and off for no reason, as it always does.
Is this what they call home, then? This cell?

Khalid is unable to think of anything but killing that ugly guy. Anger boils inside him, feeding on itself until it overtakes every other desire, even the desire to see his family again. His mind feels sharper than he can ever remember. How many seconds did he last? The guy said ten. Ten short seconds and it was over, but it felt like half an hour. In that time Khalid saw his whole life flash before him. Saw Niamh in the library, saw himself playing football down the park, scoring a goal and discussing a new game plan for the match against Heywood. He saw himself arguing with Mum, walking behind Dad down the road—pretending he wasn’t with him because he felt ashamed. How can you see all that in just ten seconds and decide to die—say goodbye to your life and then let go in that short amount of time? As well as relive everything you’ve ever done wrong. See the faces of everyone you’ve ever hurt. How?

And now they have a bulletproof confession proving he’s a dangerous terrorist, an enemy of the world, and no one cares.

Why did he let them do that? How pathetic is he? Tony Banda would have stopped them somehow. Look at what happened when that center half knocked him over in their first match against Bolton. Tony yelled like mad for a minute, but then he went charging down the field to score their only goal and nobody knew until afterwards he’d broken his big toe. Exactly how Tony would have stopped these maniacs, Khalid doesn’t know, but he’s certain he would have lasted longer than ten short seconds. Much longer than that. While he gave his life away for a breath of air he doesn’t even want. He feels ashamed of caving in so quickly. Totally weak and useless, incapable of lasting more than ten seconds, while the guy before him lasted twice as long.

Then the weirdness of this thought suddenly brings Khalid to his senses. The guy’s an idiot, a fool for lasting twenty seconds. He’s not a hero or someone to look up to. He was just another guy, a Muslim like him, being drowned. He simply suffered for longer. And why did the guard tell him he managed twenty seconds? To make Khalid feel like a coward, that’s why. And why should he believe him anyway? If Khalid told people about the attempt to drown him, would they believe him? Apart from the cut and bump on his forehead, there are no marks on his body. Nothing to prove anyone was trying to kill him.

The air-conditioning unit rattles for a second, then continues humming. Khalid curls into a ball on the mat and shades his eyes by burying his head in his arm, thinking that not only did they drown him, but they’ve left him with a burning anger that has no outlet. All he can do is grind his teeth in hatred. As he slips back into delirium, one of his little sister’s paintings flashes through his mind the moment before he falls asleep. The light bulb blazes overhead. Unrelenting as always. The smell of burning dust and the memory of a watery hell never far away.