The Identity Thief (12 page)

Without his clothes he felt vulnerable as a newborn baby. More than that, he felt stripped of all identity.

"Open your mouth," Giant Redneck said. X obliged. The Southerner's thick, gloved fingers probed his mouth roughly, lifting his tongue and peering under it with a penlight. He stood back and nodded to Big Tits, who smirked at X.

"Turn around," she ordered. She, too, was wearing yellow latex gloves.

"Now wait ... " X began.

"Shut up," Big Redneck commanded. "You heard her."

X sighed and turned around, fearing what was coming next.

"Bend over," Big Tits barked, in a sadistic tone that more properly befitted an audition for a low-budget women in prison movie.

X hesitated. "Wait," he said. "Just wait a second."

"The lady said bend the fuck over, turd," Pizza Face snarled. He was from the north, somewhere in New Jersey. "Or am I gonna have to bend you the fuck over?"

X leaned forward.

"Clap your hands on your ass," the female soldier said. He obeyed.

"Spread your ass cheeks. Wider ... wider."

X wanted to kill her.

"Ugh," she spat in disgust. "You've got the hairiest asshole I've ever seen."

Pizza Face guffawed. "Fucking Chewbacca!"

Giant Redneck's deep laugh was unnervingly similar to a mule's.

Being stripped by a woman was supposed to humiliate him, X knew that much from
Time
magazine. Muslim men were supposedly so uptight that to be nude in the presence of an American woman would be abhorrent. He remembered reading how one poor detainee at a Guantanamo Bay had been "tortured" by a CIA agent who kept rubbing her chest in his nose. Poor devil, X had thought at the time.

X didn't share the Muslim view. Frankly, he preferred that the woman was conducting the cavity search - if that hillbilly was doing it, it would be like something out of
Deliverance
. Still, this was hardly tea with the queen.

He let go of his butt cheeks and started to rise.

"Get back down," the woman said. "I'll tell you when to stop cracking a smile. Spread wider." X sighed.
When this piece of work leaves the service, she could make a mint as a dominatrix.

"Come on, this ain't your first rodeo," Giant Redneck rumbled. "We know you towel-heads hump each other every chance you get, fuck the Koran."

He braced himself for the insertion of a finger
. It's not a dick, it's not a dick, it's not a dick,
he told himself. His heart was palpitating and he felt like throwing up.

The finger didn't come. Only a flashlight illuminated his alimentary canal. After what seemed like an inordinate amount of time, Big Tits told him to stand up and turn around.

"Lift up your nut sack."

X sighed and hoisted his testicles
. Okay, it's just like being at a doctor's office, getting a hernia test,
he told himself.

"Jesus Christ, are you getting a goddamn hard-on?" the female soldier demanded in patently false alarm.

"No," X stammered, reddening.

"Don't give me that shit. Yes, you fucking are. You're disgusting," she said, turning to Giant Redneck. "Sarge, this sack of shit towel-head is flashing me. The fucking pervert!"

The big Southerner got so close to X he could smell tobacco on the soldier's breath. X drew brief satisfaction from the thought the brute would probably die from lung cancer, a tracheotomy hole in his Li'l Abner neck.

"Are you insulting a United States Marine, son?" Giant Redneck growled.

"Look, I'm not, not," X sputtered. "This is ridiculous - "

"Now he's calling me a liar," Big Tits complained, aghast, crossing her arms and pouting.

Without warning, Giant Redneck kicked him in the family jewels with his steel-toed boots.

X crumpled to the floor, his eyes welling with tears. The pain was simply unbelievable.

"Chris, get the pooch," Giant Redneck said.

"Now we're talking," Pizza Face said with a wide grin. He disappeared into an adjoining room and after a moment, X heard feverish barking. He wasn't especially afraid of dogs, but facing one nude was another story.

The female soldier stood with her arms folded, looking on approvingly. "This is so going to be fun," she declared. "Best entertainment we've had since karaoke night."

"Your 'Oops, I Did It Again' really kicked ass," Giant Redneck was thoughtful enough to mention.

"Thanks."

Pizza Face reappeared leading a huge black mastiff by a leash.
Where the hell did they even get that thing
? the identity thief wondered. The creature looked like something you'd find guarding the gates of hell; all that was missing were two extra heads. He scuttled back on his rear end as Pizza Face led the beast on a leash toward him.

"Go on, boy, sniff out the terrorist," Pizza Face said encouragingly. The dog began to snarl and pull toward the prisoner. The giant canine began to bark - a deep, Hound of the Baskervilles bellow.

X cowered in the corner of the room, desperately trying to shield his reproductive organs from the snapping jaws of the hellhound.

"Hey, hey, guys, come on," he said. "This is taking it a little far, isn't it?"

"Listen to him trying to sound like an American," Big Tits said and spat on the floor contemptuously, the wad missing X by millimeters. "Must watch a lot of American Idol on TV."

"Talk in fucking Arabic," Giant Redneck growled. "Say another word in English and you won't believe what happens next."

"We oughta let Rambo here rape his monkey ass," Pizza Face suggested, letting out some of the leash and allowing the monstrous dog to bound to within half a foot of the prisoner.

"Yeah, don't they fuck their camels?" Big Tits said and chortled.

"Go on, Rambo, bite his little teeny wiener off," Pizza Face commanded.

X was in the fetal position now, his face tucked between his knees and his hands covering his genitals. Rambo's snout was so close he could feel its breath on his body. His intellect told him there was no way American soldiers, even if given license to ignore the Geneva Conventions, were going to stand by while a dog emasculated him. But the ancient fear of being eaten took over and he was shaking in terror.

"Get your hands off your dick," Pizza Face yelled. "Stop trying to protect it. It's gone, dude, live with it. It's history. Mr. Winkie's going bye-bye. You're gonna be a unit."

Eunuch, idiot.

"He said get your hands off your dick," Giant Redneck roared. "My partner wants to get another look at what you're packing. Weren't you trying to show off your weak little wee-wee just a minute ago?"

Tears began to roll down X's cheeks. Jesus, he hadn't cried since he was 10. He hoped they wouldn't notice, but no such luck.

"Awww, look. Mr. Terrorist Big Shot is crying. He's crying like a little bitch," Giant Redneck said. He signaled to Pizza Face to pull back the dog.

"You're pathetic, you know that?" the big man said with disgust. "I guess you're pretty tough when it comes to blowing unarmed babies to kingdom come. But stick a gun in your face and you show your true colors - yellow."

"You said it, dude," Pizza Face echoed. They traded high fives.

"Get on your knees, puke face," Giant Redneck commanded.

X crawled to his knees, grateful for the dog's retreat.

"Now apologize to Madison for flashing her," the Marine said, crossing his arms.

"I'm sorry," X said.
Okay, maybe this little exercise in performance art is winding down.

Giant Redneck and Pizza Face exchanged puzzled glances that were obviously fake.

"Excuse me? What was that?" the Southerner said, cupping a hand over his ear.

X could scarcely think at this point.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he tried.

"In Arabic, dumbshit."

He repeated the words in Arabic.

"That's more like it," Giant Redneck said.

And with one sweeping kick he sent X sprawling.

* * *

X was outfitted with an orange prison jumpsuit and ill-fitting white army-issue skivvies a size too small - which, as he later, learned, was quite a privilege. Some of the prisoners were forced to wear pink panties for weeks after their arrival.

He was tossed into a windowless, cement-walled cell, no more than 12 square feet. A naked light bulb hung from the middle of the ceiling; there was a steel toilet and a bunk bed. On the bottom bunk a boy of about 17, sporting peach fuzz on his cheeks, lay reading the Koran.

The teen jumped up, excitedly.

"At last a companion. I was going mad with loneliness."

"Aloha," X sighed.

"Asar Gulzar of Kabul," his cellmate said in Arabic, with an accent that X recognized as Afghani.

The teen scrutinized at his face. "Are you truly Ali Nazeer? There have been rumors whispered that you had arrived here."

X was in no mood to argue. He nodded.

"It is an honor to meet you, sir. Come, come, you may have my bunk."

"I couldn't -" X responded in Arabic.

But the young man insisted and led X to the lower bunk, where he collapsed.

"So you are the great Ali Nazeer," Asar said admiringly. "You have become a legend here; everyone has heard how you eluded the Americans in their own country for so long."

"You get TV here?" X replied, surprised that his exploits were already the stuff of legend.

Asar laughed. "No, but a boy was brought in yesterday who told us the whole story. You are truly a brave warrior in the Jihad."

X tried to think of something that would shut the guy up for a while.

"All praise belongs to Allah," he said. "It is only he who gives me strength."

"Indeed, indeed," agreed Asar. "Would you like some taffy? I have a small tin."

X nodded and the boy shared with him. It was chewy but sweet and, as the first food to enter his mouth since a handful of peanuts in the Pink Panther what seemed eons ago, much appreciated.

"I have been doing my part for the Jihad as well," Asar said. "Nothing so grand as you, of course. I shouldn't even mention it."

"Please, tell me," X begged. Although, of course, he didn't have the slightest interest.

The teen puffed out his chest proudly. "For two years I was the driver for The Chief. Every day I was by his side."

"You are very young to have been given such responsibility," X said
. Allowing this juvenile delinquent to think I AM Ali Nazeer might play to my advantage.

"I learned to drive a tractor on my uncle's farm when I was 12," Asar explained. "I drove a cab in Kabul for three years. After that you can either drive like a racing car driver or you've been killed in an accident."

As X anticipated, Asar was not shy about detailing his exploits serving The Chief. On one occasion, so he claimed, the driver rescued the terrorist honcho from Mossad agents who were on his trail by taking a shortcut through a crowded market.

"It was just like something you'd see in a James Bond movie," Asar reminisced fondly. "Merchants were pushing their carts out of the way, melons were rolling. The Chief awarded me a medallion. I would show it to you but the Americans took it from me when I arrived."

Asar asked X about his own reception and X told him about his mistreatment at the hands of the U.S. soldiers.

"The Americans are real pigs," Asar declared, angrily. X could hardly argue with him.

"Their etiquette could use some fine-tuning," he conceded.

* * *

Over the following days, X was allowed to mingle with fellow prisoners in the exercise yard. They hailed from all over the Middle East: the Gaza Strip, Yemen, even a contingent from Indonesia and a thin, jet-black brother from Somalia.

"This is the hero who made fools of the Americans," Asar would proudly introduce him. "We have become great friends."

They spent their time in the cell reading each other passages from the Koran. X had never even thumbed through it before - nor had he gotten past Noah in the Bible for that matter. His religious knowledge consisted of what he dimly recalled from coloring books he read in a Sunday school his mother had dragged him to. Before his imprisonment was over, X would end up knowing many verses from the Islamic holy book by heart.

At night, they lay on their bunks and chatted. Asar proved to be the talkative type and very curious. He asked specifics about X's operations in Kuwait. X told him that such information was top secret and Asar nodded gravely. Asar, a former street urchin whose father abandoned the family when he was eight, was intrigued that X came from a wealthy family and wanted to know all about what it was like growing up in the lap of luxury.

X had no clue what life was like for some Richie Rich in Kuwait, but since he knew Asar didn't either, he felt free to confabulate. He described in detail his father's mansion and the beautiful silk dresses his mother and sisters wore; the life-sized marble statues; the Olympic-size swimming pool with a waterfall gushing down into it from the landscaped hillside.