American War

by Omar El Akkad

  It was only when her brother, weeping openly now, recoiled with his hands against his face that she realized she had instinctively brought her own hand up to strike him.

  Sarat threw the scissors in the dirt. She went inside, past where Karina stood in the kitchen. She went to her sister’s room and shut the door behind her. She lay in her sister’s empty bed, beneath the soft sheets that glared a pinkish silver under the light. The sheets smelled of beautiful things—of citrus and jasmine cream. But they also smelled of Dana, of her hair and of her skin and of her breath. The smell Sarat knew from childhood, the smell of Chestnuts.

  JUST BEFORE DAWN, she woke to the sound of a knock on the door. For a second she thought it was Dana, but instead she saw Karina.

  “What are you still doing here?” said Sarat. “You’re spending the night here now?” She chuckled bitterly. “You sleeping with him too?”

  “Sarat, there’s a man outside,” said Karina. “It’s about your sister.”

  Before the slick of sleep had gone from her eyes, Sarat was running out the door. She found another of Bragg’s boys in the driveway. He had his head lowered as though he’d done something wrong.

  “Speak,” said Sarat. “What happened to her?”

  “The Birds,” mumbled the boy.

  THEY DROVE most of the way to Augusta. Just before they reached the hospital, she saw the wreckage by the side of the road.

  A group of locals from the nearby town had gathered around the twisted remains of the vehicles, gawking at the carnage. The remains were of three cars and a bus. The bus was charred although the shape of its body held, but the Tik-Toks had been cracked open like fortune cookies, and no longer resembled cars at all. A crater severed the road.

  They drove to the nearest hospital. It was more of a clinic, no bigger than a diner, and had once been an animal hospital before the war. Relatives of the dead and injured crowded the entrance and the lobby. Alongside them were members of the United Rebels, who had been dispatched from Atlanta to document the carnage. Sarat shoved past them all, yelling her sister’s name, until Adam Bragg Jr. took her by the arm and led her to a room near the back of the clinic.

  They passed a silent spectacle of the dead and dying. The bus had been carrying migrant Southern workers returning from the Blue border of South Carolina. They’d been hired as part of an agreement engineered quietly between Atlanta and Columbus to send workers to help fix cracks in the Northern quarantine wall. It was dangerous work for little pay, and no Union laborer would do it.

  The men and women lay covered in stained white sheets, their relatives gathered around them. The nurses and doctors, greatly outnumbered, moved from patient to patient with grim resignation.

  She found the room where her sister lay. Before she entered, she heard Bragg Jr. as he tried to tell her something—“It was just dumb luck,” he said. “They haven’t had control over those things in years.” But his voice sounded very far away.

  She closed the door behind her, and the sounds of the pained and wailing were muted.

  The girl on the bed ended at the knees. The sheet on which she lay and the one that partially covered her were colored a red that, in places, had darkened to black. The clothing had been sheared off her, and the skin below was blistered and burned.

  Sarat stood over her sister. She ran her hand along the skin of Dana’s thigh. She felt the indentation in the skin where someone must have tried to stem the hemorrhaging wound. She saw the coal marking on her sister’s forehead—“3:49,” the time the tourniquet was tied.

  She saw the chest rise and fall for the last time. She saw the eyes flicker, the lips move.

  “It’s going to be all right,” said Sarat, but it was not Sarat making the words. They left her mouth but they belonged to an impostor. “It’s going to be all right. Just stay with me, it’s going to be all right.” The room smelled of rubbing alcohol.

  Sarat dropped to her knees and rested her head on her sister’s chest. Dana’s fingers curled around hers.

  “Beautiful girl,” Dana said. “I miss you already.”

  FOR THE NEXT WEEK Sarat did not set foot inside her house, except to lock Dana’s bedroom door and prohibit Karina from ever coming anywhere near it.

  She slept outside, sometimes in the woodshed but other times on the damp soil by the river, near the plot where Karina’s crops struggled to grow. At night she dreamed of drowning.

  A month after she set her sister’s ashes free in the Savannah, the Blues finally came for Sarat. One night she heard music among the trees; a whisper of hands against bark, of feet against earth, very faintly in the distance. The night was quiet but enveloped in the quiet was a murmur. Years later, she would recall a pinprick of red light moving across the woodshed wall. Then the door creaked open. A canister tumbled into the woodshed, and the room erupted in sound and light.

  Excerpted from:

  THE CIVIL WAR ARCHIVE PROJECT—SUGARLOAF DETAINEE LETTERS (CLEARED/UNCLASSIFIED)

  Dear **** *****,

  I received your letter in February. ****** from the ************* ******** humanitarian team delivered it to me. As usual, ******* ***** read it first, so I don’t know if I got the whole thing. But I am grateful to ******, who has tried *** best to help me, and of course to you for writing.

  I’m still in Camp Saturday. There are ** of us here, I think, but it’s hard to tell. We are still in isolation, and the ******* ******** ***** ********* us every ***** *****.

  Since ***. ***** took over, things have gotten worse. He ******* ** ****, I think, but I’ve never seen his face. I think it was him who ordered them to take our books, our sleeping shades, our toothpaste packets, and everything else that reminded us we’re still human beings. I know he had to give his permission for them to ********* us after we started our protest.

  It happens at all hours. Day, night, there’s no difference here. First they’ll come in and tell you to quit being difficult, to just eat.

  When you refuse, they take you to another room. There *****​*****​*****​*****​**** **. *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​**. *****​*****​*****​ *******. *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*. *****​*****​**.

  *****​*****​***. *****​*****​*****​*****​. *****​*****​*****​***. *********. *****​*****​**. *****​*****​*****​*****​****. *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*.

  *****​*****​*****​***. ******. *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​**. *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*** *****​*****​*****​*****​***. *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​**. *****​*****​*****​*.

  *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​. *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*. *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​. *****​*****​*****​****. *****​*****​*****​**. *********. *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​** *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​***. *****​*****​**. *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​.

  I heard ***. ***** believes one of us killed his father. But I’ve been here for years, long before any of that. I never even saw ****** *****, never heard of him before one of the *** ****** told us what happened.

  Everything else is the same. The days go by. *****​*****​*****​*****​*, except for ****** ********, when we get to see the sun.

  I know they’ve stopped telling people how many of us are still being ********. *****​*****​*** *****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​*****​. They’ve been trying everything they can think of to make us quit. There’s a nurse here, and *** does everything in *** power to make *** ************ ******** ** ******* as possible. I don’t know why. I told *** it’s a violation of *** oath, but *** doesn’t care. I begged the guard, but he cares even less.

  I heard there’s talk of peace back home. I hope for your benefit that it’s true, but I don’t think it matters much for us. We’ve been here too long. Whatever we were before this is all gone. People here speak t
o themselves. They see ghosts. I dream about you and *****, and about ******, and about home. I hope to hear from you soon.

  Yours with love,

  *****

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They were brought to Sugarloaf in roaring airborne beasts, chained to the floors and chained to each other. Eye-masks and earmuffs severed them from their surroundings. Through their pores the captives took in what little information there was to be had about the thing that carried them—a vast metal cavity, scorching hot as it sat for hours on the tarmac of some clandestine airfield and, soon after the plane ascended, bitterly cold. When the mouths opened to beg for water or relief from the chains, the skin felt other things—the hardness of a rifle butt, the steel-backed tip of a boot. The mouths closed. The bodies flew, dumb as idols, over the Florida Sea.

  Only the very crest of the hill remained above water, the last vestige of the peninsular state. Upon it was built an artificial island of stone and concrete, rounded and circled with high razor-wire fencing. A jut of unused land, about fifty feet in length, extended beyond the fence to the shore. Here, but for a strip cleared to build a dock, the grass ran wild and the ground was thick with weeds.

  The grass camouflaged the island. When the storm clouds cleared and the residents of the southern Georgia coast were able to look far into the Florida Sea, they sometimes mistook Sugarloaf for a trick of the eye—a tropical sea-dwelling mirage.

  The women were kept in cages while the camps were reordered and their male captives segregated. The cages were small and the taller detainees could not stand without crouching.

  Guards in black masks patrolled the cages. The masks hid their faces but their youth was evident in the skin around their eyes. The guards called the women in the cages by the last two digits of their detainee numbers, and called each other by their initials. As such, whenever the senior officers ordered the guards to move the women to other cages or to the Non-Compliance Area, the instructions sounded like moves in a game of chess.

  But sometimes the guards accidentally used their real names. This was how the women, who had little to do but sit and listen, learned the identities of the soldiers who walked hourly among them. The tall one with the blue eyes was Lillyman; the kind one with the accent, who used to smuggle water bottles through the fencing and was soon removed from duty, was named Izzy. The one with the thick neck—the cruel one—was Bud Baker.

  In time the women learned other things too: the names of the guards’ hometowns, of their children and their pets. They learned a feeble geography of the camps, and of the officers’ suburb, which lay on the other end of the island. And although none of these things were useful to them in their squat, vacant pens, the women committed all the information to memory, held the things they learned close like yet-unsharpened shanks.

  Sometimes the women complained about the blinding heat or about the size of their cages or the smell of their unwashed jumpsuits. When any woman did this too frequently or too loudly, a small team of armed guards would rush the cage and drag the captive to the Non-Compliance Area. A day later a woman so taken would return to her cage, and would not complain anymore. Soon, all the prisoners stopped complaining.

  SARAT CHESTNUT’S CAGE faced what she believed to be the sea. She heard the waves breaking against the shore, just beyond the guard towers and a forest of leaning reeds. In storm season, when the sky overhead thickened and lit up, the waves rose high and crashed into the stone beaches. Other times the waves were calm, and made a sound like a dog slowly lapping from a bowl. Chained and unable to stand upright in her tiny cage, she strained to glimpse the water, but the sea lay beyond reach.

  In the first weeks of her captivity she did not speak, neither to the guards who watched her nor to the women nearby. The guards took her silence as a passive defiance, and often threatened to take her to the Non-Compliance Area. The women, put off by her refusal to talk, began to suspect her as some kind of foreigner—perhaps a spy, or a Blue banished to this place for treason.

  Instead she listened to the sea. She nursed a broken rib suffered during the night the soldiers came to take her in Lincolnton. In time the pain in her chest dulled and breathing became less difficult, but the weeks she spent crouching and sitting in the cage began to inflame her knees and her back. To remedy this she knelt into a child’s pose, which she held until Bud or one of the other guards came and ordered her to get up.

  She waited on death. She had no doubt that soon the troop of masked guards would come to take her—not to the Non-Compliance Area, but to some courtroom in the heart of the Blue.

  She imagined being led in, shackled, before rows and rafters full of indignant, jeering Northerners. She imagined standing before the firing squad, a line of young soldiers no different from the ones who once hovered in Templestowe’s eye. She imagined facing their softly trembling hands and smiling. Because no matter what they did with her afterward—in which unmarked grave they buried her or wherever they scattered her incinerated remains—she would find her way to the river. She would find her way to her sister. She waited in her cage and thoughts of death sustained her.

  At the end of the third month, the women were moved into the camps. The ones who had put up no resistance were issued white uniforms and taken to Camp Thursday, where they were allowed the privileges of communal living. Others were dressed in blue, and taken to solitary cells in Camp Friday or Camp Saturday.

  Some of the women spoke of another place, Camp Sunday. The stories they told of that place struck Sarat as the stuff of depraved medieval fantasy, and at first she didn’t believe the camp existed.

  After three days in Camp Thursday, they took her to her first Visitation. She was led to a small complex of prefabricated offices, unmarked save for cameras hanging from the ceiling. The walls were plain and reinforced to keep the sound from traveling.

  She was ordered to sit on a small metal chair next to a metal table. Her arms were chained to the arms of the chair and her ankles to shackles in the floor. Soon the guards were gone and the room was quiet.

  She sat alone for three hours. A fire began to grow along her spine. She tried to shift her position but the chair was bolted in place, and no movement of her neck could keep her muscles from seizing.

  The door opened. A short woman about ten years Sarat’s senior came in. She was dressed like the women who worked for the government in Atlanta. She folded her suit jacket and placed it gently on the table. She sat down.

  “We know exactly what you did, Sara Chestnut,” she said.

  It was only then that Sarat realized her captors had no idea what she did—not only because the woman had called her by her old first name, the one she’d abandoned so many years ago, but also because if the Blues had known about her crimes, there would be no need for an interrogation, no need to extract any confession. They knew nothing; perhaps they’d apprehended her on some vague suspicion, after seeing her visit the United Rebels’ compound. Perhaps she was simply a part of some random sweep, a fishing expedition.

  “If you talk now—if you tell us everything and give us the names of the people you worked with—I might still be able to help you,” said the woman. She leaned slightly forward. “There’s still time, Sara. There’s still a chance for you to leave this place, to go back to Simon and to Dana. To do the right thing. All you have to do is be honest with me. Can you be honest with me, Sara?”

  “I didn’t do nothing,” said Sarat.

  The woman closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “Sara,” she said, “I know you think I’m your enemy, but I’m here to help you. My bosses in Columbus, they want to lock you up forever, they want to keep you from ever seeing your home again. They look at you and this is all they see…”

  From her briefcase the woman produced a set of glossy photographs. She fanned them on the table. The photographs were of wreckage, the charred husk of a car torn apart. For a moment Sarat thought the pictures were of her sister’s death. But that couldn’t be—the scenery was diffe
rent, and the woman didn’t even seem to know Dana was dead. She saw gutted sandbags strewn about, the remains of a checkpoint. In one of the pictures, the fortified center of the Northern capital hovered in the distance.

  The confusion on Sarat’s face must have been evident, because the woman quickly put the photos away.

  “Of course I know you didn’t do this, Sara, but this is what my bosses see,” she said. “But I told them, Just give me a chance; I can talk to her. I read your file, Sara. I know you’ve been through some terrible tragedy. And I know you wouldn’t want innocent people—in the South or the North—to go through the same thing.”

  The woman looked over her shoulder, as though to check that no one was within earshot. “You know my grandparents come from Alabama,” she said. “I guess you can say I’ve got the South in my blood. I know these values mean something to you, Sara—protecting the weak, telling the truth, doing what’s right. What’s right. I want to go back to my bosses in Columbus, Sara, and I want to be able to tell them what I know to be true: that you’re not a bad person, that you don’t have the blood of innocent people on your hands. And if I tell them that, they’ll listen to me, and they’ll send you home, and you can be with Dana and with Simon again in Lincolnton. I can help you, Sara, but I need you to help me.”

  “I didn’t do nothing,” said Sarat.

  Some of the softness dissipated from the woman’s face. Her voice, once soothing, hardened.

  “You know some of the people you’re protecting, we already caught them,” she said. “They’re right here, in this place, and they’ve already told us about you. They’ve already turned on you to save themselves. Do you really want to see them go free while you spend the rest of your life in a cell?”