Internment

by Samira Ahmed

  I should close my eyes, rest up for the unknown world that lies ahead, but I’m antsy. I need to move. I slip by my snoozing parents and walk down the aisle, toward the next car and the bathroom. Some of the heads turn to look at me; others don’t bother, but everyone who can’t sleep has similar glazed-over, red-rimmed eyes.

  I press the large black rectangular button that opens the inner door and step into the wide metal vestibule between train cars, then into the next car, which looks empty except for a couple of people who seem to be dozing in the front.

  I take a few more steps forward. One of the sleeping men moves, and I see him.

  Shit. A guard.

  There’s barely time to panic. Quickly, I turn on my heel, hoping that maybe he hasn’t seen me or that he thinks it was a dream. I open the door and step back into the vestibule. It jostles and I feel dizzy, like I need to sit down right now. But I also feel rage, because why do I have this sick, panicky feeling when all I wanted was to stand up and stretch my legs and maybe pee?

  The door swooshes behind me. I turn to face a stocky guard. He’s so aggressively tanned, he’s almost orange. We’re alone in the small metal vestibule, desert passing by through the small window.

  “What are you doing out of your seat?” he demands. Instinctively, I take a step back, stumble, but regain my balance.

  “I, um, I was looking for the bathroom,” I manage to say.

  He scrunches his light-brown eyes at me and clenches his jaw. But he seems to look through me, like I’m not there. “You were told to stay in your seat.” He speaks slowly, enunciating each word, bursting with restrained resentment.

  “I’m sorry. I thought—”

  “You thought what?” He takes another step toward me.

  I inch back farther, closer to the door at the other end of the vestibule, which will take me to my car, where I’ll be safe. Safe? I catch myself. Because there is no safe for me. Suddenly I’m acutely aware of how small this space is and how loud the train wheels sound against the tracks, and I wonder if people will hear me if I scream.

  The door behind the guard slides open again. A tall, broad-shouldered Exclusion Guard steps into the vestibule. God, now there are two of them and I have literally nowhere to run. My hands shake. I can’t call for any help because the people who are enforcing the law on this train are the ones I’m afraid of. Every fiber in my body wants to scream and cry, and I want to pound my fists into the metal walls.

  “What’s going on here?” the tall guard asks. His dirty-blond hair is cropped short. He twists his sandstone infantry cap in his hands. His sleeves are rolled up, exposing a small tattoo on the inside of his right forearm. Two arrows crossed, an N between the arrowheads. I turn my eyes away so he doesn’t see me looking.

  The stocky guard straightens up and salutes. I guess the Exclusion Guards have ranks, too. “Sir, this internee was out of her seat, sir.”

  That word slaps me across the face. Internee. Is that what we are now?

  Speak. I need to force myself to speak up. If I don’t speak for myself, no one will. “I’m sorry. I was trying to find a bathroom.”

  Compass Tattoo studies me, narrowing his eyes a bit. I bite my lip and glance down at my shoes. Am I shaking? It feels like I’m shaking.

  He clears his throat. “Private, I think we can let this slide.”

  “Sir, the internees were given clear orders, and so were we.”

  “There are bathrooms on this car for a reason. We can’t expect all of them to stop having bodily functions, can we?”

  The stocky guard glares at me, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, then squares himself to the other guard. “No, sir.”

  Normally any conversation that includes the phrase “bodily functions” and me in the same sentence would have me burning with embarrassment. But not now. Now I’m enraged because my bathroom use has to be regulated and is up for debate.

  “You can go back to your seat, Private.”

  “Sir. Yes, sir,” the guard says and steps back into his car. I watch the door slide shut.

  “I still have to use the bathroom,” I blurt out. I don’t know why I say this. I should go back to my car. I don’t even really need to use the bathroom. But I feel like somehow I should assert my right to do so. Which is maybe a stupid hill to die on.

  Compass Tattoo nods. “Fine. Then hurry up and get back to your seat. And stay there.” I can’t tell if his words are a caution or a threat.

  I’ve mostly been trying to avoid looking at the guards directly, but as I turn to leave, I raise my eyes to meet his. He holds my gaze.

  A caution? Or a threat?

  Independence, California. The town where we disembark for internment is called Independence. I balk at the irony of the name. And at how sunny the day is. There should be dark clouds and storms. Permanent night. But the earth, the sun, and the moon keep on their course, utterly oblivious.

  A loud voice barks from the PA: “Stay with your families. You will board buses for Camp Mobius by identification number. Show the underside of your left wrist as you exit the station. Stay calm and exit in an orderly fashion.”

  Camp Mobius? I guess that’s what they’re calling it. They give it a name, like it’s a summer sleepaway camp, and not a prison.

  “We’re in the first group. Let’s get in line.” My dad walks numbly forward.

  “How can you be so calm about this?” I hiss at my parents. I know it’s not their fault, but I’m tired, and nothing makes sense, and I desperately want an explanation for something, for anything.

  My mom takes my elbow. “Layla, enough.” My mom’s voice is low but not soft. “We’re not calm like we’re meditating. We’re keeping our cool so we don’t get shot. Understand?”

  “They’re not going to shoot us. We’re American citizens. They can’t.”

  “Our government is jailing us because of our faith,” a voice from behind me says. I spin around to face a girl who looks about my age. “They can do whatever they want. They already are. It’s a brave new world.”

  “We haven’t gotten to that book on the syllabus yet,” I say. “What happens?”

  “Spoilers.” The girl grins. I like her already.

  “I appreciate your commitment to protect the secrets of nearly century-old literature.”

  “I pride myself on my anti-spoiler crusade.”

  I laugh a little. “So you wouldn’t tell me the focus of the next Star Wars anthology film, even if you knew?”

  “Never. But obviously it should be Lando.”

  “Duh. I’m Layla, by the way.”

  “Ayesha. First of My Name, Protector of Stories, Mother of Dragons, and Soon-to-Be Interned Muslim.”

  “If you’re Indian, that’s two things we have in common. Not so much that dragon thing, though.”

  “It’s Game of Thrones. You never read it? Watched it?”

  I shake my head no.

  “Your loss. And I’m Pakistani, but, you know, a desi is a desi.”

  “Show your wrist,” an Exclusion Guard officer calls out. I move forward in the line and show the inside of my left wrist. I feel naked. The guard passes a UV light over my arm and a small fluorescent barcode appears at the base of my hand, a number unique to me, 0000105. It doesn’t hurt when he scans me, but I still feel like I’ve been branded. The guard nods, and I board a bus with my parents. We crowd onto a single bench seat in the middle of the school bus. Ayesha, her younger brother, and her parents file past. She nods at me. “See you when we get there.”

  The two-lane highway from Independence to the camp is quiet except for the small caravan of buses heading into the desert. The landscape is bleak but undeniably beautiful. A liquid blue sky stands out against the snow-tipped peaks of the Sierra Nevada. And the sun gleams. Too bright, almost. Can nature be ironic? Destructive, yes. But nature’s overwhelming power is amoral. If people die in a storm, they’re collateral damage, like any other object in the storm’s path—a lamppost, a car, a house. T
he unintentional side effects of wind or wave or current. Unlike people, nature carries out no vendettas. Yet the simple loveliness of the sky and sun and mountains makes me feel like nature is complicit in my country’s betrayal.

  After ten short minutes the buses pass Manzanar, the old Japanese American internment camp. It’s desolate. I shudder when I see the weathered wooden sign that declares MANZANAR WAR RELOCATION CENTER. Every head in our bus turns to stare as we drive by, and I’m taken by how huge the space is. It’s the desert, and nothing is out here but empty land and what looks like thousands of acres enclosed by a simple wooden fence. There are a few barracks and a sign pointing to the Visitor Center. Manzanar was a historic site, run by the National Park Service, my mom told me, but a couple of months ago, the Park Service lost its funding and this place was shut down. I glance back as we drive on. A tattered American flag still flies atop a pole in the center of the camp. Everything looks sepia-toned except the flag, with its faded red stripes and blue field of stars.

  We drive on. Those abandoned flimsy barracks at Manzanar occupy my brain. Is that how we’re going to live now? There’s a damp patch of sweat on my jeans in the shape of my right palm. I feel the panic and anxiety coming off everyone in silent waves. I don’t think any of us really believe this is happening.

  The buses slow down as we approach a perimeter of chain-link fence that must be, I don’t know, at least fifteen feet high. All around, as far as I can see, the fence is topped with curling razor wire. Watchtowers rise into the sky, guards with guns looming above us. It’s prison. I close my eyes and feel my mom squeeze my hand. I hear her muttering a prayer to herself. I join her.

  I wonder if others felt this way—the Japanese Americans who were imprisoned during World War II. Did they also feel this surreal separation from the experience, like they were detached from their bodies, watching themselves enter this camp, like ghosts, shades of who they were? Did they wonder how long they would be here? Could they have imagined it would be years? Did some try to block it all out, compartmentalize, imagine that it was only one more day? Because we aren’t even through this giant electronic gate yet and I feel like my real life is already a million miles away.

  Exclusion Guards at the gate entrance clear the drivers after a visual inspection of the inside, outside, and underside of the buses. The gate opens and the buses enter the camp, kicking up so much dust I can barely see out.

  “Everybody off,” the driver snaps at us after coming to an abrupt stop inside the gate. “Single file. Report to the Hub.” He points at the light-gray behemoth of a building that squats in the center of camp. “Register by last names and get your quarters assigned.”

  Like leashed zombies, a few hundred of us stagger toward the largest building on the site. Families walk in tight huddles, arms around one another. Lots of brown and black faces—like you’d see at any mosque. There are also Muslims here who could pass as white—probably of Arab or Persian descent; white, but without all the privilege.

  One detail that’s impossible to miss? Just like in the train station, every person with a gun is white, and not white like maybe they’re Bosnian—the kind of white that thinks internment camps are going to make America great again.

  The Hub is marked by an American flag fluttering fifty feet up in the air, and large black plastic letters above the door: MOBIUS. Exclusion Authority bureaucrats mill around on their phones amid a heavy presence of armed Exclusion Guards. Some Authority guys step in and out of a gray modular building attached to the Hub. An office of some sort? As we proceed to the Hub, I start to understand the extent of the camp and how the razor-wired, sky-high security fence pens us in for miles, cameras trained on us. And there are rows and rows of FEMA trailers. I’ve seen them on TV before, the trailers the government puts up for people who’ve lost their homes in natural disasters. But now the natural disaster is being Muslim.

  My vision clouds. I blink against the dust, and my knees buckle a little. I grab onto my dad’s arm. Every muscle in his arm is taut. He straightens his backpack. He and my mom are holding hands, and I catch them looking at each other. They’re run-down. The few wrinkles they have are highlighted by this dust that’s blowing everywhere. They look so small, so human. When you’re a kid, you think your parents are invincible and all-knowing, and then you start to grow up and realize that they’re simply flawed human beings trying to make their way in the world the best they can.

  We all look like ants marching in this dust straight into a giant trap where we’ll be stuck or where we’ll be fed poison that we inadvertently spread to the rest of the group. I bite my lip, but I don’t even feel it. What’s that thing people always say about history? Unless we know our history, we’re doomed to repeat it? Never forget? Isn’t that the lesson? But we always forget. Forgetting is in the American grain.

  Someone yells out ahead of us. There’s some kind of tussle.

  “NO! NO! NO!” I hear a boy scream and then see him run away from his mom—I suppose it’s his mom—a middle-aged woman wearing a bright-blue turban-style hijab. The boy, with curly chestnut-brown hair, is maybe eight or nine years old. She runs after him and grabs him, speaking to him in Arabic. The crowd parts around them. Then her son hits her in the face. There’s a collective gasp from the crowd. When the woman reaches up to her cheek, the boy breaks free, pushes against anyone standing in his way, and starts running back toward the main gate, where the buses entered. He doesn’t get far. Three Exclusion Guards draw guns and aim them at him. A kid. They’re pointing their weapons at a kid. A fourth guard grabs him and pins him to the ground. I’m frozen. I literally can’t move. The action slows down. I hear the muffled scream of the boy’s mother as she runs through the crowd, shoving past people, some of whom stumble and fall and curse, adding to the chaos.

  “Please! Don’t hurt him! He doesn’t understand,” the mother cries. She claws at the guard who holds her son down. He shoves her off, and she falls backward. One of the other guards directs his gun away from the boy and toward the mom. The little boy is crying. The mom’s piercing wails seem to echo through the camp and into the mountains far in the distance. Then another man—Compass Tattoo from the train—appears. He says something I can’t hear, then puts his hand on the shoulder of the guard who has the boy pinned down. The guard nods and releases him. Compass Tattoo helps the little boy up. The mother scurries to her son on her knees and tenderly wraps him in her arms, trying to protect him, shifting her body away from Compass Tattoo. But he doesn’t touch his gun or hit her. He whispers something in her ear and then takes her by the elbow, helping her up. The woman wipes her face and keeps her arm around her son’s shoulders. The boy’s face is blank, expressionless. Quietly, the woman leads him back to their place in line, the murmuring crowd parting to let them through.

  The guards put away their guns, and one of them shouts, “Show’s over.” And we continue, herded like animals, toward the Hub.

  Show’s over. My God, a show. Like our pain is entertainment.

  I look at the guard with the tattoo and then to the gun at his side. He catches my eye, nods, and takes long strides to a black-suited man who has been watching the scene unfold from a short distance. The man’s face is red and blotchy, but not like he’s sunburned—more like his tie is too tight and he can’t get enough air. Who wears a suit and tie in the desert?

  When I turn to my parents, I see tears running down both their faces. We join the crowd and continue our walk. No one talks. Silent as the grave. I take a shaky breath, and then another. I say Nanni’s favorite prayer to myself. I’m so glad she’s not here to see this. I try to find solace in her memory. But as I’m saying the words, my muscles tense and my breathing grows loud. I say the prayer again. But it doesn’t feel meditative, as it usually does. It doesn’t calm me or quell my anger.

  Thoughts and prayers. God, all the times I’ve heard politicians utter those words.

  Aurora.

  Orlando.

  Las Vegas.


  Sandy Hook.

  Umpqua.

  Virginia Tech.

  San Bernardino.

  Sutherland Springs.

  Parkland.

  Santa Fe.

  I don’t have a measure for how I should feel or what I should think. But thoughts and prayers weren’t enough to save any of those people in any of those places from getting shot. And they’re not going to be enough for us now. Prayers can only go so far. I remember something else my nanni used to tell me: Praying is important. But you can’t simply pray for what you want. You have to act.

  We line up outside the Hub by last name and proceed through the security check—full-body scanners and luggage imaging like at the airport, but with a ticket to nowhere. After the scan, we walk inside the main hall of the Hub, where dozens of registration tables are set up. I soak in this bizarre nightmare, scanning the camp and what appears to be the only entrance gate—heavily guarded—and the watchtowers and the razor-wire fence as far as I can see. And the people. Everywhere, all of them, dazed like me. It’s like a United Nations of internees. Old and young. Black and brown. Some in hijab and kufis and the traditional dress of their ancestral countries, many in T-shirts and jeans and shorts. But we’re all citizens of the United States, forced on a dead-end journey into the desert. The Muslims who aren’t citizens are going on a much longer trip—deportation. Green cards and visas instantly invalidated with a stroke of the presidential pen. Maybe they’re the lucky ones, if they have other homes to go back to, take their chances in. For those of us who were born here, America is literally the only home we’ve ever known. And all those angry mobs on television chanting “Go home,” they don’t get that this is our home.