by Jan Coffey
“You’re welcome to use this. I loaded a number of past issues of newspapers and magazines onto my laptop for the flight.”
She stared at the proffered computer. It was a precious gem.
“The only thing is that everything loaded is in English. If you’d prefer some of the issues in Arabic…”
“No, English is fine,” she said, reaching for the computer before he changed his mind. He handed her the leather storage case, too. She touched the piece of equipment, ran her fingers along the thin edge, already realizing that technology had changed a great deal since her capture.
“I guess you’re ready to leave,” Captain Adams commented breaking a moment of silence.
“Do you have any personal belongings at all, Dr. Banaz?” Agent Newman asked, turning to her.
He was wearing sunglasses today, and that made his expression much more guarded. He looked older…and more threatening. She wondered if he still harbored the doubts he had expressed yesterday, or whether he had decided that she really was Rahaf. She also wanted to know if he’d shared that doubt with the people to whom he reported. If that were the case, then they were using her as a means of finding her sister.
No matter what happened, she wasn’t going to lead the Americans to Rahaf, just to turn her over to them. The headache at the base of her skull was back. She would drive herself crazy thinking about all this. She looked up. He was waiting for an answer.
“No, nothing else.” Fahimah shook her head. Her only belongings consisted of the clothing she was wearing and the new toothbrush that she’d rolled in tissues and wrapped inside a black Nike cap before stuffing it into the pocket of her pants. She’d refused the offer of more clothes. It might have been pride or stubbornness, but she refused to take anything more than was absolutely necessary. She put the laptop in the leather case and got to her feet.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Captain Adams extended her hand. Fahimah decided against snubbing her and shook the other woman’s hand. She stood a couple of inches taller than the captain. She gripped the woman’s hand hard and kept her back straight.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again,” the captain said.
“I hope not,” Fahimah said in all seriousness, not sure if they were talking about ‘meeting again’ in the same context. But it didn’t matter. She didn’t care if she ever saw her again.
They ran into a soldier right outside of the captain’s office. Fahimah thought the young woman might have been one of the guards who’d transferred her from one cell to the next, or slid a tray of food inside her door during her months here.
The soldier nodded to them. “Good luck, Dr. Banaz.”
Fahimah was starting to hate this sudden civility. She didn’t want these people to be her friends. Matt Sutton went ahead of her down the stairs. Fahimah kept a hand against the wall going down. She had a meal last night. Another small one this morning wasn’t sitting in her stomach exactly as it should. She wasn’t accustomed to eating, so there was very little her stomach accepted. At the same time, she wasn’t used to moving around, to standing. She didn’t want to fall on her face going down the stairs.
Stepping out into the brilliant sunshine, Fahimah shielded her eyes with one hand. The outside air threatened to suffocate her with heat and dust. Figures of men and women in uniform, and three closed vehicles were all that Fahimah could see when she was able to force her eyes open against the bright sun.
Fahimah was surprised that they weren’t blindfolding her as they left this facility. She wasn’t about to remind them of it. There was no wasting time outside. She was told to climb into the middle vehicle in the caravan. Agent Newman climbed in after her. Fahimah moved to the far left to give him plenty of room. The other agent sat in the front with the driver. The air conditioning was already set on high. The smell of leather and dust and recycled air caused her stomach to churn. She took a deep breath, willing her stomach to settle. The closed windows of the Humvee were tinted so that you could only see out.
Outside, everyone moved quickly once she was settled into the vehicle. She noticed a group of soldiers moving around the cars. They all had their weapons drawn. They were constantly watching the terrain around them. Fahimah looked out the window. There was nothing, just barren land and serrated hills. Rock and dust as far as the eye could see. Her sister, Rahaf, had traveled to this country once for work, but this was Fahimah’s first view of Afghanistan.
The radio in the vehicle crackled to life. The driver started talking to someone through a transmitter. She heard the loud roar of a chopper move overhead. She pressed her face against the window and looked up at the sky to see. The helicopter seemed to be hovering right above the car.
“Move this way,” Agent Newman ordered a split-second before the door on her side of the vehicle opened. A large, powerfully built soldier wearing a bullet-proof vest nodded and climbed in.
Instantly, Fahimah found herself sandwiched between the bodies of two large Americans. She moved the laptop to her chest to protect it.
“Couldn’t you spare another car?” she asked quietly.
“No,” Agent Newman said in a clipped tone. “Let’s go over the rules now.”
“I should have known that there would be rules.”
Her response obviously surprised both men in the back seat. The armed soldier shot her a quick, amused look before turning his attention back to what was going on outside. Agent Newman’s gaze stayed on her much longer.
There was nothing improper in the look he was giving her, but Fahimah suddenly felt very uncomfortable sitting so close to the man. She tightened her hold on the computer case and looked ahead as the caravan of cars started down the road. From the noise of the helicopter circling above, she knew it was part of their escort.
“All right, Agent Newman. What are the rules?” she asked encouraging the man to say something.
“Dr. Banaz, we believe your life is in danger. We have taken st—”
“My life was in danger back in that prison,” she motioned over her shoulder at the facility they were leaving behind.
“Let me finish,” he said in a sharper tone.
She shrugged, looking ahead. The driver and Agent Sutton gave no indication that they could even hear the exchange in the back seat. As the landscape sped by, Fahimah thought the vehicles were driving far too fast. Only an occasional glint of the sun off the rear window of the vehicle ahead of them was visible through the storm of dust they were raising.
“You’ve agreed to cooperate,” Newman started again. “We’re operating with the belief that someone who you might know, perhaps someone who worked for you or with you, could be responsible for the release of this bacteria in the US.”
She couldn’t argue that point. Rahaf must have feared the possibility of the microbe being used against humans when she’d asked Fahimah to go to her lab and destroy the documents having to do with her research. Her sister had always given Fahimah the impression that the purpose of her research was to find cures to horrible diseases, including those caused by microbes that could be packaged for use as weapons. From personal experience, they both knew how terrible bio-chemical weapons could be.
Fahimah wondered now if her sister had heard anything about what was going on in that country. Unconsciously, she tapped her fingers on the computer in her arms, wondering how much information about the outbreaks was known at all. Newman had never mentioned whether or not this terror had been made public.
“We also know that as much as we try, information leaks out from our bases.” Fahimah felt the soldier beside her stiffen, but Newman continued without a pause. “So if our enemies don’t already know about your existence, it will probably be just a matter of hours before the news will surface.”
Fahimah looked up to Agent Newman’s face. He was going with the assumption that she was Rahaf. That meant everyone else out there believed that, too, including, perhaps, whoever was behind the attack. That is, of course, if the outbreaks were even the re
sult of some terrorist effort.
“Why should that cause you to worry about me, Agent?”
“Your offer to help could ruin the plans of Al Qaeda…or whoever is engineering all of this. They’ll try to kill you so that you don’t help us.”
The words should have been an icy steel spike of fear in her gut. He’d intended them to be frightening, she was certain. But after all she’d been through over the past five years, the words did nothing. Death was seen as the end by many, but for Fahimah it was only another realm of existence, the next stage in this experience. She’d wished death would free her from prisons so many times over the years.
“This kind of escort might work in Afghanistan,” she said, pointing to the roof of the Humvee just as the helicopter roared across their path. “But once we’re in Iraq, I think it will be too much. In fact, it will only draw unnecessary attention to you. An escort such as this one will tell whoever these people are that you have arrived. It is an invitation to be attacked, Agent Newman. You might as well have someone waiting at the airport and carrying a sign with my name on it.”
“We’ll have different security arrangements once we land in Iraq,” he replied. “Perhaps now that we’re underway, you wouldn’t mind telling me where are we headed from Erbil Airport?”
“We have discussed that before. I will tell you once we arrive.” She looked out the window. “We have a saying, ‘Stairs are climbed step by step.’”
“Well, that’s great, Dr. Banaz. But we’re not talking about an afternoon jaunt in the countryside for two. There are a lot of people who need time to prepare for this.”
“That is your problem and not mine, Agent Newman,” she said flatly. “I do not trust you.”
“And I thought we were past that,” he said in a mock pained tone.
“Neither of us is past it, as you say,” she said seriously. “I am not in shackles, but I am still your prisoner.”
“We’re guarding you, protecting you. This is different than being a prisoner. I thought you understood that.”
“Call it what you want,” she replied thinly. “I believe what you have shown me with those pictures. I believe what has happened to those innocent people in America. I’ll try to help you, but your past treatment of me has taught me not to trust any of you.”
“Dr. Banaz, I didn’t do anything to you. I’ve been honest with you from the first moment we met.”
“There is no I, Agent Newman. You are here representing your government. That says everything about who you are.”
“I don’t carry a gun. I’m not a soldier or a policeman,” he told her impatiently. “I’m a scientist.”
“The same thing has always been true of me. I was a civilian, a scientist. If anyone had cared to do any research, they would have found that I never participated in any of Saddam Hussein’s programs to develop biological weapons. There has been a great deal of good that has come out of the research I have done,” she reminded him, not caring that there were others who were listening to this conversation. “But I was kept and treated with fewer rights than a prisoner of war. I was forgotten, lost. The rules of the Geneva Convention do not apply to me, according to America. So do not remind me of how little I care for you and your country. Do not ask for more than I am willing to give. I told you that I will help. I will remain true to my promise. I will tell you where to go once we reach Erbil. Leave it at that.”
Fahimah looked straight ahead, finished with the discussion. It was a relief when he didn’t argue more. She felt her cheeks and ears burning. Emotions had become foreign to her over the years, but now anger heated her blood. It had been so long since she’d allowed herself to feel and speak this way.
No one said anything. The noise of the helicopter overhead competed with the sound of the road, providing the only disruption to the silence inside the Humvee. Even the two-way radio remained quiet. She hadn’t let anger overwhelm her during the years of her imprisonment, but she’d reached her limit. Like the long-trapped magma of a sleeping volcano, feelings about the injustices she had endured were suddenly erupting through the surface. It had begun yesterday, when in her fury she’d ripped through the room where they had moved her. She wished there was some physical means of venting those feelings now, but she knew she wouldn’t get far with the two large bodies pressing her on either side. She had to find other means of calming herself.
Fahimah closed her eyes. She placed the computer on her lap and loosened her hold on it. She focused on her breathing. In. Hold. Slowly out. In. Hold. Slowly out. As she breathed, she felt the flow into each limb, joint by joint, muscle by muscle.
The shoulders of the two men on either side rocked against her. She lost her focus, anger and frustration pushing back into her consciousness. She focused again on her breathing, taking in the good…holding it so that it might spread through her…breathing out the bad. She was trying to relax her limbs with each breath, but it was difficult. There were so many distractions. So much noise. She tried to focus only on the rhythm of her breaths, to become separate from the body. In and hold and out. Again. Again. Trying began to give way to allowing. Awareness began to fade.
A sudden jolt caused the computer to fly off her lap. She opened her eyes, grabbing for it desperately. Agent Newman was the one who caught it before it was thrown against the front seat. He handed it back to her.
“Thank you,” she whispered, trying to avoid eye contact. She tucked the leather strap under it and placed it on her lap again.
There was another jolt. She was crushed between the two men as they shifted and tried to regain their seat.
“You might want to put your seatbelt on,” Agent Newman suggested, reaching for his. There wasn’t much room for him to maneuver.
“Sorry, sir,” the driver said apologetically. “We’re not far from the base.”
Fahimah looked out the window at the group of Afghani kids running after the cars. The guns didn’t deter them. Their bare feet, dirty faces, hungry bellies were reminders of what she’d seen before. She could hear their voices through the glass and realized that the helicopter had left them.
“Naan…naan…naan…”
They were asking for bread. Fahimah stared at the tents set up past the faces. This reminded her of the refugee camps that had been set up all over the Iranian border after Saddam’s troops had destroyed all of those Kurdish villages, after he had killed so many men. Young children and women had been left to fend for themselves there, too.
The cars were slowing down. Fahimah saw security checkpoints ahead. The Afghanis were forced to stay on this side of the barriers. The radio came to life again. Instructions about driving through. Just before they reached the barriers, however, something hard hit the right side window of the vehicle.
Fahimah found her face shoved forward onto her lap by the soldier sitting to her left. Her nose hit the laptop hard.
“Speed up!” the soldier growled.
“It was just a rock,” the driver replied.
“They’re waving you through,” Newman said. “Go.”
Fahimah felt the vehicle speed up again. With her face still pressed against the laptop, Fahimah felt blood trickling down her face. She brought her hand up to her nose. The smell of leather from the computer case turned her stomach again. She tasted bile in the back of her throat. She took another deep breath as the weight of the soldier eased from her.
“Are you okay?” Newman asked, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her into a sitting position again.
“I warned you before. Your people are the ones who’re trying to kill me.”
She didn’t know where the tissue came from, but he started patting her upper lips, holding her head up. She took it away from him and wiped her nose herself.
“Sorry,” the soldier on her left said gruffly. “We can’t be too careful.”
“It was nothing,” she replied quietly. “The bleeding has already stopped.”
She accepted another tissue that was handed to her
from the front seat and wiped a drop of blood from the leather case.
In another minute or two, the Humvees began to slow again. At this checkpoint, armed soldiers looked into the vehicle and under it before allowing them to pass. After weaving back and forth through concrete barriers like a ski slalom, the road straightened and took them into the base.
The roads inside the base were busy, filled with military vehicles and Americans in uniform. A few Afghani civilians were visible in their turbans or caps and dark vests and their simple long shirts over white pants and sandals. They stood out among the soldiers in camouflage khaki and gray and green. Most were young men and boys. They appeared to be laborers.
“We have fifteen minutes before the aircraft is ready to board,” Matt Sutton said over his shoulder after talking on the phone.
“Take us as close to the plane as possible,” Newman ordered the driver. “Somewhere in or near one of the hangars.”
The driver spoke to someone on his phone. They were stopping at another security checkpoint as they moved from one section of the base to another. Beyond the barrier, she could see the airstrips. Huge military cargo planes lined the side of one runway. Each vehicle came to a complete stop, and the driver and Agent Sutton both opened their windows. The driver passed some paperwork out to a soldier as two others circled the vehicle, looking under the car as they had at each checkpoint with a mirror at the end of a thin metal pole.