by Alan Cumyn
“This man says number 24 is government property, but he will not let us in until he has authorization from the minister. Justice Sin has sent two staff to the back of the house to make sure no one is being taken out secretly. He insists they must let us in immediately, but the man says his superior is right now phoning the minister.”
How long can it take to phone the minister?
Forever. Sin’s aides bring a folding chair from the back of his black car. Luki and I go to the back and wait with Sin’s men. Nito stays near me nervously eyeing the surroundings. Who does he work for, I wonder? IS? The wall is too high to see over, the glass too jagged and sharp to try any climbing. There doesn’t seem to be a back entrance anyway. Unless a tunnel connects to other houses, the only way out seems to be through the front. We return to find that the minister still can’t be reached.
“Perhaps if you got written permission from the minister and returned another day,” the man at the gate says.
Sin pulls out a cellular phone, punches some numbers and waits, mops his face with a cloth, each bead of sweat instantly replaced with another. It’s not a sunny day but steambath hot, the air itself perspiring. A short conversation, then Sin makes two more calls and we wait. Kids gather from up and down the street: two boys who were playing with sticks, a girl with scabbed knees, some young teens selling cigarettes, bottled water, and magazines. The unhappy man in brown gets even less happy with this crowd and yells at the kids to leave, but the chief justice tells them they can stay, so they do. Then a number of other cars and vans arrive – the press in some, IS members, I suppose, in others. The press are generally in more relaxed dress, IS members look both sterner and more confused. None of this is supposed to be happening. The IS guys mingle and take notes. Dorut Kul pushes to the front and immediately hurls questions at Sin.
Several IS men from the house gather inside the gate now, grimacing and conferring, turning their backs to make phone calls, gesturing to the kids and reporters to clear out. Sin answers Kul’s questions patiently, turns to other reporters now thronging around him.
Kul catches me and asks for a statement about my attempt to flee the country. I give him as thorough a denial as I can, explain that I was trying to get to the airport to see off my assistant, who has returned to Canada for personal reasons. He probes further, asks if I plan to stay without her, but I tell him that’s all I can say for now.
“So you might return to your home prematurely?” he presses, and I squirm. Just what I need, to have the press go off half-cocked.
“I have no current plans to return to Canada,” I say carefully, and am grateful when he lets it go.
“What are you expecting to find in this house?” he asks.
“We have received a tip that this is a secret IS detention centre – where IS members take people they’ve abducted. From testimony in front of the commission it appears these detention centres are used for torture and murder, and are kept secret so that the IS can deny having custody of particular people and avoid being called to account. We simply want to inspect the premises, but we’re being denied access.”
A stand-off in the heat. The IS has the advantage: a roof over their heads. As the humidity builds we all know what’s coming, a torrential rain that will drive us away. The minister isn’t going to phone. That’s just a ruse to win time. Sin confers quietly with me and Luki, several reporters’ microphones leaning in to catch the conversation. Then he nods to one of his men, who walks back to the car and reappears with a huge crowbar. Sin takes it and steps up to the gate, jams it into the small lock before anyone in brown can stop him. Several pistols appear at once and Sin pauses, his large hands on the crowbar, a dozen cameras poking around him, all of us looking on.
A tense exchange. Sin doesn’t lower his eyes but neither do the IS men. The moment hangs and hangs, then the first drops of rain fall, fat and warm. We only have a couple of minutes before the deluge.
I don’t know how we all know, but somehow the advantage falls to Sin. Without a word he leans his bulk on the crowbar and the lock snaps like plastic. Instead of rushing the gate, however, he pushes it open gently and the IS men don’t resist. Their guns stay pointed, but these men aren’t going to shoot the chief justice in front of all these reporters. We walk in uninvited, but unimpeded as well.
A drab house, on first glance surprisingly domestic-looking, with a mat by the door to receive people’s shoes, a living room off the entrance, a batik hanging of a small boy, sitting on a water buffalo, playing a flute. The ceilings are high, in the local style, and in the living room four plain wooden chairs are gathered around a table covered in cards, ashtrays and tall beer bottles. It smells of sweat and old cigarettes, and the further in we get the dirtier it seems, almost in the way that an animal’s den will be – I sense the occupants will put up with the filth for ages, then decide to move on rather than attempt to clean.
We sweep past the kitchen: blackened, grease-stained walls, a dirt floor, a brown rat scavenging on the cluttered counter, pausing to look at us but not alarmed enough to move away. It feels like a dream, like stepping into layers of darkness. Sin pushes open one bedroom door: nothing. No furniture, decorations, or people, just heavy drapes on the one window, a dark stain in one corner, the stench of old urine. The same in the next bedroom, except the stench is stronger and there’s a rough bench of sorts, under which is something I recognize – a black box, about the size and weight of a car battery.
“Take it,” I say, pointing, barely able to get the words out. “Take it for evidence!” Luki relays the message to Sin’s men, who are behind me.
“You should wait outside,” I say to Luki.
“It’s all right,” she says.
“No, it isn’t. There are some things you don’t want to see if you don’t have to. Believe me.”
She wavers, but I put enough force into my voice and gaze that she obeys. Most of me wants to follow her retreat. But I don’t. Down the corridor. The third bedroom. The smell much worse. The door is locked and Sin Vello steps aside while his aides kick at it. The IS men are behind us and watching but not stopping us; they’ve fallen aside like the Berlin Wall. Two, three, four kicks and the door gives way.
Nothing.
Grey light; the pounding of the rain on the window, no curtains this time, no dark shades. A small bed, a mirror and dresser, a huge mouldy poster of the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger looking like a revivified corpse.
A handprint on the wall, some Santa Irenian magazines in the corner – porno, bad colour, the reds bleeding into the greens.
Nothing we need.
But the stench is gut-wrenching. The stench of failure. They’ve cleaned the place out. Someone’s tipped them off. We’ve come too late.
The IS generally gets its own way. I remember Sin Vello’s face when he said that: urbane, cynical, knowing. Not his face now – it’s purple with indignation and anger. He flings the bed across the room, a surprising flash of speed from such bulk. His aide checks the closet, but clearly there won’t be anything left. A few hangers, a mouldy set of clothes.
All of the air rushing out of our balloon.
I step into the corridor, crowded now with IS men, short, bulky, silent, most with moustaches, one with a red rash on his neck. Where’s the smell coming from? It doesn’t make sense. The house looks bigger from the outside …
“They’re here!” I say to Sin Vello, as if he can understand me. “They’re still here. There’s another room!” I call it out excitedly, looking for the secret door. There must be one, right? This is a secret detention centre – there must be a secret door. A basement room? Back dungeon? Where’s the stench coming from? I run around tapping the walls until Sin’s men get the idea. Some of the reporters join in, push the IS men out of the way, although it occurs to me that most of them stand back, and some haven’t even entered the house. We have to find it. We have to!
Tapping, searching, calling. This damn smell. It’s not from using the wrong disinfectan
t. Something evil’s been happening in this house. I go back to the living room, upset the card table, tear down the water buffalo picture. Then to the kitchen, rip open the cupboards. The smell is revolting. The rat has moved on but the decaying food he was feasting on is still mouldering on the counter.
Pull open the fridge door. There’s no light. The fridge is full of darkened, blackened, bloodied …
Heads.
Decapitated heads, some wrapped in plastic bags, some in brown paper, some simply …
I stand transfixed.
There are some things you don’t want to see.
An IS man stands in the doorway, his hand on his pistol, pointing. What am I supposed to do? Close the door, walk away? Dorut Kul pushes past him as if he weren’t holding a weapon at all, as if he has shrunk to three feet and is fast disappearing. As soon as he looks inside the fridge he calls out – ecstatic, a cry of triumph, and his photographer pushes past the IS man as well. There it is, tomorrow’s front page, a fridge full of heads. More and more cries of triumph, bodies pushing into the kitchen. Kitchen? I stumble out, crash against the wall twice while reeling down the corridor. Slashing rain outside, even heavier than that day Joanne and I abandoned our taxi. Years ago. Decades.
Another life.
I kneel in the courtyard, hold a small railing, the water flooding around me like an ocean tide. What are we going to do about the IS? A small part of my brain still functioning in that old way. There’s a houseful of them, armed to the teeth. How are we supposed to arrest them? But even as I’m thinking this the police arrive. Called by Sin Vello, no doubt. He is his own man, I remember Suli saying.
His own man.
And police are arresting IS, who stand around in shock, demoralized, some now vomiting in the rain beside me. It’s as if this discovery has taken them by surprise, that it wasn’t real before. A fridge full of heads!
It’s the guillotine. They always knew it was there. That someday the crowds would come. The heads would be their own. That’s why they’re vomiting, being led like sheep into police wagons. The heads in the fridge are their own.
22
“I was coming down the right side and started to fall over? So I shot my first slapshot. Ever! But it wasn’t a raise. It went right along the ice and into the net. Everybody came out and mobbed me.”
“I wish I’d been there.”
Patrick tells me more about the hockey game, his voice so young, almost pushing everything else out of my head. Almost. Except for the stench in that house – it’s clinging to my clothes, skin, imagination. I am back in the safety of my suite at the Merioka, a full day has passed, but nothing can scrub off the stench. Where are the bodies? The police are investigating. They’re going to find them somewhere, and there will be marks of torture, of unspeakable things done in that little grey house in that peaceful little suburb in Aaden.
“Why didn’t you write me any e-mails?” Patrick asks.
“I’m sorry,” I find myself saying, hollow little words, nothing against the disappointment in his voice.
“We saw your picture,” he says. “What were you doing in the rain?”
The whole world has seen my picture. Kneeling in the deluge, grasping that railing, almost prayer-like in supplication. For one day the one picture shown everywhere, in every newspaper.
Reporters are waiting for me downstairs, have been feeding from me all day. Not just locals, but international journalists flying in from everywhere. A new twist to the story of Suli Nylioko and the Santa Irenian miracle: a fridge full of heads, a houseful of IS men arrested, led away like cattle.
Maryse comes on the line. “Are you all right?” Her perennial first question, and how she must hate to ask it. What we never seem to get past. Am I all right?
“Yes. And you?”
“You’re amazing for getting headlines.”
As if that’s all it is. Whole blocks of arguments rise like icebergs suddenly tipped over so that the huge base is now forty storeys in the air, supported by the tiny tip that usually never gets wet. Ignore it, ignore it. It’s the only way.
“Things are happening. It wasn’t me, really. I was just the one in the picture.”
“The paper said more than that.”
“Yes.” Easier to agree. Breathe and breathe. She asks about Joanne and I explain about her going home and how I haven’t been able to get in touch with her, or Derrick, for that matter.
“When was the last time you talked to him?” she asks.
“I don’t know. It’s been quite a while. I’m afraid I haven’t kept in touch the way …” Blah blah blah. She picks it out of my voice and changes the subject.
“It’s just I didn’t get my cheque this month.”
“Ah,” I say. “I guess I know that, and I’m sorry. There’s been a delay in the payments here, nothing to worry about, the money should be on its way soon. I’ve got the president of the country working on it.”
“Well, maybe the president could phone my landlord, get him off my back.” For a second I think she’s serious.
“I suppose I could ask–”
“It’s a joke,” she says. Then – “I’m really scared for you, Bill. Have you done enough? When are you coming home?”
“I know, I know,” I say. “I am planning to come home, maybe very soon. It depends on Joanne, I just have to talk to her. I won’t stay here long without her. I do need her help. I recognize that. Anyway, I didn’t think you’d be that concerned.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say, but bitterly, I can’t help it. Simmer down, I think.
She doesn’t take the bait. “Don’t wait too long,” she says instead. “I’m really worried. And certain members wait by the computer worshipping you. I’m not nagging, you know, I just don’t know how else to say it. But a quick note now and again would mean so much to him.”
“I’m sorry about the e-mails,” I say, too angry to really sound sorry. “I’ve been so caught up.”
“Yes.” She could say something gentle to let me off the hook, but she doesn’t.
“Before I left, you said something about taking the next step. What does that mean exactly?” I ask.
“We don’t have to talk about it now,” she says. I know the way she’s looking, her jaw clenched, her eyes so narrow and hurt.
“Do you mean a divorce? You want things finalized?” My heart suddenly pounding in my head.
“I’m not going to talk to you about it on the phone,” she says, managing to keep control of her voice. “When you’re back. It’s just – life isn’t standing still here.”
“What does that mean?”
“Bill,” she says, and I try to calm myself. “Just come back safely. Soon, all right?”
In a small meeting room off the hotel lobby I meet with journalists from the BBC, Reuters, AP, AFP, and South China Morning Post, among others. No Canadian journalists – they’ll get the story off the wire feeds. And no big names either. For the most part young, informal, hungry types, earnest, insistent in their questioning, as if truth can be levered out of memory and consciousness. Reporters can be levered out, anyway. One good photo and the Merioka is back in business, no doubt charging their old rates in fat American dollars.
“How far can the Truth Commission go in healing the wounds of this society?”
“Do you trust the police to properly investigate abuses by the IS, and would you trust the IS to investigate the police?”
“Who is there to investigate the military?”
“How much leeway has your commission be given in its work?”
“Now that the IS has been directly implicated in atrocities, do you fear for your own safety?”
College-educated questions that I try to answer patiently, as if my own thoughts can have some bearing on reality.
“The day before the IS detention-centre bust you were reported to be trying to leave the country. Can you comment on those reports and what your particip
ation in the commission has meant to you personally?”
Personally.
Words form like they do in these interviews, well-shaped responses, apparently thoughtful, one sentence leading to another. Atrocities … abuses … extrajudicial executions … natural justice … corruption … time for healing and redemption … institution-building and renewal.
I go slowly, do my best to push some sort of light into dark corners. But shine one way and something else falls dim. Nothing stays clear. Life isn’t standing still here. My first slapshot. Ever! I love you too. Don’t really know what I think about that.
Don’t really know.
The reporter stops writing, looks in some surprise. Not one of the young men, but a grey beard, balding, heavy, wearing too many clothes for this climate. “Pardon?” he says.
“I don’t really know what sorts of conclusions we might reach,” my voice says, “or how all this is going to help in the end. But holding perpetrators accountable for atrocities is important. Don’t you think? If we ever want to move beyond these cycles of violence.”
Cycles of violence. Another handsome phrase. Sounds like a particularly vigorous bicycle race.
Not like the stench of that house. Where are the bodies? You can’t have heads without bodies.
“I’m just not certain what’s beyond the cycles,” I say.
“Do you mean what it takes to break the cycle?”
I love you too. Don’t really know what I think about that.
“I haven’t been able to move beyond the cycles myself,” I say.
“You yourself are caught in the cycles of violence?”
I keep thinking of a bicycle race. I can’t get off the course. Shoes locked to the pedals.