From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel

by Alex Gilvarry

  Armed with the Neiman news, I tried to reach Ahmed on his cell phone again and again with no such luck. In the beginning, having a partner who was never around had felt like a blessing. Be careful what you wish for. A fashion label is a company in the end, and a company can’t be run by one person, me especially. I needed Ahmed to step up more than ever. Not just to keep us afloat with funds, but to handle the manufacturing aspect with his wily head for business. Not knowing where to find him, I grew desperate. Then, an act of serendipity: Herizon delivered a stack of phone books to my building. Those big biblical books were normally an annual nuisance that littered the foyer until someone eventually employed the good sense to toss them on behalf of all the other tenants. I only noticed them this time because, on my way out one morning, the guys from the design-build collective were using one of them as a doorstop in the foyer while they loaded their van with custom-built sets. Putting my foot in its place, I tore the book open, and there, would you believe it, was Ahmed Qureshi, listed next to my old address on Evergreen Avenue. It was a 718 area code, a landline. I tore the page from the book as they do in the movies and threw it back down where I had found it.

  I ran up to the roof of the toothpick factory, dialing the number. What was I doing up there? I have no idea. Only that it would somehow feel more dramatic to make a phone call from the roof. Perhaps I thought a cell phone calling an ancient landline needed the best reception possible.

  Yuksel, Ahmed’s houseboy, picked up.

  “Yuksel, it’s Boy. Where’s Ahmed? It’s urgent.”

  “I ays so sorry, sir. He ays busy.”

  “Too busy to talk, eh?”

  “Very busy, sir.”

  “Devil take you! I need to speak to him at once.”

  The dimwit hung up on me as soon as I became irate. I pictured him glowering on the other end, that permanent smile of his plastered above his weak chin. Redialing brought on a sound I had thought extinct. A goddamn busy signal! The stupid imp had left the phone off the hook. I could have killed him. “Arrrgh!” I yelled out over the city.

  What choice was I left with?

  I hopped the train to Bushwick.

  The neighborhood hadn’t changed. It was just as depressed as it had been when I’d left it more than three years earlier. Broken bottles and butts, newspaper coupons from the local pennysaver scattered along the sidewalks. A new crop of recent college graduates had filtered into the Kosciuszko homes—I could tell by the different tags along the buildings. Crypdick and Smock and ARTJOY, the writers of my day, had been replaced by G.W. S8tan, Viet911, FUCK BUSH, and BITCHES NOT BOMBS. Everything had taken on a political slant. A little Hispanic kid across the street from the Kosciuszko homes called out to me: “Go back to China, faggot!” The tiny bugger actually got to me. Had it been that long since I’d been openly harassed? I looked down at my red jeans and my patent leather Nikes and my Marc carryall, and I felt ashamed.

  So I reacted with something I’d thought myself incapable of. I gave the child the finger. If the child had been any older I wouldn’t have dared! But seeing as how he had acted alone, I felt he deserved his own lesson in humility.

  “Oh, no you di’n’t! No you di’n’t!” he shouted.

  But oh yes, I most certainly did.

  Now pumped with adrenaline, I walked up my old front stoop on Evergreen Avenue and rang the bell. The shades were drawn at Ahmed’s. I stepped back to have a look at my old apartment on the second floor. The air conditioner Ahmed had helped me install back then was still in the window. It was leaning out, tilted at an unsafe angle. A pigeon landed on top of it and shat.

  I was buzzed in.

  “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling and calling. All I get is busy, busy, busy.”

  Ahmed took me by the arm and led me into the apartment. He peered out into the hall after me. “Were you followed?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a fair question.”

  “Why would I be followed?”

  He closed the door and bolted the locks.

  I turned around and walked right into a large bureau in the foyer.

  “Give me a hand, will you?” He directed me to help him move the bureau against the front door as a barricade.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just push.”

  “Yuksel!” I called. “Where is that devil when you need him?”

  “I sent him out for supplies.”

  “Supplies? What supplies?”

  “Bottled water, tea, scotch, liver pâté. Supplies!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Come,” said Ahmed, leading me toward the kitchen. The storage room was packed to the brim with sacks of fertilizer covered with blue tarp. Now, from the perspective of an innocent man—my perspective—there was nothing too unusual about this. Ahmed always had things in bulk coming and going.

  “I’m in the midst of a huge deal,” he said. “This is the big time, Boy. It could mean my early retirement.”

  “Have you completely forgotten about our business?” I lashed out at him. “You remember, our fashion label. I need you, man. Where have you been? We have orders now. Barneys. Maybe Neiman Marcus. Bergdorf Goodman. I can’t possibly fill these on my own. Have you gotten my messages?”

  “Messages? How are you still leaving bloody messages? I had that number disconnected. Don’t leave any messages, Boy. That line is probably under surveillance.”

  “Surveillance? What are you talking about? Who has you under surveillance?”

  “Who? What do you mean, who? It’s nothing. The ASPCA. I had a horse deal go horribly wrong. We lost some in transit. Did you hear about the freighter collision up north? No? What a mess. Hooves and manes everywhere. You remember I told you about my connections in Saratoga? Anyway, not to worry. This ASPCA, they have no real authority. They’re a nonprofit.”

  “That sounds like a lot of shit.”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t I know it. But it’s for your own good that I leave you out of it.”

  “All you ever talk about is trust, yet you can’t even tell me the truth. And why are we barricaded in here like it’s World War Three?”

  “Okay, I can’t fool you. It’s not the animal nonprofit. And I’m not moving any horses. It’s fertilizer.”

  “Manure?”

  “That’s what I said. Manure. ‘Cow shit?’ I asked them. But no. Not that kind of fertilizer. It’s for a group of Somalis who need it by the ton. And they’ve come to me to get it. I swear, I’m back, beby. These Somalis mean business too. After this the sky’s the limit with these guys. And they’re really called the ASPCA, I wasn’t lying about that.3 Boy, if I tell you only half-truths it’s for your own safety.”

  “Fuck that. I can’t believe a single thing you say anymore. My only concern now is for the label. It may be ours together, but it’s my reputation that’s at stake.”

  Where was my judgment? My moral compass? My common sense? Sometimes I think I never had any. I see now that I was blinded by my own pride. Let me propose for a moment a hypothetical. If, in my desperate state, I had to choose between finding the location of a deadly time bomb and saving my fashion label from complete demise, I would choose my label—my dream, my work, my livelihood.4 That’s how self-absorbed I was. But I’m still innocent, I swear it, despite my disposition at the time.

  “Let’s visit the task at hand,” said Ahmed. “Now, what is it that has your panties in a bunch?”

  “I don’t know where to turn to fill this Barneys order. And Ben is saying that Neiman might be interested. We need to start mass-producing this shit. This is your end, motherfucker.”

  “One thing at a time, Boy. As you will see, this is no matter. I make a phone call, it’s not a problem.”

  “Then do it. Make a phone call. But here’s my concern. Can we get a large order done in New York? Cost-effectively?”

  “Not possible. Unless we visit the child-labor option. But that’s a high-risk game none of us want to play.
We’ll have to go overseas.”

  “First, can we just try to think of a way to manufacture the clothes locally? That’s one of the selling points of the label. Made in New York. Here in Brooklyn. People respond to that shit. Look at American Apparel. Christ, I was just featured in W bragging about this very thing. I’ll come off looking like a complete idiot.”

  “You’re being unreasonable.”

  “I’m unreasonable because I don’t want to look like a liar.”

  “We’re way past that now, aren’t we?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’re the one who made promises you can’t keep. You’re selling garments made in a place where they can’t be made.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Of course not. Because ours is a thing of trust.”

  Michelle had been right from the start. Ahmed couldn’t be trusted: I realized that, finally. I’d mistaken her opinion as an attempt to hold me back. How blind I had been! How stubborn! Why couldn’t I just see it? “I was put on this earth so that I could be tried with afflictions.” But I swear: I only imagined Ahmed was screwing me. It never crossed my mind that he could be capable of harming others.

  “We’ll have to go overseas, Boy. I’ve been saying this from day one.”

  “Okay, but if we go overseas I need assurances that we don’t employ sweatshops.”

  “You’re one to talk, Mister Nike Airman.”

  “Listen, this is high-end fashion I’m doing. The reputation of how we manufacture is as important as the garments themselves.”

  “I can get it together overseas. This is what I do, Boy. But you’re not bloody trusting me.”

  “I want everything done legitimately!”

  “Beby, I swear on my children.”

  “You don’t have any.”

  “Doubter. Fine, my unborn children. May Allah have me shoot blanks between the cracks of our mother’s—”

  “I get it. You swear. Just make it happen.”

  “Glad to know my word is still good around here.”

  I felt like a pinball machine, my head ringing with plans bouncing back and forth.

  “Come, have something to eat,” he said. “I make you panini.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Then what?”

  “Last I checked you said you were going to make a call.”

  “I will, I will. But not from here, are you crazy? Haven’t I told you I’ve been under surveillance? I’m trying to keep all calls to a minimum.”

  “So send an e‑mail.”

  “E‑mail? E‑mail is a written record. No. No e‑mail.”

  “So use my phone. Wait, I’m already over my fucking minutes. Great. You’re really putting me through the wringer here, Ahmed. Get me some water, will you? I need to take a pill.”

  “Look in the mirror, Boy. You’re gaunt like a fish.” He puckered his cheeks at me, the bastard. “Look at me. I take vitamins. And when something is bothering me I tackle it head‑on. I don’t let it fester. That’s what’s rotting away inside you.”

  “I don’t let things fester. That’s why I’m here. You’re what’s bothering me.”

  “Oh, come off it! Okay, I know. I haven’t been there for you and you’re hurt. But consider what’s in that room there.” Ahmed took me by the shoulder and pointed over the sea of blue camping tarp. “What I got going is going to make me a fortune. And this

  here is just the tip. Once I give these Somalis their taste, then we’ll see some real money. Hell, enough to produce your clothes for ten seasons!”

  The price of success was something I had been weighing in my mind in those days. Every penny we’d started with came from Ahmed. He was the wizard pulling the strings. My rent, my salary—I owed it all to him. I can’t believe I could have overlooked what was now staring me right in the face. I hadn’t stumbled upon a venture capitalist, eager to break into fashion. I had found a schemer, a liar, a cheat. He was up to something, I can see that clearly now. Only I was too blinded by my own greed, or too dumb, to have suspected it then. I should have known that the money he was funneling through my label was as dirty as the fertilizer in the next room, that there must have been other motives behind Ahmed’s generosity.

  Was I that deluded to think I had a fairy godmother?

  Maybe it’s as Hicks underlined in my Qur’an, and I deserve what I got.

  When that which is coming comes, some shall be abased and others exalted.

  1. Habeas corpus, the writ by which detainees may seek relief from illegal imprisonment. This would challenge the legality of Boy’s detention, though the Military Commissions Act (MCA), signed into law by the president on October 17, 2006, suspended habeas corpus for any alien determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant. Since Boy was awaiting determination of his own status, his habeas corpus petition was denied. In June 2008, the United States Supreme Court found the MCA’s suspension of habeas corpus unconstitutional.

  2. Most notably the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, forbidding prisoners to challenge their detention in federal district court. Also see the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

  3. This is true. The Armed Somali People’s Coalition of Autonomy is a terrorist organization that has been linked to the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nigeria.

  4. The ticking time bomb scenario is normally used by those who would permit the use of torture in exceptional circumstances. It was a concept first introduced in the novel Les Centurions by Jean Lartéguy (1960).

  No Man’s Land

  I have known fear and the

  terrors of solitude.

  —Yves Saint Laurent

  Boyet R. Hernandez, Plaintiff

  How long have I been in No Man’s Land? Shall I count the days? It has been more than five months since the Overwhelming Event, the snatch and grab that rendered me here. Another sweltering New York summer has passed, and now fall is darkening toward winter back in the city. See the foliage in the parks, like feathers on a turkey! See the wet raindrops dancing off the sides of cab windows! All of this, I can only imagine. To think the collection Gil Johannessen called a “bildungsroman” was composed for this very season, and I am not in New York to see it worn! Bildungsroman! Such a phallic term! I have completely forgotten its meaning, can you believe it? That’s what five months in No Man’s Land will do to you. Your mind becomes so clouded with dirty thoughts, bloody thoughts, that you begin to lose sight of what once seemed so important.

  In here they make every effort to keep those bloody thoughts away by doctoring their own lexicon. A No Man’s Land lingua franca. Did you know that in No Man’s Land we have a hundred words for suicide? It’s true. Self-injurious behavior (SIB), hanging gesture, asymmetric warfare, self-harm (attempted suicide), induced cardiac failure, checkout pact (hunger strike), life circumvention, personal extinction, grooming incision (cut while shaving), the list goes on and on. But never will you hear anyone mention suicide. It is completely forbidden! And you won’t hear any of us called prisoners either. That’s forbidden too. We are detainees. It is all very clever on their part. Because we are not called prisoners, they don’t have to charge us with a crime.

  I no longer see Riad, my bathing partner. I heard from Cunningham that he had stopped eating. It was in protest, no longer about the plastic water bottles being taken away, but about the bigger picture: No Man’s Land. And just like that, Riad disappeared from the block. They moved him to the infirmary, where, I hear, he is force-fed through a tube via his right nostril. “He’s a vegetable,” said Cunningham. “The man is lost. The man is a vegetable. Who gives a fuck.”

  Earlier today I received a letter from the president, dated this very day, November 3, 2006. An MP I had never seen before brought it directly to me, bypassing the hands of my day guard, Win. The envelope bore the official seal of the executive office: a bald eagle dressed in a shield, holding in its talons an olive branch and arrows. The seal actually says SEAL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. I alw
ays assumed it said something else; “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness,” something like that. Anyway, at the sight of the president’s seal, my heart bounced. It was the first piece of mail I had received since the letter from my lawyer. An apology, I thought, from the president himself. Only it was no such thing. The letter informed me of my upcoming tribunal. The President of the United States v. Boyet R. Hernandez, plaintiff. It

  went on to explain that the proceedings would determine my status as an enemy combatant or “no longer enemy combatant.”1 It mentioned who would be present at the tribunal (a judge, a prosecutor, and my personal representative, no jury), and stated that I would be meeting with my personal representative in due time. In due time! With my tribunal closing in on me ( just two weeks from the day, said the letter), they still haven’t made it clear just when I would be meeting this elusive phantom, the man who is to defend my life! And not a mention of my lawyer in New York being present at the tribunal.

  The letter had a return address:

  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

  Washington, DC 20006

  My special agent has read everything I have written up to now. All of it he consumed directly in front of me during our latest reservation. To keep me busy during the hours it took him to read my confession, he brought me a review of Michelle’s play from the Daily News (again severely outdated, again with certain details redacted). He also brought me the October issue of Vogue and a carton of doughnuts. It is as if Spyro anticipates my needs before I myself know them, and I find that he brings the only consistency to my life here in No Man’s Land. His willingness to please reminds me of, well…me. I was once willing to please everyone in my path, and I found out soon enough that it always got me what I wanted. But don’t misunderstand me. Spyro doesn’t just tell me what I want to hear. I never did such a thing either. No, I’m finding him to be completely genuine in his intent to extract the truth. And it is because of his genuine nature that I want nothing more than to please him. To give him the facts straight, to remember those things that I may think insignificant but which he deems very useful.