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

by Alex Gilvarry

  (B)OY.

  “You’re this guy,” he said. “I know all about you. Question is, Do you know about me?”

  “Ahmed mentioned you, yes.”

  “So you know my reputation. And you’re comfortable with this?”

  “What are we even talking about?”

  “Working together.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sit down. Relax.”

  “I’m still wondering why you’re wearing that suit?”

  “I told you already. Ahmed give it to me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I said, ‘Where did you get such a magnificent suit?’ The sheen. The pattern. The cut. I had to have one. ‘It’s truly magnificent,’ I said. He said, ‘You can’t get it anywhere. It’s one of a kind.’ I said, ‘Impossible!’ Then we wrestled for it. He took off the suit, of course, not to get it messed up in the stable.”

  “The stable?”

  “The stable where we go to talk. Anyway, once I had his arm pinned behind his back, he told me you were the one who made it. Custom.”

  “Yes, but I still don’t see why you’re wearing it tonight.”

  “He give it to me. I said I would take a percentage off the vig. He give me the suit. Happy now, Tenderfoot?”

  I was wasting time. It was a feeling I got around people like Hajji, a melancholic fog that draped over me whenever I was in the company of someone below my level of intelligence. This feeling took the place of my paranoia.

  “On second thought,” I said, “I’ll have a glass of water.”

  He turned on a light over the sink and kept an eye on me through the mirror while he filled a glass. Hajji had deep pockmarks in his face. His hair was dyed a cheap black, and under the light I could see the violet base in the color.

  He brought over the water.

  “Thank you.” I sat on the edge of the bed and took a purple pill.

  “That stuff will kill you,” he said.

  “They’re prescription.”

  “Me, I don’t take pills.”

  “Surprising.”

  “So, Ahmed tells me you have a manufacturing problem. I’m here to tell you it is a problem no more, my friend. I can have your clothes manufactured overseas in India. It can be done quickly. We send them dresses, they send us the samples, and back and forth until we’ve reached our agreement. Ami explained to me that you had problems about going overseas. That you want everything manufactured in New York. I don’t blame you. Everybody wants American. People pay big bucks for quality. It’s a simple matter of switching the labels once the garments make it past customs. We send the shipment to a factory in Brooklyn and have all the labels switched there. Wallah.”

  “Bait and switch. That’s your plan, huh?” I put my water down on the nightstand and stood up, frustrated. “I’m sorry. This is what you followed me here for? We couldn’t discuss this over the phone? Listen, you have my number. Call me on Monday and we’ll talk.”

  He took me in his hands and pushed me back down on the bed.

  “Now you listen, Tenderfoot. I’m not here to waste my time. Ahmed said you needed to have clothes manufactured; now I’m offering you my services. I don’t offer this sort of deal to everybody. And with the kind of money he owes me, you’re lucky I don’t just take my share of your business. You think I don’t know who you are? I read!”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Not at all. I’m only trying to explain to you how it is. The clothes we make together, people will wear, goddamnit. And, I must say, ever since I saw Ahmed wearing this suit, I’ve been envious of his new friend, the tailor. I think we should be in business. Someone who can make a suit like this…one of a kind. No question. It’s truly magnificent.”

  I knew I had to get out of his room as quickly as possible, even if it meant telling Hajji whatever he wanted to hear. “Okay,” I said. “It sounds fine. You’re a friend of Ahmed’s. And I trust him. So let’s talk Monday. Call me and you can come by my studio.”

  I stood up and was met with the same hostility. He pushed me back down on the bed.

  “We’re not finished yet! This suit still needs to be taken in. And you are the one who’s gonna do it.”

  “Now? Are you out of your mind? I have people waiting for me. They’re going to get suspicious if I’m gone too long.”

  He stepped over to the bedside table and grabbed a plastic CVS bag, which he then threw at me. I looked inside. He was serious. He’d bought a needle and thread, a small travel kit. The receipt was still in the bag.

  “I can’t do this now. I need a sewing machine. And where are the scissors? We’ll ruin it. Listen, make an appointment and come by my studio. I’ll have it done then.”

  “I want this suit—” Just then, his phone went off. His ring tone was an Arabic pop song, exotic chants over a fast dance beat. He took the call and stuck out his finger, placing me on hold. He spoke a language I would later learn to recognize as Urdu.

  I waited on the bed for a few seconds before realizing that this was my opportune moment to make for the door. Hajji was at the desk fumbling with the hotel stationery. I got moving. He ended his call abruptly just as I was turning the door handle. Suddenly he was so preoccupied he didn’t seem to care that I was on my way out. I should say good-bye, I thought. Keep it friendly but quick. “Ciao,” I said. “See you next week sometime.”

  “I’ll call you about the suit.”

  “You know you can take it to any tailor. They’d do a better job. I can recommend one.”

  “Only I want you to do it.”

  “Okay, fine. No problemo.” I was dealing with a maniac. “Call me Monday and make an appointment. I’m busy, but it won’t be a problem.”

  I ran out of there and took the stairs back up to the roof. I called Ahmed’s house from the top of the stairwell.

  “Yuksel, it’s Boy. Is he there?”

  “Eh?”

  “I want you to take a message. You ready? Good. Tell Ahmed that I don’t like being followed. Tell him that I’ve just been blackmailed by his friend Hajji. The Indian gangster with purple hair. Tell him if I ever see this Hajji again, our business together is through! You hear me? Make sure he gets it. And Yuksel?”

  “Sir?”

  “Read it back to me.”

  It took us several more tries before Yuksel was able to capture the spirit of the message. Then I returned to the party.

  My special agent has informed me that Ahmed was taken into custody that same night at approximately 9:00 P.M., just as Vivienne and I were stepping into the Gansevoort for Philip’s Fleet Week party. It’s strange to think about what happens simultaneously at the most insignificant times. Never for a moment did my mind wander outside of the industry bubble.

  You see, it never did occur to me that a higher authority would come knocking on my door.

  1. Also known as NLEC.

  2. See Plato, The Republic.

  3. The correct spelling is Cunanan.

  4. Women and cocaine, presumably. Lifted from the title of the 1982 series Joanie Loves Chachi, a spin-off of Happy Days. Although Joanie Loves Chachi didn’t connect with viewers in the United States and was canceled after two seasons, it was actually a big hit in the Philippines, where it still runs in syndication.

  5. No such vessel. Most likely it was the USS Katherine Walker.

  Camp Delta Blues

  Yesterday, I witnessed a grooming incision. It is very hard for me to gather the right words for such an act of brutality, and so I must use their term. A grooming incision. A cut on the wrist by a dull razor.

  Khush, which is what I heard him called in the prison yard once, was not a likable man by any means. He was unwell. How, you ask, could I tell this when he didn’t speak a word of English? Isn’t it true that we can detect illness much like the way we can sense an attraction? Khush reminded me of a rabid dog. He looked fine from afar, but once you got closer you caught the glisten in his eye and the foam around his jaw. This is the replacement I was administered w
hen my first bathing partner, my friend Riad, decided to turn himself into a vegetable through a diet of air.

  We were together on deck, Khush and me, waiting for the showers. I didn’t even look at him.

  Once they became available, our numbers were called.

  We moved swiftly in our shackles, entering our respective stalls. Khush to the left, me to the right. The metal grate slammed behind us and the guards locked the dead bolts. We turned around and moved forward, placing our hands through the opening of the shower door. Our shackles were removed. We undressed and handed our clothes to the guards through the slot. We were given our small bar of soap and other amenities. Khush, like me, had also been deemed compliant, and so we were both given the option of the plastic razor. A very dull razor.

  Cold water from the nozzle. Two minutes.

  Looking down at my feet I watched the streams from both our showers converge into the single drain between the two stalls. I was able to see my bathing partner’s feet. The water pooled together before it went down the drain. This time I didn’t muster the will to lather myself with the bar of soap, or even shampoo my hair. Instead, like a child, I opened my eyes to the sun overhead and let the rays blind me. I remember doing this as a kid in the outdoor shower at my parents’ beach house on Samar. I’d rinse the salt off my little body and the sand out of my scalp under a trickle of water.

  One learns to tell time without clocks in prison, automatically counting the seconds in one’s head. And so I knew when our two minutes were almost up. I looked down at my feet and my eyes were not yet adjusted to the light. They were subjected to that distortion of tone one gets after peering directly into the sun. Everything was tinged red. So, you see, I expected the puddle at my feet to be the color it was.

  I suppose it should have been no surprise what happened. As I said, this Khush was not right in the head.

  “Medic! Medic!” a guard yelled. The water was cut off. My sight began to return to normal. I had to squint in order to see that it was indeed blood at my feet. I stood back against the shower gate. I crept onto the balls of my feet, but there was no escaping it. The blood had seeped underneath and filled my stall entirely. Khush must have hit an artery, because once all the water had drained, the blood just kept coming.

  “Let me out,” I said, but no one did.

  I asked Spyro about the incident during our reservation this morning. We’ve been meeting more and more frequently now that he’s read my confession.

  “It was a suicide,” I said.

  “I haven’t heard about it. Let’s get back to Ahmed and your relationship with Hajji.”

  “That can wait,” I said. “A man cut himself while we were in the shower. I want to know if he is alive or dead.”

  “It’s that important to you? You want me to stop. You want me to stop our progress so we can find out what happened to this guy. You barely knew him. Why the sudden interest? Why are you stalling?”

  “His blood was on me. I would like to know if he’s alive.”

  “So you got a little blood on you. So what?”

  My interrogator took out a pen from his inner breast pocket.

  “Do you have a name?” he said.

  “Khush,” I said. “I don’t know his last name.”

  He wrote it down. “Do you know his number?”

  “I only know my number,” I said.

  I could hear him breathing through his nostrils. He was like a bull at times, my interrogator. He stood up, took the scrap of paper, turned to me once more in frustration, then left the room.

  I don’t know why I wanted to know whether Khush was still alive. I’d never said a word to him. With the amount of blood I’d watched him lose it would be a miracle if he was still breathing. But what did I know? I needed closure on the matter of this grooming incision, this suicide, you see. Otherwise, it would remain uncertain, just like everything else in No Man’s Land.

  My special agent returned and sat down at our table.

  “Your friend…Khush. You’ll be happy to know he’s alive. He hurt himself. Badly. That’s all. He’s in the infirmary in critical condition. They say he wasn’t right upstairs. He was depressed. On all sorts of medication. But he’s alive. According to the CO it wasn’t too serious. Happy now?”

  “Am I happy? A man tried to kill himself next to me. He should be dead! But only he’d be too lucky!”

  “All right, will you calm down? It was self-harm. A cry for help.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “What is?”

  “Everything. This place. This room. This is all bullshit. I’ve had enough.”

  “Now just calm down. You haven’t had enough of anything. We’re just getting started, you and me. Now, focus. I told you what you wanted to know. Now I want to know what I want to know.”

  “Which is what? The same thing over and over.”

  “I want you to stop delaying and tell me the truth.”

  “Delaying?”

  “Yes, delaying. Delaying.”

  “A man tried to take his own life!”

  “But he didn’t, did he? He’s alive!”

  Perhaps I’d hoped my disposition would return to the way it had been before the incident, so long as I knew Khush was alive. But nothing changed. I felt no relief. It was the act alone that haunted me, not the condition he was in now. Spyro was right: It didn’t matter one way or the other.

  “I’m going insane in this place,” I said, placing my head in my hands. I couldn’t continue with our reservation. I wanted to go back to my cell and curl up under my blanket.

  “This is a natural reaction to violence, Boy. You saw something that’s hard to understand. You’re traumatized. I know how you feel. Don’t act like I don’t. I’ve seen it happen too. I’ve seen people get killed. I’ve seen innocent people get killed.”

  “He wasn’t innocent? Who’s to say?”

  “He was in here, wasn’t he? There was a reason he was in here. Just like there’s a reason you’re in here.”

  “I’m in here because a mistake has been made. A grave mistake.”

  “You’re in here because you associate with terrorist scumbags. And I want to know who and when.”

  I stood up.

  “Sit down. We’re moving on.”

  “But we go nowhere. We’re not moving. It’s the same thing over and over with you.”

  “Sit down, I said.”

  I did as I was told.

  “I’ll recommend that you see the psych tech. ASAP. Happy?”

  ASAP. Everything here is promised to you ASAP.

  “When will I get out of here?” I said.

  “When you tell me everything I need to know.”

  I continued on. I continue on because the man in the cell next to mine, a Yemeni, is so old that I can smell his dying. Because dying has a particular smell. Because I know that if I do not continue on with my confession, I could end up just like him. He doesn’t speak a lick of English, this Yemeni. I think he’s too old. At some point the brain is too stubborn to learn anything new. Not to mention, he looks as if he couldn’t hijack a bicycle. But whether he is an enemy or not doesn’t concern me. I’ve thought a lot about what my special agent said to me regarding each prisoner, how each of us has a valid reason to be here, though some of us don’t deserve to know why. I hardly care anymore. I’ve been asking the wrong question all along. Why is of no use to me. I am here. There is no why. There is only this. Therefore, I shall focus the rest of my energy on getting out.

  The old man will soon die. I don’t feel the least bit bad about saying so. He’s letting it happen to himself. He’s given up. Maybe he’s reasoned that in here he can get an operation from the Americans, where in his homeland he’d already have expired. Maybe he’s thinking, “What would I do out there but die anyway?” Who knows. As I said, he doesn’t speak English. He’s lost his will to live, that much is clear to me.

  I must soldier on and finish my confession. Onward, I say, I am ready. I will not fa
ll through the cracks of history a war criminal, when really, as I’ve been saying over and over, I’m just a designer of women’s clothes. I am innocent! That is the only constant that keeps pushing its way forth into my impossible equation. An innocent man should have nothing to fear. If it is the truth that my special agent wants, then it is the truth that will free me from this cell.

  It is true that I heard about Ahmed’s arrest the day after it happened. May 26. Ben told me over a Mexican lunch at El Baño. We took the secret entrance through the back alley, because many of the restaurants in the city at this time built secret entrances for the in‑the-know regulars. You had to walk through the bathroom in order to get to the main seating area. It was a coed bathroom. We were expecting a good table, but what we got was so close to the actual bathroom that anyone taking a whiz could hear our conversation.

  “This restaurant has lost its je ne sais quoi.”

  “Maybe we should have taken the front entrance and waited,” Ben said. “Why use a secret entrance if we’re going to be treated like a bunch of amateurs? So much for this place.”

  “I only hope the carnitas is still good.”

  “I’ll have the plantains,” he told the waitress. “Tap water. A coffee, black.”

  “Carnitas enchilada and a café con leche,” I said. “You’re not eating?”

  “New development.”

  “With Neiman Marcus?”

  “No, something else has come up. You know how I have old friends over at the Post. Well, this morning I spoke with George Lipnicki, who used to cover fashion and entertainment a million years ago. Now his beat is everything Homeland Security. Counterterrorism. If a terror suspect is under surveillance and so much as farts in the tristate area, George catches wind of it. Anyway, I overheard a name familiar to us. Your backer friend, Ahmed. George mentioned ‘Qureshi.’ It was in passing. ‘How was your day?’ ‘Shitty, this Qureshi thing.’ I said, ‘Hold it, not Ahmed Qureshi?’ He said, ‘Yeah, that sounds like the guy. How’d you guess?’ Ahmed was picked up in Newark last night. The feds have him.”

  “What? Get the fuck out of here. For what?”