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

by Alex Gilvarry

Someone flushed and exited the bathroom. The man practically had to step over our table on his way out.

  “Relax, keep your voice down. George is still looking into it. There could be some mistake, you know with the feds. I was detained in 2002 on a goddamn typo. And all these Muslim names run together—Ahmed al‑Mohammed-Sheik-bin-Barack-Hussein. George thinks that it was an arms deal. Weapons. A fertilizer bomb, maybe. It was a sting operation of the highest degree.”

  “I’m sorry, a what bomb?”

  “A fertilizer bomb. But none of this is confirmed. You need to take steps to distance yourself—”

  “That’s a real bomb?”

  “Yeah, made from fertilizer. But it takes tons of the stuff. You remember the psycho who got picked up coming in from Canada with a truckload of fertilizer. It wasn’t manure but the kind that can go boom. And what’s his name…the Oklahoma City scumbag. He used a similar thing.”

  “Fertilizer.”

  “Timothy McVeigh. He’s dead now. Why can we never forget the names of these madmen? They don’t deserve such places in our heads. Manson, Ted Kaczynski, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.”

  “Oh Christ. How was I supposed to know?”

  “These fucks always find a way to hurt us. Outlaw fertilizer, they’ll figure out how to blow up laundry detergent. Tide bomb, with bleach alternative. I’m surprised they haven’t thought of it.”

  The waiter brought over our lunch. I tried to remain calm, but I couldn’t help shifting in my seat. I fumbled for my purple pills.

  “C’mon, eat,” said Ben.

  “Listen, I tell you this not because you’re my publicist but because you’re my friend. You’re my friend, right?”

  “Of course I’m your friend. You can tell me anything.”

  “Okay. I’ve been to Ahmed’s apartment recently. I think I saw what could have been sacks of fertilizer. Piles of fertilizer, like in a nursery. I didn’t ask for what. He always has shit coming and going. I mean, a fertilizer bomb? How was I supposed to know? It sounds made up.”

  “Easy, Boy. Take it easy. Okay, you saw something. A lot of something. But to your knowledge, it’s not an illegal substance. And who knows what he was going to do with it.”

  “Jesus. What do you think is going to happen?”

  “Well, let me be honest. There’s an investigation. I’d say you’re going to be picked up and questioned. Seeing as you two have had plenty of contact, they’ll want to know what about—which they probably know already—and you will tell them the truth.”

  “The truth?”

  “He was an investor.”

  “He was!”

  “Take it easy, don’t get excited. What’s the worst that could happen? They take you in for a day, two hours, maybe they ask you to come back for another meeting. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “I can’t believe this. Fuck! I’ll be deported. I can’t go back, Ben.”

  “Easy, Boy. You won’t be deported. Questioned, that’s all. To confirm what they probably already know. In this day, it’s standard procedure. According to our current shit-eating administration, we all have to make sacrifices. Even if it means missing London Fashion Week because of some bureau clown’s fuckup—true story. I was detained because of ‘homophonic similarities,’ let me remind you. Treated like some two-bit criminal. But not you. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Ahmed.”

  “What’s the worst that could happen? You’re an up‑and-coming designer.”

  “I took money.”

  “What else? He was an investor! That’s the nature of the thing. There’s an old saying. Goes, ‘Ours is not to wonder why…’ Ever hear it? You take money from investors; who’s to ask how they got it? You’re in the clear, Boy. What have I been saying? I come with information so you can be prepared. In case. Now c’mon, let’s eat.”

  “I can’t. I’m going to be sick.”

  I excused myself and dry-gagged over a heated toilet seat, a TOTO, desperate for every vile thing within to come spewing out and then get flushed automatically while I ran my filthy mouth through its built‑in bidet. But I was empty inside. I laid my head on the warm seat and stared into the depth of the bowl. Oval, like the inside of an egg. Head still on toilet, I got fetal. I reached into my right jacket pocket for my purple pills. I managed to break open the child safety cap on the bottle with my thumb, only this caused many of them to spill onto the floor. I caught two in my palm and brought them to my mouth, chewing them into a dry rocky powder. I swallowed.

  Ben must have come in to check on me, because the next thing I knew he had kicked open the stall door, which I hadn’t locked. “Dear God, kid, how many did you take?”

  “Two. I spilled the rest.”

  “You’re kidding. I thought you tried to off yourself. Here, get up.” He grabbed me under the arms and got me onto my feet. “Now, brush yourself off. There. Can you stand?” He gave me a couple of loving slaps on the cheek. “Go clean up. Otherwise who’s gonna kiss that handsome face of yours.”

  I went to the sink and threw some cold water on my face.

  “Here,” Ben said, handing me a towel. “Dry off. I didn’t mean to freak you out. You’re going to be okay. Worse comes to worst, I know a good lawyer.”

  “Worse comes to worst…Where does that expression come from?”

  “It’s just a saying. I don’t investigate where things come from, Boy. I was brought up Irish Catholic.”

  We discussed the possibility of turning myself in, though Ben suggested not to worry about that yet, to go on with my life, and if and when the FBI needed my help, they would get in touch with me. And so I did just that. I went on with my life, unsuspecting. If the time came for my adopted country to call on me, I would tell them what they needed to know.

  In the Qur’an, particularly a chapter titled “Sad,” there is much about the day of judgment, when that which is coming comes, when all of us will be divided. Believers on one side, nonbelievers on the other, a line in the sand between us. Hypocrites versus the righteous. And each group thinks the other ones are the hypocrites. Who’s to say which side is right? There’s no guidance in this life but your own conscience. That’s what I say. If your conscience is telling you to do harm to others, so much for you, you’re finished in this world. No one likes a madman. Only begets more madmen. My own version of the truth doesn’t include an afterlife. There’s just this one, and if you make the best of it, be true to yourself, treat others with reasonable respect, drop your spare change in a coffee cup once or twice a week, etc., I happen to think you can be very happy. Worry about what comes around next and you’re likely to go crazy and override what your conscience is telling you.

  I just read: “Those who deny the life to come, the heavens and all its splendor, shall be sternly punished in the hereafter.”

  This is where I disagree with the glorious book. I haven’t studied it intensely, like the rest of my cohorts here. Each one of them has devoted his life to it much like the way I devoted mine to fashion, and that’s fine by me. I’m not trying to be social critic number one. People get fatwas for that kind of thing. Those who deny the life to come… That means me. By the book I’m damned. A kafir. The infidel. The unbeliever. Well, now, by the looks of it, I’m already serving my sentence along with these other guys. Judgment day is upon us. What does that tell me? I can’t extract much meaning or hope from what it says in the glorious book, but for these other sorry individuals, I’m starting to see why they put all their eggs into Allah’s basket. They’ve come from nothing, fallen into paths of more nothing, and have been put through a lot of shit, so they think: How can things be this bad forever? Logically, if there is no god but God, it can’t. Their glorious book confirms that they’re onto something special just the way the September issue tells me knit jersey is in. And so, they have their afterlife and I have New York. I got my heaven the first time around. These poor bastards are still waiting.

  Apropos of the Ferti
lizer

  I have never been a depressed person. That was my father’s disposition, not mine. Me, I thought I could handle anything, which has proved true for the most part. Look at how far I’ve come. I made it all the way to New York City, a little pinoy from Marlboro Street. And look at where I am now—the edge of the world, the rim around America’s rectum, and I haven’t fallen in yet.

  This morning, as Spyro promised, a visit from the psych tech. She had blond hair tied back into a bun. No makeup. Her accent was familiar, the Northeast. Massachusetts or Rhode Island. We talked through the mesh grate of my cell. She made notations on her clipboard each time I answered a question.

  “Do you know who you are?”

  “Two-two-seven.”

  “I mean your name. What’s your name?”

  “Boy.”

  “What’s your full name?”

  “Boyet Hernandez.”

  “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”

  “Reyes.”

  “What’s her mother’s maiden name?”

  “Araneta.”

  “What do you do, Boy?”

  “What do you mean, what do I do? I’m a prisoner. I do nothing.”

  “You’re not a prisoner. You’re being held here indefinitely until we can establish whether you are an enemy or a nonenemy. This is not to be looked at as the end, Boy. This is only a stop at the beginning of a long journey.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Can I ask you a few more questions. Is that okay?”

  “Do what you must.”

  “Are you eating?”

  “If you call this food, then I am eating.”

  “Are you sleeping?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Are you?”

  “It’s impossible to sleep more than an hour here. There’s always commotion on the block. I hear noises.”

  She stopped writing on her clipboard. “And these noises—what do you hear?”

  “Are you asking me if I hear noises in my head like some psychotic? These are real, believe me. Go ask the others. There are noises that keep us up at night. The guards. And the men being taken from their cells. And bombs. You can hear bombs being set off in the night.”

  “Bombs.”

  “Yes, bombs. Explosions.”

  “Do you have nightmares, Boy?”

  “If I can sleep, I dream nightmares.”

  “Are you feeling despair?”

  I started to laugh. It was a nervous laughter that I knew would produce tears. After a few breaths I couldn’t hold it in. I began to sob. I turned away from the psych tech. And wouldn’t you know it, she continued to ask me questions, even though it was obvious I was too broken to answer. And when I didn’t answer, she waited just a short moment before moving on to her next question. She was in a hurry! It was quite obvious she was working from a script. She didn’t even ask about the incident with Khush.

  “Do you want to harm anyone, including yourself?”

  How can a man be expected to answer that from in here? Yes, I’d like to kill you and your entire family, if I could. And then I’d love to do myself, but only under the condition that I am still in here.

  Then the young woman from Rhode Island or someplace like it explained to me the benefit of image therapy. “Picture,” she said, “your happiest moment. Close your eyes and begin to breathe deeply. In through your nostrils and out through the mouth. In. Out. Take a second to look around in this happiest of moments. Who’s there? Why are they there? Why are you so happy? What is it about this moment in your life that makes you want to go back to it?”

  I closed my eyes and pictured my white tent in Bryant Park. The catwalk, the collections, my bildungsroman. Backstage. Olya, Dasha, Kasha, Vajda. Thongs, asses, hair, makeup. Oh, but it was no use! What happened to my white tent during this silly exercise? I saw a spatter of red across its canvas surface. Khush’s vein carved open with a dull plastic Bic.

  I could not lift the razor’s edge from my thoughts.

  The psych tech took pity and placed me on antidepressants, to be administered daily. Small comfort. The meds don’t kick in for weeks, and I don’t have weeks. My November 17 tribunal is just ten days away, according to the president’s letter.

  After she left, I was fed my lunch and then taken away for another reservation with Special Agent Spyro. He had transcripts of my phone conversations in the days that followed Ahmed’s arrest, courtesy of those turncoats at Herizon Wireless. Privacy, my ass. There’s no such thing as a private phone call these days. He knew the times the calls were made, what was said. I ask you, who would not look bad when listened in on? I’m almost certain that if the circumstances were reversed, and the American people got to snoop on the calls made between the president and his vice commandant, there would be riots on Pennsylvania Avenue. A coup d’état. My point is that when things are spoken behind closed doors they are said with the belief that no one, with the exception of the parties involved, will hear them. Here’s a little piece of truth about human nature: Sometimes, we just don’t think about what we say before we say it. Once in bed, I called Michelle a whore after she pulled my pubis. “You whore,” I said. Of course there was no exchange of currency, though I did end up paying for it in the proverbial sense, with her fucking play.

  Apropos of my teletranscripts, those bums at Herizon have taken all of the humor and inflection out of my phone conversations. What we are left with is language without voice. Just words on a page. Even I had difficulty deciphering these words during today’s reservation. However, Spyro has allowed me to keep the transcripts, and so I have gone ahead and reestablished the tone of the calls, using Herizon’s documents as an aide-mémoire.

  Here is what was said between me and the various parties on May 27, 2006.

  At 0900 I received an incoming call from Ben Laden.

  “Page two of today’s Post. Do you have it?”

  I did. Alarmed by the urgency in his voice, I ran to get the paper, no questions asked. I turned to George Lipnicki’s article on page two. I read over the phone: “ ‘Ahmed Qureshi, a former fabric salesman, was arrested on Friday at the Sheraton Hotel near Newark International Airport.… According to the criminal complaint, Qureshi has been accused of selling and transporting ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a key ingredient in homemade explosives.… The Canadian salesman…’ Huh…he’s really Canadian. I wondered. ‘The Canadian salesman was caught red-handed in an FBI sting operation where Qureshi allegedly praised Osama bin Laden to an FBI informant.’ ”

  “He praised Osama bin Laden,” Ben said. “Can you believe that?”

  I read on: “ ‘He’s a great man, bin Laden. He did a good thing.…’ ” These were not my words. You see, I was reading the article from the paper. Words taken out of context can go over very badly, especially if they are to be used as evidence in one’s tribunal.

  “My namesake is back in the paper,” said Ben. “Just when I thought I was in the clear. Allah akhbar my ass.”

  “This is bad, Ben.”

  “When I talked to George he had no idea about Ahmed’s connections with the label. And I didn’t tell him. I don’t think anything will lead back to you. All the information he has is from the feds. He won’t be doing any snooping when a story like this gets dropped in his lap. It looks like they got their man, and everybody’s happy. The new story is justice—what happens to Ahmed now? That sort. What can I say? I think we dodged the bullet.”

  “This is crazy. I don’t understand.”

  “He was a psycho. You can’t understand psychos. Why try? They’re fucked in the head.”

  “Yes, but I don’t believe he would want to hurt anybody. I know him, Ben. He’s not capable.”

  “Do me a favor: Go on with your life. There’s nothing you can do until you’re called in for questioning. And that’s not a definite. You may never hear of this again.”

  After I spoke to Ben, I made some breakfast. A strange thing to do after receiving such news, considering
my reaction on the day prior in the restroom of El Baño. But I would challenge you to name one man who has shown consistency in the face of surprise. Again, I must invoke the president himself in my analogy. Two out of three of the most shocking events of his term thus far brought the same reaction: paralysis and denial. Very consistent. However, consider how he handled the news when his own right-wingman1 gunned down a fellow septuagenarian, mistaking him for a quail: “I am satisfied,” said the president with such outward calm. And what composure! But I am sure that inside the president’s own soul he was deeply shocked and disturbed when he uttered those words.2 Inwardly, I admit, I was a basket case, while outwardly I soft-boiled two eggs for five minutes. Then I ate at my worktable in order to go over some sketches. I cracked the little tops of the shells, salted the eggs, and opened their soft outer whites with a teaspoon. When I was no longer hungry, for I rarely finished two eggs, I turned my attention to the blank page and began to sketch a silk dress, crêpe de chine with sequined details.

  At approximately 10:05 as I continued work on my sketch, I was interrupted by a second phone call.

  “Guess who, Tenderfoot. It’s Horseradish.” Damn. It was that Indian gangster, Hajji, from the Gansevoort. I had told him to call me on Monday. But with Ahmed in jail I thought I could shake him on my own.

  “Right,” I answered. “Hey, listen, I’m glad you called. Turns out, I’m not going to need your help anymore. What do you know? I found a manufacturer right here in Brooklyn! Can you believe my luck? Anyway, it’s better this way, so—”

  “You see the papers?”

  “The papers?”

  “C’mon. Today’s paper. Extra, extra, read all about it. You’ll be interested to know our friend got pinched.”

  “Why, I don’t know what you mean. Listen, I really have to be going.”

  “Lucky lucky, rubber ducky. They didn’t even mention you. Not a peep.”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Google this, Tenderfoot! U R fucked dot com! See what I mean? Now, how’d you like to stay out of the papers?”

  “I don’t follow.” I was stalling. I realized what was happening. This bastard was blackmailing me.