I, Who Did Not Die

by Zahed Haftlang

  “Sometimes these tics correct themselves. Other times, not.”

  I became a source of great amusement to my captors. I could no longer work construction, but they still put me in service, pouring them tea in the officers’ dining room. My slippers squeaked as I dragged my wooden feet across the tiles, and the saucers rattled as I set teacups before the officers with my crippled hands. Each time I spilled tea, they sent me back to the kitchen, demanding I do it right. They laughed cruelly each and every time.

  “Are you belly dancing for us, Zahed?”

  “Hey, Zahed, need a napkin? You’ve got some drool on your chin!”

  Go ahead, laugh. Don’t mind me while I do this shaky dance to pull a dead mouse out of my pocket, lift the lid of the samovar, and drop it in. They played their games with me, and I played mine. I came up with all sorts of additives for the tea. I drooled into the teapot, peed in it, and even shook my hair over it to share some of my lice. I’ll never know if it was me that did it, but whenever one of the tea guests fell ill, I rejoiced.

  Within a year, we were moved out of the containers and into the new cells. Our two-story cinder-block dormitories were designed like American roadside motels, with long rows of ten-foot-by-twelve-foot rooms, and a single covered corridor running past the front doors. Each cell had one window covered by iron bars, and contained two bunk beds shared by twelve men. We had to double and triple up in the beds, and rotate turns on the floor, to keep things fair. The rooms were unlocked, and we could come and go during the day. But at night if you went outside you were likely to be shot, so no one dared. The prisoners had constructed an auditorium, a kitchen, bathrooms, and a storage room. We dug a large well in the yard and built four watchtowers and an iron gate for the camp. We painted the command building and paved the road leading into camp with asphalt. We even built solitary-confinement rooms, each no bigger than a broom closet, with the spike ends of nails protruding inward from all four walls, so that a prisoner would be forced to stand totally still inside. The space was so tight that you could barely bring your hand to your mouth, and falling asleep or leaning on a wall could be deadly, or at least extremely painful. Imagine standing in an upright coffin made of cactus leaves.

  One afternoon as I was clearing the teacups, an officer’s hand flashed out and grabbed me by the wrist. “Leave the dishes. We have something better for you.”

  A group of soldiers led me outside, behind the dormitories, until we were standing at the edge of a massive dirt pit, a hundred feet across and ten feet deep, where all the sewage pipes emptied. Mira Sahib had ordered us to put a plastic tarp over it, but still the smell permeated the entire camp. Now the guards rolled back the cover, and inside, the sludge had risen to a height of about three feet. The pit wasn’t lined or anything, so the liquid sewage had seeped into the dirt, and the shit had risen to the top and baked in the sun, forming a fetid crust.

  Even though I garbled most of my words these days, there was one word I could still say with perfect clarity.

  “No. No, no, no, no!”

  I tried to backpedal, but someone kicked me over the edge anyway. I felt the crust briefly bend under my weight and then give way, sucking me into a putrid muck that oozed up my pant legs and down my collar and into my ears, and I clamped my hand over my mouth and held my breath until I could thrash my way back onto my feet. I did my best to stand at attention like a soldier despite my involuntary jerking. I dripped in filth while they threw bottles and stones at me, refusing to grovel because that’s what they wanted. I remained a statue, letting the objects bounce off my body, but this only made them try harder to break me. When they failed to get the reaction they wanted, Mira Sahib approached the edge of the pit and unzipped his pants. I didn’t move as his hot yellow stream arced through the air and splattered on my chest.

  When the novelty of their new game finally wore off, they left me in the shithole. Maybe if I was my whole self with working hands and no shakes, I could have crawled out of the pit, but in my current condition I was trapped. I waded to one side of the pit so I could at least lean against the dirt wall if I fell asleep. Night came and I watched the stars come out and thanked them for reminding me what beauty was. I looked up and imagined the white pinpoints in the sky were part of a big lace curtain, and behind that was some force watching me.

  “OK, God, you have my attention,” I shouted to the stars. “What have I done to deserve this? What can I do to make it right?”

  As I waited for an answer, I tried to go back and figure out where my life had gone wrong. Was it when my parents first met? When I was born? Was it when I stole Baba’s money? When I ran away? When I saved the enemy soldier? When Mina died? When I stole gold from a corpse? When I killed my first man? My life seemed like a series of bad luck, bad juju, and bad decisions, so many wrong turns that it was beyond impossible to find my way again. God still hadn’t answered me by the time the sun began to show itself, but I wasn’t surprised. I would have given up on me, too.

  Not long after sunrise, I heard footsteps. I pushed myself up off the side of the pit and my tremors kicked into high gear, anticipating that Mira Sahib and his cronies were back for more. I blinked into the sun at the outline of two silhouettes and saw that it was Agha-ye Ahmadi and Amu Safar, lowering down a ladder. Maybe God had been listening. I crawled up a few steps on the ladder and they hoisted me up while I clung there, blubbering like a baby.

  “Barbarians,” Agha-ye Ahmadi said as he helped me to my feet.

  My saviors walked me to the showers, but Mira Sahib blocked the washroom entrance with his hulk.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. “Back to your cell.”

  Just when I thought I’d mastered the art of turning myself into a stone without feelings, Mira Sahib discovered one little nerve I’d overlooked and bit down on it. He had found a way to make me the Ramadi untouchable, a shaking, drooling, retch-inducing turd disgusting even to myself. My clothes were so soiled that I couldn’t distinguish stripes anymore, and I smelled like the inside of a squatty. I had to walk down the corridor like that, as the other prisoners hurled shoes and whatever else they could find at me, pelting me until I tripped and fell onto all fours. It took everything I had left to stand back up, because all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and howl. But amidst all the hollering directed my way, I could still hear Mira Sahib laughing at me, clear as a bell, and I have to tell you, that supremely pissed me off.

  Sometimes, when Mira Sahib was feeling generous, he would wave me over to a high-pressure hose, the kind that firefighters use. He’d open the valve and aim the water at me, knocking me to the ground. He’d hose me off as I rolled like a log, taking off what felt like two layers of my skin. I’d return to my cell dripping and dejected. No one wanted to sleep near me anymore, so my rotation in the beds came to an end.

  This became my new routine. The guards continued to toss me in the pit whenever they felt like it, which was like every week. And it always depended on Mira Sahib’s mood whether I could wash afterward or not. Sometimes I had to keep the layer of slime on me overnight. One time he waited a whole week before granting a shower. I developed skin infections and an uncontrollable itch. One day I looked down and saw worms crawling under my skin. Agha-ye Ahmadi tried to treat the worms and sores with salt water, which was all we had for medicine, but it didn’t do too much. I repelled everyone in prison, except for the three prisoners who tried valiantly to stick up for me and remind the others that I was an Iranian just like them: Dr. Ahmadi, old man Safar, and Daryoosh.

  Daryoosh knew what it was like to be hated in prison. People were envious of him because lately he had been getting special treatment. He was taken off work duty and for the last month he was allowed in the officers’ kitchen to eat anything he wanted. He came back describing kebabs and fresh vegetables and yogurt, and even though we all asked for reports, at the same time we didn’t want to hear the answers. It turned out Daryoosh had a rare blood type, one that matched the blood of one of the I
raqi officers who needed a kidney. A while back the guards had come by with syringes and taken blood samples from all of us. Daryoosh was the lucky winner. In my nearly two years as a prisoner, I’d never seen a doctor at Ramadi or heard of a prisoner being taken to a hospital, but one night Daryoosh was whisked away for surgery.

  A few days later, two guards deposited Daryoosh back in our room. It was the middle of the day, and everyone was out doing construction while I was passing the time alone until I had to pour tea. His skin was ashy, and he was stooped over like an old man with sunken eyes that focused on nothing in particular. He shuffled his feet as I helped him to one of the bunks.

  “What happened?”

  Weakly, he lifted his shirt. His belly was so bloated that the skin was stretched like a drum, and a jagged five-inch vertical line of stitches on the side of his belly-button was infected and oozing. His skin was hot to the touch, and his sweat was already soaking the blanket. Then he pointed to his other side. I rolled Daryoosh toward me and saw a second line of stitches.

  “They took both,” he said faintly.

  “Barbarian” was too kind a word for Mira Sahib. He’d had Daryoosh butchered, then brought him back on purpose so that we’d have to watch him die a slow, painful death as the unfiltered blood inside him collected and turned toxic. Daryoosh’s eyes fluttered closed and he groaned in agony.

  “Brother, make sure I get a proper Muslim funeral,” he said.

  I promised, and put his head in my lap so that he would know that he was loved. There was nothing I could do but try to make him comfortable, so I hugged and kissed him and brought him water, and then four days later he died in my arms. The cries of grief from our cell drew Mira Sahib like a vulture.

  “Get away from him,” he barked, and we scattered like mice.

  Mira Sahib walked up to Daryoosh and when he was satisfied that our friend was dead, the commander raised his foot and stomped on his distended belly, then walked out, leaving a bloody footprint in his wake. We rushed to Daryoosh, caressed his limbs, and began to pray. Each man poured a bit of his daily water ration from his canteen into a cup, and I ripped the lining from my jacket pocket, wet it, and wiped up the blood from his stomach. Then, following his last wish, we went through the traditional funeral rites. I took the wet cloth and wiped the top of Daryoosh’s head, then his face, and then the right side of his body from top to bottom before moving on to the left, all the while whispering the first surah of the Koran:

  In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

  Praise be to Allah, Lord of worlds,

  The Beneficent, the Merciful.

  Master of the Day of Judgment,

  Thee alone we worship; Thee alone we ask for help.

  Show us the straight path,

  The path of those whom Thou has favored; not the path of those who earn Thine anger nor those who go astray.

  We carried Daryoosh outside, behind the buildings, and buried him. I sat next to the mound of new dirt for a long time, and came to a decision. Okay, Mira Sahib, you win. I was done. I didn’t want to live with cruelty like this anymore. I walked back to the camp and waited until Mira Sahib crossed my path, then I waved him over.

  “Mira Sahib! Come here.”

  He stopped, stunned that I was ordering him to do something.

  “You motherfucker; you don’t tell me what to do!” he thundered.

  Still, the surprise tactic worked. He stomped over to me with his pile-driver gait.

  I fell to my knees and bowed my head.

  “Just kill me.”

  That laugh—again. In the chess match between Mira Sahib and me, he had just cornered my queen. I heard him spit and felt saliva land on my head.

  “Don’t be silly. Why would I kill you when I can slowly torture you to death?”

  FOURTEEN

  RADIO

  The welts on my back healed. The commandos left Arak prison, assigned to torture Iraqi POWs elsewhere, I guess. Our regular guards resumed their halfhearted watch over us, but with one major change: they stopped bringing sharp objects in from the outside. They still brought us gifts, cigarettes and candies and whatnot, but thankfully no more digging tools. Escaping through the sewers—come on, who came up with that? Someone was watching too many James Bond movies. The only way we were going to escape prison was to keep our heads down, stay calm, and ride it out. This war couldn’t go on forever.

  But 1985 became 1986, and marinated into 1987, and still the war dragged on. I fell into a routine designed to cut the days into smaller, predictable segments. Basra and Baghdad were so far away from me now that they were like dreams I had had once. With each passing year, the edges around them grew fuzzier.

  My days began with a whistle blast, then the morning lineup to be counted. This was followed by breakfast, which was always one of three things: boiled eggs and bread, cheese with bread, or lentil soup with bread. Then we went to the yard and separated into three tribes: those who exercised, those who made handicrafts, or those, like me, who sat around and told stories. I was a bit more fortunate than the others because I had a prison job to distract me. I was called on almost daily to translate for the commander, and my Farsi became almost fluent. Every afternoon, during the hottest part of the day, we escaped indoors for a nap. This was followed by the evening meal, which was indistinguishable from the morning one, then a second body count and the locking of our doors at six p.m. We only veered from routine every two weeks, when we were given a bucket of cold water and soap to wash ourselves, and on the rare rainy days, when we gratefully hung our jumpsuits outside to wash them.

  When I wasn’t translating, I was a storyteller-slash-actor. Eventually I ran out of Bruce Lee material and had to make my own movie. I decided on a murder mystery and set it during the American Civil War with Christians fighting Christians over power and borders and the right to own slaves. I gave it the title A Trip to the Gypsies, which will become clear in a minute. I had no paper or pencil to write my script, so I memorized the whole plot, creating seven episodes that each took an entire day to tell. I wrapped the inmates in its spell like a soap opera, giving them something to debate and anticipate. When everyone assembled in the courtyard to hear the latest episode, all I had to do was lift two fingers and a cigarette would appear there, a gift to the artist. Even the guards found reasons to linger on the sidelines, eager to watch even if they couldn’t understand the words.

  The movie opens in Texas, with two American cowboys, professional criminals, sitting under a tree. The one with the face of a fox tells the chubby one he’s going to give up crime. After a lifetime of victimizing almost everyone in town, they have become targets of a growing vigilante movement and have decided to skedaddle.

  Foxface marries and has a son who becomes a high-ranking police officer, lauded in the newspapers for his exceptional crime-fighting skills. This son marries a rich girl and they have a boy. One day the baby is found dead at the bottom of the staircase, and no one ever figures out what happened. The couple has a second child, also short-lived, found choked to death. When a third child is born, the father goes on high alert. He locks all the windows, loads his gun, and paces the house at night waiting for the murderer. He falls asleep and is awoken by a cry, rushes to the baby’s crib, and finds his wife with her hands around the child’s neck. He lunges to slap her hand away but accidentally hits the baby instead, killing him. Both parents are arrested, each accusing the other of murder.

  I left my audience there, the perfect cliffhanger, and when we gathered the next day, it was time for opening arguments in the courtroom. The wife hires the biggest attorney in town, who argues that no woman in history has ever killed her three children. He says the real killer is a former victim of the accused man’s father, back for revenge. The jury begins to turn on the father, until the mother, who has stayed silent through the entire trial, asks the judge for permission to speak.

  At this point, I feigned having to go to the bathroom, to build dramatic tension. Al
so, I wanted to sit quietly and remember her dialogue, to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. When I returned, the men fell silent, their looks expectant.

  “Okay, where was I?”

  “She’s on the stand!”

  “Yes, the mother tells the judge, ‘I was the one who killed my babies intentionally, and if I had more babies, I would have done the same.’ ”

  The prisoners gasped, waiting for an explanation. I straightened my spine and took on an air of righteousness, to get in character.

  “ ‘I am a woman who loves her children more than any mother in the world. I wanted to send my babies clean without corruption to God. Today’s young American men are depraved criminals who fight wars, they have become corrupted and dirty and addicted to drugs, so I wanted to do a favor to my babies and send them with total innocence to heaven. If you believe in Jesus Christ and God, you should do the same.’ ”

  The mother’s theory was so dangerous that the judge ordered all the courtroom doors locked and made everyone inside take an oath that they would never mention what she said to anyone. The grief-stricken father falls into a lifelong depression. The mother escapes prison with her attorney, and they flee the country to go live with the penniless gypsies.

  A good storyteller knows who’s listening, and I made sure the prisoners would identify with every character. The inmates were Foxface and Chubby, men who had killed other men, wishing they could exchange their pasts for a fresh start. They were the mother, desperately needing to believe that God would take care of them. They felt compassion for the babies, knowing intimately what it was like to be a pawn in the middle of a war. Yet they also empathized with the accused father, born into a history of violence and vendetta, destined to pay for the sins of previous generations. Although I gave up on grade school rather early, I still remember one of my teachers who explained that stories are about two things: there’s what they are on the surface, but what they are really about is underneath. If you asked the men what A Trip to the Gypsies was about, they’d say it was about a woman who killed her three children. But if you asked them how my movie made them feel, I hoped they’d say it made them sad to think about how it’s always the innocent who suffer when religion and greed hold hands.