Cycling to Asylum

by Su J. Sokol

  The Protectrice steps in.

  “I can certainly see where that must have been extremely frightening. And you say in your account that when you saw this same officer in the newsfeed, looking in the direction of Madame Wolfe, you believed that he might target her. That you feared for her safety and for the safety of your children.”

  “Yes,” I say gratefully. “Yes, that is exactly correct.”

  Janie takes my hand in hers and squeezes.

  The Crown Officer takes up the questioning, seeming a little put off. “Let’s move on to the main series of events that you speak of in your application. Your participation in—let’s just call it a group for now—and your eventual arrest. Your lawyer has already provided medical and psychiatric reports, both from here and New York, to substantiate your claims of torture and post-traumatic stress disorder.” She nods towards Pierre-Ryan. “We also reviewed the research you provided to document the use of torture by the United States government and law enforcement agencies. Very … thorough.”

  I’m proud of Janie, who did that research herself under Pierre-Ryan’s supervision.

  “So my questions are not about that, but rather, about your own activities. You understand that even if you prove that you meet the criteria for protection as a refugee under the Act, you can still be excluded from Canada if it’s found that you committed certain types of crimes?”

  “Yes. My lawyer explained this,” I say.

  “Then I ask you to tell me now, in your own words, the reason you were arrested.”

  Pierre-Ryan has prepared me for this question. And Janie long ago taught me what every trial lawyer knows—that if you’re not sure of an answer, don’t guess. It’s better to simply admit that you don’t know.

  “I don’t know why I was arrested,” I say.

  “You must have some idea …”

  “It could have been for certain of our activities. Or just because they were trying to shut down political groups like ours. Or for reasons of their own. I can’t speak to that. In all the time I was in custody, they never told me why I was being held.”

  “Why don’t you describe your group’s activities. Did you break the law?”

  “We planned acts of civil disobedience. Engaged in some level of … of disruption.”

  “Disruption?” she asks.

  “Disruption of government projects we believed were harmful. Like the propaganda ads they used to justify the military invasions. Or to encourage people to turn in their neighbours. We replaced them with our own ads. And we did some sabotage …”

  “What kind of sabotage?”

  “Digital sabotage. Hacking. You know.”

  “Assume I don’t know,” the Officer says, with a look of encouragement.

  “We hacked into some databases. Like the weather experiments. And later, leaked info to show that they were using this research to create weather-based weapons. To threaten coastal countries that wouldn’t go along with their trade and economic treaties.”

  Pierre-Ryan stands up, pulling on his ear—a nervous habit he has.

  “My client has carefully outlined the various activities of his political group, to the extent that he understood them, in his submission.”

  “It’s instructive to hear about some of it in his own words. But I can ask a more specific question.” She turns to me again. “What did you do to ensure that the actions you took were the least extreme possible? Why not just demonstrate peacefully? Engage in voting campaigns?”

  I feel more confident now, talking about politics, about history. “In U.S. elections, the winners are already bought and paid for. Even before the ‘Electoral Freedom and Financing Act.’ Historically, third or independent parties have never been allowed to gain a foothold in the States. And demonstrations had simply become staging areas where government and law enforcement could test out their latest crowd-control weapons and techniques. Or get better footage of political dissidents for their dossiers. So some people chose to go underground.”

  “But destruction of data, couldn’t that cause greater harm? You wrote that your group tried to compromise the Unified National Identity Chip system. But this system is used for crime prevention and anti-terrorism measures.”

  “More for harassment of political activists. As well as apprehension and torture of undocumented immigrants. Other than that, the main thing the Uni system does is help mega-business organize their money-making activities by connecting biometric data with financial info and purchasing histories.”

  I can see she doesn’t buy it, but there seems little point in engaging in a political debate. I just wait for the next question.

  “You used physical sabotage as well,” she says.

  “Yes. Sometimes.”

  “And what did you do to guard against harm to individuals or property?”

  “We did research. Made sure buildings or sights were empty. We were always careful.” This is true, I tell myself. We did our best.

  “But even so, there’s always a risk when violence is used. Accidents can happen.”

  “Yes.” I say, refusing to look down. But I can feel my own heartbeat accelerate, feel the sweat begin to dampen my armpits. Is she monitoring the sensor feed right now? Is that why she’s looking at me so closely? I feel like an animal in a lab.

  “Was there ever any loss of life or physical injury as a result of one of your actions?”

  I know this would be the wrong moment to look at Pierre-Ryan. Or at Janie. Or even to hesitate. “I don’t know,” I say. That’s the right answer, isn’t it? When you’re not sure, you say you don’t know. Like before. And I don’t know. Not really. But why, then, do I feel a darkness descending on me? Like I’m drowning. Like I’m back in that room, and they’re drowning me again. I take Janie’s hand. Look at me. Please look at me, Janie. She turns her head towards me and smiles encouragingly. But her eyes are filled with fear.

  I turn towards Pierre-Ryan. He glances at me quickly and then addresses the tribunal.

  “We need to keep in mind that Laek was only a child when he participated in these activities. Of course he wouldn’t know everything that happened.”

  “Monsieur Wolfe,” the Protectrice du Québec asks. “How old were you when you first became involved in this group? And when you were arrested?”

  I turn towards her, relieved at the change of subject. The Protectrice is probably ten years older than the Officer, but she’s dyed her hair a lively red and her clothes are much more contemporary. At the same time, unlike the Officer, the Protectrice’s face doesn’t appear to have received any anti-wrinkle therapy, let alone surgery.

  “I was fourteen when I joined. Fifteen when I was arrested.”

  “The others in this group, what were their ages?”

  “Some were in their twenties. Others in their thirties. One who was older than the rest.”

  “What was your relationship with these others in your group? Were you close?”

  “Yes. They were like family. My brothers and sisters.” Even me? Al asks, in my head.

  “And your real family? They were …”

  I’m confused for a second, so she repeats the question.

  “I’d run off. My mother was in a cult. It was … I … Do I need to tell you about that too?”

  “No, that’s sufficient. But your father?”

  I see the cult leader standing over me. With my hair and eyes. But his face like stone.

  “I don’t know for sure who my father was.”

  “Can you describe your relationship with the older person in your group?”

  “We were close. This person was … like a mentor, I guess. Or … I don’t know.”

  “Like a parent, perhaps? Might you have regarded this person in such a way?”

  “I suppose,” I say, though this doesn’t feel quite right.

  “This person, the whole group, they must have had a lot of influence on you.”

  I know where she’s going with this. And it’s good of her. But i
t’s also wrong.

  “The beliefs I had, that I have, they’re my own. I wasn’t brainwashed. If you want to talk about brainwashing, we can talk about my mother’s cult. Like I said, I left that.”

  “But the actions your group took, did you plan them? Or were they mostly planned by the others—the older members of your group?”

  “Mostly the others,” I admitted. “But I participated of my own free will.”

  “Would it have been hard to say no, perhaps?” the Protectrice asks me in a gentle voice.

  “I could have left. I could always have done that. I didn’t want to. Madame, you are very kind. But I need to be clear about this. I was young, yes, but I wasn’t forced by anyone. If anything, they tried to keep me out of danger as much as possible. To protect me.”

  “You were very young, though. Perhaps, had you been an adult, had you the opportunity to decide again, you might have chosen differently.”

  “Maybe. Is there anyone who wouldn’t do things differently if given a second chance? But I need to be clear about this. I do not disavow my activities with this group. And I won’t let my old friends take responsibility for my actions. That would be wrong. I’m sorry.”

  The Protectrice looks like she wants to argue, but the Crown Officer clears her throat.

  “Let’s return to my last question. Whether people may have been hurt. Were you arrested because someone had been harmed in one of your … actions?”

  “No. No one was ever hurt in any of our actions before the arrest.”

  “What about after? In your account, you don’t talk about what happened after your arrest. Or even how or when you were released.”

  Had I known what was coming? Is this why I couldn’t think beyond the hearing?

  “I was told that my release was secured by a children’s rights NGO. Though I don’t know if this is actually true. After I was freed, another group from my organization took me in.”

  I’d known most of them already, from previous mass actions. I think of Imani, who shared her bed with me most nights. But she only let me make love with her once. Said she was too uncomfortable with how young I was. I stayed with her anyway, even though a couple of the guys in our group would’ve slept with me. Imani, only twenty-one herself, was wise and quiet and strong. I thought she was beautiful. And I liked the way she smelled. She made me think of the rich earth and fragrant flowers in our backyard where she’d started an organic garden. She and I worked there most days.

  “You didn’t mention this other group. What did you do with them?” the Officer asks.

  I clench my jaw against an assault of sensory memory. A hand on my shoulder. The smell of boiled lentils. Of blood and soil. High-pitched laughter, a deep voice reading an old screen novel. I push it away. Focus on the question.

  “We didn’t have a chance to do much of anything. Less than two months after I joined them, there was another raid. They were all taken.”

  “What about you? What happened?”

  I close my eyes and just let the words come. “I was out when the Terror … when the Anti-Terrorist Squadron arrived. It was … it was devastating. I now believed I’d been released only so they could use me to find others from my organization.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know. I felt numb, blank. I think I wandered around the house for a while. It smelled musty. It was very empty. I thought about running. They might come back, take me too, torture me again. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave.”

  I feel Janie’s eyes on me, Pierre-Ryan’s as well. I know they’re both feeling derailed by this. A lawyer’s worst nightmare. Testimony that’s not only unrehearsed, but about events that weren’t even previously discussed. I rub my eyes with my fist. I’m so tired. I’ve been having those nightmares again. Little by little, memories of the event I’d long ago buried have come back. I stayed awake last night to avoid dreaming about it.

  “Go on,” the Crown Officer prompts. “Tell us what happened next.”

  “I went into the backyard of the house. To the garden. We had a garden. Some days, I’d stay out there from sun-up until sundown. Weeding, planting.”

  And during the night, I’d dream of pulling weeds, of my hands in the dark soil … I stop, confused. I feel Janie’s hand on my shoulder. Holding on tight.

  “Monsieur Wolfe? Are you alright? Can you go on?”

  “I .. I went out to the garden. We’d used old bricks to section off plots. I saw that the Terror … that they’d been back here. Destroyed everything. Shards of smashed bricks against the back of the house. The plants dug up, trampled. It just undid me, seeing that …”

  “What did you do?”

  “I picked up one of the broken bricks. Sat down in the middle of the yard. Where our garden had been. Thought about my friends who’d been taken. Thought about them being tortured, like I’d been. I thought about the Terror Squad coming back for me too. Then I used the brick to open up my wrist.”

  I remember the rough feel of it against my skin, how I kept digging and tearing at my wrist until I had a nice flow going. Just the one wrist, though. I wasn’t in a hurry. I watched the blood go into the soil. I felt OK watching that. Good, almost. I imagined my body returning to the earth. I lay on my side, watching the dirt become dark and wet with my blood.

  I’ve stopped talking. Maybe I’ve said enough. Maybe I can finally sleep. I hear Pierre-Ryan asking for a recess. An adjournment until tomorrow is proposed. I can’t go through this again. I push myself to my feet.

  “I can continue. Please, I … I want to finish.”

  The IRB member, the judge, speaks from his place in the front.

  “We will let the applicant continue his account.”

  I sit back down, relieved but shaky.

  “I don’t know how long I lay there. A long time, I think. Someone eventually found me.”

  “The… the Anti-Terrorism Squadron?” the Québec Protectrice asks.

  “No. Someone from my group. The previous one. The older person I’d mentioned. I woke up in the back of this person’s vehicle. A recreational vehicle. I was on a bed or couch, covered in blankets, my wrist bandaged up. Getting a blood transfusion.”

  I hope they don’t ask me how this was all managed. I can’t answer that. All I know is that Al has his resources. He always did. I continue.

  “This person nursed me back to health. And when I was strong again, asked me to participate in an action. Just this person and I would be involved. I couldn’t … I didn’t refuse.”

  “What were you asked to do?”

  “Enter a complex. In the midwestern drylands. Do some physical sabotage. I thought it was an important target, hidden away like that. I didn’t know what it was, though. Still don’t. I had an idea it was related to the weather-based weapons research. But maybe that was because of all the dry lightning that night. I may have confused it in my mind. I … I wanted to help my friends. I thought this was related somehow. I wasn’t very lucid maybe …”

  I realize I’m babbling and stop.

  “But you were asked to do this by your … friend?”

  “This is what I was good at. Getting in and out of set-ups. Memorizing long strings of code, seeing the complete physical layout of a place in my head. All this came naturally to me. And with the right tools and intel, it would be fast. So I … I didn’t really mind.”

  Am I talking too much? I look up and see everyone watching me, listening closely. The Québec Protectrice looks a little sad and I feel bad for her. The judge seems troubled. Pierre-Ryan is very alert, but looking at me as though from a great distance. Like I’m sliding down a mountainside and he’s trying to reach out to me but can’t. I won’t look at Janie right now, but I feel her iron grip on my arm. Instead, I turn to my questioner. She has an avid expression on her face. She sees me looking at her and smiles with encouragement. I go on.

  “I got in without a problem.”

  Despite the mantraps, timed lockouts, numerous coded entr
y points. A Sirius-cloud–type security set-up, but I had all the non-biometric pass codes. Tricks for bypassing the others.

  “I placed all the charges as instructed. The idea was to set off a series of linked explosions that would destroy outright certain key tech and cause massive flooding in other targeted areas. I had plenty of time to leave the complex before it became dangerous. But on my way out I saw there was someone in one of the rooms. No one was supposed to be there.”

  The man hadn’t seen me. To be in the building in the middle of the night, it had to be someone high level. Or an intruder like me. I could easily have just slipped out. But there was a charge set to explode on the other side of the wall. Right behind his head.

  “I warned him that he needed to leave. Immediately.”

  I close my eyes and it’s like a graphic screen novel, the colours too bright. I see him pull a disrupter gun on me. Fire it. I duck behind the entranceway as soon as I see the gun. The charge flies past me. But the man still isn’t leaving. I shout at him that an explosion is due to go off right behind him in three minutes. “Who the hell are you?” he asks me. I don’t answer. I just run.

  “Then I took off down the hall, hoping he’d get out too. He came after me.”

  Shooting at me down the hall. He clips me in the back of the shoulder and I fall with the impact. I lie there on my stomach like I’m unconscious. When he sees I’m not moving, he kneels down and turns me over. “Shit, you’re just a kid,” he says. I punch him hard, right in the face.

  “He caught up to me. We struggled.”

  I kick the gun out of his hand. It spins down the hall. We trade blows. He’s bigger than me, but less used to fighting with his fists. But the disrupter burn is starting to hurt badly. When the explosions start, he grabs me by the shirt and flings me against the wall. “Who the hell are you?” he repeats. “Who sent you here?” The pain in my shoulder makes red spots in front of my eyes. I keep fighting him. And keep trying to move us further away from the explosions. Water is beginning to flow in from the walls and ceiling. As we approach another mantrap, he pulls us both inside. Grabs a derma mask.