Spoils

by Brian Van Reet

  She gave birth to Hassan in 1983, in Islamabad, where she lived while I fought the Soviets across the border. It’d been her idea to return to the jihad. Egypt had been no place for us; in Afghanistan I was a hero, while in my homeland, little more than a fugitive. With the telltale stamps of a mujahid on my passport, I’d had a difficult time even reentering the country. I was briefly detained. Father had had to vouch for me, to bribe officials, and after my return, the State Security Service had dropped by the house several times unannounced, a little preventative harassment, nothing too serious, but enough to ensure I lived in fear of being rounded up and imprisoned during one of Mubarak’s periodic purges. Then again, there was more than stateless anxiety motivating our flight. Mariam hadn’t fallen in love with a taxi driver. She thought of me as a warrior, a fighter; she wouldn’t come right out and say it, but that’s what she expected me to be. And that’s what I became, again, for a time, for her.

  We’ve just gotten word over the radio that Dr. Walid’s first video has aired. The sergeant and the girl, embarrassing their country with testimony against its warmongering; Michael Crump, bruised and battered, glowering silently at the camera; the doctor making vague threats. I can no longer take the men’s gloating, so I wander off, eventually downstairs, where the only light is warm and orange, a kerosene lantern burning dirtily in the hallway. It reeks of fuel, and I worry about the air becoming poisoned. My shadow skulks over the wall as I join Abu Hafs in front of the girl’s cell.

  “How far do you think she’s gone today?” I ask.

  “God only knows, sayyidi,” the Yemeni says. “Every time I’ve checked, she’s been walking.”

  It’s common for prisoners to pace in agitation, but the girl’s exercise is clearly more than idle restlessness. Some days she must walk fifteen or twenty kilometers.

  “Is she still taking meals?”

  “Yes, sayyidi.”

  “Stop calling me that. Please.”

  He’s taken to using the honorific in addressing me. I haven’t yet discerned what he means by this, but it makes me uncomfortable, separating us too much; it’s like he’s afraid of me. Perhaps he has reason to feel this way.

  I struggle to come up with something to talk about, something small and human—it’s never been my strong suit. To break the silence, to busy myself, I ask him to unlock her cell. The lantern light dimly issuing through the cracked door must appear to her deprived eyes like a fiery beacon. I think of calling to her and telling her not to be afraid, but that’s a foolish thought, and I don’t act on it.

  I peer in, wanting a glimpse. Each morning after prayers, the men argue and cast lots over who’ll be the one to deliver her food that day, their desire barely masked, a paradoxical mixture of revulsion and flirtation: the condition of any woman is a strange one, at the same time venerated and reviled, powerless and all-powerful, and this is no ordinary woman. The brotherhood fairly pulses with masculine interest. They want her to teach them English. They call her a whore behind her back.

  Abu Hafs is clearly drawn to her and can often be found near her cell. I’m sure that with his youth and inexperience he’s even now plagued by unclean thoughts, and yes, I will admit to the same. I’ve stirred for her more than once; though, even while in delicto, was disappointed in myself, numbed by unsavory detachment from my body’s wants. I’ve lusted in my heart ever since I became capable of experiencing lust—who hasn’t? It’s better to admit this than to hold the schizophrenic and peculiarly Christian belief that one’s thoughts carry the same weight as actions. They don’t, and I am not guilty, nor ever will be, of laying a finger on her.

  I’ll grant that thoughts do sometimes lead to actions. I have confidence in my ability to control myself, but it’s only a matter of time before one of the others decides to take her, if it isn’t already happening without my knowledge. I don’t want that, yet here I am in the doorway to her cell, curious, watching. She’s lying in the corner, resting, or pretending to, her abaya drawn up around her face. To view her is anticlimactic. She’s the most valuable spoil we’ve ever taken, she’s elevated our brotherhood from unknowns to the talk of the world, but to see her, she could be any girl.

  I expect she must feel equally anonymous, even if she has grasped the magnitude of what her captivity must mean to her countrymen. I myself have spent no more than a few days behind bars, detained when I reentered Egypt after my first trip to Afghanistan, but that taste was enough. It took only hours for me to begin to feel abandoned by everyone outside the prison walls, which is the curse of all prisoners, even the most celebrated. Rulers, killers, revolutionaries; iron bars and dungeons have a sly way of effacing the distinguished, belittling the accomplished, stripping the entitled, enforcing anonymity across the board. The oubliette is so named for good reason and represents one of the prime truths of confinement. Forgetting. When on the free side of the cell, the jailer turns the key; on the far side, the famous, infamous, and ordinary alike all despair of being remembered.

  I watch her a moment longer before locking the door and taking a spot beside Abu Hafs in the hallway. He and I are alone.

  “Do you talk to her much?” I ask.

  “We aren’t supposed to,” he says quietly.

  “Right. But everyone does. I heard you were teaching her Arabic.”

  He hesitates.

  “I wouldn’t be angry if you were,” I venture.

  The boy looks down at his feet, the rust-stained wall, anywhere but my face. Yes, the cub has grown fond of her, perhaps a little smitten. What is the inverse of Stockholm syndrome?—is there even a term for that?

  Squatting on the floor, balancing my wrists on my knees, I tap a fingernail against the buttstock of his rifle, a familiar, conspiratorial gesture.

  “Some time ago you spoke to me of marriage. Do you have your eye on any girls in the bazaar?”

  “Not really,” he says, his manner precluding further discussion of the topic.

  “What’s on your mind, then?” I’ve noticed the distance in his eyes, the way they remain on the latch as if it holds a transformational power.

  “Can I tell you something, just between us?”

  “Of course,” I say, pleased he has come back around to confiding in me.

  “It’s about them. Her and the other prisoners. Sometimes I wonder if what we’re doing is right.”

  “Yes. I see. Well, it’s good to think this way, to examine one’s self. But remember, whatever the nuances of our situation, they are completely in the wrong. They chose to come here. They brought this on themselves.”

  He nods thoughtfully at what I’ve said, but the rest of his body betrays his disagreement with it, his mouth contorted, shoulders hunched; biting his bottom lip, he grasps for a way to express what he’s feeling and finds himself at a loss, reduced to uttering childlike truths. “I always had an idea of what the Americans would be like. But they are different than I thought. They’re just people.”

  I have to stop myself laughing, not wanting to insult him in his moment of vulnerability but struck again by just how unworldly he is. “Who did you suppose we were fighting? It is always ‘just people.’

  “When I was your age,” I continue more kindly, “there was a Russian soldier we came upon after a firefight. He had been badly wounded. I tended to him as he died, even though our emir at the time, a man named Jawad, scolded me for it. He wanted me to put the Russian out of his misery. That might have been the best thing. It’s what I would probably do now, anyway. But back then, I could see that the Russian was very afraid to die. The way he concealed his fear touched something in me, and it seemed like he appreciated what little I could do for him. A sip of water. A sympathetic face to look on as his life slipped away. It is inevitable, what you are feeling. There comes a time for each of us when we realize the truth about the enemy. Which is that he is not an idea, or some faceless demon. He is a man. And every man is much like ourselves.”

  There is quiet in the hall, the distant sound of t
he brothers upstairs celebrating the video’s release, as Hafs digests what I’ve told him.

  “She is not a man,” he says after a while.

  “She was doing a man’s work.”

  “So she deserves to die because of it?”

  “That’s not for me to say.”

  “But if it were,” he asks earnestly. “If you were emir again, what would you do?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say, and this is the truth.

  “Do you think Dr. Walid will have them all killed?”

  “If he gets his way, yes.”

  My admission seems to disturb him even more than I thought it would. His brow quickens. He cannot meet my gaze, staring instead at her cell door. “The other day she asked me to get a Qur’an for her. Do you think if she professed belief, the emir would spare her?”

  “How am I supposed to know?” I say, frustrated with his adolescent fixation on the girl. “Walid is a madman. There’s no telling what he’s capable of.”

  My treasonous words hang unanswered in the still, underground air.

  “You hate him,” the boy finally whispers, eyes wide, but nodding as if realizing he’d known this for some time.

  “You are no fool,” I say, leaning in closer, lowering my voice even more. “And now it’s my turn to seek your confidence. I’m trusting you with my life. And I feel compelled to warn you, because I’ve come to see you as a son.”

  Here I pause on the precipice, knowing full well that what I’ve just said is no exaggeration; if I have misjudged the boy’s loyalty, I will be endangering everything to continue.

  “What?” he asks, a soothing urgency in his voice, as if he is trying just a little too hard to reassure me that it’s safe to tell him.

  “I’ve been thinking of leaving the brotherhood for some time. I’ve got a bad feeling about the way this is going.”

  “Will the emir just let you leave?”

  “No, I don’t expect so. He would take it much too personally.”

  “So what, you’ll run away?”

  “Is that the kind of man you think I am? Someone who steals away from his obligations like a coward in the night? No, Walid may not let me go freely, but that doesn’t mean I won’t go. There are ways of persuading him to it. Cub, look at me. It’s not an easy choice for me to make. I’ve given my life to this. I would rather change the brotherhood from within than—well—but if I do leave, you should consider coming with me. You should strongly consider it. This may be the last chance you get.”

  The boy looks surprised, deeply unsettled, even a little sick. He must feel a host of clashing impulses: honor at the trust I have placed in him, uncertainty over having to choose between two feuding mentors, and above all, the fear, written all over his face, of how their conflict will play out.

  “I’m not sure I could,” he says.

  “Why not? What, because of her?”

  He doesn’t answer, but I can tell I’m right.

  “You’re young,” I say. “You have a strong sense of justice, and that’s admirable. But she isn’t your problem. If things turn out like I think they might, you will be throwing your life away along with hers.”

  12

  CASSANDRA: ANTIBODY

  17 Days After

  IRAQ (WATER TREATMENT PLANT)

  Crump’s screaming again and there is the furious whir of an electric drill being operated somewhere down the hall. These twinned sounds evoke horror-movie sequences of mutilation, gore splatter, panic: she was waiting for something like this to happen. Walid threatened to punish them if they disobeyed his instructions, and since Crump, even with a pistol to his head, refused to read his statement or to engage with the camera in any way other than stating his name, rank, and service number, this must be his punishment. A motherfucking drill.

  Cassandra rises from her pallet and begins to pace, circling her cell a few times before her guts turn to water and she squats over the pail and moves her bowels, her body unburdening itself gracelessly before its own turn comes. She doesn’t bother washing up with the pitcher of water, an unusual lapse in hygiene, and goes immediately back to pacing. The drill and Crump scream in angry antagonized bursts. The sounds give her wild visuals, blue and green fractals sparking in the darkness as she completes ten, fifteen laps. At which point Crump falls silent. The drill also stops and then begins again. Closer now. Twenty, forty laps, and the drill is repositioned a second time, just outside her cell. It’s biting into the wall outside her cell. It’s coming through the wall. There’s a beam of light as the bit emerges near the door, gouging an inch-wide hole. The bit is removed, spinning. The door opens. Hafs enters, proudly displaying the drill in one hand and a porcelain light socket in the other.

  “See?” he says. “I promise you. Now is no problem for the Qur’an.”

  Got light, she taps.

  How, McGinnis replies.

  Hafs wired bulb

  Good sign

  Maybe

  No it good

  OK how your arm

  Same

  She knows he tends to downplay; same means worse, the cut still infected. On top of everything else that might kill him, it’s his penicillin allergy that constitutes the most pressing threat, his body primed to self-destruct. Penicillin is all Walid’s got. According to McGinnis, Walid is supposedly sending men on regular trips to the bazaar, searching for an acceptable drug, but two wars and a decade of sanctions have made short supply of exotic antibiotics.

  Find any yet, she asks.

  No

  F that sorry

  There’s a long pause.

  He say maybe have to amputate

  The incandescent bulb mounted on her wall burns for the several hours the guards run their generator each day. When it’s dark in the cell she sleeps or paces or communicates with McGinnis. When she has light, however—and it’s possible she’s never been more grateful for anything—she devours the Qur’an that Hafs has given her.

  The volume is a well-worn paperback with a maroon cover and the title embossed in gold: Interpretation of the Meanings of the Noble Qur’an in the English Language. It’s no idle way to pass the time: reading takes her mind off the future better than anything else.

  Even so, she finds it difficult. Compared to what she remembers of the Bible, the Qur’an has nowhere near as many discrete stories with beginning, middle, end, its message revealed not so much in parable as direct pronouncement. Giving her the book, Hafs explained that Arabs consider it the most beautiful feat of prose writing accomplished in their language, but if that were true, something must’ve been lost in this translation.

  The majority of the verses lay out rules, warnings, and proscriptions. The first few surahs read to her like a long rant about how the unbelievers are going to hell. It surprises her, how harsh is the condemnation. She remembers the way prominent Muslims came forward after 9/11 to denounce the attacks and to defend Islam as the religion of peace—she remembers some called it that, the religion, not a religion. At the time she had no real opinion on the truthfulness of that claim, but the Qur’an seems far from peaceful. The battlefield is a continuing theme, and a significant number of passages set out rules for combat. Rivalry, feuding, and conflict make appearances in nearly every surah. If this is the religion of peace, she thinks, I’d hate to see a religion of war. Not that the Old Testament isn’t chock full of blood and guts and God’s holy wrath. There’s a famous psalm that ends with the image of babies’ heads being bashed in, and this is supposed to be a good thing. Monotheism is funny for its sheer wrathfulness. Once you corner the market on the divine, it becomes yet another thing to fight over.

  Be careful, McGinnis taps.

  About what

  Heard you two talking

  So

  Dangerous

  What

  Religion

  Lying on her side in the cell, ear to the drain, she laughs out loud, an exasperated laugh at his expense, at his absurd risk aversion: right on the line between overca
reful and craven. Here they are, held captive by men threatening daily to kill them in the name of God, and yet he feels the need to warn her that religion is a possible flash point in their relations. Like she hasn’t already thought through the possibilities and decided to take the risk anyway, to leverage the crux of the matter—conviction—to her advantage.

  Maybe they treat us better if we convert, she tells him.

  If caught faking they kill for sure

  Don’t get caught, she taps, then immediately changes the subject:

  Arm OK

  Skin cracks when I touch

  Sorry

  Is OK but afraid

  Of losing it

  Yes and

  Let him amputate

  Not yet am waiting while longer so they find meds

  They will, she assures him, but isn’t so certain, though she can hardly blame him for wanting to put off the decision about the arm until the last possible moment. She’d be equally reluctant to subject herself to major surgery undertaken in primitive conditions without proper sanitation or anesthesia. Even if there is a medical doctor, or someone claiming to be one, to wield the scalpel.

  Not wanting a thing never stops it from happening. She’ll learn the details later, but for now all she knows about McGinnis’s fate is what she overhears through the pipe. The sound of his door repeatedly opening and closing, a steady stream of traffic into his cell, the points of her hips growing sore from lying against the concrete, eavesdropping. Him talking with the guards. Although she catches only the odd phrase, the gist is they’ve devised a treatment and must remove him from his cell to administer it. She hears “medicine” from both him and the guards. Why they would have to remove him from his cell to dose him, Cassandra doesn’t understand. This question also bothers McGinnis who asks more than once where he’s going.