The Order of Nature

by Josh Scheinert

  The noise from the vehicle was muffled by the bag over his head. He could hear himself breathing loudly. Because of how his hands were tied, he was leaning slightly forward and his body jerked wildly as the jeep raced ahead, bouncing up and down over Banjul’s deserted, uneven streets. Every bump intensified the pain shooting through his body. With each slight movement, he had to clench his jaw and fists as tightly as he could to stay silent. There were men seated on either side of him, their bodies pressed together in the backseat; he was sure they could feel each time he grimaced through the pain.

  Before his head was covered, Thomas quickly searched for but wasn’t able to see any identifying insignia on the men who took him. As the jeep pressed on he imagined they were probably the rumored Black Boys, an unofficial police unit outside the official command structure who reported directly to the president. It was believed they were responsible for most instances of torture and abuse in the country. Placing a bag over a person’s head was said to be how the sessions most commonly began.

  Eventually, the jeep slowed down and came to a stop. The back-left door opened and the person sitting next to Thomas got out. All he heard was the silence.

  “Get out,” commanded the person sitting to his right.

  Thomas carefully shuffled his tied and hooded self to the left when the person to his right pushed him fiercely and unexpectedly, causing his knees to buckle as he fell forward into the car seat. Still, no one made a sound. As he struggled up again he was pushed another time, but this time forcefully enough that he fell from the jeep onto the pavement, his shoulder and then head bearing the brunt of the fall. His arms instinctively tried to grab hold of his chest, where the pain was greatest, but they remained tied behind him. As the shock converged on him, the boots of the men began kicking him once more. He tried desperately to curl his body and use his legs to protect his exposed stomach, but with his hands tied behind his back he couldn’t bring his legs up enough. Lying exposed on the pavement, the pain grew fierce. He’d never been in a fight before and had no idea what it felt like to be attacked, to have boot heels colliding with his rib cage, his head sent slinging from side to side as if his neck were on a spring. It was all happening so fast that he barely registered the torment he was in – his insides so sore and his ribs feeling so cracked that it occurred to him he was having trouble breathing. He tried to cry out but it was too hard. Instead he choked and coughed up his own blood into the bag covering his face, which made it stick to his chin.

  The kicking stopped and Thomas was left stuck to the pavement, completely inert. All his senses had gone numb. He struggled to stay alert. The one thought he could process was that he was petrified for what might follow. After a while – it may have been five minutes or thirty minutes, he had no idea – he was lifted by his armpits and dragged forward. It felt like his skin was the only thing keeping his body in one piece. His head slumped forward and he wasn’t entirely sure if his eyes were closed or if it was dark because of the bag over his head. Still no one spoke. A door in front of him opened and he was brought through it. The men carrying him let go of his armpits and he fell to the ground flat on his chest. It felt like cold concrete. He turned his head to his side and rested it against the floor, breathing slow, shallow breaths into the dark and bloodied bag, taking advantage of the reprieve.

  Footsteps broke the silence as he sensed someone walking up to him.

  “Thomas,” the voice proclaimed. It sounded confident, almost amused. “Welcome to hell. No American can save you here.”

  American. Andrew. Thomas tried to lift himself up to his side. Where was Andrew? Was he okay? But he couldn’t move. His whole body felt broken as he lay there flat with a man standing over him.

  “You should know this is not a country kind to you people.”

  Thomas squinted through his eyes, wanting to see the face of the man who stood over him, but couldn’t see through the bag. He wanted to confront, with a glare of disbelief, this man who decided how his country would act towards him. He wanted that man to have to meet his eyes as he spoke, to face his condemned.

  Thomas’s hands were untied and he was lifted to his feet. His arms were raised above him as his wrists were again tied, this time from ropes that must have been hanging from the ceiling. There was pressure as his arms and shoulders fought each other, his arms wanting to pull away from his body, his shoulder sockets refusing. His feet barely touched the floor. Someone cut his t-shirt from his body before his pants were pulled off, leaving him hanging in his underwear. A bucket of ice cold water was thrown on him and jolted him to attention. His senses became more alert while the shock of the cold numbed the stinging aches throughout his body. Suddenly he was doused with an equally hot bucket of water and cried out in agony. Three more cold buckets followed, leaving him shivering uncontrollably.

  Hanging there in the dark, still not able to face his countrymen, he tilted his head back, as if to look up to the sky. Through tears of pain and fear he wanted to ask why. But no sound came.

  The bag was removed from his head. His eyelids squinted and pupils grew smaller in anticipation of adjusting to the light, but the room proved almost completely dark. A small lamp in one of the corners provided the only source of light and his eyes widened to take as much in as possible. The room was bare. There were four men in front of him – three of the Black Boys, who still had their faces covered, and a fourth man wearing an NIA uniform. Thomas assumed he was the one who’d spoken to him. He sensed at least one more person, maybe two, behind him.

  As soon as Thomas had enough time to take in his surroundings, the NIA officer spoke.

  “There is no place for your kind here.” Then the officer turned around and walked out of the room, leaving Thomas alone with the Black Boys. The butt of a rifle hit him in the lower back. Another hit his head.

  Thomas kept losing and regaining control over his thoughts as the Black Boys passed a wooden club, iron bar, and glass bottle between themselves and began to have their way with him. His aching and swollen fingers dug into the rope as one of the men pulled off Thomas’s underpants and spread his legs with the club. As with the NIA officer, he tried to see through the masks of the Black Boys and into their eyes so they would first have to face him before they proceeded. But none would face him. Three of them just circled him slowly, holding their instruments. Once. Twice. Thrice.

  He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw as tight as he could to send his mind away from his body when they forced the club into him. He saw Andrew over and over and over. He saw him the first time he came to the hotel. He wore a baseball cap, which Thomas later learned belonged to the Chicago Cubs, a black and white striped tank top and a gray bathing suit. His pasty skin gave him away instantly as new. He was cute right from the beginning. He saw Andrew as he sat quietly in groups of people talking, often choosing to mostly listen, nod, and smile. He’d always loved Andrew’s smile. It was so simple and effortless. He briefly cried out as the iron bar went deeper inside of him and he was hit in the stomach with the club, but he stopped himself, not wanting to grant his torturers the pleasure of his pain. Instead, he went back to the third or fourth time Andrew had come by the hotel on a Friday night. He was getting up to leave. By then Thomas had enough confidence to ask what became the first spoken acknowledgment of their budding romance.

  “All those people you come here with on Saturdays, where do they spend their Friday evenings? Is everyone together?” he asked him suggestively.

  “A lot of people are together, yeah,” Andrew answered.

  “And you’re okay to miss that,” he followed up, hinting at a smile more with his eyes than with his lips. “It’s fine for you to keep coming here even though your friends are somewhere else?”

  Andrew, finally catching on, locked eyes with Thomas. “Yeah, it’s okay,” he said reassuringly. “I see them lots of other times. I don’t need to be with them tonight.”

  The Black Boys slapped Thomas’s face to force him to look at them. “
Dirty boy,” one of them taunted him, “look at me.” Thomas raised his head towards the man. He could see beads of sweat forming around the man’s eyelid. “You enjoy this, no? This is what you like.”

  Thomas looked away.

  “How does your American do it to you?” another one asked. “He’s not here to help you.”

  Even through their taunts, Thomas broke his mind away from the depravity. He met their cruel eyes with ones that were vapid and vacant, but not yet defeated. The visions that formed before him were not of the men violating him, they were of the times he lay in bed next to Andrew, watching him as he slept. He saw him lying there, oblivious to the shining sunlight, his body deep in rest, seemingly incapable of being disturbed, rising so peacefully with each breath. Those were the moments when Thomas felt luckiest. Against all the odds, I won.

  But slowly he started to feel suffocated and felt himself drifting away from Andrew, who remained sleeping on the bed so innocently, unaware of what was happening to him, shielded from the wickedness of it all. He was being torn apart, and it was becoming unbearable. Thomas’s torturers grew more determined and violent. In a final act of resistance, he tried to muster whatever strength he had left to think of the first time he’d been with Andrew. How gentle Andrew was, how tender. As they fumbled their way awkwardly and delicately the way new lovers do, Andrew kept asking, Are you okay? Are you sure you’re okay? Yes, Thomas answered sincerely. Yes.

  And that was when he couldn’t hold on any longer. As Andrew’s indispensable solace receded further and further away from him, when he could clutch onto it no more, he finally cried out with the savagery of a dying beast, his wail echoing into the dark and empty night. Please stop, he begged them. Please stop. Please stop.

  Eventually they did, but on their terms. He was left hanging for some time, alive but robbed of his humanity, before someone returned to take him down. By that point he couldn’t see anything so had no idea who the person was. A second person entered and the two of them dragged him through hallways and down stairs, dropping him in a small cell with nothing but a paper-thin mat and loose pants with a half-torn drawstring he quickly bled through.

  23

  “You can call me Officer Lamin,” the older officer said to Andrew, pointing to a chair across a wooden table. As Officer Lamin closed the door, Andrew quickly scanned the room. Its stained walls closed in on him. Water damage in the low ceiling gave the impression that something could fall through at any moment. He fixed his gaze on a crack running diagonally across the length of one of the walls, originating from a small hole in a top corner. The chairs weren’t entirely dissimilar to those at his school, wooden bottoms that curved downwards at the end by the legs, and a wooden half-back bolted to a metal rod up the length of the back. The wood, of course, was chipped and uneven and uncomfortable on his legs. He wished he was wearing long pants instead of shorts. The sound of Officer Lamin pulling his chair out rattled Andrew away from these mental distractions and returned him to his state of fear. Shouldn’t someone from the embassy be here by now, or a lawyer? he thought to himself, assuming it would have been the usual practice.

  “Do you know why you are here?” Officer Lamin’s voice was mean-sounding and accusatory.

  Andrew slightly and hesitantly shook his head. “No,” he said, barely audible.

  “Don’t lie to me, Andrew.”

  Not looking any more confident than the last time, Andrew again shook his head in the same slight and hesitant manner. “I don’t.”

  “Why are you lying,” asked Officer Lamin, in a voice as calm as Andrew’s but significantly more assertive.

  Andrew could do nothing but sit and stare back at Officer Lamin. What was he supposed to say? Yes? What would happen if he admitted to knowing why he was there? And what if he kept saying no? At what point would it look ridiculous to keep denying. But aren’t you always supposed to keep silent? Isn’t that what they say?

  The only thoughts Andrew could process were those confirming he didn’t know what to do. That fear of being lost without the slightest of bearings to grab a hold of was rapidly metastasizing within him.

  “Think about it. Think about it carefully,” Officer Lamin said, betraying a sense of impatience. Then, standing up he took out a sheet of paper from a folder he’d brought with him into the room. “Maybe this will help,” he said as he steadied the paper in front of Andrew before stepping away and opening the door. Andrew could hear the door being locked from the outside and the footsteps of Officer Lamin retreat down the hall as he was left alone in the room for what felt like an eternity. All he had was a solitary piece of paper and a growing sense of panic and dread. As the time kept ticking, disoriented and tired, Andrew began dozing off. He tried to fight it, focusing attentively on keeping his eyes open, afraid of what might happen to him if he wasn’t awake. But his energy kept waning and he quickly reached a point where he could resist no more. He faded out and succumbed to exhaustion.

  “Well, Andrew,” bellowed Officer Lamin as he swung open the door, jolting Andrew awake. “Are you ready to stop lying?”

  Andrew didn’t answer. Before he’d drifted off to sleep, he resolved that he would demand to speak with someone at the embassy, or at least a lawyer. He must have rights, he decided. They can’t just keep me here like this.

  He swallowed and looked straight at Officer Lamin. “I’d like to speak with someone from the U.S. Embassy.”

  Officer Lamin’s laugh was bewildering as he shook his head at Andrew before growing stern. “You think, Andrew,” he barked at him, “that because you are an American you are going to get special treatment from us? Somehow we must act differently towards you? You are mistaken, young man.” He reached down to the table and picked up the sheet of paper he left behind. “May I remind you,” he said holding it up to him, “this is a law we take very seriously. There is no room in The Gambia for such bestiality. America may be filled with your types, but not here.” He grew louder as he placed both hands on the table and brought his face up to Andrew’s. “And you, Mr. Turner, broke the law.”

  He yelled out hastily into the corridor in Wolof. Almost immediately, two young police officers emerged. One was holding what only looked like brown material, which Officer Lamin hurriedly yanked from him.

  “Here,” he said holding it out to Andrew. “Take off your clothes and put these on.”

  Andrew didn’t immediately react, especially since the three officers were still standing in front of him. Officer Lamin took his free hand and slammed the door shut with the other two officers still in the room before he turned back to Andrew and yelled.

  “Now!”

  He kept his boxers on, but still felt frightfully exposed as he changed in front of them, turning and bending to shield himself and maintain some privacy from their peering eyes.

  When he finished changing, Officer Lamin looked at him and asked once more, “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Andrew thought hard before answering. He started to raise his chin, as if beginning to nod, only to pause when he detected Officer Lamin’s expression turning satisfied as he anticipated Andrew’s capitulation.

  “Where’s Thomas?” Andrew asked.

  Officer Lamin huffed loudly and barked off orders in Wolof again. The two officers led Andrew out the door.

  “He’s nowhere you can help him,” Officer Lamin said as Andrew was led past him, forcibly pulled down the hallway further from where he entered the night before.

  The officers shoved Andrew into a cell. He stared down at a thin, torn mattress on the floor without any sheets. The cell was narrow, barely enough for Andrew to extend out his arms from wall to wall. It was cold, and he was alone.

  Andrew heard footsteps coming down the hallway. These ones echoed differently from those of the guards who brought him food and let him use the toilet for the past seven days. They were more pronounced. As they got louder he could see why – they were from women’s shoes. Maya walked quickly, like a professional with so
mewhere urgent to be. She had a folder in one hand and swung her other arm severely as if relying on it to propel her forward. Two guards trailed behind her.

  This is it, Andrew thought.

  She stopped right in front of him. She wore a U.S. Embassy ID around her neck.

  “Andrew,” she said. “My name’s Maya Mitchell. I work for the U.S. Embassy here in Banjul.”

  “Hi,” he responded with excited anticipation.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “I mean, are you hurt at all? You’re not in any pain, you haven’t been abused in any way.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, good. What about food. Are you being fed properly three times a day?”

  “I get fed. I don’t know if it counts as properly. It’s disgusting.”

  “I think the standards here are different. Are you able to at least eat it? Are you going hungry?”

  “No.”

  “What about medication? Do you take any regularly? Anything for malaria?”

  “Yeah, I take Malarone. That’s it.”

  “Do you have it here with you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, I’ll make sure it’s brought to you.”

  Her American accent made him homesick.

  “And have they provided anything to you to help pass the time?”

  “Some books,” he answered, beginning to grow somewhat impatient with her check up.

  “I see.”

  “Maya, what’s happening?” he asked softly.

  Maya turned to face the guards who stood closely behind her. “Can you move back and give us some space please, some privacy?” she asked, though she didn’t speak like it was a question. They obliged.