American Taliban: A Novel

by Pearl Abraham

  On January 11, the first twenty detainees arrived at Guantanamo’s Camp X-Ray.

  On January 16, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that he did not feel the slightest concern regarding the treatment of Guantanamo prisoners. They’re being treated vastly better than they treated anybody else, he said.

  On January 17, the official detainee count at Guantanamo was one hundred ten.

  JOHN WALKER LINDH was scheduled to arrive at the correctional facility in Alexandria, Virginia, and Barbara wanted to be there.

  Bill tried discouraging her. Her obsession with the Lindhs was getting to him. Her irrational persistence in somehow identifying the Lindhs’ John with their John made him think she might be losing it.

  Pray, he said, that our John is safe elsewhere, far from the Taliban. Pray that he had better sense. Should have better sense.

  He was still waiting for information from Yusef, for the law firm’s findings, for the State Department’s response to his missing person report, but answers were slow in coming, and Barbara was losing patience.

  I think these kids don’t know anything or they know and won’t tell. Before September 11, before Lindh’s capture, they might have been forthcoming. After, telling is like a confession of guilt. That’s what I feel intuitively, and in the absence of facts, I’m placing my trust in intuition.

  Without facts, we’ll get nowhere, Bill warned. Therefore I’m engaged in fact gathering.

  That might be fine for trial preparation, Barbara criticized. When you’re working for a client. But in an emergency, especially an emergency that involves your son, it’s not enough.

  You know, Bill said, looking at her. Maybe, just maybe, if you hadn’t encouraged John in his crackpot ideas and readings, he’d be at Brown now and we wouldn’t be in this emergency.

  Upon which Barbara broke down and refused to say anything. She wouldn’t eat dinner, wouldn’t answer questions, wouldn’t share a bed with Bill. She moved into John’s room, but halfway through the night, Bill joined her in John’s bed.

  ON JANUARY 24, Barbara canceled her morning appointments in order to get to the facility early and position herself near an entrance. She wanted to see the boy and hoped to have a word with his mother. She hoped Mrs. Lindh would agree to ask her son whether he’d met John Jude. Mrs. Lindh, she thought, would understand. A suffering mothers’ group might be just what was needed. An international suffering mothers of the world group. They could band together and effect change, eradicate war.

  She drove south to Virginia, found the facility, found a place to park with some difficulty and at some distance. She wasn’t the only one who wanted to see the boy, it turned out. There were others, and by the time she arrived at the gates of the compound a large crowd had gathered. People jostled for position, but Barbara pushed toward the entrance and then had to make an effort to hold her ground. If she didn’t get near enough, she wouldn’t be able to make contact.

  A helicopter droned overhead. The crowd looked up and watched it circle and land inside the prison compound. It was difficult to see what was going on on the ground, but when Barbara looked up, she saw sharpshooters on the rooftops of every structure. Motorcycles rumbled, radios and CBs crackled, the propeller spun, the door opened, and men with guns clustered and huddled and completely obscured the nineteen-year-old boy who had somehow provoked this scene out of—it has been years since she’s watched anything like this—out of ludicrous Starsky and Hutch. For a nineteen-year-old. What were these people thinking? That he was Bruce Lee? What were they afraid of? Barbara turned to say something to someone beside or behind her and noticed for the first time that the crowd was angry. The rumble started low, but quickly grew in pitch. Traitor. Shame. Hanging. These people had taken time off from work to be here, to see with their own eyes the boy who’d betrayed his country. They’d come to accuse him, to judge him without a trial. They were mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, but they were unforgiving. Of a nineteen-year-old’s misadventure. Of a self-seeking journey. Did they know he was only nineteen? Did they understand—

  A black limousine pulled up to the gates, and Barbara felt a huge weight forcing her forward, toward the car, as if to crush it, crush her. She panicked. She needed air. She raised her arms, reaching for air and sky. Help, she called.

  Traitors, people shouted. Hot-tubbers. Murderers.

  Hang him, someone shouted. By his balls.

  This crowd hated the boy and his parents. This crowd hated her. They were wrong. She wanted to tell them they were wrong, they didn’t understand. She wanted—she was unable to tell them.

  Security officers surrounded the vehicle, pushed the crowd back, and Barbara felt herself falling backward. She grabbed someone’s jacket and held on. She steadied herself. She breathed. And then the gates opened, the car pulled through, and the gates shut. The Lindhs had gotten through safely, and the crowd didn’t like it. They protested. They shouted. Hot-tubbers. Latte sippers. Liberals.

  WHAT DID YOU THINK would happen? Bill asked.

  But he’s only nineteen, Barbara protested.

  Your son, our son, is nineteen. Walker will be twenty-one in two weeks and the 9/11 terrorists were not much older than that. This boy fought in a war against Americans, on the side of the enemy. Worse, he witnessed the murder of a CIA man, and did nothing to help him. Do you have any idea how America feels right now? Do you have any idea how much hate mail the Lindhs must be getting? Probably death threats too. I hope to God that our John didn’t do anything this stupid. Pray that he didn’t.

  If he did, Barbara said, he didn’t know what he was doing.

  That night when, with the help of an Ativan, Barbara finally slept, she relived the scene. Traitor. Shame. Murderers. Hot-tubbers. Hang them. She tried running and couldn’t. She was surrounded. She shouted for help. Someone was calling her name.

  Barbara. Wake up. Barbara. It’s okay.

  They turned on CNN and heard that John Walker Lindh had arrived in Alexandria to be tried in a civilian criminal court, that he’d made his first appearance before a U.S. district court and heard the criminal complaint against him, which listed four charges, including conspiring to kill fellow Americans in Afghanistan, providing support to terrorist groups, and aiding the Taliban. Though CNN had been allowed into the compound to film, they showed very little, the helicopter in the air, the landing, a glimpse of Walker in his orange prison clothes, then moved on to other news, non-news really.

  Barbara sat, astounded. They were giving hours of coverage to daily nonsense, and mere seconds to this.

  The arrival, Bill said, was handled pretty well actually. No one wants this kid to attract a cult following. Ashcroft screwed up the first half of this case by allowing the interview to take place without a lawyer. Which means it will never go to trial. Heads are expected to roll at the Justice Department. Rumors are already emerging. There’s a story of a Jesselyn Radack, a young attorney in the Justice Department’s internal ethics office, who is said to have advised against interviewing Lindh without an attorney present.

  Radack? Barbara said. Radack. I know that name. From somewhere.

  She Googled it. Jesselyn Radack, she read, was the activist student at Brown who’d appeared on Phil Donahue. Then Barbara remembered. She’d come across her writing somewhere. In the Brown alumni magazine? That’s why the name was familiar. What an odd connection. Mere coincidence, Bill would say, as she would have said only a few months ago, but these days, anxious and afraid, Barbara found everything relevant.

  THE STORY OF JESSELYN RADACK

  December 7, 2001. Justice Department attorney Jesselyn Radack received an inquiry from John De Pue, Terrorism and Violent Crime Section. Would it be okay, he asked, for the FBI to interview Lindh in Afghanistan without the presence of his lawyer? Radack researched the question and consulted with a senior legal adviser before replying: We don’t think you can have the FBI agent question Walker. Lindh’s father had retained an attorney, Radack noted, so interrogat
ion outside of the presence of counsel would be improper.

  December 10, 2001. In a follow-up, De Pue informed Radack that the agent had conducted the interview anyway. The interview, Radack wrote back, will probably have to be sealed or used for national security purposes only. Ashcroft disregarded this advice and insisted on using the interview as a confession.

  February 4, 2002. Jesselyn Radack received an unscheduled scathing performance review. Her boss, Claudia Flynn, who had not signed the review, offered to keep it out of her file if Radack found another job.

  March 7, 2002. Randy Bellows, a prosecutor in United States of America v. John Philip Walker Lindh, e-mailed Radack, asking whether there’d been only two e-mails in her exchange with the terrorism unit. Bellows had sought all of Radack’s e-mails on the Lindh interrogation and received only two. Radack knew there had been a dozen or more, but when she pulled the file now, she found only three e-mails and some cover sheets. Working with a computer technician, Radack retrieved fourteen archived e-mails. These she printed the same day and addressed, with cover memo, to Claudia Flynn.

  April 8, 2002. Jesselyn Radack began working at the Hawkins law firm.

  DESPERATE FOR WORD, for answers to queries and questions she hardly dared voice, Barbara couldn’t help herself and looked for connections and meaning everywhere. Everything connects. Jilly’s death was also somehow connected. She worried that the loss of Jilly had somehow engaged John’s instinct for risk and destruction, his death drive, what Freud called the Todestrieb, and now she blamed herself for telling him. She should’ve known better. She should’ve waited until he got back, until he was safe, or safer, at home, where love could counteract this destructive impulse. At the time she’d worried that not telling him was wrong. Now she spent long nights thinking, arguing, agreeing, resolving, compromising, begging, negotiating, conceding, seething, settling, fighting, negotiating again, compromising.

  But with whom are you reasoning and cooperating and compromising? Bill wanted to know.

  I don’t know, Barbara sobbed. With whatever power’s keeping John from us. I know he’s alive. I know he’s being held. Somewhere. Against his will.

  Bill attempted to hold her still so she would sleep. You’ve got to keep it together, he whispered. I agree with you. He’s alive. And he will need our help when he shows up. You can only help him if you keep it together.

  She was convinced there was someone who knew John Jude’s whereabouts and wasn’t telling. She was convinced the U.S. military knew or had the capacity to know. They might have him at Guantanamo and they weren’t telling. Or they’d already killed him and weren’t telling. Or it was possible he’d been left behind as Dostum’s prisoner, and he was now without arms and legs or minus his tongue so that he couldn’t write and couldn’t talk. Or he was one of the many dead in the compound at Qala-i-jangi. Or. Or. Or. Something convinced her he’d been there, a prisoner at the fort, along with Lindh. If only she could talk to Lindh. As long as she didn’t know anything with any certainty, as long as she was without answers, she was stuck in a loop, going from step to step and back again, with only the news to inform her, with only what was revealed on any given day, with chronology. She was stuck in this story without an ending.

  FEBRUARY 13, 2002. John Walker Lindh pleaded not guilty to a ten-count federal indictment that charged him with conspiring to kill Americans. His attorney notified the court that he will argue against the use of forced statements his client made in Afghanistan.

  February 21, 2002. A federal judge dismissed the legal challenge to the Guantanamo detentions in which Barbara had placed hope.

  February 21, 2002. A jihad website leaked a video titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl. The video showed Pearl’s body naked from the waist up with his throat slit. Then a man decapitated him.

  Barbara and Bill watched the short clip of the video made available for airing. Beside herself, in despair, Barbara called out to her nonexistent God: If you exist, she cried, prove yourself and bring on the Apocalypse NOW.

  Perhaps this is the Apocalypse, Bill said, rubbing his exhausted eyes.

  Though he doubted that John Jude was in Guantanamo—his American citizenship would have forced the military to bring his case to a civil court—Bill contacted one of the attorneys scheduled to visit there and asked him to be on the lookout for John Jude.

  A thin man, Bill had lost too much weight and was now fragile looking. He was keeping long hours, working his usual fifty-hour week, and then working evenings to learn what he could. At work, colleagues stopped by his office to discuss the situation, to sympathize and advise.

  Your boy can’t be represented by a lawyer until he shows up, somewhere, anywhere, Chip Brown, one of Bill’s partners, said, pointing out the obvious. We’ll go to work as soon as he shows up.

  John, the John I know, has an instinct for life, Brad Walker said. I agree with Barbara. He’s alive, and he will turn up. In a while. He put his hand on Bill’s shoulder. You and Barbara just have to sit tight, you have to find some way to get through this. After the Lindh fiasco, Ashcroft will hold back embarrassing information of other captured Americans for as long as he can manage it.

  But Barbara wouldn’t or couldn’t live with mere waiting. She closed the door to her office, opened her Rolodex, and started at A. She would call in every favor from every politician who had ever attended her fund-raisers and parties, anyone with any clout in this White House. And she did get people on the phone, and though the conversations would begin convincingly enough, when she met with inaction, or what she thought of as stonewalling, she raised her voice. She ranted. She shouted. And when the other party hung up, she ate. Between A and B on her Rolodex, and between B and C and C and D and D and E, she ate. She’d gained twenty pounds since Thanksgiving. She’d demolished the leftovers they’d saved for John. She’d become a fearsome figure, a major matriarch in appearance.

  When people stopped coming to the phone, she determined to go where they went. Mornings she scanned the day’s lists of events, circled the ones likely to attract the most powerful, and attended. She made herself available to bloggers and gossip columnists for the most outrageous quotes. At a book party for a young dot.com editor noted for her witty political discourse interspersed with frequent references to gin and anal sex, Barbara offered an explanation for the prevalence of sex abuse in Washington: Caligula is the politician’s guide to D.C. They watch the film so often, they come to know it as their gospel. Remarking on the number of politicians at the party who were either losing or had lost their voices and therefore couldn’t comment on her questions about the American Taliban, she offered a Freudian analysis: their penises were rising up into their throats. On the phone with a young intern who refused to connect her to his boss, she suggested he imagine himself in Nazi Germany. They weren’t all evil, she ranted, just weak in character and dignity, like you, people unwilling to do what’s right, afraid to pursue justice. You would have been one of the millions who performed their jobs and asked no questions; in essence, you would have been, as you are now, a collaborator.

  At home, she continued scanning postings and blogs, both the reliable and ridiculous, and staying close to online rumor mills and postings and blogs, she learned about another American Taliban, a young man named Yasir Hamdi, born in Texas to Saudi Arabian parents. Hamdi, she reported to Bill, was captured alongside Lindh, but he didn’t make headlines or even the news.

  It’s possible there are others, Bill said. It’s entirely possible, he thought, that John had kept his wits about him and remained silent. A lawyer’s son, he knew not to talk without a lawyer, not to the military or the press.

  ON APRIL 5, Yasir Hamdi was scheduled for transfer from Guantanamo to a naval brig in Norfolk, Virginia. This headline served Barbara as the burning bush served Moses, and the angel Muhammed, illuminating the unknowing dark. She suddenly KNEW. John is going by a different name, as he has before. He might be Attar or Ishmael or Abdul. He might even
be going as Yasir Hamdi. He might BE Yasir Hamdi. How could she not have thought of that: he wouldn’t use his real name. She canceled her appointments for the day and drove down to Norfolk, riding and deriding Bill all the way down, Bill and his paper attempts at finding their son. Then she turned on herself: how could she have overlooked something this obvious? She worried about what else she might be missing. She tried thinking John’s thoughts. What did he want her to know, say, think, do?

  This was his adventure of becoming. But what was the use of becoming, if you ended in annihilation?

  You’re not fully alive unless you’re risking death, he’d say.

  And what would you say we’re doing, Dad and I? she’d ask.

  She arrived early this time, prepared for the tight security, expecting the angry crowd. This time, she would get in. Wearing a smart dress and sensible heels and dark Chanel sunglasses, and carrying a journalist’s bag, flap open just enough to reveal a journalist’s props, the notebook, the recording device, and authentic-looking ID, she stepped up to the pier gates with as much official know-how as she could muster. She smiled at the guard, reached for the flap to show her pass.

  Reporting for whom? the guard asked without looking.

  Washington Times, Barbara said, with authority.

  And miraculously, the gate opened, miraculously she was waved through. It’d worked. She’d managed it. She walked toward the group of reporters gathered under an awning. She nodded greeting and inserted herself into the side flank of the huddle, mindful of the others, careful not to attract much notice.