The Identity Thief

by C. Forsyth

"Get your hands off your dick," Pizza Face yelled. "Stop trying to protect it. It's gone, dude, live with it. It's history. Mr. Winkie's going bye-bye. You're gonna be a unit."

  Eunuch, idiot.

  "He said get your hands off your dick," Giant Redneck roared. "My partner wants to get another look at what you're packing. Weren't you trying to show off your weak little wee-wee just a minute ago?"

  Tears began to roll down X's cheeks. Jesus, he hadn't cried since he was 10. He hoped they wouldn't notice, but no such luck.

  "Awww, look. Mr. Terrorist Big Shot is crying. He's crying like a little bitch," Giant Redneck said. He signaled to Pizza Face to pull back the dog.

  "You're pathetic, you know that?" the big man said with disgust. "I guess you're pretty tough when it comes to blowing unarmed babies to kingdom come. But stick a gun in your face and you show your true colors - yellow."

  "You said it, dude," Pizza Face echoed. They traded high fives.

  "Get on your knees, puke face," Giant Redneck commanded.

  X crawled to his knees, grateful for the dog's retreat.

  "Now apologize to Madison for flashing her," the Marine said, crossing his arms.

  "I'm sorry," X said. Okay, maybe this little exercise in performance art is winding down.

  Giant Redneck and Pizza Face exchanged puzzled glances that were obviously fake.

  "Excuse me? What was that?" the Southerner said, cupping a hand over his ear.

  X could scarcely think at this point.

  "I'm sorry, ma'am," he tried.

  "In Arabic, dumbshit."

  He repeated the words in Arabic.

  "That's more like it," Giant Redneck said.

  And with one sweeping kick he sent X sprawling.

  * * *

  X was outfitted with an orange prison jumpsuit and ill-fitting white army-issue skivvies a size too small - which, as he later, learned, was quite a privilege. Some of the prisoners were forced to wear pink panties for weeks after their arrival.

  He was tossed into a windowless, cement-walled cell, no more than 12 square feet. A naked light bulb hung from the middle of the ceiling; there was a steel toilet and a bunk bed. On the bottom bunk a boy of about 17, sporting peach fuzz on his cheeks, lay reading the Koran.

  The teen jumped up, excitedly.

  "At last a companion. I was going mad with loneliness."

  "Aloha," X sighed.

  "Asar Gulzar of Kabul," his cellmate said in Arabic, with an accent that X recognized as Afghani.

  The teen scrutinized at his face. "Are you truly Ali Nazeer? There have been rumors whispered that you had arrived here."

  X was in no mood to argue. He nodded.

  "It is an honor to meet you, sir. Come, come, you may have my bunk."

  "I couldn't -" X responded in Arabic.

  But the young man insisted and led X to the lower bunk, where he collapsed.

  "So you are the great Ali Nazeer," Asar said admiringly. "You have become a legend here; everyone has heard how you eluded the Americans in their own country for so long."

  "You get TV here?" X replied, surprised that his exploits were already the stuff of legend.

  Asar laughed. "No, but a boy was brought in yesterday who told us the whole story. You are truly a brave warrior in the Jihad."

  X tried to think of something that would shut the guy up for a while.

  "All praise belongs to Allah," he said. "It is only he who gives me strength."

  "Indeed, indeed," agreed Asar. "Would you like some taffy? I have a small tin."

  X nodded and the boy shared with him. It was chewy but sweet and, as the first food to enter his mouth since a handful of peanuts in the Pink Panther what seemed eons ago, much appreciated.

  "I have been doing my part for the Jihad as well," Asar said. "Nothing so grand as you, of course. I shouldn't even mention it."

  "Please, tell me," X begged. Although, of course, he didn't have the slightest interest.

  The teen puffed out his chest proudly. "For two years I was the driver for The Chief. Every day I was by his side."

  "You are very young to have been given such responsibility," X said. Allowing this juvenile delinquent to think I AM Ali Nazeer might play to my advantage.

  "I learned to drive a tractor on my uncle's farm when I was 12," Asar explained. "I drove a cab in Kabul for three years. After that you can either drive like a racing car driver or you've been killed in an accident."

  As X anticipated, Asar was not shy about detailing his exploits serving The Chief. On one occasion, so he claimed, the driver rescued the terrorist honcho from Mossad agents who were on his trail by taking a shortcut through a crowded market.

  "It was just like something you'd see in a James Bond movie," Asar reminisced fondly. "Merchants were pushing their carts out of the way, melons were rolling. The Chief awarded me a medallion. I would show it to you but the Americans took it from me when I arrived."

  Asar asked X about his own reception and X told him about his mistreatment at the hands of the U.S. soldiers.

  "The Americans are real pigs," Asar declared, angrily. X could hardly argue with him.

  "Their etiquette could use some fine-tuning," he conceded.

  * * *

  Over the following days, X was allowed to mingle with fellow prisoners in the exercise yard. They hailed from all over the Middle East: the Gaza Strip, Yemen, even a contingent from Indonesia and a thin, jet-black brother from Somalia.

  "This is the hero who made fools of the Americans," Asar would proudly introduce him. "We have become great friends."

  They spent their time in the cell reading each other passages from the Koran. X had never even thumbed through it before - nor had he gotten past Noah in the Bible for that matter. His religious knowledge consisted of what he dimly recalled from coloring books he read in a Sunday school his mother had dragged him to. Before his imprisonment was over, X would end up knowing many verses from the Islamic holy book by heart.

  At night, they lay on their bunks and chatted. Asar proved to be the talkative type and very curious. He asked specifics about X's operations in Kuwait. X told him that such information was top secret and Asar nodded gravely. Asar, a former street urchin whose father abandoned the family when he was eight, was intrigued that X came from a wealthy family and wanted to know all about what it was like growing up in the lap of luxury.

  X had no clue what life was like for some Richie Rich in Kuwait, but since he knew Asar didn't either, he felt free to confabulate. He described in detail his father's mansion and the beautiful silk dresses his mother and sisters wore; the life-sized marble statues; the Olympic-size swimming pool with a waterfall gushing down into it from the landscaped hillside.

  Asar oohed and aahed, and X embellished further and further, inventing a palatial estate worthy of an Oriental despot. The physical descriptions came mostly from old movies he used to watch with his mother, like "The Prince of Baghdad." It was the only time he remembered her being at peace, the two of them lost together in a fantasy world.

  Each night "Ali Nazeer" regaled the teen with tales of family trips around the world to hot spots like Paris and Beijing, playing with the children of rich and famous movie stars and jet setters. He became Asar's Scheherazade.

  X had to admit it was fun creating this blissful imaginary childhood so different from his own. The rich, powerful father, the doting, educated mother reading Dickens and Shakespeare to him and his loving sibling at bedtime.

  Asar would ask him to repeat stories, and X did, fleshing them out with more minute details as he did. Some were funny. He told anecdotes about maids and gardeners who misunderstood orders - plagiarized from homophone-challenged Amelia Bedelia - that made the teen roar with laugher.

  A week passed before "Ali Nazeer" was escorted from his cell for his first interrogation.

  "Be strong, my brother," Asar told him, clapping him on the back.

  "We'll have him back in a jiffy," one of the guards said cheerfully. "Yo
u'll be amazed how quick your hero breaks."

  X was marched down a long corridor with barred cells on either side. It looked like one of those old black and white movies about Alcatraz except that rather than Jimmy Cagney or George Raft, the residents were bearded, swarthy men, two or three to a cell. Some were prostrate in prayer, others were scribbling on pads. Some saluted him; a few even bowed reverently.

  "Allah will protect you, brother," one called.

  Unfortunately, the identity thief didn't believe in Allah (or hold much stock in the god of the Hebrews either).

  He was shoved into a small, barren room at the end of the hall. X was not pleased to see that Pizza Face, Giant Redneck and Big Tits were all in attendance. This time they were joined by a clean-cut young man in natty, wire-rimmed glasses that must have cost $600, a blue blazer, yellow sweater and fraternity tie. He looked as if he was home for the holidays from an exclusive prep school.

  "I give him about eight minutes," Pizza Face snickered.

  "Five," said Big Tits.

  "It's a bet." They shook hands.

  He was stripped again, and hung by his wrists with ropes from a hook on the ceiling. The Yuppie, who had been silent up until now, stepped forward and spoke in a calm voice, barely above a whisper.

  "Now let me tell you the game plan for today, Mr. Nazeer," he said. "I am going to ask you questions and you're going to answer them. Any time you don't answer, this gentleman will do something to you that's not very nice."

  He pointed to an ugly-looking cattle prod in the hands of Giant Redneck. This time X was ready for them. He would not be intimidated, he would not be crushed.

  "You can't torture me," X said smugly. "We watch CNN, you know. I know your leaders have forbidden it."

  The Yuppie laughed and the soldiers followed suit.

  "That's right, dude." he said. "All that went out with the Bush administration. You have absolutely nothing at all to worry your little head about." He nodded to the Giant Redneck, who poked X in the testicles with the cattle prod.

  Volts lanced through his gonads and X screamed in agony. It was hard to believe he'd ever be able to reproduce.

  Okay, he thought. Hold out for a minute to make it believable, then tell them the most credible lie you can muster.

  "Now whereabouts can we find The Chief?" the Yuppie asked pleasantly, as if asking the directions to the nearest Starbucks.

  X shook his head. Giant Redneck zapped his private parts again.

  To hell with holding out a minute.

  "All right, all right," he sputtered. "He's in Afghanistan, near the village of - "

  The Yuppie imitated a game-show buzzer. "Wrong answer. We know he's crossed over into Pakistan."

  Another electrical assault on his testicles.

  "I have to, I have to go the bathroom," X moaned.

  "He's stalling," Pizza Face warned the Yuppie in his nasal New Jersey accent.

  "You can drain the old dragon on the floor," the Yuppie offered. "You have our permission."

  Big tits snickered.

  "Go ahead, I told you to piss yourself," the Yuppie said more sternly. Now it was a command.

  Finally X let go. If he was worried about his dignity, that ship had sailed. A yellow stream shot from his dangling organ onto the concrete floor. This psycho prep-school brat from hell probably did worse plenty of times after keg parties back in college, he told himself, if it was any consolation.

  "Look at what that filthy sand nigger did," Giant Redneck said, shaking his head. "He messed up the floor. They just mopped it yesterday."

  The Yuppie clucked his teeth. "Well, here we clean up our own messes. We don't want to create extra work for the staff." He nodded to the Marines.

  They unhooked X's hands. The Giant Redneck dragged him across the floor by the nape of the neck and stuck his face in the pool of piss. Big Tits planted a boot on his backside to hold him in place. Pizza face tossed him his underwear.

  "Now wipe up that fucking piss," the Redneck said.

  "Next time we'll make you lick it up, ass eater," Pizza Face put in.

  X sighed and began to scrub up the yellow pool. He felt the urge to weep again, but steeled himself this time. He refused to give them the satisfaction.

  "You're going to break, bro," the Yuppie informed him. "Maybe after we pump you full of babble juice so strong it leaves your brain fried. Maybe after we show you snapshots of some street thugs partying in your wife's tush. Sooner or later, you'll talk. So why not cut to the chase?

  "Now I'm going to ask you one last time, Ali. Where is The Chief? Work with me here, dude."

  "I don't know," X said, in his most convincing voice, what he always thought of has his "honest" voice. "As Allah is my master, I do not know."

  "You are one lying Arab bastard," the Yuppie hissed. "You are so going to get your clock cleaned." He nodded to Giant Redneck, who seized a fistful of X's hair. He dragged the prisoner out of the room into the corridor, where fellow detainees flocked to the bars of their cells to see what was going on.

  X could see Asar clutching the bars, looking on as if it were his father being abused.

  "In front of all your homies here, you're going to swear to Allah that you don't know where The Chief is," the Yuppie demanded, raising his voice for the first time. "No, dudes and dudette, I'm getting a brainstorm here. Swear on the freaking Koran."

  X vaguely recalled accounts of how at Guantanamo Bay the Koran was abused in interrogations back in the Bush days, but had chalked them up to Arab propaganda.

  The Yuppie snatched the Koran from Asar's hand and said, "Enjoy the show."

  Giant Redneck and Pizza Face hoisted X up to his feet and the Yuppie waved the Islamic holy book in his face, "Put his hand on it."

  Big Tits grabbed the prisoner's hand and forced it onto the book.

  "Swear you don't know where The Chief is," the Yuppie demanded.

  "I swear on the Holy Koran that I do not know the hiding place of The Chief."

  "Bullshit. Bullshit!" the Yuppie exclaimed, turning blue in the face and flying into a fury that looked almost genuine. "Make him eat the freaking thing."

  There came howls of protest from the cells and prisoners began banging objects on the bars. The din only added to X's torment.

  Big Tits tore out four pages from the book with obvious relish and stuffed them in his mouth, knocking a filling out of his mouth in the process.

  "Eat it," the Yuppie snarled. "You're going to eat your beloved Koran and shit it out. That's right, Ali, you're going to turn Mohammed's words into doo-doo. "

  Giant Redneck pulled his sidearm from its holster and pressed up against X's temple.

  "Do it, camel jockey!" he barked in X's ear. "Do it right now, or we'll splatter your brains on the floor."

  The Muslim prisoners booed in fury. They shook their cages like furious baboons.

  "Infidels!"

  "Cursed American dogs!"

  "May Allah give you strength, Ali!"

  "It is better to die with honor than to live on in shame!"

  The Yuppie paced back and forth. "Let him go," he said after a moment.

  "Ali Nazeer" collapsed to his knees, the leaves of paper clenched between his teeth.

  "I'm going to count to three, you freaking sand monkey," the Yuppie said quietly. "And if you aren't chomping down on your good book by then, I swear to Christ himself - the real God, by the way - I'm going to give the order to shoot."

  X had had enough. He was 99 percent sure they weren't going to shoot him. Besides, what would happen to him if he defiled the Koran in front of that pack of fanatics? Surely he'd be beaten to death in the exercise yard within a day.

  So "Ali Nazeer" stood up, and spat out the pages. He grabbed his dick and waved it at the Yuppie.

  "Eat this, you sick cunt," he shouted. Then, for the benefit of his fellow prisoners, he repeated the colorful insult in Arabic.

  From the row of cells, the roars of his fellow prisoners were deafening.


  "You see," Asar called to the guards, triumphantly. "To threaten a brave man with death is like promising water to a duck."

  While X tried to make sense of that, his fellow prisoners chanted a phrase meaning, X knew, "one who is praiseworthy in the eyes of Allah."

  Strangely enough, the admiration of these strange men - with whom he had nothing in common and whose philosophy he despised - uplifted him. Perhaps it was because it had been so long since anyone had shown him admiration. He felt like he was a seven-year-old child again, getting applause for the winning a spelling bee, his mother in the audience.

  I'd forgotten about that.

  His moment of glory was short-lived, though. He was gang-tackled by the Marines and hauled back to his cell.

  Chapter 12

  I AM ALI NAZEER!

  Another few weeks dragged on. Now, without the Koran, X and his cellmate were forced to converse even more. The nightly tales became more vividly detailed and intricately embroidered, to the point that X almost convinced himself he really had been raised with love in the lap of luxury. They also conversed about their current lives, and inevitably, women. Asar had a girlfriend in the small town in Afghanistan where he'd been born, a neighbor's daughter who had been promised to him at birth.

  "I have composed a poem for her," Asar said diffidently. "Would you like to read it?"

  "Read it to me," X said.

  The teen took a sheet of paper from under his mattress, cleared his throat and began:

  "Your voice is like a babbling brook,

  Sweet and gentle,

  When you speak,

  I hear the harps of angels."

  He was praising her voice, X realized, because in all likelihood the girl was veiled and the teen had never actually seen her face. Still, it was touching. Hard to keep in mind that the boy was a stone killer who would murder him in a New York minute if he knew his true identity.

  X could not share with the boy the names of the many American women he'd bedded. Nor could he say he'd slept with them, of course - intercourse outside marriage was contrary to Islam. The call girls, the barmaids, the grifters, the occasional housewife who pegged him for a con artist and jumped his bones nevertheless because she found it exciting. So he talked about Ali Nazeer's third and youngest wife, Jasmine. She was the upstanding daughter of an iman, according to the backstory he concocted - a woman who was wise, virtuous and obedient.