“Use what I have,” Mike says.
He starts to really think about what he has.
Day Seven
Mike stares at the sky. So blue! So beautiful! He breathes deeply of the fresh air. He fills his lungs.
“Move, inmate,” yells CO Jenson. “It’s large-muscle exercise time, so move those large muscles or I’ll move them for you.”
The exercise cage is not much larger than his cell, but without the concrete bunk taking up half of it, it feels enormous. Plus, there is wire mesh instead of walls. Mike runs from corner to corner, bounces off the fence and keeps on running. He does the things he learned to do in gym class. He runs to one end, drops to the ground, runs to the other end, drops to the ground. He notices Jenson has his back to him. Mike scoops up gravel from the floor of the cage. He hides what he finds in his jumpsuit pocket and just keeps running.
Day Ten
“Pawn to king’s bishop seven,” Mike says as he looks down at the chessboard. He makes his move, then he gets up, goes to the other side of the board and becomes his opponent, assessing the battle from this new point of view.
What he has. Toilet paper and water to mold into chess pieces that took two days to dry. A dab of ketchup turned half the pieces pink. One of the pebbles he picked up in the yard etched a chessboard into the cell floor. Memories of being in fourth-grade chess club reminded him how to play.
He plays chess for hours. He takes on different opponents. One time he plays Wolverine. Another time he takes on the ghost of Prince. He thinks of playing against God but figures God would have too much of an advantage, so he plays against Batman instead.
Day Seventeen
There is a mini chocolate bar on his tray with the foot-burger. Someone has given up their commissary.
Mike nibbles at it in small insect-sized bites, making it last and last.
Day Twenty-three
“Taxpayers paid for that toilet paper to use in the proper way, not for you to waste! Five more days in Seg for that.”
They make him sweep away his chess set, his papier-mâché marbles and a sculpture he was trying to make of the Incredible Hulk. The COs are supposed to take him out for a shower, but they don’t.
Mike slumps in a corner. His back hurts in this position, but he doesn’t have the will to change it.
Day Twenty-eight
Mike stops eating. The foot-patties go back to the kitchen untouched. No one asks if he is ill.
Day Thirty-two
Mike wakes up in the infirmary, chained to the bed, an IV drip feeding into his arm.
“You almost left us,” the nurse says. “Don’t you like the nutritional loaf? It’s got everything in it your body needs to survive.”
Mike doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even look at her.
His time in the infirmary doesn’t count toward his punishment. The doctor declares him healthy and he’s put back in his Ad Seg cell.
It’s been Day Thirty-two for four days.
Day Forty
They check now to make sure he eats.
“Had a kid in the hole die on them once,” Jenson says through the peephole. “No one knew it for three days. Load of paperwork on that one. Now I have to watch you eat.”
Mike doesn’t care enough to talk back. He puts the food tray on the floor by the closed door and takes off the cover.
There is a book on the tray, a ratty old Agatha Christie novel called Murder on the Orient Express.
Mike silently places the book on the floor where the CO can’t see it from the peephole. Mike picks up the foot-patty, steps out in front of the peephole and chows down on it. He wiggles his tongue to show he swallowed it, then he slides the tray back out through the slot. Jenson leaves without comment.
Mike opens the book.
Someone has written a message on the inside cover. Maybe for him, maybe for someone else.
You are not alone.
Mike shuts the book and hugs it to his chest.
Other people have been held in cells like this one, held in even worse cells. Nelson Mandela. Gandhi. Jesus. Those women who wanted to vote. Muhammad Ali. The guy who carved the F and part of a second letter into the wall of this cell.
They did it.
He can do it.
He opens the book and lets it take him on a long, long train ride.
Day Sixty-three
Mike is doing a wall sit. He’s been alternating wall sits to a count of three hundred with pushups and jumping jacks.
He’ll exercise his large muscle groups when he feels like it, not just when Jenson tells him to.
From his position on the wall he stares straight at the half-written curse word.
Maybe it’s not supposed to be a curse word, he thinks. Maybe the guy was trying to write his name. Maybe what he thinks is half a U is really an O, for a name like Ford or …
Mike can’t think of any other name that begins with F-O.
Maybe it’s not a name but a word. Not a curse word. A regular word, like FOSSIL. Maybe the kid felt like he was being buried in here.
Or he could have been writing FORGET.
Forget what? Forget his past? Forget his punishment? Did the kid want people to forget him?
Mike comes down off his wall sit and crouches beside the half word.
“Could be FORGIVE, too,” he says, and he sits with that thought for a bit.
“What will the next kid want to see?” he quietly asks the room. “What will help him?”
FORGIVE might sound like a command from a social worker or a Bible thumper.
Suddenly Mike knows what word will be right, if he can do it.
The small stones he’s picked up from the exercise cage now line the wall of his cell, blending into the gray of the floor. He picks one up and starts carving.
FORWARD
Day Seventy-two
“Move out,” orders Jenson.
Mike moves out.
He doesn’t look back.
Day Seventeen Out of Seg
Mike is working in the prison kitchen. He’s new at it and he has a lot to learn. He washes a lot of trays. He peels a lot of potatoes. He follows a lot of orders.
“We got a new kid in the hole,” the kitchen chief calls out. “Heat up a loaf.”
Mike’s stomach heaves at the sight of the foot-patty being lifted out of the freezer and tossed in the microwave.
He swallows hard. He has been waiting for this moment.
He moves from the sink to the counter where the microwave sits. When the oven finishes, he places the hot punishment loaf on a tray, taking care not to breathe in the stench.
With a quick look over his shoulder, he takes the Agatha Christie novel out of one pocket and a small pack of red licorice from his commissary order out of the other. The lid goes on the tray and the tray goes off to the hole.
“You’re not alone,” he whispers to the unknown boy.
Forward.
9
The Hiding Chair
Noosala was sitting on a mat.
The landlord called it a carpet.
“Be sure to keep that carpet clean,” he said nearly every time he came into the apartment. “If those babies spit up on that nice carpet, I’m going to have to charge you extra.”
That last bit was a ridiculous threat. The landlord already knew he had taken almost all the money they had.
Besides, this was not a carpet.
A carpet was something made in the shacks of Afghanistan, hung on frames and tied with the small hands of women and children who breathed in the fibers and whose backs got stiff and sore from hours of cramped sitting.
A carpet was a sturdy, luxurious thing. A carpet was strong enough to be washed in a river and dried on a rock, thick enough to feel smooth on rough ground and soft enough to cover the back of a horse.<
br />
A baby was no threat to a real Afghan carpet!
This thing that Noosala sat on was flat and plastic. It was horrid. It was not a carpet.
Noosala knew. She had woven carpets all her life.
“We could ask the landlord to set up a carpet frame for us,” she said out loud without thinking. She spoke quietly, though. Her voice automatically stayed quiet now. Even the little ones hardly ever cried louder than a whisper.
“You want us to make him a carpet?” Aunt Freyba asked her. “You want us to break our backs and cut up our fingers to make something beautiful for him? I suppose you think he will go sell this carpet and bring us back the money. Is that what you think?”
Noosala’s aunt used to be fun. In the good days, before the war, the family saw her twice a year. She brought them presents like dolls and change purses she had made from clothing scraps and told them funny stories about when she and Mama were little girls.
Now Mama and Papa were dead and Aunt Freyba was just foul.
“After all, the landlord has been so trustworthy so far,” Aunt Freyba said. “He has gotten us to safety, hasn’t he? We are all living a grand new life, aren’t we? We are eating too much food every day, aren’t we? Are you thinking we owe him money for all the fabulous food he brings us? Do you think we owe him money, you silly girl? Is that what you think?”
Many, many times, Noosala wished she never again had to hear that phrase — “Is that what you think?”
Their landlord was the same man who had smuggled them out of Afghanistan. Noosala’s father had found him for the group through one of his neighbors in Mazar-e-Sharif. The group would have blamed her father for their misery, but he was arrested at an unexpected Taliban checkpoint as they were heading out of the country. The Taliban shot him right in front of Noosala.
“The rest of you — go!” the checkpoint commander ordered. Aunt Freyba forced Noosala back into the truck. She had to leave her father in the dust, unburied.
“I will care for you,” Aunt Freyba said then. “I will be your mother and your father, and you will be my child.”
Noosala’s mother died of pneumonia back in Mazar, and Aunt Freyba’s family was killed in a rocket attack.
Noosala allowed herself to be held in Freyba’s arms — she was too upset to pull away — but she remembered her father’s warnings at the start of the trip.
“Do not trust Freyba. The war has made her mean,” he said. “And don’t tell anyone about your gold. Not ever.”
Sure enough, two days into their journey, Aunt Freyba said to her, “Give me your gold. I’ll hang on to it. It will be safer with me.”
“I have no gold, Auntie,” Noosala lied. “It all went to pay for medicine for my mother.”
“But your mother’s ring. Her earrings. What about those?”
“That’s all the gold there was, and it’s gone.”
“All of it?”
“All of it, Auntie.”
Freyba pulled away from her then. Noosala blessed her father for his advice.
“My turn to sit with my back to the wall,” Aunt Freyba declared, getting to her feet and kicking at Noosala to move. “You’re so eager to weave carpets, you won’t mind sitting with nothing to prop up your back.”
Noosala didn’t listen for anyone to defend her. She knew no one would. There were eighteen other people cooped up in this room.
In the early days, everyone worked together, trying to make it as easy as possible for everyone else. They helped out with each other’s children and passed the time sharing stories. Being out of reach of the Taliban meant they could relax a little, and everyone slept a great deal.
Eight months in, they had shared all their stories, and patience was as low as their supply of food.
The men decided they needed their own space away from the women and children, so they divided the room with hanging blankets, keeping the larger half for themselves. They had more wall space to lean against. They had more room to stretch out and could even exercise a little, if they did it quietly.
The women and children’s section of the room was chopped up with the bathroom and the kitchen shelves. It did not have much wall space. They had to take turns.
Noosala moved as far away from everyone as she could, which was only about four feet. This put her right against the kitchen shelves.
“Move away from there!” the oldest woman, Spurghai, said. “You’ll break my bowl! It’s all I have left of my house. Make her move! She’ll break it!”
Noosala was nowhere near the old lady’s bowl, but she stood up anyway. There was nowhere left for her to sit except in the tiny lavatory, and someone else was there now.
Noosala took two steps to the window and pretended to look outside.
If I could just see the sun again, she thought.
“Stay away from the window!” the landlord said over and over. “Don’t touch the drapes. There are police right outside, watching for illegals like you. If they see you, they’ll ship you right back to the Taliban.”
For eight months, the heavy green, dusty drapes kept the room dark at night and dim during the day.
Maybe I could hide under the drapes, Noosala thought. I could make them into a cave, like I did when I was a child.
She could not remember the last time she had been alone.
She heard the sound of someone coming up the stairs.
All nineteen of them clustered around the door. The landlord was coming!
The key turned in the lock. The landlord came in carrying a bag. One bag.
“Don’t crowd me,” he snarled. Then he sneezed. One, two, three sneezes followed by a long bout of coughing
“Is this all you’ve brought?” asked Sayed Ali, the oldest man. “You have not been here for a week. We have been out of food since yesterday.”
“Yeah, well, now you have some. It stinks in here.”
“You promised us soap.”
“Soap costs money.” The landlord sneezed again and bent over in another fit of coughing. “Ungrateful dogs. No ‘Thank you for coming here when you are sick.’ All you want is more, more, more.”
“All we want are the visas you promised us, the visas we paid for. We have been in this room for eight months. The children have not seen the sun for eight months!”
“No sunburn, then, right?” the landlord said. “There’s a problem with the visas. I need more money.”
“More? We’ve given you so much.”
“And you’ve eaten so much. Come on. I see some rings, some watches. Hand them over.” His words were punctuated by loud, hacking coughs.
Slowly, reluctantly, watches, rings and brooches were placed in the landlord’s hands.
Noosala did not move. Her gold remained hidden, sewn into the hem of her skirt. Her mother’s ring and earrings belonged to her. They were all she had in the world, and she was not going to give them up, especially since she did not think for a moment that she would get a visa in exchange.
“Don’t look at me like I am a bad guy,” said the landlord. “I have gone to considerable trouble for you people. And for what? For you to look at me like I’m a thief? I won’t put up with that.” He pocketed their jewelry. “If you are not happy with these arrangements, leave. Go outside. Take your chances with the Uzbek police. The amount of rent I could get for this flat! I ought to turn you over to the police myself.”
“No, no,” Sayed Ali said. Noosala would not have bothered. The landlord had made these threats before. “We know this is a hardship for you as well. We are just tired of waiting.”
“That’s what life is,” said the landlord, sneezing as he handed the bag over to Sayed Ali. “Waiting to die. We are all just waiting to die. Me, I’m going home to wait in my bed. Don’t bother thanking me.”
Before he left, he reminded them, “Don’t touch those drapes! Keep
those kids away from those windows.” He coughed some more, then left the flat. They heard him turn the key to lock them inside.
The bag held three loaves of bread, a small tub of margarine and a small jar of honey.
Ali handed it to the women.
“Feed the little ones first,” he said.
Noosala knew that by the time the small children ate and then the men ate, there would be next to nothing left for her.
The women got busy. They had a task to do. They had to divide up the bread and honey. They went to the task with full gusto, each one of them wanting a piece of the work. It was something to do.
Noosala woke up with an empty belly. By the end of the next day, flu gripped the noses and bellies of the smallest and the oldest. The stench rose with their fevers.
Soon half the flat was ill.
I’m going to go mad, Noosala thought. I’m going to go mad and then I am going to die in this terrible room.
Noosala tried to bury that thought in work. She rinsed and washed as well as she could without soap, wiping down the feverish ones with cool cloths and trying to keep them covered.
She was not sick. Everyone else, it seemed, was.
I’ll be the last, she thought. I’ll work to make everyone better. Then they will get well and I’ll get sick. They will go on to Europe and they will leave me here to die.
Still, she kept working to care for the others. There was nothing else to do.
It wasn’t enough. Within days, death came for Sayed Ali and for old Spurghai and for Aunt Freyba.
The littlest ones were in a really bad way, too.
“We need a doctor,” Noosala said. She stared at the door, waiting for the landlord to walk through it. “We need medicine. We can’t all just wait to die.”
And we need to get rid of the bodies, she thought, trying not to look into the corner where the three dead bodies were under a blanket.
“What are we going to do?” she asked the room, and no one answered her.
“Never touch the drapes,” the landlord had warned them over and over. “Never look out the window. There is a police station right across the street. They will see your foreign faces and they will throw you in a dungeon, even the children. They will beat you and torture you and ship you back to the Taliban. Stay away from the windows!”
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