Internment

by Samira Ahmed

  I walk back to the cot, zombie-like, and fall down onto the pillow.

  The logic of sleep pulls at me, but all my edges are too sharp. I feel like my skin is coated with crushed glass, ready to shred me to smithereens if I dare close my eyes and drop my guard. My guard. The guard. The Director’s men. Did they go back to my trailer? Does the Director have my parents? Stay strong. Stay strong? Breathe? How? I barely have the strength to sit up. And, God, how I wish I could stop having to remind myself to breathe. I wish I could imagine anything besides the blood on my dad’s face. I wish my mom could have one minute of ease and peace, and now I’ve taken it all away. There is no wishing anymore, though. No imagining and no pretending. The stars have all gone out. Only darkness remains.

  The door to my cell clangs open. I have no idea what time it is or if I slept or how long I slept or even if it is day or night. Jake steps through the doorway and rushes to my bedside. “Layla. Are you okay?” His voice is low, with tension in it. A taut wire.

  I nod and sit up, trying to rub the weariness from my eyes. My entire body aches. “Jake,” I whisper. “What’s happening? Are my parents okay?”

  He looks into my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Layla. We only have a minute. The Director wants you in his office.” He pauses, takes a deep breath, and covers my hand with his. “Listen, I’m so sorry to have to ask, but I need you to go along with this. I can’t get you out right now. It’s chaos out there. And no one is sure what’s going to happen. Be brave. Can you do that?”

  My mouth opens. Jake’s words are still in my ears, but they don’t make any sense. Stay here? Go along? Be brave? I don’t know what to say. I nod once. Do I really have any other choice?

  “I’m sorry. I have to go,” he says, pulling his hand away from mine. He stands up.

  Footsteps outside. “I’ll take her,” a voice says. Jake steps aside so I can see the door. It’s Fred.

  Jake nods and hurries out. He never told me if my parents are okay.

  I stand up from the hard bed. Fred walks over and hands me a banana. “The Director says he wants to see you at six a.m. sharp. I’ll give you a couple of minutes to wash up, okay? Layla, I know you’re scared. But you’re not alone.” He smiles at me in a halfhearted way. Everything feels hollow right now. Words. Gestures. Thoughts.

  He steps out, and the door slams behind him.

  I devour the banana. Apparently, my body is hungry even if I’m not paying attention to it. I wash up and coax myself to pee, silently thanking Fred for standing with his back to the small observation window that looks into my cell.

  The door opens again. “We need to go,” he says. He leads me down the narrow hall. As we step into admin, the door momentarily hides our faces from the camera in the corner, and he whispers, “Be brave.”

  The same words Jake said to me. But how am I supposed to be brave when I’m terrified?

  He opens the door to the Director’s office. The early-morning sun brightens the room. The Director stares out the window. “Thank you, soldier. You can leave now,” he says without turning around. Fred hesitates for a split second, then exits.

  There is no one else in the room. We are alone. A solitary inquisition.

  “Have a seat, Miss Amin.” The Director continues to stare out the window, speaking with his back to me.

  I sit and wait. And wait. The Director doesn’t turn toward me. The room is silent except for his loud breathing and his occasional guttural throat clearing. He taps on the window. The silence feels loaded. I’m pretty certain it is meant to intimidate me—and it’s working. I want to scream or cry out, end the silence, but I don’t want to give the Director the satisfaction.

  I grip the arms of the chair. The sweat from my hands makes them slippery, but I hold on like my life depends on it. I close my eyes, try to breathe through the dread. I inhale and focus on my own breath traveling through my body before exhaling. I feel its resonance in my bones. I mute the Director’s breathing and tapping until it disappears.

  Inside me, it is still. And through the silence, I hear voices: You’re not alone. David. Jake. Ayesha. My mom. My dad. You’re not alone. You’re not alone. You’re not alone.

  I listen. And from the dark quiet that scares me, I discover that love lives in the deepest silence.

  The Director is still at the window, pretending to survey the camp. He plans to keep me waiting. To wait me out. But I see his tense shoulders. The veins in his neck bulge. I hear his snorts. He coughs, clears his throat. I can tell he’s restraining himself. Waiting for the perfect moment. Trying to find the silence he always demands before he speaks. I’m tired of him getting what he wants, though.

  “Are you okay, sir?” I ask. It’s no trouble at all to muster mock sincerity.

  The Director roars. He spins and slams his fist onto his desk. The entire desk shakes, and the force feels like a gale wind slamming my back into the chair. His red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes brim with fury.

  “Shut up. Shut your goddamn mouth.” Beads of spit fly from his swollen purple lips; a deep animal-like growl rises from his throat.

  I clasp my hands as if this action will hold me together.

  He wants so much to believe he is in control that losing his grip only enrages him more. That’s when he makes mistakes. It’s a risk to draw out his rage, but if he’s focused on me right now, he can’t focus on anything or anyone else.

  The Director skirts around his desk and stands over me. He puts his hands on the chair and bends over me until his face is inches from mine. I recoil from the whiskey on his breath and the sweat dripping from his hairline. I start to gag.

  He grabs my jaw between his rough, calloused fingers and squeezes. I twist my neck away, trying to free myself from his grasp, but he only grips harder. The pads of his fingers brand my skin with their force. I try to speak, yell out.

  “Shut up,” he spits in my face. Then adds, “Does this hurt?”

  I don’t move. I stop struggling. Don’t answer. Don’t give him the satisfaction. I may have almost no control, but I still have a choice.

  “How about now?” The Director tightens his grip more, and a grin escapes his purple-red lips.

  I dig my heels into the floor and wrap my hands around the Director’s forearms. I feel like he could tear my skin from my skull. He begins wrenching my face, like’s he’s trying to pull it off my neck.

  “And now?” he bellows so loudly that I feel his voice inside my body. Tears stream down my cheeks. He pulls his hand back, balling it into a fist. I raise my hand to protect my face. His hand hovers in the air, suspended.

  The door bangs open. It’s Fred. A small mercy. “Sir. Your visitors from High Command are passing through security, sir. They will be here shortly.” Fred steps completely into the room. “I can take the internee back to her cell, sir.”

  The Director lets out a raw, brittle laugh. If there is a devil, this is what he sounds like.

  “Lucky again, Miss Amin. Soon I will make that luck run out. Count on it.”

  Fred takes my hand and gently helps me out of my seat, hurrying me out of the room. He shuts the door behind us.

  We walk silently down the small, empty hall back to my holding room. Fred stops at a small closet and grabs a couple of ice packs. He opens the door to the cell and helps me to the cot. Once I’m seated, he breaks the capsules in the ice packs and shakes them, hands them to me. I hold them against each side of my jaw.

  “It looks like you’re going to have some bruises. I’m sorry. I wish I could’ve intervened sooner. I—it’s so wrong, what’s happening here. Jake is right; we need to speed things up. He’s trying to.”

  I look up at Fred. I’m so grateful he’s here. “Is Jake back? Where did he go?” I wonder what things he wants to speed up, but my body and mind feel like they might both collapse, and I can barely get any words out.

  Fred shakes his head. “He’s attending to High Command. He’ll be back soon. I know he’s worried about you.”

  I know he has
his orders, but I’m sad he hasn’t come back. Doesn’t he at least want to check on me?

  My jaw throbs. My entire body hurts. “If you see him, could you tell him—tell him I—” I have no idea what I want to tell him. Maybe that I feel broken and lost and helpless. “Tell him I tried to stay strong.”

  Fred nods. “He’ll go wild when he finds out what the Director did. Things are getting out of control. That’s why High Command is here. With all this media attention, the protestors, they can’t afford any more mistakes. The public was fine with all this in the abstract, but it’s becoming real for them, and it’s starting to make people squirm.”

  “How long will the Director hold me in the brig? Can I see my parents? Are they okay?”

  “I don’t know how long he plans on keeping you here. He’s forbidden any visitors.”

  Tears sting my eyes. I’m so tired. I wish I could sleep. I wish so badly that I could see my parents. But I’m still aware enough to realize that both Fred and Jake ignored my questions about my parents. I hope they’re okay.

  “I’ll wrangle you up something to eat.” Fred begins walking back to the door.

  “Fred? Aren’t you scared? I mean, the cameras in here?”

  “The IT guy on the security feed right now is with us. Any footage that could cause trouble will meet with a technical glitch. It might not seem like it, but there are a lot of people who are fighting this.”

  I offer a weak smile. Fred walks out. And I’m alone again.

  I clench my fists. I want to punch this stupid wall, but I can barely lift my arm. I fall over onto the cot, my body convulsing in soul-shattering sobs.

  They yank me from my sleep before I can cry out. Before I can even remember where I am.

  I wipe my eyes with the backs of my hands. This is real. This prison room. These two men from the Director’s security team. This pain in my jaw. And the horrible sinking feeling that I am being taken away. Forever.

  I yearn for a minute of a gentle, just-stirring stupor, but I can’t afford to be groggy. Not here. Not now. My muscles tense. My throat feels raw, like I was breathing through my mouth all night, and my heart whirs like an overwound motor on a toy car.

  Neither of the Director’s men says anything. One takes my arm and pulls me to standing and cuffs my hands behind my back. I strain against him, against the handcuffs, but he is twice as big as me and has a gun.

  “Keep your mouth shut,” the other one says. He’s taller and has bushy light-brown eyebrows that look like caterpillars. He rips a piece of duct tape from a large roll.

  I whip my head away.

  “You can make this easy or hard. It makes no difference to me,” he says in a dull monotone. My palms sweat. My heart races. I start to gag. I’m panicking. When I panic, my mind starts to go on walkabout, but I need to be here. I have to keep pulling myself back to the present moment.

  “I won’t scream. You don’t need to do that,” I say, my voice fading like a wisp of smoke.

  “Orders.”

  I purse my lips as he tapes them shut. The one who handcuffed me pushes me forward.

  These guys are the Director’s private security. Where are the Exclusion Guards? I don’t see Fred anywhere. And does Jake even know what’s happening? As I step through the door, I see another one of the Director’s henchmen waiting in the hallway. He throws a brown cloth bag over my head, tightening it around my neck like a noose. I squirm. I try to push against it, but the more I fight, the less I can breathe. I wonder if this is what suffocating feels like. Was this what it was like for the others? The ones he disappeared?

  “Stop fighting it,” a throaty, unknown voice whispers in my ear. The third man. “It’s only a short walk.”

  I try to slow down my breathing. And quiet my body. My instinct is to close my eyes, but I force myself to keep them open. It’s dark, but not completely. The rough fibers of the fabric allow light from the fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling through. I’m guided down the hallway toward a door to the outside.

  No. I can’t go outside. If they take me away from the camp, I could be gone forever. No one will find me. No one will know where I am. I drag my feet, but the men pull me forward against my will.

  Adrenaline surges through me. I’m suddenly hyperaware of my breathing and the rapid thud of my heartbeat.

  Scream.

  Run.

  Fight.

  But there is nowhere to flee. And there is no fight I can win.

  The security detail propels me forward. One of them opens the door to the outside. I can taste the dust in the air. I feel the tiny particles swirling about and coating me like a second skin. Even through the bag on my head, the dust fills my nostrils. There is a stillness, a quiet outside. It’s the middle of the night. The nights at Mobius have an eeriness about them, a soundless, otherworldly beauty, interrupted only by a chance howl or hoot in the distance.

  Occasionally I’ve snuck out of my room and sat on the steps to my trailer, listening to the night, gazing up at the stars, dreaming. Night is refuge, a kind of mental sanctuary I can access. But being outside right now, under the cloak of darkness, offers the very opposite. My fears hurtle to the front of my mind. A black-ops site—some secret location away from Mobius. Where no one would be able to find me. The security detail said it was a short walk, but it could be a short walk to a van that might be taking me anywhere. And anywhere in handcuffs means those secret sites, hidden away, places where they can erase your existence. Jake warned me, but I didn’t believe it was really possible. I thought maybe my age, or the presence of the Red Cross, immunized me against the terrors I knew existed in the camp.

  Maybe I thought someone would stop it.

  Maybe I thought this couldn’t happen here.

  In American Lit class once, we discussed America as a metaphor tying it into how the country is represented in books, movies, songs. You know, America is a melting pot. America is a mixed salad. America is a shining city on a hill. America is the country where a skinny kid with a funny name can defeat the odds and become president. But America doesn’t seem like any of those things anymore. Maybe it never was.

  After walking a couple hundred yards, we stop. I’m pulled through another door—not a car but a building—and ushered into a room that smells like cleaning fluid. Like bleach and synthetic lemon. I hear the screech of a metal chair as it’s pulled across the floor. I’m shoved down into it, and it’s pushed back, jerking into place. Someone unlocks one side of the handcuffs and drags my still-cuffed right hand to a table in front of me. I hear the other handcuff click onto something metal. I circle my free wrist to rid the phantom weight of the handcuff while one of the security guys pulls the bag off my head.

  I blink at the fluorescent lights in the room; a faint buzz emanates from them and reminds me of the lights in my high school library. The room is empty except for the small metal rectangular table in front of me; I’m handcuffed to a metal bar in its center. My blue chair is pulled up close to the table, allowing me to at least rest my handcuffed arm along it; it feels cool against my aching skin. There is one other blue chair in the room, ominously empty. And that chemical bleach smell fills my nostrils. What was spilled in this room that it had to be cleaned with bleach?

  No windows.

  No cot.

  No hope.

  One of the men reaches toward my face and rips the duct tape off my mouth. I cry out. I raise my free hand to cover my mouth. The pain brings tears to my eyes. But no one notices, or cares.

  The door opens. The security detail files out of the room. Someone else enters. It’s him. He’s behind me. I can tell from the loud breathing. I try to steel myself, close my eyes and remember Jake’s words. Be brave. Be brave. You’re not alone. But an image of the woman tased at the orientation springs to mind. And Noor being dragged away, Bilqis and Asmaa being assaulted, and my dad being butted by the end of a rifle. Blood on the floor in the Mess. Blood mingling with the desert dirt. The electric fence. That terrible scream.
Soheil. Soheil. Soheil. My heart thuds against my ribs. I rub my free hand against my jeans, trying stupidly to wipe away the clamminess and fear.

  “We meet again. Did you miss me?” The Director’s voice seems different than it did… eighteen hours ago? Twenty? I realize I don’t know what time it is or even, really, what day. There’s a forced, practiced calm in his tone. So cold. And it’s terrifying. I bite my lip. Stay calm. I say this over and over in my head, hoping that somehow it will stick.

  He slams the door shut; the thud of his soles against the concrete floor shakes my seat as he approaches me from behind. The Director takes his time walking to the other side of the table. He pulls the chair back and takes a seat, tenting his fingers, pointing his chin downward. Smug. It’s all very rehearsed. Like this is his stage. And it strikes me that this is exactly that—his show. He’s playing the strongman. I guess that’s sort of the thing with bullies, though, isn’t it? They play a part to mask their own weaknesses.

  And that’s the small opening. The only one I may have. At their core, bullies are cowards. He is what he always was. He can still hurt me. Kill me, even. But he will never win.

  Remember who the enemy is. I’ve been fighting myself. My fear. My failures. That’s the wrong fight. The fight is in front of me.

  “I’ll keep it simple,” the Director begins. “You cooperate. You protect yourself from further harm.”

  I stare at him, debating the best way to proceed.

  He chuckles. “So that’s how it’s going to be? Nothing to say? Perhaps you didn’t hear me. Cooperate. Save yourself.”

  “Cooperate with what?”

  “Let’s say I could use someone like you. For starters, you point out the troublemakers. Tell me who is writing those lying blog posts that are causing such a ruckus. How are they getting the information out? Who is their contact? There’s a traitor in my ranks, and I need to know who that is. Now, that’s not a very big ask, is it?”