The Godless One

by J. Clayton Rogers

  The guard handed Finley Ari's license. He studied it closely, as though peering through a microscope, then read out loud some of the lines on the pink card. "Patente Di Guida, Repubblica Italiana…Siracusa…"

  "That's my Italian license," Ari repeated. "The IDP provides the translation."

  Finley flipped over the second card. "'International Motorist Qualification and Permit.'" He raised his head and looked at the guards. "Have either of you ever seen one of these?"

  Neither of them answered.

  "Have either of you been overseas? Do you know if this is the norm?"

  "I went to Poland with the Mrs. a couple of years ago," said one of the guards.

  "Did you drive?"

  "Uh…no. One of her relatives came over from Germany and—"

  Finley cut him off with a raised hand. "Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance for any long vacations. Too busy with…this…" He spread his arms, as though displaying a crowd of dummies who could not be left alone for a single minute.

  "I can vouch for him," said Grainger.

  "Member of your church?"

  "No...we only met yesterday. But a member of my congregation is his neighbor."

  "And how long has he known him?"

  "A couple of months." Guessing, and probably agreeing, that Ari's bona fides were weak, he added: "He's a member of his local Neighborhood Watch."

  Finley barked a laugh, as though commenting on the stupidity of farmers who hired a fox to watch their chicken coop. "Well, any other time..." He handed the license and IDP to the guard, who put them in a drawer. "But I've got a big pain in the butt with this Arab prisoner. Transporting stolen property across state lines usually lands you in a BOP, but the Feds are refusing the transfer unless we can fill out the paperwork, and right now there are just too many blanks in Mohammed's history."

  "I told him about our trouble with the Canadians," Pastor Grainger said in a tone that suggested the fault lay with militant knuckleheads like Finley.

  "Stolen property?" Ari inquired.

  "Yeah." Finley's grin was accentuated by the sunglasses, as though his mouth was his primary tool for conveying emotion. "You'll appreciate this. He was driving a stolen Lamborghini." He drew out the car's name with a mock Italian accent.

  "Amusing," Ari said.

  "All right. Please remove your keys, cell phones, wallets, cameras and anything else in your pockets and place them in this drawer. Thank you. Now please remove your coats and stand over there while the officer pats you down. Don't be alarmed. Everyone who comes in gets frisked, including me and the warden."

  Ari glanced at Grainger, who nodded. He was not alarmed. He analyzed the guard's performance as he was patted down and found it far too cursory. At Abu Ghraib, inmates were practically turned inside out. Not officers, of course—unless they were prisoners, too. And visitors were usually turned away.

  Shrugging back into their coats, Ari and Grainger followed Finley into the courtyard. The red brick wings of the main complex seemed to embrace them. They paused as a guard and a prisoner scurried from one wing to another. They were so cold that the guard did not appear too interested in guarding, and escape was the furthest thing from the prisoner's mind.

  "Alberta Clipper," Finley said through his clouded breath. "Those Canucks really have it in for us."

  They were buzzed through a door in the central complex.

  "I’ve reserved one of the classrooms downstairs," Finley said, leading them past inmates ranked casually to one side of the hall with an air of polite boredom that Ari assumed was intentionally deceptive. Take the guards and walls away, and these men would raise hell. He had seen eyes like that many times before, chaos biding its time.

  In the gatehouse and courtyard the prisoners had worn blue chambray shirts with orange collars, but here the dress code consisted of bright orange jumpsuits. He noted that most of the men were black, but Hispanics comprised a sizable minority. They looked upon Ari like a poor counterfeit, all the more offensive for being free. One of them, a plump man with an apocalyptic complexion, murmured, "Maldito árabe."

  "Mafioso," said Ari. "Callate el osico gordota."

  After a moment’s pause to absorb the ‘Mafioso’, the other Hispanic prisoners burst out laughing.

  "We already have enough Spanish translators," the Deputy Warden said, his alarm hidden behind his sunglasses. "I must ask you to please not talk to the prisoners." He turned to Grainger and admonished, "You should have informed him of that before bringing him here."

  "It slipped my mind," Grainger said contritely.

  Finley’s lips were a sketch of irony. One could expect no better from well-meaning ministers.

  "Powhatan is one of Virginia’s oldest correctional centers," Finley said. "It was due to be replaced with more modern facilities, but funding has been difficult and…well, here we still are. Long in tooth and likely to remain that way for some time to come."

  "On the contrary, I find your prison quite modern as it is," said Ari truthfully.

  "Oh?" Finley slipped off his sunglasses, as though unlocking his own personal cell to allow Ari inside. "What part of Italy are you from?"

  "Sicily."

  "Oh yes, the reverend mentioned that. Sicily!" Prisoners looked apprehensively in the Deputy Warden’s direction when he clapped his hands. "I’ll bet you have prisons hundreds of years old."

  "Thousands," said Ari. "The Athenians didn’t survive them."

  The historical allusion shot like a bolt over Finley’s head, but the thought of decrepit Sicilian jails made him think a lot better of his own situation.

  They came to a broad flight of stairs. The light dimmed as they descended. Finley would surely have been compelled to remove his sunglasses had he not already done so. At the bottom, they found inmates arranged in an informal line at some kind of service desk. Behind the counter, brightly lit guards called out names. Like supplicants at Our Lady of Lourdes, the ones whose names were called approached the counter as though expecting a dispensation from On High. On seeing Grainger, those in line whispered loudly in his wake.

  "Pastor…!"

  "Reverend…!"

  "Father…!"

  A guard snapped, "Quiet, there!"

  Grainger turned and gave them a benign wave. "Later," he said.

  Ari thought they were soliciting spiritual advice, but as they turned up a long corridor, Grainger said, "I help them with their petitions to the parole board."

  Ari was not sure what a parole board was. He added it to his growing list of Americanisms to research.

  They passed several rooms that contained inmates sitting at computer terminals.

  "These are computer literacy classes," Grainger explained. "You can’t get very far in the modern world without knowing the basics of Windows and Mac."

  "That sounds like a course I should take," Ari said.

  "They don’t have access to the net," Finley said, a little too smugly. "No CD/DVD burners, either. We’ve spent tons on software programs that mimic the internet, but all they really want is porn."

  Grainger made a sound of impatience. A responsive nod from Finley told Ari he was familiar with that particular cough. "You’re too tolerant, Reverend. If that inmate wins the lawsuit we were talking about, you watch how much hell breaks loose."

  To an inquiring glance from Ari, Grainger said, "The inmate in question wants to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover."

  "Straight out porn," said Finley.

  Grainger coughed. Finley nodded.

  "’Mohammed Jones’," the Deputy Warden continued. "That’s the prisoner you’re going to see. That’s what we’ve called him since he was processed out of Culpeper County Jail. The Reception Center people were pulling out their hair. A little unusual. We’re Level Three, and they didn’t know how dangerous Mohammed is, so they sent him here. We can’t even get a surname out of him."

  "I understood that your previous translator visited several times," said Ari.

  "They talked a mile a mi
nute, at first, but nothing useful came out of it," Finley answered. "My guess is they talked about life back home, family, useless stuff."

  He stopped in front of a classroom. "The reverend and I have to stop here. This is privileged client-lawyer business." He popped his head into the room. "Jenny?"

  "Yeah!" came a gruff response. There was a scraping of furniture and a short, overweight woman shuffled up to the door. She looked up at the three men, giving a grunt when she saw Ari. He was reminded of the woman he had seen feeding feral cats at Manchester Docks.

  "This is Ari Ciminon," said Grainger, stepping aside.

  Jenny held out her hand and Ari took it, intending to give it a gentle shake. The woman whipped his arm up and down like a hand pump. "You speak Arabic, Mr. Ciminon?"

  "Enough to get by," Ari smiled.

  "I hope you can get more out of Mohammed than your predecessor."

  "I’ll do my best."

  She held up a blank notepad. "This is all I got in three sessions. Well, that plus complaints about the food here. Mohammed said he wanted something called ‘hell-meat‘."

  "Halal meat," Ari corrected.

  "Right," Jenny nodded. "And don’t even talk about days when pork is on the menu! Anyway, Mustafa Zewail, the guy before you, said the name of Allah has to be pronounced when the animal is slaughtered. We’ve got plenty of Muslims here, and in the Culinary Arts program, too. I’m sure they must say ’Allah’ when they carve the roast. But that doesn’t suit Mohammed. He says those are black Muslims. I always thought a Muslim here is a Muslim there. Are you aware of any Koranic rules that apply to this?"

  Ari put on a show of deep thought, then shook his head. "It sounds like Mohammed is trying to be a pain in the ass."

  Grainger looked dismayed, but Finley barked another laugh.

  "You’ll do just fine, Mr. Ciminon," he said, then turned at a noise in the corridor. "Here’s your man, now."

  Mohammed was wearing a belly chain and accompanied by a guard. He was almost as short as Jenny. In his orange jumpsuit, he looked like a shizi. Ari’s mind ticked down a mental list and thudded against a picture from an IPS file.

  Iraqi, he thought with alarm. Ari's trepidation rose when Mohammed's eyes fixed on him in puzzlement—the first step to recognition.

  "You're the translator?" Mohammed asked in Arabic. Ari nodded. The prisoner lowered his voice, even though no one else could understand him. "If you want to save your neck, get out of here now!"

  "Assalam alaikum to you, too, brother."

  Mohammed twitched, perhaps on hearing Ari's Baghdad University accent. "Valaikum-salam," he nervously responded.

  "Then we'll leave you three to it," said Finley. "A guard will be just outside the door throughout the interview. If there's any trouble, just holler. But Mohammed has been a sterling inmate so far. We just don't know who he is or where he comes from." He took Grainger by the shoulder. "Come on, Reverend. I'll show you the new Carpentry class. Prisoners with hammers and chisels. I'm sure you'll enjoy it."

  Mohammed tried to communicate with Jenny, shaking his head in protest, but she had already turned to reenter the room. The guard had his own way of communicating.

  "Hey!" he said loudly, getting Mohammed's attention. He pointed at the room. Mohammed could not pretend he did not understand, but just in case he tried, the guard bared his teeth. The un-American non-American would flee at the threat from the American carnivore. Mohammed stepped into the classroom. The guard pointed at a chair and bared his teeth again. Mohammed sat.

  Jenny battled her plumpness into a desk. Ari followed suit, and immediately felt like a schoolboy again. The guard nodded agreeably, as though he had just put his family safely to bed, then left the room, closing the door behind him.

  "Well, Mr. Ciminon, since you seemed to understand what Mohammed was saying in the hallway, I guess we can get this show on the road." She followed this up with a grumpy noise, which was in turn followed (to Ari’s horror) by a loud fart. Mohammed giggled. Ari shot him a look and he fell silent.

  "They’ve got some kind of beany oatmeal in the cafeteria here," Jenny semi-apologized. "Now, Mr. Ciminon, would you mind introducing yourself to Mohammed?"

  "My pleasure," said Ari, turning to the prisoner and switching to Arabic. "My name is Ari Ciminon, you piece of filth."

  Mohammed stared at him.

  "Good," said Jenny, opening a folder and taking out some forms. "Unless Mr. Zewail was mistaken, Mohammed understands that I am a court-appointed lawyer here to help him negotiate what we fondly refer to as ‘the System’."

  "You defend him in court?" Ari asked.

  "If we go before a judge or this goes to trial, yes."

  Was she speaking of show trials, where the defense held the rope while the prosecution looped it around the prisoner’s head? There had been plenty of those in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Hussein himself had succumbed to the most elaborate show trial of all, which Ari had found both sad and poetic. Was Ari here to teach Mohammed his lines?

  "Of course, all of this is moot until we get more information out of Mohammed. He had no identification on him when he was arrested. For the record, can you ask him if he’s an American citizen?"

  Ari asked.

  "Ha!" said Mohammed.

  "O-kay, no need for translation there. Can you ask him what his nation of origin is?"

  "When was the last time you saw Sadr City, you Shia piece of shit?"

  Mohammed looked down.

  "Iraq," said Ari.

  "But he didn’t say anything," Jenny protested.

  "He speaks in the Baghdadi dialect, a variety of Mesopotamian Arabic."

  "Pastor Grainger told me you were from Italy." Jenny twisted around and looked at him. "Are you a language expert?"

  "I worked in the Alagonian Library in the Archbishop’s Palace—in Syracuse. It has an extensive collection of Moorish manuscripts." Ari mentally kicked himself. He had promised himself just the other day that he would stop cooking up these outrageous stories. It was a bad habit he found hard to break.

  "My public library has an extensive collection of Harlequin Romances," said Jenny. "That doesn’t mean I know squat about love."

  "Ah," said Ari. Feeling temporarily bereft of chivalry, he left it at that.

  "All right, can you ask him when he left Iraq? It’s important, seeing as we’re involved in a war there."

  Ari was curious himself, and put the question straight. Mohammed did not answer.

  "Uh-oh, here we go," Jenny frowned. "The first time Mr. Zewail translated for us it was like two badgers at a wolf convention. They were the only two people in the room—I didn’t exist. Then it went belly up."

  "Is that so?" said Ari. Mohammed had mouthed off about something to Mustafa Zewail and been told to shut up. But told by whom?

  "Well, let’s see if we can at least get a full name out of him."

  Ari sighed and asked Mohammed his name.

  "Are you of the Faith?" Mohammed demanded abruptly.

  "Who’s asking?" said Ari.

  "They sent a Christian here, before."

  When Ari neither affirmed nor denied that he was a Muslim, Mohammed crossed his arms and mumbled. After rolling his tongue over a bicuspid, Ari allowed himself a fit of impatience.

  "You are Samir Salman, the premier cocksucker of Gejara Street. You were arrested for raping young girls and escaped execution due to the intercession of the American Army, which mistook you for a political prisoner and released you on the unsuspecting Iraqi public. Ten to one you were involved in the famous ambush of the 1st Cavalry Division, and wouldn’t the Americans love to know that they have you in their clutches?"

  Samir Salman howled and leapt out of his seat, backing towards the front of the classroom. The guard immediately appeared and bared his teeth. Samir Salman wilted under his brazen grin and returned to his desk. The guard nodded contentedly and left.

  Jenny was staring at Ari. "What did you say to him?"

  Ari, a master of f
urtive gestures, ran a finger over his sleeve. "When he didn’t answer, I put the question to him more forcefully. I am from Sicily and perhaps some of my rough upbringing came through…" He grimaced and shrugged.

  "Great," said Jenny. "I ask for a translator and get Don Corleone. Would you please apologize to Mohammed and rephrase the question?"

  "Certainly." Ari turned back to the prisoner. "All right, Samir, let’s get this straight. If you don’t start answering questions these people will send you to a Federal prison, where I believe castration is practiced as a matter of course. So, are you going to cooperate?"

  "The Godless One," Samir Salman whimpered.

  Ari sat straight. "What was that?"

  "I wondered when I saw you. Now I know. You’re the one they talked about."

  "Who talked about?"

  "Everyone. You’re the devil who reads souls. You know everything about everyone. They passed around a drawing of you."

  It must have been one hell of a good drawing for Samir to recognize him so quickly, so far out of context.

  "Who? The Mahdi Army?"

  "You know who. You know everything."

  "Uh, Mr. Ciminon?"

  Ari smiled at Jenny. "His name is Samir Salman. He was a seller of trinkets in Baghdad. He escaped because he is Shia and he was afraid of certain Sunni…elements."

  "He feared for his life?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "Great! A political refugee!" Jenny began scribbling heavily in her notebook. "How to you spell that name?"

  Ari spelled it for her.

  "Good…good…now ask him how he came to this country."

  "You came through Canada, right?" Ari said to Samir. "Who sponsored you?"

  "No, no!"

  For a moment, Ari conceded to his fear. "Why did the other translator give up on you?"

  Samir Salman tried to draw his legs up into the fetal position, but the molded plastic of the single-piece desk made it impossible. "He began getting letters."

  "Threatening letters?"

  "From some American asshole. He said he didn’t like having a Center Denter in his neighborhood."

  ‘Center Denter’. A reference to the World Trade Center attack. Ari had heard American troops use the phrase.

  "He used that word: ʹneighborhoodʹ?"