by AHWA
“Do you feel guilt?”
The boy nodded.
“Do you feel remorse?”
Nod.
“Do you wish to atone?”
Hesitation. The window slid closed. Unwanted panicked and knocked on the glass again, nodding so hard his head rang. The man stared for a moment then disappeared.
Unwanted moved from the door and slid down the wall. His head hung low, his eyes glazed and his cheeks wet. It had been so long since he had felt tears and tasted his own sorrow. He let them flow and lifted his head. Slender was gone.
Unwanted heaved a breath and dragged himself to the head of the bed. He wet his fingers with his tears and tried to wash the blood off the wall below his victim’s picture.
A metal scrape, and the room brightened. He turned to squint at the open door. A tall, full figure shuffled out of the glow and into the shadows as the door closed.
“Your atonement is to feel all that he can feel no longer.” The voice was shaky but cold. It sounded like it had once been angry, but had grown emotionless.
Brute stepped forward and placed a final steel container on the floor in the middle of the room. Unwanted crawled to it and slid off the lid. A heart, so like the others but redder and more human, lay inside.
Unwanted felt a thump inside his chest.
“You have to feel. You have to feel like he did!”
Brute’s voice cracked but he stayed stiff. He clenched his fists by his sides as he stared down at the heart. Unwanted dropped his gaze back to the organ. He thought he saw it beat. Brute reached into his pocket and dropped a knife and fork at his feet. Unwanted cut into his last meal.
The two boys stayed in silence until the final sip of blood was drained from the container. Unwanted yelped. He fell back to the floor and gripped his chest over where his heart beat faster than it should have. Greed and humiliation and horror and anger pounded against his brain, and were finally allowed entrance. And he knew his heart had always been there—the feelings always there. But too much.
And then it stopped.
First he lost feeling in his fingers and toes, then up his torso, and finally his head before he could close his eyes. He saw Brute a final time, bent over but unwilling to help. And then he was gone.
There still, to this day, is a cottage by the lake. In the cottage is a room, and in the room is a boy with a heart that beat too strong.
They Don’t Know That We Know What They Know
Andrew J McKiernan
A locked room. A body.
No, this is not one of those mysteries only Miss Marple or Angela Lansbury could solve. Murder?
Most definitely, though there is little doubt as to the culprit’s identity. I confess, it was me. Acting under orders, of course. I wouldn’t kill just anybody, and this one only because he wouldn’t talk. Despite months of waterboarding and sleep deprivation and loud volume replays of Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits, this subject refused to break under any of the government-sanctioned methods of illegal interrogation. But time is now short. Information desperately required. And so, they call in someone like me. I am their instrument of last resort.
The room is hermetically-sealed. Locked from the outside by a series of computer-controlled systems. I have no access. Only my superiors, observing through a window of blast-proof glass set high above, have the necessary codes. This is for their own protection, they say. For the protection of everyone stationed at the Camp. Here, only I am at risk.
Or, I am the risk.
It has never been made clear to me which.
The body lies on a slab of concrete. A boy of Middle-Eastern appearance, mid-teens, dark hair, approximately five feet seven inches tall. The slab is seven feet long, three feet wide and rises four feet from the floor. Everything here is concrete—the walls, the floor, even the doors—most of it two feet thick, reinforced with steel and sandwiching sheets of copper mesh, like a Faraday Cage, to block radio signals from entering or leaving. Bug-proof. Soundproof.
The tools of my trade are arranged neatly within a niche set into one wall. I take a piece of black chalk. With it I inscribe a circle just inside the perimeter of the pentagonally-shaped room. I mark the circle with glyphs arcane and potent, with words of power millennia old. Within the niche I light a small brazier and sprinkle the glowing charcoal with incense. A mix of frankincense and myrrh, dragon’s blood and galangal root. Thick white smoke curls up and out, filling the room, and I breathe it in. I place lit candles of beeswax at the five corners of the room. I motion for my superiors to cut the lights and I lower myself to the floor, a supplicant before the dead.
This is where it begins. This is where I work to discover that which the boy would not speak.
Prayers to ancient gods tumble from my lips. Invocations in Sumerian and Greek and bastardised Latin. I focus on the words; each letter a sigil imbued with thousands of years of meaning. Their combinations act like notches on a key, moving tumblers into place, until a door opens in my mind. I place my hands upon the cold, dead flesh of the body. I take a deep breath and …
* * *
The boy runs through the streets of Karbala’s old district, feet bare and kicking up dust. His name is Mustafa al-Nashiri. He is fifteen years old.
Although it is still early, cars and people are beginning to fill the streets. There are a lot of funerals to be had. A lot of bodies to be washed. Only two days ago, a car bomb exploded not far from the Shrine of Husayn ibn ‘Alī. Sixty-three people killed and over two-hundred wounded. All of the dead will be buried today and that will make Karbala a very busy place.
Mustafa rounds a corner and almost knocks an old lady to the ground. He stops, apologises profusely, head bowed, and helps her pick up the food she has dropped. He is a polite boy, but in a hurry. He is already late for a meeting with his uncle, and his uncle is not a man to be kept waiting. The old lady mutters a curse and shuffles on her way without looking back.
Up ahead is the coffee shop his uncle frequents. Already Mustafa can smell the mingled scents of tobacco smoke and coffee, cinnamon and cardamom. The coffee shop is like a club; a gathering place for his uncle and the men who work for him, or with him, or something. Mustafa is not really sure what they do or discuss there.
The front of the shop is open to the street. Big shutters rolled up, exposing waist-to-ceiling windows devoid of glass and double doors folded back to hide them from view. The open plan, the rich scents, the lively sounds of traditional maqāms playing on an old stereo, they all serve to create an inviting feel. But Mustafa knows that is all deception; casual customers are not welcome here. Entry is strictly by invitation only. Visitors stepping in for a quick cup of qahwa are greeted with harsh stares and stony silences that ensure their hasty retreat. Mustafa has been the recipient of such treatment many times in the past, when running messages for his mother.
His uncle is his father’s brother. Since his father died fighting in Baghdad, his uncle has looked after Mustafa and his mother. He pays their rent and buys their food. Whenever Mustafa’s mother needs money, she sends her son down to the coffee shop to ask. Mustafa has no idea what his uncle does to earn a living—his mother refuses to talk about it—but he always has money.
This time is different. He has not been sent on an errand for his mother. There will be no request for money. Mustafa has been invited. When he stops and looks in through the beaded curtain at the coffee shop door, his uncle smiles.
“Assalamu alaikum, Mustufa,” his uncle says. “Come in, come in! Don’t tarry outside like an urchin.”
“Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatu Allah, Uncle,” Mustafa replies and steps inside. There are other men in the room but they ignore him. Some are playing backgammon or dealing out cards. Thick smoke from waterpipes and roughly rolled cigarettes hangs in a cloud above Mustafa’s head. All sip coffee and eat dates a
nd pistachios from small bowls. His uncle motions for Mustafa to come sit beside him.
“Ahh, son of my brother, how you have grown!” he says, looking at Mustafa from head to toe. “No longer a boy, but a man! Your father would be so proud. But now that you are a man, it is time to act as a man. Your family owes me a debt and it is only right that you be the one to pay it. Tomorrow, you will begin working for me. I have a job for you. I want you to come with me to Baghdad.”
* * *
… I breathe out again, hands falling to my sides, and open my eyes.
The room is still full of incense smoke. Candles burnt half-way down, as if hours instead of moments have existed between my last inward and outward breath. But now I know the boy’s name, his age. I have seen the face of his uncle.
I stand and motion to my handlers. High in the ceiling, exhaust fans whir, sucking away the incense smoke. A hidden projector casts a screen upon the wall before me, a desktop of icons. I sweep my hand through the air and a directory unfolds. A matrix of profiles. Insurgents and terrorists, suspected terrorists and known associates. I scroll through until I come to the face that I recognise.
“That’s him,” I say. “That’s the boy’s uncle. The one who recruited him.”
I tap the air with my finger and his image expands, biography unravelling across the screen. Abdulaziz al-Nashiri. Aged fifty-two. Veteran of the first Gulf War. A man suspected of plotting numerous bombings. The killing of scores of Kurdish rebels. Of arranging arms and training for insurgent forces throughout Iraq.
“We need more.” The voice grates from a speaker set in the wall.
“I can give you the name of the café he uses as a base for operations,” I offer, knowing it won’t be enough.
“Delve deeper.”
I nod and move back to the niche in the wall. Stand a moment with my back to the window, to conceal my excitement. I consider the tools before me, deciding which would be best for the course I need to follow. Delve deeper. From the tray I choose a scalpel, stainless steel and sharpened to surgical precision. I admire the beauty of its micro-sharpened edge, the honest simplicity of its engineering. Nothing is hidden. No agenda beyond the obvious purpose of its design. To lay open the truth; to reveal the concealed. It is an inspiration. An aspiration.
I turn back to the boy on the slab. He has been dead less than an hour. A lethal injection that leaves his body still supple, pliable. I arrange his limbs. Arms stretched above his head in an open V. Right leg straight, left leg bent across it at the knee until they form something resembling the number four. The hanged man of the tarot, laid out upon the concrete slab. My hands feel the taut skin of his abdomen. Palpitating. Searching. I take the scalpel and draw a line like an artist across his flesh. I reach inside. Dredge from that wound a handful of intestines and I let them drop. They hit the concrete floor with a wet and beautiful sound that I know my superiors find sickening. The handful’s weight drags more of the boy’s guts out in a glistening train.
I look down. My hands are red with blood and a pile of entrails lies slickly at my feet. A filigree of organs. The shapes they have made. Curl upon curl. Concertinas of reddish-blue flesh from which I cannot turn away, and I feel myself drawn into them. A message is written there. I let my mind drift, eyes half-focussed, and I hear a voice saying …
* * *
“If they capture you, they will torture you,” Mustafa’s uncle says.
They stand inside an old warehouse on the outskirts of Baghdad. Dozens of people, faces covered by industrial masks, are working at benches. They’re mixing chemicals and carefully dismantling old mortar shells. The place reeks of rotting fruit and chlorine and sweat.
“They will use every method they know to extract information from you. And now that you are here?” His uncle gestures around the room. “Now that you have seen even this small amount, you have knowledge that will be of interest to them.”
Mustafa still isn’t sure what he is seeing. His uncle has explained nothing to him. From the assault rifles held by the guards standing at doors and along the overhead walkway, he assumes that what is being done here is illegal.
“Like Shaytan, they will whisper lies into your ears. They will threaten the most horrible things upon you and your family. They will try to drown you. They will keep you in the dark and silence for days, waking you at their whim with bright lights and loud music until you are filled with the despair of Iblis and turn your heart away from Allah and betray your people.”
Mustafa shakes his head. He could never do that.
“It is true,” his uncle says, voice and eyes filled with sadness. “That is why I have brought you here. We have methods that will allow you to beat their interrogation techniques. I want you to learn these. Come, I would like you to meet someone who knew your father.”
* * *
… deeper. Delve deeper. I thrust my hands into the steaming pile of offal at my feet. Feel my way through its folds for more of the boy’s secrets. And they are there, inscribed within the bumps of the muscularis externa and in the forking blood vessels beneath the visceral peritoneum. It is as easy for me to read as braille for the blind. The words of his life saying …
* * *
“I knew your father. He was a good man, may Allah bless his soul and make his grave a garden of paradise.”
The Imam is the oldest man Mustufa has ever seen. His face is deep-lined and dark-hued. Sober of expression. He kneels on a prayer mat in the small mosque set up next to the warehouse, beard hanging long and grey to his knees. His hands are large and spotted with age, a ring of silver set with four jewels jammed on one of his fat fingers.
“It is probable that you are too young to remember much of the invasion.”
Mustafa nods. He was only five, but he remembers the trucks and tanks rumbling through Karbala on their way to Baghdad. The sound of rocket and mortar fire in the night. The echo of shots fired in narrow streets.
“We knew it was coming for a long time, and when it did it happened swiftly. The Americans invented a reason to invade and, within weeks of the first attacks, Baghdad fell. Your father was there, in the city. He was fighting for your freedom. Fighting for the freedom of us all. Not freedom as the Americans saw it—which is really just their way of making us like them—but the freedom to be ourselves. Do you understand?”
Mustafa nods again, though he’s not sure that he does. He is excited by this talk though. Excited at the thought of his father fighting for his freedom.
“We did not always agree with the regime of the time. It wanted Iraq to expand, to take the resources of others for itself. To make others think the same as us. That was almost as bad as the Americans. Almost. At least Hussein was honest about his goals. Now, nine years later, I think we are often worse off than we were. Our people are lost. Ask most Iraqis where on earth they would most like to visit. They will answer Disneyland. Ask them what they want to drink when they are thirsty and they will say Coca~Cola. They say they hate the westerners, but they are becoming like them without realising it. They say they want freedom, but all they have done is substitute one regime for another. They are turning against the words of Muhammad and they don’t even know they are doing it. Your father would not have wanted that to happen to you, Mustafa. Your uncle cares for you too, as he cared for his brother. It is why you are here. In honour of your father, you are to be made an instrument of Allah; a weapon in our people’s battle for freedom. But first, we must make you a fortress against their methods.”
* * *
… and I pull away, almost toppling backwards, filled with the same excitement as the boy. Yes, yes, make of yourself a fortress against the words of the infidel, I think and laugh. My superiors must surely think I am mad; which is almost certainly true, but beside the point. The enemy’s counter-interrogation techniques are indeed very good. Much better than our own. We
cannot break them with conventional methods when they have been trained this way. Their faith is too strong. It is the cement that binds the walls they build against us, and they are certain that their secrets are safe behind them. But they have not reckoned upon specialists like me. They don’t know that we know what they know.
Already, with the knowledge I have gained, I could direct a Special Ops unit through the streets of Baghdad. Out of the Green Zone and across the Al-Ahrar bridge. Left onto Al-Rashed. Left again, past the once proud booksellers and literary cafés of Al-Mutanabi Street, its colonnaded buildings now dark and crumbling, walls black with the blast marks of car bombs and stray mortar shells. Downhill, towards the mud-brown flow of the Tigris. It is there, not far from the covered markets, that they’ll find the small warehouse and its makeshift mosque. There they will find the Imam and the insurgents who work night and day to build their explosive devices and mix their deadly chemical cocktails.
But my superiors will want more. They will want to know the target. The time and the place. These secrets are engraved within every cell of this boy’s flesh. They are there for me to discover. If only I search deep enough.
I move back to my niche. Sprinkle another handful of incense upon the still glowing coals. From a black-leather case I take an ancient bronze dagger. Babylonian. Not an imitation. Almost four thousand years old and in excellent condition, thanks to a long line of careful owners: curators, collectors, antique dealers, and on the odd occasion, someone like me who actually knew its true purpose.
I turn and move back to the slab, the open body, the blood-slick pile of viscera on the floor. To the Babylonians, blood was life, and the source of blood was the liver. Only natural then for the Bārû—the sacred seers and diviners—to look within that red and meaty organ for the secrets of a man’s life.
