by Anna Perera
And now they have a bulletproof confession proving he’s a dangerous terrorist, an enemy of the world, and no one cares.
Why did he let them do that? How pathetic is he? Tony Banda would have stopped them somehow. Look at what happened when that center half knocked him over in their first match against Bolton. Tony yelled like mad for a minute, but then he went charging down the field to score their only goal and nobody knew until afterwards he’d broken his big toe. Exactly how Tony would have stopped these maniacs, Khalid doesn’t know, but he’s certain he would have lasted longer than ten short seconds. Much longer than that. While he gave his life away for a breath of air he doesn’t even want. He feels ashamed of caving in so quickly. Totally weak and useless, incapable of lasting more than ten seconds, while the guy before him lasted twice as long.
Then the weirdness of this thought suddenly brings Khalid to his senses. The guy’s an idiot, a fool for lasting twenty seconds. He’s not a hero or someone to look up to. He was just another guy, a Muslim like him, being drowned. He simply suffered for longer. And why did the guard tell him he managed twenty seconds? To make Khalid feel like a coward, that’s why. And why should he believe him anyway? If Khalid told people about the attempt to drown him, would they believe him? Apart from the cut and bump on his forehead, there are no marks on his body. Nothing to prove anyone was trying to kill him.
The air-conditioning unit rattles for a second, then continues humming. Khalid curls into a ball on the mat and shades his eyes by burying his head in his arm, thinking that not only did they drown him, but they’ve left him with a burning anger that has no outlet. All he can do is grind his teeth in hatred. As he slips back into delirium, one of his little sister’s paintings flashes through his mind the moment before he falls asleep. The light bulb blazes overhead. Unrelenting as always. The smell of burning dust and the memory of a watery hell never far away.
15
SLEEP
Staying put, getting up—neither choice is a good one when every part of Khalid’s thin body aches. Hatred and guilt scrabble like ferrets at his brain. Guilt at the thought of his stupidity. If only he hadn’t done that. His tired mind haunts the life he once knew for a memory that might bring him comfort.
Any reason to go on living.
All night long, under the constant bright lights, the picture at the front of Khalid’s mind is the painting by Gul. A picture stuck to the fridge at home in Rochdale. His stomach churns when he remembers the green sun, the orange sea and the mad red grass. Everything was painted the wrong color, including the blue dog, but that’s why it keeps going round his head. The memory of the odd colors adds to his feeling of being locked out of anything normal. Little Gul’s painting is a reminder of something ordinary to hang on to—even if the orange sea gets brighter and weirder every time it rolls through his head. Anything’s better than remembering that moment—his hand on the pen . . .
If he can close his brain down for a bit, then maybe he can forget. Perhaps if the guards stay away for a while . . .
One sleepless hour later, they barge in to wake him again. Yank him from the mat and haul him around until his eyes stay open. Yelling obscenities in his ears to stop him passing out. As if they haven’t got what they wanted by now. Then, as the aroma of a sickly lemon aftershave fills Khalid’s nose, the back of his throat tightens.
A pink cat begins pawing his face. Or is it a man with pink hands squeezing his cheeks for fun? They win. Khalid stares at the soldier and his tinted glasses. Recording every detail of his bright, shiny face for posterity, because once they see he’s fully awake, they’ll leave him alone. And they do—for a bit. Leaving him with nothing but the sound of his heart thumping louder than the air conditioner.
Sinking to the mat, he passes out. Fast asleep in seconds. Asleep until a total madness starts up out there: dogs barking, plane engines roaring, men yelling orders at the tops of their voices. Don’t say they’re planning on doing more water tricks now? But the noises—they’re new, aren’t they?
Khalid focuses, listening carefully as the noise suddenly changes to a tinny banging.
“NO. NO.” Two guards barge in, shackles swinging from the stocky one’s arms. Khalid blinks. Not really taking them in. Vaguely recognizing them as two of the five men who’d woken him through the night.
The one with the strong lemon-smelling aftershave shouts, “Get up!” Yanking Khalid from the mat.
The psycho one with tiny fish eyes says, “You’ve got thirty seconds to eat this.”
A peanut butter sandwich presses into Khalid’s face, along with a plastic bottle of water. Only half here, Khalid stumbles. They catch him under the arms and slam him angrily against the cell wall, pinning his shoulders back with their fists. Their roughness suggests Khalid has the strength to resist them. After days without sleep, he can barely stay upright, let alone escape. He’s almost unconscious. The guards messing with him like this is beyond crazy—they really are insane. Without tasting anything, Khalid gorges on the cardboard-like sandwich. Peanut butter sticks to his teeth and he dribbles, croaking down warm, plastic-tasting water.
Barely able to swallow more than a teaspoonful at a time, Khalid says, half smiling, “What, no Coca-Cola?”
“That’s it.” The stocky soldier knocks the bottle from his hand. “Jackass.” The blue plastic dreamily double-bounces before rolling on the steel floor. Water slips between Khalid’s toes and the smell of the guy’s aftershave hangs over him like a smashed-up lemon tree, and all he wants to do is sink to the floor and close his eyes forever and ever.
First they kit him out in an orange suit, then they twist his arms together. One sneers at Khalid’s skinny arms and wrists as he clicks the cuffs tightly shut, then they attach the handcuffs to a middle chain they fix around his waist. At that point Khalid’s head flops to his chest and he drops fast asleep. Moving quickly, they lock his ankles to the waist chain. The cold, heavy metal catches his cuts and bruises by surprise, bringing him round for a moment with the fear they’re going to drown him again.
“Too loose, mate!” Khalid mutters, awake again. But they don’t laugh. They never laugh.
“Bye-bye!” A guard pulls a black hood over Khalid’s head. The sudden darkness is a shock after days of dazzling bright lights, a weird relief until a sickening loss of balance comes over him as they lead him down the corridor, staggering all over the place. His bare feet kicking together with sharp toenails.
“Guantanamo!” someone whispers as they pass. Bringing Khalid to—for a moment—before he shuts his eyes again. It’s OK, he’s going home. They said he could go home. He signed the papers to go home.
The sound of dragging feet and clanking chains pierces the midday heat. The sun beats down like boiling tar on Khalid’s masked head. He can sense other people nearby. Three? Or maybe a hundred? He’s going a long way away. England? Yes. Why else the sound of so much sudden movement and the horrible smell of petrol?
“Hey, dude, get them over here!” a soldier screams.
Someone shoves earmuffs on Khalid. The world goes suddenly quiet. Leaving him bent and gasping, on his knees in the searing heat like a captured, half-dead dog. Breathing in the smell of soldiers’ socks and desert boots.
Maybe he is going to Guantanamo. But they said he could go home if he signed.
After a few minutes, Khalid’s yanked up again. Step by step, they shuffle him along the ramp of the plane—up hot, ridged metal that seems to go on forever and burns his curling toes, shackles cutting into his ankles.
The moment his aching bones hit the plane floor, Khalid knows he’s going to be sick. But nothing comes up. Just the same dizzy, nauseous feeling he’s kept down for hours. One part of his brain watches himself fall to pieces, while the other no longer cares about anything and just wants to sleep.
The drone of the engine grows louder.
Khalid tries pushing the earmuffs off his sore ears. Cuffs rub his wrists raw as he pushes and pushes, elbows in the air. The hot
, plastic smell of the mask turns his guts over. A terrible desperation spreads through him as he twists and wriggles the earmuffs farther off his head. But they spring back and he has to wait a while before bending his head and trying again. This time he succeeds in freeing his sore lobes for a few minutes. That’s better. Now his ears aren’t hurting, he can close his eyes and go to sleep.
“Allah hears and knows all things,” a prisoner says over and over again.
Shut up. Khalid wishes the guy would shut up, that all of them would stop praying and groaning, because he feels nothing for anyone. Not even the tiniest spark of concern or compassion for any of them any more. No way are all these hooded men going to Britain.
“Camp Delta, what a stupid name!” Khalid remembers laughing when Wade told him about it. He actually laughed. Not realizing they were going to warm him up for the journey by leaving him alone in a brightly lit cell for days. Days where he wasn’t allowed to sleep or talk to anyone before they tried to drown him. Which brings it all back to him.
Brings back the thing he’s trying hard not to think about or admit. Submitting finally to the memory of something the suited man said before they hauled him on the plank.
“You spoke in a secret code when online?”
“No, it was normal computer chat,” Khalid had replied. “We were playing a stupid game.”
“Who’s ‘we all’?”
“Us gamers.”
Khalid mutters, “Gamers. Gamers.”
He forces himself to remember being stripped naked and thrown backwards on the plank. Tilted back. Feet in the air.
“This procedure will continue until you confess your part in the worldwide bombing campaign you planned with known accomplices.”
“Known accomplices.” The expression haunts Khalid’s every waking hour.
Remembering every detail. The cloth smelling of old bandages smothering his face. Water clogging his nose and throat until he gagged. Coughing and spluttering for air. All the time, someone shouting, “Tell us what your plans were and we’ll stop.” But they didn’t and he couldn’t, because he had no idea what they meant. Khalid closes his eyes but the man next to him is still muttering and his mind’s still spinning. Racing and racing with question after question.
What plans were they thinking of? Khalid’s suddenly wide awake. What was really going on in that guy’s mind? And then the suspicion he’s been burying for a while rises to the surface again.
Did Tariq have something to do with this?
How else do they know so much about the fact he’d been on the computer? Did he really betray him? His own cousin? Had he been talking to Abdullah, the aunties’ neighbor in Karachi? He’d found Abdullah on the computer. He knew Khalid had been playing a game. Did he know it was Tariq’s game? Do they know each other? Were there other people involved in this that he hadn’t considered? Abdullah said his brother and his sister’s husband used the aunties’ computer. Did they have something to do with this? Either way, Khalid’s thoughts keep returning to Tariq. He’s the link. The other gamers didn’t know where he was, but Tariq did. The thought sticks in Khalid’s throat. It’s obvious: he’s trusted him way too much since they began messaging. After all, what does Khalid really know about Tariq? They’ve never even met, so why should he expect anything of him? Apart from the fact they were family, they didn’t have anything special in common.
One after the other, he’d signed all those pages because of him. Signing them with a nicer pen this time. A black shiny one. When he glanced at the names on the pages, though, he hadn’t recognized any of them. Not that Khalid looked closely —he was still choking. Half dead. Shivering, at the time.
Now he wishes he’d paid more attention. Perhaps Tariq’s name was there—in some form or other.
All the gamers used pseudo names that they changed regularly. Names like Tariq Van Dam. TVD for short. One guy called himself Purple Pizza before changing it to DungHill. Another was Verminate before becoming Boss X. Khalid still has no idea what their real names are, apart from Tariq’s.
Thinking back to that second after they whisked the black pen away, he remembers a feeling of absolute peace spreading over him. Realizing they had no need to hurt him ever again. It was worth lying for. Worth it for that moment’s peace. It doesn’t feel worth it now.
Now the regret he feels is driving him crazy. Why can’t I just sleep? Why can’t I stop thinking and thinking?
As he rocks back and forth, the relentless drone of the plane’s engine bores into him until he hears and cares about nothing but getting the truth from Tariq once and for all. Settling the frantic feeling in his stomach for a few hours by imagining Tariq admitting his part in Khalid’s abduction. But what was all that about Afghanistan when they questioned him in Karachi? Where was his passport? Abdullah, the neighbor and random people at home, like Nasir, the shopkeeper in Rochdale, were they members of al-Qaeda? Jim, who helped him look for Dad, what about him? What about Dad? Anyone he’s ever met?
Angry. So angry. There are so many people he’d like to destroy. Their faces go round and round his head, the layers of fury expanding as they circle his brain.
Yelling, “HOW DARE YOU DROWN ME?” But the sound comes out weaker than an abandoned kitten whining for food.
Exhausted, Khalid’s heart slows to normal for a few seconds. Allowing him to breathe more easily, unleashing the desire to sleep again. His eyes open and close in a dreamy spin.
Clutching at hope, Khalid imagines he’s going home to England, to Mum and Dad and his little sisters, and a life of shops with milk and newspapers. Chocolate and lottery tickets. Ordinary things. But the deafening plane engine roars into action and it doesn’t feel like it’s taking him home. Or anywhere nice.
A sudden, dense heat smelling of petrol overtakes the trapped desert air inside the plane. Khalid can’t help gasping. Since they tried to drown him he’s been continually gasping for air. Unsure it’s really there—sucking it up in case it’s his last breath.
The inside of the mask dampens with sweat from his dripping forehead, the salt sharpening his swollen lips. All Khalid can do is waggle his head to keep the drips from his eyes. The hot uncomfortable earmuffs cling to the sticky mask. The available choices are simple: either put up with the din of the engine or suffer the pain of the earmuffs and get some peace. Either way he can’t sleep. His eyes won’t stay closed.
Khalid maneuvers the earmuffs back slightly using his shoulder. By mistake he moves the mask round to reveal a hole in the plastic which he can clearly see out of.
His eyes land on a soldier with fat, freckly arms. His big hands are attached to a silver camera and he’s taking pictures for fun. Flash. Flash. Anger flares up inside Khalid again. He can’t believe anyone would do that for kicks. Maybe he wants photos to sell to the newspapers back home. Either way, each click is another hammer blow to Khalid’s heart.
Who do they think they are, these guys? Khalid fumes.
It sparks a memory of the time they’d been studying the Spanish Inquisition in school with Mr. Tagg and he’d got them all worked up about the subject of torture. Everyone began arguing. Loads of kids said it was a good way to get information from evil people, but in the end Jacinda Parker, who lives over the music shop, got them all thinking differently.
“It’s a stupid way of finding anything out. Whenever my brother twists my arm up my back, it hurts so bad I say anything he wants me to just to get him to stop. So what’s the point in torturing someone if all you get is lies?”
None of it adds up for Khalid. If only he could stop all this stuff going round his head. His mind returning from the sight of Jacinda Parker and her horrible brother, Josh, and their nice two-story flat over the yellow-painted music shop, to his sore arms and aching head. To the raw feeling in his throat and itchy eyes. To the thought of Tariq turning him in.
He thinks about Guantanamo Bay again. If he’s really going there. Wasn’t it a place for members of al-Qaeda?
Someone ha
d said Guantanamo was the worst of the worst, but Khalid hadn’t really listened. He half thought they were making the stories up. He doesn’t even know why it’s in Cuba and not America.
Surely they won’t take a kid like me there?
The thought makes him catch his breath, and when he comes to breathe out he gasps for air again. Defeated. Totally shattered. His mind begins searching for that place deep inside where peace happens. Where nice memories are stored. Eyes wide open, he begins wanting. Wanting his mum. Wanting his dad. Wanting his annoying little sisters. Wanting his friends, Mikael, Holgy, Nico and Tony, and a longed-for kickabout in the park.
Drifting back to Rochdale, he’s walking through the town center wondering what the old mill town used to look like before they covered up most of the River Roch that flows underneath the main street. The nice old buildings that are still there with the best town hall in the universe. A majestic building with a beautiful wooden staircase and wallpaper by William Morris, who, the art teacher, Mrs. Dowling, says was a genius.
Then there’re the cheap lunches they do in the town hall for retired people. Khalid helped out, along with two others from school, during Help the Aged Week last year. For three pounds they get a three-course, home-cooked meal in a lovely room with William Morris wallpaper. How good’s that?
Rochdale is a nice place to live. Plus Khalid’s house is only a ten-minute walk from the Odeon cinema.
Now his mind’s right there on the football terraces, shouting for Rochdale to win—at their away matches especially. Seeing the town with its—he’s not quite sure how many exactly, but definitely more than six—mosques. Each of them floats past his eyes. Mixed with people who are Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rastas. Plus loads of people who don’t believe in anything. Others who sometimes believe but never go anywhere near the mosques, temples, churches and synagogues. And plenty more believe whatever makes them feel good. Then there’re those who hate everything. Who just get angry and spew up any old crap. All of them live side by side in Rochdale. His Rochdale. Khalid likes that.
