Guantanamo Boy

by Anna Perera

  He’d wandered in there with Tony to hand back the books he’d borrowed for his English essay and couldn’t help noticing the pictures on the walls. There was one of a doorway leaking blood from the handle that caught his eye first, then a pencil drawing of Mrs. Warren, the headmistress, which looked just like her.

  “Here, look at this one,” Tony called, dragging Khalid’s attention to a painting of a filthy swimming pool with a stag beetle floating in it.

  “Erghh, disgusting!” They were about to go when Khalid noticed a painting of a green grassy field with a single yellow buttercup in the middle. There was something so still and beautiful about it, he found it impossible to look away. He could almost smell the damp grass just by standing there.

  He can almost smell it now.

  “‘The Last Buttercup’ by who? Who Reilly? Is that Nim or Neem or what?” Khalid read out the title.

  “It’s pronounced ‘Neeve.’ The new girl, you know?” Tony said. “Bit of a boring picture, though—I told you girls love shoes. They love flowers too for some reason.”

  But Khalid carried on staring, impressed by how real the painting looked. What he didn’t know was that Niamh was leaning on the table right behind him, watching his reaction.

  “You coming, mate?” Tony said. “We’ll be late for math.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Khalid turned round and fell straight into Niamh’s green eyes. A bolt of electricity passed between them. It did. He can remember that feeling even now. It hypnotized him for what felt like ages, it was so full on. From that moment, wherever she was—sauntering down the corridor, chatting to her mates at the school gates, leaning on the classroom door—he could pick her out without even trying. A sharp buzzy feeling always told him exactly where she was in a crowd. If only he’d plucked up the courage to talk to her in the library. If only he hadn’t gone all shy and walked away. And even though he’s spoken to her many times since, he can’t help regretting the wasted opportunity from way back then.

  More fragile than he realizes, Khalid pitches forward and back, unable to keep still. Helplessly trapped by the rocking movement of his body, he can’t believe how little fun he’s had in his life. He’s never been to an all-night party, had a real kiss or scored any girls, and while his friends are probably getting loads of action at home in Rochdale he’s still stuck here in this kennel on his own. The imagined picture of playing Spin the Bottle with Niamh mixes with other terrible images of small children being blown up—burning hope and fear into his mind at the same time.

  Then a few guys start yelling and soldiers begin storming into cell after cell.

  “On your knees!” they yell, shackles swinging.

  Khalid is ready on the floor, head bowed when they get to him. And, like before, they push him outside and along the hard, scrubby ground to another section of Camp Delta. Into another building and another room that resembles the last one in every detail except it has a room off to one side. A cell with its own private interrogation room and a door that opens to reveal a black table with two people sitting behind it.

  Khalid’s locked in, thinking, Oh, so that’s the way they’re doing it now. Recognizing them as the cold American woman from Karachi and the guy who stood behind her, saying hardly anything, while she and the posh English guy questioned him about being in Afghanistan. But this time, excited by running into Masud, knowing he didn’t imagine him, Khalid decides not to be fazed by them. Not this time, no.

  As the soldier attaches the chain from Khalid’s left ankle to the bolt on the floor, pulling up a black chair for him directly opposite them, he holds his head high. Ready for them.

  “Pakistan last time, wasn’t it?” the woman says pointedly. “We’ve been looking at your confession again. Have you got anything to add?”

  “Yeah, I’m really Bin Laden!” Instantly Khalid wishes he hadn’t joked with her. By the look on her face, she’s not in the mood to be messed with.

  “You were part of an Internet plot to bomb various cities. It says so here in your signed statement. So now will you tell us the order of the planned bombings?” She bites her lip impatiently.

  “I want a lawyer,” Khalid says.

  “A lawyer? I’m a lawyer, you can talk to me.” She smiles patiently. “The name’s Angela. This is Bruce. You remember.”

  “You’re not a lawyer!”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “No. No.” A rare moment of sanity returns to Khalid as he looks into Angela’s hard little face. A much-needed shot of confidence suddenly gives him strength. “I want to write to my family. You’re not allowed to treat me like this. Where’s the judge who found me guilty, then? Go on, where, you tell me? I haven’t had any exercise. No education. Nothing. Well? I’m going to get you all back for this.”

  Bruce interjects now. “Come on now, we know you. We know exactly what your intentions are.” He’s sneering at Khalid’s pathetic attempt to stand up for himself by shouting his mouth off.

  “How? You don’t know me. My intentions? What exams was I taking, then? Answer that! You can’t, can you, because you’re idiots. Nothing but creeped-up worms. Ask me how I know that. Go on, ask me!”

  “We have a document signed by you which proves you and your accomplices plotted online to bomb a number of cities throughout the Western world. We intend to find out which city you planned to bomb first,” Angela says.

  “Yeah, but I made it all up. I take it all back. You locked me up on my own, trying to make me crazy. Well, hard luck. Stopping me from sleeping. Not letting me get letters, or see a lawyer, or get any help. You’re going to get in trouble for trying to kill me! You wait.”

  “You were friends with known members of al-Qaeda. We have photos.” Bruce remains unfazed. “Plus members in England who have recently been arrested.”

  “What? What members in England?”

  “We’re not going to give you that information. We want the details of the movements and conversations you had with these people,” Angela adds.

  “But I don’t know who they are!” Khalid shouts.

  “You will tell us what you know about al-Qaeda!” Bruce says menacingly. “If not now, then tomorrow or the next day. I hope you’ll think about how your actions are harming innocent people.”

  “Innocent people? I’m the innocent one here and you’ll go to hell for this,” Khalid warns in the same tone of voice Bruce is using. “There are millions of Khalid Ahmeds on the Internet. You’ve got the wrong one. What’s wrong with you?”

  “We know there are many members of al-Qaeda with your name. We have details of your involvement with the Taliban from other detainees in Afghanistan and here in Guantanamo.”

  “I don’t know anyone here except for . . .” Khalid stops himself from mentioning Masud, unsure how the information will be judged.

  “Except for whom?” Angela stares blankly ahead. “Perhaps you’re thinking of Ahmad Siddique? Msrah Shia-Agil? Kamal Sadat? All known members of al-Qaeda?”

  “That’s total crap!” Then suddenly a flash of inspiration tells Khalid what’s going on here. “Wait, I get it. You made these guys I’ve never heard of say they know me, sign papers, like you made me sign, and yeah, then you’ve got something on me. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  “You’re imagining things.” Bruce frowns, glancing at Angela for agreement before calling the guards. Interrogation over, they untie his ankle from the bolt on the floor, but only after Angela and Bruce have left by their own secret door. Angela’s heels clicking quickly down the corridor.

  Over the next few weeks, Khalid’s brought next door for questioning many times. Sometimes by Angela or Bruce, sometimes by another man who claims his name is Joe and the woman he’s with is called Sal. Each time now he’s given a chair before their insane questions begin.

  “What would you do if you knew someone was planning a suicide attack?” Joe asks him.

  “I have no idea,” Khalid murmurs.

  “Come on now, you must have friends who ta
lk about this stuff?” he says.

  “No,” Khalid says. “Do you?”

  “Why not trust us for once and tell us what you know?” He doesn’t seem to notice how tired and thirsty Khalid’s becoming.

  “Leave me alone,” Khalid begs.

  “As soon as you give us some answers you can go.”

  Khalid scoffs. “Yeah, right. I’ve heard that one before. Liars.”

  Joe goes on and on trying to break him. As if the constant repetition will nudge his brain into remembering something.

  Khalid never knows when the questioning will end and when they’ll take him back to his cell. Soon realizing how pointless his answers are when all that happens is they come right back, asking the same things over again, until he can almost predict what’s coming next.

  Tired of sitting in the hard chair without a sip of water, Khalid trains his mind not to listen. Their voices drone on regardless. Although somewhere, deep inside, he knows even these terrible sessions are helping him to reclaim some part of his mind and his memory. Anchoring him to reality for short periods of time. Even just giving him the chance to sit in a chair. Look at different walls. Real shoes instead of boots. The smell of mildew and warm plastic in his nose instead of stale bread, rotten fish and warm water.

  The following day, they up the pressure. No chair this time. Now Khalid’s lying face down in the middle of the concrete floor. Arms out, his wrist shackles tied to a rusty iron ring. His chin is hard on the floor, while a man with gray hair and gray skin, smelling of cigarette smoke and lounging in a black chair, points a large spotlight at Khalid’s face.

  A tall, stocky woman in a navy suit stands behind him with arms folded, tapping two long red nails on her elbow. Her silver bangles clink and clank like keys.

  The sound is broken by a sudden groan from Khalid.

  Pain shoots up his arms as he wriggles his hands nearer to the ring bolted to the floor to try and ease the pain. Fully aware as he stares at the ring that it’s a chain within a chain. Inside a locked cell. Inside a guarded prison camp circled by rows of high, curling razor wire. Its perimeter patrolled by soldiers carrying guns loaded with bullets, guarding a prison that’s part of a base. A base situated at the tip of an island, in the middle of two oceans. Protected by water on one side and landmines on the other.

  The dot on the floor is him, a sixteen-year-old boy. A boy who’s looking at himself from every angle. Looking down on himself. Looking up from below. From underneath, then behind and in front. Backwards and forwards, images flash through his brain. Nothing but thin air covers his bones. His lungs. His heart. He can see his own dusty breath sweeping from his mouth.

  Mirrors of light bounce from him like laser beams.

  “Tell us the name of the fifth accomplice.”

  “Number five!” Three seconds. Khalid counts. That took three seconds to say: Num–ber–five. Yep, three.

  “Admit your role in helping him!”

  “Let me go. Let me go.” Was that six seconds? Six words—could be five seconds, because the words are short.

  Soon the door opens and the man leaves. The American woman is joined by another American man, around forty years old, who looks friendly. Getting Khalid’s hopes up for a second. But after whispering to the woman, he turns to Khalid.

  “What other international cities were you planning on bombing?”

  “Burnley. Barnsley. Bolton. Accrington. Todmorden. Over there. Yeah, Tod. Tod.” How many seconds was that? Khalid breaks out in a fit of hysterical laughter. So hysterical, he can’t stop. Annoying the man and woman so much they leave the room to the soldiers. Soldiers who kick and beat him. Anxious for their pound of flesh to get them through the day. The force of their anger is outside anything Khalid knows and he can’t be bothered to count the number of kicks they give him.

  And there are other times. When they won’t give him water. When they push him against the wall to stub out their cigarettes on his arms. But when he laughs they stop. Giving up for a while—at least on him.

  Khalid loses himself by pressing his face to the floor. Numbed by the light burning into his face, consumed by the desire to lick dirt from the cold concrete floor. The feeling he didn’t really see Masud begins haunting his bleak, staring eyes once more.

  Were Masud’s eyelashes really that long and feathery when he saw him in Karachi? Or was the room too dark to notice them at the time? Khalid had been in pain, his eyes swollen from the beating when they kidnapped him, but still that face—it looked like Masud’s. Now the chatter in his mind’s suspended by the memory of the bleak room with the rough coir matting. The scruffy, handcuffed man whose swollen face was covered in bruises, sitting cross-legged on the floor. A strange, calm dignity about him. Yes, that was Masud, with the graying hair and beard. He mixed him up with the guy in the shower. That guy sounded like him. His head and face were bare but still he looked nothing like Masud, hair or no hair. It wasn’t him. How could it be?

  “What was the name of the fifth accomplice?” A voice interrupts his thoughts.

  “I don’t know,” Khalid says.

  “You don’t know?” The man leans in to the spotlight.

  “There wasn’t anyone,” Khalid sighs. Out of energy.

  “No one at all?” he asks.

  “Please let me go. Let me out,” Khalid wails. “My arms hurt.”

  19

  THE JINN

  Gazing at the lights, staring into the black hole that keeps flashing up the new imaginary face of Masud, Khalid hears the sounds of Ramadan start up again. Hungry men refuse breakfast. Later on refusing lunch and even dinner if it’s brought before the sun goes down.

  Praying for help. Praying for peace. Always praying, and it sounds nice.

  Too weak to join in, Khalid’s finding it hard to get up and go to the loo this morning, even though his bladder is full. And it’s not just due to guilt because of Ramadan and the thought of a billion Muslims around the world who are fasting and praying while he’s lying here doing nothing. It’s because he knows another, even more dangerous thing is happening to his brain.

  It started when he did or didn’t see Masud in the showers. Now the jinn—the genies—have begun calling his name. Just as Masud had done. Or he thinks he might have done. Khalid can’t quite remember why. Khalid met one before in the room in Karachi while he stared at that rug. Didn’t a genie take him away then on a flying carpet? Back home to his family and friends.

  “Khalid, Khalid.” The voices grow louder and louder, then soften slightly when the ceiling lights dim. And when the voices drop, the world goes backwards. Khalid gets up from the bed and walks up and down to stop everything moving the wrong way, pacing the room to remind himself of his body. The shooting pain across one shoulder tells him he was bolted to the floor a short time ago and forces him to straighten his spine and rub his neck. How long ago was that?

  A deep well of fear and worry adds to the feeling he’s been a dimwit most of his life. Then suddenly he’s aware of himself sweating and panicking. Standing stock still in the middle of the cell for no reason.

  Listening.

  Knowing whenever a sound stops out there, like when a soldier clunks to the end of the row and the name-calling finishes. Finishes. A hum starts up where the echo of the boots was before. A hum that rings and rings even though there’s no proper noise behind it. Not even the voice calling his name. Then, when it goes quiet, Khalid can see a white space filling out in front of him, even though he knows he’s imagining it.

  He falls on the bed. Head in his hands. But the worse thing is, when the white space comes, it spreads everywhere. He can’t stop himself sinking into it. That’s why he wets himself from fear.

  The warmth a pleasant feeling for a second until the smell hits him.

  No point getting up now. Khalid shakes his head at himself. Shocked and half pleased at the same time. Shocked he’s lost control of his bladder. Half pleased because the sensation brings him round and, the second he knows where
he is, the white noise goes away.

  Feeling better for a while. But not better enough to do anything, like pray or think. Especially not think about his family and what he’s supposed to be doing for Ramadan.

  This morning, when they brought the plastic tray for breakfast, he was still staring at it when they brought the next tray for lunch.

  “What’s up, man? This place stinks. Why you ain’t touched your oats?” The smiling black guard stares at the tray. His voice soon changes to a gentle whisper. “Now come on, you gotta have something!” In the end, it’s the dark, syrupy color of his eyes that brings Khalid back.

  “I, um, I, yeah,” the only thing Khalid manages to spit out. Part of him believing he’s skipped breakfast because of Ramadan, while another part wonders how he completely missed hearing the soldier. Maybe he didn’t shout his number this morning. Maybe he didn’t fall on the bed when he went sweaty. Maybe he stood in the middle of the room for hours. He got up from the bed just now—didn’t he?

  The thought troubles him.

  “Now, you eat this up, you hear me? I’ll be back in ten and I wanna see this grub gone.”

  Khalid nods, pretending not to be a bumbling idiot. Then he takes a deep breath, thinking, He’ll be back in ten and I have to eat this up, otherwise they’ll . . . He doesn’t know what will happen if he doesn’t eat the cold canned potatoes, one after the other. Then the peas, one after the other. Then the . . . it looks like fish, but it smells like stinking cabbage. He’ll be back in ten and then—what?

  The rancid smell of urine overpowers Khalid as he stands with the tray in his hand in front of the hole, waiting. Waiting for the guard to come back.

  Only he doesn’t come back in ten. He doesn’t come back in fifteen or twenty. The man only said that to get Khalid to eat up.