by Sidney Wood
“Ugh,” thought Jen. “This is pretty gross." She took her knife and tried cutting a leg off. The bone made it impossible and the hair was getting all over her blood-sticky hands. “I guess I have to skin this thing?" She sighed and held it out to see it better in the firelight. “Okay, then…just like science class." She cut it open, up the belly, and peeled the skin back away fro the ribcage. Then she placed the neck over a flat rock and cut the head off with some difficulty. “Eeww,” she said. The smell was terrible. She peeled the skin back and off of the torso like taking off a coat. She peeled it down each leg and pulled until it popped off. The furry feet stayed attached to the body and she chuckled at how it now looked like the hare was wearing socks. Grimacing, she pulled the guts out and tossed them away.
Jen held out the skinned hare. “Wow, that wasn’t so bad,” she thought. She set it down and rinsed her hands off with some of the water from her jug. “Now for a cooker,” she thought. She looked at the rocks, contemplating forming a sort of hot plate over the fire, and shook her head. She pictured the hare slowly turning on a spit over the fire, sizzling and cooking to perfection. Her mouth started watering and she decided on expedience over complexity. She used the knife to cut and sharpen a stout “hotdog” roasting stick. When it was ready, she tried to poke it through the carcass without success. There was not enough to the animal for the stick to go through lengthwise, so she tried to poke it through perpendicular through the rib cage. The stick was sharp, but not sharp enough to poke through the firm body of the animal. Jen gave up and made a hole with the knife. She held it out over the fire and then quickly pulled it out.
“Yuck!” she said as the burning hair smell hit her nose. She slapped the carcass on the cutting rock and cut the hairy feet off. “Not so cute now, Mr. Rabbit, but you’ll definitely smell better." She put the hare back over the fire and tried again. “Oh man,” she said in frustration when she tried to turn it over. Jen turned the stick, but it just spun in the hole while the rabbit stayed still. Jen sighed and pulled it back out of the fire. She took the rabbit off the stick and laid it on the rock. After thinking about it for a minute, Jen used her knife and cut strips of meat off the carcass and impaled them on the stick. She held the meat over the fire and watched happily as it began to sizzle. “Now we’re talking!” she said.
Jen ate the hare in bits and pieces and loved every juicy bite. By the time she had her fill, she was feeling sleepy and she curled up next to the fire. She lay her head on top of her canvas bag and hijab, and stared up at the night sky. “Dear Heavenly Father,” she prayed. “Thank you. Thanks for the rabbit. Thanks for making me strong enough to endure all of this. Please, Lord…help me get home. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
A heavy weight pressed on Jen’s chest, waking her up. “Hey! Get off me!” she yelled while she pushed and shoved at the oppressive force. Her wrists were snatched and forced together in an instant. Plastic restraints were zipped painfully tight as more hands grabbed hold of her ankles and zip-tied them together as well. A hood was slipped over her head and she was lifted off the ground. She heard shuffling boots carrying her over the dirt, and men speaking Arabic in hushed voices. She felt hard metal against her side as she was tumbled into the back of a vehicle. A diesel engine rumbled to life and the vehicle began to move. Jen continued to struggle and tried to sit up until something hard hit her violently in the face. The force of the blow made her bite her lip and she cried out. “Ouch!” She lay on her back, stunned.
In Farsi, Jen shouted for them to let her go. “Esmee Jenna! Let me go!” she yelled desperately.
A male voice near her face spoke in Farsi and said, “I don’t care who you are. Shut up and hold still or I’ll hit you even harder.”
“You’ll be sorry,” she said quietly.
After about an hour the vehicle stopped and Jen was hauled out and carried again. She was tossed into a room and the door was slammed shut. She lay on a cold floor, unable to see because of the hood. She struggled to sit up, which wasn’t easy since her wrists and ankles were still tied together, and then pulled the hood off. She felt her sore bottom lip and felt an open cut. “Perfect,” she thought sarcastically. Jen looked around and saw she was sitting in a small cell with one door and no windows. The door had a small locked tray slot in the center and light seeped in around the edges. It wasn’t natural light though. The light was from generator powered flood lights buzzing outside.
Jen looked at the restraints on her wrists and ankles and smiled. They were the type of heavy duty plastic flex-cuffs the police use for riots. She was smiling because she knew a trick. This was one of the cool things she learned from Sarah’s dad when the girls were younger. Sarah’s dad was a police officer and he showed them a trick for quickly getting out of flex-cuffs.
Jen bent her knees and brought her legs closer to her hands. She untied one of her shoes and pulled the lace out. Then she looped it through the flex-cuff on one of her ankles and held an end in each hand. Using a fast sawing motion, as much as her tied wrists would allow, she cut through the hard plastic in seconds. Once her feet were free, she looped the lace through the cuff on one wrist. She held one end of the shoelace under each foot and pulled her hands back and forth as fast as she could. She was completely free from the flex-cuffs in no time.
Jen stepped to the door and peeked out the cracks around the tray slot. She was definitely in some kind of military compound. There were concrete barriers with military trucks backed up against them in a neat row. Another barrier was made of linked metal-mesh baskets that were lined with fabric and filled with dirt. A group of soldiers in brown uniforms walked past her cell. “These must be Iraqi soldiers!” she thought excitedly. “They’re allies with America!"
“Hey!” Jen yelled in English. “I’m an American! Help me! My name is Jena Amahdi, and I’m an American!" No one paid her any attention. “I was kidnapped in Iran two years ago! Hey!" She slammed her fists on the door and kicked it when still no one listened. “Please,” she said, feeling defeated. Jen sat down heavily on the floor and buried her head in her hands. She felt her cut lip again and hoped it had stopped bleeding.
In the morning, Jen heard someone outside her door. She sat up and tried to look like she was still restrained. The tray slot opened and a face peered at her from outside. She stared back at them without speaking. “What are they going to do?” she wondered. “Do they think I’m their enemy? Maybe they aren’t even Iraqi soldiers…”
The tray slot closed and the door opened. A man stepped in and blocked the doorway with his body. Jen could see another man behind him. They were both dressed in the brown uniform pants, but instead of brown uniform shirts, they wore tan t-shirts with the letters ISF over the left side of their chest. The man in front had rubber examination gloves on. “Oh no!" Jen leaned away from him until she was about to fall over.
In Farsi, he said, “Don’t be afraid. I am just taking fingerprints and a retinal scan. No needles. My name is Kasim" He reached back and the other man handed him what looked like a briefcase. Kasim opened the briefcase and laid it not the floor. Inside, at the bottom of one half there was a flat, rectangular box with an ink pad. At the bottom of the other side was another flat rectangular shaped platform with a hinged flat metal window on top. Kasim took a piece of card stock and slipped it under the hinged metal window on top of the platform. The metal window framed a series of squares on the card, where the fingerprints would go.
Kasim motioned for Jen to come closer. She scooted to the briefcase and held out her hands. Kasim frowned when he saw that her wrists were no longer bound. “Are you going to give me any trouble?” he asked. The look on his face told Jen that he was not actually giving her a choice.
She shook her head side to side.
“Good. Give me your left hand." Kasim pressed each finger on the black ink pad and then rolled it on the white card. Then he did the same with her right hand. When he was done he stripped off the gloves he was wear
ing and tossed them on the floor. He passed the card back to the other man who handed him a smaller box. The second box looked more like an old polaroid camera. He held it in front of Jen and motioned for her to look into the eye pieces. She pressed her forehead to the end closest to her and stared into the eye pieces. Kasim made several adjustments and then the eyepieces lit up. He presses a button and pulled it away from her. He closed the briefcase and set another card on top of it. The second man handed him a pen. Kasim clicked it and held the pen ready. “Name?” he asked.
“Jena Ahmadi,” Jen answered in a shaky voice. Her whole body trembled. “Someone will know I’m alive! I might actually go home!"
“Date of birth?”
“June 1, 1999, in Dallas, Texas,” she answered in English.
Kasim gave her a dangerous look and repeated the question in Farsi.
Jen felt frustrated, but obeyed his request and repeated the date in Farsi.
“Sunni or Shia?” Kasim asked.
“Christian,” said Jen defiantly. She raised her chin and silently challenged him to make her say different. “I’m not denying my faith anymore! I’m a Christian and I won’t lie about it to save myself! Not again! Not ever!” she wanted to shout.
Kasim raised an eyebrow and stared at her for a moment, but only nodded and recorded her answer. “We’ll be back soon. I’ll make sure you get some food and something to drink if you behave." He gathered up the boxes and paper, and both men left the cell. The door closed and locked behind them.
Jen stood and paced in her cell. “I need a phone call,” she said. “And a tooth brush." She stopped pacing and dropped into the push-up position on the floor. “Stop whining, Jen,” she chided herself. She began doing push-ups. Jen stopped at forty and flipped onto her back. She did fifty flutter kicks and then held her feet off the ground for a minute. When she was done, Jen jumped to her feet. She felt better. Her blood was pumping and the feeling of self-pity had passed. She felt so good, she did a few jumping jacks and ran in place until she was breathing hard and sweating. She laughed, “Okay, now I really do need a shower!”
It was late in the evening when the door popped open and Kasim stepped in again. He made Jen turn around, and he put metal handcuffs on her before he took hold of her arm and walked her out of the cell. Jen offered no resistance, and surveyed her surroundings as he led her to a small building in the center of the compound. A soldier opened the single door on the side of the building and they walked through. It was dark. Jen hesitated, and Kasim pushed her farther in. A light flipped on and Jen could see a single table in the middle of the room. There was a camera on a tripod facing the table, and a single chair on the opposite side. The light was suspended above the table and provided little illumination beyond the table and chair.
Kasim motioned toward the chair and Jen walked slowly toward it. “Is this an interrogation?” she wondered. “What is the camera for? Am I going to record a message for my family? Oh! I hope that’s it!"
When she rounded the table, Jen saw a metal ring anchored in the floor near the chair, and a similar ring bolted to the edge of the table. She looked back at Kasim, who just nodded and pointed at the chair. Jen sat down and folded her hands on the table in front of her. She startled when someone was suddenly standing next to her. “Where the heck did he come from?" The soldier removed one of Jen’s handcuffs and brought both of her hands to the front. He fed the unlocked cuff through the metal ring fastened to the table and then re-locked it around her wrist. He knelt down and fastened leg-irons to her ankles and used a second pair to fasten them to the metal ring in the floor. “Great,” thought Jen. “Obviously, they still think I’m one of the bad guys.”
The soldier stepped back into the darkness and Kasim came to the table. He stood on the other side next to the camera silently. The overhead light made his facial features sharper and he looked even more intimidating. He reached over the top of the camera and pressed a button. A small red light came on above the lens, and Jen knew she was being recorded.
Kasim leaned forward over the table and said, “We know who you are, Jenna. Imagine my supervisor’s surprise when we sent your name up and you turned out to be her." He chuckled as if it was a joke. “The mother of all, what was it again? Suicide bombers?" He chuckled again. “I look forward to this, Jenna."
Kasim stood upright and the smile left his face. He pulled a notepad out of his cargo pocket and began asking the same questions he asked earlier. Jen provided the same answers. When she answered all of them, Kasim started over and asked the same questions again. He repeated the process no less than five times. Jen began to get frustrated and even started to question her own answers. That’s when the questions started getting difficult.
“When did you join the Islamic State?” Kasim asked abruptly.
“What? I didn’t join! I was kidnapped!” Jen said angrily.
“Why did you join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria?” he asked flatly.
“I just told you, I was kidnapped. I didn’t want to join anything!”
Kasim looked down at the table and asked, “Name the crimes you have committed as a member of ISIS.”
Jen jerked against her restraints and growled in anger. “My name is Jena Ahmadi! I am an American citizen! I was kidnapped from Tehran two years ago, and all this time…" She broke down and started to cry. She bent her head over the table and began working her wrists in the restraints. One of the cuffs was almost loose enough, and although she tore her skin trying, she couldn’t manage to get her hands free. She raised her head slightly and sobbed into the camera, “I’ve just been trying to get home!”
“I see,” Kasim said. He looked to his left and spoke in Arabic to someone Jen couldn’t see. A television flickered on and the Jihadist video of Jenna threatening the world played without sound. It flicked off.
Kasim continued asking his baited questions, and then started over from the beginning. After the third time through, Jen stopped answering. “They aren’t going to let me go home,” she realized. “They are looking for a confession."
After a few unsuccessful attempts to get Jen to answer the repeated questions, Kasim changed his tac. He asked about the conditions in the city, and the strength of the ISIS soldiers holding it. He asked about sympathizers and dissenters among the residents. Jen pled ignorance, saying, “I was held captive the entire time I was in the city. I don’t know." She finally stopped talking all together and stared just into the darkness.
When it was obvious that she would not cooperate any further, Kasim turned the camera off and called to the soldier behind Jen. The soldier stepped forward and began removing her restraints. He unlocked the leg irons first and removed them. Then he unfastened her handcuffs and worked them back through the ring in the table.
Jen took advantage of his momentary distraction and jumped up. Instead of running away, she leapt onto his back and clawed at his face. He flailed backward and managed to take hold of Jen’s hurt wrist. She winced when he wrenched it hard, swinging Jen down and around and knocking her to the ground. Kasim shouted and more soldiers ran in.
Jen looked up at the angry soldier standing above her. He had his fist cocked, but he didn’t swing. He looked at Kasim, who shook his head slowly. The soldier above her growled in anger and touched the bleeding scratches on his face. Jen saw that it was the same hand he used to grab her cut wrist.
The other soldiers pushed past him and dog-piled on top of Jen. They held her down and forced her hands behind her. Just as one of them was trying to slip flex-cuffs on Jen’s wrists, she heard a terrible scream.
The soldier she had scratched had latched onto the man cuffing her and bit him viciously in the neck. The other soldiers broke apart and several drew weapons. Jen stayed flat on the floor as blood sprayed and the infection spread. When the shooting started, Jen used the covering noise and confusion to scoot farther into the semi-darkness and hide.
More and more soldiers came into the building in response to the gunfire an
d shouting, and the contagion spread like wildfire. Jen was grateful that the building was mostly dark. She couldn’t see everything. What she could see was the stuff of nightmares.
The melee was over and the compound was quiet after a few intense starts and stops, and about twenty-five minutes of sporadic savagery. Jen waited a few more minutes and listened for any sounds indicating more screams or gunshots. When it seemed clear, she stood up and ran outside. It was getting dark, but Jen wasn’t exactly afraid. She was anxious. She needed to get out of there and find somewhere safe. She needed a vehicle.
Jen went to the nearest parking area and checked the first vehicle. It was a small brown SUV and the driver’s door was unlocked. She opened it up and looked for a key. “Score!” she thought when she saw the keys sitting in one of the cup holders in the center console. She grabbed the keys and ran back toward the dark building.
As she got close, she saw what she was looking for and breathed a deep sigh of relief that she didn’t need to go back inside. There were several dead soldiers outside and most were armed. Jen picked up two new looking AK47 rifles, and then stripped several of the full magazines the soldiers wore in their uniform pouches. She looked for a flashlight and stuffed the small one she found in her pocket. She spotted a watch on a soldier’s wrist and decide to take that as well. Jen stowed one of the rifles and all of the ammo in the SUV and then went back to find some food and water.
Jen checked to make sure the magazine was full and charged the rifle. It didn’t eject a round, which meant the soldier she took it from wasn’t shooting when he went down. “That won’t be me,” she said.
Jen pulled out her flashlight and hustled through the buildings. She looked for food and water, and anything else that might be of use. She tossed what she wanted out the door onto the ground and ran to the next building. She went as fast as she could, and only gave herself ten minutes for the hunt.
