by Nafisa Haji
This was not what I thought I had signed up for. Back when I was still in college, Professor Dunnett, my Urdu professor in Chicago, had asked me to see him at the beginning of my last semester there.
“That interview with those recruiters that Crawley set you up with? Have you accepted the offer, Jo?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised that he knew of it.
He had paused for a moment, resting his chin on a triangle made of hands and fingers. “I’m not sure this is the right thing for you to do, Jo.”
“But— I just want to help. To do my part.”
“Did they say what kind of work you’d be doing?” Professor Dunnett asked.
I nodded warily. “I’ll be working as an interpreter. Under contract to the government. They’re really short. In all areas. And— I know two languages they’ll be needing.”
“But what will you be interpreting? Will you be on the battlefield?”
I shook my head. “No. Intelligence work. They’re running background checks. To get me a security clearance. It’ll take about six months. So I’ll be able to start right after I graduate.” I was eager to start, was planning to cram all I could into those last months of study.
“Intelligence work? As in, paperwork? Correspondence? Or— in person?”
I’d shrugged.
“This isn’t what you planned to do, Jo. With what you’ve learned. I thought you wanted to be a missionary?”
“I do. But the mission, for now, has changed.”
In the process, so had I. In the grand scheme of things, I was nothing, I knew. Nothing but a translator. An interpreter. A human dictionary. That’s what I told myself in the beginning, trying to absolve myself of any of the responsibility of what I’d taken part in. But the trick was the human part. A human dictionary.
I didn’t work in any of the places that became famous. Guantánamo or Bagram or Abu Ghraib. I worked in the dark. Initially, in prison cells in Pakistan. Sometimes in hotel rooms. Other times, in other places—secret locations. Black sites, the newspapers started to call them. In Africa. In Asia. And Eastern Europe. A beautiful island in the Indian Ocean.
In the course of my work, I had been to Pakistan many times. Mostly to cities in the north, but to Karachi, too, a few times. Landing there, in the city that Sadiq came from, I couldn’t help but think of him. Looking down at the lights of Karachi from the window of the plane as we’d make our descent, I’d wonder if he was there. On the road, driving from the airport to secret locations in Karachi and other cities and back, I would look out from behind the tinted glass of SUV windows that no one on the streets could look into, like a woman from behind a veil. I only experienced the place in fleeting moments and snippets, always in a hurry, usually on the ground for merely a few hours and in the dead of night. I wondered sometimes if I’d ever go back and see those places in daylight.
My language skills narrowed—I knew how to ask questions—over and over again, the same ones. I knew how to translate the same repeated answers and assertions: “I am innocent. No! That’s not true. That’s a lie. Who told you that? I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am not a terrorist. I am not a bad man. I am a good person.” I couldn’t translate the sobs and the screams. I didn’t have to.
How was I supposed to know? That these cries and pleas would all sound the same, whether or not the person who formed them was telling the truth. That the people I worked for couldn’t tell the difference either. They thought they could. They thought that pain and confusion could be a filter for lies and truth. So they were liberal in handing out both. Along with threats. Involving children and wives and families left behind.
Once, I’d been assigned to an interrogation of two little boys. Eight and six. Their father was a big catch. And the mission was to get intel from them that would help to convince their dad that we had them and that they were in danger. Their mother was in our custody, too. I did the best I could to make myself understood, to understand them, but I wasn’t used to talking with children. I’ll never forget how scared those little boys were.
When we were done with them, the guy in charge took one look at me and said, “Don’t let yourself get all dewy-eyed for those kids. Their father is a murdering monster. They’re murderers in training. They don’t deserve those tears threatening to fall out of your girly eyes.”
I put my hand up to my face in shock. I hadn’t noticed the wetness. That was how good I was at doing what had to be done. I was numb, totally cut off from the source of those tears.
On my very first assignment, the people I’d be working with—government interrogators, not military—had offered the old joke, “If we tell you who we work for, we’d have to kill you,” as if it wasn’t crystal-clear. The lead interrogator, the night before our first mission, had given me lots of advice at the bar in the hotel where we gathered, in Barcelona, getting ready to fly somewhere else the next morning.
“Don’t get caught up in any of the bullshit they’ll feed you. They’ll cry and talk about how innocent they are. I mean grown men. Weeping. Be ready for that. They’ll tell you their sob stories. About what a big mistake we’ve made. That’s not your problem. Your job is just to translate. To tell them what we tell you to tell them. To tell us what they tell you.”
The others had nodded, raising their glasses to their lips. Wide-eyed, I’d sipped my Coke and tried to prepare myself. In the morning, over breakfast, before our flight, I’d asked if I could say a prayer for our mission. The guys all nodded their agreement. I closed my eyes, bowed my head, and said, “Lord, we ask You to be with us, to guide us in our mission, to let our hands be Your hands, our words be Your words, our works be according to Your will. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”
“Amen,” everyone said; big, brawny guys who swore too much and drank too much, led in prayer by me, with my quaky, shaky, scared-of-what-was-next voice. After that first assignment, I couldn’t look at them anymore without flashes of what they’d done streaking through the air at odd moments. I regretted praying with them. But they asked me to, again, before the next assignment, and then, again, before the next. So, I did, always unsure about whether it was the right thing to do.
You’d think I wouldn’t fit in. I don’t know what it says about me that they accepted me as they did. I wasn’t even that good at my job, not as good as some of the native speakers who were also on contract, far better interpreters than I was. I think I was more trusted than they were. Simply because I wasn’t a native speaker.
Despite the pep talk and the prayer, that first time and all the others, it was impossible to ever really be ready for our assignments, even after dozens of missions. Each and every one of them was recorded. Sometimes literally, by one of the guys, in a mask, holding a camcorder, but always in my memory. There was a room in my head, where the scenes played repeatedly. I could be in my apartment. Could watch TV and laugh at a sitcom. Have dinner with friends. Or listen to Dan on the phone, telling me about his day. But the images were my constant companion.
It was strange, too, the tricks my memory played. That when I remembered, my perspective changed. The mask on my face, which we usually all wore on assignment, would fall off, leaving me exposed to the pain, sometimes the hatred, raw, of the people we questioned. But the masks on the faces of the people I worked with remained. So that my nightmares were filled with them, faces of violent people in ski masks, their eyes hard and cold, looking at me, at the detainees, utterly drained of anything recognizably human. That was a scary feeling, one I couldn’t escape at times—like now, just home, with fresh memories to assemble into line with all of the old ones.
Four hours later, the phone rang.
It was my boss. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Your contract is officially up.”
“I know. Two years. Time flies when you’re having fun.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
He sighed heavily. “Come on, Jo. The offer for r
enewal? The one you said you’d think about?”
“You said I should think about it. I said I wasn’t interested.”
I heard him sigh again. “Is it the money? Because I’ve been authorized to up the offer.”
“No. It’s not about the money.”
“Come on, Jo. You know this is important. You know how much we need you.”
“I don’t want to do it anymore. I told you.”
“Look, I know it’s a crummy gig, but someone’s gotta do it. It’s a matter of national security.”
I decided that silence was the way to go. He argued some more, not noticing that he was only arguing with himself, trying to convince me to renew. Finally, he gave up, but not before telling me to call him if I ever changed my mind.
I was still on the couch, too tired to get up and too wound up to bother trying to sleep where I was, when, a little while later, I heard the key jiggle in the lock before the door creaked open, and a hand reached in to flick the lights on.
Colleen was already inside, mail in hand, when she saw me and gasped, “Oh! My! You scared me, Jo.”
“I’m sorry, Colleen.”
“I didn’t know you were home. I’ve got your mail here, from yesterday.”
“Thanks, Colleen. Come in.”
She put the mail down on the dining table before taking the few steps into the living room.
“When did you get home?”
“Last night. Late. Thanks again, Colleen. For taking care of everything. All the plants are thriving. Doing better than they would have if I’d been the one watering them.”
“That’s because I talk to them. You look exhausted.”
“Bone-weary. Too tired to move. I just want to sit here and do nothing.”
“Poor baby! You gonna be going away again soon? For work?”
“No. I quit.”
“Oh.” She paused. “Should I leave the keys on the table, then?”
“Nah. You keep them, Colleen, if you don’t mind. I’m going home for Thanksgiving next week. To California.”
“Oh, that’s nice. You haven’t been home for a while, have you?”
“A few months ago. But only for a day or two, when my brother came home from his tour in Iraq. I’m going to stay longer this time. While I’m there, I’m going to think about moving back home. To try and make the savings last as long as I can, now that I’m officially unemployed. You going anywhere, Colleen? For Thanksgiving?”
“Nope. My daughter’s coming to visit me. With her kids.”
“Oh. Well, feel free to use my place if you need more room for them to stay.”
“Aw—bless your heart, Jo.”
“I mean it.”
“Do you? That’s not a bad idea. If we get too crowded in my place, I might take you up on it. Well, I’m sure I’ll see you before you go. But if I don’t, you say hi to your family for me. And give your brother a big, giant hug from me!”
“I will.” Colleen had met Chris, once. When he’d come to visit me before being deployed.
“See ya later,” Colleen said, leaving, taking her cheery energy out the door with her.
I went through the mail when she left, seriously this time. Got out my checkbook and caught up on my bills. I called the cable company. If I was going to continue to be sleepless, I needed my cable.
I got through the day. Went out to stock up on some groceries. I called Dan. And Mom and Dad and Chris. Thanksgiving was going to be a big deal for Mom. The first one we’d all be at in a long time. Uncle Ron and his family would be there, driving down from Los Angeles. Grandma Faith would be coming home, too, just in time, back from a quick mission, the first one she’d gone on since Chris was at boot camp, going only after he’d come home from Iraq.
By evening, I was unpacked, stacking the new Urdu and Arabic DVDs in the cabinet with the rest of my movie collection. I cleaned up, wiping away the dust that had settled on the surfaces of tables and counters while I was away, and did some laundry. Took a hot bath. Made myself some cocoa. And took up my place on the couch again, a book in hand. After a while, I put it down, giving up the fight.
It wasn’t the parade of images that was getting in the way now. Just one—one bewildered face. There were plenty of reasons for him to be memorable. He’d been rounded up in a house raid in Karachi—one that had netted some pretty big fish and made it into the news. Everyone caught in that net was considered high-value, and the team had been pretty excited. These were some really bad guys. Most of them had been shot during the raid, and the Pakistani authorities hadn’t bothered to treat any of them. So they came to us with wounds, festering. His was in his thigh. He’d also been beaten up pretty badly. He couldn’t walk and had to be held up and frog-marched.
His name was Fazl. The guys called him Fuzzy, behind his back, and then, eventually, to his face. That was against protocol. We were only supposed to refer to detainees by their numbers. But in Fuzzy’s case, for some reason, everyone broke that particular rule. He was only a few years older than me. And something he’d said, more to himself than to me, mumbling, had stayed with me, striking a chord of memory—like déjà vu. It was a spectacular coincidence. It had to be. But it had nothing to do with what the guys on the team wanted to hear.
There’d been some hesitation about taking him with us at all. We’d walked through the cell block in Karachi, doing the usual preliminary screenings. The biggest fish, the one whose name was on the front page of the New York Times that week, spoke English, so I wasn’t called in to help with him. Outside of Fuzzy’s cell, we stopped, trying to get his story. About what he was doing in the house that had been raided.
One of the Pakistani agents came up to us and said, pointing at the guy we’d soon be calling Fuzzy, “This one is retahded.” We’d stared at him blankly. “He’s—not right in the head. An idjit. Stchupid, you know. The mind of a child. He says he was only a gatekeeper. He didn’t even have a gun on him. The others say the same thing about him.”
One of our guys said, “So—he was a bodyguard, eh? And the retarded thing—it’s an act. It’s standard op with these guys. To pretend not to know anything.”
The Pakistani agent shook his head. “He’s not pretending. He’s retahded, I tell you. Poor bahstard. You’ll get nothing out of him. And he’s not one of them.” He pointed his head in the direction of the cell block where the biggies were. “He’s Pakistani. Not Arab.”
The lead interrogator stood and stared at Fuzzy for a moment, unsure. This was unusual, to have a local agent discourage us from taking a detainee. The Pakistanis would have given us a lot more guys if we let them. There was a lot of money to be made, handing them over for American taxpayer-funded bounty.
Then the lead guy said, “We’ve got to be careful. They’re telling us that we’re bringing in too many of ’em who have nothing to give us.”
Breaking another rule, unwritten, I used a word we weren’t even supposed to think, saying, “You mean— they’re innocent?”
“I didn’t say that!” he snapped.
“Look,” one of the other guys on the team said, “we’ve got our orders. This was a big raid. Everyone in that house has something to tell us. Even this fuckin’ loser.”
That had settled it.
I was the interpreter assigned to Fuzzy’s interrogation. If he was acting, he was really good at it.
No matter what we asked him, he’d always go back to the beginning, speaking in a very soft voice, so soft that I had to lean in close to hear what he was saying. “When I was little,” he’d say, “my mother died. We were in the city. And she died. I was all alone.”
“What the hell’s he saying?!” the interrogator, my least favorite to work with, thundered.
“He’s talking about how his mother died when he was little.”
“What am I, fuckin’ Freud, now? I don’t give a shit about his mother. Ask him about his boss. Ask him if he’s ever met Bin Laden.”
I did what I was told. But Fuzzy just started over a
gain, still barely audible. “When I was little, my mother died. I was very, very little. We were in the city. The big city. We’d left home. She died. And I was all alone.”
He made the interrogator furious. Fuzzy suffered for that fury. But nothing that they did to him got him on the track they wanted him on. It wasn’t that he was being uncooperative. It was just that he seemed not to understand how to start in the middle of the story. He had to start at the beginning. After a while, after Fuzzy had been punished a lot for what the interrogator considered to be uncooperative behavior, the team tried a new tactic. They let Fuzzy start at the beginning.
“When I was little, my mother died. I was very little. We were in the city. I was all alone. Then Uncle came to see me. He said he would take care of me. He took me to a school.”
“What’s that he said?!” the interrogator interrupted. “Something about a madrassa?”
“Yes. But that’s just a word for ‘school’—he says he went to school.”
“Yeah! Fuckin’ jeehad school is what it is! Ask him about that! About where the school was. Did they have guns there?”
I asked Fuzzy about the school. But the interruption had caused him to start at the beginning. “When I was little, my mother died . . .”
“Jesus Christ! This moron is fuckin’ killing me!” The interrogator threw his hands up, curled them into fists, and waved them around for a second, and then sat down again.
Fuzzy, again, started at the beginning. It took a few moments for him to catch up to where he’d been before. That’s when I resumed my translation.
“Uncle took me to school. I learned there. But it was a hard school. They used to beat me. I learned to read the Quran. Uncle used to come and visit sometimes. When he found out that they beat me, he was angry. He took me out of that school and put me in another. He wasn’t really my uncle, he told me. He paid for my fees. Bought my clothes and books. Uncle was good to me. Sharif Muhammad Uncle.”
