SIkander

by M. Salahuddin Khan

  “I…I don’t have any idea about any plans,” Sikander stuttered, as he braced himself for what would come next.

  Mahler straightened up and glanced once more at the MPs, again murmuring the word “down.” Like a well-choreographed ballet movement, they repeated the routine, bringing Sikander up off his chair and crashing down onto the floor. New agonies piled onto those from his earlier punishment. Sikander screamed and whimpered, certain he would die from the pain. He was lifted and dumped back into the chair.

  “Tell us what we want to know, Mr. Khan. Make it easy on yourself,” demanded Mahler.

  “I don’t know! I…don’t…know! I’ve told you what I know!” screamed Sikander, barely able to hold up his head.

  Mahler issued a disdainful sigh. “I’m leaving this shit-can. I need a smoke! These guys are leaving with me,” he said. Smirking and with his head now close to Sikander’s, in a tone of disgust he continued, “I’ll be back.”

  The door closed behind them.

  “You really want things to be this ugly?” asked the female officer. “You think we like doing this?” Her face had a business-like pleasantry, as if she might have been making an appointment with a customer. It was difficult to remain focused and these people knew it, thought Sikander. He shook his head without answering. Whatever mental faculties he had left at that moment were absorbed by the thought of Junaid being a member of al-Qaeda. He struggled to remind himself that Mahler’s claim might not be true.

  Sikander noted the woman’s uniform name label. A fleeting smile visited his lips as he considered the irony of being held captive by a woman called Alexander.

  “You know, we usually get the information we’re looking for. It seems stupid to go through the agony that it must be for you, only to cave in ultimately. Don’t you think, Sikander? I mean, why not behave like civilized people? Why get into all this… physical stuff?” said Alexander.

  “Huh!” sighed Sikander. “Tell me…tell me what you want me to say…” he asked wearily before screaming, “Tell me!”

  “Oh, everything you know and nothing that isn’t true,” she advised, unfazed by his volatility. She approached him more closely and started caressing his hair with her soft hands. Crouching down to whisper into his ear, she said in an alluringly quiet voice, “Tell us everything we want to know, Sikander. We’ll show you our…appreciation.”

  Lingering fragrance from Amouage, worn the previous evening drifted into his nostrils. Sikander recognized it. It was one of Rabia’s favorites. The scent made him recall her, and he focused on her image, resisting the urge to react to Alexander. His Muslim sensibilities demanded that he be repulsed by such a move, even though physically she was impossible to ignore. Whatever he felt, he was determined to express neither pleasure nor revulsion.

  A few minutes passed when the door opened and Mahler and his MPs reappeared. “Well?” he asked Sikander.

  “Captain, I can’t tell you what you’re asking for,” said Sikander. “I simply don’t know.”

  After glancing at Alexander, who gave a barely perceptible headshake, Mahler paused before looking at the MPs and waving his head toward the door. Sikander was returned to his cage. Hurled into it like a sack of potatoes, he struck his head against the far side wire wall. But he was beyond processing pain now. He needed sleep.

  When Sikander awoke, still weary, he sat up to rest his back against the cage wall and could see other detainees gazing at him from their own cages. He tried to say something but the pain forced his fingertips to meet his swollen lip, then a cut on his forehead.

  “Interrogation?” asked a voice from across the aisle that separated his cage from the adjacent set. It was a young man who spoke English with a Cockney accent.

  Sikander nodded, exhausted.

  “Yeah, I’ve had that treatment too, man. Huh! Don’t hold anythin’ back, do they?”

  Sikander shook his head. He had little desire and less ability to speak.

  “It makes ‘em really pleased if you tell ‘em something. Makes ‘em feel like what they’re doing’s workin’, you know?”

  As the morning brightened, Sikander could see the man across the way. He was well built, like Sikander, though perhaps a little shorter. He was wearing a white skullcap and wore his jumpsuit pants well above his ankles, in line with conservative Islamic principles.

  “Assalaamu ‘alaykum!” said the man. “I’m Fareed.”

  “Wa ’alaykum…assalaam,” replied Sikander with barely the energy to get the words out. “I’m… Sikander.”

  Sikander leaned his head back against the cage and closed his eyes. He could no longer be sure of that. Who was he? The insane stream of events in which he was swimming denied him any footing and he wondered if this was the beginning of a rapid slide toward insanity.

  I can’t be the person that left home, went to Afghanistan, trained in Scotland, fought the Russians, and prospered in Peshawar. That’s an imagined fantasy. No! For a terrifying moment, he felt as if he’d always been a detainee. More terrifying still was the glimpse his mind was offering him of the possibility of such feelings lasting for more than just a moment. No! He had to remain in control. He was Sikander. He had to remain Sikander.

  “How long have you been here?” Sikander asked.

  “Not sure,” replied Fareed, gazing wistfully skyward. “It wasn’t long after the New York attacks. God! Who would do somethin’ like that, eh? Who would have the balls? Calmly gettin’ on a plane, slittin’ the pilot’s throat, flyin’ it into a building? Man!” He shook his head in disbelief.

  “They picked me up and did terrible things to me! Just needed to throttle somebody, anybody. Anyone who looked like they could’ve done somethin’ like that. Competin’ with each other, I bet! See who could get the most revenge. God!”

  “You don’t sound like you’re from Afghanistan or Pakistan,” Sikander said.

  The young man smiled, though it was barely observable across the shadowy cell. “I’m not. I’m from England. Just north of London actually. I grew up there.”

  “Hm. Are you…were you…al-Qaeda? Taliban?”

  Fareed didn’t answer the question. He couldn’t trust Sikander with whatever the truth might have been. He just looked down at the concrete floor of his cage.

  “How’d you get to Afghanistan?” probed Sikander.

  “I was eight when I came to England with my mum and the rest of the family. We lived in Woodford. I studied pretty well and y’know, I got some pretty decent grades and I was goin’ to university,” explained Fareed.

  “Really? Which?” Sikander asked, still fighting the pain of speaking.

  “City. City College in London.”

  Sikander didn’t let on that he had never heard of it.

  “Huh! Computer science,” continued Fareed with a wistful grin. “Didn’t finish the program. I just wanted to get out of England and, y’know, see somethin’ of the world?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Sikander said, “I didn’t finish school either.”

  “Really? Well, I was in Germany when I was seriously injured in this accident y’see. Struck by a car. Almost died! Well, technically I think I did, y’know, when your heart stops?”

  Sikander was fascinated.

  Fareed continued. “I dunno; I suppose that’s what turned me to think about Islam. I mean, I wanted to know more so when I came back to England, I started going to this place they’d converted into a masjid in London.” Fareed adopted a distant look before shrugging. “Huh! I knew a bit about computers so I helped ‘em with their Web site. They liked what I did for ‘em and well, y’know, that made me feel good. So I decided I’d go to Afghanistan. Get some trainin’. I wanted to be in jihad for Islam.”

  “Hmm,” responded Sikander. He could only guess at the kind of hole Fareed might have dug for himself.

  “It was right after Bush got in. I went to some camps learnin’ how to use AK-47s and RPGs. But that was long before the World Trade Center. God, those attacks!”
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  “Go on,” probed Sikander.

  “After the attacks I had to fight didn’t I? I mean, all we saw once the Americans came, was bombs, bombs, and more bloody bombs rainin’ down on us!”

  “So how did you land here?”

  “Caught in Qunduz.” Fareed shrugged. “Those haraamzadas held onto me. I’m sure they were well paid for turnin’ anyone over to the Americans.”

  As he slowly shook his head, Fareed’s tone in uttering the last word left little doubt he had only resentment for America. Still, he seemed a fellow-in-misery for being picked up in Qunduz. Sikander shared his own story with Fareed, which upset the young man visibly. It was all Sikander could do to calm him down and warn him not to direct his anger toward the prison guards or interrogators, as that might land both of them, but certainly Fareed, into serious trouble and IRF injuries.

  Several times over the next few weeks Sikander was hauled back in for questioning. On each occasion Mahler and his MPs repeated the treatment, giving him more names and pictures to which he could react. More often than not Lieutenant Alexander accompanied them and whenever she came, she was left alone with him administering variations of her practiced seduction and sympathy to get Sikander to reveal something new. As usual, Sikander could offer nothing of any al-Qaeda plans, training facilities, or people, and as usual, whenever he was judged to be uncooperative, Mahler would see to it that the MPs got their “exercise.”

  Sikander and Fareed periodically talked to each other and the conversations usually boiled down to a damning critique of how the American government had responded to the terrorist attacks. But it helped to pass the time.

  “Do you suppose they’ll ever let us out of here?” Fareed asked Sikander a few weeks after they’d met.

  “I don’t know, Fareed,” replied Sikander. “I don’t know what has to change for them to do that. That’s the frustrating part about this hell. It feels like you’re groping for the formula. What’s it going to take? What do they want to hear?”

  The weeks crept along and the temperature in Guantanamo began climbing. On a hot day in March, as Sikander lay in the sweltering heat, MPs arrived to “escort” him to the interrogation block where Mahler was waiting. Sikander almost welcomed the respite from the heat and humidity that the interrogation would no doubt provide, while steeling himself for his usual denials. But the questioning on this day took a different approach. Mahler was not interested in his knowledge of other possible al-Qaeda members. He wanted to understand Sikander’s own makeup. Perhaps they would learn something about the moment in his life when he went off the rails and use it to understand the pathology of his becoming an al-Qaeda sympathizer, financier, or full-blown operative.

  “When you were fighting the Russians, you say you were trained to use Stinger missiles? Where?” Mahler began.

  “It was Scotland. We were never told where exactly.”

  “Scotland? Hm…never been there. How’d you get there?”

  “We were taken by the PAF to Qatar and from there in a British C130 Hercules.”

  “Describe the place.”

  “Hilly. On a shore…there was an expanse of water to the west…islands across the water with their own hills. The sun set behind those hills. It was a long time ago,” replied Sikander.

  “What else?”

  “We were in a camp with cabins. They took us to the camp in a helicopter from the airfield where the Hercules landed.

  “How many of you were there?”

  Sikander paused to think, wary of how risky such a pause might be. “Fifteen, maybe twenty of us…no, it was fifteen. We were put into five groups of three.”

  “Remember any names?”

  Sikander again thought carefully. “I remember some people, yes,” he replied.

  After waiting a few seconds Mahler prodded, “Well?”

  “There was Irfan who had a brother, uh, Usman,” said Sikander, “and there was Abdul Rahman and Saleem, my wife’s cousin and brother.”

  “Where did Irfan and Usman come from?” asked Mahler.

  “Khost is what they said. Irfan was killed by the Russians at Arghandab after saving my life,” replied Sikander.

  “Hmm…touching. And the other guy, Usman?”

  “After Arghandab, we brought Usman back with us to our village in Nangarhar. He had nobody. No family. They’d been killed by the Russians much earlier. We…my wife’s family, offered him a place to—”

  “Where’s he now?”

  “I don’t know, but on one of my trips back to the village a few years ago I was told he was back in Khost. I haven’t seen him since I left Afghanistan in 1988.”

  “What got you interested in fighting against America? After all we’d done to help you beat the Russians, were those attacks a way to repay us? Did you get some religious moment? A call to jeehaad?”

  Mahler’s tone seemed to lack interest in an answer, but Sikander couldn’t be sure. Speaking would probably be better than silence.

  “Captain, I’ve told you. I was never interested in fighting America. It’s true I’m a religious person. I believe in God. But it doesn’t mean I’m trying to kill everyone who isn’t a Muslim.”

  Sikander’s words bounced harmlessly off Mahler. He stood hovering over Sikander’s bound form. Speaking in a calm, soft voice, he began again.

  “Y’know, Mr. Khan, I’ve just two more years in this job; two more years of active duty. I used to have this neighbor. Buddy o’mine. Sometimes we’d spend weekends hunting, or working in each other’s garage workshops. Sometimes we’d chill out at a local bar. Tony… Tony DeLea.” Mahler smiled wistfully. “Only he’s no longer a buddy. You see, he was blown to bits on September 11. Take a look at this.”

  Mahler pulled out his wallet and from it a picture. He held onto a corner and brought it close to Sikander’s face.

  “See him? He’s the one on my right. It was after we’d been duck hunting in Virginia. He left a wonderful wife and a sweet little daughter. Not even twelve yet. See him, Mr. Khan?”

  Sikander nodded, before raising his eyes to meet Mahler’s.

  “Now…how do you expect me to live with myself if I don’t see to it that justice is done? How can I face that girl again? Hm?”

  Sikander thought about giving Mahler a philosophical response but knew he’d be risking another beating for “being cute.”

  “I suppose you have to seek out the ones who did those things, Captain.”

  “Well, you got that right, Mr. Khan. You got that right. I have to go looking.” Mahler’s cynical smile changed abruptly into a frown. “So, you going to help me with that? Or getting in my way…” Mahler nearly shouted the last few words, “…by not telling me everything you know?”

  Sikander’s heart sank. He was back full circle into unanswerable questions. He didn’t want the terrible beating again.

  “Captain…I…just…just tell me what you need me to say,” he whimpered. He couldn’t hold himself together. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t… Oh! Noooh!” Sikander groaned, as without a word, Mahler’s eyes met the MPs. Once again he was given the treatment. Mahler turned his back on the scene, as if to disown the MPs’ action.

  When he could speak again, Sikander had to ask the question that had never left his mind since eternity began, back in the middle of November. “Why!? Why are you doing this to me!?”

  The MPs were about to repeat the punishment when Mahler’s hand shot up to interrupt them. “Mr. Khan,” he replied in mock surprise that the question should even arise, “Why, I’m doing this for my country, for Tony, and for all the other Tonys out there and their families. And I’m doing it because I’m a Christian and I know what you people with your evil religion are trying to do to this world. I’m not going to let you do it. You’re not going to blow yourself up killing others with you just so you can go to Candyland and get yourself some virgins!” Mahler nodded to the MPs. The punishment resumed until yet again, Sikander was hurled into his cage in semi-consciousness.


  Fareed saw Sikander stir. He looked around before cursing their captors under his breath. “Haraamzadas!” Barely conscious, Sikander heard the comment, but had neither the energy nor the coherence to agree with him.

  Sikander’s numerous but unproductive interrogations frustrated Mahler. By now he should have cracked. He couldn’t possibly be anyone other than a pro-Taliban or al-Qaeda terrorist and probably a financier at that, putting on a show. Yet Sikander had given him nothing more than corroboration that he had met Atif Masood Qureishi of the Pakistani ISI. He wondered if Sikander had been specially trained to invite such treatment in readiness to validate the claim of torture, should he ever be released. That’s a game I can certainly oblige him with, mused Mahler.

  On April 28, some three hundred Camp X-ray detainees were told to pick up what few CIs they had and be ready to move into a new facility. Camp Delta was finished, and was to be their “permanent” place of incarceration. They would have enclosed cells. They were transported in a windowless van, in the goggles, earmuffs, manacles, and shackles that denied them any sense of who or what was around them. The remaining detainees were moved the following day.

  Camp Delta was much larger than X-ray, to accommodate the swelling numbers of detainees. The banner on the camp’s gate read “Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.” The camp’s perimeter was made of much taller chain-link wire fencing than X-ray’s, earning it the nickname, “The Wire.”

  But for Sikander, who had managed to step back from the precipice of insanity and cling to his own identity, there was no mistaking the identity of this place. It was surely “Jahannam”—a name ingrained into the Muslim psyche as the eternal recompense for a misspent life, from which escape was impossible.