When Khafaji wakes up, the hood is off, but his head is pounding. He rubs his temples and neck for a minute before it registers that the cuffs are also gone. He blinks and coughs, and then sees a motley group of young men. Most are wearing nothing more than filthy pants. He looks down at his own nakedness and shudders. He tries to cover his penis with his hands. Someone hands him a dirty towel. With numb fingers, he wraps it around his waist as best he can.
Khafaji sits up and someone offers him a tin cup of water. Not water, but a tepid liquid stinking of sulfur. He drinks it quickly, though it does not go down easily. The throbbing in his head begins again, then the spinning. He lies down again. Hands pick up his body then set him down gently on a cold metal bench.
“Thanks,” he mutters. His old voice has returned, frayed around the edges.
“The brother is Iraqi. We’re honored by your presence.”
“The honor is mine.” His right hand touches his heart.
Khafaji lifts his head slightly to see the faces of his helpers. In an instant, the stench of twenty men shitting and pissing into buckets hits him. He covers his face with filthy hands and fingers. He’s smelt it before, but never from this side of the door. He looks down at his wet legs, uncomfortable and now even more ashamed.
Khafaji closes his eyes. He was right – they are young. Half are boys. A couple aren’t even old enough to shave. They talk. They tell stories. About families at home. About brothers. About famous men. Two make a point of talking about how much it cost to come. To liberate Muslim Iraq. Khafaji guesses that of the twenty, maybe one was trained to do something more dangerous than picking beans.
The day passes in winding conversation, interrupted at random by loud music that suddenly blasts into the cell for minutes, and that, just as suddenly, disappears again. The light turns on and off without warning, without pattern. When the cell is dark, Khafaji feels at his head and face. He is stunned to find his hair cut, along with half of his moustache. His fingers travel up to his face to feel the patches of bare skin. No sooner does he manage to forget this than his fingers are there again, prodding at the skin on his scalp and his lip. The more his head throbs, the more his fingers dig into his temples.
The lights come on again. The older ones are more than curious to know what an old man is doing in their cell. Khafaji tells them his name is Omar. He says his wife’s family comes from Tikrit. He hints that he was captured while leading a unit in Salaheddine province. A string of lies, but Khafaji isn’t entirely insincere. A couple of the boys pepper him with questions, others tune out.
The lights go off and they ask Khafaji about the fate of the world. Why were Iraqis so slow to take up arms? Who built this prison? Did Shiites collaborate with Americans because they hate Islam so much? Why did the Kurds love Israel so much? Khafaji says as little as possible. Nothing to encourage or dampen hopes. Nothing specific. Nothing verifiable. After a few hours, Khafaji pieces together that they were all picked up around al-Ramadi. Most within days of arriving in the country. Some within hours. If they ever returned home, this cell would be the only Iraq they knew.
The weeping is so faint that it takes Khafaji a long time to realize what it is. When the light comes on again, he sees the boy in the corner. Crying. He’s been crying for hours. Khafaji watches him urinate on himself more than once. The others around him try to comfort him, but they also move away from the puddle he sits in. His body never stops shaking.
The first time they prepare to pray, they ask Khafaji to lead. He wonders, Do you remember how? He apologizes, and his sorry state excuses him. The next time, they don’t even ask. After they pray four times in a matter of what seems like a few hours, he realizes: they don’t know what time it is any better than him. It could be day or night. A boy complains about the light, and someone else answers, “At least it keeps the bugs away.”
And then there’s the sound. Only now does he begin to hear it. There is no sound at all. Or rather, there seems to be no sound except a distant, white roar. From somewhere in the building itself, a distant hissing sound floods the air. No other noise. No sound coming from other cells. No sound from the outside. A seashell’s whisper, soft, almost imperceptible. Except that when you wake up to it, it’s a deafening roar.
Never once does the power go out here.
One by one, the others fall asleep. At one point, the only other person still awake is the sobbing boy in the corner. Khafaji nods to him.
“Tired?”
“Yes. I haven’t slept since I’ve been here.”
“In this prison?”
“No. In Iraq.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Longer than that, actually. Not since I left home.”
“Egypt? How long’s that been?”
“Three or four months, I think. I don’t know. Forever.”
“Does your family know you’re here?” Khafaji studies his face. The long nose, round cheeks, and soft lashes might have been copied from an ancient temple wall. A Pharaonic scribe with sleepless eyes.
“Only my brother and cousin. They helped me buy my ticket. No one else. If my father knew, I’d be dead.”
“But he’d also brag about how brave you were.”
“Maybe. But it would only bring trouble. He’d kill me.”
“He must be a good man to have raised a strong young man.”
“Until they made me a girl.”
“What?” Khafaji immediately regrets asking.
“They did that to me. Right outside in the hallway. They made us all take off our clothes. They said I was a girl, and then they made me one. Then they did it over and over. Everyone saw it.” The boy begins to cry.
Khafaji doesn’t know what to say. He reaches out his fingers and rests them on the boy’s shoulder. The boy leans onto Khafaji’s shoulder as he sobs. Onto the warmth of his skin. Khafaji still does not know what to say. The minutes go by as they sit side by side in silence. When the lights suddenly shut off again, the boy stops crying. Khafaji moves away to another corner of the cell.
“Do you ever dream?” the boy asks.
“Of course.”
“I mean, while you’re awake? Do you ever see dreams like they’re real? And they are real. But then, later, you realize they were in your mind?”
“Everyone does. When you’re sick enough. Sleep is the cure. Sleep, son. Sleep and forget your dreams.”
“Do these dreams come from God, or from the Devil?” Khafaji shakes his head in the darkness. He wants to laugh, but it’s too late. Like laughter, grief is also infectious. Khafaji’s breath slows and slows until his body finally gives way.
It is hours before the door opens. Two Americans walk in and look around the room. When one of them speaks, they realize she’s a woman. She throws a pile of what appears to be women’s underwear on the ground and laughs. The boys in the room go bolt rigid. Alert and on guard. The Iraqi guard accompanying them orders a thin Yemeni boy to take the buckets down the hall. The buckets are full, almost too heavy to lift. He carries each one with both hands. The liquid splashes out over his toes, and leaves a spattered trail across the concrete floor. A minute later, the boy is back and retrieves the next one. As he goes back and forth, his plastic sandals slip and slide. By the time he’s done with all of them, a large puddle of mess covers half the room. The door closes. In an instant, a line of boys forms, their faces turned away from the others already emptying their bowels.
Khafaji rummages through the pile of underwear and finds something he can put on. Then he dozes off. Khafaji dreams that the Tigris has become a lake, its waters swelling green and stagnant with garbage and human waste, sweating oil and tar. He stares at the heavens and the sky opens. Rain begins to pour down. He smiles to himself. It has been months since it rained in this city. Violent storms sweep across the sky. Clouds fly and loosen like purple turbans unfurling themselves. Sheets of rain crash against the window. Water gushes down minarets in frothy cascades. The alleys and streets fill with puddles. The crater outside becomes a dancing pool. Streams surge across sidewalks and avenues. A flood sweeps down every street, washing away all the debris and litter. Small cars get caught in the deluge, then trucks, buses, troop carriers and helicopters. The streets are now torrents, spilling everything down to the Tigris. Khafaji and Suheir are eating masgouf at their favorite restaurant. He is chewing slowly, picking bones out of his mouth as he watches the gathering destruction. Something sticks in his throat and he begins to gag. Soon he is choking and spitting. As he begins to vomit, a huge carp leaps from of his mouth into the river. He reaches for a glass of water, but the table, the restaurant, and now Suheir are floating off, beyond his reach. He is in the Tigris now, drifting with its current. It is no longer a lake, but a strong, swift river. Slowly, the currents begin to gather speed, and he is carried away. The water is clear and cold and sweet on his lips. He drinks and drinks then gazes into the blue-gray depths below. The whole city, clean and still, drifting hundreds of feet beneath his floating body. Baghdad Atlantis. Suddenly, small dots begin to rise up from the streets and buildings beneath. First in ones and pairs like loose balloons, then like flocks of geese, they float up from below. They grow in size until he can see them clearly: crowds of bloated corpses, gathering speed as they ascend. With a whoosh and splash, each one breaks the surface. Soon, Khafaji is surrounded by a thicket of lifeless bodies, so swollen with air that their shiny bellies look like fleshy spring-onion bulbs. The body next to him turns over, and Mrouj’s lifeless eyes gaze up at his.
Terrified, Khafaji wakes up. He stares up at the fluorescent bulbs until the floating sensation becomes a dull throbbing again. He rolls over and feels the vomit on his face and chest. His stomach is a wolf gnawing at the rest of his body. He can’t remember the last time he ate. The others tell him that food arrived while he was sleeping and they saved him some. They see his face and tell him to eat. He crawls over and sits in front of the food. He drags a piece of dry bread through cold, viscous soup, and puts it in his mouth. Bite by bite, he finishes the plate.
As soon as he finishes the last bite, his body seizes up. In a second, he is heaving and convulsing, and everything comes out again. The more he vomits, the clearer his head feels.
He can’t stop the tears when they begin to well up. He turns his shaking body to face the wall, and tries to do what he has always done whenever he is sick or tired or sad. He tries to escape into the music he knows by heart. Poetry, the same liquor that his father poured whenever he wanted to drink himself into oblivion. Khafaji wants to drink it too. He wants to drink until he can’t see straight any more. His father used to say that Arabs called poetic meters “seas” because you could sail on them, and because you could drown in them.
Khafaji tries to recall lines from the book he was reading to Mrouj yesterday. Where is Mrouj? he wonders. Was it yesterday? No. He thinks about the poems, hoping that something might float up from his memory. A line or fragment. These are poems he’s known his whole life. They are who he is.
But, tonight, nothing. As if someone had erased the diwan of his life. For the first time in years, there’s not even a poem to keep him company. He cries hot torrents of tears, but they’re not enough to wash away the dirt and blood on his cheeks.
At some point, he finds a hand gently resting on his arm and looks up to see the young Egyptian boy sitting next to him. They look at each other until, suddenly, the lights turn off again.