Nothing, Mishaal thought as he watched the attendant in his heavy thawb approach down the long hallway. I want nothing. I am nothing.
He was an inmate at the al Ha’ir prison south of Riyadh. It was the Kingdom’s primary detention facility and recovery center for addictions, whether to drugs or terrorism. The conjugal-visit wing felt like a boutique hotel, if you ignored the narrow windows and high walls. Most rooms each had an en suite bathroom and a big-screen TV, a king-size bed and shiny wallpaper. Only the Saudis deradicalize vicious terrorists with opulence, as if hedonism was a cure-all.
Opulence for everyone, that is, except Mishaal. Abdulaziz wanted his son punished and broken—the “old way,” he had said. Mishaal’s universe consisted of a cot, a lavatory, the Koran, and a prayer rug.
In the beginning he had lain on the floor, screaming from withdrawal. He had shat himself and drooled. His attendant had come. The prince had seen the man’s sandals from his prostrate position on the floor. He had reached for the man, anticipating relief, but the attendant had beaten him and left him lying in a pool of blood-streaked retch.
It had gone on like that for two days, alternating between sickness and beatings, until he had begun to forget who he was and where he was. Eventually, the room had gone dark, and he had slept. Later, he had hauled himself to a sitting position. He drank water straight from the sink, only to vomit it back. Then they beat him again.
Now he cowered, recoiling as he listened to the footsteps coming down the corridor.
“Get up,” said the attendant.
The prince didn’t rise. He stayed on his prayer rug, his head bowed to the west, toward Mecca. He tried not to look at the man’s feet, only a few inches away. He had the impression, somehow, that the prayer rug was a safe zone, that they wouldn’t beat him here.
“Get up,” the attendant said again. But the prince didn’t rise.
“You are a disgrace.”
The prince didn’t argue. He could feel disgrace leaking out of every pore of his body. He could no longer defy his father. He could not be anyone but who the old man wanted him to be. The other path was too painful, and he feared pain most of all.
“You shame our world.” The man stepped forward, and Mishaal expected to be kicked again. He flinched, as he had flinched from his father when he was a boy.
Instead Mishaal felt the prick of the needle in his neck, then the relief as the heroin flooded his body.
“Shukraan,” he whispered. Thank you. “Shukraan. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.” God is good.
He heard the attendant—the cleric—scoff. He felt the man’s hot breath an inch from his ear. “The first one is free.”
The feet started to retreat, and Mishaal knew this was not an attendant but a messenger. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Thank God.