Captivity (18 page)

Junior enters with his arms waving, eyes wide, face flushed, a gun in his right hand. He points it towards the ceiling.
“Mooseh-dis! Mooseh-dis!”
he cries, makes a shooting sound, explains in body language how he’d been examining the gun when it discharged. The bullet nearly struck him in the head, hit the ceiling and sent plaster flying everywhere.

“Haji
okay?” I say.

He nods. “Yes, okay, but this
mozane,”
he says, holding up the gun.

Another afternoon. We’re sitting in the living room, under the Sacred Heart, hands free. In front of us, an end table with a plate of cookies, two glasses, a bottle of 7UP. We have visitors: Medicine Man, Video Man, the little boy. Junior squats down to talk with the little boy while Medicine Man, Video Man and Number One confer in serious tones.

I look up at the ceiling. It takes a minute to find it, the round pock-mark in the chandelier moulding where the bullet hit. I nudge Harmeet in the arm. “There it is,” I whisper. I catch Junior’s eye, grin and point to the ceiling. He scowls, puts his index finger across his lips and shakes his head. He doesn’t want Number One to know.

Video Man and Medicine Man turn towards us. Number One moves to the doorway. Medicine Man points to the Sacred Heart above our head. Junior takes it off the wall and drops it behind the couch to our right.

“Canada good,” Video Man says, offering each of us a cookie with a smile that makes me shudder.
“Shokren,”
we say, obediently taking them. He pats Harmeet on the head and gives me a thumbs-up.

“This you release video,” Medicine Man says. “We give to Al Jazeera just before you release. You must to look happy.” We nod blankly. “You must to smile. This for you release. You have some Seven.” Medicine Man fills a glass for each of us. “Drink! Drink!” We drink. “Have some biscuit!” I force myself to smile. “Good. Now we begin. No speech. You just to smile, laugh, make your glasses like this.” He holds up a glass as if he’s making a toast. “Do like the English.”

Video Man stands on a chair to film us, why I have no idea. He gestures towards the glasses.

“Smile!” Medicine Man says. “This you release.”

“Cheers,” we say, tipping our glasses together. It’s humiliating. I feel like a dog sitting up for its master. I look away from the camera. Junior is bouncing in and out of the living room with the little boy on his back. The boy laughs delightedly. I smile at him.

“Good smile,” Medicine Man says. “That is all.” Video Man steps down from the chair, removes the tape from the video recorder and hands it to Number One. Number One leaves through the kitchen.

“Al Jazeera give us some money,” Medicine Man says. “When we release you, Al Jazeera will show the video. Not before. This something exclusive for them.”

How long before we’re released? we ask.

“Not long,” he says. “Three day, four day.” What about Tom and Norman? “They are fine,” he says. “We separate you for the safety. We take the video of them, just like you. For release. You release first, and then the others. All of you release. Just some negotiation and finish.”

He motions for us to stand up. Junior puts our handcuffs back on. Medicine Man pushes the couch back into place and tells us to sit down. The captors chat together in the middle of the room. Junior shows them a gun. Medicine Man releases the safety, checks the magazine, looks down the barrel. He points the gun at the floor, squeezes the trigger, shrugs, hands the gun to Video Man. Video Man looks at
it, pulls the trigger, shrugs, hands it back to Junior. Junior throws it onto the couch. The men continue talking.

The little boy wanders over to the gun. He hesitates, puts a finger to his mouth, looks over at the men. When he sees they’re not watching, he reaches for the gun. He tries to grip it in his right hand, the way he saw the men holding it, but it’s too heavy, he has to use both hands. He examines it reverently, and then, looking up, points it at us. I shake my head slowly. A cold smile spreads across his face.

Medicine Man sees the boy and points at him. The men break into laughter. Video Man pats him on the back and pinches his cheek. He seems to be saying something like,
You will grow up to be a mujahedeen, just like your father
. Whatever it is, the boy beams proudly.

Another evening. Junior is sitting cross-legged and barefoot on the bed next to us at our right, elbows resting on his thighs. If I tilt my head up just a little, I can see Junior’s face below my hat. Number One is standing behind us. He interprets as Junior talks.

Junior points to Harmeet.
“Sadika, sadika,”
he says with a curving gesture to indicate a woman’s hips. His face is earnest, inquisitive like a 12-year-old boy.

“He see you on television,” Number One translates. “Your picture. You are with a girl. She have yellow hair. Very pretty. She is your girlfriend?”

Harmeet shakes his head. “No, I don’t know anyone with yellow hair. I don’t know who he could be talking about. Unless it’s a very old picture. Maybe it’s someone I knew in university, but I never had a picture taken with her.”

Junior asks if he has any children. No, Harmeet says. Junior asks if Harmeet is married. No. Does he have a girlfriend?

“No
sadika,”
Harmeet says, pretending to cry. “This very sad.”

“
Leiash?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying, I’m trying. This not love me,” Harmeet says, joking. He pretends to pull a ring off his finger, then draws a big X in the air.

“Mother? Father?” Junior asks.

“Yes, mother and father.”

“In Hind?”

“No, Zambia.” Junior doesn’t understand. “It’s a country in Africa.”

Junior’s eyes widen. “Brother? Sister?”

“One sister. In New Zealand.”

“Nuzlander?”
Junior says, surprised.

“Yes, New Zealand.”

“This
Hind
?” Junior asks him.

“This Kashmiri,” Harmeet says.

“This
Kashmiri
?” Junior’s face is full of surprise.

“Yes.”

Junior points to Harmeet, flexes his bicep, makes the gesture of a machine gun.

“He say the Kashmiri fight for independence, just like Iraq,” Number One says. “He say you have parents in Zambia, you and you sister in New Zealand, but you Canadian, and you Kashmiri. How can someone be all of those things? Are you Muslim?”

“No, I am Sikh.” Junior looks puzzled. “It is a religion, like Christianity or Islam.”

Number One and Junior converse back and forth. Junior finally nods. “But the rest of you are Christian?” Number One asks.

“Yes,” I say.

Number One asks me if I have children. No. Am I married? No. He is surprised. “How old are you?” Forty-one.

Number One explains to Junior. His eyes widen. “Why this? No madame? No
whalid?”

“I don’t know,” I say. Junior wants me to explain. I swallow hard. “I don’t know why. I just never got married,” I say, shrugging, trying to look as natural as possible. I’m in mortal danger. I can’t lie, and I can’t tell the truth.

“He say you are the handsome one with blue eyes and you not marry. Why this?” Number One says.

“It’s a long story,” I say.

“We have time.”

“It’s a long, sad story,” I say.

Number One translates. “I am sorry,” Junior says.

Number One places his hand on my shoulder. “When you get back to Canada, you must to get married. This very important.”

“Inshallah,” I say.

“Inshallah,” Number One says. My heart rate eases. I passed the test for a second time.

Junior points to my shirt. It’s one of my favourites. It showed up on the porch of Zacchaeus House one day in a bag full of second-hand clothes.

“He says you have a very nice shirt,” Number One says. “He ask how much it cost.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s second-hand.” Junior looks puzzled, feels the fabric of my shirt.

“Was it eight dollars?” Number One says.

“I don’t know. Somebody gave it to me. Brand new it would be, I don’t know, maybe fifty dollars?”

Junior’s eyes widen. “He wants to know if you’re rich,” Number One says.

“No. I mean yes, compared to most Iraqis I am rich, but in Canada I am not rich. I believe we should only take what we need.”

“Thank you,” Junior says.

“Does
haji
have work or some business now?” I ask through Number One.

“This … taxi … in Baghdad,” Junior says, forming a steering wheel with his hands. “Shwaya
faloos.”
He rubs his fingers together, making the sign for money.

“How much does a taxi driver make in Iraq?”

“It depends,” Number One says. “He say at night it’s seven thousand dinars. During the day it’s nine thousand. He works at night.” It’s the equivalent of nine dollars.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No mother, no father, no sister,” Junior says. He shakes his head, his face sad. Then, looking up, eyes fierce, he points to himself. “This
Fallujah! This Fallujah!” It is like a battle cry. Then, as he speaks, his face and eyes become blank, as if he’s stepped away from his body.

“He say the Americans bomb his house,” Number One says. “His mother, his father, his sister, his fiancée, his best friend—they all kill when the Americans bomb his house.”

“I am very sorry,” I say. “This
haram.”

Junior looks down at his hands. “Thank you,” he says.

No one speaks for a long time. Finally I say to Number One, “Can you ask
haji
what he would be doing in Fallujah if there hadn’t been any war?”

Helping his father in the market, Junior answers.

Harmeet and I pass the time in long, wandering conversation trails, one question and story leading into another. Slowly, word by word, the contours of our lives begin to take shape for each other. I learn that Harmeet is a Kashmiri Sikh born in Zambia and a permanent resident of New Zealand with Canadian citizenship. He tells me his great-grandfather is buried in Iraq. He was a
havildar
, the equivalent of a sergeant, serving in the British Indian army when he died during the Mesopotamia campaign in 1916. There’s a memorial maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission near Nasiriya, south of Baghdad.

His great-grandfather had a son in 1913 named Bhagwan Singh, the father of Harmeet’s mother. Bhagwan’s mother died when he was only ten. He and his brother were looked after by their grandmother, and when she died tragically three years later, they were taken in by a Hindu family. Like his father, Bhagwan joined the army when he came of age. He was a subedar (lieutenant) stationed in northern Kashmir, in the town of Gilgit, when the British withdrew in 1947 and British India fractured along religious lines to form the Dominion of Pakistan (later the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People’s Republic of Bangladesh) and the secular Union of India (later the Republic of India). Kashmir, a kingdom located in the northernmost corner of British India but not under direct British rule, became the epicentre of a bitter contest.
Pakistani-backed forces invaded and Kashmir’s Hindu king enlisted the help of India, which promised to allow the people of Kashmir to decide their own future in a free plebiscite.

When his Muslim comrades switched their allegiance to Pakistan, Bhagwan suddenly found himself fighting against men who had once been his friends. He escaped with two gunshot wounds to his leg. It was winter, he was up in the mountains and he had no food. He was captured by Pakistan and taken to a transition camp, where he was saved from execution by a Pakistani soldier who had served under him. He was then transferred to Attock Fort as a POW.

The war ended in a stalemate, with Kashmir divided between India and Pakistan. When Bhagwan returned home a year and a half later, he was horrified to learn that his village was now part of Pakistan and ninety members of his extended family had been killed—basically all the people he had ever known, including his first wife and three sons. It would be seven years before he discovered one of his sons had actually survived. Harmeet’s grandfather remarried in 1951 and his mother was born a year later. Bhagwan retired in 1958 after twenty-eight years of military service.

Harmeet’s parents, Dalip Singh Sooden and Manjeet Kaur Sooden, were joined in an arranged marriage in 1971 during the third Indo-Pakistani war. They fled to Zambia, where Harmeet’s father had been working in a nitrogen plant. Harmeet and his sister were born and raised in the expatriate community that ran Zambia’s copper mines. Haunted by the spectre of war and poverty, the young couple were determined to provide their children with the best education possible. At great sacrifice, they enrolled them in British public schools—Harmeet at the age of eleven, his sister at the age of ten. Except for holidays, Harmeet spent his adolescence in British boarding schools.

In 1991, Harmeet was accepted into McGill University to study computer engineering. He graduated in 1997, got a job with Nortel in the techno-boom and became a Canadian citizen in 2001. When the bubble burst that same year, Harmeet was laid off and a long-simmering inner conflict boiled over. Becoming a professional and moving to a
Western country, the path chosen for him by his parents as the means to a secure future, had led him to a soulless corporate career marked by long hours and superficial work relationships. Long troubled by the inequality that ravaged the world and now suddenly free, Harmeet began a lengthy process of rethinking his commitments and priorities. He went to Kashmir and stayed with his grandparents to reconnect with his Kashmiri roots. Then, unsure of what to do next, he followed his sister to New Zealand. After a long search for work, he finally landed a three-month contract with Cubic Defence NZ (formerly Oscmar International), a defence contractor specializing in military training and simulation systems. His savings were running low and he had to get back into the job market or risk becoming professionally obsolete in the swift-moving world of computer engineering. He told himself he’d take the job for a few months while he looked for something else.

Three months turned into a year and a half. A growing unease about his work turned into a full-blown crisis of conscience when he was assigned to a sensitive defence project for Israel that seemed to be in breach of New Zealand export law. He travelled to Israel/Palestine as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM)—a group much like CPT that supports Palestinian self-determination—to learn for himself what the situation was. Concerned that his work was supporting Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestine, he resigned and went to study English literature at the University of Auckland, at last embarking on a path that was truly his own.