Captivity (37 page)
Authors: James Loney
We are brought downstairs. “Movie! Movie!” they say. They settle us in front of the TV and bring us popcorn. It’s bizarre.
Movie Night with the Captors
. Tonight’s feature is
Transporter 2
. Frank Martin is a one-man martial arts army on a routine mission guarding the six-year-old son of the director of the National Drug Control Policy. Everything goes
smoothly until the last day, when little Jack is kidnapped by the evil Gianni, a drug lord with a villainous plan to take over the world’s drug trade. Outnumbered at every turn and facing impossible odds, Martin risks life and limb in an inexorable quest to rescue little Jack, thwart the evil Gianni and save the day.
It fascinates and astounds me. Nephew and Uncle are cheering for Frank Martin! The Good Guy going after the Bad Guy who’s kidnapped an Innocent Victim.
Somebody’s confused
, I think. I look down at my wrists. The red marks from the handcuffs I’ve been wearing all day are still there. Let’s see, that means, yes, I’m one of the Innocent Victims. And Uncle and Nephew, they have the keys and the gun, so that means, yes, they have to be two of the Bad Guys.
Excuse me gentlemen, I hate to interrupt the film, but seeing as you’re cheering for Frank Martin and all, I was wondering if perhaps you would maybe consider letting us go, I mean since he is the Good Guy after all, and we are the Innocent Victims …
And then it strikes me. In the movie they’re starring in, Uncle and Nephew are with the Good Guys. They’re fighting to save their country from the Bad Guys, who have invaded and occupied their country with tanks and Humvees and Apache helicopters. But the American soldiers they are fighting against, they’re in a movie too. I’ve heard them say it, this exact phrase, “We’re here to get the Bad Guys,” the insurgents, the
mujahedeen
, the men who are resisting their noble quest to bring democracy to a long-suffering people and save the world from Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Good Guy or Bad Guy, soldier or insurgent, they are both working from the same script, there is no difference except in the roles they have assigned each other. They have become the mirror image of the other through the means they have chosen.
FEBRUARY 15
DAY 82
The captivity changes in Tom’s absence. They laugh and tease each other more. Uncle’s
hamam
sounds, for example, have become a recent source of great hilarity. Our daily ration of food increases slightly.
Uncle brings us oranges, Nephew carrots and dates. When we see Junior, it is in the evening. An hour or so before they get us up in the morning, a car starts in the driveway, idles for half an hour, then drives away. Our theory is that Junior is spending the day at the other house minding Tom. It is a prospect that fills me with dread.
A new evening routine develops. The captors come to unlock us, we stack our chairs and set up our bed, then we get our toothbrushes and follow them downstairs. If supper is ready, we wash our hands and sit on the floor. Most of our meals now, whether upstairs or downstairs, are served to us from a common plate. We eat with our hands free using pieces of flatbread or
samoon
to take bits of whatever we are sharing: potato, rice, scrambled egg, the fried slices of hot dog the captors call
sausage
. After supper the captors pour us tea—the hot, sweet comfort of it is beyond describing—and they converse with us as if we are friends who just happened to come by for a visit. Then it’s two or three mind-numbing hours of Arabic channel surfing. When it’s time to go back upstairs, usually around ten o’clock, we brush our teeth in the hallway sink, make a last quick
hamam
visit, and then we’re locked up for the night.
It’s a coin toss as to where time passes more easily: in the gloom room upstairs, or the captors’ living quarters downstairs. The relentless babble of the television is exhausting and the pretence of hospitality infuriating. I find myself longing to return to the stale darkness of our room. There at least, sitting in our handcuffs, everything is very clear, who they are and who we are, the nature of the relationship we are in.
There’s one thing that doesn’t change: the constant gnawing regime of fear. Sometimes it is a hot rushing dread that courses through your veins like a throbbing toxic ooze, but mostly it’s just chronic white noise, something you screen out and stop paying attention to even though it’s always there.
We have begun to see, as a result of this increased proximity, that our captors are afraid too. At the slightest sound they’re up and moving, bodies on red alert and eyes wide with listening, sneak-peeking through
curtains, checking the other rooms or checking outside, sometimes returning with a gun. This reassures me somehow. It means they are just like us: anxious, vulnerable, human.
FEBRUARY 16
DAY 83
Nephew is unusually jumpy. We suspect he is the only one on duty. As if to assure us otherwise, he tells us Junior is downstairs sleeping. “Hayder
sadika moor-reed. Sadika
in hospital.
Sadika
very sick. No sleep for two days.” Then he says Uncle is very angry. “Sayeed go to the house.”
Which house? The house where Tom is? we ask. No, he says, “house of mother-father.” We have no idea what he means.
When Nephew leaves, Norman proposes an “expedition” to the window. We’ve been watching the shadow of a bird coming and going for several days now; Norman wants to know if there’s a nest on the window ledge. We make our way to the window, being very careful not to make any noise with the chain. It’s exhilarating, to be crossing this forbidden threshold, a chance to finally see what the world is like beyond these goddamned curtains.
“Well hello, we do indeed have a little nest,” Norman says delightedly.
“What else can you see?” I ask, fiercely jealous of Norman’s place at the end of the chain, his access to the window and ability to see outside.
“But the nest is empty,” he says.
“We’d better get back,” Harmeet says.
We are crossing back to our chairs, just about to sit down when we hear, “
Shoo?
What this?” It’s Nephew. At the door.
I immediately put my hands above my head as if I’ve been stretching. “Exercise, exercise,” we say. He doesn’t believe us. We don’t know how long he’s been standing at the door. We have to tell him the truth. “Tweet tweet, I like birds,” Norman explains, leading him to the window to show him the nest.
“La!”
Nephew cries, shaking his head gravely. He’s going to have to
tell Medicine Man. I feel strangely anxious, like a child afraid of his babysitter’s report to his parents.
We’ve watched several action-hero films now. The story is always the same. A lone individual (usually male), of exceptional courage, virtue and strength, is called forth to battle an evil nemesis (also usually male, but sometimes intoxicatingly female). The nemesis has upset the scales of justice, perhaps by killing an innocent victim, or he has an evil plan to take over the world, something which must be stopped at all costs. The action hero faces great peril, is betrayed, captured, wounded, tested to the very limits of human endurance, but in every case defies the impossible and triumphs in the end. Whereas the nemesis is greedy, ruthless, cunning, narcissistic, attended by sycophants, sadistic, vain, ugly, ultimately a coward and doomed to fail, the action hero is selfless, stoic, beyond temptation, proportional in response, humble, pleasing to look at, inexhaustibly determined, courageous beyond measure, inclined always towards mercy but realistic about the necessity of using violence, and destined to win.
I’ve grown to dislike this mythic staple of the entertainment industry intensely. It is the glorification of the individual. Only the individual counts, triumphs, overcomes, saves the day—never the collectivity. Never a union, a strike, a mass demonstration, people getting organized and working together. In this narrative there is only the hero who acts; only the hero who is chosen, set apart, called forth, elevated from the indistinguishable “common gardener” to make the required difference. We who constitute the rank and file of the inert herd must either equip ourselves for similar action-hero feats or sit on our hands for lack of action-hero capabilities. If we are not an action hero, we are without consequence.
The power of the enemy flows from another kind of rank and file, those who have given their individuality and agency to the nemesis in order to share in his formidable power and wealth. The members
of this rank and file, the henchmen, have no name. No one cares about or even notices their destruction by the action hero because they are nothing more than disposable pawns. The action hero is the antithesis of the faceless, sycophantic host who attend the nemesis. He becomes an individual by accepting the call to exert his moral character and physical prowess in the pursuit of the good (i.e., stopping, or if necessary destroying, the nemesis).
It is surely no accident that it is those men who are most disempowered, men sitting around in prisons, men waiting for work, men dying for something to do in drop-ins, men under the orders of another man—in other words, men emasculated by the masculine—who are the most enamoured of, even addicted to, the action hero. He is like an injection of manhood for those whose lives offer no hope of achieving his sublime masculine individuality.
For a man to achieve the
gravitas
of
being a man
he must complete the rite of passage into the fraternity of those who count. In other words, the fraternity of the action hero, the one who risks everything in righteous battle against the nemesis. In the absence of such a true test (for alas, real life is rather mundane), the action film will do. For succeeding in the manner of the action hero, the archetype and arbiter of all things masculine, is surely a conceit for most of us. Let cheering the action hero on from the sidelines be therefore sufficient.
—notebook
It is just before eight o’clock in the evening when Nephew enters the upstairs room with our
samoon
supper. There’s been no sign of Uncle or Junior all day. He
must
be alone. He puts it down on the hostess trolley, unlocks us, tells us to get ready for bed. We set up our bed, go to the bathroom, brush our teeth. We’re waiting longingly for our
samoons
when, much to our surprise, Medicine Man comes in.
“How are you?” he asks, standing over us like a monarch. We don’t answer. “How are you?” he says again, annoyed. Harmeet asks if there is any news.
Yes, he says. We should carry you to the other house but we cannot. Soldiers in the street, checkpoint, searching the car. Since Sunday I am checking, even today, one hour ago. It is not safe. He looks stressed. He says their chief was captured. Two days ago, at midnight. This is a big problem. We have no one to give the order to carry you. It is a problem like in any army. When you take the chief, the soldier can do nothing. He says there’s a committee that will decide who will take his place.
Nephew distributes our supper. They talk together with much laughing while we eat. They talk about us as if we’re not there, in the amused way adults will talk about children. When there’s a lull in their conversation, I ask about Tom.
He is fine, Medicine Man says. I just see him at the other house. He is resting, watching television, there is no problem.
I ask him how long he thinks it will take. Not more than one week, he says solemnly. He begins to ask us questions: how old are you, are you married, do you have children, what do you do for work. This shocks me. He knows nothing about us. Is it only now, after eighty-three days, that he is beginning to see us as people?
Medicine Man and Nephew converse in Arabic, point to the chain locked around Harmeet’s wrist. They’re observing how small his wrist is. It’s heavy, Medicine Man says, remarking on the weight of the chain.
It’s good, Harmeet jokes, flexing and squeezing his biceps as if he’s been using the chain to work out. This is just like Guantanamo, Medicine Man says. Our treatment is much better here, Harmeet says.
We got a lecture on Islam from the big man last night, Norman says. Medicine Man says we’ll exchange emails and discuss Islam and Christianity when we are released. Norman asks about the political situation in Iraq. It is very difficult, Medicine Man says. Norman asks if the new Iraqi Parliament is working well. No, he says, all of this is very difficult.
Harmeet asks for copies of the mujahedeen videos we were shown. He wants to take them home to show people what is going on in Iraq. Yes, Medicine Man says, I will bring for you. We have a new edition now, a sniper edition from Fallujah. I will bring it tomorrow.
I am sleeping here tonight. I am just downstairs. Call me if you need anything, he says.
This confirms our theory that Nephew has been on duty alone. We have to start making a plan, I tell myself. With the Instrument of Grace, the red blanket and the element of surprise, Nephew is vulnerable enough that we can do it, but it will take all three of us. I resolve to bring it up with the others so we can start the process of figuring it out.
FEBRUARY 17
DAY 84
Much to our surprise, it is Junior who unlocks us in the morning. So much for our theory. Where’s Medicine Man? we ask.
Sleeping, he says.
Where’s
haji
-with-the-big-belly?
Junior looks at us crossly. We’re asking too many questions.
We’re out of toothpaste, we tell him. He sends Harmeet downstairs to get some. The door to the common room is open. Harmeet peeks inside. Somebody is asleep. Who is it? Medicine Man? Uncle? Another captor altogether?
We don’t see Junior for the rest of the day and it is Nephew who keeps the watch. Who’s in the house, we wonder, and who is minding Tom? There are no sounds of coming and going through the kitchen door all day. Is it possible they’re using another entrance? It’s all very confusing.
I am beginning to wonder if I am growing narcissistic in my captivity. I went to pray yesterday, and initially it all revolved around my captivity: assessing how different people are being affected, and to what extent, and praying for them accordingly. I had to remind myself—my captivity is not the centre of the universe. So then my prayers became more generous, and I felt better.
My interest in our captors is waning, my interest in them as people. I find myself increasingly unenthusiastic about engaging them, trying to reach across this divide with small talk, little jokes,
positive interactions. I am, of course, unremittingly polite and obliging, but really all I want is
news
, or release. That’s all! It’s become draining to relate with them, an imposition—and the suggestion that we will maintain contact after this is all over—well I find the idea ridiculous.
—notebook