The War on Terror

Posted by rache on June 11, 2008 at 19:37:36:

The War on Terror
by rache

I was dreaming of the sea again. I didn't remember very much, although I'd had that same dream many times. Strange isn't it, the way some dreams are like that? But I remembered the water and kneeling on the shore. Washing my face. Pouring the sea into my eyes so that the salt was stinging. I wept in my dreams and that was a secret pleasure and I didn't want to leave it. Five minutes more, facing the rising sun with my shadow long behind me. Two minutes or just one...A single moment less than I could bear.

"Wake up, bitch!" Cold water on my face was the only bath I would know, and a voice that was deep and rough and unkind, as it must be in a place like that.

I'd learned not to cry a long time ago. Not asking why took a little longer, but all of my questions went away eventually. That's what it is to be a slave. I was numb now, except in my dreams, and numbness is a thing you can't understand until you feel it. Until it consumes you. Becomes you.

"You go on television today." There was the clattering of a metal tray being shoved under the bars, kicked towards me so that the cold hard rice was caught and tumbled off to flake on the floor.

I scrambled for it, catching the rice in my broken fingers like a living thing and pushing it between my lips. He watched me. Not smiling, not frowning, just watching. There was fruit on the tray, four sections of whitish-orange jackfruit. I picked them up carefully, one at a time, sitting with my knees against my breasts, my chin in the valley between them. Television. I was going on television again, that was why they gave me fruit. I ate it slowly, rocking back and forth and staring at the wall.

My first time had been very hard. I hadn't wanted to read the words and I'd refused. So they'd beaten me from the waist down with truncheons of rubber hose filled with sand. I hadn't been able to walk or even stand, but I'd been able to read what they told me to as I sat on a chair. My face had not been marked then, not once, nor had my arms or shoulders. Any part of me that would be seen by my friends and family was clean and soft and unbruised. It shamed me.

The second time I'd been more ready and I protested silently, staring into the camera as if my eyes would tell the truth. My voice was a flat monotone without emotion, unlike the month previous when I'd struggled with tears. They weren't pleased by this. They said it looked like I'd been drugged, and fear and pain were better than that. People would expect fear and pain, understand and appreciate it, but not drugs. That would be boring. I read it again, this time with wires attached to my sex and a car battery on a table nearby. It was like striking a match, the way he did it, sliding the red wire along the battery post for just a second. I lost control of my bladder immediately and urine, the man told me, was a very good conductor. He did it again to ensure I understood what they desired. The breathless quiver in my voice; the nervous twitch and flutter of my eyelids when he would frown and narrow his gaze; the jerk of my body at even his smallest gesture; as much as my words, that was what they wanted from me.

Now, my third time. None of the others had ever done three, but they were all men and only a few had been on television even once. I was different. A third time and for all my numbness there was something there, some small hope stalking me like a disease. I wasn't completely gone, not yet and that frightened me all the more. I suddenly felt the urge to throw-up, my stomach knotting around the sickly sweet fruit I'd just eaten.

"Let me hear you, please." This voice was not so deep, not so rough, and his accent less gutteral. His civility was offensive and made me small.

My body heaved and it took a great act of will to swallow the bile back down. Every punishment I'd ever received had come from that voice. Every torture commanded softly by him in my language for my ears, so that I would know what was coming. It was Pavlovian, the simplest training imaginable. I yearned to please that voice and even more, I desperately wished to never hear it again.

He wanted me to read the words on the wall. They'd been there when I'd first arrived, neatly formed letters that ran the width of my cell. Words written in black on white, and every smudge and stain and crack in the mortar seemed to give them imperfect life.

"My na..." I coughed and started again in my native tongue. "My name is..." He listened patiently while I read to him, the same words that I would say for the cameras later. I tried to sound sincere, convincing and clear. I hadn't been coerced or drugged at all, my voice said, my eyes, my hands, the tilt of my spine, the posture of my shoulders. I meant what I was saying, if it would only please this man.

A few days later I awoke to find him looking at me and I knew it was time. I might have said something, asked him if he was going to kill me now, but I don't remember. I just remember his eyes and how they were neither cruel nor angry. They were just brown like any man might have.

"I pray...I..." I stumbled for the words, trying to put them in order. "...I want to pray."

"Do you want a priest?" He might have been amused, but his tone was not mocking.

I shook my head, looking down at myself all crumpled up as if I'd been thrown away. "Just tell me, please..." My face was dry and cracked and I licked carefully at my lips, ignoring the strange sensation of ragged gums beneath my tongue. I'd lost all of my teeth in the hours after my last television appearance. My nose had been broken as well and the world had tasted of blood and snot ever since.

"Yes?" He leaned forward, tilting his head slightly as if to better hear me.

My left eye was swollen shut and refused to see, but with the right I stared at the barrel of his pistol tapping patiently against his thigh. The man was perhaps smiling because he knew what I was going to ask. He'd been waiting for this. Waiting for me.

"What...way...is East?" I asked, knowing he would tell me and why.

I'd prayed many times in my windowless cell. Every day, whenever I'd thought of it. Sometimes I'd forget and then remember as if my faith had been sleeping, and then I'd weep silently with shame. No tears would come, not even for Him, but they were the great sea of sorrow my dreams had become. And I'd faced all four walls when I could, and the corners in their turn; but too often the ceiling, or the floor while I was beaten and raped and slowly murdered for my faith.

"Allah Akbar." God is Great and my shadow is long behind me.

end