B009G3EPMQ EBOK (26 page)

“Move!” he screamed into my face. Of course I should have moved much earlier. I certainly should have moved just then. I was just so angry, offended, and despairing of all this. I badly needed to
reacquire some measure of dignity. Toward that end I had defiance available as a tool, but that was about the extent of it. Defiance it was, then.

I stood unmoving in that moment, showing more defiance than I could have explained even if they understood, even if they cared. He pushed the blade toward me and radiated enough psychotic energy that I woke up to the fact that I was about to throw my life away for the privilege of defying a child demon.

I moved.

It was all of five feet, but
this
spot was perfectly suited to Crack Baby’s whim of the moment. I could tell he still didn’t feel that he had scared me enough, though, in my “too mad to care” outrage. So when I turned my back to him and commenced walking in those endless little circles around the tree for a morning constitutional, he went off to wake up the Colonel.

The little creep glared back at me with a leering grin while he instigated one of the Colonel’s famous fits of anger over being awakened. Everybody in camp knew not to disturb the Colonel’s sleep, or to be ready for the explosion if they did. Crack Baby’s evil genius was a mixture of careful lying and timing of delivery. He had the advantage of being able to address the Colonel in front of me without my knowing the translation, but his tone of voice said a lot.

He was telling him that I had tried to wander off, to sneak away. No doubt it was a story claiming that if not for the quick wit and eternal vigilance of our Crack Baby, I would have slipped into the desert and made good my escape. Fortunately the Colonel was a lot smarter than this kid. He knew I had nowhere to run, and more important, he knew I realized that. I could see he was angry and puffy-eyed over being awakened, but his “punishment” for me showed he wasn’t fooled by Crack Baby’s fake escape story. All he did was order me to quit walking in little circles and instead
sit down under the tree. This way he maintained his dignity as a leader by “dealing” with the complaint about me, but it in a manner that showed he didn’t seriously regard it as a threat.

•  •  •

After a few days of separation, somebody decided to bring Poul back to the camp. No explanation, of course, just one day there he was. We tried to catch up on what had been going on, but real conversation remained difficult around those guys. It was just another term of isolation served out here on the nothing farm where nothing is planted and nothing is grown. They kept us physically separated nearly all of the time, enough to prevent any conversation.

There was a buzzing sound, faint but noticeable, and it seemed to come from somewhere way up in the air, so far overhead there was nothing to see. Like somebody operating a gas engine generator right behind the nearest cloud. It made the Somalis nervous. They always jumped up and made certain we were covered by overhead branches when they noticed the buzzing sound. I stifled a bitter laugh to think these people actually believed two aid workers were going to draw surveillance from the U.S. military. But I was happy to see their fear; it helped quash a little of the arrogance they so often displayed.

I only half noticed the sound. There was the buzzing of desert insects, the playing of the breeze in scrub brush branches. Faint background sounds constantly blended into a low fog of soft noise. With Poul unceremoniously returned from his separation “punishment,” the two of us were once again permitted to walk in circles around the tree for exercise. He also watched the sky for satellites at night and told me how he could tell the difference between them and stars. I could understand using any technique to mentally escape, and I never gave much thought to whatever these guys feared was up there, overhead.

All of that seemed too far away, too removed from us, to have any meaning. Instead, my days blended away inside my imagination. Since I didn’t know if I would ever see my home again, I visited it in my mind and made it a point to visualize every detail I could, to deepen the experience and prolong the amount of time I might have away from my surroundings. In spite of the fact that it had become so difficult to concentrate, I pushed myself to focus.

I imagined being back in the apartment Erik and I shared in Nairobi, slowly walking in through the door and standing in the entranceway to look around the living room and take in every detail. I didn’t picture Erik there, at first, because I needed to warm up to the idea so I wouldn’t start crying and draw angry captors down on me or Poul.

I mentally moved through each room, pausing to look in every direction, remembering where every piece of furniture, every piece of artwork, every decoration would be. I checked under the sofa for dust bunnies and looked over the titles in the bookcase. I smelled the warm human scent of our bedroom in the mornings. I smelled our dog, Smulan, when he was fresh from the bath. And finally, when I was ready, I pictured Erik there waiting for me, and we took each other in our arms, and I smelled his body and felt his warmth. And for just a little while, I was free in spite of this rotten place and I was happy in spite of my mortal fear. Our tormentors had no way to touch me, just then.

I couldn’t go so far in this fantasy as to picture us making love. I thought it would surely break my heart and leave me sobbing like a kid while screaming Somali faces blew their
khat
breath on me and called for silence. Instead I stayed inside the apartment with him and told him everything I would say if he were right there in front of me. Once I got myself in the groove, the force of memory was nearly hypnotic. I found I could pass hours that way.

The men still wouldn’t give me the antibiotics Erik sent, and my urinary tract infection had become so severe the only way to
get comfortable was to lie in the fetal position on my sleeping mat and take imaginary cruises through my past. At least the mental journeys didn’t cause gravity to work against my troubled bladder.

I remained at my parking spot under the tree one day while Poul accepted a surprise invitation to chew
khat
with some of the men. I had no idea what an invitation like that from men like these was supposed to mean, but they seemed to find it amusing to watch a foreigner partake of their favorite drug, and they seemed to want to test Poul’s response to the stuff. Naturally as a woman I wasn’t included, which was a relief in this instance. I had no desire to join these guys in their bloodshot paradise.

And by this point I also had no illusions that this bought Poul any extra favor with them. They might have been willing to “entertain” him in this fashion, but they had no more feeling for him than that. One of them could just as easily have an attack of paranoia, decide Poul had insulted him in some way, and shoot him for his trouble.

By the time January 24 rolled around I was still sick. It had been eight days since our last proof-of-life phone call, and the Somalis merely handed me some antibiotics they got somewhere and which didn’t seem to be right for my infection. I’d been through two rounds of them and was still weak and in pain, but at least it was a little easier to move around instead of spending all my time on the mat curled into a ball.

They were doing a pretty good job of “punishing” me and Poul for not providing their expected millions. I felt certain the only reason they gave me any medicine at all was that if they let me get any sicker I wouldn’t be able to do the proof-of-life calls. That wouldn’t play well for them. So there we were, at a standstill.

Over the past two weeks, Poul and I had been subjected to a second “punishment” of forced separation and virtual solitary confinement. So it was good news when Dahir the Helper took advantage of the fact that the Colonel and Jabreel were away and let the two hostages get together to have a meal.

I had long since been forced to abandon my vegetarian diet, because the men were convinced I was only getting sick because I wouldn’t eat meat. They refused to allow me enough nonmeat items to survive on, and I was forced to begin ingesting whatever they let us have, just for the calorie value. I had already lost too much weight.

The men responsible for bringing in that day’s
khat
supply also brought along a live goat. It caused a major stir in camp. For these men, this was a significant event.

Helab! Helab!
(Meat! Meat!) the men cried with the joy of combat troops getting a visit from the Dallas Cheerleaders. My revulsion at the slaughter of animals was part of my reason for being a vegetarian in the first place, which made it hard to stand there while the animal was killed, and impossible not to notice that the few seconds needed to cut its throat and let it bleed to death were all it would take for them to do the same to us.

When one of them passed a severed goat leg to me and Poul, I knew better than to refuse the food; there might not be anything else. The knife Abdi had at my throat earlier was the only cooking knife in the camp, so we used it to cut the meat into pieces. We fried the goat bits in oil over Poul’s cooking fire. My body was so starved for protein that the meat actually tasted very good, even though I wasn’t used to eating it. But for the next few hours, my stomach felt as though I’d swallowed a big ball of dirt.

Although Dahir the Helper had brought a watermelon into the camp on the previous day and let us have some, there was no way to get enough calories from the few fruits, vegetables, or grains they provided to prevent us from starving. Our problem in that regard was that they didn’t need for us to be healthy; they only needed us to be alive.

Meanwhile the others cut up the rest of the animal’s carcass and threw it into a big pot to boil over the fire. As soon as it was cooked they all fell on it, sucking marrow from the bones, drinking
the fat floating on the surface of the pot, and spitting bits of gristle into the fire. The camp went quiet except for the sounds of a dozen men engaged in a rhythm of eat, suck, smack, spit. Poul and I had to turn away.

We knew it wouldn’t be long before they returned us to our isolation, so we tried to quietly talk while the men were occupied. After three months, there was nothing new to talk about, but any interaction bolstered our spirits by reminding us we weren’t completely isolated there.

I think Helper was trying to make up for the fact that in December he had confided to us that we were to be released by January 1. When that date passed, he then came with the news that it would be done by January 15. Now, nine days afterward, it was obvious he was either lying, which would be odd for Dahir, given his normal behavior, or he had genuinely thought he possessed inside information. I told myself the date could have been changed without his input and without any notice, because of his low rank. Either way, I was touched that he even concerned himself enough to find the failure of his predictions embarrassing, instead of merely amusing himself with our disappointment.

As the sun went down, the big guy called “African” was in charge of the men while the Colonel was away. I didn’t know what made African any more African than the others, but that’s how he was known. He was dirt poor, wearing only a very old and tattered cotton shirt, the traditional Somali men’s skirt, and nothing else, every day. He didn’t seem to possess anything else, either. And yet for some reason the Colonel had decided to leave African in charge. I guess it was a simple matter of size.

We hadn’t seen Jabreel for days; he wasn’t spending as much time at the camp with the men so unhappy over his negotiation efforts. This was fine with me; it provided a little breathing room. Poul was permitted to come and help me move my sleeping mat
and the foam mattress down to our sleep spot out under the open sky. I usually moved them myself every night, but it was getting hard to walk without stabbing lower pains from my bladder infection. I was glad for the help and a minute of company.

But when no one was paying attention, he muttered that he had information. I was so skeptical at this point, I didn’t even react. He confided that Dahir had talked to Jabreel a few days ago and asked him when this was all going to be over. He claimed that Jabreel promised it would all be finished in two weeks. They said Bashir planned to accept whatever our people offered to them.

My problem with that idea was mostly that Dahir had been telling us pretty stories for over a month. I found this one hard to believe, but the cruelty of hope is such that I couldn’t keep myself from igniting a little flame in my heart. It might have been idle gossip, but at least it was positive news, not another assurance that we would be killed or sold off if the price wasn’t met. We bid each other goodnight, and Poul headed for the other side of the camp to go count the satellites.

I made my crude bed and lay down to wait for my mom to show up. I always gave her name to the first star to appear at night. Soon she emerged, and I could see her star, shining bright. I talked to her for a while, telling her about my day almost as if writing a verbal diary. I sometimes imagined what her answers would be. It was almost like hearing them.

Finally, a thin overcast engulfed the sky, and the stars were blotted out. I think I closed my eyes at that point, but the sky was so dark it was hard to tell. Sleep was elusive for awhile, so I began another mental walk through our apartment at home. I moved into our living room, slowly dragging my fingertips across the images of the keepsakes lying around the room, trying to actually feel them, the unique feel of each one, the texture and temperature. I traveled down the hall to our bedroom, felt the floor under my feet,
my constantly bare feet. I climbed into our big Zanzibar bed, felt the mattress sink under my weight, just a little, not too much, the sheets, freshly laundered, crisp and clean against the skin.

The scene I played out there was always the same. It was the best I could imagine, and there was no need to change or improve it.

Erik appears and we sit together in the bed, holding our new baby, our first child, here at last. The scene becomes more real than the ground beneath my dirty foam mattress. Soon I hear Erik’s voice, feel his touch and the strength of his arms, the stubble on his face, the scent of his skin.