Captivity (21 page)

I sweep my hand along the floor and hold it in the light of the kerosene lantern. It’s covered with dust, sand, hair, crumbs. I sweep my hand across the surface of the futon. It’s full of little gritty bits. I get down on my hands and knees and brush the futon madly with my hand.

“What’re you doing?” Tom asks.

“The futon’s covered with dirt. I’m cleaning it before we have to sleep on it.”

“We’ve been sleeping on it for a week. It doesn’t matter,” Norman says, impatient.

Yes, it does
, I want to say.
I don’t want to sleep in filth
. “It’ll just take a second.” There’s too much of it. I sense the captors are getting impatient with my housekeeping efforts. I’ll finish the job tomorrow.

Tom hands each of us a bulky, lead-weight pillow. What are you going to use? we ask. He says he’ll roll up his sweater and use it as a pillow. We offer to share. No, Tom insists, he’ll be fine.

The captors put Tom on the outside of the bed by the door so they can chain him to the door handle. We ask if Harmeet and I can sleep between Tom and Norman so that Norman can have one hand free.
“Kabir, kabir,”
we say, reminding them of Norman’s age. They agree. Junior kicks off his flip-flops and steps onto the bed. We hold up our wrists. He locks Harmeet to Tom, Harmeet to me, me to Norman.

“Okay?” he says as he closes each handcuff. “Okay,” we say, just before the handcuff becomes uncomfortably tight. He nods and clicks it down one more notch, just to be sure. He grabs a length of chain and bends over Norman’s foot so that his face is only inches away. He wraps the chain around Norman’s right ankle, then struggles to get the padlock shackle through two links of the chain. He wants it tight. He scowls, Norman clenches his jaw, the lock clicks shut. Junior stands up and moves to Tom’s foot. Norman touches the chain, as if testing to see if it’s real. Junior, physically repulsed, touches Tom as little as possible as he locks Tom’s left ankle with the chain that leads to Norman’s right.

I grit my teeth as the captors drag the big red blanket across the floor and heap it at the foot of our bed. We open it up and pull it flat. It’s a heavy polyester fleece material decorated with a profusion of green leaves on a screaming red background. It isn’t big enough to cover all four of us. I cross my arms and shiver. “The blanket is too small. We need another blanket,” I say to the captors.

Junior shrugs. “No blanket.”

“You must have something,” I say. Junior shakes his head. I fight to contain my anger. “From the other house? Or the market?”

Junior scowls. Great Big Man leaves the room and returns with an armful of fabric: white latticed cotton with delicate floral embroidery lined with a sheen of cream-coloured silk. He drops the fabric on Tom’s legs.

“What the hell’s that? It looks like a bridal gown,” I mutter.

“I can make this work. I don’t need a lot of blanket,” Tom says. The chain at his right hand clatters on the floor as he teases the fabric apart. “It’s a curtain. They must’ve ripped it off a window.” He folds it in thirds and slides himself between the rustling layers. We’ll take turns, we tell him. “No, it’s okay, I’ll be fine,” Tom insists.

Great Big Man puts a finger to his lips. “Shhh. No killam,” he says, pointing to the window. We nod, say good night. They turn the lantern down, set it outside the door, make their way downstairs. Diesel generators hum in the night around us. The street outside is curfew quiet. The murmur of television rises up through the stairwell.

There’s too much light. I can count the brown stains on the bedsheet curtain. I hear Harmeet, Norman and Tom shifting in their places, trying to get comfortable.

“Tom, can we close the door a little? It’s awfully bright in here,” I say.

Tom pulls on the door. A sharp groaning reverberates through the second-floor foyer. I hold my breath, listen intently. The television chatters on. “I’ll have to work on that,” Norman says.

I look up at the angular shadows on the ceiling cast by the lantern.

“Good night, Tom,” Harmeet says.

“Good night, Harmeet,” Tom says.

“Good night, Norman,” Harmeet says.

“Good night, Harmeet,” Norman says.

“Good night, Jim,” Harmeet says.

I start giggling. “Good night, John Boy,” I say.

“John Boy?” Norman says.

“They’re characters from a seventies TV show called
The Waltons,”
I say. “It always ends with the characters saying good night to each other. Do you remember it, Tom?”

“Good night, Mary Ellen,” he says.

I’m so glad we’re together again. I can’t imagine going through this alone. I want to say this, but don’t. I don’t want to sound maudlin.

I lie awake for a long time.

DECEMBER 12
DAY 17

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, before the first call to prayer, I’m awakened by an engine-roaring procession of vehicles. A military convoy, vital occupation supply line, very close, no more than a hundred metres away. I want to leap up, hurl open windows, scream for help with every ounce of breath and strength. The last truck passes. Silence pours back into the room, flooding me with despair.

Every night at about the same time, another convoy will barrel past, heard but not seen. Help so close, and yet so far.

Great Big Man unlocks us while Junior, leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest, watches irritably. Tom goes to the bathroom. Harmeet gathers up the big red blanket and drops it on the floor near the barricade, sending up a cloud of dust. I get down on my hands and knees and vigorously brush the futon with my hand. When I’m done, Harmeet and Norman fold the futon in half and drag it across the floor towards the barricade, cutting a swath through dustballs, candy wrappers, sunflower seeds.

“Haji,”
I say to Great Big Man in My Most Polite Hostage Voice. “Do you have a broom?” He looks at me. “A broom,” I say, demonstrating with my hand. He shakes his head. “The floor is very dirty. Mooshkilla,” I say. I wipe my index finger on the floor and show it to him.

Tom returns and I take my turn in the bathroom. It’s directly across from our room. There’s a Batman sticker on the door. I assume it as a right and close the door. No one objects. It’s an eight-foot-by-eight-foot room. There’s a puddle of water around the base of the sink and a long slimy effluence leading to a drain near the tub. I’m suddenly very conscious of my stocking feet. The white tile floor is even dirtier than the floor in our room. We’re going to need
hamam
shoes.

Above the tub, up near the ceiling, light pours into the room through a translucent rectangular window a foot high and two feet wide. The window, divided into two parts, opens outwards. Each half of the window is fitted with a cantilever handle. The window ledge is
cluttered with old toothbrushes, a Snoopy bath toy, a rotting hairbrush and a crumpled Irish Spring box.

I quickly assess that it would be possible to pull-hoist myself through the window headfirst. But then what? The window must be twenty-five feet off the ground. I could call or signal for help. No. That would lead to a military rescue operation, and the very real possibility of somebody getting killed.

The pleasure of being alone is intoxicating. There’s no one to observe me, no one to answer to or worry about obeying. For a few moments I can do whatever I want. I step to the driest part of the room to jump in the air and twirl my arms. There’s a mirror over the sink. I gaze into my eyes, frown, smile, wiggle my eyebrows. I’m pasty, thinner, my hair is oily and matted. I smell myself, check the state of my underwear, pull up my shirt, run my hand across my belly. I guess that I’ve lost fifteen pounds.

All of the bathroom fixtures—vanity, toilet and bathtub—are baby blue. The toilet is the ceramic-bowl type common in the West. It’s caked with brown, and a noxious stew of urine and shit festers at the bottom. The water supply to the toilet has been shut off. I lift the lid off the tank, being careful not to make any noise that would arouse suspicion. The flush mechanism is hopelessly corroded. We’re going to have to get a water pitcher to flush it manually.

There’s a cracked yellow plastic toilet seat on the floor. I put it in place and sit down, being careful to avoid pinching my thigh in the broken plastic. I hop over to the sink with my pants hanging about my knees. I wet my left hand, squat down, wipe, trying not to drip water on the floor. I make a mental note to ask for a
hamam
jug.

There’s no soap. I take a quick look around the bathroom. There’s a rotting string bag hanging from the shower faucet that holds several cracked bars of soap. I take one and wash my hands. The water is ice cold. I’m perplexed. Norman and Tom have been here a week and haven’t even thought to take some soap for themselves so they can wash their hands. It seems as if they’ve made no effort at all to improve the conditions of their captivity. They’ve been living without hope, like men condemned.

I see a rubber squeegee with a long broom-handle pole leaning against the wall. I make a plan to clean the floor tomorrow. I’m excited. Something useful to do.

When I return, Harmeet, Norman and Tom are sitting in their chairs against the wall. I sit between Norman and Harmeet. Junior locks our wrists together.

Standing near the hostess trolley, Great Big Man pivots on his toes like a dancer and grabs four
samoons
lying on the dirty surface of the trolley. He pivots again, crosses the room in two steps, hands us our breakfast.
“Shokren,”
we say as he leaves.

“Well, here we are. Day 17,” I say.

“Day 16,” Harmeet says. I chuckle. “How did everyone sleep?” he asks.

“Fine,” I say.

Tom says he isn’t sleeping well. Only a couple of hours a night. It’s the acid in his stomach. “I don’t know what’s going to happen if this continues. I can’t function without sleep.” Norman sleeps okay until his side starts to hurt in the middle of the night. He can hardly bear it sometimes. He says it would help if he could move around. Why don’t you stand up and stretch? I ask him. He says he doesn’t want to bother me. That wouldn’t bother me at all, I say. We’ll see, he says.

I suggest that we have a meeting. “That’s a good idea,” Tom says. “Shall we make an agenda?”

“I shall have to check first to see if I’m available,” Norman says. “Let’s see … No, I don’t have anything else scheduled right now.” I think he’s joking, but I’m not sure.

First item: futon. Can we avoid dragging it across the floor? I ask. No problem. Can we always fold it over the same way so we can keep the side we sleep on clean? Sure. Can we put the blanket
on top
of the futon instead of on the floor? Yes. Can we use the Quality Street tin for garbage? Okay.

We need to get a broom, I say. I can’t stand the filth of this place. Wait, someone says, are there other things we need before that? We make two lists: one for the guards and one for Medicine Man. Broom, water jug and hamam shoes go on the guards’ list; stomach medicine, street shoes
and Norman’s reading glasses go on the Medicine Man list. I suggest another blanket for Tom. Tom says no, that’s not necessary. Norman suggests a bible. I say no, we should only ask for what they can realistically get; how’re they going to find a bible in Iraq? Tom wants us to ask for sleeping pills. Norman wonders if they’re readily available given the conditions in the country. “Half of Iraq is taking sleeping pills,” Tom says.

Last item: we still don’t have names for two of the captors—the big one and the shy one. “He was really quite kind when it was just the two of us,” Norman says of Great Big Man. “He was almost like an uncle.”

“Hey, let’s call him Uncle,” Harmeet says. It’s agreed.

“What about the other one,” somebody says. “He seems kind of timid, almost like a captor-in-training.”

“Like a nephew,” someone else says. We all laugh. Nephew. It’s perfect.

Slowly, our persistence wins results. One day there’s a pair of grungy plastic
hamam
shoes at the bathroom door, the next a yellow water jug. When Uncle enters the room holding a little hand broom, I almost want to kiss him. “Thank you! Thank you!” I say. He flashes me a big smile.

I get to work cleaning the next morning. The broom, the water jug, the hamam shoes—these are crucial recognitions of our human dignity, signs that our captors are not going to kill us. At least not right away. And it feels good not to live in filth.

The struggle to assert our humanity, improve our living conditions, expand our knowledge about the geography of our hostage prison is unceasing. Every interaction is a strategic testing, an opportunity to examine the habits of our captors. Who knows when or where we will stumble across something—the open window or door, the misplaced key, the act of kindness or thoughtless mistake—through which we can escape this nightmare existence? It is in every thought, word and action: the irrepressible, burning urge to be free.

The next victory in this invisible war is our morning exercise routine. It happens gradually, imperceptibly, over the course of several
days. It begins our first morning in the second house when the captors arrive to get us up. They step heavily, faces dull like Monday morning factory workers. They stand and watch as we fold our bedding and set up our chairs for the day. We work quickly, almost urgently, why I don’t know. Maybe it’s because it feels so good to be doing something, or maybe we’re sending a message to the captors.
See, you can trust us. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do
—quickly, efficiently,
in the best way we can. We won’t take advantage of you by taking more time than we need
.

We finish this morning chore before the first person is done in the bathroom. We stand waiting, charged, ready, alert to everything, like deer in the middle of a clearing. The energy in our bodies irrepressibly seeks release. We start bending, twisting, stretching, reaching. It’s instinctive, primal, can’t be stopped. A prisoner must exercise.

The room becomes crowded with movement, and the captors, suddenly in our way, move into the foyer. We exercise with the singular focus of Olympic champions. The same thing happens the next morning, and the captors leave the room earlier. I do my exercises in the doorway to give the others more room. We don’t go back to our chairs until the captors tell us to. The morning after that, the captors don’t spend any time in the room at all. I ask Uncle if I can stand just outside the door. There’s not enough room, I explain in body language. He says yes.