Captivity (36 page)

“Well, I guess this is goodbye,” Tom says, his face and eyes soft, open, hopeful. His words are like an electric shock. I know what he’s thinking: we’re going to be released in stages; this will be the last time we see each other until we all get home. Something far more grim flashes across my mind. I chase the thought away.

Tom and Harmeet shake hands. “See you soon,” Harmeet says.

I feel very strange. There’s an engine inside me roaring full throttle.
No!
a voice screams.
Now!
it commands.
Fight to the death!
Instead I feel, say, do nothing. I stand up like a grey cardboard puppet that’s being moved by an invisible hand. “Goodbye, Tom,” I say, looking him in the eyes. I wrap my arms around him, for a moment hold
him tight. His body is all hardness and bone. There’s nothing left of him. It shocks me: this is the first time we’ve touched each other since the captivity began. It’s impossible to do in handcuffs, pat someone on the shoulder or give them a hug. I hold Tom’s shoulders for a brief moment.
Be strong, God is with you
, I want to say. I keep reaching for words, but they won’t come.

Tom turns to Norman. They shake hands. “Take care, old chap,” Norman says. The moment is stiff, awkward, formal.

Junior is waiting with the handcuffs. “Tom, can I give you a hug?” Harmeet asks. They step towards each other and embrace.

Junior tells Tom to put his hands behind his back.
No, please
, I want to cry out,
that’s not necessary
. Junior locks Tom’s wrists behind his back. He’s totally helpless now. Uncle scoops his clothes into a bag. My eyes reach for Tom’s, but he doesn’t see me. He’s scared, lost, already looking ahead. Junior takes Tom by the arm and turns him towards the dark foyer. And then he is gone.

We are squeezed in a giant vise of waiting. With every minute, the vise closes tighter. I can hardly breathe. At nine-thirty, Nephew and Uncle announce that it’s time for bed. What’s happening with Norman? we ask. They look confused. We point to the little bedroll Norman has made with his woollen tie. He is supposed to go with Tom, we say. They look surprised. No, they say, you’re staying here. News good for Harmeet and Jim. Big
Haji
in Baghdad.
Hubis
in Baghdad. Tomorrow or the next day, go to Canada. Inshallah. Now sleep, they say.

We set up our bed. No more need to make a place for Tom with the sleeping mat. We can all fit across the futon under the blanket now, and each of us has his own pillow. Harmeet takes Tom’s place next to the door. I watch, as if suspended from the ceiling. There’s a man locking a metal bracelet around somebody’s wrist. The wrist has a mole on it just like mine. The man says good night and closes the door. I fall asleep instantly.

FEBRUARY 13
DAY 80

And then there were three. There used to be four. Four toothbrushes standing together in a castaway Tupperware container. How I loved the colour of them—there is so little of it in our lives—red and green and blue and purple, so chosen by Medicine Man so we would each have our own to use. They represented our individuality. But now the purple one, Tom’s, is gone. A great hole has opened in our lives.

For a moment, grief breaks through. I push it down, bury it deep, pave it over. We just have to keep going.

Tomorrow, tomorrow after tomorrow, a week, Nephew says.

A week? we say. It was supposed to be yesterday. No, yesterday before yesterday.

News good, he says. One million in Iraq, one more million from Canada, we count all the money, phone call from Big
Haji
, one week and go.

We are staying here, then?

Yes.

And what about Tom?

He shrugs his shoulders. He doesn’t know. He was at home, off duty when all of this happened.

He offers each of us a candy wrapped in crinkly gold paper.
No thank you
, I want to say,
I’m not interested in your pathetic attempt to make everything better
. But I watch, aghast at myself, at the three of us, as we hold out our hands, unwrap and pop them into our mouths, let them dissolve into our bodies. I can’t decide whether I am more disgusted with our captors or myself.

“I wouldn’t mind to hold on to those,” Norman says, pointing to
the wrappers in our hands. He folds them up carefully and adds them to the secret miscellany in his pockets.

He produces them later, along with the silver foil cigarette papers he has squirrelled away. “Do either of you gentlemen recall how to make a peace crane?” he asks.

Yes, Harmeet says. It amazes me as I watch them, folding, unfolding, refolding, trying to reconstruct the pattern that a 12-year-old Japanese girl named Sadako Sasaki completed a thousand times before she died. It is a welcome reprieve from the long torment of waiting, the wondering, when are they going to take the rest of us to the other house. She was two years old when her city, Hiroshima, was destroyed by an atomic bomb. When she became sick with leukemia and had to be hospitalized shortly after her twelfth birthday, her best friend told her about the ancient Japanese legend that promises one wish to those who make a thousand origami paper cranes. Sadako got to work immediately. Her wish was for world peace. She used whatever paper she could find. She asked the other patients for the wrappings from their get-well presents and collected the little squares their medicines came in.

Sadako makes me think of Anne Frank, writing away in her red-checker diary at the age of fourteen, telling the story of her life in hiding, two pressure-cooked years in a secret apartment with seven other people, never seeing the sky, living in constant fear of the day they would be betrayed, arrested, deported to Nazi death camps. Her diary was saved by a friend of her family and found its way to her father, the only one of her group to survive, who then transcribed and published it.

Both girls died anonymous and irrelevant, their lives of no apparent consequence beyond the circle of those who knew them. Yet Sadako’s hospital bed project has become a world symbol of peace, and Anne’s diary is one of the most important testaments of the twentieth century. None of us can know the measure of our lives. None of us can know what our actions might seed.

How does that parable go? A man scatters some seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he is asleep or whether he is awake, the seed of its own accord sprouts and grows, how he does not know.

It gives me enormous comfort. That’s us. We are each a seed planted in the ground. While we sit here, while we lie here, day after useless day, suspended in this invisible womb of waiting, something is sprouting, something is growing, how or what we do not know.

As darkness falls, Uncle comes into our room with the lantern. He sets it on the floor, pulls a chair in close and sits down. For a long while he is silent. When he finally speaks, he points towards heaven.
“Allah wahid. Issau, Mohammed, Miriam shwaya.”
He almost touches his thumb against his index finger to show how insignificant they are in comparison to God.
“Allah kabir. Issau shwaya.”

We strain to understand him, piecing together what we can from his body language and the bits of Arabic we know. No one is like God, he tells us. Allah makes the rain, the wind, the rivers, the animals, the air. Who else does this? He pretends to dig a grave and points to the lantern. Do we want to be buried or cremated? Jesus, Mohammed, Miriam, Moses—they all were buried, put into the fire—where are they now? They’re all dead. They are small,
shwaya. Allah kabir, Allah wahid
.

We have feet, legs, hair, eyes, a mouth. So did Jesus and Mohammed. Allah has none of these things. Mohammed and Miriam were married, Allah is not. Issa had a mother, Allah does not. Jesus is not equal to God.
Issa shwaya
. For Muslims, all food must be
halal
. Christians are not
halal
. No drinking alcohol. Muslims must not steal. “No
ali baba
.”

His face is very grave as he speaks. He is telling us the truest and most important things. If only he could speak English he would convince us.

I tear a page out of my notebook and draw a map of Iraq with Baghdad in the middle. I show him how there are different roads coming from different cities, Basra in the south, Kirkuk to the north, Amman in the west and Tehran to the east. The roads begin in different places, but they all lead to the same place, to Baghdad. Baghdad is like God, and the different cities are like the world’s religions. Each religion offers a different road leading to God.

“La,”
Uncle says indignantly.
“Allah wahid. Allah wahid.”
Baghdad is not like God. He goes through the circle of his argument again, point by point, lecturing us with his finger. The harangue lasts an hour. If we were Muslims, he tells us right before he leaves, he would have to release us.

Nephew and Uncle bring us downstairs to watch television. We wonder where Junior is. Could he be minding Tom at the first house? Their room is like a sauna. We take our sweaters off right away and sit facing the television. Uncle has the remote. He switches restlessly through six channels. The choices seem to be news or Arabic soap operas. We don’t understand a word, but it doesn’t matter. It is a relief simply to be out of handcuffs. I pretend I’m a normal human being who’s watching television with some friends.

“Chai?”
they ask us.

“Yes!” we say. Uncle and Nephew scavenge for some cups. I force myself not to think about how dirty they are. They pour us tea from a blackened aluminum pot that sits on the
soba
. Uncle scoops sugar into our cups from a clear plastic bag, leaving trails of sugar behind each heaping spoonful. The tea slides down my throat like a healing balm, spreading an unfamiliar feeling of vigour.

Tom has been released, Nephew tells us. He’s in Amman. We watch the news carefully. I am mesmerized by the image of a jet taking off—the symbol of release, freedom, going home! There are no stories about Tom. We don’t know what to think. Perhaps our kidnapping is not of interest to anyone here. Perhaps it will be on the news tomorrow. Perhaps Nephew is lying.

This has been the most discouraging day so far, Harmeet says when we are settled in bed. Tom has been taken away, we don’t know what’s happened to him, we’re back to the three-day/four-day holding pattern. He thought about it all day, how Medicine Man said Tom didn’t need shoes. If he doesn’t need his shoes, that means they’re not planning to let him go. It’s clear Tom has been separated from us, we just don’t know why or what it means.

For a moment I am awash in grief.
Tom! What’s happening to you!
The feeling rises like a cataract and threatens to drown me. But then, something within me, sovereign and inexorable, sweeps it away and buries it deep in my psyche. A time capsule waiting to be opened at another time, on a day when I can walk free under a blue sky.

FEBRUARY 14
DAY 81

Medicine Man is on his way, Nephew says. He’s going to take a picture of Norman. To show “Madame” that he is still alive. They will send it by Internet. “Madame on television. H
azeen.”

Medicine Man arrives a short time later with a video camera. “Doctor,” he says, “I have to take some picture. This the final video for you.” He has three questions for Norman, sent by his wife, that only he knows the answer to: What is his wife’s maiden name? Who made Norman’s wedding ring? You have an unusual hobby—why?

Medicine Man films and Norman answers. Then he tells Norman to write down the answers on a piece of paper. I ask about Tom. Medicine Man says he is fine, there is no problem, he is at the other house. “We just have some problem with the road. It is not safe to carry you. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. I must to check the way first.”

Norman asks if the negotiations are complete. “The news is good,” Medicine Man says. “There is only something, one, maybe two final things. I will come to carry you, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, and you go. I must to take your emails. In three, four years, when all of this is over, I come to visit each of you.”

Uncle shows us a zester, something he found somewhere in the house.
Shoo?
he asks, scrubbing his heel with it. Is it for shaving calluses? he wonders. No, we tell him, it’s for
portugal
, orange.

Harmeet points to the barricade of chairs in front of the window. Where does all this stuff come from? he asks.

From the people who used to live here, Uncle says.

How long ago was that? Harmeet asks.

Two years ago, Uncle says. The Americans raided the house and killed two people. The owners have four houses in Baghdad. They rented this to
Haji Kabir
for one million dinars a month. They’re still in Iraq.

Before us, who else was brought here? Harmeet asks. “Amriki?
Australi?
Italian?”

“Jaysoos
. Iraqi
najis
. Iraqi killam.” After you leave, your chairs will be occupied by others: Australians, British, Germans.

“You are the peaceful people,” Nephew says to us. “Harmeet good.”

“Harmeet no good,” Harmeet jokes.

“Harmeet good,” Nephew says. “Jim good, very nice. Norman good. Tom? Tom
hazeen.”
Nephew makes a sad face in imitation of Tom.
“Leaish?”

His question almost makes me snort.
It might have something to do with being kidnapped
, I almost blurt. “Tom doesn’t like to talk very much,” Harmeet says.

Nephew is priming us. He wants us to take him into our confidence. We’ve discovered recently that he has a penchant for gossip. The other day he referred to Junior as Hayder and Uncle as Sayeed. Today he tells us Medicine Man is from a wealthy family, that one of his brothers is an engineer, another a contractor. They have houses in Mosul, Baghdad and Fallujah. He is always moving around. He never sleeps in the same place twice.

“Shoo?”
Nephew asks, not understanding.

Harmeet leans closer. “Tom
shwaya killam,”
he says.

“Yes,” Nephew says, nodding solemnly.