From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel (25 page)

“It’s that important to you? You want me to stop. You want me to stop our progress so we can find out what happened to this guy. You barely knew him. Why the sudden interest? Why are you stalling?”

“His blood was on me. I would like to know if he’s alive.”

“So you got a little blood on you. So what?”

My interrogator took out a pen from his inner breast pocket.

“Do you have a name?” he said.

“Khush,” I said. “I don’t know his last name.”

He wrote it down. “Do you know his number?”

“I only know my number,” I said.

I could hear him breathing through his nostrils. He was like a bull at times, my interrogator. He stood up, took the scrap of paper, turned to me once more in frustration, then left the room.

I don’t know why I wanted to know whether Khush was still alive. I’d never said a word to him. With the amount of blood I’d watched him lose it would be a miracle if he was still breathing. But what did I know? I needed closure on the matter of this grooming incision, this
suicide
, you see. Otherwise, it would remain uncertain, just like everything else in No Man’s Land.

My special agent returned and sat down at our table.

“Your friend…Khush. You’ll be happy to know he’s alive. He hurt himself. Badly. That’s all. He’s in the infirmary in critical condition. They say he wasn’t right upstairs. He was depressed. On all sorts of medication. But he’s alive. According to the CO it wasn’t too serious. Happy now?”

“Am I happy? A man tried to kill himself next to me. He should be dead! But only he’d be too lucky!”

“All right, will you calm down? It was self-harm. A cry for help.”

“Bullshit.”

“What is?”

“Everything. This place. This room. This is all bullshit. I’ve had enough.”

“Now just calm down. You haven’t had enough of anything. We’re just getting started, you and me. Now, focus. I told you what you wanted to know. Now I want to know what I want to know.”

“Which is what? The same thing over and over.”

“I want you to stop delaying and tell me the truth.”

“
Delaying
?”

“Yes, delaying. Delaying.”

“A man tried to take his own life!”

“But he didn’t, did he? He’s alive!”

Perhaps I’d hoped my disposition would return to the way it had been before the incident, so long as I knew Khush was alive. But nothing changed. I felt no relief. It was the act alone that haunted me, not the condition he was in now. Spyro was right: It didn’t matter one way or the other.

“I’m going insane in this place,” I said, placing my head in my
hands. I couldn’t continue with our reservation. I wanted to go back to my cell and curl up under my blanket.

“This is a natural reaction to violence, Boy. You saw something that’s hard to understand. You’re traumatized. I know how you feel. Don’t act like I don’t. I’ve seen it happen too. I’ve seen people get killed. I’ve seen innocent people get killed.”

“He wasn’t innocent? Who’s to say?”

“He was in here, wasn’t he? There was a reason he was in here. Just like there’s a reason you’re in here.”

“I’m in here because a mistake has been made. A grave mistake.”

“You’re in here because you associate with terrorist scumbags. And I want to know who and when.”

I stood up.

“Sit down. We’re moving on.”

“But we go nowhere. We’re not moving. It’s the same thing over and over with you.”

“Sit down, I said.”

I did as I was told.

“I’ll recommend that you see the psych tech. ASAP. Happy?”

ASAP. Everything here is promised to you ASAP.

“When will I get out of here?” I said.

“When you tell me everything I need to know.”

I continued on. I continue on because the man in the cell next to mine, a Yemeni, is so old that I can smell his dying. Because dying has a particular smell. Because I know that if I do not continue on with my confession, I could end up just like him. He doesn’t speak a lick of English, this Yemeni. I think he’s too old. At some point the brain is too stubborn to learn anything new. Not
to mention, he looks as if he couldn’t hijack a bicycle. But whether he is an enemy or not doesn’t concern me. I’ve thought a lot about what my special agent said to me regarding each prisoner, how each of us has a valid reason to be here, though some of us don’t deserve to know why. I hardly care anymore. I’ve been asking the wrong question all along.
Why
is of no use to me. I am here. There is no why. There is only this. Therefore, I shall focus the rest of my energy on getting out.

The old man will soon die. I don’t feel the least bit bad about saying so. He’s letting it happen to himself. He’s given up. Maybe he’s reasoned that in here he can get an operation from the Americans, where in his homeland he’d already have expired. Maybe he’s thinking, “What would I do out there but die anyway?” Who knows. As I said, he doesn’t speak English. He’s lost his will to live, that much is clear to me.

I must soldier on and finish my confession. Onward, I say, I am ready. I will not fall through the cracks of history a war criminal, when really, as I’ve been saying over and over, I’m just a designer of women’s clothes. I am innocent! That is the only constant that keeps pushing its way forth into my impossible equation. An innocent man should have nothing to fear. If it is the truth that my special agent wants, then it is the truth that will free me from this cell.

It is true that I heard about Ahmed’s arrest the day after it happened. May 26. Ben told me over a Mexican lunch at El Baño. We took the secret entrance through the back alley, because many of the restaurants in the city at this time built secret entrances for the in‑the-know regulars. You had to walk through the bathroom in order to get to the main seating area. It was a coed bathroom.
We were expecting a good table, but what we got was so close to the actual bathroom that anyone taking a whiz could hear our conversation.

“This restaurant has lost its je ne sais quoi.”

“Maybe we should have taken the front entrance and waited,” Ben said. “Why use a secret entrance if we’re going to be treated like a bunch of amateurs? So much for this place.”

“I only hope the
carnitas
is still good.”

“I’ll have the plantains,” he told the waitress. “Tap water. A coffee, black.”

“
Carnitas
enchilada and a café con leche,” I said. “You’re not eating?”

“New development.”

“With Neiman Marcus?”

“No, something else has come up. You know how I have old friends over at the
Post
. Well, this morning I spoke with George Lipnicki, who used to cover fashion and entertainment a million years ago. Now his beat is everything Homeland Security. Counterterrorism. If a terror suspect is under surveillance and so much as farts in the tristate area, George catches wind of it. Anyway, I overheard a name familiar to us. Your backer friend, Ahmed. George mentioned ‘Qureshi.’ It was in passing. ‘How was your day?’ ‘Shitty, this Qureshi thing.’ I said, ‘Hold it, not
Ahmed Qureshi
?
’
He said, ‘Yeah, that sounds like the guy. How’d you guess?’ Ahmed was picked up in Newark last night. The feds have him.”

“What? Get the fuck out of here. For what?”

Someone flushed and exited the bathroom. The man practically had to step over our table on his way out.

“Relax, keep your voice down. George is still looking into it.
There could be some mistake, you know with the feds. I was detained in 2002 on a goddamn typo. And all these Muslim names run together—Ahmed al‑Mohammed-Sheik-bin-Barack-Hussein. George thinks that it was an arms deal. Weapons. A fertilizer bomb, maybe. It was a sting operation of the highest degree.”

“I’m sorry, a what bomb?”

“A fertilizer bomb. But none of this is confirmed. You need to take steps to distance yourself—”

“That’s a real bomb?”

“Yeah, made from fertilizer. But it takes tons of the stuff. You remember the psycho who got picked up coming in from Canada with a truckload of fertilizer. It wasn’t manure but the kind that can go boom. And what’s his name…the Oklahoma City scumbag. He used a similar thing.”

“Fertilizer.”

“Timothy McVeigh. He’s dead now. Why can we never forget the names of these madmen? They don’t deserve such places in our heads. Manson, Ted Kaczynski, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.”

“Oh Christ. How was I supposed to know?”

“These fucks always find a way to hurt us. Outlaw fertilizer, they’ll figure out how to blow up laundry detergent. Tide bomb, with bleach alternative. I’m surprised they haven’t thought of it.”

The waiter brought over our lunch. I tried to remain calm, but I couldn’t help shifting in my seat. I fumbled for my purple pills.

“C’mon, eat,” said Ben.

“Listen, I tell you this not because you’re my publicist but because you’re my friend. You’re my friend, right?”

“Of course I’m your friend. You can tell me anything.”

“Okay. I’ve been to Ahmed’s apartment recently. I think I saw what could have been sacks of fertilizer. Piles of fertilizer, like in a nursery. I didn’t ask for what. He always has shit coming and going. I mean, a fertilizer bomb? How was I supposed to know? It sounds made up.”

“Easy, Boy. Take it easy. Okay, you saw something. A lot of something. But to your knowledge, it’s not an illegal substance. And who knows what he was going to do with it.”

“Jesus. What do you think is going to happen?”

“Well, let me be honest. There’s an investigation. I’d say you’re going to be picked up and questioned. Seeing as you two have had plenty of contact, they’ll want to know what about—which they probably know already—and you will tell them the truth.”

“The truth?”

“He was an investor.”

“He was!”

“Take it easy, don’t get excited. What’s the worst that could happen? They take you in for a day, two hours, maybe they ask you to come back for another meeting. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I can’t believe this. Fuck! I’ll be deported. I can’t go back, Ben.”

“Easy, Boy. You won’t be deported. Questioned, that’s all. To confirm what they probably already know. In this day, it’s standard procedure. According to our current shit-eating administration, we all have to make sacrifices. Even if it means missing London Fashion Week because of some bureau clown’s fuckup—true story. I was detained because of ‘homophonic similarities,’ let me remind you. Treated like some two-bit criminal. But not you. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

“You’re starting to sound like Ahmed.”

“What’s the worst that could happen? You’re an up‑and-coming designer.”

“I took money.”

“What else? He was an investor! That’s the nature of the thing. There’s an old saying. Goes, ‘Ours is not to wonder why…’ Ever hear it? You take money from investors; who’s to ask how they got it? You’re in the clear, Boy. What have I been saying? I come with information so you can be prepared. In
case
. Now c’mon, let’s eat.”

“I can’t. I’m going to be sick.”

I excused myself and dry-gagged over a heated toilet seat, a TOTO, desperate for every vile thing within to come spewing out and then get flushed automatically while I ran my filthy mouth through its built‑in bidet. But I was empty inside. I laid my head on the warm seat and stared into the depth of the bowl. Oval, like the inside of an egg. Head still on toilet, I got fetal. I reached into my right jacket pocket for my purple pills. I managed to break open the child safety cap on the bottle with my thumb, only this caused many of them to spill onto the floor. I caught two in my palm and brought them to my mouth, chewing them into a dry rocky powder. I swallowed.

Ben must have come in to check on me, because the next thing I knew he had kicked open the stall door, which I hadn’t locked. “Dear God, kid, how many did you take?”

“Two. I spilled the rest.”

“You’re kidding. I thought you tried to off yourself. Here, get up.” He grabbed me under the arms and got me onto my feet. “Now, brush yourself off. There. Can you stand?” He gave me a
couple of loving slaps on the cheek. “Go clean up. Otherwise who’s gonna kiss that handsome face of yours.”

I went to the sink and threw some cold water on my face.

“Here,” Ben said, handing me a towel. “Dry off. I didn’t mean to freak you out. You’re going to be okay. Worse comes to worst, I know a good lawyer.”

“Worse comes to worst…Where does that expression come from?”

“It’s just a saying. I don’t investigate where things come from, Boy. I was brought up Irish Catholic.”

We discussed the possibility of turning myself in, though Ben suggested not to worry about that yet, to go on with my life, and if and when the FBI needed my help, they would get in touch with me. And so I did just that. I went on with my life, unsuspecting. If the time came for my adopted country to call on me, I would tell them what they needed to know.

In the Qur’an, particularly a chapter titled “Sad,” there is much about the day of judgment, when that which is coming comes, when all of us will be divided. Believers on one side, nonbelievers on the other, a line in the sand between us. Hypocrites versus the righteous. And each group thinks the other ones are the hypocrites. Who’s to say which side is right? There’s no guidance in this life but your own conscience. That’s what I say. If your conscience is telling you to do harm to others, so much for you, you’re finished in this world. No one likes a madman. Only begets more madmen. My own version of the truth doesn’t include an afterlife. There’s just this one, and if you make the best of it, be true to yourself, treat others with reasonable respect, drop your spare change in a coffee
cup once or twice a week, etc., I happen to think you can be very happy. Worry about what comes around next and you’re likely to go crazy and override what your conscience is telling you.

I just read: “
Those who deny the life to come, the heavens and all its splendor, shall be sternly punished in the hereafter
.”

This is where I disagree with the glorious book. I haven’t studied it intensely, like the rest of my cohorts here. Each one of them has devoted his life to it much like the way I devoted mine to fashion, and that’s fine by me. I’m not trying to be social critic number one. People get fatwas for that kind of thing.
Those who deny the life to come
…
 
That means me. By the book I’m damned. A
kafir.
The infidel. The unbeliever. Well, now, by the looks of it, I’m already serving my sentence along with these other guys. Judgment day is upon us. What does that tell me? I can’t extract much meaning or hope from what it says in the glorious book, but for these other sorry individuals, I’m starting to see why they put all their eggs into Allah’s basket. They’ve come from nothing, fallen into paths of more nothing, and have been put through a lot of shit, so they think: How can things be this bad forever? Logically, if there is no god but God, it can’t. Their glorious book confirms that they’re onto something special just the way the September issue tells me knit jersey is in. And so, they have their afterlife and I have New York. I got my heaven the first time around. These poor bastards are still waiting.