Amsterdam 2012 (14 page)

Could Alex be right?

And if it was true, where did Peter fit into all of this?

Chapter Six

“So Ann,” my mother began, “what are you thinking of doing for the rest of the summer?”
 
Just the way she asked I could tell she had been talking with Dad about it.
  

“Do we have to discuss that now?” I asked.
 
I stood by my map looking for the small African country of Djibouti where the U.S. military based AFRICOM, its central command for Africa.
 
Last night Islamic insurgents from Somalia tried to blow up a military compound there.

“No.
 
No, I guess we don’t.
 
I just don’t like to see you wasting your time, doing no—”

“Mom,” I warned, drawing out the open vowel, biting down hard on the second M.

“You’re right, dear.
 
It’s your summer vacation.
 
But still I hate to see you waste—”

“Mom!”

She sighed loudly, exasperated at her daughter who never listened—spoiled rotten, if we must be honest.
 
But there was something else in her sigh, something that had nothing to do with me.

“What is it, Mom?
 
Something about Peter?”
I asked, whipping around.
 
“You know something?”

“Calm down, Ann.
 
I don’t know anything.”
 

She said this wearily, as if I pestered her with the question ten times a day, which I never had, not even once.
 
Oh my temper, flapping like a loose sail.
 
“Mom!
 
Tell me what’s going on!”

Her scolding eyes soften almost at once.
 
She sat on my bed.
 
“I don’t know, honey.
 
The future seems—I don’t know.
 
It’s just a feeling.”
 
She laughed apologetically, sipping from her water bottle.
 
“I get the sense I should be preparing for something—hording water and food and tools, packing first aid boxes.
 
Doing something.”

I flashed on an image of Otto Frank making preparations months before his family went into hiding, wearing several extra shirts and sweaters under his coat to work, little by little storing up food, a bag of potatoes one day, onions another, beans yet another, giving away furniture and valuables to friends, neighbors helping by bringing over a few jars of vegetables, pans, linens, a little something every time they visited the warehouse where the Frank family would hide.
 
He even remembered Anne’s film star posters and picture postcards, sensing the hours of daydreaming that lay ahead for his daughter, anticipating what might give her the most comfort.
 
Otto Frank prepared to escape and hide, while other Jews were doing what—hoping it wouldn’t get that bad?
 

My mother was filled with the same survivor instinct.
 
That she even imagined it might be necessary shocked me.

#

The next week my father got word from Baron Fairchild that Peter was going to be released soon.
 
I was so excited.
 
I couldn’t wait to see him.
 
I was thrilled he would be freed by the time fall semester started.
 
I immediately made plans to fly to his parents’ house in Connecticut to welcome him home.
 
I figured I’d spend the rest of the summer with him and his family,
then
we’d take the train together to Canterbury College.

I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep.
 
I was in a perpetual state of sexual arousal.
 
I was making myself crazy.
 
I couldn’t think of anything else—his hands, his kisses, his thighs.
 
I was afraid I might explode before I got to see him.

Monday came.
 
The day Peter was to be set free!

Just before dinner Dad shuffled out of his office looking haggard.
 
He had just gotten off the phone with Baron Fairchild.
 
He told me this.

A little after noon, Peter was flown from Cuba to Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. escorted by two military guards.
 
He was met by Baron Fairchild, his Washington criminal defense attorney, Stanley Kirk, and an FBI agent.
 
As they were exiting the airport, Peter asked to use the restroom.
 
The three men waited outside for ten minutes.
 
When Peter didn’t come out, they became concerned and went in to find him.
 
A dozen men were using the facilities.
 
The lawyers shouted Peter’s name.
 
When he didn’t answer, they checked every stall.
 

Peter had disappeared.

#

“How could they lose him?” I demanded of my father.
 
“Where did he go?
 
I don’t understand.
 
Why didn’t they go into the bathroom with him?”

“As soon as Peter stepped into Ronald Reagan Airport, he was no longer in custody,” my father said.
 
“It probably never occurred to them he’d take off.”
 

“Why did he disappear?”

“Maybe he didn’t believe he was being released.
 
Maybe he thought they were lying to him and were moving him to another prison.
 
The FBI hasn’t ruled out kidnapping.”

“Kidnapping!
 
Who would kidnap him?”

“I don’t know.
 
Some terrorist group or maybe anti-Muslim fanatics.”

“Can we file a missing person’s report?”

“Yes.
 
But Peter is over eighteen, and with his history, nobody is going to look too hard.”

“His history!
 
What about innocent until proven guilty?”

“Calm down, honey.”

“So they’re not going to try to find him?”

My father straightened the seam of his khakis, eyes hazily focused on his knee.
 
“I’ll tell you what Baron Fairchild told me.
 
If the FBI finds him, they will put him under surveillance.
 
Informing us where Peter is would not be in their best interest.”

“Do they think he’ll lead them to a terrorist cell or something?
 
Is that why they let him go?”

“The FBI takes his running as a sign of guilt.”

“Has he called his parents?”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“Where would he go?”

“I don’t know.
 
Where do you think he would go?”

#

I was furious.
 
I could hardly breathe.
 
I stomped into my room and slammed the door.
 
I collapsed on my bed and pounded the mattress with my fists, then flung myself on the floor, legs kicking, arms flailing.
 
A full throttled tantrum like I hadn’t had since I was eleven.
 
I was furious with my father, at the lawyers, at the FBI, but most of all I was furious with Peter.

I kicked and convulsed until I was depleted.
 
Despair pressed down on me, squeezing me, immobilizing me.
 
How could he disappear without letting me know?

In the depths of my self pity, a tiny sane part of me understood this was how Peter must have felt in
Guantánamo
, powerless and abandoned, although it would’ve been worse for him.
 
Much worse.
 
I suddenly ached for him.
 

I closed my eyes and imagined I was Peter.
 
It took me a few moments to feel myself slip into his body.
 

There I was in
Guantánamo
on his cot, looking up at the corrugated roof, rain clattering down on the tin.
 
At first he is not allowed to talk to anyone except a Muslim cleric who visits him once a week.
 
Peter doesn’t bother to tell the cleric he is not Muslim, but listens to him talk about Islam for something to do.
 
In the afternoons when his anger has exhausted him, he picks up the
Quran
and reads.
 
At first it seems flowery and pompous and repetitious, and he can’t believe anyone could be inspired to jihad based on this prose.
 
Bored he puts it aside.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.
 

In the beginning he thinks he will be released soon, but then he recalls that some of the prisoners at
Guantánamo
have been there for nine or ten years.
 
A small percentage have
been granted trials.
 
The others received only abbreviated hearings before the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, where they were not allowed to have an attorney present or to call witnesses.
 
They were presumed guilty of being enemy combatants based on evidence they were not allowed to see.
 
Most faced life in prison.

Despair sets in.
 
I feel his weariness.
 
He cannot move.
 
He spends hours watching a roach crawl across the floor.
 
He observes the other prisoners, who maintain a certain amount of discipline—praying, doing calisthenics, reading the
Quran
.
 
After awhile, he picks up the only book he is allowed to read.

When the interrogations begin, he waits for someone he feels he can trust to talk about Amsterdam.
 
They badger him, calling him “terrorist trash,” making him kneel for hours until he collapses, their angry faces grimacing in front of him, shackling him hand and foot in a fetal position for twenty-four hours, forcing him to soil himself, bombarding him with loud music, yanking him from his bed in the middle of the night for questioning.
 
It makes him stubborn.
 
It makes him think being terrorist trash might be a good thing.

I feel his rage and his fear, betrayal suffocating him like a blanket soaked in something hot and toxic.

This goes on, month after month.
 

Then a guard tells him to be ready to move and to take all of his belongings.
 
An hour later, two soldiers whom he has never seen before march him to a military plane.
 
They do not tell him where he is going.
 
He sees he is the only nonmilitary person on the plane.
 
When they touch down, an FBI agent boards and tells him he is being released into his lawyer’s custody.
 
Peter has never seen this agent before.
 
He doesn’t believe him.
 
Even when he sees Baron Fairchild, a man he trusts, standing in the terminal, he still doesn’t believe they will let him go.
 

When he enters Ronald Reagan Airport, he knows even if they do let him go he will always be on a list, will always have his computers and telephones and bank accounts monitored.
 
His friends will be investigated.
 
He will be under surveillance.
 
He will never be cleared.
 
A black cloud of suspicion will follow him for the rest of his life.

So he runs.

I knew then that Peter didn’t lie awake at night thinking about making love to me.
 
He didn’t think about me at all.
 
I was insignificant.
 
If once he indulged my spoiled silliness, he now despised me.
 
I represented all that he hated about America.
  

I rolled to my side, barely able to move, my body covered in sweat.
 
I had fallen into the deep dank well of the falsely accused along with Peter.
 
I felt the walls closing in on me, the hopelessness of climbing out.
 
I understood how betrayal weakens you.
 
Rage was the only thing keeping him alive.

I felt him on the run.
 
Did they give him back his luggage?
 
His passport and money?
 
Or did he only have his jeans and a denim jacket, a thin, frightened Arab-looking boy.
 
How would he ever make it on his own?

I then realized Peter was
not on his own
.
 
The only kindness he had received in prison was from Muslims.
 
Wrongfully accused, he would become one of them.