Captivity (47 page)

Rob watches out of a window, his attention sharp, focused, purposeful. He says things into his headset from time to time. He opens another Velcro window for us. I watch the world passing by, approximations of buildings, cars, people walking. We stop for a long time at an intersection. Rob’s jaw tightens. The tank turns 180 degrees over a traffic median and roars away. His jaw relaxes. We seem to be travelling through a dry, cement-lined water causeway.

I tap Harmeet on the shoulder. “Do you have the Instrument of Grace?” I shout into his ear.

“WHAT?” he shouts back.

“DO YOU HAVE THE INSTRUMENT OF GRACE?”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a curtain hook.

“MAY I?” I ask, smiling mischievously.

He nods quickly, eyes alight. He holds out his handcuff for me and
I insert the Instrument of Grace into the keyhole. The ratchet slides free. I hand him the hook and hold out my handcuff. Harmeet springs it open. Hooriya!

Our bone-and-teeth-rattling ride seems to take forever. Finally we stop, a half-hour, forty minutes later. The hatch opens. “Thank you, Rob,” we say, shaking his hand.

It is a relief to step out into sunlight again. We’re in the middle of what looks like a giant parking lot surrounded by blast walls. There’s an overpass nearby. In one corner, the rusting and derelict remains of a cement plant. This must be some kind of staging area.

We seem to be encircled by Humvees and tanks. There’s a phalanx of soldiers staring at us. I wonder what they’re thinking. A soldier steps towards us. His eyes are hard and his face is creased. His body exudes command. He is angry. “I know I’m speaking out of school here,” he says, pointing his finger, “but I’m going to say it anyway. You have no idea how many people were involved, how many people risked their lives to get you out. I want you to tell your people that. Just tell them to think about
that
before they decide to send anybody else here. I’m not saying anything else. Just tell them. Tell them to think about all the people that risked their lives to get you out.”

My mouth opens and closes. My mind races. How do I begin to respond?
You are the reason I came here, I want to say. So you no longer have to do what you do. It is a paradox. Some men with guns came and took me. Then you came with your guns and took them. You have given me back my freedom. I am unspeakably grateful, but the gun is still in charge and nothing has really changed. We need a world without war. You, me, Junior, Uncle, Number One—all of us do. I wonder, if we sat and talked together for a while, if I could tell you about them, maybe you would see what I have begun to see, that there is no such thing as “Iraqi freedom” or “American freedom,” that there is only human freedom. We were created to give life, not to take it. Our freedom begins when we live in accord with this purpose. The gun will never make us free. The gun makes us a slave. A slave of fear going around and around in a spiral of death, becoming more and more like the thing that we hate
.

In this moment it is all too much to know, too much to say. I nod solemnly. “Thank you,” I say.

“Let’s go!” he shouts to his men, turning away.

A man in civilian clothes steps towards us and shakes our hands enthusiastically. “My name is Dean. I’m from the Canadian embassy. Welcome back! You don’t know how great it is to see you guys. We’ve been working for this day for a long time, and we wanted to make sure there was a friendly face to greet you. Somebody in regular clothes who’s not dressed like all these dudes.” He smiles and points to the soldiers surrounding us. “It must be a little unnerving for you.”

Yes, a little, we say.

“There’s just a little more of this. We’re going to fly you to the Green Zone in that helicopter over there.” He points behind us. “You’ll just be with civilians after that. Ever been in a helicopter before?”

No, we say.

“Well, you’re going in one today,” he says. “We’ll have you there in five minutes.”

Soldiers escort us to the helicopter. Norman is already there.

“Norman! Long time no see!” I say.

“Greetings. I got to ride right up front in the Humvee,” he says, beaming. “I got to see the whole trip—everything. It was quite a tour of Baghdad.”

“What did you see?”

“Oh, we went right through the city, through all these shopping districts, turned at different traffic circles. But then we got caught in some kind of traffic jam, so we double-backed and took some sort of back way—it looked like a canal.”

Two men in the back hold of the helicopter grab our arms and hoist us up. We’re strapped into chairs that pull out of the floor, the engine roars to life and we lift into the air in a whirl of dust. We fly low over the city, no more than five hundred feet. From this height Baghdad is a sprawling ocean of brown rectangular shapes, green sprouting palm trees and ornate mosque towers. A soldier with a leg hanging out the door scans the horizon below us with a heavy-calibre machine gun. Here and there I see people on rooftops hanging out their laundry.

We’re in the Green Zone, occupation headquarters. I am marvellously, luminously, deliriously happy. The nightmare is over. We’re going home.

I search the horizon around me for familiar landmarks. I recognize, to the northeast, not far, perhaps four hundred metres away, the convention centre where I took delegations and went to meetings at the so-called Iraqi Assistance Center. To the southeast, the empty, bombed-out hulk of the Telecommunications Building. To the south, the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, just a few blocks from the CPT apartment. I wonder if they even know we’ve been released. Does anyone know?

It used to be called Karradat Mariam. In those days, it was the lush, palmy centre of Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule; the home of the Republican Palace, the National Assembly, Baath Party headquarters, government ministries and official palaces, posh villas owned by Baathist elites; a desert Shangri-La of gardens and ponds where ornamental bridges crossed artificial streams and garish military monuments dominated august boulevards. All of which changed on April 9, 2003. The U.S. Army came rumbling into town and Karradat Mariam’s powerful inhabitants fled for their lives, leaving behind a luxury ghost town. Homeless squatters were the first to move in—an estimated five thousand of them. Then, over the following weeks and months, the United States and its allies seized whatever had not been reduced to rubble. The American embassy set up shop in the Republican Palace, and so one pharaoh replaced another.

The optimism and goodwill that greeted U.S. forces quickly vanished. Over that first summer the insurgency began its first tentative
strikes. The U.S. retreated further and dug in deeper with each attack. They enclosed four square miles of central Baghdad with eight miles of blast wall, surveillance towers and concertina wire.

I had been to the Green Zone twice before, when I was on the CPT team in the winter of 2004. I thought of it as a giant open-air prison. You had to have an appointment, and the person you were going to see had to meet you at the final checkpoint. You waited in line, exposed to the hot, baking sun and whoever might be on a suicide bomb mission that day, and followed a winding gauntlet of razor wire through a labyrinth of earth-berm walls, passing through four checkpoints along the way. If you were lucky, the whole process took half an hour. I only ever got as far as the convention centre, located at the northern end of the Green Zone, a dreary piece of socialist architecture surrounded by perfectly coiffed lawns. This was the only place in Iraq where the Coalition Provisional Authority interfaced with the public it was occupying. It was further separated from the main body of the Green Zone by another set of blast walls.

Harmeet and I are met by a tall, burly man in civilian clothing. “Harmeet! James!” he calls. It’s an indescribable pleasure to hear my name being called. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you. Gordon Black. RCMP.” He shakes our hands. “Do you know where you are?”

“The Green Zone,” I say.

“This is the American Hospital,” he says, motioning us towards the front entrance of a modest three-storey building. Ibn Sina it was called, a private hospital that cared for Baathist elites before it was taken over by the Americans. “We’ve arranged for you all to see a doctor. You guys look pretty good, but we just want to be sure …” We follow him through sliding glass doors into a reception area. We’re greeted by several concerned-looking medical personnel. Gordon introduces me to a young medic named Jason. I follow him through a cluttered hallway that opens into an emergency operating theatre. I imagine a bomb-blasted soldier on a stretcher, doctors shouting and nurses rushing, blood everywhere.

“It must’ve been quite an ordeal …” Jason says to me. “How are you doing?” He’s calm, gentle, a little shy, warm with caring.

“Pretty good, actually,” I say. I explain about having been sick, the fever, the mysterious lumps in my neck and under my chin, how the captors brought me some antibiotics and that seemed to clear everything up.

He gives me a hospital gown to change into. “You look like you lost some weight,” he says.

“They didn’t feed us very much,” I say.

He asks about our treatment. “They never tortured us,” I say. “Our treatment was … consistent, I guess you could say. I guess they wanted to keep their merchandise in good condition.”

When I’ve taken all my clothes off, he puts on a pair of gloves and places each item into a clear plastic bag. “Are you taking my clothes away?” I ask.

“I’m sorry, I should have explained.” It’s standard procedure, he says. They want them for forensic examination, to see if there might be anything unusual, traces of explosives or gunpowder, DNA from the kidnappers. They want everything, even my underwear. I feel invaded. I don’t want to do this. I want to know how this evidence is going to be used. Everything’s moving so fast and there doesn’t seem to be any choice. I feel as if I have a new set of masters to contend with. I reluctantly agree.

He asks me if I have anything else. “Just these,” I say, showing him my pen and solitary handcuff. “I don’t care about the other things, but I really want the handcuff back.”

He assures me everything will be returned once the investigation is complete. Then he gestures towards my notebooks. “They want everything,” he says.

A foot stomps down within me. He’s not taking them. “I don’t see why this is necessary. I’m the only one who’s touched them. I can guarantee there’s no gunpowder on them.”

“It’s okay,” he says, relenting. “Just keep them. I’m sure this is more than enough.” He gathers together the plastic bags. “Will you
be okay if I leave for just a second? I’ll be right back. There’s somebody waiting for these.”

“Oh, sure,” I say. It is, in fact, the thing I most want. Simply to be alone. Even if it’s for only one minute.

An army chaplain enters the room. He asks me how I am, says it’s a miracle that I survived, asks me if I’d like to pray with him. No thank you, I say. He offers me a brown, leather-stitched bible. The feel of the cover is sheer comfort and pleasing luxury. It’s beautiful, I say, but I already have one. It seems extravagant, unnecessary to have two; someone might not get one if I take it.

“I have lots of bibles,” he laughs. He looks at me closely. His voice softens. “You don’t have one now, do you?”

“No,” I say. My resistance crumbles. He wants so much to give me something. “Call me,
any time
, if you need anything …” he says, handing me his card.

“Thank you,” I say.

Jason has been waiting discreetly in the hallway. He approaches as soon as the chaplain leaves. “Now, if it’s okay, I’d like to check you over, just to make sure everything’s okay. Would that be all right?”

Yes, fine, I say. He proceeds to examine me. It feels good to be touched, paid attention to, treated like a human being again. I almost start to cry.

He says I look a little dehydrated. He wants to start an IV. “Actually, now that you mention it, I am really thirsty,” I say. He gets me a bottle of water, then carefully slides a needle into my right arm. I brace myself for a stabbing pain, but I don’t feel a thing. He hooks up the intravenous and puts a big piece of tape over the needle.

“I’ve never had an intravenous before,” I tell him.

“You’ve probably never been kidnapped before,” he says.

“No,” I say, returning his smile.

“I’ll be right back. I’m just going to bring these blood samples in for testing.”

Gordon approaches as soon as Jason leaves.

“So your family doesn’t know yet. Ottawa knows, of course, but we
haven’t told anybody else.” He smiles at me. “When we planned all this out, we wanted you to have the choice. It’s up to you. If you like, we can call and let your parents and Dan know, or you can call them yourself. It’s totally up to you. You’ve had your freedom taken away from you for four months. Our role now is to restore that freedom to you.”