Guantanamo Boy (10 page)

A murmuring sound inside one of the two cubicles tells Khalid he’s not alone as the towel’s removed. The door locks quickly behind him as he gazes at the dark, damp toilets that look like something out of a horror film. No windows. Only one dripping tap and two stained porcelain urinals. Such a flash house and these smelly toilets are ten times worse than the ones at school.

“Hello?” Khalid whispers to the closed, gray cubicle, aware the guard’s listening outside. The murmuring suddenly stops. The door opens and an alarming-looking Indian man with dazed eyes and a vacant expression pushes past without seeing him.

“Hey, man!” Khalid whispers.

Shocked by the greeting, the man bangs anxiously on the door to be let out. In a second he’s gone, leaving Khalid even more bewildered. How many others are there like him here? Is this posh house a disguise for a prison? Who owns this place? The door opens again for Khalid soon after. He is handcuffed once more, the towel is thrown over his head and he’s led up some stairs and down another corridor to another room, where the towel’s removed again.

Khalid can’t bear it any longer. “I need help.” A weird sound like that of a wounded animal escapes his mouth. “Please! Please!” His teary eyes meet the guard’s flat, cow-pat eyes. A look of hopeless recognition that they’re both out of their depth passes between them. The gentle-faced guard lowers his head to gaze at the floor while Khalid begs for help.

“I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m a schoolkid. Please get me out of here!” Knowing this might be his last chance of escape.

“I cannot.” The guard sighs.

“Why are you helping them, not me? At least go to my aunties’ house and tell them where I am. Please. Please. If you can’t help me, help my mum.”

“We have rules not to aid,” he answers, clearly upset.

“Who’ll know? I won’t tell anyone! Please. My poor mum.”

Suffering from a roller-coaster of emotions, Khalid thinks maybe kicking him before running for the stairs is worth the chance of getting shot in the back. Anything’s better than being held here. This time the guard stays quiet. A look of guilt passes over his worried face as he hurries out. Quickly the lock turns, clicks then clunks, followed by the kind of silence that feels as if it might go on forever.

Khalid turns from the door with a tightness in his throat and tension in every muscle of his aching body that threatens to bring him to his knees at any moment. For some reason the room this time is smaller, far less luxurious, containing six hard wooden chairs, a polished table and several rugs. The window is covered with black tape.
A dining room
, Khalid thinks. Suddenly aware of the sound of a hammer drill starting up in a building close by, the rhythm of rapid gunfire adds to the strange feeling of being holed up in someone else’s nightmare. He’s trapped, finished, with no one to help him and no way out.

Khalid’s never felt special. Nothing but an ordinary kid from Rochdale. He’s OK at football. If he works hard he gets decent grades at school. He isn’t bad-looking, but none of his features are amazing. Not like his mate Tony Banda, who looks like a film star and has gorgeous Lexy for a girlfriend. Not like Holgy, who’s a brilliant goalkeeper. Not like Nico, who’s famous for being the top alcohol trader in the area. Not like Mikael, who’s clever and great at football too. And aside from Khalid’s close friends, it’s easy to go through all the kids he knows and pick out something about them that makes them stand out. While him, he’s no one—nothing. Nobody. That’s what makes this whole thing worse than embarrassing. Everyone’s going to laugh their heads off when they hear Khalid Ahmed’s been kidnapped.

He sits on one of the hard wooden chairs, staring at the five empty ones that surround him. Who uses this room? It doesn’t feel used. Why him? Why’s he sitting here with his arms cuffed behind his back, feeling totally crushed and aching all over?

A short while later, Khalid sees the nice guard for the last time when he opens the door to fling a thin, brown blanket at him, which smells of mice. His bedding for the night. Another guard brings a cold dinner of chicken curry, which, after uncuffing his wrists, he watches him eat. Only to grab Khalid’s elbow the moment he finishes popping the last fingerful of rice in his mouth. This time he kindly attaches the cuffs a little looser, Khalid guesses, to make the night more comfortable for him.

He must have been held here for over twenty-four hours now without reason. Why? Khalid curls up under the smelly blanket on the red oriental rug. Pausing for a second to wonder how the carpet-makers manage to weave such intricate geometric patterns, he lets his mind drift off to imagine a weaver alone in a small dark room, deciding where to put the diamonds and crosses, the bold border with red flowers.

A few years ago, Dad insisted on taking him to the oriental rug sale in Rochdale Town Hall. Khalid moaned all the way, while Dad was as excited as a child. Rubbing his hands at the thought of the beautiful carpets they were going to see.

“Oriental carpet patterns always please the eye,” he told Khalid. “No matter how different the pattern, the effect is always the same, beautiful. Do you hear? A kind of magic is there. Many patterns, but one carpet. Unity, that’s what they are showing here.”

Of course they couldn’t afford to buy a rug. The cheapest was several hundred pounds. Not that Khalid cared. Bored out of his skull, he didn’t really take in any of this stuff at the time. Even when they arrived at the town hall, which was crammed with people wanting to buy, rug after rug held up by the auctioneer as if they were the crown jewels, Khalid didn’t get it.

“A carpet’s a carpet, Dad! It goes on the floor.” Now Khalid wishes he hadn’t said that. He feels guilty, worrying that Dad must have been disappointed by his lack of enthusiasm even though he didn’t say anything at the time. But when he did speak he said something Khalid never forgot.

“Giving thanks for something beautiful is the best way to find peace.”

Now the more Khalid examines the rug he’s lying on, the deeper and more satisfying the patterns appear to be. How peculiar is this? Sitting up suddenly, he can see himself handcuffed, on this strange floor, scared to death, and all he can do is stare at this rug. But the longer he looks, the more perfect the repeated diamond shapes seem to be. A strong black line here and there turns the pattern on its head for no reason, breaking the set order in a strange, surprising way. Which forces him to wonder why the shapes suddenly reverse and then sometimes continue as before. In a flash, he suddenly understands why Dad took him to see the carpets.

Before long, Khalid can’t help giving quiet thanks to the thousands of weavers who are, right now, hard at work making something as beautiful as this out of wool, cotton or silk. Not guessing that it could mean so much to a fifteen-year-old boy who’s usually playing computer games and larking about with his mates.

It’s true, saying thanks does make Khalid feel better for a moment—even a bit more peaceful, like Dad said. In a second, Dad’s wide smile comes back to him and that quick laugh he has whenever he spots something special. Silly things like a stone in the shape of an egg.

“The whole world’s in this kind of surprise,” Dad once told him.

The idea that Dad might also be staring at a carpet in some other room, somewhere in Karachi, feels like a real possibility suddenly. But the truth is, the rug he’s lying on is the only link he has to him right now. Khalid’s mind is desperately grab-bing at something to stop himself from going completely crazy, tugging at the shapes and colors of the rug like a baby pulling apart a favorite blanket.

He lifts his head from the rug to stare at the ceiling, wishing the yellow glow from the bare light bulb above him would spin into the shape of a genie. A fat, laughing genie or jinn, like the one in the story of Aladdin’s lamp. The jinn, an immortal in human form, is coming to carry him away from here. He can see him, right there, right now, carrying him home on a magic carpet, back to his mum. His mum.

“Your wish is my command,” the jinn says, and Khalid’s heart locks on to the image of being returned to the computer cupboard, switching off the machine this time. Seeing himself pick up his mobile, put it safely away in his denim pocket, the chrome watch back on his wrist, and walk up the stairs to bed. Waking a few minutes later to the smell of steaming hot tea and Mum standing over him with a wide smile, saying, “Dad’s still asleep.”

But the jinn has gone. No one comes and after a while the light bulb flickers off and Khalid’s thoughts change course to the hopeless feeling he’ll never get over this. Lying on his side, he listens to the night-time noises of the big creaking house, occasional footsteps and the murmur of a passing car outside. His eyes on the beautiful rugs reaching out to the dark hidden corners of the room which smells of mold and wax polish. The only light a streak of yellow coming in under the door.

In the morning another armed guard, with a drooping face and a curling beard, brings Khalid tea and bread. Uncuffing him like last time, the guard stands over him until he finishes eating. Footsteps hurry past the door while Khalid sips the hot, sweet tea, and the sound of banging and angry shouting from the room above keeps him company as he hungrily snaps up the flat bread. Scoffing it in three eager mouthfuls. The smell of stale white flour on his fingers.

“Any chance of a shower?” Khalid says without much hope. Finally losing it when the guard turns away to gaze vacantly at the blank wall. In one fell swoop, the tea and plate crash to the floor as Khalid leaps at him. His hands close tightly round the soft skin of the guard’s warm neck and the anger rises so fast Khalid’s fingers tingle as the guard struggles to pull them off, punching him like a boxer as he wildly yells for help through the stranglehold.

Four guards charge in, pointing their guns at Khalid’s head. Standing feet apart like a firing squad, ready to kill him the second he releases the guard’s neck. But, exhausted by the power of his own nervous fury, Khalid drops his hands and
sinks in a heap on the floor, head hanging low. Thick black hair falls over his forehead and he begins to sweat as an out-of-body feeling of sheer hopelessness drains him of every molecule of energy.

Now he’s down, a boot jams into his side, knocking him flat. His arms are twisted back, he’s handcuffed tight. Another boot lands on his shoulder. Boots come down on his stomach until there’s nowhere for Khalid to turn to get out of their way. He doubles up in pain until blood runs from his nose and he vomits.

He lies there for what seems like hours until eventually he falls asleep. Waking up to find the room dark again. The moment he remembers what’s happened, he panics. His stomach hurts. Arms hurt. Face hurts. There’s hardly a part of him that isn’t in pain. Despite the tears welling in his eyes, Khalid stares into his invisible future and sees nothing worth living for, just a small horrible world with nasty people who don’t give a damn about anyone.

At that point, the door opens and a square of fluorescent light floods the room. Khalid squirms to focus on the shapes at the door, unable to make out the shadowy faces. A man says something that might be in Urdu. Khalid picks out a word that sounds familiar.

Then one of them says, “Only English him speak.”

“Up from there!” another quieter voice commands. With the shadow of a gun on the wooden floor beside his feet, Khalid struggles to stand, a piercing pain in his ankle causing his foot to suddenly fold, making it hard to balance. But he tries and tries—knowing if he stumbles they’ll start kicking him again.

Two rugged-looking men on either side of him elbow him to the door and out of the room. There’s enjoyment on their faces as they rush him down the corridor to yet another room. A room with a ceiling light, a small desk and two black plastic chairs.

What kind of weird game are they playing with me?
Khalid wonders.
Are they moving me around so I won’t remember where I’ve been?

Three of the men hurry away, leaving only one man with a kind face. Khalid sees he looks ashamed when he meets his gaze. He quickly lowers his eyes before sneakily attaching one of Khalid’s handcuffs to the chair. The other arm is left to hang limply in his lap. Then he stands back while Khalid examines the extent of the yellow and purple bruises on his brown skin. Plus his filthy hand, which is smeared with dirt, dusty and bloody, with a few carpet threads attached. His fingernails look as if they’ve been dipped in ink. Khalid raises his arm for the guard to see his injuries, pointing his finger firmly at him as if he’s responsible for the state he’s in. But the guard doesn’t seem to care. He leaves, only to return a couple of minutes later, grinning for the first time with tatty, wonky teeth while he cracks open a bottle of water.

“Thank you.” Khalid’s suspicious of his sudden smile, not wanting or trusting the kindness he’s showing by giving him a measly bottle of water. Khalid would rather he scowled at him. Then maybe this jailer–prisoner relationship might have a vague chance of being an honest one. Khalid glances down, avoiding his gaze.