Guantanamo Boy (25 page)

“But the bombings and that?” Khalid wonders what Ali’s going to come out with next.

“Any person who commits an act of terrorism violates the laws of Islam,” Ali says.

Khalid’s confused, wondering how to reply, when suddenly Balendra’s beside them, smiling. Breathing forcefully, he grabs his hips to steady himself.

Ali turns, happily smiling back, white teeth sparkling like pearls.

A familiar noise of squeaking boots forces them to glance at the fence, where two soldiers are approaching. Keys at the ready.

There they are, the same as all the others. Middle height, medium build, brown-haired, slightly stocky soldiers. Leather gun straps making a rubbing sound on their shoulders as they walk. An overdose of strong aftershave disguises the smell of their sweating skin.

“Take note from the Qur’an, Khalid. ‘God is not so weak as to need a protector.’” Ali’s led away, his perfect shadow beside him.

Khalid catches sight of his own shadow. Straightening himself to alter it, he glances up to see the clouds closing in again. A vulture flaps overhead while he wonders at the things Ali’s told him. Realizing he knows nothing about anything. Now the lights are on concerning the history of Islam and how misunderstood the subject is—even in his own mind—several arguments start up in Khalid’s brain.

Arguments where he takes both sides, sees both sides, defends both sides. Pointing his finger at his friends if they disagree.

At anyone who’ll listen.

His mind burns with imaginary people who agree with the death penalty. He argues with himself until he becomes exhausted. At the same time, he wonders where his brain has been all these years while he’s been playing football down the park, gaming on the computer, thinking about Niamh. He’d ignored the important things in life and regrets not listening to what Dad tried to teach him.

Caught in a roller-coaster of strong emotions that fling him from wall to wall. From sanity to craziness, with nothing in between. The chat with Ali has added more complications to the whirl of activity in his head. Only the books Khalid’s been reading can take him out of himself and back to a more solid, reliable world. Beginning, middle and end. Where the problems belong to someone else and everything about them is more interesting and easier to understand than what’s happening to him.

This morning, Khalid lies on the bed, hands tracing the itchy grid of dark stubble covering his head. Tired. So tired. Tired of thinking about Ali and his clever brain while his own twisted mind is caked with moss. And scared. Scared that any day now they’ll shave him again.

“I haven’t got lice!” Khalid shouts. No answer. There’s only the sound of padding footsteps heading away from him. Are they afraid that if they don’t cut and shave them some ugly monster will grow on their heads and do them in? Or maybe the shaved heads make it easier to tell who are the detainees and who are the soldiers, as if the orange uniforms aren’t enough. Or, more likely, they do it to make them feel less like men and more like laboratory mice.

The library man, Will, came yesterday with two more yellowing Reader’s Digest condensed books and a copy of
National Geographic
magazine. But it’s not enough. Khalid had read both books and the
National Geographic
from cover to cover by this morning. He’s read the article about Sri Lankan elephants twice and even found time to glance at the Qur’an again.

What’s he going to do for the rest of the week until Will comes back?

“Please can I have more books?” he asked the female guard at breakfast time.

“Buddy, you’ve had your books,” she says.

“Yeah, but I’ve read them. Can you maybe give mine to someone who’s read theirs? Swap them over?”

“You bet your sweet bippy you’ve read ’em,” she crows. “What else have you got going on? Nada! Hey, relax. Chill, man. I’ll maybe see what I can do.”

“Thanks very, very much.” Khalid gives her a wild, smarmy, begging look for luck and she says, “Oh, you guys—some nerve!”

It was worth a try.

Now he’s waiting for two things today. The head shaving, which he thinks is more than a week overdue, and, hopefully, a couple of new books to read, deciding it’ll be great if the shaving comes first, because afterwards he’ll have the new books to look forward to.

Yeah, the barber will loosen his collar so a few sharp hairs drift down his spine to irritate him, like he always does. Khalid expects to be butchered by him yet again. Whereas, if the books come first, he’ll be sad and fed up knowing he can’t enjoy them until he’s been cut to shreds by the shaver. Maybe even find he’s read them before, which will make him feel even worse. Knowing then he’s got nothing to look forward to.

It’s all so complicated.

Khalid goes over the timeline of the day’s expected events so fully, his heart starts racing, while his neck begins itching from imaginary stubble. Hope soon fades of a simple solution when breakfast arrives, but no barber or books. Not even a shower, which he badly needs.

Between avoiding the scary pictures at the back of his mind and waiting for the barber and books, his heart’s beating faster, pounding hard with worry and waiting. He’s getting himself more and more worked up and the sweat pouring over him is making the waiting worse. The air conditioner has gone off at the hottest time of the day and, being on the kind of timer only Einstein could figure out, there’s no chance it will start working right now.

Lunch has come and gone before footsteps come to a halt outside his door and someone shouts, “256—barber!” Goosebumps break out on Khalid’s neck at the sound of the loud voice. He knew it. Knew it was barber day today! As long as the books don’t come while he’s there, all will be cool.

Khalid jumps up, arms at his side, waiting for the door to click, bang and thump open. He lifts his hands for the shackles to be tied. Hurrying the guard in his mind so he can get the whole shaving thing over with and be back here for the new books that he prays will come later. He was right about the hair, wasn’t he?

The moment the guard leads his dragging shape into the corridor, Khalid notices the linoleum’s been washed. Usually there’re tiny bits of dirt and dust in the crevices between the bubble-like shapes but today there’s none. Then he realizes the last time they took him out for a shower was before lunch and maybe they don’t sweep the corridor until later. Khalid tries to remember the sound of sweeping after lunch.

Did they sweep the floor without him noticing?

He promises himself he’ll listen more carefully tomorrow, to see whether the sweeping routine has changed from early evening to early afternoon.

He knows tracking these changes is pathetic but it’s something concrete to latch on to—as well as something he can congratulate himself about when he works out the new routine. Occasionally he even thinks he can read the guards’ minds.

This one, for instance, look at him. He’s not as tall as Khalid and his thick, meaty neck throbs, the large vein pulsing as he walks. His dead eyes stare straight ahead. Khalid guesses he’s wondering whether to have a second helping of chips with his steak for dinner. It occurs to him that this soldier looks more brain-dead than most.

Khalid steps into the sunshine and once again the same delicious blue sky greets him, but with no hint of rain in the thin clouds. Quickly, he takes in the full force of the shimmering light on the pale earth and a beautiful, sparkling spider’s web swinging from a truck mirror.

Light reflects light until his head is pulled down again by the weight of the waist chain it’s connected to. He finds it easier, though less entertaining, to follow the flickers of sunshine passing over the guard’s black boots. The sound of hammering in the distance tells him yet another fence is being erected.

A group of soldiers drop cardboard boxes beside the door of a shed. More soldiers patrol the fence with squeaking boots as Khalid’s led past an open truck smelling of bananas.

In the distance, more trucks, more bland buildings. More impossible-to-see-through fences. More rocks. The sunshine quietly points Khalid’s eyes to the lizard on the wall of the open building. Its pale body is a perfect match for the spotted, uneven concrete it’s glued to and the sight makes Khalid smile.

Several men stand hunched and bowed in a line, guards at each side. A fleeting glance of recognition passes between Khalid and the man just arriving behind him. It’s Ali Abaza from the recreation ground. Khalid shuffles round, twisting his head slightly to get a better look. He expands and then relaxes his chest to make the abrupt movement look more natural to the guard standing right next to him.

Ali lifts his head, nodding quickly. A horde of unspoken thoughts and feelings pass between them. The snap message from Ali’s eyes tells Khalid things are worse than they were and he wishes he could explain what’s been happening. Khalid nods politely, as best he can.

Just then the guard shoves Khalid forward, blocking the gap between them. The whining sound of the electric razor cuts off his thoughts with the more pressing threat he’ll be next. The wordless conversation is sadly over.

The noise of the clippers and a faint breeze distract Khalid from the sight of men’s shadows lined up beside them. The shapes merge with the guns and soldiers’ boots and there’s not a breath of energy between the men and their shadows. Everyone’s as dead as dead can be.

The strange sound of loud breathing and the whiff of burning hair confuse Khalid for a moment as he’s pushed down on the stool. Quickly, he catches sight of a wide face beaming with pleasure as the man slices into his scalp with pink hands. Beside Khalid is a small wooden table with a bucket of water for rinsing the blades and a silvery tin box with spare batteries and a face shaver with three cutters. A tin box Khalid’s never noticed before.

The chrome clippers begin whizzing and spinning to cut him open in a hundred places and the razor threatens to slit his ears and gouge his eyes out if he moves a muscle. Preventing Khalid from catching anyone else’s eye with an elbow in his shoulder blade, the barber nudges him. But when Khalid’s head is forced down, then sideways for the barber to clip his neck, he catches his own eyes clearly reflected in the shiny surface of the tin box. Tripping him into the sight of an unknown skinny face covered in stubble, black eyes staring out like someone mad.

The more he looks, the more shocked he is by the hugeness of his chin. Did it always look like that? With a swift flick, his head is turned and the reflection disappears. The glinting blades flash past his forehead.

This one’s enjoying slashing Khalid’s temples to pieces. Prodding his ears out of the way. Slicing his scalp as if he’s trying to lift it off. So aware of his power, he gives a little laugh when he slides into an eyebrow and Khalid recoils, only for the barber to grab his chin and push his forehead back with thumping fists. Khalid can do nothing but tense up, gritting his teeth.

A drop of blood dribbles down his face and slips over his lips.

The barber jerks Khalid’s head swiftly, one more time, to finish off his low hairline, sending itchy hair flying down his back. Scraping his skin so hard, red weals form on every part of his sore, dry head and neck.

For as long as Khalid can remember, a visit to Robbie the barber in Rochdale was a quick, pleasant non-event. After asking what he wants, the barber does the cut with a smile and a few fast, gentle strokes. Maybe a kind word about his thick hair and the new aftershave he’s wearing as he softly brushes loose hairs from Khalid’s neck before shaking the clippers for the next guy to take his place.

This barber flings the chrome clippers in the tin box and replaces them with a black battery-powered shaver. He has no use for creams, soaps or brushes. There’s nothing to ease the attack on the teenage hair on Khalid’s face as the shaver is applied with the same vengeance as the clippers.

Khalid had never been shaved by anyone else until this prison ordeal began. At home in Rochdale he’d started shaving a couple of times a week when he was fourteen and he was always careful not to cut himself. This shaving feels like another abuse. Three blades thump into his cheek, mangling his chin to pulp.

At last it’s over. Khalid’s back in his cell. Shivering. Sore. Miserable. The blasts of ice from the air conditioner are turning the room into a fridge. Wrapping himself in blankets and a towel, he crouches on the bed, feeling sad and empty, going through the process of trying to keep warm when actually he doesn’t care.

Was that really his face? Khalid runs his hand over his chin. It’s not that big, is it? Chins don’t change shape, do they? How come his face is so long and skinny? He knows he used to look better than that. Or maybe he looks peculiar because the tin’s not a proper mirror and that’s why the reflection is odd.

Struggling to settle his mind, Khalid gazes at the spots of blood on the white towel hanging from his shoulders, then gently explores the bumps and dents in his skull for the secret place where three prickly hairs escaped the clippers. He wiggles the ends, sharp as needles, with the tip of a finger.

Dinner comes and goes. Still no books.