Captivity (22 page)

The morning after that, Harmeet moves into the foyer too. They don’t object. With every passing day, we take longer in the bathroom. From fifteen minutes, we push our little envelope of freedom to half an hour.

One morning, Uncle waves us into the foyer, arms flapping in jumping jack motions. The foyer is shaped like an L. Our room, the bathroom and another bedroom open onto the short side of the L, an area about eight feet wide and eight feet long. The second part of the L is much bigger, maybe fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long. A modernist concrete stairwell with open risers is located to the right of the bathroom. Each set of stairs, one leading to the roof, the other descending to the ground floor, pauses at a landing halfway up and halfway down. Heavy red velour curtains cover the lower-landing window while light pours into the foyer through the upper-landing window.

I move hesitantly into the open expanse of the foyer. The walls are high and white. It feels strange to be surrounded by so much space and light. I stand for a moment, unsure of what I should do. I count four more doors, all of them closed. Not counting the bathroom, six rooms open off the foyer. I look longingly at the stairs. They must go to the roof. The curtains, I think—if the door to the roof is not locked, we could tear them into strips, tie them together and make our escape by climbing down the building.

“Come on, Jim! Exercise.” Junior puffs out his cheeks and pumps his arms. He’s uncomfortably close.

I smile and step back. “Yes! Exercise good!” I say, matching his enthusiasm with some jumping jacks. It’s good to feel my heart pumping again.

I lie on my stomach with my palms against the floor. I have to see how many push-ups I can do. Normally it’s thirty-five or forty. It takes everything I have to get to fifteen. I sit back on the floor, my body trembling like a leaf. My eyes meet Junior’s. He looks away quickly. He doesn’t want me to know that he was counting, measuring himself against me.

Those first two weeks at the second house are a swirling mass of inchoate waiting. Nothing has form or shape. We sit, we lie on our backs, we drift and float, anchorless on an ocean of grey. Medicine Man’s promise of release echoes in every footstep, phone call, door opening and closing. We wait on pins and needles, ask the guards for news.
“Shwaya, shwaya,”
they say. Every minute is a lash.

One of the few things I can remember about those interminable days happens one afternoon. We ask Junior and Uncle if we can go to the bathroom. They say yes and unlock us one at a time. When it’s Tom’s turn, Junior becomes agitated. What’s he doing in there? he cries. Why is he taking so long?

We hear a clang in the bathroom. Tom has dropped something on the floor. Junior rushes to the bathroom door.
“La firar! Amriki! Amriki!”
he shouts, pounding with his fist on the door.

“Just a second,” I hear Tom say.

Junior bangs harder on the door.

I find it curious. There’s no lock, nothing to stop Junior from just going in. This is good. Junior feels bound to respect Tom’s privacy. He sees him as a human being.

The door opens. There’s a flurry of angry Arabic from Junior. Tom returns to his chair, defiantly calm. Junior follows close behind, his face red. “This CIA. This
hazeem,”
he says, pointing at Tom. He locks Tom up and goes directly to the bathroom to investigate. Later we see that he has wrapped a piece of wire around the window handles to make sure it can’t be opened.

“What happened?” we ask Tom.

“I don’t know. I just knocked the water jug over and the next thing I know he’s pounding on the door,” Tom says.

When Junior brings us our
samoon
supper, I try to explain that Tom was not trying to escape, he just knocked the water jug over. Junior is not interested. “No, this
Amriki najis
. This CIA. This
jaysh.”

At lock-up, Junior tells Tom to move his legs closer together, he’s going to chain both his ankles because he tried to escape. Tom tries to explain that if his legs are chained too close he won’t be able to move them during the night and they will cramp up. No, Junior says, move them closer. Tom refuses. Junior tries to push Tom’s feet together. Tom resists, sending Junior into a rage. “No! This
mozane,”
Junior snarls. He tries once more to push them together. Tom braces his legs and tries one more time to explain. “No. Shut up. This
najis!”
He grabs Tom’s shirt and threatens to punch him in the face. Tom looks at him without blinking and moves his feet together.

DECEMBER 15
DAY 20

It’s election day, the first under Iraq’s new constitution, ratified in a referendum on October 15. The ballot includes a staggering list of 228 parties and 21 coalitions. Junior is in a buoyant mood. He opens our handcuffs with care and joins in our exercise routine with some stretching of his own. I’m relieved to see that he’s no longer angry with
Tom. We ask Junior and Uncle if they’re going to vote. Uncle shakes his head. “No,” he says.
“Ali baba.”
He thinks all politicians are thieves.

“Yes,” Junior says solemnly. “This Islami. This Sunna.” He says he’s voting for Party 649.

Election day is followed by two days of curfew. Any news? we ask. No news, they say. When is Big
Haji
coming? we ask. When the curfew is over, they say. When the curfew is over we ask again. They don’t know. Can you phone
Haji
and ask him to come? Yes, they say.

Norman smuggles a soft piece of soap out of the bathroom. His idea is to use it to lubricate the hinges, so we can close the door at night without the captors hearing us. It works beautifully.

DECEMBER 18
DAY 23

Medicine Man enters the room with a whoosh of authority, Junior and Uncle following behind him. Junior puts a bulging black plastic bag on the floor near the barricade. “I have something for you,” Medicine Man says, smiling. He hands each of us a toothbrush. “They are the different colour. So you know to take them separately.”

“Thank you, thank you!” I say, holding the toothbrush against my chest.

Medicine Man laughs and hands Norman a box of Sensodyne. “This your toothpaste. For the sensitive teeth.”
Shokren
, we say.
Afwen
, he says. He points to the bag on the floor. “I bring you shoes.”

Our shoes! Walking, freedom, going home!

“And I bring you your medicine. For the stomach,” Medicine Man says, handing Tom a bottle. Tom is effusive with thanks. Medicine Man nods, stands back with his hands resting on his hips, the flaps of his suit jacket gathered behind his arms, exposing his bulging gut, a gun tucked into his belt. “Is there something else?” he asks.

Norman asks about his reading glasses. “They are at the other house,” Medicine Man says. “For all of you. All of your things—your camera, your notebook. I bring for you. We not take anything.”

Norman wants to know if he can send a message to his wife. Medicine Man looks at him blankly. “To let her know I’m alive,” he says, his voice breaking.

Medicine Man looks puzzled. “She know you alive. We take some video to show this.”

“Yes, but I should think a video of me in a jumpsuit—”

“There is one more thing,” I interrupt, worried things are moving in a bad direction. “Tom is having trouble sleeping. Would it be possible to get something to help him sleep?”

Medicine Man looks at Tom. “This is not a problem. What do you need?”

“Valium. Just something that will help me sleep.”

“I bring for you.” Medicine Man’s face turns instantly ruthless. He steps towards Tom and grabs his shirt. “I know you. You must not to escape. If you try this, I kill you. I know who you are.” Tom answers with the barest nod. Medicine Man releases Tom’s shirt and steps back.

“Tom didn’t try to escape,” I say. “He knocked a jug over in the bathroom and the sound must’ve startled
haji.”

“We are trained,” Medicine Man says. “He cannot fool me. I know who he is. He is not like you. I can tell, the way he look to me. He is cold, not smiling. He is a hard man. Like the CIA. I know this. This is something we have the training for.”

My heart sinks. “Tom is a peace activist. He’s been working in Iraq with CPT for almost two years.”

Medicine Man shakes his head. “I know this. I have the training for this.”

Medicine Man edges towards the door. He’s about to leave and we haven’t asked the most important question of all. “Is there any news?” I blurt out.

“There is some change,” he says. “We have some negotiation for your case. One week and you release. Not more. You are home for Christmas.”

–

Time edges towards Christmas, the hope of release in every breath. We eddy and whirl in a grey fog of waiting. I lose track of the days, what happens when. There is only Christmas, blinking like a navigation light on a faraway radio tower, a red eye flashing in the darkness.

At first I am hopfeul. A Christmas release would be perfect, I say, a public relations coup! Think of the headlines:
HOSTAGES REUNITED WITH THEIR FAMILIES, TERRORISTS NOT SO BAD AFTER ALL. INSURGENTS GIVE THE GIFT OF PEACE
. They’ve even given us our shoes back!

Harmeet will call his family and then make his way to Palestine where he’ll join the International Solidarity Movement team in Nablus. Norman will attend the Christmas Eve service at his church and sip ginger wine afterwards with Pat. Dan and I will go to Sault Ste. Marie where there’ll be tons of snow and we’ll go tobogganing with my nieces and nephew.

Tom is the lone holdout. “We really don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck here. I’m just trying to stay in the present moment.”

Then I am irritable.

“What would you do for Christmas if we do get free?” Harmeet asks.

“I don’t want to think about that. I’m just trying to stay in the present moment.”

Present moment, present moment! Fuck the present moment. If you say that one more time, I’ll ram it down your throat and make you choke on it!

“What would you
usually
do for Christmas?” Harmeet presses.

“Well, for the last couple of Christmases—this is only the second Christmas since Andrew moved out on his own—Kassie and Andrew and I have a meal together on Christmas Eve and then we go to a Quaker meeting together.”

I am prickly, venomous, rabidly impatient. My mind circles around and around, like a vulture in search of carrion, something to leap on, criticize, attack. Harmeet’s wriggling toes. How Norman digs in his
ears. The slow-motion way Tom blinks his eyes. The hours of aimless chatter, every word a flagellation! A voice in my head screams for silence. I fight with everything I have to hide and contain it. This is my problem, not theirs.

The black plastic bag with our shoes sits there for days. I stare at it hungrily, compulsively. Harmeet says it’s too small to hold his boots and all our shoes. I’m desperate to find out. We all are, I think, but none of us dare. We’re not sure. Could we have misunderstood? Did Medicine Man really mean for us to have our shoes back? What if they hear the rustle of the bag or catch us getting up out of our chairs?

It is Harmeet who takes the first illicit peek, one morning during exercise. “Hey guys, I have bad news. Those aren’t our shoes,” he reports as soon as the captors leave.

“Are you sure?” I ask. He has to be wrong.

“I’m sure,” he says.

Norman investigates next. “I’m afraid Harmeet is right. They look like Keds sneaker.”

My spirits plummet.

A day or two later, Junior points towards the bag and then at our feet. “Shoes. This shoes.” We nod and say thank you. He holds the bag out to us: what are you waiting for, he seems to be saying, go ahead, you can wear them. I want to leap at it.
Shoes! Escape! Freedom!
It’s okay, we tell him, we’re used to not having them. Junior shrugs, puts the bag within Norman’s reach and leaves. Still we don’t open it. It infuriates me. A strange and compulsory indolence has taken hold of us. We’ve lost our initiative and will, our ability to act. Our spirits have been taken captive too.

Finally, during a long stretch of afternoon, it is Tom who suggests we have a look at our new shoes. We open the bag and discover they’re black, dollar store tennis shoes, decorated with a lightning flash decal. I examine the tread, bend the toe, fit my hand inside. The biggest shoes, size nine, are hopelessly small for Tom’s size-eleven feet. Harmeet, with
the smallest foot, finds a pair that fit perfectly. Norman and I are just able to squeeze into ours.

“Hey, look at this!” Harmeet says, holding up a one-inch tack. “It was stuck into the sole of the shoe.”

“Wow! That could be really useful,” I say.

“It almost looks as if somebody stuck it there,” Harmeet says.

“Remember when we watched
Con Air?”
I say bubbling with excitement, “how they picked their handcuffs with that piece of wire?” Everyone laughs. “Do you think that’s just Hollywood, or do you think it might actually work?”

“It’s just Hollywood,” Tom says.

“Maybe we should try it?” I say.

The room grows very quiet. My chest tightens uncomfortably.
This might actually be a way for us to escape
. No, they say, it’s not worth the risk. I’m not sure whether to be angry or relieved. I deliberately change the subject. “I think we should ask for bigger shoes. It’s the least they can do after stealing ours. These certainly didn’t cost them anything.”

Tom says they’ll stretch. Norman says he’s not planning to run any marathons. Harmeet says his fit just fine. I remonstrate with Tom. “You have a right to a pair of shoes that fit,” I say. I want to shake him, them, all of us. Shake us out of this strange creeping passivity, this fatalistic waiting, this lethal drug of resignation.

“I can make do with these,” Tom says, adamant, in that infuriating it’s-final-don’t-argue-with-me tone.

Tom rarely wears his shoes. They just don’t fit. Norman slides in and out of his as if they were a pair of slippers, wearing the heel collars flat. Harmeet wears his loose, laces untied. I wear mine laced up tight. They stretch and fit just right. I fall in love with them. They protect my feet from the cold and the filth of the floor. And they are ready, should a door suddenly open, to help me run.