The Sleeper (5 page)

The wife of the man I wanted to see in Granada was veiled almost like a nun, and much prettier than I was ready for her to be. When I arrived, she was alone behind the counter of a small wholesale shop for Middle Eastern foods and spices in a run-down collection of warehouses on the edge of the city.

From the moment I walked in, early on that stifling afternoon, I had the feeling I'd guessed right. Abu Seif's address book had a lot of potential leads in it, and some of them were people I knew. But they were farther away, in the Balkans and Africa. I couldn't afford any misses at that range, and this address in Spain for “friendlyboy,” somebody supposed to be called Bassam al-Shami, kept jumping out at me. Instinct told me to come here, and now the Agency's money let me follow my instinct. If this didn't work out, I'd know quickly, and I could head for Africa, where I thought I might have at least one good connection.

“Le puedo ayudar?”
asked the woman behind the counter. She was a little younger than me, and taller than a lot of women, and she had a kind of pretty strength about her face and her hands that was surprising. But that was all I could see of her. Her sleeves were long, the cuffs buttoned tight, and of course she wore that gray scarf—the
hijab
—of a modest and pious woman. It was a kind of uniform, especially for the wives and sisters of the Muslim Brotherhood. It revealed none of the hair on her head and was pinned beneath her chin, but, still, it framed high cheekbones, a sharp nose, and bright, deep brown eyes that did not turn away when I looked into them. There was no air conditioning in the shop, and her clothes must have been stifling. She shifted slightly on her feet.

“Le puedo ayudar?”
she said again.

“Tell me you speak English,” I said.

“
Sí
—yes, a little bit.”

“That's great.” I was as friendly as could be. “Is Mr. Al-Shami here?”

“He is not here,” she said. A thin dew of sweat dampened her upper lip.

“Will he be back today?”

“No,” she said. “He is not in Spain.”

I stayed friendly, and our eyes stayed on each other's. “I hope he is coming back soon,” I said. “I was sent by a friend.”

“Bassam has many friends,” she said.

“I guess he does.”

I looked around the shop, and for a second thought it might be fortified, there were so many burlap bags piled against the walls. But the place smelled liked spices, not sand. Some of the bags were open so buyers could taste what was inside: pistachios, black pepper, a green powder I didn't recognize, a reddish-orange powder I couldn't name, chunks of resin that looked like rock candy but smelled like perfume. I picked up a piece and sniffed it.

“Incienso,”
she said.

“In sea in so?” I spoke a little Spanish, but had no idea what she was saying.

“In church, you know?” She made a motion with her hand as if she were swinging something. “
Humo
—smoking?” Now she opened her hands in a gesture of helplessness. And she smiled.

I put the resin to my nose again and closed my eyes. It was the smell of the Serb churches, and it sank into the pit of my stomach. “Incense,” I said, and tossed the rock back onto its pile.

“Incense!” she said. “Thank you.” She pulled a notebook and pen out of a drawer like a schoolgirl getting ready for her lesson. As she wrote I noticed just how powerful her hands were for a woman.

Along the opposite wall were shelves holding jerry-cans full of liquid.
“Gasolina?”
I asked, and she laughed.

“Noooo,” she said. “Honey.”

“Honey?”

“
Miel.
Honey? This is the word?” She came from behind the counter and opened one of the cans. Her dark gray dress was long and shapeless and covered her legs to the ground. She took a plastic stick and dipped it into the can, then let the thick brown liquid trickle off the end back into the container. She touched the last drop with her forefinger and held it up for me.

“No thanks,” I said.

She smiled and, without making too much of it, she licked the sweetness off her fingertip.

“Is Señor Al-Shami your father?”

“He is my husband,” she said.

“And will he be away long?”

“I do not know,” she said. “He is away two weeks now. Sometimes he is away two months. He no want that I talk about his trips.”

“Sure,” I said, looking one more time around the store. Then I pulled the empty scabbard of Abu Seif's letter opener out of my pocket. “Do you know where I can find a letter opener that fits into this?”

“Everybody, I think. But—maybe the brother of my husband. In his shop. In Albaicín.” She looked at me, and at a clock on the wall and shrugged. “It is closed now, and I must to pray. I will write for you address. Is near San Nicolas church.” She wrote down a street name in schoolgirl handwriting. “Where you stay?” she said.

“I don't know yet.”

“You have a car?”

“No.”

“Maybe I take you there, to shop? I know a place to stay, also. We meet here at bodega—four o'clock?”

“What is your name?”

“Pilar,” she said, and shook my hand, holding it in hers for a long moment.

“Pilar,” I said. “A Muslim name?”

“No,” she said. “Spanish. But I am Muslim for my husband.”

 

At a phone shop a few hundred meters from the bodega, I bought a Spanish network chip for the mobile phone, then found a seat outside at a café full of construction workers. In the front, near the cash register, was a rack of postcards for sale: scenes from places in Granada I hadn't seen yet, the Alhambra, the Generalife, the Court of the Lions. In Bosnia, I used to listen for hours to preachers who talked about the greatness of the Muslim world, and about Granada. When Europe was in the Dark Ages, the Muslims here were in their glory. But somehow they'd lost it. Maybe because the Christians were crueler, more ruthless, more hungry. Maybe just because their time had run out. They were forced to their knees, scattered into tribes. And that was five hundred years ago, and they were never allowed to stand again like men.

Most of the rest of the postcards were for truckers who didn't give a damn about the glories of Granada. They showed women with tits like pillows bulging out of bikinis, girls with bare asses on the beaches of Andalusia, penis heads with funny faces drawn on them.
“Viva España!”

The phone was ringing at the Jump Start. The voice that answered wasn't Betsy's.

“Ruth?” I said. “My wife there?”

“We're right in the middle of breakfast, don't you know?” said Ruth, who was Betsy's best friend at the restaurant. “That you, Kurt?”

I hung up. I could call back later, tonight or tomorrow. No rush, I thought.

The steel door at the front of the bodega was locked. Even in the late afternoon the reflected light off the white cinder-block building turned my pupils to pinpoints and drilled into my skull. I knocked again. To my relief, the lock rattled as the key turned from inside.
“Adelante,”
said Pilar.
“Un momento, por favor.”

“Thanks,” I said. “This is so nice of you.” In the gloom of the shop, I could barely see her shape, much less her face. She closed the door and reached for the light switch, slowly, waiting for—what?

“Freeze!” shouted a man's voice behind me. “Right there!”

I spun around, of course. But the blast of the shotgun sent an adrenaline jolt through me, and now I did freeze. I heard something spilling from one of the sacks against the wall.

“I do not want to have to kill you,” said the man, whose accent sounded like put-on British. “But you are going to answer some questions.”

“You a cop?” I asked. I was trying to see his face, but couldn't.

“What do you want with Bassam al-Shami?”

“His help,” I said.

“I do not believe you. Where did you get the scabbard?”

“From Abu Seif.”

“He is dead.”

“No! When?”

“You are not going to ask questions,” said the man. I still couldn't see his face clearly, but I focused on the shape of the gun, a side-by-side double-barreled twelve-gauge. Two shots. One gone. I was judging the distance between us when an iron bar smashed against my skull and sent me stumbling toward the back of the store. The woman hit me again, and again, stepping into each swing with all her weight. I went down on one knee. The shotgun was still trained on my gut, too far for me to reach, but close enough to cut me in half.

Fear gives you a powerful rush of sensations and I remember now how sweet the spices smelled all of a sudden, how sharp and hot the bile was that rose in my stomach, how salty the taste of blood at the back of my mouth, how cool the tiles of the floor against my cheek.

“Sit up,” said the man. “Sit up!”

I wanted to obey, but every time I raised myself on my elbows or forearms, the iron bar cracked against my shoulders or the small of my back.

“Up!” he shouted again, and I saw he was signaling the woman to stop. I rolled over, grateful to be able to obey his orders and, slowly, to sit. I looked at my legs straight in front of me and wondered if they were still part of me.

The man handed the woman the gun. She handled it easily. More easily than him. He had a limp. I hadn't noticed. A limp. He walked as quickly as he could to the back of the store. A bad limp. How about that? Now he was lugging something big and round. The limp was much worse. This guy was a real gimp with a limp. I smiled.

“Put your hands in your lap,” he said.

I obeyed.

The tire dropped around my arms, pinning them to my body.

“I know how you feel,” said the voice. “The panic begins now.” He took the point of the steel rod and shoved the tire. I fell over again, a rag doll, no spine, just bloody lint inside. I tried to twist into some position so my feet, or knees, shoulder, could get some purchase on the tiles. The woman rested the shotgun across the top of two open bags and picked up the iron bar. She swung it hard against my shoulders, my arms, again, again, then the neck, the head, hammering me toward the floor. Without defense, my face smashed down on the tile again, the tire pushing my diaphragm. There was no air. No air. The panic did begin. But my body did nothing. Nothing.

“You are lucky,” said the man. “I have questions. When this was done to me, there were no questions. So no answers could make it stop. So you see you are lucky.”

“Lucky,” I said, or thought I said.

“You are working for the American government.”

In my mind I was laughing. I don't know what kind of sound came out.

“Take off his shoes,” the man ordered the woman. I felt my trainers leave my feet, my socks slip off. The steel rod smashed against the soles and pain exploded through my entire body.

“Again,” said the voice.

Again, the explosion. My bladder lost control, then my sphincter.

“I—I…”

“You are…” said the voice.

“I am one of you.”

“You have come because—? Ah, yes, because America has been hurt and you think, perhaps, Al-Shami has some connection to that? Is that it? I'm having a great deal of trouble understanding you, so speak up.”

“I—am—one of—you.”

“Do not test my patience,” said the voice.

“La Allah,”
I said, repeating the profession of the faith,
“illa Allah, Muhammad—”
The heart-stopping pain of another blow cut me off.

“Blasphemy,” he said. “We will not hear it. When did you see Abu Seif?”

“Ealing mosque.”

“When!”

“Month…month ago.”

The explosion again. And again. The questions were repeated. Again. Many times. And the pain. And then for a time, I can't tell you for how long, there were dreams. I do not remember what they were.

 

When my eyes started to open, the nightmare was still real. I was on the floor face down in my own blood and shit. The tire had cut off the circulation in my arms and my hands didn't have any feeling at all. The rest of me was in pain. Nothing else you can say about it, just—pain. But now there was light like a sun burning through my eyelids.

“We must rest,” said the voice. “We must reflect.” I heard him sipping something. “You have been badly hurt today. You are wondering if you will—if you could—ever recover. You are wondering if you will die. You are thinking that you would like to die. You see? I know every step in this process. I am a well-practiced, a very well-practiced, victim.” I heard the woman's footsteps come and go. I heard the sound of the man sipping again.

“I was ten years in the prison at Tadmor. Do you know where that is? No. You wouldn't. It is near a great tourist attraction in Syria. Little old English ladies come and go to the ruins of Palmyra and marvel at the pagan temple of Baal, and they pass by Tadmor's prison and look the other way. They send postcards to friends about their fabulous visit, and they have no idea, I think, that the prison is there, or that inside it the tire—what you are experiencing—is a way of life. Whether you live or die, my American friend, you will never be able to say that the tire was your way of life. And you should be thankful for that.”

I heard a yawn. The woman was yawning. The voice said something to her in Spanish. They talked for a couple of minutes and then I heard her walk out the door. I did not know if she was gone for the night, or where, or if she would be back. I did not know anything except that, for this moment, the beating had stopped.

“You are broken now,” said the voice. “Are you not?”

I couldn't speak.

“I know. Torture has its own physiology,” he said, “its own chemistry. They never taught us that in medical school (I am a physician, you see), but in ten years one can study, and one can learn a lot about endurance, or the lack of it. And there is a kind of—what would you say?—a fascination.

“At Tadmor the torture is public. You have the chance to live the pain in your mind, watching others, listening to others, even before you experience it firsthand. And once you know what the screams mean, because you have been there, there is a reaction that sets in when you hear a certain noise—say, the crack of a metatarsal.”

His words came through to me very clearly, but I couldn't seem to control any of the sounds that came out of my own body.

“You know,” said the voice, “I didn't hear that particular sound tonight.” He was silent for a time and somewhere in the empty cave of my brain the thought came that the beating was about to begin again. The voice got up, turned out the light that was in my eyes, and walked into the other room. My face was flat and still on the slick tiles. I couldn't see what he was doing, but I heard water running.

Suddenly the bodega's overhead lights went on. “Lie still,” said the voice. “And close your eyes.” A stream of cool water washed over my head and neck.

“Thank you.” I croaked the words. The water ran in a small flood toward a drain in the floor. It was pink with my blood.

“You are most welcome,” said the voice. “Water, you see, is one of the greatest of pleasures. That is why it is so present in Paradise, so absent in Hell. Would you like more?”

“Yes,” I said.

The voice walked away into the other room and again I heard the water running. I tried to twist to see his face, but could not. Every muscle in my neck and shoulder was knotted with the pain, and he was behind me.

“Listen to me,” he said in a doctor's tone. “You are filthy and I am going to remove your trousers, but only to clean you.”

Twice he splashed the cool water over my rear and my genitals, and I watched the filth flow into the drain.

I was beginning to think now a little more clearly about what he was doing. In the dark, during the beating, he was the bad cop. In the light, with the blessed water, he was the good cop. First he would be feared, then he would be loved. I saw this mind-fuck for what it was, and I was grateful anyway for the water.

“Pilar will be back soon,” said the voice, “and we will have to start again, unless…” He let the idea settle in on me. “…unless you can tell me a little more about yourself and what you are doing.”

“I—I don't know.”

“That's not a good beginning.”

“I was afraid…”

“Go on.”

“I was afraid after New York.”

“Why was that?”

“I was a mujahedin.”

“Really? That surprises me.”

“I was. My father—Bosnian. I was in Cazin, in Zenica.”

“There are many spies among the mujahedin.”

“I do not know.”

“Maybe you are a mujahedin. Maybe you are a spy. Maybe both. This is not such a bad thing. The elements are mixed in any of us.”

He wanted me to have hope so he could take it away from me. This would not end soon, and when it was over, I would be dead. I didn't know if that mattered to me now. I had fucked up so bad. So bad. Where had I gotten the idea I could save America? Or even my own family? Betsy. Miriam. Thinking about them should have given me strength, but it took the last breath of hope out of me. My muscles, tight with pain and fear, surrendered. I couldn't resist anymore.

The tire, wet from the water, slipped a tiny bit on my arms. I tried to move my fingers under my body, but they had lost all sensation. My legs felt my hands against them, but the hands did not feel the legs. I had to make my fingers work again, I thought. Concentrate on that. As much as I could, I tightened my stomach muscles to give the blood in my arms more room to flow. The tire slipped again, but clouds of pain filled my head.

“We all make compromises with power,” said the voice. “Have you ever bargained with God?”

“No,” I said.

“I see you are still able to lie,” he said. “No more questions until Pilar gets back.”

He walked away, and was gone for some time. When he returned, he was sipping tea. I could smell the mint in it.

I started to speak. “I went to Abu Seif for help.”

“No more lies for now,” said the voice. “Abu Seif is dead. Murdered. And for all I know, you are his killer. You're not his killer, are you?”

“No.”

“You are his killer, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

“Ah,” said the voice. “There you go. That is really
the
problem with torture: If someone is telling the truth, how do you know?”

“Please,” I said. “Please listen.”

He sipped his drink and said nothing.

I started to sob. “Please…Please…” I kept repeating the word until it lost all meaning in my mouth.

“People will say anything to stop the pain,” said the voice. “Anything at all. If there is time, one can check the information, one can look at the files. But when you have no information, when you have no files, how do you judge? In that case, pain becomes the only measure of truth. Pain and the interrogator's instinct.”

“Please…listen.”

“But, you see, there's a trap there, too. There comes a time when the interrogator will not believe anything without the pain—anything at all. Do you think I can believe you now?”

My fingers began to tingle, and to ache, as if they'd been numb with cold. I lay there as still as I could and focused all my energy on my hands, on my forearms, willing them to work.

Outside was the sound of a car pulling up. The door to the bodega opened and the woman came in, dressed now in blue jeans and cross-trainers, with a kind of smock over the top of her body, a black
hijab
over her hair and neck. She put her purse down on the counter as if she were getting ready to start a normal work shift.

She and the voice talked for a couple of minutes in Spanish. The overhead lights went off. The halogen light was back in my face, like a sun burning in the blackness of space. But nothing else happened. They kept talking. The front door opened. Someone left in the car. I could hear the engine start, could hear the sound of it fade as it went away. Someone went into the back room to boil water. The ritual of pain would begin again soon, but they would make me wait, and wonder, about when.