Title: Different Prisons
Completed: 2/19/08
Posted: 4/9/08
Genre: Gerneral
Rating: K+
Spoilers: Enter 77 (3x11), flashbacks only

Summary
Tag for Enter 77 (3x11), Sayid's flashbacks. The story of Amira, her cat, and the prisoner in the pantry.
Remember this episode? It's been a while, hopefully not too long.

Disclaimer
Lost is property of ABC, Bad Robot Productions, JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Jeffery Lieber, and not me.

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
Mahatma Gandhi

When Amira arrives in Paris with her husband, she doesn't leave the apartment.

The bandages still cover her arms. All of the stitches have yet to come out. Only heavy makeup, dark sunglasses and a scarf wrapped around her head will hide the bruises. Moving hurts. She slips across the room, the floorboards groaning under her feet like her bones. Sometimes the sunlight still hurts her eyes.

Sami never asks if she wants to leave and for that she is grateful. How could he have? How could anyone ask such a thing?

For Amira, the outside was no safer than being back in that cell. There were people outside; lining the streets, filling the shops and cafes. No, she doesn't stay indoors because of anything like vanity. The last thing on her thoughts are how people will see her; her still healing face, her hands. The skin still inflamed an angry red. Wrinkled, with a sheen that reminded her of wax paper. Her fingers ache and swell. For months she cannot even wear her wedding ring.

No, what people will see when they look at her is the last thing on her mind.

Rather, they're a continent away and she still expects to see their faces. The cell was never well lit but they visited often enough for her to remember every detail; right down to the seven o'clock shadow, the mole on the fat one's cheek, the broken nose on the tall one. If a face ever evades her it returns in her dreams. Marroon berets and red boots. In her sleep she still flails and flinches from blows who's marks have long faded from her skin. She wakes her husband or even herself because of this. Their faces, their voices, haunt her. It doesn't matter how close Sami holds her or how many times he reassures her she is safe.

It is never safe.

It will never be safe.

Because, even on the days when Amira knows that she will probably never see any of them again, she knows it doesn't matter. If people like that exist in her home country who's to say they don't exist in France? In Paris? On the same street as herself and her husband? Perhaps working for Sami in the restaurant below. People like that could be anywhere. Just waiting for the opportunity, the excuse.

Amira gave them what they wanted. When hot oil is being poured over your arm the line between lies and truth vanishes. It hadn't mattered what they'd asked, she admitted to everything. Anything.

Even now, they could be everywhere.

So Sami never asks her to leave and Amira never has an intentions of doing so. Her husband kisses her forehead and goes downstairs to work. Amira sits at the window that faces the alley, angled so she can see the sky. She sits and rubs lotion on her hands, and watches the strays search for scraps three stories below. Seasons pass. She sits and doesn't think.

One day, sitting in her chair with Sami working downstairs, she hears howling. At first the angry howls of a stray, and she expects to see the tomcats fighting once more. Only the howls become screeches and yowls of pain. Standing at the window Amia can just see the children below, sitting on a box and lighting firecrackers. From her angle she watches the boys drop the firecrackers into the box, and listens to the sound of pain. The box jerks and their laughter echoes against the walls.

For a long moment, all she can think is: There it is. Even in children it's there.

And for the first time since leaving Iraq, Amira is not afraid. For the first time, she has a reason to leave her apartment; and she does so without hesitation.

After months of healing and caretaking, the cat is her companion. He sits with her when she reads. Sleeps with her. The only place he is not allowed is the restaurant downstairs. He must sit and wait while she cooks for the customers. The vibrations of his purring are like a soothing spell.

Sometimes, the cat forgets where he is. He forgets he is safe and bites or scratches Amira. Every time, she forgives him.

LOST

Amira leaves the apartment. Not often. Never alone; but now and then. When the weather is clear and the aches subside.

It is on such a day that she sees him. He is working in another restaurant as a chef. They've moved to a completely different hemisphere and there he is. Serving coq au feu and blanquette de veau to customers. She knows his face and her husband does not question it. After escorting her home Sami leaves once more. Amira sits by the window with the cat and fears for her husband. Even though she never asked him to stay.

Only Sami has always been careful. He calls his friends and lures the chef to their restaurant. He has his wife identify the man a second time before knocking him unconscious and chaining him to the floor grate in the pantry.

Amira does not argue. She sits on the unfolded chair and watches as her husband beats this man, demanding he confess to his crimes. Stoically silent, a part of Amira hopes that the man does not. So that her husband is forced to continue.

This Sayid Jarrah admits to his role in the Republican Guard. He admits to the torture; but he denies ever touching a woman. He denies ever seeing her. There is the briefest, most minute flicker of doubt; the split second where Amira reminds herself people change. Would their faces be the same after all these years? Time had blurred so much.

Except deep down she's not sure she cares.

The doubt is not why she keeps Sami from grabbing the pipe, though. She gazes up at him and searches his face, twisted in rage. Until now Amira has never seen her husband strike another person, and the blood on his knuckles turns her stomach. Once more Amira realizes that it could be in anyone. Even Sami.

Even herself.

"That is enough for today."

LOST

Later that night she pays Sayid Jarrah a visit. Alone, except for her cat. She tells Jarrah the cat's story; how sometimes he bites and scratches. Amira and the cat are kindred spirits through experience.

She asks that Jarrah show her the respect of admitting what he did to her. Because, even if she's wrong, Amira hopes that somehow this will help. Because, even if it wasn't her, it was still someone else; and maybe he needs to admit it just as badly as she needs to hear it.

This man who was once an interrogator in Iraq, now a chef in France, looks at her; and in his eyes she watches something break.

"I remember you."

This man who had met her husband's blows so fearlessly begins to weep, and Amira understands that there are different types of prisons. So she listens to his confession and she feels something lift from her spirit, a weight she'd grown accustomed to. Amira listens to Jarrah sob and apologize again and again; and she forgives him. The words come from her without thought, far more easily than she could've ever dreamed.

She forgives him because everyone is capable of putting a cat in a box with firecrackers or pouring oil over a woman's hand, but Amira will not do that. She refuses to be that; and it's in that moment that she pities Sayid Jarrah. More than anything.

When Sami returns, she tells her husband she made a horrible mistake. Jarrah is released; and that night, with her husband and her cat, Amira sleeps without dreams.

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you."
 Lewis Smedes

Author's Notes
As per usual I fell out of interest with Lost over the summer, only to be brought back thanks to the new season. Looking back at season 3, particularly this episode, I'm reminded why Sayid is one of my favorite characters. Rewatching the flashbacks in Enter 77 spawned this piece; I actually only finished it after watching the Nip/Tuck episode with Rachal Ben Natan and the suicide bomber.

I also know very little about French cuisine. I just picked some names from a menu.