XXXII: Model Citizen

Sayid could not get rid of the new recruit. Why the fellow wanted to hang around him, he was not certain, but he wished that the younger man would leave him alone. He had reports to write, superiors to report to, a whole host of things to do that required they be done in specific increments, in a set period of time. He could feel the weight of the anticipated work bearing down on him, and did not need any distraction to keep him from his tasks.

"I'll just sit and watch, if I can?" the recruit said. "They said that you were in charge of the reconnaissance detail that brought in the journalist, so I guess you're a good person to study."

Sayid smiled, but thought, Why me? This is a punishment from God for what we have been commanded to do. I tried to deal with the journalist civilly, though. Is it my fault he is still sitting there stubbornly, refusing to talk? God commands us to fight, and I am being unjustly saddled with this irritating recruit?

"By all means, study if you would like. I am only checking my belongings, though, and then I have reports to write. I doubt it will be fascinating."

It would have been better had Dana confessed in detail. It would have been easier. Then, he could have stayed there until he had gotten something out of him, until he knew what the connection to that girl was, and just whom the girl was. She had to be rich. There was no other way that she would have been afforded the necessary secrecy to send communiqués. A Baghdad family, probably, an oil magnate or a heavy-industry family. She could be royalty, too. There were too many questions, and he disliked not having the answers. He would get them, though.

First, he had to rid himself of the new recruit. He had ignored the new fellow for the longest while, laying out his supplies and tallying them up, making sure he was all set. His equipment was proper, and he felt some relief at that. There's one thing I don't have to do, at least. Now, he had to get his weapons off himself, and then he would tell the boy to leave. He pushed up the left-side hem of his fatigue shirt, ripping the tape off in a smooth motion, slipping the knife free from where it had rested, easily accessible if need be.

The new recruit stared. "Why do you tape things to yourself?"

"For security," Sayid answered briskly, setting the knife down on a rickety table nearby. He was not in a mood to chat, and inwardly dreaded the barrage of questions that was sure to come. "Knives are unlikely to fall off that way. Holsters and scabbards are unreliable at best, fatal at worst."

"And you are left-handed," the youth replied, sounding sure.

He stared at the boy, shook his head. "Wrong. Right-handed." The new recruit looked confused, and Sayid suddenly knew why. "I tape it to my left side because it's easier to draw the knife that way." He demonstrated the crosswise motion, his bare hand clutched as if gripping a knife. "And I tape it with the blade at the top, because that way, you can seize the knife and come up with it, not down. There's more power behind it that way. Come downwards with it, and you run the risk of dropping the knife or loosening your grip, or missing your mark because of a twitch of the arm."

The new recruit nodded, taking this in. He mimicked Sayid's demonstration, but his arm was far too stiff, held as if he were a Janissary wielding a saber instead of someone with a more flexible modern weapon. He gave Sayid such an eager look, though, searching for acceptance, that Sayid did not have the fortitude to tell him otherwise.

"Very good," Sayid said with phony approval. "Now, I have reports to write, ya Sidi…?"

"Qadir – Farouk Qadir."

The name, 'wise and capable' as it meant, amused him. The boy was anything but when it came to military training. Sayid did not think it necessary to inform him of this, though. "Very well, ya Sidi Qadir. I'll make you an offer, though. To which detail have you been assigned?"

"Reconnaissance."

"Very well. Come with me tomorrow, if you're so curious about the journalist. You can meet him for yourself." Sayid wondered if he was making the right decision, but from the way the boy's features lit up, he figured he was. "I have reports, though. Be off."

All of a sudden, the boy, Farouk, was more than happy to oblige.

–––

After salat-ul-asr had begun and the afternoon prayers were performed, they headed towards the trucks to take them from the base to the old Iranian jail. Farouk tagged along after him, looking like a dog or an excited little boy. Sayid felt like he should take the new recruit to a festival, not to an interrogation session, and the weirdness of it suddenly hit him. It had not struck him before. He had thought nothing of inviting the new recruit along. Now, he thought, I am making the wrong decision. He does not need to see this. There was nothing to be done for it now, though. He had already requested Farouk's assignment to his detail for the day, and changing it, reassigning the fellow, would be more effort than he cared to put into it.

He had to prepare Farouk, then. He watched the young recruit for a long moment. He could tell Farouk had not been away from his home town very long; he sat there without suspicion, studying everything around him as if this were a class trip to a religious site, grinning like an idiot.

"Farouk," Sayid said, trying to make his voice seem as gentle as possible, "I want to tell you a few things before we arrive at the jail."

"By all means, ya 'Ammo. What?"

Am I really a generation older than he, to warrant the title? Or does he just think that I look that old? Farouk's usage of it startled him, but not unpleasantly. He watched the goings-on around them for a long moment, listened to the pieces of conversation. There were a lot of details getting ready today. Something was being done. He did not know what, but he supposed that, had he needed to know, he would have been told. His primary duty was to interrogate the American, and he would not seek further duties, because that could be seen as questioning the rightness of the commanders' choices. He preferred to keep beneath their radar if at all possible, and to simply do his work. He wondered what they thought of him taking Farouk along, if they even cared. They probably did not. The army did not extend courtesies to any of its soldiers, and they would not worry about what Farouk was about to see.

"Call me Sayid, please. What you will see at the jail, Farouk – I must warn you. It may not be pleasant. If it is not something you can handle, I want you to leave the jail cell immediately. Do not feel that you have to stay simply because you think that you are learning something. In interrogation, the goal is to get answers, and we will do a lot to get those answers." He paused, sighing, bringing his glance to meet Farouk's. "We have already done a lot."

The gravity of the situation did not hit the younger man. "Oh, I am sure of it. But he is an American, ya 'Ammo." Farouk paused at that, supplanting, "Sayid," and then adding, "So he deserves whatever we give him, as someone belonging to a country that has not obeyed Islam." The last part of it sounded like Farouk was trying to convince himself more than Sayid.

"There is no religion to torture, Farouk," Sayid countered, his voice low. He could not risk his superiors chancing to hear that, but he knew, as seriously as he said it to the boy, that the boy would not take offense at it and report him for it. "The only belief is, 'I can get answers, and I must find a way.' That has nothing to do with Islam, nothing to do with Iraq, nothing to do with the Husseins. It has everything to do with whom you are, and whom your captive is." He tapped his own cap in indication. "What you have up here, and," a tap on the shirtfront, "in here. If you are of strong character, you can do this and stay unspoiled."

Farouk's eyes were wide. He was listening. He was taking it in, Sayid knew, and he felt a rush of relief at that. "And are you of strong character, Sayid?" he wanted to know, the question obvious but somehow seeming startlingly direct, hitting the interrogator's ears in a strange, almost foreign way. "Are you that much of a model?"

"I try to be," Sayid responded, shaking his head. "But I fail. We all fail. The important thing is to know yourself, and to know that what you do – what you are doing to this other person before you – that those actions are not you, but instead are only the circumstance. In another circumstance, that Mr. Dana and I might be friends," he pointed out, using the English title. No, we wouldn't, he thought. I wouldn't be able to stand him. That was not the point, though.

The truck jolted, shifting them about some in its bed, and he seized the rifle sitting next to him in preparation before letting his hand relax. There was no threat. It was just a rock or rut in the road, nothing more. They were almost at the jail cell, and as he looked past the truck cab, he could see the hulking structure sitting there, looking like something struck from hellish forges. And it is to hell that we go to exercise dhulm in the name of our nation, he thought. It is there that we oppress and commit wrongdoings for our great country. The thoughts felt like heresy, and he shook his head, doing his best to move past them.

Farouk hadn't quite understood. "So why do you get yourself into a circumstance to do these things, Sayid? Why not avoid doing them?"

"Nobody else will do them. Someone must. It is better to have a decent person doing them, even if he is no model, than to have someone doing them who enjoys the process. I hope you understand," Sayid concluded the conversation, swinging off the truck as it parked at the jail, and motioning for Farouk to accompany him.

Even Farouk was quiet as they moved through the jail cell. Again Sayid felt the ghosts all around him, could hear them cry out for mercy, the sound of it wrenching and frightening. He wondered if Farouk heard them too. The boy had his gaze straight ahead, though, as if he was looking forward to meeting the journalist. Sayid realized that Farouk heard nothing and felt nothing.

He gave his charge the keys, and Farouk yanked open the door to the jail cell, revealing Barry Dana once more. The man had grown haggard, tired, had even lost some weight. The newfound absence of a few fingers had doubtless contributed a few pounds to the weight loss. He had not eaten much, and what he had eaten, Sayid saw clearly, he had thrown up.

His face and voice changed. They were not his own now. They did not belong to Sayid the Tikriti anymore. They belonged to Jarrah, the interrogator, and that was not the same person as the first. Sayid compartmentalized, rationalized, like he always did, and then he spoke.

"Mr. Dana, it appears you're not hungry anymore. Surely you haven't decided to become too much of a gourmet to eat our food? I will admit we are not the five-star hotels in Kuwait that you are used to, but you have no doubt learned that we are not as rich as they. At the very least, you could have done us the decency to avoid throwing up the food that we have graciously provided for you."

Farouk moved to a wall, watching, slouching casually. His face was intent, though, and his attention was precisely on the interaction between his superior and the captive journalist.

Dana looked at Sayid, a haunted look on his face. Sayid wondered if they had encountered the same ghosts. "You're going to ask me about the girl again, ain't you? I told you, I don't know nothin' about her other than that she sent a message."

"Give us her name, Mr. Dana. Her name must have been mentioned."

"Al-Jazeera or somethin'. I don't know."

From the wall of the jail cell, Farouk barked out a sarcastic laugh. It seemed he did not realize what Sayid did. Sayid was struck with sudden familiarity, and it wasn't because of the news agency. There was a girl he had known once, with a name close to that. The vague suspicions he had felt when Barry Dana had first mentioned her had grown stronger, and he clenched his teeth, fighting hard not to throw up now himself. The irony was not lost on him, but it did not entertain him, not like Dana's initial capture had entertained him. If only I could remember what the name was exactly and whose name it was, Sayid thought.

Dana caught the uncertain look on his face, and laughed aloud, bitterly. "I guess you don't know either, huh, Mohammed? Just kill me, all right? Get it over with."

Sayid shook his head at that. He had to fight not to look at either of the other men – Dana was watching him like a wounded snake about to strike, and Farouk suddenly had found something even more absorbing about their conversation. "Let's start at the beginning, Mr. Dana. How did you come into possession of the communiqué from this al-Jazeera? And what did you make of it? And if you knew what it said, why in the name of God did you come into Iraq?" He had known the answer to the last question for a while, but the man's blatant stupidity still surprised him. It did each time.

Dana coughed, moving his hand weakly to wipe his mouth on his shirtsleeve. Sayid could see phlegm and blood glisten on the man's sleeve, some of it new, produced by the cough, but not all of it. He began to talk, but there was a fatalism to it that Sayid recognized. For all of his pleadings to save himself earlier, Dana had accepted his fate by now. He knew he would die, just as Sayid had known it.

The difference was, Sayid realized, that Dana had accepted his fate by now. Sayid was not sure if he had come to the same acceptance, and it was an uncertainty that he did not dare probe. After all, he had not been ordered to do so. It was not his place.