Guantanamo Boy (27 page)

“NOOOOO!” Khalid yells, fury rising. The distant sound of footsteps thudding towards him with armfuls of shackles echoes through the clawing noise coming out of his mouth.

“YOU were the one who set up the links. Only YOU had everyone’s real names and locations. That’s why you didn’t answer me yesterday.”

“Shush! How could I answer you yesterday? I didn’t know it was you. Even when you called me cuz I never imagined it was you.” Tariq pauses for a moment as if to remember. “How can you accuse me?”

“Liar,” Khalid mutters.

“What? It wasn’t until that female soldier said you were asking for my name and she said yours was Khalid that I got it. The guards were listening to you going crazy, and you are completely crazy if you really believe I did something wrong. Now they’re—”

“No. No.” The door smashes open. Two guards walk Khalid backwards into the wall. Causing him to float out of himself as he knocks his elbows and head on the concrete. Forcing him into the orange suit, the shackles clicking quickly into place like latches. Then they cart him off to a thunder of rap music which blasts suddenly from the single loudspeaker in the corridor to shut the rest of them up as breakfast’s served.

Shocked by their sudden anger, Khalid struggles as they lead him down the row. One or two men bang their doors and shout to show support, but the noise is lost in the breezy rap beat throbbing in his ears. His head is dragged down by the waist chain and the back of his neck starts aching. A new sharp pain pricks his shoulder. As he shuffles along this white linoleum there seems never to have been a time when he hasn’t felt the whole world is against him. That someone’s out to get him. There’s a plot to slice up his life and destroy it bit by bit because they hate his guts.

The guard beside him is in too much of a hurry, impatiently pushing Khalid outside and across the hard earth. A hot fist on his shoulder, Khalid pauses for a moment to take a breath and stare at the sunlight glancing from the chains like silver bullets across the ground. A light so bright it hypnotizes him for a second.

“We ain’t got all day,” the guard warns.

A hundred small pattering steps later—Khalid counts each one—they arrive at a building he’s been to several times before. A building that smells of hard-boiled eggs.

A door opens. The shackles clink like a handful of coins as they undo them and Khalid looks up to see a room without a bed, or blanket, or water, or toilet, or windows, or lights, or air conditioning. But there is a new black loudspeaker high on the wall that blasts out the same loud, simple rock song over and over again until Khalid screams at the walls for release.

They played that rap music at breakfast ages ago, now it’s rock music before lunch. What new thing are they up to?

But this time it’s not so enjoyable. The unbearably loud, thumping bass hammers his head. Chews his eardrums to pieces. It’s not long before Khalid feels he’s going totally insane. Sitting on the floor with his knees under his chin and hands on his ears, he screams and begs for the noise to stop as it drives him back to that crazy place inside his head. Tariq. White noise. The jinn. Again.

Now and then, over the next few days, Khalid thinks he hears Tariq calling his name. His cousin’s high-pitched voice cuts through him like a knife while he lies there bent double on the bed, head buried in his arms. The throbbing pain in his ear makes him feel like he’s just been thumped by a stray cricket ball.

“For me it was a game. Just a game,” Khalid whimpers, breathing in a whiff of bad breath on the back of his hand when he jams it in his left ear, which is badly damaged from being blasted by the relentless, pounding rock music in the isolation room. The pain spreads down the side of his face to his neck and is the reason why he can’t sit up to eat the pasta shells in cold tomato sauce, which is turning to solid red glue in front of his eyes.

The tray smells of tin for some reason. Not plastic.

Yesterday, after he was brought back to his cell, Lee-Andy gave him an aspirin. She told him the guy in the next cell is called Tariq and apologized for not coming before but she had to work someone else’s shift in another block because the timetable had been marked out wrongly. “Sorry!”

Today he’s in too much pain to care whether Tariq’s calling his name or even if he’s dead or alive. Feeling worse with every passing hour, Khalid hasn’t seen Lee-Andy at all and it’s nearly dinnertime. Where are the bloody aspirins? There’s no point in yelling for help. They’ll just take him back to the isolation room and leave him there again.

Lee-Andy is his only hope.

The dinner trolley comes and goes without Khalid getting up from the bed to take the tray being offered to him. The guard doesn’t care either way and whistles a silly tune as he slides it back on the metal shelf.

“No water?” the trolley man asks before passing on, unanswered. “Your choice, dude!”

Luckily, Lee-Andy hasn’t forgotten Khalid. When she undoes the door to flood his cell with her lovely perfume, he twists round, spaced out, to face her.

“Eee–gad! Back in two seconds!”

Wherever she went, whoever she told, whatever she did, a miracle happens. Two guards rush to help Khalid, who’s clutching his head and groaning on the floor. Helping him up, they take him outside, unshackled for the first time, across the sun-baked concourse to a building he’s never seen before. Their footsteps patter away down the smooth white corridor of a hospital Khalid’s shocked to discover actually exists. Then he’s led through to a small ward smelling of bleach that contains three other men.

One of the men has yellow tubes down his nose that make him gasp and cough every few seconds. Another is covered in wounds that resemble leprosy sores. While the last man, with sunken cheeks and a deathly pallor, is unconscious on the bed with a drip in his arm.

The guards wait beside Khalid, who moans while trying to remain upright on the bed, not daring to lie down. A military doctor, no more than thirty years old, with deep-set dark eyes and a tight mouth, eventually appears with a nurse.

Abruptly, he tips Khalid’s chin to one side and presses a cold instrument into his ear. Then bends down to look without any introduction.

“Infections spread from the hands. You mustn’t put your fingers in your ears. Not that bad. No reason to keep him here.”

He nods to the nurse. “When you’re ready.” And writes a prescription for antibiotics.

“It was that crappy rock song that did my ears in,” Khalid mutters.

The doctor laughs. “You must have been listening to the wrong stuff!”

A smile passes between them for a second. In the midst of which the half-dead man with the drip in his arm sits bolt upright and gazes round the room. Then sighs as if remembering something and crashes back on his pillow. The whole thing reminds Khalid of a scene from a hospital sitcom on TV.

Not long after, Khalid’s given a glass of water and three pills, one of which is a strong painkiller. Strong enough to allow him to feel almost human by the time he lies down on the narrow bed in his cell.

Facing the stark wall, Khalid rubs the side of his face, not daring to touch his ear after what the doctor said. Slowly, he massages the skin front and back, hoping to ease the pain that’s lurking behind the soreness. He can’t help worrying they’ll forget to give him the next dose of painkillers before he goes to sleep.

“Khalid, Khalid.” He hears Tariq call his name but he doesn’t answer.

This time the demons who stalk him have to step back a few paces, because Khalid has something else, apart from his cousin, to think about as he drifts off.

It was the sight of the man in the hospital with yellow tubes forcing food down his nostrils who’d got to him the most—the rattling gasps he made between breaths as he lay dying, blood on the pillow. There was no one beside him to hold his hand. In fact, Khalid noticed, the doctor didn’t even glance at him when he hurried to the door, which makes him think something’s not right here.

Why did they bother to pay attention to his little ear infection? He’d been in far worse states before and never had any help or been taken to the hospital. The only reason that makes sense is there’s more to Lee-Andy’s intervention than he realized. Were they using her to spy on them by putting Tariq in the next cell? Was that the reason for the chocolate bar? To gain his trust? Well, it worked, if only for a while. But now he’s on to her. Tariq would be too, once Khalid found a way to tell him.

Once upon a time, if ever Khalid fell out with a friend, they would just move on one day. Continue chatting as if nothing had happened. And that would be that. Like when the bell went on the last day of term and everyone started rampaging in the corridors. Yelling their heads off. Foaming at the mouth. Pushing each other out of the way to get out first.

They were in second year, Khalid remembers, and he was trapped by the rush on the concrete stairs with Pete, Nico and Holgy, who turned from good friends to screaming morons in five easy strokes by somehow agreeing to push Khalid aggressively down the steep stairs. Laughing and shouting, they became more determined to get him to the bottom in less than three seconds the more Khalid tried to stall them. Tried to stop them by desperately reaching for the railings and elbowing them off. All of them thundering down like a herd of wild elephants.

The floor began rearing up, was right in Khalid’s eyes as, pushing and shoving, the pace increased and Holgy let go suddenly, leaving him to fall the last few steps, where he landed on his shoulder with a crack. Fracturing it, the idiots. The pain was so bad he yelled for Allah in front of everyone.

After the X-ray, they gave Khalid a pink spongy sling which he wore for six whole weeks and he avoided Holgy for a good few days because he was still angry with him. Of course he hadn’t turned any of them in to the principal—they’re mates, aren’t they? Then, when he turned up at the park on Saturday evening, Holgy started chatting about Rochdale’s 2–1 win, and that was the end of it.

Not quite the same problem Khalid has with Tariq, he knows. The small chance he’ll forgive him just because he doesn’t have the energy to continue hating him begins to form in Khalid’s mind. Hadn’t he decided a long time ago to give up hurting and to forgive those who’d hurt him because he couldn’t bear to inflict or suffer any more pain? He’s seen too much of it. And now, the first chance he gets, he turns away and somehow can’t turn back.

“Khalid. Answer me.” Tariq’s irritating voice feels more grating than ever and Khalid is suddenly consumed by fury. Ignoring him, hands on his head, he listens angrily to the sound of Tariq slapping the door with his flip-flops. Then silence. Khalid lies back on the bed and hears Tariq whisper, “They snatched me from my house.”

Khalid sits up but he doesn’t answer.

“I bet it was the same day as you,” Tariq adds.

“What?” Khalid jerks forward in shock as the door rattles open and Lee-Andy barges in with a handful of pills and a glass of water. Her ponytail swinging from side to side.

“How ya feeling now?”

Khalid mumbles a thank-you and gazes at her unblinking hazel eyes for a sign she’s more than an ordinary soldier. He gulps down the pills while staring at her face.

She looks away, glancing at the floor. Did her hand shake just now?

“Guess those will see you through till morning.” Lee-Andy grins.

“Yeah, maybe. Is Masud in the next cell?”

“Masud? No, his name’s still Tariq.”

“Tariq? You sure?” Khalid says.

“Yes, pal.”

“Just checking,” Khalid mutters.

“That’s all?” Unable to return her winning smile, Khalid nods and turns away. Anxious for her to leave so he can talk to his cousin again.

Lee-Andy’s not happy with Khalid’s response and surprises him by leaning her side onto the wall next to him, arms folded, as if they are on the same football team and about to share a Coke after winning a game.

Khalid jumps up. Terrified.

“Whoa!” Lee-Andy jerks forward from the wall, hand raised. “Just being friendly, buddy. No reason to freak out. Just wanted to see if you’re OK.”

Lee-Andy shakes her head to protest her innocence, hurrying shamefaced to the door. “Sorry again.”

Khalid is barely able to breathe straight until she’s gone. Her suffocating perfume in his nose, he listens for the sound of her fast steps padding away before grabbing his heart to hold it in place. Thankful she’s gone. Then, taking a minute to collect himself before pressing his nose to the wire, he speaks to the cousin he’s never met.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes, yes,” Tariq answers quickly. “I’ve been waiting for days for you. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything.”

“They captured us because of the game, don’t say they didn’t,” Khalid says.

“Yes. For them it was a dangerous plot to destroy the West. Someone, I don’t know who it was, told them that. Maybe the new Saudi player. Then they tracked the locations of our computers. They held me in Bagram for over a year. I hope you made up a good story. I convinced them weapons of mass destruction were in my teacher’s cowshed.”

With the sound of approaching footsteps, Tariq pauses. Soon Lee-Andy reappears, waves to him, then nods. Standing with her back towards them. Legs astride, arms folded, taking up as much space between their cells as her slim frame will allow, she obviously means to stay there.