The Sleeper (13 page)

I was dead.

Drifting.

Nowhere.

I was lost—when the house began to build itself.

I saw a rolling meadow above a pond, and I saw the foundation start to outline itself in the blowing grass. There were no shovels or backhoes, yet there it was, tracing its way into the ground where a deep, cool cellar appeared, with solid walls of cut rock. What kind of house could I build in a place like that, on a foundation like that? I saw the shape of it: two stories with a porch that wrapped around three sides of the building, and half-moon dormer windows in the roof. It was covered in white clapboard. The windows were tall and those that looked out on the porch reached almost to the floor. There was a fire-place in the living room, and a big kitchen where you could eat around a wooden table. But there were no people here. The house was not finished. I had to work to make it real. I had to hammer in every nail on every joist. I had to lay every floor-board and every shingle. That would be the only way to finish the house. And then we would see—then we would see who would come to live in it.

“You've been with us seven weeks.” The man behind the steel desk glanced over the file in front of him, then looked up at me with all the interest of an Orkin man looking at another termite. His face was square and his head shaved into an old-style crew cut, the frames of his glasses were thick and black. His BDUs bore no insignia, but there was a thick white line on his right ring-finger. Probably he wore a Naval Academy ring. But he wouldn't want me to know that.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, sure.”

“Yes.” He flipped back a page in the file. “Seven weeks and one day.”

“Lost track,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And—”

“Yes?”

“Why am I here?”

“Above my pay grade,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“The medical report says you are in good condition.”

I nodded.

“Do you have any physical complaints?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Why am I here?”

“I told you, that's above my pay grade.”

“Why haven't I—been”—the words came slow for lack of practice—“been—questioned?”

The guy just looked at me with that expression that guys with security clearances love to cultivate. Not a frown and not a smile, but not quite blank either, as if the question had never been asked at all. He smelled like soap, I thought, like those little bars you get in a cheap motel.

“I am an—American citizen,” I said.

“Yes, well, we hear that a lot.”

“You know.”

“Do I?”

“You know my name—Kurt Kurtovic, and that I am—U.S. Army Ranger. Panama. Gulf War. In your file.”

That look again.

I asked, “What about ships?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“What about goddamn
ships
?”

“I can tell you we have detained you for your own protection.”

“I see,” I said. “I—can I see somebody?” I was trying to force myself to speak in full sentences.

“No.”

“Griffin?”

“Who?”

“Somebody.”

“You're not making sense. You want to see a lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“Impossible. You are not under arrest.”

There didn't really seem to be anything else to say. “What—what now?”

“You're leaving in a few minutes.”

“Back to—States?”

“Let's not play twenty questions.”

I sat back and looked at my handcuffs and shackles, my maximum security smock with the Velcro on the sides so they could leave the belly chain on all the time, and my paper slippers. “Will I—will I have time to pack?”

The guy didn't smile. “You're very controlled,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “I have—a—job—to—do.”

“What's that?”

“My country—expects me—to move farther—uh, farther—faster and fight harder,” I said, repeating the words of the Ranger Creed that was my faith before I found God, that had come back to me in the hole.

“Whatever,” he said, closing the folder.

I looked at him and for just a second his square face was consumed with fire. “Whatever,” I said.

 

To the orange jumpsuit and the blacked-out goggles, the earphones, and the chains, they now added mittens and a little cap. They'd taken away sight and sound. Now touch. But the more my senses were taken, the more I absorbed whatever sensation was left. Shuffling shackled, shuffling mindless, suddenly a wave of feelings hit me. The earphones didn't block everything, they just muffled it, and a wall of sounds came at me so loud that I could feel them with my whole body. I felt the deep shock of jet engines. I felt the heat of the sun burning through the cloth that covered my body; the wet, heavy air filling my lungs. And the smells—the smells of fuel and of burned rubber, of sweat and of the sea—rushed at me from every direction. All those weeks in the ionized air of the cell, I smelled next to nothing. Now I was catching scents like a bird dog in a cornfield. And one of them was—was—so fresh and so pretty. And so out of place. I stopped my shuffle for a second and surprised the two guards who held my arms. What was the smell? I turned my head trying to catch it again. There. Just for a second when I turned my head to the right—I couldn't tell you what was in it, but I could tell you what it was: the perfume Betsy used to use. The little bottle had two little doves on the top. Her grandmother gave it to her and she wore it when we got married, and sometimes she wore it when we made love. And there was no way I could smell it without thinking of her. The guard's hand pushed my head back and the hand had the smell on it. Now something else was being put on my face. A paper mask like a painter's mask. But I could still smell the perfume. And Betsy's face came to me out of the shadows and filled my mind and I started laughing, and I couldn't stop. This guard—must be a woman sailor—this guard was wearing Betsy's perfume. How crazy was that? I kept laughing and laughing as they chained me inside the chopper.

On the long flight to land, and then on board another plane, which flew so long that I slept and woke and slept and woke four times, I remembered the smell and laughed until the rubber of the goggle rims and then the paper of the mask were damp with sweat and tears.

 

The airplane rolled to a stop and we were led down the ramp onto solid land and into the heat of the sun. I was shuffled onto some kind of bus, then off. There were other prisoners around me now. Getting on and off these vehicles, we stumbled into each other like blind mice in an old cartoon. Somebody moved my cuffs from front to back of the belly chain and forced me to get down on my knees on gravel. I settled back and waited. If they'd wanted to kill me, I was in just the right position for a bullet to the back of the head. But I knew the U.S. military well enough to know they hadn't brought me all this way to kill me. At least not like that. Even so, I flinched when somebody touched my shaved scalp.

They were just taking off the earphones. “Name,” said a deep Southern accent.

“Kurt Kurtovic.”

“Nationality.”

I said nothing. I didn't know where I was or who was listening.

“Up! Get up!”

I tried, but the only way to get up if you're shackled and chained is to rock back and balance a second to steady yourself, then stand. The gravel slipped under my feet and I went down on my side. The blacked-out goggles shifted on my face and I saw the orange suits of two other prisoners nearby on their knees, and the legs of guards in BDUs. And that was the first glimpse I got of the cage that was going to be my home.

“A little help?” said the Southern voice.

Hands grabbed me and lifted me up, shuffling me forward. Through that sliver of an opening between my face and the shifted goggles I saw chain-link fencing and steel posts, a cage with doors like a kennel. I couldn't think what this would be. The door opened. No dogs inside. I was inside. The chains came off and I could move. The goggles came off and I could see. The guards closed the door.

There were a lot of cages: at least ten right here in two rows of five, back to back, and another set beyond that and another beyond that. There were no walls. Everything was wire, so that when you looked around, you could get a pretty good view of what was happening just about everywhere. Just like in a kennel.

But, my God, the air. It was late afternoon and there was a breeze blowing. A sea breeze. I peeled the orange overalls off my arms and shoulders to let the air move across my bare skin. I stepped back to the back of my cage and sat down on the cool cement with my fingers laced into the chain-link fence above my head. It felt so good to stretch. It felt so good to have breath from the open sky. Life was rushing suddenly back into me in ways I didn't dare think it could. My mind began to shed its web of dreams like it was coming out of a cocoon.

An officer stalked down the walkway in front of the cages, a Marine colonel who looked like he spent a lot of time on the weight bench. He surveyed the cells, reviewing the enemy troops. Some of the men behind the wire looked at him, others paid no attention at all. No one shouted. No one shook the wire. It was like all the prisoners were just waking up from a long sleep but didn't know yet if they could move, or if words could come from their throats. The only sounds were of the seagulls overhead, the far-off rumble of an airplane engine, and the crunch of gravel beneath the colonel's boots. I stayed back at the back of my run.

“You are now at the United States Naval Station at Guantánamo, Cuba,” said the Marine colonel. “You've been brought here because of your affiliation with terrorist organizations that attacked the American people. The United States is now at war, and you will be held here until the end of that war. You will be treated humanely, but you will be interrogated and you are expected to cooperate. In a few minutes, you will be supplied with basic necessities. Captain Jackson will inform you of the camp routine.” The colonel turned and left. Captain Jackson saluted and watched him go. And we watched Captain Jackson, whose face was sharp and narrow and mean, like some Georgia cracker you'd meet at an all-night truck stop, and who looked too old for his rank.

Gitmo, I thought to myself. This is Gitmo! This is fucking Cuba! I tried to look through the walls of interlaced wire to see how many others were here. Was Nureddin somewhere nearby in another cage? Was Abu Zubayr here, whatever was left of him? Did any of his men survive? What about Al-Shami? He seemed to be everywhere else.
Everywhere.
Why not here? But in the cages around me everyone was a stranger. To my right was a tall, black-skinned man with a sharp Arab nose. He reminded me of a Sudanese I used to know in the Bosnia camps, but this wasn't the same guy. His left eye was closed and the skin around it scarred. So many one-eyes in the muj, their sight lost to shrapnel and their own homemade bombs. The right eye was moving, staring, without stopping to focus on anything.

“Listen up!” shouted Captain Jackson. The one-eyed Sudanese turned his back on him and started pacing off the space in his cage: the length was two and a half of his strides, the width was less than two.

To my left was a guy who could have been from Pakistan or India. He had very dark skin and black eyes, and he squatted in the corner of his cage like a frog ready to jump, but he was deadly still. I looked at his eyes. His mind was far, far away.

“Listen up!” the cracker captain repeated, pulling a little spiral notebook out of his pocket. “Each of you will receive the following items,” he said, and started to read. “'Clothing: two prison overalls orange color. That includes what you have on. One pair of rubber sandals; what we call flip-flops. For sleeping: one foam mat, standard issue. We get the same thing in the field, so I don't want to hear nothing about that. One blanket. Yeah. Personal hygiene: soap, a bottle of shampoo, and a tube of toothpaste. You are not going to get toothbrushes. Just use your fingers.”

The Sudanese was still measuring his cell, the Squatter was still ready to jump to some far-off place.

“You will have two buckets,” said Captain Jackson. “One is for water, which we will fill several times a day. The other is for waste. You do your necessaries in it, and it will be emptied twice a day. Now, this is important: I understand some of you use water to clean your posteriors. Well, you do what you like. But do not
repeat
do not use that water from that bucket for drinking purposes. You will also be given a canteen. Use that for your drinking purposes if you want. And there will be bottled water with meals. And”—he consulted his notebook—“there should be enough water for washing up before your prayers, or whatever it is you need to do. And speaking of prayers, we have a Navy chaplain who is a Muslim and who will be—” Captain Jackson turned to a sergeant and looked at him. The sergeant shook his head. “—who will be speaking to you later today or tomorrow.” He looked around to see if there was any reaction, but there wasn't. He nodded like that meant something. “You will get a wash cloth and two towels. If you want to, you can use one of those towels as your prayer rug.” He nodded at his notebook. “And we will also be distributing Ko-rans and I'm pleased to say there are Bibles, too, for anyone who wants to discover the Gospel according to Jesus Christ.” He flipped the notebook closed and put it back in his pocket. “Any questions? Fine then. Some food will be distributed in about twenty minutes.” Just as he started to walk away, Jackson noticed me. He walked over close to my cage door and stared into my eyes, which were just about the same freezer-blue as his. “Where the hell are you from?”

There was nothing I was going to say. Not to him, not then, and not in front of anybody in any of these cages. I just stared straight into him. Then he turned away, followed by the sergeant and a couple of privates.

The food came in a clear plastic bag full of smaller plastic bags: barbecued potato chips, a pack of peanuts, a couple of cereal bars; there was a box of sugar-frosted cornflakes and there was a little pack of raisins. It was like I had America in my hands—my old America from when I was a kid lying on the sofa munching in front of the tube. There were Tony the Tiger and Mr. Peanut, and that was the Sun Maid, who smiled at me from the plastic, her hair covered by a red bonnet and dark locks falling over her shoulders, her arms reaching out over a big basket of grapes. She looked different than I remembered her. Her skin was lighter. Why was that? Who was this Sun Maid who'd never seen the sun?