The Guantanamo Bay Redemption

One evening, Gary lay on his couch, munching potato chips and watching Survivor, when men in black masks broke down his door and crashed through his window. They held machine guns to his neck, pulled a hood over his head, handcuffed him, dragged him down the stairs, and threw him in the back of a truck. Gary didn't know why anyone would want to kidnap him. He didn't have enemies. His family had no money for ransom. Obviously, these men wanted to steal his organs and sell them on the black market. They wanted his kidneys.
“Just take one,” Gary pleaded through the musty wool hood. “Just take one and I won't tell anybody.”
They didn't respond to his pleading and begging.
They brought him on a military cargo plane to a compound surrounded by guard towers and fences strung with barbed wire. They dressed him in a polyester orange jumpsuit that clung to his chest in the balmy air. A salty breeze kissed his face; the ocean was near. In the distance beyond the guard towers, there were palm trees, but within the compound there was only gray dirt and concrete sheds.
A guard pushed him along through the dusty yard. Stitched to the shoulders of the guard's olive green uniform were American flag patches bordered with golden thread. For a moment, Gary thought he was saved. Then he realized it was his fellow Americans who had kidnapped him.
“I'm an American citizen,” Gary said.
“Sure you are, Mohammad.”
“My name isn't Mohammad.”
“Do you prefer to be called Moe?”
“My name is Gary.”
“Your name is prisoner two seven nine four eight one eight. Memorize that number. It will not be repeated.”
“Don't I at least get a phone call?”
“That's only when you're under arrest. You're not under arrest. You're an unlawful combatant. You have no rights.”
The guard brought him into a cube-shaped concrete shed smelling of stale sweat. A single bare light bulb hung from the ceiling. A short bald man leaned against a metal folding table in the middle of the room. He smiled at Gary with crooked, yellow teeth. Seated in a metal folding chair against the wall sat a woman scribbling on a clipboard. The short bald man broke a clove from a bulb of garlic, popped it in his mouth, and chewed. He walked up and breathed his garlicky breath in Gary's face. Gary started to protest his innocence, but the man told him to shut up.
“I'm going to ask you some questions and you're going to tell me the answers,” the bald man said. “Question number one—where is Osama bin Laden?”
“In a cave?” Gary said.
The short bald man smiled. “That's fine,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I prefer if you make it more difficult for me. I got good news and bad news for you. The good news is the United States doesn't use torture, so we won't be yanking out your toenails or attaching electrodes to your genitals. The bad news is that we have other ways of getting information out of you.”
The woman with the clipboard cleared her throat.
The man sighed. “Our Red Cross observer,” he said, nodding at the woman with the clipboard. He handed Gary a small white plastic card. “That's a stress card. If at any point, you feel the interrogation is too intense or stressful for you, hold up the stress card, and we'll stop.”
They made Gary stand on one foot as they questioned him. They wanted Osama bin Laden's location. They wanted the names and addresses of other terrorists. He would stay on one foot until he told them what they wanted to know. Gary wasn't allowed to hold his arms out to balance himself, so staying up was difficult.
“Look at you,” the guards mocked. “Standing on one leg like a flamingo. We should get you a pink jumpsuit!”
The woman with the clipboard cleared her throat. “It has to be orange,” she said.
Soon Gary's leg started to ache, so he held up the stress card.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man said.
Gary set his leg back down.
One of the guards left and then returned with a plastic jug full of water. They lay Gary on his back on the metal table, his head hanging off the side.
“Where is Osama bin Laden?” the bald man asked.
“I don't know,” Gary said.
The bald man poured water over Gary's mouth and up his nose. The cold water was refreshing at first, but then it choked him. His lungs tried to suck in air, but only sucked in water. Gary lifted the stress card and waved it around.
“Dagnabbit!” the bald man said, throwing the half-full water jug against the wall.
Gary sat up and coughed out water. A cigarette taste burned his sinuses.
The bald man kicked the plastic jug, which bounced off the concrete wall. “Take him back to his cell,” he said.
The Red Cross woman cleared her throat.
The bald man sighed. “And give him a Koran,” he said.
A guard marched Gary to a narrow corridor with barred cells on each side. Each tiny cell held a swarthy, bearded man in an orange jumpsuit, who stared at a concrete wall.
Gary was thrown in a cell with a thin cot, a metal sink, and a metal toilet. The guard handed him a yellowed paperback Koran. When the cell door slammed shut and the key turned in the lock, Gary's heart pounded.
“Welcome to the neighborhood,” said a heavily accented voice from the cell across the hall.
The large, hairy man introduced himself as Abdullah. He held a Koran and fingered its cover as he spoke. He said he was a former Afghani goat herder turned freedom fighter, who was captured by the Americans. He would be happy to take Gary under his wing.
“You will be my bitch,” Abdullah said. “I'm not gay, but there's no women in this prison, so I take what I can get. Unfortunately we're in separate cells, so I can't touch you. We'll have to talk dirty to each other.”
Gary tried to ignore Abdullah. He sat down on his cot and turned toward the wall, avoiding Abdullah's gaze. There was nothing to do but read the Koran, so he flipped it open to the first page. It was in some strange script that Gary couldn't read—Arabic, he supposed. He couldn't read it, but he could enjoy the flowing black letters that danced like ribbons. He looked at page after page and was so enmeshed in the calligraphy that he didn't notice the guard approach until his cell door swung open.
“Let's go, Mohammad,” the guard said, waving a rifle. “The Red Cross went home for the day. Time for the real interrogation.”
Gary folded the upper corner of the page in the Koran to mark his place, closed the book, and set it on the mattress.
Abdullah screamed in fury and charged the bars of his cell. His nostrils flared like a bull. Spittle dripped from his mouth. His eyes shone hate at Gary.
“What did I do?” Gary said.
“You desecrated the Koran,” Abdullah said. “You must use a bookmark to mark your place.”
“But I don't have a bookmark.”
“You could use your stress card.”
“I need it. I can't go to the interrogation without it.”
Gary opened the Koran, and smoothed out the diagonal line with his finger, but the line didn't disappear.
“Let's go!” the guard shouted.
Gary closed the Koran, set it on his cot, and followed the guard out of the cell. When he passed Abdullah's cell, Abdullah reached through the bars and grabbed Gary's ear.
“As you did to the Koran, so shall be done to you,” Abdullah said, and folded down Gary's ear. Cartilage snapped and a burning pain flooded the ear.
Gary screamed as Abdullah laughed. The guard chuckled to himself.
Following the guard back to the interrogation room, Gary rubbed his wounded ear, which wasn't standing up straight anymore—it flopped. Hopefully the cartilage would grow back.
When Gary reentered the interrogation room, the short bald man held a steel crowbar, rhythmically tapping its hooked end in the palm of his hand. Where the metal table had been now stood a wooden crate the size and shape of a refrigerator turned on its side. A humming noise, like fluorescent lights, came from inside the box. The woman with the clipboard was nowhere to be seen.
“The Red Cross is gone,” the short bald man said, stroking the curved end of the crowbar like a cat's neck. “I have good news for you. This crate just arrived, so you get to be the first to try out our new interrogation method. But I should warn you—this is the first time we're attempting this particular method, so there may be a few bugs.”
The guards chuckled and snorted. “A few bugs,” they said.
The bald man smacked the crowbar against the crate. Whatever was inside went crazy. It buzzed and screamed like a swarm of locusts. The bald man popped a fresh clove of garlic in his mouth and got up close in Gary's face.
“Half a ton of caterpillars,” the bald man said. “Freshly shipped from the Amazon. And you're taking a bath in them.”
Gary's heart pounded and his legs shuddered. He was terrified of insects. When he saw a spider in his kitchen, he called over the neighbor to kill it. Gary pulled the stress card out of his pocket and held it up. It shook in his trembling hand. The guards laughed.
“Your card's been canceled,” the bald man said.
The card slipped from Gay's shaking fingers and fell to the floor.
“All right! I admit it!” Gary screamed. “I'm Osama bin Laden! Please, I'll tell you whatever you want!”
The guards laughed. The bald man stuck the flat end of the crowbar in the crack at the top of the crate and pressed. The wood creaked. The bald man jumped up and then came down with all his weight on the crowbar. The wood cracked in the corner of the crate. A burst of color shot out—green, blue, purple, red. It kept pouring out, filling the room. The guards screamed and covered their faces to protect themselves from the fluttering wings that filled the room. Gary had never seen so many butterflies; it was a beautiful sight. He covered his mouth to stop anything from flying in. One of the guards opened the heavy door and stumbled out. The swarm of butterflies flew out after him. The bald man grabbed a guard by the collar and pulled him close to his face.
“Butterflies!? Why are there butterflies in there?! There's supposed to be caterpillars!”
“I don't know, sir.”
“What do you mean you don't know!!??”
“I ordered caterpillars, sir. They must have sent the wrong box.”
Gary looked down into the crate. It was empty except for a few dead green caterpillars.
“Do I still have to get in?” he asked.
“Take him back to his cell,” the bald man said.
The guard marched Gary back to his cell, past a rainbow of butterflies. As Gary passed by the cells, every bearded face was pressed against cell bars, eyes gazing at the butterflies that flew past. A film of hopeful tears was in each pair of eyes.
The guard locked Gary in his cell, and then went off. Gary glanced into Abdullah's cell. Abdullah sat on the cement floor, ripping pages out of his Koran.
“What are you doing?” Gary said.
“The butterflies,” Abdullah said. “They made me remember how beautiful life is.”
“So you're ripping up your Koran?”
“It's Origami.”
“What?”
“It's the Japanese art of paper folding.”
“I know what Origami is.”
Abdullah folded the Koran pages. He fashioned them into a shiv, a jail-house knife. He stuck this in the lock of his cell door and jiggled it around. Metal gears inside the lock clicked, and the door slid open. Abdullah stepped out of his cell and looked down at Gary. He stuck the shiv into the lock of Gary's cell door and jiggled it. Gary jumped onto his bed. There was no way out. Concrete walls surrounded him on three sides. He snatched up his Koran from the bed next to him—the only weapon he had to defend himself. The lock clicked and the door squealed open.
“Come on,” Abdullah said, motioning with the paper shiv for Gary to follow him. “We're getting out of here.”
Gary, realizing that Abdullah was not planning to kill him, let the Koran slip out of his hand and onto the mattress. He ran after Abdullah. About a dozen other prisoners had Origamied themselves out of their cells. Together, they dashed away.
The guard towers were empty. All of the guards were in the yard, trying to capture the hovering butterflies. They swung giant butterfly nets—the kind used to catch crazy people and cart them off to the lunatic asylum.
The prisoners ran up to the fence. On the other side was about twenty meters of a dirt ground and then palm trees, but the fence separating them from this had barbed wire strung through every rung from top to bottom. There didn't seem to be a way to get past it. Gary glanced over his shoulder. The guards still swung butterfly nets at the butterflies.
The bearded men knelt down and started to scoop up dirt with their bare hands. They dug like rabbits. After only a few minutes, they had dug a shallow channel under the fence, coming out the other side. Although it was only a couple of inches between the bottom of the channel and the barbed wire, the bearded men slithered through without slicing open their backs on the low-hanging barbed wire. They probably had a lot of experience sliding under barbed wire at their terrorist training camps. Gary's childhood summer camp fires and archery classes didn't prepare him for this.
After Abdullah slipped under the fence, Gary was the only one left.
“Hurry up,” Abdullah said.
Gary knelt down to go under the barbed wire. In the dirt, centipedes writhed and squiggled. Gary's stomach wobbled, and he was afraid he would throw up. But they were waiting for him. He gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and closed his mouth tight so no centipedes would crawl in. He pressed his chin in the dirt and pulled himself forward with his elbows. The barbed wire tore through the back of his orange jumpsuit, but it didn't break the skin. Something tickled inside his ear—probably a centipede crawling inside. He ignored it. He forced his rear end down away from the barbs and pulled himself forward.
He was through. Abdullah grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet. Gary felt like he had water in his ear. He tilted his head, tapped his temple, and a centipede fell out.
Just as the men turned to make a dash for the palm trees twenty meters away, a deafening burst of gunfire rang out. Everyone froze. Gary turned his head. On he other side of the fence, the short bald man had a large machine gun trained at them.
“Looky what we got here—a jailbreak.”
Gary raised his shaking hands in the air.
“Get back in here,” the short bald man said, gesturing with the nozzle of the rifle to the burrow underneath the fence.
Gary looked down at the dirt where the centipedes wriggled. A bit of orange fabric hung from a barb at the bottom of the fence. He didn't want to go through there again.
Abdullah whispered to one of the men in their strange guttural language.
“Right now!” the short bald man said. He pointed his rifle at Gary's chest. “You first, Mohammad.”
Abdullah whispered to Gary. “We're going to make a break for it,” he said. “I've been counting his shots. His gun is empty. He fired all six bullets. By the time he reloads, we'll be in those palm trees over there.”
Gary shook his head. That wasn't a six-shooter pointed at them. But before he could say anything, it was too late.
“On the count of three,” Abdullah said. “One, two, three.”
The bearded men ran. Gary ran with them. Gunfire filled the air. Bearded men, riddled with bullets, fell to the ground. Abdullah's ear exploded in a bloody mist. He screamed and collapsed, grabbing where his ear had been a moment ago.
Gary rushed into the palm trees. Bullets hit the trees and chunks of bark and palm fronds rained down on him. The trees soon ended and Gary ran down the beach, tearing off his orange jumpsuit. He jumped naked into the warm water, the salty taste splashing against his lips, and swam away.