A Sliver of Light Read online

  4. Josh

  After our long drive down the mountain, we arrive at a police station. Inside, I am seated at a desk across from an interrogator. On my left, another man sits in a plastic chair. Beside the desk, there is a two-gallon pot of tea with a single Lipton tag hanging out. Shane and Sarah wait in the backroom, where I sat when they were each interrogated.

  “What is your name?” the interrogator starts off.

  “Joshua Felix,” I lie, using my middle name printed on the passport to disguise my Arabic last name.

  “Your religion?”

  “Christian,” I lie again, hesitant to admit that I’m Jewish.

  “Write it down.”

  He tells me to sign and fingerprint the bottom of each page that I answer.

  The interrogator stops thumbing my passport and says with solemnity, “We have an eyewitness.” He points to the guy in the plastic chair. “He says you were in this town, Mariwan, last week. He says that he met you on the street and asked you where you were from. He says you told him you were French.” The guy in the plastic chair smiles at me.

  We were in Iraqi Kurdistan for the past few days and Syria before that . . . Why is this guy lying?

  “I swear I’m not French. I’m American. You have my passport.”

  “Okay, if you are American,” he says with a straight face, “then spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” I don’t answer. I stare at him in disbelief. I feel foolish for having taken him seriously at all.

  After that, he wraps up the interrogation. They take us back outside and into the SUV. They try to separate me from Shane and Sarah, but Sarah interlocks our arms and yells at them until they relent. No one tells us where we are going.

  All afternoon, they’ve been shuttling us to different buildings. In the medley of officials I have already met in the police stations, I’ve found no potential allies, no one willing to listen. Everyone is lost in the bureaucratic quandary of what to do with these Americans who showed up near a border area.

  In another police station, they feed us dinner, give us some blankets, and put us in a large, empty room. I lie down next to Shane and Sarah, under a mess of wool blankets. My legs feel tired from the long hike this morning. I think about my mother and father and hope they don’t know what is happening to me. I go to sleep, anxious and exhausted.

  5. Shane

  The next day, they wake us at sunrise and we drive. By midday, we arrive at another city and they take us into a nondescript apartment with all the blinds closed. I don’t know where we are. Various people come and interrogate us with little skill, seemingly asking whatever questions come to mind. Different translators come and go. The last one says these men picked him up at the university. He says he doesn’t know what’s going on. He looks frightened.

  After dark, a new man comes. They bring me out of the bedroom that Sarah, Josh, and I have been held in. It’s apparent that they expect me to answer the same stupid questions, through this translator, for the third time today. “I won’t answer anything until you tell me who you are and what is happening to us,” I insist. He leans back in his chair and laces his ringed fingers over his protruding belly. “We are a nongovernmental organization,” he says, grimacing.

  “What. Are. You. Going. To. Do. To. Us?” I ask with rising anger in my voice. Sarah and Josh, apparently hearing my protestations, come out of the room and stand behind me. Someone else materializes and trains a camcorder on us. The man leans forward in his chair, leaning his forearms on the desk between us, and says, “In about one hour, you will know everything.”

  An hour later we’re in a car. Beneath the night sky, the city is smearing slowly past our windows.

  Who are these two men in the front seats? Where are they taking us? They aren’t speaking. The pudgy man in the passenger seat is making the little movements that nervous people do when they try to pretend everything is normal: coughing occasional, fake coughs; adjusting his seating position compulsively; fiddling with the doodads on the dashboard with mock interest. Everyone in the car is trying to prove to one another, and maybe to ourselves, that we aren’t afraid. But Sarah’s hand is growing limp in mine. Something is very wrong.

  “He’s got a gun,” Josh says, startled but calm. “He just put it on the dash.” In a busy roundabout, our car swerves to avoid an oncoming vehicle. The pistol falls from the dash and scuds across the floor. My heart stops and my mouth goes dry. The pudgy man picks it up and sets it on his lap. We turn onto a road that leads out of town. The city lights fade behind us.

  “Where are we going?” Sarah asks in a disarming, honey-sweet voice. “Sssssss!” the pudgy man hisses, turning around to face us and putting his finger to his lips. The headlights of the car trailing us light up his face, revealing his cold, bored eyes. He turns back to face the front. The solitary lights of country houses stream by like little meteorites. The car falls silent again.

  He picks up the gun in his right hand and cocks it three times.

  Sarah’s eyes widen. Her posture stiffens. She leans toward the man in front and, with a note of desperation, says, “Ahmadinejad good!” (thumbs-up!) “Obama bad!” (thumbs-down!) The pistol is resting in his lap. He turns to face us again and holds his two hands out with palms facing each other. “Iran,” he says, nodding his head toward one hand. “America,” he says, lifting the other. “Problem,” he says, stretching out the distance between them. He checks our faces to make sure his message registered, then drops his arms.

  Sarah turns to me and starts. What does she see? Her eyes are penetrating. “Do you think he is going to hurt us?” she asks. I don’t know whether to respond or just stare at her. I am terrified. We walk into our fear together, letting it surround us softly like fog. The immediate prospect of death seems so different than I had imagined it. In my mind, I see us pulling over to the side of the road and leaving the car quietly. My tremulous legs will convey me mechanically over the rocky earth. I will be holding Sarah’s hand and maybe Josh’s too, but I will be mostly gone already, walking flesh with no spirit. We won’t kiss passionately in our final moments before the trigger pull. We won’t scream. We won’t run. We won’t utter fabulous words of defiance as we stare down the gun barrel. We will be like mice, paralyzed by fear, limp in the slack jaw of a cat. We will just stand there. Each of us will fall, one by one, hitting the gravelly earth with a thud.

  Sarah pumps Josh’s and my hands. Her eyes have sudden strength in them, forced yet somehow genuine. “We’re going to be okay, you guys. They are just trying to scare us.” Yes, maybe they are just trying to scare us. This can’t be true . . .

  Where’s Josh? He seems so far away. His head hangs low over his chest and he is staring blankly at the back of the seat. How did I get him into this? I wanted the Middle East to be lovely for him. For years I’ve been trying to get him to visit. I promised him he would love it. I knew he would love it. His eyes squeeze shut as his face floods with emotion and he tries to force it back down. Then they open again. Then they close tight. Maybe we should choke these two in the front seat before we become too resigned to our fate. I could get the pudgy man and Josh could get the driver. Could we drive back to the border? How far is it? Where are we? What about the car behind us?

  Our car turns and its headlights illuminate a giant, red steel door. As soon as we stop, it swings open and we pull inside a dark, empty compound surrounded by ten-foot-high cement brick walls. There are a few gray buildings inside. No one is around but the man who opened the door and another standing on the steps of the main building. Will they do it here, hidden, out of view? We all get out silently. They tell us to bow our heads and they walk us into the empty country jailhouse.

  Once, almost four years ago, I was walking along a set of train tracks in Oakland with Sarah. It was summer, just before dusk, and we were drunk on our new love. We had just discussed the possibilities of our future: Could I settle down someday, have a home? Would she travel, maybe even move to the Middle East? Yes, I could! Yes,
she would! We talked in that delicate way new couples do, not committing to any future plan, just dancing, each of us seeing if it was safe to take things further. As we walked, a train approached slowly from the opposite direction on the adjacent tracks. We stopped, leaned back against the frames of our bikes, and watched the graffiti-covered cars slowly roll by. The world felt perfect. The ker-klunk of the train was perfect. The breeze on my face, perfect. As I watched the groaning mass of metal, I was at once calm and excited. I thought I had given up on finding anyone who could fit into my life, who could handle the constant moving and risk taking. But at that moment, I was sure we could make it work. The train continued to roll past us and as the engine drew farther away, I heard the faint dopplering sound of a whistle. For some reason, I turned my head to the left at the sound of the third or fourth whistle. On our track, a train towered over us like a life-sized still photograph. The next thing I knew, we were off the tracks and the train was smashing by. We were in each other’s arms. Our chests were heaving. Neither of us knew who saved whom and we liked it better that way.

  This—now—feels like that. When the metal jail cell doors clang behind us, I fall into Sarah’s arms with the same sigh of relief and the same exhilaration for being alive as I did then. The prison cell feels like life. Compared to the immediate potential of death, the uncertainty of captivity seems like a gift. Moments start to take shape again. Sarah and I kneel down, and I weep into her shoulder. Something pours out of me—a deep guilt. “I can’t believe I got you into this,” I say, looking into her eyes. “I could never forgive myself if anything happened to you.”

  She grabs my face and, almost sternly, says, “I got my own self into this, Shane. This isn’t your fault. Do you understand me? This is not your fault.” Part of me believes her, but most of me doesn’t.

  Josh sits with his back against the wall. “I want to have kids someday,” he says. Sarah calls him over and the three of us embrace. And the three of us breathe.

  6. Shane

  On our second morning in the jail, Pudgy returns. They are taking us back to Iraq, he says. It’s all over. It must be 6 a.m.

  After about two hours of driving, we pull off for breakfast at a little roadside restaurant tucked into a ravine. The pickup that has been escorting us follows. Mustachioed men in baggy Kurdish pants and cummerbunds plop casually out of the truck bed. They walk slowly to the restaurant, bandoliers hanging loosely around their shoulders, AK-47s dangling casually at their sides. Their ease puts me at ease. Our relief that we are going back to Iraq is palpable. Sarah walks aimlessly and swings her arms high and loose as she gazes up at the rock walls all around us. I meander around, plucking a little purple flower from a bush and pressing it into my book, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, as a souvenir. In the restaurant, Josh snatches a tray of tea from the waiter’s hands and serves it to our guards with a smile, humming Bob Dylan songs under his breath. They bow their heads, slightly but graciously, clearly tickled. We linger over our breakfasts of kebabs and eggs.

  When we leave, we drive on and on, past salt flats and fields of sunflowers. Hours stack upon hours. “Iraq?” I ask Pudgy. “Areh, areh.” He nods, yes, yes, and points up ahead. He does this every time we ask, as if Iraq were perpetually around the corner. Reality is slow to set in. It isn’t until we have been clearly heading east for two hours that one of us finally announces that we are driving to Tehran. At one point Pudgy turns to us and holds out his palm as if balancing something delicately on it. He looks at his hand and says “Obama” as if the name were perched there. Then he blows across it—poof!—as if scattering dandelion seeds. That is his explanation for what’s happening to us. For the rest of the drive, we oscillate back and forth between a heavy silence and discussing what to do if we’re separated. If they pull us apart, we decide we will hunger-strike until we are reunited.

  By midday we’re in Tehran, where we’re transferred to the custody of burly plainclothes men. They put us in a white van with tinted windows, blindfold us, and drive us for about fifteen minutes. When we stop, we are taken into a building and we sit in chairs, clutching one another’s hands. Leather shoes click past. Black chadors wisp into the thin line of vision underneath my blindfold. We are made to dress in light blue fatigues and pose for mug shots, holding boards with numbers on them. The only thing keeping me from falling deep into my own fear is a strong desire to comfort Sarah. She keeps searching for reassurance that we’re going to be okay. She is trembling slightly, tightly gripping Josh’s and my hands.

  A man tells us to go with him. We follow, hand in hand, in and out of doors and hallways, still blindfolded. Now I am trembling. Suddenly, after turning a corner, they start pulling at Josh. They’ve tried to separate us from him several times in the last few days, but now they are serious. I hold on to him tightly, letting my body be pumped with each of their tugs. Someone twists my other arm behind my back and I shout like an animal in pain. My brain is skipping tracks, but my body is still groping automatically. It feels sort of like when you fall off your bike, or the split second between getting punched in the face and finding yourself on the ground, when everything is black and jumbling. Amidst everything, I hear Sarah yelling, “No! Noooo!” repeatedly.

  Then Josh lets go of me. “I’m going,” he says. “I’m going.” I feel the instant relief that comes with submission, then the loss. He floats swiftly away in the dark sea of bodies, and Sarah and I are immediately pushed upstairs. As we climb the stairs, Sarah is bent over, crying and shouting, “Josh! They took Josh!”

  “It’s okay, Sarah,” I say stupidly. What else is there to say? “It’s going to be okay.”

  Upstairs, they push Sarah into a cell. “Let me stay with my husband!” We aren’t married, but she’s hoping they’ll keep us together if they think we are. “Please! Please!” she begs. “Plea—” The heavy, metallic sound of a closing door cuts off her voice.

  I enter the cell across from hers submissively. The door closes. I let my back fall against the wall. Slowly, I slide down to the floor and let the weight of my head fall onto my knees. Everything is drowned in silence so thick and black that it feels like its own entity. It fills the room and squeezes up against me.

  I take off my blindfold and look around. I see the carpet, a tightly knit bluish gray. I see the marble-tiled walls, gray with threads of black knotted throughout. I see the thick steel door with its little food slot and window, both sealed with their own metal doors. I see the thin plastic door that leads to the little bathroom with the little toilet, the little sink, and the snaking bidet. I am irrevocably present. It is just me and these things. Ten feet off the ground, the sun spills in through the grated windows like orange daggers. The fans in their ducts whir. The world turns with a slow groan.

  Sarah’s muffled sobs pulse nearby. The bottom has fallen out of whatever vitality was inside me. We lost. Sarah and Josh are gone. All they left me was Sarah’s sobbing. I am grateful to them for leaving me at least that. No, I hate them for leaving me with that.

  7. Josh

  My body is theirs. My sandals clap loudly on the floor as I try to catch my momentum and keep my balance. After every few steps, they spin me in circles. My mind tries desperately to remember the way back.

  The door shuts behind me. The clanging metal reverberates until silence resumes. I stand at the door, distraught and disoriented. I should roar like a lion; I should cry like a baby. Now is the time to blaspheme the world, but I would be faking it. Whatever script, whatever drama I thought I was in, ends now. Whatever stage I thought I was on is now empty. The director left and so did the audience.

  Slowly, as if I were sick, I dodder to the corner of my cell and take a seat on the carpet. There is nothing in my eight-by-twelve-foot cell: no mattress, no chair, nothing—just a room, empty except for three wool blankets, with a bathroom attached. My prison uniform blends in with the blue marble wall behind me, and the tight blue carpet below. Shane and Sarah are probably sulking in the corners of their cel
ls too. We agreed we’d hunger-strike if we were split up. Now I don’t feel defiant. I just feel lost.

  Sarah’s glasses are in my breast pocket. She gave them to me to hold for her when they made us wear blindfolds. She didn’t have pockets in her prison uniform. I empty my other pockets: lip balm from the hike and a wafer wrapper—the remnant of my measly lunch.

  A creeping sense of aloneness takes root. I don’t know what I’ll do in here for the rest of the day. Beyond my bewilderment, I fear the encroaching emptiness. I sense the hovering blankness—a zone of mindlessness that looms over my psyche and lives in the silence of my cell.

  8. Shane

  The day after our arrival, men remove me from my cell. They seat me in a chair-desk combo—the kind used in high schools—facing the corner of a room. I’m blindfolded. I don’t know where I am, except that it is in or near Tehran. I’m convinced we’re in an unassuming building in some alley—a kind of secret prison. We must be in an outlying neighborhood. Why else would I hear birds chirping?

  I can hear a group of men whispering behind me. Chairs are shuffling. The sweet pungency of dried leaves hangs in the air. My oversized blue prison shirt exposes my chest. The air is cool, but not sharp.

  Last night, Sarah and I discovered we could whisper to each other in short bursts through the grates on the bottom of our doors when no one is nearby. Neither of us has heard from Josh since yesterday. We haven’t eaten since we arrived.

  Things are moving forward. We are going to clear this up. They will ask me questions and they’ll understand they made a huge mistake. They don’t want an international scandal. They are figuring out how to ease out gracefully.