The Faithful Spy

“Allah,” he said. “Allah.” He felt the stick of a needle in his leg. A silver peace spread to his brain and his fear vanished. Then the blackness overtook him. The nightmare ended. b u t w h e n h e woke he found that it hadn’t ended after all. He opened his eyes and saw nothing, nothing but the most profound blackness possible. He seemed to be swimming inside it, swimming in a sea of blackness. The hood. He must still be wearing the hood. He tried to pull it off. and realized his hands were locked behind his back. With that thought his shoulders began to ache. His legs too, for his ankles were manacled to the floor. And yet his flabby buttocks were exposed to the cool air. The chair he was on had no seat, and his pants had been cut off. Also, oddly, it felt as if a tiny alligator clip was attached to his right index finger, and a Velcro strap to his left ankle. He tried to rub them off but found he couldn’t. And he was thirsty. He licked his dry lips with his dry tongue.

“Salaam alaikum,” he said, his voice a rasp. No answer. He tried again, more loudly this time. “Alaikum salaam. Hello.” And now a real shout: “Allahu akbar.” But no one answered, and Farouk suddenly realized he could hear nothing at all. Not a sound. Not the rush of the wind or the bark of a dog or the hum of a car’s engine. No inside sounds either, like pipes or air conditioning. His ears seemed to have been stuffed with cotton, only they weren’t.

Could the Americans have forgotten him here, wherever here was? Would he die of thirst?

Farouk pulled himself back. He needed to stay focused. I’m a scientist, he thought. I must use my mind. My name is Farouk Khan. The kafirs have taken me prisoner. How long ago? I don’t know. Where am I? I don’t know. They drugged me, put me to sleep, moved me somewhere. Fine. He breathed in and out, and realized that someone had cut a hole in the mask so he could breathe more easily. Good. Why are they doing this to me? They want to know about the Geiger counter. Of course. That beast Zayd had been right. He should have left it in the storeroom, though the Americans would have found it anyway.

He tried to relax. He wasn’t an illiterate peasant. He knew the Americans had rules. They could make him wear this hood, but they couldn’t hurt him too much. They would ask him their questions, and then would put him on a plane to Guantánamo. If they asked him about the Geiger counter, he would say. he would say that he didn’t even know what it was. He should make up a name. A Shia name would be best. Hussein, then. He would call himself Hussein. As long as he didn’t tell them who he was or what he was doing in Iraq, he would be fine.

The Americans had rules. He just needed to stay calm. b u t s t ay i n g c a l m got harder as the seconds stretched into hours. He thought of his wife, Zeena, of his sons and daughters, of the dirty concrete floors of the lab where he had worked, of the black stone of the Kaaba, which he had never seen except in photographs. Of the glorious moment when he had met Sheikh bin Laden, of Zayd picking his nose as they waited for the peasants to arrive with their yellowcake. Of the lead box that he had bought from Dmitri, and the havoc it would wreak. He smiled at that memory. But always his thirst distracted him, pulled him back to this empty black room. And his bladder had grown uncomfortably full. And what if he needed to empty his bowels? Was that why they had cut open his pants?

“Swine,” he said aloud. “Kafirs. My name is Hussein. Hussein Ali.” His voice rose. “Let me go!” He repeated himself a dozen times, a hundred times, until his voice cracked and crumbled and his face flushed under his hood.

Someone had to respond. But no one did.

.

p e r h a p s t h e a m e r i c a n s really had forgotten him. No, that was impossible. This was a game. They wanted to scare him. But Allah would protect him.

And so he waited, fighting his fear, licking his dry lips and counting slowly to one thousand and back down again. But his dread deepened in the silence, along with his thirst.

“Please,” he said quietly. “Please.”

later. he didn’t know how much later, couldn’t imagine, and suddenly a torrent of water drenched him. Freezing water, painfully cold, stinging him through his hood and his clothes. So cold. Yet Farouk turned up his head to drink, thankful even for this, for any sign that they knew he was here.

“Allahu akbar,” he mumbled. He had asked and Allah had provided. He drank and drank even after he was full, afraid that the water might not come again.

But the cold flow kept coming, and deliverance quickly turned to a new kind of misery. He squirmed left and right, but he couldn’t escape the stream. The water saturated his clothes until they couldn’t hold another drop, then soaked his skin. Water trickled along his stomach, down his legs, off his feet. He could feel it pool on the floor and rise to his ankles.