Unreliable Narrator

Unreliable Narrator

     BAM! A debilitating flash accompanied with a deafening bang left all those in the house with temporary blindness and ringing ears. The sound of footsteps and voices filled the room as the dust settled. When I finally came to it, I noticed the 5 men in my home. They were yelling in a language I couldn’t understand, and took my wife, my son, and I into a back room where they zip tied our hands behind our backs. This was our food pantry, there was only enough room for my family and me, so the intruders stood in the hall. As the five men in fatigues speak to each other, they motioned down the hall for someone else to enter the room.

     When the sixth man enters the room, I immediately notice he is different from the others, he is shorter, less built, and looks as if he is from Afghanistan; if not definitely from somewhere in the middle east. He paused in the doorway, talking to who seemed to be the leader of the men in the fatigues, and then continued into the pantry towards me. I was sitting on the ground with my wife to my left and my son to my right, this sixth man bent down and looked into my eyes. “These men are American soldiers, you know why they are here. Tell us the information we need to know and we will leave you alone, possibly reward you…” he said in perfect Arabic, not even stumbling over pronunciation once. I quickly replied, “No! No! I know nothing! Please!” but the man just turned and talked to the leader of the group again.

     As the interpreter tells the leader what I said, he is noticeably irritated, he instructs the interpreter what to say and he turns to me, “This is your last chance, tell us what we need to know!” “I know nothing! Please-”, but before I can finish my sentence the leader of the American soldiers kicks me in my head, knocking me out cold.

     After the standard issue American combat boot to the face, the next thing I remembered was waking up in a dark, damp, cold room. The room was about 10ft by 15ft, and entirely made from concrete. There was only one single flickering light bulb, hanging by a slender black wire in the middle of the room. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, and I were completely soaked with water. I tried to move, but only then had I realized I was restrained to a chair. It was a simple, metal chair, with arm rests that held the restraints in place, as well as leg restraints. I looked around the room, and the only things I could distinguish were a table to my right and a large hose on the wall opposite of me. After about an hour, or at least I thought it was an hour, I heard footsteps approaching in the distance.

     The footsteps grew louder, and louder, and louder until there were two men standing in front of my cell door. One of the men I could recognize as being the interpreter I met at my house, and the other I had never seen before but he looked at me as if he was looking through me. The latch clicked and the door swung open, the interpreter approached me, looking into my eyes he said, “So are you going to talk now? We know you know something.” As he said that the second man placed his bag on the table and began unpacking. The interpreter waited a minute for my response, and when he did not receive one he stated, “Abd Al-Aziz Mohammed Kassab, we know who you are. We know that you have some shady associates buddy.” I thought of responding, but I decided to keep quiet, nothing I would say could change their minds. They already have their minds set, in their eyes I’m already guilty. The interpreter, growing more impatient by the second, is handed a folder by the second man in the room. He opens the folder, looking inside with a look that was equal parts curiosity and disgust, then he nodded his head, turned and left my cell.

     Now I was left alone with this mystery man, he circled around my chair, removing things from his bag and placing them on the table outside of my field of vision. He was humming an eerily familiar tune, it sounded familiar and foreign at the same time. When he had finished removing his things from his bag, he paused. He looked at me and in butchered Arabic he murmurs, “Only god can save you now you filthy savage.” This made me exponentially uncomfortable, what was this man going to do to me? What does he think I know? For the first time I think about telling them what I know, but that is not an option.

     As the man circled behind me, I heard him pick something up. He walked around in front of me, and that was when I saw what he had in his hands. He raised the sledge hammer up into the air, and with all the force in his body he brought it down on my foot. Although I saw the blow coming, it didn’t come anywhere close to preparing me for it. As soon as the hammer made contact with my foot metal shattered bone. I tried to keep in my screams, but the excruciating pain forced me to let out a yelp. My torturer seems amused, like he is gaining pleasure from inflicting this awful pain upon me, “Oh wow! Look at that! Now he wants to talk!” I took a deep breath, raised my head, and spit at him. He chuckled, turned back to the table and began humming again. Now that his sick, sadistic nature had been revealed, the melody he hummed bothered me a great deal more.

     “One last chance….” his broken Arabic made me sick, that’s their problem. These Americans come to OUR land, kick down OUR doors, but don’t even take the time to learn OUR language. They believe that they can come here and know what WE want, know how WE want to be ruled, without even asking US. I must have spaced out, because my torturer was on the move again. He approached the table and scratched his head, “Hmmmmm…..” he pondered his decision like his whole life lead up to this point. He reached out for a belt sander, but hesitated and pulled his hand back before deciding decisively to pick up a blow torch and a coat hanger. Giggling as he heated up the hanger to red hot, he asked one more time, “You wanna talk now?” Waiting for my response, he looked me in the eyes, but when I looked back there was nothing. He was cold, expressionless, whatever humanity was in this young man when he was sent here is long gone. His government has made him into what he was sent to fight, a fanatic. He didn’t become a defender of freedom, he became a fanatic of democracy.

     This train of thought was abruptly brought to an end when the red hot coat hanger was plunged deep into my right thigh, it was so hot that it felt almost cold. At this moment I had decided what to do. The torturer continued to heat up the coat hanger, and eventually plunged it back into my leg. I constantly whimpered as I thought of someone to implicate. If I give them information they will let me go, but if I send them after the wrong person, when I get home I will be killed. I had decided, my neighbors, they will be the ones who will suffer for the greater god. They will be the ones who die so our cause can gain ground, they will suffer to push the Americans out.

    Just before the hanger was stabbed into my legs for the third time I exclaimed, “My neighbor…. Haydar Ibrahim… he is Al Qaeda…” The torturer yelled in English out the door to the translator, who came back into my cell. They conversed for a minute before the translator left the room running. The torturer had a smug look on his face as he untied me from the chair, in his horrible Arabic he sneers, “See now wasn’t that easy?” He seems pleased by my information, but he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know the horrible pain he is going to inflict on an innocent man and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t know that I am the one they want. He doesn’t know that they will never win, he doesn’t understand US.