13
The sacking was pulled off my head. I was sitting on a chair and my hands were cuffed behind my back. I looked down at my shirt, at the two little rips where the Taser barbs had struck. I looked around. I was in your typical interrogation room and going by the insignia, I was looking at a US Army major.
He was glaring at me.
I glared back. I was Taliban, wasn’t I?
He suddenly started jabbering away at me in some harsh Asian-sounding language. What the…? It wasn’t anything I spoke so I was lost. He stopped then started again, louder this time. Nope, sorry mate, no idea, I thought.
Suddenly the Major threw his hands in the air in disgust and stood up.
‘Dumb haji doesn’t even understand Pashto. OK, give the ANA guys a call. He’s all theirs.’
It looked like they were washing their hands of me and I was on my way to Gary Swallow’s fabled madhouse. He rattled more gobbledegook at me.
A voice from behind me. ‘Whatchoo sayin’ Sir?’
‘I’m telling him that we didn’t strip-search as we are now preevented from doing so, so as not to offend their cultural sensitivities.’
He looked disgusted and bored at the same time. He glanced at the Specialist who’d zapped me.
‘Can you get me some coffee. Proper coffee. And Ruth? Contact INSCOM on-site and tell them I want to know why the power grids have been dropping off in the area. We can’t have power-outages on base. Especially at the detention centre. Kabul’s one thing, but not here.’
‘Sir.’ She saluted and left, just as two ANA guys walked in and clocked me and my dishevelled state. They spoke to the Major in that language. He nodded.
They grabbed me by the arms and marched me out into the desert night. I immediately started coughing on the outside’s miasma of acrid shit, dust and diesel fumes. I was flung unceremoniously into the back of their Hummer, and off we sped across the airbase. I wriggled about until I could see out of the window. I was trying to commit as much to memory as possible. Good grief, this place was
huge
. Lines of planes of every description. Combat planes, transport planes. Squadrons of fully bombed - up F16s, A10s, ranks of C130s, Transalls. A solitary grey Air Truck. Hangars, vehicles, lights, buildings. We drove along a runway past a sign saying “Welcome to the home of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing”. More hangars. Fences with five rolls of razor wire apiece. After some time, we stopped in front of a set of hangars lit as harshly as a baseball stadium and another sign, in squiggle and also in English that read “Parwan Detention Facility/ BTIF”.
I was dragged out and up to the main doors. They were talking at me in that strange language again. In we went.
They put me up against a wall and took my photograph and then me and three guys struggled manfully with a fingerprint kit and a handheld retina-scanning device. The software crashed halfway through my left eye and they gave up. I was handed an orange jumpsuit with a stencilled number on the back and it was made clear by sign language that I should put it on over my clothes. I did. It was too sizes too large so that didn’t prove a problem. I was then marched down a corridor with cinderblock bunkers on either side, another set of doors were unlocked and opened, and they pushed me through. To a scene of utter chaos. The doors slammed behind me and I took a look at my new lodgings.
I had never imagined anything like this.
I walked into a combination of a circus and a day at Walthamstow dog track. It was a vast hangar, full of cages and corridors, with men hanging out of every door. The noise was indescribable. The smell reminded me of prison back home- disinfectant, unwashed men, bad cooking. I veered right, and meandered along the opened holding pen doors. An old insurgent instinct told me that if I wandered long enough among the prisoners, I would hear something. And within two minutes I was proved correct. I heard English, and an accent you just couldn’t mistake. Brummie. I looked to my right.
A man with a fist-length beard was having a stand-off with two other men. He was shouting at them but they weren’t deterred in their efforts to get something from him. ‘Geroff it, this is moi jacket and oi’m ‘avin’ it!’
I walked over and stood by him. He caught my eye.
‘New here?’
‘Yep. Name’s Rizwan. Salaam Aleykuum.’
He laughed as he cottoned on to the English. ‘Waleykum Salaam, akhi. Name’s Mo. So you’re a Brit Salafi too? You see, that’s the kind of stuff that landed me in ‘ere.’
We both cracked up. The nearest Taleb made another grab for the denim jacket that Mo was arguing about. I socked the Taleb in the jaw and he stumbled back into two guys sitting down. And then the biggest fight broke out around us. We went in swinging back to back. A massive roar went up and every cellblock piled in. Suddenly a klaxon sounded and in walked another US Major and two ANA top brass. We all stopped punching each other for a bit. I stood and got my Taliban opposite number to his feet and we brushed each other down and turned to see what the staff had to say. Mo sidled up next to me and murmured ‘Ere we go. Looks like Ze Chermans are annoyed.’
This major, on closer inspection of his tabs, turned out to be US Air Force. He looked
really
pissed off. All three brass were wearing safety goggles. I poked Mo and nodded at them.
‘Oh yeah, the goggles. Some of our long-termers in here like to throw their shit at them.’
‘Yuck.’
‘Yeah.’
The major drew himself to his full height and started addressing us in English. One of the ANA officers next to him started translating. Obviously me and Mo could get the original draft and it was hilarious and surreal.
The major was declaiming, ‘Attention enemy combatants. Yes that means you guys. We have just undertaken an inventory of this site’s materiel affects and we have found the following items to be missing.’
He paused then resumed reading.
‘6,000 bed boards. 111 pillow cases. 52 twenty-man tables, 10 single tables, 34 chairs, 76 benches, 1,212 bed bolsters, 1,219 knives, 478 spoons, 582 forks, 69 lamps, 1,000 feet of electric wire, three sets of discotheque lights, 1,200 feet of rope. 49 blankets. Ten sewing machines. Three Humvee batteries. And 3,400 industrial-size cans of Heinz beans!’
He stopped and glared at us over the clipboard.
‘Don’t think I don’t know you guys are up to something! And don’t be crying to Amnesty International when I shut your little playhouse down!’
He turned and stalked out. The ANA officer finished translating and a ripple of giggles went round the vast hangar.
The Taliban lad next to me said ‘Da lombrha Shahzadgai’ under his breath and laughed.
I looked at him. ‘What was that?’
Mo nudged me. ‘He said “The Fox Princess”’.
I did a double take and he registered my confused and shocked look. ‘Yep. This is the talk. Up at the far north end of the site, in the women’s section, there’s a crazy girl called the Fox Princess, and they say she’s planning a prison break. Although that’s debatable. Could be the rumour mill on overdrive.’
I sat down on a bench. Oh, my, God. I looked to the ceiling lights and laughed. Could it be?
Mo glanced me up and down again. ‘So our new boy gets an orange jumpsuit. You jammy get. Thought they’d run out. They’re prized in here, makes people think they’ve been in Gitmo.’
I looked back at him. ‘Mo. If you can get me into the far north end where the crazy people are, it’s all yours.’
He grinned. ‘My man! You’re on.’
14
The next morning Mo, now proudly wearing my orange jumpsuit, took me for a guided tour round our section of the facility. He’d winked at me earlier and I’d inferred that he had a contact somewhere here. A fixer, maybe.
We inspected the classrooms and the library, chatted to some inmates in the prison garden and then Mo haggled some cigarettes from a guard on the gate. Our wanderings took us back to the chow hall and we got served some unidentifiable vegetable slop and some crusty bread. The afternoon passed. Mo took me to the infirmary and I got my dressing changed. The bullet scar and livid rainbow bruising got a quizzical look from the nurse in charge, and I got a top-up shot of antibiotics. We did a walk of the razor-wired inner perimeter and ended up at the basketball court, where the southern Taliban guys were having a bounce-about against a team of what I was informed were common thieves from Kabul’s suburb of Shar-e Naw.
The ball lazily smacked off the concrete and rattled off the wire fences. There were narrow walkways and serried rolls of concertina wire for as far as I could see in all directions. Mo fished out some fags and lit two. We smoked and watched the game. Mo spoke. ‘Hope your TB jab is up date, mate. It’s rife in here. That’s one thing me and you have got going for us, being Brits an’ all.’
After an hour or so, there was a commotion at the blockhouse nearby. A guard snapped to attention and out came a big old bearded senior officer. Without any preamble he came and sat next to me and Mo. Mo stared straight ahead, suddenly deeply engrossed in the match.
I studied the new arrival. Nicely-shaped beret. Mirror shades. Trimmed grey beard. Smart, pressed, digital-pattern fatigues.
He spoke in perfect English. ‘You are Rizwan?’
‘I am.’
He removed the shades, turned and smiled. ‘I am General Farukh, commander of Parwan Detention Facility.’
Holy
shit
.
He continued. ‘Mo tells me you have some crazy urge to get into the northern hangar to find some even crazier girl, is that correct?’
I nodded.
Everyone was quiet for a while. Someone in the court scored a slam-dunk and there was a cheer from the bleachers.
‘This crazy girl of yours has already killed one of my deputy commanders. You knew this?’
‘I did not.’
‘Yes. Mind you, he was an asshole.’
We all laughed.
‘Let me tell you something about my command here, Rizwan. On the 10th of this month, the US military officially handed over control of this prison and its 3,082 occupants to me. And yet - when I arrive for work, the Americans on the perimeter take my phone from me. If I want to bring in a prisoner, I need American permission. That can take days. In fact for captured Pakistani or foreign national fighters, it’s almost impossible, and therefore I’m surprised you are here. When I conduct interviews, two American “advisors” sit with me. It is… a nonsense.’
He seemed to be weighing things up. Finally he spoke. ‘Mo. Please could you take Rizwan to the northern guardhouse between eight and ten tonight. And Rizwan. Two things. First. The Americans found some parachutes south of here in a dry culvert earlier today. It’s only a matter of time before they join the dots. Second. Tell your girl I know she is tunnelling, and to stop it. Just because the Taliban managed it at Sarpoza last year doesn’t mean she can try. That is all. Good luck.’
He then gave a letter to Mo and left.
Mo handed the letter to me. It was a handwritten note, signed at the bottom. I couldn’t read the writing. I looked at Mo. He beamed at me. ‘Don’t laugh. He knows my mother’s side of the family.’
15
At 8.30 that night Mo walked me down the ubiquitous high fencelines to the northern guardhouse. There was the smell of diesel and the hum of a generator. Two guards sat on plastic garden chairs by a set of open hangar doors. A queue of what looked to be laundry-women were waiting to go in to the hangar. We tagged onto the back and waited our turn.
Mo whispered in my ear. ‘These are the staff, the backbone of everything here, really. They do the laundry, cooking, sewing… they run the place. They’re Uzbekis.’
We shuffled forward as the Uzbeki ladies went into the brightly-lit hangar, chattering like birds as they went. As we watched, another set of women came out of the hangar carrying a shrouded body on a stretcher. Mo shrugged. ‘Overdose or a suicide. We have a lot of them.’
Finally we reached the head of the queue. CCTV cameras watched us. Mo talked to one of the guards and indicated that I should show him the letter. I did.
The other guard came over to look. He spoke two words to Mo. ‘Pa rekhteya?’
Mo just said ‘Pa rekhteya.’
The guard nodded towards the hangar. I was in.
‘Mo, what does this letter say?’
‘It’s a note from the General. It says anyone carrying this letter is allowed access to either hangar in Parwan for the next 72 hours, from this date and by his order.’
Then he clapped me on the shoulder and said ‘See ya in a bit then akhi!’ and left the way we’d arrived.
I walked into the hangar. It seemed to be less of a circus than the mens’ section, but still a muddle. The paint theme here was scuffed and flaked lime green. Everywhere I looked, women were haggling, arguing, hurrying off on some engagement. I smelled cooking on the air. Proper cooking, not the slop we got in our section. My stomach started to grumble. Focus, Riz, I told myself.
Now, if I was Bang-Bang, where would I be, I asked myself. Easy. She’d be teaching a class somewhere. I started to pace the cinderblock corridors, looking for classrooms or signs I could understand. I walked past a blank-eyed Uzbek girl lazily pushing a mop. I looked down. She was swabbing at a large slick of blood and some used needles. The dark red slick
got larger and the needles just swam around in the blood. God. I started praying under my breath, almost without a thought.
C’mon
Holly
,
where
are
you
babe
…
All the room and cell doors seemed to be open, and as I neared the end of the hangar, I came to a T-junction. To my right was a scrum of women, and some boys, craning to see into a doorway. I made for the doorway and pushed my way through.
The crowd parted reluctantly and there she was. There she was, flicking cards down onto a trestle table. To either side of her sat two boys, neither of whom could have been more than twelve or thirteen. Hard to tell. She was wearing a grubby salwar kameez and a loose hijab over her hair…really loosely. I chuckled to myself at the rebel headscarf and my naivety in thinking she’d be teaching, rather than running a card school. I then stopped as I realised how pale and thin she was, and spotted the livid bruise on her cheekbone and the dried blood where someone had torn her nose-ring out. She’d been in the wars.
‘Aaaand, house collects! Biennnnvenidos a la vidaaa locaaaa, compadres…’
Bang-Bang was drawling in Spanish and the ladies of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan weren’t getting it. Once a Blackeye, always a Blackeye. Her two little helpers raked in the dollar notes and she swigged from a bottle of water, then resumed shuffling and dealing. The game looked to be Texas Hold ‘Em.
I pushed forward until I was sitting in the inner circle. Without looking up Bang-Bang flicked a pair of cards down and spoke to me in what I assumed was Pashto as the card players took their deals. I’d forgotten that all her Dad’s side of the family spoke it. How stupid of me.
I replied ‘Sorry luv, I only speak Quack Quack and Durka Durka.’
Bang-Bang looked up and her eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth.
And she rapidly composed herself and grinned back. A rustle went round the crowd. She spoke to them and they laughed, and she patted a space next to her as boy number one went off on an errand.
We hugged, and time seemed to go away for a short break. I’d found her. She was shaking and clung to me like a limpet. She seemed so skinny, and didn’t smell too good. But then, neither did I, I supposed.
Time came back. We acted normal. The crowd was watching us for a cue. Bang-Bang leant into me and put her head on my shoulder. She smiled.
‘I knew you’d find me. I
knew
.’
‘Always. But on a less bright note, we’re now BOTH in an Afghan prison.’
We laughed at the absurdity of the situation. She looked up at me. The pupils in her eyes were like pinpricks.
‘Yeah. But I’m tunnelling out. Haven’t you heard?’
‘Yes, we got a lecture from the commandant about several thousand missing industrial-sized cans of beans.’
Her shoulders shook again, but this time with quiet amusement. ‘Did he mention the potato peeling machine? I’ll show you what we’ve been up to with it all in a bit.’
She checked her watch. They let them keep their watches here? ‘In fact, fiancé of mine, by eleven tonight, the machine should have hit the outer perimeter.’
‘This I MUST see. And may I enquire, oh darling fiancée, where you learned about tunnelling?’
Bang-Bang raised her eyebrows. ‘OK. What is my Dad’s favourite film apart from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon?’
Of course. ‘You got me. It’s The Great Escape.’
‘In one. I had to watch the damn thing every other weekend when Mum was at bingo.’
She looked sharply at me. ‘How
are
me Mum and Dad? How are the girls? And how’s the Colonel? Still building his Death Star?’
I grinned. ‘Your parents, the girls, and the Colonel, miss you and need you back. All hell is about to break loose back home. How did you get set up here? Any dramas?’
‘Not much. On day two the second-in-command ANA guy came in and tried to rape me in front me of everyone here. Mister Big Shot. Unfortunately for ANA guy, I’d kept a shard of window glass from over there…’ she waved left… ‘I’d wrapped some electrical tape round the shard and I hacked his throat open with it. I lost my nosering in the fight but he died. Badly. Hooah. The Americans had to send the Forced Cell Move Team in to drag his body out. This end of the prison and every person in it has thought I’m brilliant ever since.’
I had to laugh. ‘Holly. I fucking love you.’
She laughed back and punched my arm. ‘And I fucking love you too Rizwan Sabir. Hey, check this out, wanna see my bullet scar?’
She pulled her salwar kameez top down so I could see a professionally-stitched bullet wound just below her collarbone. To our right, a couple of Taliban ladies blushed and turned away from this brazen display of flesh.
‘Apparently they dug the round out in the ambulance. Grazed my left lung. I nearly bled out and flatlined, but they had loads of plasma and antibiotics. I was lucky. Relatively.’
‘You
were
lucky. Who told you about what they did?’
‘A US Air Force nurse. She was OK. The others weren’t.’
‘Holly, me and Fuzz went to the airbase. We worked out the who, the what, and the where. And then me and Swallow fell out of a perfectly good airplane and here we are.’
She hugged me and smiled. We were quiet for a good long while. Eventually I couldn’t resist a windup and spoke.
‘But hey, check
my
gunshot wound out, it’s even better!’
I showed her the bandaging on my ribs. She sucked her teeth with displeasure and touched my arm protectively. ‘Oh babe. My, we
have
both been battered about a bit, ‘int we?’
Bang-Bang looked around for a bit and then whispered in my ear. ‘Right. Listen in. Wait till I tell you about the French and Belgian troops on the north of the airbase and what they’ve been stockpiling. Bare Nazis, some of them. I saw them walk through the outside gym a few days ago, bold as brass, nasty skinhead fuckers chatting in French.’
One language I did know she knew was French. She’d studied hard for that GCSE, or so she’d told me on that prison visit, two hundred years ago.
‘Did you get what they were saying?’
‘Nah. They were too far away and it seemed to be very Parisian slang, les flics et les mecs if you get my drift. Alors, désolé, j’ai pas compris.’
I
didn’t have a clue. She carried on. ‘Something’s gonna go down. The Taleb lads said there’s a lorry container out near the ambulance station and they’re putting all the seized weapons in it. We need to get out of here.’
I nodded. ‘OK. Darling. Show me your arms.’
She pulled up a sleeve to reveal loads of trackmarks.
Her eyes wobbled and focused on mine. ‘What did you expect hun? The CIA shot me full of it the minute they got me here and it’s all we’ve got for entertainment as they don’t have Sky Plus onsite.’
‘Astigfurallah! My babe is a smackhead!’
‘Hey, look on the bright side, at least I’m not on crack. I can kick it in days. Honest.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you can. OK, now what?’
She looked around again. ‘I’m waiting for FlameLite to find me on site. Then we move. But we have to be ready to move quickly. Any ideas?’
I did. I showed her the General’s letter. She read it and gave a low whoop. ‘So
that’s
how you got in here. This is good, this means you and me can go to and from either hangar… within reason.’
I told her about her IMVU avatar and the strange raccoons that were not actually raccoons. She looked ceilingwards to the ever-present strip lights.
After a moment she spoke. ‘OK, so it’s started. Nothing I can do now. FlameLite is self-aware. Hooah again. Maybe it’ll use a Java applet attack vector to get in…’
I had no idea what she was talking about. She looked at me with those crazy eyes. ‘Wanna see the escape tunnel?’
Of course I did.