Of course, insurgency abductions are serious. Not something to be treated lightly, or as titillation. Writing this I was deliberately referencing back to the counter-culture poets and anti-Vietnam agit-prop writers who used extreme satiric and purposefully obscene images to attack what they saw as unjust foreign policy. The title is a reference yet further back to the kind of 'Man's Adventures' magazines of the 1950's with their exploitational anti-Nazi and anti-Commie stories of scantily-clad victims of evil ideologies. Yes, I know the Taliban are not necessarily active in Iraq, although 'Rashid' explains the connection, and hopefully the denouement is humanist and optimistic with a 'message' of common humanity, despite such tacky precedents. That the things that unite us are greater than the ideologies, cultural divides, sexual and religious prejudices that divide us...
Just because they call it the 'Green Zone' don't necessarily mean it's green. Like everywhere else in this benighted country it's hot and unpleasant. Made more nasty by the concrete blast-barriers, razorwire and patrols. Which was why Tariq takes me places I'm not really supposed to go. Of course, I trust him. With him by my side I feel invulnerable. He knows the city. He knows where to go. He leads me through a maze of narrow streets into the bazaar. Although times are hard, and prices are being ceaselessly bartered, there seem to be stalls and kiosks, and others just trading bread or fruit from boxes in alcoves. A constant babble of voices and movements with the sun glimpsed somewhere out there beyond the almost aquatic twilight of the 'souk's covered ways. Emerging out of the far end the sudden blast of dazzling heat is overwhelming, and for a moment I didn't realise what was happening.
A van halts abruptly in my way. It was green, I think, although corrosion and over-painting with designs and names makes it difficult to tell. Three men spring out, then the tailgates bust open and there's another. I just watch, unaware of anything sinister. Until Tariq breaks, and begins haring back in the way we'd come. I turn to follow, suddenly alarmed, but it was too late, they'd seized me and roughly propelled me into the back of the van. They were silent. The engine exploded into straining life as the doors were juddered back into place and secured. It accelerates away. The full horror of the situation canting my gut. This was the terror that was always there on the edge of your mind. It had happened to others, you'd seen them on Al-Jazeera, but of course, it would never happen to me. And Tariq...? Had he set me up? That was the most appalling aspect of it. Had he deliberately led me to this place? Had this been his motive all along? After all the sweet things we've done together, all the things we'd said... has it all been contrived just so that he could betray me? I couldn't believe it. But staring across at the two terrorists across from me, their faces hidden behind their keffiyehs, it seems I have no option but to accept that it is true.
The van lurches and careens at considerable pace, before slowing a little, I guess so as not to attract attention from APC's, the checkpoint armoured personnel carriers. It was unbearably hot. I was squatting on my heels, my back rammed up against the curving wall. They sit across from me, implacable, with their Kalashnikov AK-47's resting idly across their knees. My throat too dry to speak anything beyond 'please, don't do this.' It must have been twenty minutes later, the van-doors erupt outwards and I was shoved forward. My legs barely function. I get the impression we're in some kind of tightly enclosed yard. There's a strong smell of spices unpleasantly mingled with the stench of drains and decay. I was hurried through a door into a long gloomy passage, and eventually into a bare room.
Is this it? Is this where I'm going to die? They gesture for me to undress. At first I thought I must be mistaken. I go through a mime of not understanding. Then one of them pokes along the lines of my shirt with the muzzle of his gun, I get the message, and hurriedly do as indicated, nervous and self-conscious. Naked and incredibly vulnerable I await my fate. They pinion my hands behind my back, handcuff them there, and attach me to a water-pipe. All of this happens without a single word being exchanged. They laugh at my predicament, and leave the room. I slump down, finding as comfortable a position as I can manage, my back hunched up against the wall, my head resting on my knees. I sob uncontrollably for... how long? I don't know. They've taken my watch along with my clothes. I might have been there two hours, maybe longer. Sweat crawls and drips along my forehead, down my legs and thigh. I feel sick with apprehension.
There are muffled sounds elsewhere in the building, voices pitched just a little too low that I couldn't quite understand. Eventually one of the insurgents returns. He's removed his facial covering, and seems surprisingly youthful. Little more than nineteen. Releasing my hands, he passes me a long chador, and watches with keen interest as I fumblingly envelop myself in the disguising feminine garment. He was joined by two others and I was shepherded out of the building by an entrance onto a back-street where a battered saloon car waits. I realise that my unusual appearance is to enable me to be moved around the country without drawing attention. We drive for a long weary distance. There are tense moments when we pass lazy checkpoints who scarcely bother looking at the driver's ID, casually glancing at the other passengers before waving us on. I was tensed to yell out or make some sign, but I was under constant scrutiny, and I know my captors are armed.
Outside the city I was hooded for a while to further confuse me. Not that I'd know where we were heading. As part of the cultural liaison division I'd hardly been outside the Green Zone, let alone the city. We crawl up a coiling gradient with abrupt hairpin bends alongside steep arid cliffs. At last we arrive wherever it is we're going. A remote enclosed property. I manage to grab glimpses of groves of what I take to be warped olive shrubs. A vista looking out between dry crags over the lowland back towards the city, across this mystically ancient land of Mesopotamia and Sumer, by the rivers of Gilgamesh and Babylon, and above to the mountains. Land that had been watered by blood since the very dawn of history. I was escorted directly through to a room at the rear with no outside window, but a bedstead with a soiled mattress. The young guy waits as I remove the chador, then handcuffs me to the bed. Again I was aware of his keen interest in my body. Let him look. It occurred to me it was my foreskin he was looking at. Tariq had confided the same. Where circumcision is the cultural norm, a hooded cock is the cause of amused curiosity.
I lie back on the mattress that smells of stale piss. A vast wave of fatigue and aftershock taking me. It was obvious I was not about to be executed immediately, that I was the victim of some kind of hostage scam, and that negotiations would begin. Maybe they're already in motion? Despite everything I sleep dreamlessly. When dawn spills in, it was the light I'd craved for. Light I'd feared I might never see again. My eyes were starved for it. My bones ache for it. In its long absence it seems I've shrivelled to something less than the size of a sand-grain, something to walk on, something you crush without thought beneath the sole of your sandal.
'Asalaamu alaikum' he greets me.
I grunt, 'insha-Allah' in response. He gives me an enamel dish with a sparse mound of rice, some lentils and diced aubergine. I'm about to refuse it, until I realise it's exactly what they're eating. They're giving me equal shares. Guiltily, I sit on the edge of the bed, and eat. It leaves me still hungry. The water he gives me tastes distinctly odd too, with an unpleasantly fetid aftertaste. He speaks heavily accented Gelet Arabic. As though it's unfamiliar to him. His name, I discover, is Rashid.
When I reply, he's surprised I speak it well, but that's my qualification for being here. 'Yes, I've learned how to 'come' in at least two languages.' I use a slang term for 'come' which will leave no doubt about my meaning.
