From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel Read online

“You’re talented, Boy. I like the texture. What about men? I’m looking for a stylist myself.”

  “I’m concentrating on a women’s line, solely. This is part of a new collection.”

  Ahmed swiveled the form around to inspect the back, with its V‑cut opening that ran from the shoulders to the base of the spine. “Mmmm. This I like. I could do with a little more cleavage in the front, kind of like what you did here, but overall…”

  “Well, it’s unfinished. There’s still a lot that has to be done.”

  “You ever design a suit?”

  “In school,” I said.

  “Good. Because I want to commission you to make me two suits. The color I leave up to you, but they must appear Western, and radiate class. For this service I will pay you fifteen hundred dollars.” Ahmed’s hand had worked its way up to the form mannequin’s breast, which he now cupped in his palm.

  “That’s very generous,” I said. “But I couldn’t. I’d be cheating you. Besides, you could go into Barneys and probably get two suits at that price.”

  “Yes, but they wouldn’t be made for me. There would be other suits out there just like them. They wouldn’t be originals. Call it crazy, Boy, but having possessions that are unlike any other in the world is very important to me. It’s a symbol of status where I come from. A mark of prosperity.”

  “Really. Where are you from?”

  “Canada.”

  As I said, I was able to overlook his lies no matter how blatant. I knew his kind didn’t respond well to accusations. Our Pakistani maid at home had quit when my mother accused her of stealing washcloths out of our upstairs linen closet. The maid left the house that day swearing in her language, totally incoherent, except for one foreboding phrase she managed to utter in her poor English: “You’ll pay por dis.”

  Besides, I understood Ahmed’s desire for something original. I suffered a similar hang‑up with Nike high-tops, and had gone to great lengths in the past to find pairs that were equally as rare—originals from the 1980s. Sometimes fashion is all about stature, and making the other guy feel inferior.

  “I have to decline,” I said, regarding the suits. “Please understand, but I’m very busy.”

  “Two thousand,” he countered.

  “There’s so much time that goes into a thing like—”

  “Twenty-one hundred.”

  “And it’s been so long since I last—”

  “Twenty-two fifty. Fabric included.”

  “Who knows if it would be any good?”

  “Twenty-five. Including materials. And Boy, remember that I have plenty of contacts in the industry. In addition, I know how to return a favor. A true businessman. If you take the same care with me that you have given this gown”—Ahmed placed his arm around the form mannequin’s waist, and they stood joined at the hip like two lovers— “you won’t regret it.”

  “Two thousand five hundred dollars?”

  “Look at me, you’re gonna say no? You already hiked me up a thousand U.S. You know what you’re doing. You’re a businessman as much as you are a brilliant designer. You’ll go very far. My mind’s made up. Twenty-five hundred!”

  I didn’t want to design a suit, let alone two of them. I wanted to work on my own collection. But the money was significantly better than what I was making ironing dresses at trunk shows for upstarts I didn’t really respect. Plus, I could get all of this done on my own time.

  I suggested that we discuss fabrics another day, and then perhaps set up a time the following week to do a fitting. This was all still pretense, mind you. I didn’t think he really had the money. And how could you trust a “Canadian” who was obviously from Pakistan or somewhere thereabouts?

  “Listen, Boy,” he said. “There’s nothing to talk about. Classy and Western—the rest is up to you. Come by first thing tomorrow for the fitting,” he said. “I have Wi‑Fi and panini press. The whole ground floor of the building is mine.”

  1. Council of Fashion Designers of America.

  2. Actually, this technique is known as agugliatura. Italian designers like Miuccia Prada have been doing it for years.

  3. There is no evidence that Qureshi was a wanted man in Yemen, though the Dubai story bears some truth. The United Arab Emirates has had Qureshi on their watch list since 1999 for reasons unspecified.

  On Memory

  Those known knowns! If I may borrow a piece of logic from the U.S. defense secretary.1 Those knowingly knowable knowns! They stand propped up in my way like roadblocks to the truth. A road I have been down over and over. I find myself in a dilemma of time versus truth, don’t you see? At the present time in which I reveal these facts, I fear that they will be misconstrued, and taken in a manner that presents me as a liar, an ignoramus, or worse—terror’s lackey, a coconspirator. Why should I be so afraid if I am completely innocent?

  Because, because, because.

  Because Ahmed Qureshi, aka Punjab Ami, the man who I naively took into my confidence as a fabric salesman, was arrested for selling bomb-making materials days before I was brought here to No Man’s Land. My interrogator has revealed that Ahmed is being indicted for conspiring to acts of terror. “He will be convicted, and quickly,” he said, during our reservation earlier today. (That’s what they call our sessions together. Reservations. I am visited by a commanding officer, the CO, a day in advance, and told that I have a reservation at such and such hour the following day. Being interrogated here is like trying to dine at Babbo.)

  Yes, regarding Ahmed, there were certain degrees of doubt in my mind. Undoubtedly, yes. But as I sit here in my cell, filling in the blanks of the past few years, more blanks seem to crop up. One of the problems I’m having with the construction of this true confession is the remembrance of actual thoughts at the moment of their occurrence. It is impossible to remember exactly what I was thinking when I was thinking it. What was the exact thought that crossed my mind when I decided to leave my apartment and hop down the dilapidated staircase to meet with Ahmed on the matter of two suits? I wish I could just bite into a macaroon2 like Flaubert,3 and poof, it would all come flooding back to me like some irresistible dream. But I can’t. This confession is composed of thought thoughts—those things we think we thought at the time we thought them. They are re‑creations, composites of ideas we have reasoned and not the actual thoughts themselves. Because to remember an actual thought at the exact time it occurred in the brain would be utterly inconceivable. That is, unless I had that magical French cookie, but real life doesn’t happen like it does in the books. In my world they shackle you to the ground and pump death metal into your ears till you recall being in your mother’s womb, quite vividly, and that it was Dr. al‑Zawahiri who did the C‑section.

  My interrogator understands all of this. He believes that for me to get at the true truth—the stuff of a surefire confession—I must relive it again and again, play it over and over like a video in my head, and then expel it like a demon once I arrive at the closest representation. That’s why he’s made sure I have pen and paper with me at all times in my cell. Who knows when a moment of clarity will strike me?

  I find it strange that my interrogator is so sympathetic toward my situation. Why does he treat me so? Maybe it is because he is part of a defeated minority himself. (He’s a Greek, my special agent. Goes by the name of Spyro.)4

  “Can I be honest?” said my Greek today. “I think you know more than you think you know.”

  He’s a large man, my interrogator, with a taste for expensive suits. He obviously knows a thing or two about men’s wear, so I must remember to be as specific as possible when I recount my forays into men’s fashion with Ahmed Qureshi. My Greek’s hairline has mainly disappeared, and the few curly black strands he has left up front mold together into a little patch resembling the Italian boot. Coincidentally, there’s also a sunspot on his scalp right where Malta floats in the Mediterranean. He continued: “There are some things lodged so deep in our minds that we can’t recognize them. Wouldn’t you agr
ee?”

  “Come again?” I said.

  “You know Dostoyevsky?”

  “I’ve never met him,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t have. He’s dead,” said Spyro.

  This made me feel rather ignorant. Of course I had heard of Dostoyevsky. Notes from Underground, The Brothers Karamazov, and the one about the idiot whose title escapes me.5

  “You two have a lot in common,” said Spyro. “He was sent to prison too.”

  “Lucky for him.”

  My interrogator is a real Russophile and will go on and on about Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, as though these men were the greatest of all thinkers. He’s even mentioned his admiration for the music of Chai Kaufsky.6 I find it strange that an American investigator (of Greek heritage, no less) is so taken with all things Russian. But I’ll admit that I too am an admirer of some of Russia’s exports, particularly Alexandre Plokhov.7 His militant, sexy outfits were quite an influence on my designs, as well as on my own personal style. I remember his store on Greene Street, with those thin little gothic sales boys and their angular haircuts.

  “You know what Dostoyevsky once said?” he continued. “He said that there are things in every man’s memory that he’s afraid to divulge, even to himself. And he said it might even be the case that the more decent the man, the more substantial the accumulation of these memories.” My interrogator looked down at his handmade shoes. Again I spotted the patch of hair on his broad forehead that formed the Italian boot. “When I was a kid,” he said, “I threw a rock at a man’s house just to do it.”

  A confession. “In the Greek isles?” I asked.

  “In Perth Amboy, New Jersey,” he said. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter where. I broke a window. I didn’t mean to. My brother was with me. The thing was to hit the side of the man’s house. We knew him as our neighbor. I had nothing against him. It wasn’t even about him. It was about throwing a rock at a house just because. When it was done, the man came over and told my father. He said he saw me do it. He confronted me in front of my father. Of course, I denied it. I lied. I had to. And then I lied to my father. I was too embarrassed, because even I didn’t know why I had done it. I couldn’t explain my actions. I threw the rock at the man’s house because it was there. Sometimes there are no reasons.”

  My interrogator removed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead. The room was air-conditioned, but his excess weight caused him to sweat a great deal.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I started this story backward. Memory sometimes works in reverse, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Anyway, it was last Christmas when my brother reminded me of this occasion, when I had thrown the rock at the neighbor’s house. He said, ‘Don’t you remember when you threw that rock?’ I said, ‘What rock?’ I didn’t know what he was talking about. I honestly couldn’t remember. He told me the story again, as he knew it. And again, I had no memory. I didn’t think my own brother was making it up, but I was convinced he was thinking of one of his friends from when we were kids. I dismissed the story without offending him, but for some reason it just wouldn’t leave my mind. And then, sometime after New Year’s, it occurred to me. I remembered. The rock in my hand. The throw across the road. The shatter of the windowpane. My brother laughing. I recall the particular time of day. My father’s face when I swore to him I didn’t do it. I forget where I was when I remembered all this—I could have been at the office, or on assignment somewhere—but suddenly my face went flush with embarrassment.” Spyro stood up to take off his jacket. Then he sat back down, unbuttoned his sleeves, and rolled them up. He had a long scar running down the length of his left forearm. “You see, our tendency to make ourselves look better in disagreeable circumstances can be overwhelming. It can make us forget. What I’m most interested in is if there’s anything you’ve forgotten.”

  And this is where we left off for the day. I was tasked to go back to my cell to remember all that I may have forgotten. Win wondered how it went with my Greek. “Fine,” I told him. It seems that Spyro’s intent is to inspire my confession. In a way, he wants the same thing I do. For all of this to be finished as soon as possible. For my confession to be submitted as evidence and for my tribunal to be underway.

  And yet oblivion, not active remembrance, has become my sole means of survival after three weeks in No Man’s Land. Not a day goes by where I don’t try to forget where I am. It is not the guards who make this difficult but the other prisoners. Five times a day they pray. As soon as the sun rises, imagine! During prayer time I’ll often sit up in bed, shut my eyes, and transport myself back to my former life. A fall fashion week in New York City. The white tents laid out across the lawn of Bryant Park. I venture in through the canvas flaps of the tent, past the ice sculptures of female torsos—nipples melting over avocado rolls, translucent vaginas dripping into mounds of pickled ginger. I navigate through the labyrinth of runways and the foray of flash photography, escaping backstage through an inviting satin curtain. Around my neck, a VIP pass: DESIGNER. Backstage is a different kind of frenzy, the workers scrambling to put on a show. I watch fifteen stylists do the hair and makeup of models too plentiful to count. Pulling, clipping, crimping, blowing, flattening, spraying. I summon up each model’s face from my past. Olya and Dasha, Irina, Katrina, Marijka, Kasha, Masha—their white, cherubic young skin contrasted by such stark Eastern European bone structure. I inhale the aerosol of hairspray and am suddenly lifted off the ground, floating above the circus of backstage fashion until I hit the pillowlike ceiling of canvas above. I hold my breath, floating over a maddening sea of bare asses and thongs and hair, and look! There’s Catherine Malandrino! Bonsoir, Catherine! Once I exhale, I free-fall and am deposited safely into a pile of Miu Miu handbags.

  Open my eyes, and I’m still on my thin rubber mat.

  Unlike one of Spyro’s repressed memories, I can’t just will away this cell, can I? And if I ever do get out of here, if I ever get my thoughts together in one plausible row, I doubt that I will ever be able to forget the memory of this place. The sounds alone will rattle in my mind forever. There is the chime of the razor wire outside. Dogs. Barking dogs coming from the other camps. Rats scurrying underneath our cells. Men are taken for reservations in the middle of the night, and so there are the sounds of their shackles, chains scraping along the metal floor. This of course wakes everyone on the cell block. We are kept between sleeping and waking. We are kept tired. There are the sounds of farts and belches from the other prisoners. Wailing, crying, yawning, grunting, every variation that can come from a human being. The night guards talk and pace the deck. A few times I have heard distant explosions. I thought we were under attack. Cunningham, my night guard, told me that the explosions were land mines left over from a forgotten war. They were being set off by natives of the island trying to flee for the confines of No Man’s Land.

  Imagine, people blown to bits trying to get in! Can such an act of brutality still be called irony?

  Why am I in No Man’s Land?

  I’ve asked my interrogator.

  The question still lingers in the air like the stench of a rat that has gone and died under my cell.

  My fear is that we’ll all get used to the stink.

  1. Now former U.S. defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.…”

  –Defense Department briefing, February 12, 2002.

  2. Madeleine.

  3. Proust.

  4. Special Agent Spyros Papandakkas of the FBI, lead investigator on the Hernandez case.

  5. The Idiot (1868).

  6. Properly spelled Tchaikovsky.

  7. Founder of the men’s label Cloak.

  Modus Operandi

  Because I am guarded 24/7, I hardly ever interact with the other prisoners. Sure, they surround me on the prison block, but Win or Cunningham will prevent t
hem from speaking to me. “Don’t talk to him,” Cunningham has yelled at my neighbor, who has tried to whisper things into my cell. Anyhow, the man doesn’t speak any English. And even if we could understand each other, what would I say to him? Unlike you, I am innocent.

  Even during rec hour I am kept apart from the other captives. Once a week we are let out of our cells and taken to the prison yard. It is called rec hour by the guards even though it only lasts fifteen minutes. The remaining forty-five are spent in transport to and from the prison yard. I am suited up with chains, my hands and feet, then moved outside to yet another cage of my own, while the others are piled together in communal chicken-wire confinement. During rec, Win, my day guard, is relieved from duty, and I am escorted by a different MP. Today, a woman.

  The fencing overhead is covered with blue tarp. Rays of sun break through its little holes. It is mostly sunny in No Man’s Land. We have not had a drop of rain since I’ve been here. And yet the air is disgustingly humid. Rarely a sea breeze.

  Just beyond the prison yard is a dirt expanse. At one end is a soccer goal with no net. Off on the sidelines a stationary bicycle covered in dust. A deflated ball midfield. We’re not allowed out of our cages, so the field is only there in plain view as a reminder of what we can’t have.

  It is clear by the way they look at me through my cage that the other prisoners have had some trouble adapting to my presence. They think I’m a plant, a mole, sent here to spy on them. And I don’t even speak any Arabic. How could I possibly spy on them without knowing a word they are saying?

  It all comes down to motive, I am told.

  Motive is something my Greek and I discuss quite often, in fact. What was my main motive in getting involved with Ahmed? It is yet another question that lingers throughout our sessions, and one that haunts this true confession. I was a designer of women’s wear, so why on earth did I decide to make two custom men’s suits for a stranger? What was my motive?