My reaction to the world

How do you cope with news you feel is out of your control? News about something you want to change but don't know where to begin?

I write. Tonight I'll break with previous posts and share something I first wrote in early 2008. I called it "Detainee 9732." 

I am Detainee 9732.

I am thirty-two years old today.

I am a husband. 

I am an American.

I am in solitary confinement. 

Four hundred forty days ago I was a normal man.  I taught literature at Alexander Graham Bell High School five days a week and went home each night to Janet, my wife of four years.  I would cook dinner, she would do the dishes, and we’d curl up on the couch with our books, her ice block toes tucked under my knee.

When I turned thirty, Janet baked a chocolate lava cake that turned into Vesuvius over our kitchen, and as we mopped up syrup from the linoleum, she promised through the tears she’d master it.  I wonder if she’s at home now mopping syrup off our floor.  

I shouldn’t cry; a tear is unbearable. 

I met Janet when she hurried into our undergraduate American literature class wearing silk pajama pants and an “I’m Voting for Chelsea” t-shirt.  She sat in front of me and my eyes traced the damp web her hair left across her back.  She answered questions with confidence, not pretension, and I think I loved her before the fifty-minute class ended.  I couldn’t say my vows on our wedding day for crying. Four hundred forty days ago we talked about having a baby. 

The police arrested me the next evening as I parked in our driveway.  I had a bouquet of flowers for Janet; they were all pink and blue, and they left nursery-colored stains over the pavement as the police put me in handcuffs.

I was charged with monetarily aiding terrorist insurgents, which included my 82-year-old great uncle whom I called monthly and to whom I sent a check four times a year.  I told my wife we would defend my actions in court; I told her it didn’t matter how long I had been on the black lists.  I would be free.

But I am still here.  They claim I’m being held offshore by a multinational force as an accommodation to another government until that government can sentence me.

            Until that day, whenever—or if—it occurs, I am Detainee 9732.  I know this because it is painted on my headboard.  It is painted on my headboard because I cannot speak to tell the nurses my name. 

 When my vision is clear, my view of the world goes from the headboard to the tip of my nose, from the left wall to the right, but mostly I see the ceiling.  There are no windows, and once I saw a nurse’s badge that read “Second Subterranean Unit” so I think they have us buried already. 

The right wall of my cell has a row of clocks that tell the time, not the time here, but the time in places all over the world, so each of us knows when his family is sitting down to dinner or when his wife is crawling into a cold bed.  The left shows rows of cots, the other prisoners staring at the world through sidelong glances.  I don’t know what their faces look like.  I don’t know what their voices sound like.  The only faces I have seen, the only voices I have heard in over a year are the ones who come to turn me so I don’t get bedsores, who check my airways, who suction my spittle, and who change my IV drip.

There were many prisoners gathered up during the past twenty-five years and individual cells became cost and space prohibitive, so our jailors became inventive with storing the most dangerous of criminals. This new policy saves space; there are twenty of us in this cell, which is no larger than the bedroom Janet and I shared at home. 

I have overheard a great deal discussed between doctors and nurses.  Chemicals injected into my spinal column disintegrated the myelin sheath surrounding the cells of my central nervous system, a sentence that lets the brain roam free but keeps the body immobile, paralyzed except for the blinking of my eyes.

When the procedure was first introduced to jails the doctors simply induced brain stem strokes, but gradually their methods evolved.  The doctors and officials stole the life work of doctors who sought to make people well again, doctors who wanted to put families back together.  They raped the National Institute of Neurological Disorders’s research and they sired torture.   

After a generation of practice, they have become adept at interrogation.  They knew in the beginning that isolation, sleep deprivation, cold or heat, reduced food, and immobility in a fixed position were interrogation techniques.  They simply took their practices to the natural conclusion.  The methods are more sophisticated now—a mosquito introduced into a room of men who cannot swat and who cannot scratch but feel the itch.  Once a day, an officer comes into our ward and barks questions.  To get their answers, they implanted a microscopic electrode five millimeters into the forty-one neurons in my brain that control my speech impulses, the movement of tongue and lips to generate conversation.  An algorithm translates the electrodes into words that an officer can read on a computer screen in another room or on another continent.

I am Detainee 9732.  My name is Jamal Washington.  I am telling my story for the 2,538^th time.  I tell my story so it will be documented, even if it’s on a distant official’s computer screen.  I tell my story so I will not topple into insanity like the men around me whose brains submit to a type of suicide.  I keep myself sane because one day I believe a stem cell inserted into my nervous system will regenerate my myelin sheath and I will be well.  I keep myself sane because I believe one day this madness will end and I will return to my wife.  God, please, let them end this madness soon. 

I am Detainee 9732. 

I am thirty-two years old today.

I am a husband. 

I am an American.

I am in solitary confinement.

I was a normal man four hundred forty days ago.   

I am telling my story for the 2,539^th time….