“He’s a bad man! He had nine girlfriends!” he yelled, before slamming the door shut.
“I told you, you shouldn’t have told him that,” I remarked.
When Yassine and Igor came to take Theo from the room they didn’t say where they were going, but being that they weren’t screaming at or hitting him like usual I didn’t get the feeling that he was in danger. He was returned about fifteen minutes later with a head that had been so poorly buzzed he had bald spots all over. Then Yassine pointed to me. I argued that there was no need and removed my ski cap to remind them that I was already bald, except for the sides, but he had orders from the emir to shave our heads and trim our beards, and like it or not that was what was going to happen.
I was escorted to the end of the hallway where Igor waited for me, politely motioning to the floor while holding a pair of electric clippers. Reluctantly I sat down, Indian style, and he got to work. As I sat there watching the clumps of hair fall to the floor, I thought about when I’d visited Auschwitz, and remembered a room they had there, filled with thousands of pounds of human hair. I remembered footage I’d seen of prisoners jumping off the train cars on the way to the gas chambers, of them lying starving on the ground. That’s what they were turning this place into, and they didn’t even know I was Jewish.
Igor didn’t get far because the blades weren’t oiled; they kept getting stuck in my hair and ripping it out, and after I started complaining he got frustrated and stopped. He said he’d come back the next day, but when the next day came it was only Yassine who returned, with manual clippers, a pair of scissors, and Sancho. I began cutting my beard myself in the light of the open door, with the two of them standing above me. At one point Sancho began to tap me hard on the top of my head with his wooden club, but Yassine stopped him almost immediately.
“No, no, no,” he said in Arabic. “This one is to be pitied.”
After a few minutes they got sick of waiting and locked us in with the tools. Theo took over, doing about as good of a job on me as Igor had done on him. After he was done I started pacing back and forth on the blanket, launching fists at the air.
“Fucking maniacs are turning this place into Auschwitz!” I yelled.
Theo had no idea why I was so furious; he just sat there listening to me rant—not that he had a choice. Since we’d been here in hell I’d thought a lot about the Holocaust literature I’d read describing what it was like to be starved, beaten, and infested with parasites. Now, not only was I being treated like a prisoner in a concentration camp—whenever I peered at myself in the mirror, I looked like one as well.
The night the Little Judge appeared, all hooded up with an AK over his shoulder, the lights were out and I didn’t recognize him until he opened his mouth and I heard that shrill shriek of a voice. He was accompanied by two guys—one wearing a Puma jumpsuit and the other a suicide belt.
“He said we’re going to make videos,” Theo translated. “You have to say you’re a CIA agent.” The Little Judge said he planned to send the videos to Qatar, so they could act as intermediaries in negotiations for our freedom.
“Boss, there are three guys in masks doin’ an investigation on me,” I reminded him.
“Forget about the men in the masks,” said the Little Judge. “This is between you and me now. You will confess to being a CIA agent.”
“Forget it.”
“Don’t worry, when you get home you can tell everyone you told us because you were being tortured.”
“No.”
“Well, then you can sit in this room for five years and eat nothing but halawa.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Or I’ll just kill you,” he added.
“I’m not saying it.”
“I’ll come back in two days for an answer,” the Little Judge said, frustrated, and then he left.
Fifteen minutes later, he returned.
“Jumu’ah, what is your answer?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
A second later his cell phone rang and he held it up to my eyes so I could see the number in Arabic.
“Ah, it’s the American ambassador—Hello?” he said, answering the phone in English, trying to give the impression that negotiations were taking place.
He left, and Theo and I actually started to laugh.
“I can tell everyone that I admitted it under torture?” I asked, with a smirk.
“He doesn’t want you to get in trouble,” Theo answered, and in this darkest of moments we shared another real laugh together.
Theo thought the videos were just a fantasy, but I was very much convinced that the Little Judge intended to make them a reality. As always, I was tormented by the thought of my mother seeing her son on the internet, being held hostage by terrorists, beaten or worse. This was an important moment of my internment—it’s when, in my holders’ eyes, I officially went from photographer to CIA agent, and it’s also when the Little Judge stepped up to show me how big he really was.
February twenty-fifth, the day I had been
