The prisoner was busily hunched over a sheaf of papers when the guard rapped his nightstick across the bars of his cell door.
“Hey you!” he yelled. “Let’s go, the colonel wants to see you on the double!”
The prisoner shot him a smoldering, contemptuous look. “With all that racket outside I thought today, for once, you might give that tired routine a rest.”
“Right Abdul, how insensitive of me. Guess Cinco de Mayo’s not a big thing over in Iraq but here at Camp Delta it’s parrr-ttt-eee time!," barked the guard.
"It's the one day of the year we get to fraternize with the foreigners outside the wire... 'dem Cubans really know how to parrr-ttt-eee!, " he added, shaking his head in wonderment.
The guard noticed the prisoner clutching some papers. “Hey, what’s that you working on?”
“Words… just words!”
The guard threw him a hard stare.
“Words that might move humanity towards a higher moral purpose,” replied the prisoner with an air of moral superiority. “I call it A Letter from a Guantánamo Jail." The prisoner paused for effect. "Has a nice ring to it wouldn’t you say?”
“Ok smart ass, let’s go,” demanded the guard. He crossed the cell’s threshold and yanked some pages from the prisoner’s shackled hand, “Lemme look at that.”
His beady eyes scanned the pages. “Hey, you’ve written only one line!”
“Corporal,” the man shot back, “do you think with all the interruptions, interrogations and all that messing about with my head King or Mandela could have done any better?”
A sour look filled the guards face as if he had been punched in the stomach. “Didn’t stop Hitler did it!” He glanced at the papers once more.
“Who’s this John Malkovich?”
“An actor and great humanitarian who’d be quite sensitive to my current predicament.”
“Horseshit Ahmed.” The guard tossed a pair of shoes to the orange jumpsuit clad prisoner. “Put ‘em on. Gotta get you over to the Colonel el pronto.”
Why, wondered the prisoner, were they so intent on keeping him as shoeless as Ava Gardner in the Barefoot Contessa?
...
The prisoner, dripping in a finery of chains not seen since the days of Torquemada, was frog marched to an interrogation room on another level whose central inspiration with its all tile and stainless steel décor owed much to an airport bathroom. He was seated and chained to the long end of a wood grain linoleum covered table. Within minutes Colonel Gaius Petroleus bolted through the door surrounded by a battalion of aides. He was crisply dressed in a blue and gold military parade uniform complete with a riding crop and topped off by a hat with miniature friezes of Roman battles anchored by an order of scrambled eggs on its brim.
Damn American technology, thought the prisoner, try and get creases like that in Baghdad.
Given his retinue it took some minutes for the Colonel to hack his way through his throng of military support personnel before he finally came face to face with the chained man.
“How are you Prisoner 018a7632691-x?” Petroleus asked, sounding slightly befuddled as he studied the dossier in his hand, "Ok, let's start again Prisoner 018ba63902691-xy... ah, screw this! Who's the genius that came up with this god-damned numbering system?"
One of the aides pressed to his left leaned in and stage whispered, "The numbers are random number generated using a 32 bit matched pair encryption key..."
The Colonel sliced the air with his right hand as if he was trying to jujitsu mosquitoes, "Cut the bullshit soldier! I wanna know why?"
"Security, sir," he replied, saluting, "deprives Al Qaida of actionable intelligence."
The commanding officer shot his aide a dripping look of incredulity.
"Screw it," he barked, "so prisoner Ibn ali-Bahloni..."
"I am known throughout the land as Ibn."
"Just Ibn?"
"Like your Bono, Madonna or Sting."
"So Abu, how are you?"
“Shoes could use a little stretching but other than that… ”
“I’ve got to hand it to you... you really had us going there for awhile.”
The prisoner raised his left eyebrow silent movie style.
“For a nano-second field ops thought they had captured the Big Kahuna himself.”
The prisoner's mind flash-backed to a moment some weeks before when he was strolling along the streets of Baghdad on a spring Sunday. So focused was he on maintaining character that he failed to notice he was dressed to the nines in full strongman regalia. Imprudent, in hindsight, given that the city had fallen the previous Friday. .
"You mean the moment I was nabbed by your so-called coalition forces of infidel dunces?"
The Colonel smiled like a thirsty hyena. “Payback is a harsh mistress and public payback is the harshest bitch of all!"
The prisoner bobbed his head knowingly. How could he forget that disastrous ad campaign of 'Bahloni, No Baloney!' that nearly derailed his career.
“Understand my predicament Colonel. Only forty-eight hours had passed since I wrapped my last scene. It’s not like your troops were the brightest bulbs in the tool box!”
Petroleus's smile collapsed into a hard rictus.
“Without the deck of cards your soldiers didn’t have a clue," mocked the prisoner, "One sergeant held a single card up to my face and screamed ‘Yep, that’s Saddam! Whoo-hoo the ace of spades! “
“And you didn't think to tell them otherwise?”
“And be a traitor to my profession?”
“Omar, can’t say you didn’t have your chance. Remember that years from now when you’re rotting here at the gulag on the bay!”
The sound of an operatic sigh filled the room.
“Goddamn High Command drove that deal. So set on giving Rummy a birthday surprise," he snorted, "Hell, when your DNA tests came back a big negatory boy, you should've seen the up close and personal knife fighting in Defense that day!”
Petroleus paced around the room with the nervousness of a caged animal, stepping on at least a half dozen feet in the process.
“Who are you... I want the truth!” he demanded, jamming his right fist into his left palm.
“You can’t handle the truth!”
I’ve heard that line somewhere, the colonel thought to himself.
“Try me!”
A torrent of words poured from the prisoners mouth.
”Please, slowly. From the top, Mohammed,” said Colonel Petroleus.
Composing himself the prisoner began anew, “It was late February. I was up in Qut preparing for a role that I thought would be perfect to re-ignite my sagging career.”
“Your career was in the crapper?”
“As low as Elvis’s after the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan.”
The Colonel’s face brightened. “Oh yes! The King! Have you ever heard me do my impression of Elvis?”
Oh Allah, the prisoner thought, forget the virgins just save me from this infidel.
Petroleus took a few steps towards the middle of the room, loosened the belt of his pants and crouched his body into the tight coil of a man about to engage in a karate fight.
“The image is one thanng ha ha ha an’ the man’s annutha!”
Gaius turned to the prisoner for kudos but heard nothing, not a sound. Deja-vu, he thought, staring at the prisoner. I know that look of induced coma - the dead fish eyes. Could it be, he mused, that Elvis just might be Al Qaeda's Achilles heel?
“C’mon give it up Attaturk!” he commanded.
The prisoner rattled his chains just enough for a thin smile to spread across the Colonel’s face.
Petroleus grabbed the dossier off the table and gave it a hasty scan. "“Who the hell are you?" he demanded, "and don't give me any of that goddamn dramaturd crap!" The colonel then leaned in so closely to the prisoner that he recoiled slightly as if he could feel the stubble of his five o’clock shadow and it was only ten in the morning.The colonel then leaned in so close to the prisoner that he recoiled as if gravely insulted by the stubble of his five o’clock shadow at the ungodly hour of ten in the morning. "Army intel had you pegged in Qut’s theatre district around February. Spill it. No song and dance, boy!”
“Yes, I was there,” he replied. .
“We know but why? Care for a swim this morning? The boys down the hall I heard drawing a bath. A bubble bath.
“I was there for an open call.
“You’re playing with us Mohammed? Open call, what is that, some recruitment thing?”
“Recruitment, right!” he spit out contemptuously. “A tryout for the lead role in the song and dance extravaganza, ‘Sayyid We Hardly Knew Ya!’.
Sayyid… hmm, the name rings a bell,” Gaius said, grabbing a briefing book, “tell us more Mustaffa”
“The musical was loosely based on the life of Sayyid Qutb - radical Islamist prison intellectual and big time nose-thumber to the West. But to the cognoscenti, that is, the dance crowd, a great hoofer.”
“According to these field reports your performance dated Feb 24th was far more interpretative in your portrayal of Qutb… how do you account for that Jamal?”
The prisoner looked at him blankly.
“At key moments in the musical you invoked a technique referred to as ‘inside out’ and yet strangely at other moments you shifted 180 degrees to something called ‘outside in” … fucking CIA… obfuscate with the jargon! Can you clue me in on this?” he asked, totally confused.
“Snoops,” Pi replied, waving his hand dismissively, “you mention Stanislavski, and they think you’re talking about the Cheka,”
“You’re not helping me out here Kareem Abdul Jabbar… my patience has limits.”
“Let’s see… we have a dramaturge from La Mama, a director from the Performing Garage, a mystic/owner from a Sufi bookstore in Tribeca and a talent agent from William Morris.”
“Qutb? You mean that rat bastard radical Islamist and intellectual-spiritual leader of Al Qaeda?”
“Look the man had a few flaws but that’s no reason to condemn him outright,” replied the prisoner defensively. “Did you know early in life he was trained as a song and dance man?”
“A song and dance..!” spat the Colonel. “A terrorist by any other name Rahman is still a terrorist in my book…”
“Why Qut?
“Where else to flesh out Qutb’s character but in Qut?
Gaius wasn’t buying it and gave him an icy stare.
“In February I received an urgent request that I drop by Baath Party headquarters in Qut. Due to ambiguities in the Qut dialect I thought it was an invitation for one of those swank hot tub affairs that put the town on the map when Alexander rolled in. Instead of being met at the door by buxom girls in diaphanous gowns I was met by two surly, smelly men who lead me into another room by the cinch of their cold steel knife blades under my neck.”
“So, what did they do… have their way with you Deliverance style,” interjected Petroleus, “or force you to have sex with a goat?”
“’What the hell happened to you?’ they demanded in unison. The party boss in the back of the room stood slack jawed in shock as he alternated his withering stare from my face to my head shot and back again. ”
“Life under UN sanctions hasn’t been easy. Everyday I miss my shipments of foie gras and sumptuous white slave girls but,” he screamed, “that’s no excuse…!”
“Did you bother to read my dossier?”
This caused a lot of teeth gnashing and head scratching displacing in the process a few rotten incisors and a small army of head lice.
“The Method. Draw a straight line from Stanislavski via Lee Strasberg to my training at the Saddam Institute of Drama and Skullduggery."
“Method, I don’t know,” screamed the first man, pounding his fist into the wall, “First and foremost you’re a Saddam impersonator and you must never, ever, ever let the method never trump the man!”
“Let’s cut his tongue out,” came a voice from somewhere in the cheap seats.
“Let’s cut off his ears,” chimed in another.
“Hold it right there Zubaydah Zubayday!,” demanded the Colonel, “cut to the chase, man.”
Lucky for me their leader a man called Quinsay waved them off.
“So, tell me about him.”
“He was different from the rest. The others to a man all sported that same look - the heavy set beard compounded by a facial expression that indicated the discovery of fire was not to distant in their past.”
“Go on…”
The prisoner shifted in his chair, rattled his chains a bit and then continued: “It was also the cut of his clothes that set him apart. He was a bit of a dandy. Not an easy thing to pull off in Iraq. The mark of any civilization really comes down to the question as to whether your people can turn out a decent pair of trousers, doesn’t’ it?”
“Interesting sartorial point,” the colonel replied. “Why so much time in the sticks?”
“Twenty years ago when I graduated from the Institute I had the kind of heat you couldn’t buy in Baghdad with all the bribes in the Oil for Food program. I was signed by famed impresario Sayeed Cohn and given a lead role in an out town try-out in Karbala.”
“Karbala?” muttered Petroleus.
“Like your Boston or Chicago, a place to iron out the kinks. My performance had people literally dancing in the streets. Not long after we opened in Baghdad. For the next fifteen years my every move was followed by the town’s chattering classes. But then alas came the Big Slump. I was barely able to subsist on that interminable string of bit parts tossed my way. Last year I tried a comeback and mounted a stage adaptation of Democracy in America.”
“You did what?” barked the Colonel.
“I directed and starred in de Tocqueville’s master work. Very avant garde, I assure you,” he replied with a superior air, “but with high art there’s bound to be problems.”
“Problems, like what Abu Nobu?”
“For starters the title. The censors replaced all but three letters with asterisks. Those butchers told me this was the usual practice of the New York Times. It played hell with the ad campaign.”
“And then out of the blue I got a visit from Saddam’s secret police. They threatened to cut out or cut off my tongue or ears or both. While they were trying to decide their next move by engaging in a tag team wrestling match complete with steel cage Otay, Saddam’s son, arrived backstage. He proceeded not only to shower me with accolades but a fine spray of spittle to boot.”
Colonel Gaius Petroleus sliced the air with his hand Kennedy style. “Otay? His name doesn’t appear in my briefing book… are you sure it was Otay?”
“Otay is to Saddam Hussein what Neil was to George Herbert Walker Bush - a secret best kept hidden in the attic.”
The prisoner rattled his chains once more before speaking, “Instead I was banished from Baghdad and forced to take my act on the road.”
“Beats losing an appendage,” offered the Colonel.
He let out a doleful sigh. “Maybe..."
"But you don’t know what hell is until you do Tikrit summer stock in the winter!”
Just then the door burst open and in rushed the corporal or at least he tried to rush in but Petroleus's phalanx of aides slowed it to a crawl. The hallway behind him was bathed in a pulsating red light as raspy voiced commands barked rat-tat-tat over the loudspeakers.
“Colonel, sir, the prisoners are monkeying around again with the excrement," he said, saluting crisply.
"We’ve got a Fec-Con 4 on our hands!”
“Talk to me boy.”
“Sir, we’ve got a piss n' shit lock down on three!”
“What the fuuuccckkk?" he bellowed, "we had intel and a battle plan in place. First, hit 'em hard with the Exlax and double their water rations for the purge and then cut 'em off high and dry." The colonel shot the enlisted man a withering look of disbelief.
“Guess the boys in cell block three didn’t get the memo," he answered sheepishly, “I brought this poncho for the prisoner.”
Gaius Petroleus got right up into the corporal's face, nearly nose to nose, his face flushed crimson.
“Do I look like I have your girlfriend's aborted fetuses for brains, corporal?" he screamed, "Son, there's a real shit storm brewing out there and I'm gonna make damn sure I got my ass covered." And with that he grabbed the poncho out of the enlisted man’s hand, threw it over his shoulders and then turned to the prisoner.
"Prisoner Abu Kleenex Box... we'll pick this up next time!”
The Colonel grabbed his swizzle stick, screwed his hat back on, adjusted its brim with its full serving of ham and eggs, and performed a military retreat of such wondrous gutlessness that everyone in the room after a moment of stunned silence burst into rapturous applause.
Now that, thought the prisoner, smacking his lips lasciviously, is how you exit the stage!
...
12:37 pm
Ten Days Later
The barefooted prisoner, clad in an iridescent orange zippered jumpsuit set off by a hot pink Apache scarf and gold band, was sitting in the lunch room searching his pockets for coins for the milk machines. Finding none he leaned over to an unkempt, surly looking fellow sitting to his right who was engaged in grooming his beard with an exactitude that recalled a certain sub-Saharan simian.
"Brother, can you loan me a dime?"
"Do I look like King Abdullah to you?" he replied testily.
"I was just appealing to your sense of Muslim charity..."
The man went back to ginning through his whiskers and culling out lice with an efficiency not seen since Eli Whitney.
The prisoner feeling miffed by the man's curt behavior retorted brusquely, "Did not the Prophet say: 'You shall give alms to the needy, the poor..."
His table mate cut him to the quick: "You dare speak to me of zakat! Stop right there mister turbinado sugar packet! The Prophet said 'alms'!"
The prisoner gave him a quizzical look. The bearded man responded by reaching into his pocket and slapping a handful of pocket change palm down on the table.
"Does this look like alms to you?"
The prisoner's eyes scanned the small pile of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies.
"I think, Allah Akbar, the Prophet was speaking figuratively."
"No. The Prophet was clear! Alms... not this pocket trash of an empire in decline," he spat acidly.
"Mere coins... that's all, my brother of the faith."
"These aren't coins," he snarled, allowing his fingers to dance languidly across the pile, "they are the painted whores the Prophet forbade us to marry, each a mere five microns of nickel plate, the rest, just base metal," he said, his voice trailing off. Momentarily, he slumped slightly forward and then croaked heavily, "We are debased by that whoreson marriage of reserve currency to fossil fuel convenience."
The man's remarks struck a resonant cord in the prisoner. He stood up from the bench and then screwed his body into a compact, misshapen form and his face flushed with a pinkish hue not seen since Elsa Schiaparelli last walked the Earth. "Takes me back it does to the days I trode the boards in the West End," the prisoner rasped in a regally decadent tone, "playing Iago - that beautiful creature of motiveless malignancy!".
Before he continued he affixed his gaze toward a point hovering betwixt the foreground and the background of the lunch room, an area of seeming mystic import sharply delineated by the blue paper and plastic recycling bins. Dropping his register to a sonorous growl he exclaimed:\
"'Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
A loud staccato blast from an air horn hijacked the moment. A canned, scratchy message started playing over the P.A, white noising out the aural equilibrium that had existed before.
The other man sensing danger grabbed the prisoner by his over gesticulated arm and pulled him to his seat. After he quieted him the man glanced around the room furtively.
"Hey, who do you think you are Kurt Furtwangler?" he hissed, "at Delta we have a saying: 'loose arms dunk dummkopfs!'"
The prisoner looked befuddled and was about to ask a question when the air horn filled the room with a another series of blasts.
"That's two volleys... nobody gets two volleys!"
"What?"
"Ssshh!" the man ordered, placing is hand over his lips and signaling with his eyes toward the far end of the room.
The two men watched off in the near distance a heavily armed escort of six men frog march a prisoner down the cross hatched metal corridor running parallel to the room. The prisoner was clad in a fuchsia zipperless jumpsuit bedecked with chrome chains head to foot. The manacled man's eyes were covered by a mask, his ears by headphones, his mouth by a surgeon's mask and his nose something Grouch might have worn on a bad shaving day.
"So... who's the guy wearing more chrome than a '59 Cadillac?"
The hirsute man squinted under his cupped hand a few moments longer and then slapped his head in disbelief, "Allah Akbar! I can't believe it!"
"That my Muslim brother is Khalid Gehrig!"
"Never heard of him," the prisoner replied, feigning indifference.
"You never heard of Khalid Gehrig the Iron Horse?," he spat incredulously, "perhaps then you know him by his street name - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?"
"No cigar," replied the prisoner, with a hint of boredom. "Why the nose? Seems like overkill to me."
"Not only is he a mass murderer but a world class schemer to boot," the man whispered, "the interro-punks are afraid he'll telegraph his next move to his confederates by any means necessary including snot."
"What?"
"Snot... it's the new semaphore."
"Why would the interro-punks be up in his camel crap so much?"
"You're joking, aren't you? The Iron Horse's feats are known far and wide."
The prisoner wagged his head from side to side.
"He holds the record... not just here but in all the CIA torture chambers in all the world," he answered, with a hint of pride, "for an unbroken one hundred eighty-three consecutive waterboarding sessions without a single snitch!"
One hundred eighty-three times, thought the prisoner, mere child's play when compared with his own records, the knowledge of which he had painstakingly buttonholed to almost every inmate at Camp Delta; not an easy thing to do in a camp ruled by Velcro.
"That's a cheap parlor trick picked off any dime store magician. I knew this actor who held his breath underwater for an entire season playing Houdini."
The bearded man threw him a look of disbelief.
"How? The man had to be a fish."
"Maybe he grew gills... look, Mister Peshmerga or whoever you are I don't delve into other actor's techniques, ok?" he shot back acidly, "that many waterboards, you say, and still going strong?"
"A real Energizer Bunny, he is. The Muslim Brotherhood in cell block three have covered every bet since the Clipper broke fifty-six. Those Muthas's are making a mint I tell you!"
"Aren't they those clowns known for throwing shit like zoo monkeys?"
"Purely a diversionary tactic, I assure you."
"But, dear brother, isn't that against the Book?"
"What? Somebody's runnin' another book? Is it that rat bastard Omar Hamzayavich?"
The prisoner looked furtively to his left and right and then leaned in conspiratorially, and whispered, "The Book." .
"What... what book?" he pleaded, a sense of alarm shadowing his face.
"That BOOK!," replied the prisoner pointing his finger towards the aluminum mesh ceiling and then winking. "The one that starts with the letter K... remember?"
"Oh yes... that Book." he mumbled. Just then he noticed he was being stared at by others in the room. This caused him to jump out of his seat, leap up on the table with the panache of an Errol Flynn and proclaim to no one in particular, "Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!Allah Akbar!"
When he returned to his seat he leveled his gaze at the prisoner and coolly replied: "Shitting or making book?"
"Take your pick."
"Both are against the strictures of the Book but the Prophet in his wisdom allowed for certain dispensations," the man replied, returning to his previous activity of culling his beard for lice.
The prisoner looked at him questioningly.
"Firstly, when a man's gotta go he's gotta go. And secondly, gambling is fine as long its done in the cause of jihad. When I say the Brothers are minting I mean they're really minting gold. Gold that will be used to destroy that great temple of satanic evil and smite its Ponzi ilk."
"Temple Mount... the Jews?" he offered.
"No, the Federal Reserve and Greenspan!"
The prisoner shifted nervously in his chair.
"Now, how about that loan?"
"What for?"
The prisoner pointed toward a row of vending machines at the back of the room.
"Man, I love you like my Muslim brother but no can do..."
The hirsute man sensing a changing vibe got up to leave.
"Work those machines into the jihad equation and I can help you," he added, while adjusting the Velcro straps on his chartreuse caftan.
The prisoner looked up at him, a hint of sadness filling his eyes.
The man, feeling a tinge of pity for the younger man offered some sage advice : "Look, I suggest you find yourself another, more accommodating book. Ring up the Jews or the Catholics or even the Scientologists." On that note he tied the two ends of his zircon encrusted sash and exited the room.
Scientology? he thought:
'Tom Cruise!
John Travolta!
A veritable Actor's Studio of the modern era.
Yes!
That's it... that's my ticket outta this shithole!'
In a surge of new confidence the prisoner leaped out of his chair, stubbed his toe, danced a fast ooh-aah-ooh dance of pain and then raced through door the bearded man just exited. "Hey! Wait up, old wise and venerable one... Hear me out."
One month later:
To Be Continued
One night after a soggy bit of water board games with the intelligence goons I was able to grab just a few hours of shut eye before awakened by the distant peal of the bugler’s revelry, off key - no Bix Biederbiecke he. Minutes later I was visited by a phalanx of security and one Colonel Gaius Petroleus. He was crisply dressed in a starched military parade uniform. Damn that American technology! Try and get creases like that in Baghdad. No way, Jose. The Colonel was a tall, rangy, no nonsense kind of man, a Sam Shepard wannabe but with better teeth.
“Prisoner Number 314159, let me be frank. We have a problem. On the day you were nabbed at a drugstore on the corner of Tigris and Euphrates Street my Commander and Chief and his untold minions of sycophants were ecstatic. Even Rummy couldn’t contain himself. In his exuberance the Secretary vandalized a number of display cases in the Pentagon hoping to find a working armament to fire heavenward in joyous rapture… I’m sure you know the feeling. Alas, not only was he unsuccessful but called in the weapons manufacturers like Raytheon, Martin Marietta, Lockheed, and their ilk to give them a dress down in the still of that night, a moment I may add where shock and awe truly occurred… , ” he fell into such a state of gravitas that had I not quipped, “I am President Saddam Huss…” followed in nanosecond time by a sock to the jaw today he might one day be standing on a granite pedestal in a park covered up to his armpits in bird shirt.
The Following Week
“Two words for you Prisoner 314159…get the fuck out of character! So tell me you goddamn dramaturd,” he shouted DI style, bending his face in so close I could feel the stubble of his five o’clock shadow at ten in the morning, “Who the hell are you? Army intel had you pegged in Qut’s theatre district around February. Spill it. No song and dance, boy!”
“Yes, I was there,” replied Prisoner 314159, eyes slightly downcast.
“We know but why? Care for a swim this morning Prisoner 314159? .” A bubble bath. What’s with this Prisoner 314159… you know that’s Pi?”
“What? Like mom’s apple pie? Are you impugning my patriotism?
“Pi as in how you obtain the circumference of a circle, the radius multiplied by Pi or 3.14159… you see?
“I was there for an open call.”
“You’re playing with us Mohammed? Open call, what is that, some recruitment thing?”
“Recruitment, right!” he spit out contemptuously. “A tryout for the lead role in the song and dance extravaganza, ‘Sayyid We Hardly Knew Ya!’.
Sayyid… hmm, the name rings a bell,” Gaius said, grabbing a briefing book, “tell us more Mustaffa”
“The musical was loosely based on the life of Sayyid Qutb - radical Islamist prison intellectual and big time nose-thumber to the West. But to the cognoscenti, that is, the dance crowd, a great hoofer.”
The colonel has his goons undo his restraints while he continued rummaging through the dossier. “According to these field reports your performance dated Feb 24th was far more interpretative in your portrayal of Qutb… how do you account for that Jamal?”
The prisoner looked at him blankly.
“At key moments in the musical you invoked a technique referred to as ‘inside out’ and yet strangely at other moments you shifted 180 degrees to something called ‘outside in” … fucking CIA… obfuscate with the jargon! Can you clue me in on this?” he asked, totally confused.
“Snoops,” Pi replied, waving his hand dismissively, “you mention Stanislavski, and they think you’re talking about the Cheka,”
“You’re not helping me out here Kareem Abdul Jabbar… my patience has limits.”
“Let’s see… we have a dramaturge from La Mama, a director from the Performing Garage, a mystic/owner from a Sufi bookstore in Tribeca and a talent agent from William Morris.”
The prisoner mused that a hot knife piercing his eternal soul could have not caused me more pain. “William Morris?” he muttered inconsolably. “How many were in the audience that night?”
“Including our three plants? Hmm, give or take 19,” stated the colonel.
The news seemed to make the prisoner convulse.
Resentment burned in me like a cauldron. My head felt like a cauldron of burning resentment.
Colonel Gaius sensed my intense discomfort. I shook my head in disbelief. “My producer! Give me the chance Colonel and I’ll have him singing with the papal castrati!”
Petraeus shot the prisoner a writhing look.
“Hamel Ali Kamal, that fat pig, he reported a gate of 36!”
“19 or 36… so what’s the difference?”
“36 is break even. Under that they pull the advertising and the lights go out in a week.” (dig down in your camel saddle, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…)
[food for oil program… my agent was what? Selling oil allotments for cash behind my back…
“That explains the empty theatre. Yet, we were sold out… that’s for the account boys… [Oil for the Arts]
is magical, a critical mass on the great Bagdad Way. I swear when I get the chance I’m going kill him, his children, their children, their childrens’ pets and their pet’s pets!” I screamed furiously.
“Nineteen ain’t so bad!” the colonel snapped.
“I don’t play to those numbers, I get better numbers at a palace gig even when Saddam’s not in residence,” Khaldun spat bitterly, “did your team pay full price or buy them at discount from SADDAMTIX?”
He studied his dossier once more. “Bad tradecraft if we they paid full price. Let’s face it, locals paying full price creates suspicion anywhere. The company bought them off of a man named Jabar.”
“Did he have a lazy left eye?”
“Yes,” he answered, surprised.”
The truth burned like the glowing end of a Karbala stone inserted rectally Khaldun thought. Not only had his glorious leader let him down with his multitudes of Republican Guards, Al Quds, Mujahadeen and various hangers-on but so had his producer and agent! “is nothing sacred in this world? Between you and me, colonel, if anything good comes of this war let’s just hope it’s better representation!”
A month passed.
That night the Colonel paid me an unscheduled visit. He brought along a thermos of coffee.
“Like a cup of Joe, Mohammed?”
“Is it Hallah?
“Hallah?”
“How do you say… kosher?”
“Think so… odd, I didn’t think you were observant.”
“Colonel,” he replied with a wink, “the walls have ears.”
He handed me a metal cup. I studied it momentarily. “You’re not going to let me keep this are you?”
“I see no reason why not,” he replied.
“A skilled terrorist could make say a radio receiver out of this… like say the Professor did on Gilligan’s Island.”
He gave me that Gaius look. “How are you getting along with your other terrorist pals here?”
I studied the metal cup in my hand for a few moments before answering. “They’re not my pals, Colonel! They’re semi-illiterates; can barely write their name in the sands of the Sahara with a stick.” I paused and then gave him the look that once seduced all on the Great Baghdad Way. “Have you ever talked to them? All they want to talk about is things like shape charges, how to smuggle detonators in your ass and their longing for their manger animals.”
Many Are Called, Few Live to Tell about It
“In late February of ’03 I was in Qut preparing for a career defining role, he replied, “that of prison intellectual, radical Islamist, and major nose thumber to Western civilization Sayyid Qutb. I was just wrapping some last minute adjustments, you know a line here, a line there when I received a call from a very officious man asking me to drop by the local Baath party headquarters. Due to certain lexical ambiguities inherent in the Qut dialect I mistook it as an invitation for one of those swank Qut hot tub affairs Sufi poets have sang about since time immemorial,” I said, continuing, “When I arrived I was met by an angry mob of party apparatchiks carrying malfunctioning torches.”
“What happened to you?” demanded the head apparatchik. His eyes panned across my face and back to my headshot clutched between stubby fingers. You look like that hated Jew - may Allah skewer him over a large fire - Moshe Dayan!”
“Check my dossier, Chief. I’m old school. A Method Actor, which requires me…” He cut me off , screaming, “Enshallah, you’re a Saddam impersonator first!… remember, never ever let the method trump the man!”
