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ADULT CONTENT
This article contains adult content that may not be suitable for all readers.
Sexual References: Features sexual themes or language, without the depiction of sexual acts.
Sexually Explicit: Description of sexual acts.
Sexual Assault: Features non-consensual sexual acts.
Gore: Depiction of blood, gore or mutilation of body parts.
Child Abuse: Features severe mistreatment of children.
Self-Harm: Description of self-harm.
Suicide: Description of suicide.
Torture: Description of torture.
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A ROUNDERHOUSE Joint
Farhan swirled the last dregs of rum in his glass, watching the liquid catch the light. He was in a bar — a custom for him whenever he was in Bahrain. The island country was one of the few places in the Arab world one could catch a drink without looking over one’s shoulder. He took full advantage of that small liberty whenever he had a good reason to visit. He rarely did.
Today was rare. It was a nice place — all fancy lighting, cocktails served in ridiculous glasses. Wood panelling on the bar and an impressive collection of spirits. It was a Saturday night, so the place was packed. Every Friday, as soon as work ended, the wealthy prodigal sons from Saudi Arabia would pile into their Mercedes and Range Rovers, and drive across the King Fahd Causeway that connected the two countries. They would arrive, and enter into an unspoken gentleman’s pact to ignore each other’s behaviour for the rest of the weekend. They would pretend not to notice the shots, the champagne, insist the nightclubs were upscale lounges and that the filet mignon was halal. For three days, they would get drunk off mead and live the life only the liberated of Riyadh could live. And come Monday, driving back across the bridge into Saudi Arabia, they would become good Muslim boys once again.
Farhan held no strong judgements on them for their temporary debauchery. They weren’t wretched because they were getting drunk; they were wretched because they were rich, hooting young men who had never known a day of work in their lives. Father’s credit card and expense account took care of any inconveniences. One bumped into his shoulder at the bar, nearly spilling his drink; the boy, no older than twenty-five, muttered a quick apology in Arabic before launching back into a spirited discussion with his friends. Farhan didn’t acknowledge it.
He did acknowledge the fetching woman who took the seat on his other side. Not Arab, but not American like the rest of the clientele here. Eastern European, maybe? Dark hair, a strong face, in a beautiful red pencil dress. Ordered her cosmo with an accent. He put on his best, smarmiest smile. Women seemed to love it. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
She smiled at him, and raised her voice slightly above the din. “No, I’m not! Take a guess.”
He took the opportunity to intently study her face. She thought he was probably trying to figure out her background, and smiled. In his head, he was matching her to the picture on his phone. Finally, he smiled and snapped his fingers.
“Belarussian!”
She laughed. “Serbian. And careful, the wrong person wouldn’t take that well.”
“Are you the right person?” He threw in a flirtatious smile.
“I might be.” She threw one right back at him. He knew he had her now.
“Intriguing. And how might we figure that out?”
“Let’s start simple. What’s your name?”
“Let’s start simple. What’s your name?”
“Fuck off.”
The man sitting across from him in the table cocks his head. He’s Mukhabarat, but he doesn’t look like the standard interrogators they would trot out. He has a soft, round face, full cheeks with no beard. He looks like someone’s cousin, a friend that might come up to a function who no one really recognizes — forgettable, but perfectly blending in. The khaki uniform and maroon beret make him look like a child playing dress-up.
“This doesn’t have to be difficult, you know.”
Farhan looks around. The pair of them are in a concrete room — nearly identical to the cell he’d been thrown in hours earlier, but slightly larger. Square, no defining features. Nothing except the chairs they were both in and the wooden table separating them.
“You’re prepared for difficulty.”
“I’m prepared for everything. But whether we go that route or not is your decision.”
Farhan smiles. “I really don’t know anything.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”
“But I can tell you already I don’t know anything. I assume you’re asking me about anything. So there’s no point in asking, is there?”
The man laughs. A light, airy giggle. “I like you.”
For some reason, the laugh unnerves Farhan. He tries not to let it show. “Thanks.”
“So if I asked you about reports of a man matching your description being sighted around the cultural ministry before the alarms went off, you would have nothing to say?”
“I would say that I am not a very unique looking man.” He knows that’s a lie, but he forges ahead. “I have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, hair. Many do.”
“Many do,” the man agrees. “Not many of them carry illegal firearms on their person.”
“I was concerned about my personal safety. Times like these, you know. I’m more than willing to pay any fine, but wouldn’t this be a police matter?”
“It would,” he agrees.
“Then why is someone from General Intelligence here?”
“Because,” he begins, rising from his seat. He circles the table, with an odd, lurching gait — the impression us a hyena, inching toward its prey until he reaches just behind Farhan’s shoulder. “A crime that involves an ORIA agent is my jurisdiction.”
Farhan blanches, and this time, he can’t hide it. The man laughs.
“We’re going to have fun together, lamb.”
“What do you do for fun?”
“Oh, this and that. Cook, travel. Talk to beautiful women in bars.”
She laughed. It was later now, and some of the folks had filtered out. The boys were lightweights with no meaningful tolerance, and that meant they left early. The expats were left, businesspeople and tourists.
“What about you?”
She thought about the question for a second, a fourth drink in hand. She didn’t look soused, to her credit. “Not much. All of my time goes to work.”
“What do you do?”
“Oh, this and that,” she parroted back to him.
He pressed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that job, honestly.”
“Seriously. I work for an international financial firm. We have lots of holdings here and in Riyadh, so they fly me out often.”
“Lucky girl! You must be a proper regular here, then.”
An embarrassed smile. “I wish. I barely speak Arabic.”
“It’s not that hard of a language to learn. And very pretty. Flows like water.”
“Its beautiful,” she agreed. “And you?”
“Are you asking if I’m beautiful?” he teased.
She giggled. “No! What you do for work.”
“Oh, nothing interesting there, I’m afraid. I’m just an office worker.”
“I’m — just — an office — worker,” Farhan gasps out stutteringly, teeth chattering. The ice water flows down his body, pools around his toes, then down the drain set into the middle of the room. There’s a metal loop set into the concrete overhead, his arms forced up to meet it, then a cable run through it binding both arms behind and above him. The result is an agonizing stress position, where all the weight of his body is either on his feet or hanging from his arms. He’s sure that he would’ve passed out if it wasn’t for the regular ‘infusions’ of ice water to keep him awake.
“No, you’re not,” the man answers matter-of-factly. “Don’t lie to me, lamb.”
“I’m not—”
“You are an ORIA agent. You were on a mission of some kind. Tell me what.” He’s not yelling or screaming — the demand is simple, neatly phrased. Gentle, almost.
“I don’t—”
His protests are cut off by another bucketful of ice water, thrown directly into his face. He gasps, taking in shaky breaths, hair matted to his forehead. He yells; an animal, guttural noise of shock. The better part of a minute passes before he can put words together again.
“S—stop. Please.”
To Farhan’s surprise, the man lowers the next bucket he already had raised.
“Have you decided to share?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know anything. Please,” he repeated. It feels like he’s said that a hundred times in the past two days — the words are rote, mechanical.
The man looks down at him, and for a moment, Farhan sees himself through the colonel’s eyes — pathetic, hanging from his burning arms, soaked to the bone and shivering weakly.
The colonel cocks his head. “You’re cold. Let’s get you warmed up.”
Farhan doesn’t say anything, scared to ruin whatever small mercy this could end up being. He watches as the colonel strides to the metal door and raps sharply on it. A few seconds later, it opens, and someone passes something through. A charcoal carrier — the kind he’d seen a thousand times in hookah bars, a small metal basket containing burning charcoals. In his shocked haze, he doesn’t register its purpose for a second until the colonel approaches him, carrying the basket in one hand and a set of metal tongs in another. He starts writhing, futilely trying to pull away.
“Fire is a magical thing, isn’t it? Too cold, and you die. But too hot, and you’ll wish you were dead.”
“No no no no! Please, wait, hold on—”
He’s cut off by a bloodcurdling scream. It takes Farhan a moment to realize the scream came from himself, as the burning charcoal is pressed against the naked skin of his thigh. The telltale odor of burning flesh fills his nostrils, and he screams again, kicking his leg out. The charcoal clatters to the floor, steaming where it hits the pooled water. The colonel looks at it.
“Pick it up.”
“W-what?” Farhan groans.
The colonel reaches over, drawing his knife from his belt. Farhan winces before he realizes the cable keeping his arms up for the past 6 hours is being sawed through. It snaps and he crashes to the floor in a heap, letting out another low scream as the blood rushes back into his limbs.
“Pick up the coal.”
“I— what? I can’t.”
The knife is against the back of his neck now. One plunge, and his spinal cord is severed. The message is clear. He swallows his pain and his pride and crawls across the freezing-wet concrete floor, to where the charcoal is still steaming.
He looks back to the colonel. “Please.”
“Tell me what you were looking for or pick it up.”
His chest heaves as he stares at the burning black rock for a few seconds. Then he leans down and wraps the fingers of his left hand around it.
He screams immediately, but dipping his hand into the ice water gives him a second before the pain sets in, a second he uses to whip around and lunge at the colonel, burning charcoal outstretched.
The colonel swiftly steps to the right. Dazed and confused, Farhan misses easily, crashing into a heap. The colonel wastes no time in dropping, placing a knee onto his back, twisting his arm behind him until he grunts and drops the charcoal. The skin of his hand is charred, bubbling.
Farhan can’t see him, but he can hear the amusement in the colonel’s voice.
“Looks like we still need to break you. I always did like cooked lamb.”
Nobody outside the room hears Farhan’s screaming as the colonel dumps the entire basket of burning coals onto his back.
“I’ll have the lamb shank,” the woman told the server.
Farhan winced, and she caught it.
“Not a fan of lamb?”
“A bad history with it. But don’t let me spoil your fun.” He turns to the waiter. “I’ll just do the tawook.” The man nodded, taking both of their menus and leaving them again. They were still at the bar — the place was upscale enough that they also served food. Pretty good food, at that. Farhan nursed his fourth glass of pineapple rum while they waited for their food.
“You seem like a much bigger heavyweight than most of the clientele,” she commented.
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, most Saudi guys have never had a sip of alcohol before coming here, right? You’re pounding those back.”
He declined to mention that the alcohol vaporized in his mouth before he swallowed. “Well, firstly, most of the rich bastards from there that can afford to drive down here every weekend aren’t exactly bound by the dry laws.”
“How’s that?”
“There aren’t bars or anything, but I’ve known people who had wine collections. Strictly as a financial asset, of course.” He gave her a knowing smile.
“Of course. So does that makes you a rich bastard who can afford to import it?”
“God, no. Well, at least I’m not a rich bastard.”
“Then what?”
“Simple. I’m not Saudi.”
“Oh. Oh! I— sorry, I didn’t—”
He laughed. “It’s okay. You’re hardly the first person to make that mistake. I’ve been called everything from Pakistani to Mexican. Ethnically ambiguous. Plus I speak English with an American accent, and that makes everything that much more confusing.”
She nodded slowly, still embarrassed. “So where are you really from, then?”
“I’ve been all over. But I was born and raised in Iran.”
“Oh, wow. That’s not… super common here, is it?”
“It’s not. Things have cooled in recent years but Saudi Arabia and Iran still do not like one another. Barely ever let citizens of the other in.”
“Then how are you here?”
He smiled. “I have friends in high places.”
“I assume you mean God, because I can’t imagine who else would manage to get those two to agree on something.”
That actually got him to laugh. “Probably not even him. Though I’m not terribly sure I believe in God anymore.”
“Allaahummak-fineehim bimaa shi’ta.”
Farhan whispers the prayer to himself, over and over, because there’s nothing else to do in the coffin. It’s a long, narrow metal box, just wide and tall enough to fit a person with hardly any room to wriggle. Moving his shoulders two inches to the right hit the wall, and the same on the left. There wasn’t enough depth to even bend his knees, so he stood with his legs locked. The pain set in after only half an hour.
He can’t tell how long he’s been inside. They’d thrown him in unceremoniously, and he’d heard the locks turning outside before they stepped away, leaving one parting message:
“If you scream, we’ll put a wet towel over the airholes.”
He hasn’t screamed yet. The airholes were six holes in the ‘ceiling’, each about the diameter of his pinky — though with his arms pinned to his sides, he could only estimate. They are the only source of light and air into the box.
He starts the prayer again. And again, and again, and again. He’d gotten to seven-hundred-twenty-nine before he’d lost count, keeping track on his fingers until the joints locked up.
It’s cold. It’s so, so cold. And quiet. He can’t hear a thing, not even the low sobbing of the other inmates that permeates the prison. Pure silence. It was calming at first, not having to think about what other horrors were being inflicted on those he can’t see. Whether he’d already suffered as they had, or whether he had yet to see what made them break. Then it became maddening, stifling, completely blocking his ability to think or keep track of time or his own thoughts. Now, he can’t think at all.
He kept repeating the prayer. A childhood memory swims to the forefront of his mind — in the mosque as a boy of no more than six, pulling at the hem of his father’s thobe. His father kneeling on the intricately-embroidered carpet, hands wrapped into prayer, making a supplication. “Allaahummak-fineehim bimaa shi’ta.”
Ya’allah, protect us from those who would do us harm, however you wish.
His father turns to him, and opens his mouth to speak. No sound comes out. His lips move, but nothing is expressed. Staring up at his father, Farhan realizes with a jerk that he can’t remember how people sound.
The scream he lets out isn’t one of pain — it’s an animal reaction. Reminding himself what a human sounds like. It echoes inside his chamber, and only after it reaches his ears does the graveness of his mistake register. For a few seconds, nothing happens, and he prays that the guard thought it was one of the other dozens of prisoners. That nobody heard it.
Then he hears the metal door unlock, and he breaks. Loud, wracking sobs, contorting his body against the coffin. His forehead slams into the cold metal six inches in front of him. He hears the clicking of boots against the floor as someone approaches, trying to stifle his sobs.
“Please. I’m sorry. Please—”
He’s cut off as the meager light from the airholes vanishes. The whimpers turn into open, screaming begs. No response. Despite his training, he starts to hyperventilate. He can’t do it. Tight spaces. Darkness. Restrictive. Claustrophobic. Suffocating. His head swims. In some logical part of his brain, he knows he can still breathe, but his throat tightens as the walls of the coffin move in, strangling him, crushing him—
“PLEASE!”
In one final act of desperation, he bangs his fists against the door — and it pops free. He tumbles out into a heap on the floor. The darkness recedes. His throat opens. He can breathe again. He sucks in greedy, desperate breaths before looking up at the black boots in front of him, following them up.
The colonel, face as soft as ever. There’s no cruelty in his expression — even as he crouches down and gently brushes Farhan’s long hair back from where it has matted to his forehead with sweat, his movements are kind. He waits for the gears in Farhan’s head to start turning again.
“I-it was unlocked?”
“The lock has been broken for years. With enough force, it comes free. But you didn’t even try.” His tone isn’t mocking. “I’m very proud of you, lamb.”
Farhan keeps sucking in air. Trying to process his misery for the last who-knows-how-long was self-inflicted. His own fault.
“It seems you don’t do well in tight spaces.” The colonel continues. “But at least your prayers were answered, in me.”
It takes another second for the statement to register. “H—how did you know I was praying?”
“Because I was here. I’ve been sitting right here for the past eight hours. I heard every little duʿā and supplication.” The colonel smiles down at him, showing his teeth. “I wouldn’t abandon my lamb. But are you ready to cooperate now?”
Farhan finds his head nodding, in spite of himself. It’s a physical reaction. He can’t stop it. But he opens his mouth anyway. “Please don’t make me.”
The colonel’s muscles tense, pulling away from Farhan’s hair. “’Please don’t make me.’ Very telling phrasing. That you will if I force you to, but that you’re scared of the repercussions if you do. From your handlers? From God?” He got to his feet. “Doesn’t matter. Same solution either way.” He pulled something off a table.
A claw hammer.
“I just have to make sure you’re more scared of my wrath than their’s.”
Before Farhan can pull back, the colonel grabs and pins his arm against the concrete. The blood is still redistributing through his body — the sudden pressure alone makes him groan in pain.
“Who do you worship?” The question is evenly-phrased and straightforward. It doesn’t even occur to him to lie.
“Alla—”
He doesn’t even get the whole word out before the hammer smashes down onto his little finger. Farhan screams like a dying animal, thrashing desperately. But he’s starving, weak, sleep-deprived — he can’t do anything except scream as every bone in his finger is shattered, pulverized. The pain is blinding. He feels bile crawl up his throat and hot, salty tears spill from his eyes.
“Who do you honor?” He knows it’s a trick now, but he doesn’t know what the trick is. In his dull agony and dazed confusion, he defaults to the same answer.
“Al—”
Again.
His ears are ringing so badly he doesn’t even hear the scream leaving his mouth until it begins to die away. He can just see his ring finger. It’s a crumpled, fracture mess that looks like it went through an industrial shredder, bent at all the wrong angles in the wrong directions. Both the ruined fingers are turning purple. He can’t hold the bile back this time and vomits, spewing the greyish mixture onto the concrete in front of where his head is pinned. Some of it flows back against his face and into his mouth. The tears mix with it.
“Who do you obey?”
“You. You.”
There is a half-second where he expects the hammer to come down again, and reflexively tenses. Holds his breath. But it doesn’t come. He opens his eyes, chest heaving.
The colonel is smiling down at him. “Good little lamb.”
Then he raises the hammer even higher. “Now let’s make sure you don’t forget.”
Don’t forget, 589, 3am
It’s scrawled onto the back of the cocktail napkin in pretty blue pen, the one she’d handed him before departing.
“I’ve got some business to take care of.”
“At this hour?”
She shrugged. “International finance. You learn to keep odd hours.”
The bar & grill was nearly empty now — just the two of them, a few regulars, and the staff. They’d be making last call any minute. He put on his best slightly-disappointed face.
“That’s a shame. This was one of the better nights I’ve had in this place.”
She leaned down, intentionally giving him a not-insignificant view down the front of her cocktail dress. She planted a kiss on his cheek, leaving a lipstick smear behind. “Doesn’t have to end. Look inside.” And then she was gone.
He unwrapped the napkin. Inside was a keycard for a room at the Hilton Bahrain.
And now here he was, at three in the morning, standing in front of an unfamiliar hotel room. He considered knocking, but then — she’d given him a card, hadn’t she? He slipped it into the reader, and the light blinked green. He gingerly opened the door, peeking inside.
“There you are.”
She was sitting on the couch, heels thrown off and legs up on the coffee table. Still in that red cocktail dress, an unopened bottle of red wine in front of her. Two glasses.
“Here I am.”
He moved in, closing the door behind him. He cast a look around — no obvious hiding spots for people or large weapons. It was a single queen room.
“I was starting to think you wouldn’t show,” she commented.
“I got a little lost. Never been in a fancy hotel like this,” he lied.
“What do you think?”
“I think you might be out of my league.”
She laughed and blushed. Just drunk enough to be flattered by any compliment, no matter how brazen.
“Well, c’mere. It’s late. Let’s not waste any more time.”
“I can’t imagine what we’d be wasting time from.”
She grabbed the hem of his jacket as he approached, pulling him in. He playfully resisted, letting them both ‘naturally’ fall onto the bed, her on top of him. “Well,” she purred, reaching at something. “That’s interesting.”
“Woah, girl.”
She pulled her hand back, quieting. “I’ve been a good girl, haven’t I?”
“Tonight? Sure.”
“So indulge my curiosity about something?”
He cocked his head. “Is it about the eye?”
She reached a hand up, teasing the hem of the eyepatch over his left eye.
“Sorry. I don’t want to offend.”
“You’re not offending. It’s just not a very interesting story, I’m afraid.”
A drop of blood pools on the edge of his brow. He’s on his knees, forced forward by his arms behind him and suspended from the ceiling. It’s an awkward position, designed to put immense stress on the shoulders and arms. Normally, he would be feeling the pain coming in dull, crashing waves — but at some point it all became too much. He dissociated, and now Farhan is watching his body contorted into shape from the outside.
A month ago, he would’ve been described as a handsome, curly-haired youth in his early twenties, with a proud face and a strong nose. Now he is unrecognizable, he thinks, gazing at his body from top to bottom. The hair is matted to his forehead with sweat and oil. Blood flows freely from his broken nose, catching in his stubble. He’s naked — his body is an artwork of bruises, cuts, and burns. Wicked-looking purple and yellow splotches spread across his back, arms, and chest, from the constant and uncomplicated beatings. His thighs and calves are dotted with burnt, charred skin that has melted and healed on itself, over and over as the hot coals were applied. Dark circles cut across his arms where a tourniquet was used to cut off blood flow for hours. Every single finger on both of his hands was a fractured, crushed mess, beaten bloody with a hammer until he went into shock.
A single, huge purple welt wraps around his neck where he was collared — a steel band with a leash wrapped around his throat, then used to shove him against a brick wall, yank him back, and shove him again. At one point, his head snapped back and collided with the brick. He woke up twelve minutes later when they waved bath salts under his nose. He couldn’t remember his own name for an hour.
The soles of his feet are red and swollen from when they were rubbed with honey and presented to a box containing a fire ant colony. Not that it mattered, because he hadn’t been given opportunity to walk for days. His ass was sore — they had withheld his water for two days before delivering a sudden, shocking burst of ice water through an enema, mixed with a few drops of chili oil. He had tried to vomit, but there was so little food in his stomach that the only thing to escape was the water he had accidentally swallowed while being waterboarded. His penis had a shallow cut in the skin from where a box cutter had been pressed while a rubber-gloved hand groped him. He’d been told that if he didn’t speak, the blade would sever neatly through his genitals, castrating him. They’d press a hot iron against the wound, cauterize it and leave him a eunuch.
And every step of the way, he’d given them what they wanted.
They’d broken him, that night in the coffin. Playing on his worst claustrophobia, the fear that they had no way of knowing. And once that dam was breached, the rest was a matter of applying pressure. Between the agonies and the punishments, he’d told them everything. That he was an ORIA operative from Tehran. That he’d been living in Aswan for months, lying low and waiting for his opportunity. Of the sword in the Nubian Museum, the one that could cleave through a sea if wielded right. How it was looted during the Arab conquests, how it belonged to the ummah as a whole. How a defector from Egyptian intelligence had given him the inside loop on getting it back. He gave it all up, between sobs and screams and tears. For two weeks, the Colonel worked him day and night, cutting him up, figuring out every aspect of how this had eluded the system. In time, with pain, every question was answered.
Except one.
The metal door clunks open. Farhan’s mind is snatched back into his body, and he looks up from the pool of blood, sweat, and piss that has formed underneath him. It is the only person it can be. The colonel strides up to him, giving him a pitiable look. He’s in a sorry state.
“Have you reconsidered?”
Farhan just pants in response.
“We’re going to find out anyway. An ORIA safehouse in this country cannot go undetected for long.”
He ekes out a reply. “It… has for… this… long…” His voice trails off. Putting the short phrase together sapped all the strength he had left.
This is all he has. This is the last shred of honor he can salvage for himself — to die without giving up his countrymen. He knows he will die. This is no more a matter of question than the sun rising. But if he keeps his silence, he dies with dignity. If not, he dies a traitor and a coward.
I am not a coward. I am not a coward. I am not a coward.
He lets the phrase bounce around his head, cutting through the fog and confusion in his mind. He doesn’t remember the last time he slept for more than a few minutes at a time — the noise machines in the cell were installed two (three?) days ago, constantly playing a loop of screaming, gunfire, artillery, animals being slaughtered, women being assaulted, baying of wolves, dropping of bombs. Trying to put a thought together is like walking through a warzone with an iron spike through his skull.
The colonel tuts.
“A shame. I suppose that’s the end of you, then.”
His chest heaves. He knows he should be terrified, desperate. But all that has been beaten, burned, torn out of him. All he can feel is relief as the colonel pulls his chin upward. Relief that the pain is finally over. Maybe he’ll get to make amends in jannah. Maybe he’ll see his father.
Then he realizes the two other prison officers coming in to grip him from behind. He’s already bound, he can’t move. Why would they hold him if they were going to kill him? He makes a noise of confusion.
“I haven’t given up on you yet, lamb. You’ve been so good for me. You’ve given us so much. It’s just that last little bit that’s being troublesome. And I still believe we can work it out of you with the proper motivation.” He turns away to the table. “Do you know what the first thing I noticed about you was?”
“Wuh?”
“Your eyes. They’re beautiful. Rich and deep and brown. I’ve spent much time in the West — they like their blond hair and blue eyes, but I’ve always felt the colors you see among our peoples are so much more striking. And yours are a truly remarkable set. They have a depth and soul to them.” He turned around again, raising something up. “Unfortunately, you seem to be wasting them. You refuse to see the bigger picture. This is larger than you, lamb. This is about the struggle of nations, for legitimacy as the world order crumbles. And if you refuse to see, what use are your eyes?”
It was a power drill. A long, thin bit sat at the end.
Farhan’s eyes widen. All the peace and resignation for his death he felt a moment ago evaporated.
“Hold him. Don’t struggle, lamb — I don’t want this to be a lobotomy.”
He screams, thrashing. But the guards already have a tight grip on his head, neck, and arms. He can’t move, only watch as the colonel draws closer, spinning up the drill. One of the guards tilts his head back, and he lets out one last, wild scream to anyone who would listen or help.
No one comes.
The bit stops a centimeter away from his face.
“Choose.”
“P-please.”
“Choose, or I’ll take both.”
It’s an impossible choice, the definition of an impossible choice. But he has to make it. His head swims, and bile creeps up his throat. His stomach feels like a bottomless pit, and he surrenders to fate.
“…L-left.”
There is no hesitation. One of the guards forces his eyelids apart with a spreader and the drill spins up again, letting out a whirrrrrr as the colonel drives it cleanly into Farhan’s left eye. There’s a mote of resistance, and then it breaks through, shredding the jelly-like interior of his eye. Farhan’s vision twists, goes red, then black, and then he doesn’t see anything at all.
He screams like the devil himself, bucking and thrashing fruitlessly. It can’t have been in his eye for more than a handful of seconds, but it’s a lifetime of pain. Every nerve in his eye socket is on fire, like a match has been thrown into his head. His blood boils and his teeth gnash. When the drill recedes, he does completely limp in the legs, hands scrabbling up to his face, clawing at his eye for something that isn’t there anymore.
“Make your decision, lamb. Or I’ll be back in the morning for the next one. And after that, you won’t have anything left to give me.” The door slams shut.
Lying there in a pool of his own blood, half-blind, howling at God for abandoning him, Farhan Moradi dies.
He fucked lifelessly and mechanically. He was a corpse puppeteered by mechanisms, thrusting into her with a dull, regular rhythm. To her credit, she didn’t seem to mind, moaning and panting underneath him — even without putting his heart into it, he was good enough to satisfy. That made him feel a little better.
Casual sex had always been a given for him, but it offered diminishing returns — at one point, years ago, it was how he reminded himself he was still alive. The endorphins would rush through his veins, his heart rate would spike, the adrenaline would electrify his body while he wrestled with someone in bed. It was a rush, a high. Then the high stopped being so high, and he would lay awake afterward, staring at the ceiling, naked, next to someone deep in sleep, wondering what was wrong with him. Now, it was more routine than anything. He found someone at a bar, he said all the right words, they went to their place (never his place), and he fucked like a dead thing for a few hours. He was gone before morning.
There was someone who had made him feel alive again, a few years ago. But she was gone now. And he'd probably never see her again.
In any case, this wasn’t that — this was business. Business, he told himself, as skin slapped against skin and her moans filled the dark hotel room, as fluids spilled onto the hundred-dollar sheets and the bottle of wine sat unopened on the coffee table. As he tries not to focus on the canvas of scars decorating the parts of his body usually hidden by clothes. Business.
That night, in his cell, Farhan is visited.
The guards untied him from his position in the interrogation room and hosed him down. Some rudimentary first aid was applied to make sure he didn’t bleed out overnight, and then he was dumped unceremoniously into his cell. A thick piece of fabric was tied around half of his head — it made his skull feel weighty. It took all his strength to crawl onto the mat before passing out.
He does not awake when he is visited. He does not stir at the sound of the two loud thumps outside several hours later, like bodies hitting concrete. He is not awakened by the door unlocking, or the footsteps creeping up to his mat. He is lost in the abyss as a set of hands lifts him up, checks his pulse and spine, cradles his head, inspects his wounds. He does not hear the swift expressions of shock at the brutality of his injuries, nor the duʿā quickly whispered over his supine form. He does not notice as a multitude of strong hands lift his body up into a bridal carry. He does not feel the temperature change on his skin as they quietly, swiftly leave the concrete of the prison, slipping into the cool night.
Farhan Moradi dies in that Egyptian prison. Someone else exits that night.
Farhan leaned against the doorframe of the bathroom. The woman was inside, running a warm bath. She gave him a glance as he fills the doorway, letting the sheet fall to the floor. She smiled, not seeing what he was holding just out of sight.
“That was fun.”
“It was,” he lied.
“You never did tell me what you do for work.”
“Neither did you.”
She cocked her head, confused.
“Yeah, I told you — finance.”
He shook his head.
“No. You’re an upper manager for Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd.” He watched the blood drain out of her face before he continued. “For the past seven years, you’ve been the Vice President of the Middle Eastern Office. Under your influence and direction, MC&D has shifted its focus away from providing petrobillionaires and oligarchs with expensive novelties and anomalous toys, and towards supplying power-hungry dictators with anomalous arms. Your private auctions in Riyadh, Cairo, Damascus, Tehran — responsible for tens, hundreds of thousands of deaths in regional conflicts. Now every autocrat knows he can get something better than yellowcake at half the price of a nuclear programme.”
He pushed into the bathroom, letting his size fill the room. His eye burned under the patch.
“You’re attending a private auction in Manama in seven hours, arranged by yourself. You will be selling an explosive package the size of a water bottle that can level New York City. You’re expected to walk away in excess of a billion dollars, and fifty million of that is your personal commission. The dictators trust you personally — without you, there is no auction. You’re dealing death on a massive scale, and getting filthy rich off it. And no one is doing anything to stop you.”
She backed away.
“Who the fuck are you?”
He adopted a simple, impassive tone he learned from a man in an Egyptian prison twenty years ago. It makes it easier to divorce himself from his actions, pretend it’s someone else about to do what he’s about to do.
“Someone being paid to stop you.”
He lunged at the exact same time she went for the bathroom drawer. A small snubnose pistol, tiny enough to hide anywhere. He cursed himself for not checking earlier as she fumbled with it. Even armed, it isn’t really a contest — she had no combat training, no idea how to use a firearm in close quarters. He dropped into stance while she was still grabbing at the gun, delivering a sharp hand directly into her ribs. She gasped, and it dropped to the floor. They struggle violently for a second, wrestling around for control of the gun. She wrapped her fingers around the barrel a half-second before his other hand landed on top of hers, trapping it, raising it up and twisting her body. If it went off, it would attract undue attention. His other hand went to the back of her head. He had been hoping to resolve this without a mess. No such luck.
He slammed her head down, directly into the corner of the toilet tank. The white porcelain turned red and cracked. Her grip on the gun weakened, but didn’t release. He slammed her head again, grunting with the exertion. The ceramic shattered, her skull caved in, and she went limp. He wrapped his fingers into the hair in the back of her head, then dragged her over to the bath. It was full. He dunked her head below, watched the red fill the tub, and held her there until the bubbles stopped.
He let himself drop to the tile floor in exhaustion, back against the tile wall of the tub. The woman’s corpse was inches away from him.
He waited for the wracking, heaving sobs to overtake him. They never came.
