The Epistle of an Interrogator: Part III

Part III From Abu Ghraib, Iraq.
God be with you all. love, joshua

The parched desert air wraps around your
face and hands like a stale blanket.
Foot and vehicle prints can almost never
be traced from one day to the next, as
the wind cascades yesterday's treads
into the air. And yet you feel as if,
day after day, this is where yesterday I
walked . This is the path I just took.
That is where I just stepped. But even
the gash in the earth that yesterday
laid open, tomorrow has been filled by
dirt and shovels erasing the land with
the newness of cables and wires, stone
and steel.
Walking through the many courtyards,
Arabic numbers tattoo the walls; sayings
and drawings and proverbs on the inner
perimeter. "The future is for us, and
not for our enemies." A patchwork of
punctured brick backdrops the ascension
of one to ten written on a courtyard
wall, the other side of which prisoners
once lived in barred cells. I wonder
what events there, too, the winds and
workmen's hands now seek to erase from
memory. What sounds, I wonder, once
were fired in the courtyard overheard by
prisoners waiting their turn to stand
beneath a number. Will I be one? Which
of my countrymen will save me to eleven?
Their voices are not heard, but I feel
as if they walk beneath my treads, and
linger on beneath me as I walk daily
upon the dirt, which I ingest into my
lungs throughout the day.
At the prison's edge is the teetering of
a skyline - a minaret, palm trees, the
mosaic dome of a mosque, rooftops. At
sunset I can hear the calls to prayer
from south and from east. At times it
may even appear as if in a round, like
choirs of a cathedral, one folded atop
the other. But, always a few hours
after the sun has fallen there is the
intermittent echo of small-arms fire,
the howling of dogs. Today the earth is
carved by the claws of 210mm artillery
rounds hidden in the back of a stolen
vehicle, parked on the road near an
American checkpoint. Tomorrow,
buildings and roads, pipes and
electrical wires, bandage and suture the
forgotten earth, which I breathe into my
chest and wear upon my hands and face.
The morning arrives darkly silent, with
the occasional back and forth of early
passers by. Vehicles begin their first
light regimen, and sunrise prayers echo
from neighboring minarets. A prayer for
penance, and for absolution, I offer
soft under my breath in the breezeway.
Runners begin to pass, and others
readying for the day's work. The wooden
chair beneath me is dusty and new. The
ever present cover of dust which fills
the air does not discriminate, between
what has been and what has only recently
come. And I am there in the midst, dust
gathering on my body and clothes as I
softly ask the day's beginning.
Most evenings are journeyed through
books, something to connect me to a
world of words, peoples and places that
can speak conversations different to my
present. This is my lens and my light,
not for escape, but to see aright. The
mornings, however, I try vigorously to
steal to myself before steps, movements,
fixed hues and cascades of ever changing
colors seduce me to forget. Hostile
voices tell me there are enemies, tell
me to forget my own tongue and to use it
as if this enmity were true. The
hostility, it soothes, it hands me a rod
and bids me lie down, and to forget the
pains of the land and her children.
From the rising to the setting of the
day's enveloping heat, the droning hums
and vibrations of wheels, machines and
wind follow my steps and cover my ears.
It is impossible to listen amongst the
ever present chatter of inanimate
voices. The days merge to and from one
to the next and bear no distinction from
one to the other; for the same
conversation marks them all, tireless
wind and ever laboring generators.
But where, my friend, are words between
walls of stone and brick? Beneath wires
of twisted metal, amidst a blanket air
of earth swirling about your hands, feet
and face. The constant hum of
electrical wheels turning for your
livelihood, lest the darkness deafen
your eye. You rise and fall daily
clothed in your daily drink, and walk
the dirt each day draped in the carbon
contrived to ensure you may tomorrow
receive your daily bread. The Sumerian
sun is punishing, those caught in his
wake are mastered by the strength of his
arm. We hide his gaze by day, saving
our supplications for the presence of
his queen. She is calm, inviting,
spills forgetfulness into our longing
ears, until once again words are uttered
between the moments of veiled light.
Memory seems forgotten, and amidst the
ever forward pressing sameness, silence
and doubt seem as to prevail.
But doubt can starve a man. It can tell
him that hope is beyond reach and
unworthy of forelonged expectation.
Doubt whispers into a man's ear, telling
him that it is condemnation only which
awaits him; that goodness cannot and
will not reach out to him. Doubt pushes
a man to listen only to his pride, it
forbids the vulnerability to be seen by
an other. They will take you, Doubt
says. They will leave you, forsake you,
condemn you. They do not understand,
they do not see, they only conjecture
and plot, do not trust them.
And yet Doubt is a companion, it is a
sojourner one takes into solitude.
Doubt elevates you in your own realm,
and says you are safe when the rest of
the world seeks your life. Doubt takes
your hand and walks with you down every
path, it leads you through fettered
woods and clothes you in wind and storm.
Many will come against you, but Doubt
will keep you and let not you fall from
his side. You will cross roads crooked
and broken sunsets descend throughout
the many seasons' change. And with him
you will die, together alone.
The kingly crown you were given will
crush under the weight ever rising
threat. All those who once reached to
you on your journey, kept at lances
distance by the armor you conjured. The
gusts could not take you, for you would
not enter the sea. The paths you took,
ever changing in their course, paid the
tollman's wages so you would not feel
summer's heat, or winter's chill, or the
sun or breeze on bare skin. And, all
the while, you covered yourself in a
blanket made for a child.
I stand across a table from so many for
whom I can intercede, be an advocate and
mediator. Between each man and his fate
of judgment is a conversation, often
many, that can lead to the law or an
atonement of some sort in its stead. I
am this conversant, this confessor. But
Doubt is their friend when they feel an
enemy across the way. Today I sat with
the most ruthless man I've ever known,
and between cigarettes and smiles we
sat, doubting. Enemies, be they real or
other, abound. Yet, they do not know
the terror I feel each day as I plead to
be let into their secrets. It is they
who reveal their sins and yet I who
tremble before their Judge. I am their
advocate, and in no small way; and yet
Doubt is so strong, it can take a man to
his death. If they could see my days,
which begin and end on my knees. If
they could hear what I hear and see what
I bring to the one who will judge their
fate. If they could comprehend that I
wish to give them life, and be not their
accuser. But Doubt sustains them where
I am restrained.
I cannot tell them what I pray in
solitude, what I say to the magistrate,
who will lead them to life or to
bondage. I cannot tell them except what
their ears will hear, and yet hearing,
they do not understand, for Doubt is
their lord and comfort. I cannot
forgive what is not confessed, and thus
so many must retain what I could not
absolve. God forgive me for those whose
yolks I could not carry, lighten or
remove. Forgive me for the stories I
could not see behind fig rouses.
Forgive me Lord if my atoning work is
incomplete, and for the imperfect
justice that sends me to them as Your
Minister.
Open ears Lord, open hearts, and first
Lord, I beg thee, mine. Let not Doubt
reign. Look not upon the sins of the
accused, but upon the faith of Your
Servant. Let Doubt be subdued, let me
vanquish him with my words. Let him
come before me, even though he is
cunning amidst unholy wars. Let not the
ambitions of the powerful, nor the
graspings of the desperate, confound a
Justice which Doubt knows not. Let the
words of my mouth, and the meditation of
my heart, be always acceptable in Thy
sight, oh Lord, my Strength and my
Redeemer. Amen.