Gitmo 43: Men

I came to to fists in my guts. Hamdi must have been hitting me a while, though probably he had somebody else do it, since it actually hurt. He hit me again, this time in the face, but when my head didn’t go ragdoll he stopped and smiled. 

“Thought you were awake,” he said. He sat down in a chair opposite the one I was tied down in.

“This is all very exciting for me,” he said. “Between here and Gitmo, I haven’t been a free man in most of a decade. Ate when allowed. Slept when allowed. I wiped when I was provided toilet paper.”

“It’s hard to be a man, hard to feel like one, live up to your responsibilities, when you’re chained up like a dog, beat anytime you get out of line.”

“You are a dog, Hamdi. A rabid fucking mutt. And in a better world we would have put you down. And instead we coddle you, like you aren’t a worthless little shit, like you aren’t a danger to yourself and everybody around you.”

But he didn’t rattle, much as I shook the tree. He just smiled. “If you lose communications, the protocol outlined in the agreements is for the military to wait for thirty hours without communications from the Marshall. The beauty is that if they come too soon, I win. One more breach of the agreement and Bim Maa Chiaa will riot. And if they come too late… well, I get to peel that smug grin off your fucking face.”