Gitmo 44: Waterboard

In a way, I was glad when they decide to waterboard me. See, they could have gone at me with knives, torn the meat off my bones in strips, broke every tiny bone in my hands. Waterboarding is simulated drowning, which in my book trumps actual mutilation any day.

Of course, those were rational thoughts, me ramping myself up as I heard them pouring water into a bucket from the chair I was tied to in Hamdi’s tub. I was pretty sure the rag they put over my face was soaked in piss, not water, though foolish me I spent my last few seconds with access to air trying not to smell it.

And then they started pouring. You know when they say something comes as easy as breathing? We take it for granted. It’s something we go months without even thinking about. Until suddenly you’re being intentionally deprived.

I tried to keep my dignity, just sit there in the chair and pretending like I didn’t need the air, waiting for unconsciousness to take me. But my lungs told me to fuck off, and sucked as hard as they damn well could, but nothing came in, aside from a little bit of the piss-rag that touched my tongue.

Then I was hit, hard, in the stomach, and I realized there was just a little air left in my lungs at the moment I lost it. Then the rag steadied over my face again, and the water started to pour again. This time my body was too busy shuddering, from the punch, and the coldness of the water. I told myself the burning in my lungs would warm me up, and that almost made sense to my oxygen deprived brain. And then it stopped.

They pulled the rag off my head, and I gasped, deep, and even with the smell of piss in my nose it was the best tasting air I’d ever had. And I looked at the two buckets they’d been pouring over me, and they were nowhere near big enough to explain the length of time since I had my last breathe.

“We’re new to this, I admit,” Hamdi said to me. “But we have experience on the other end. We think you should have just enough time to recover while we refill the buckets, so that you don’t die. We think.” He smiled, and I tried to punch him, but my hands were tied to the chair, so all I managed to do was yank painfully on my shoulder.

Already the first bucket was full again with water. I didn’t even have time to take one last breath before the rag was over my face again.