The Occupation of Emerald City: The Worker Read Free Page B

power plant once Coalition soldiers began patrols.”
    “My parents don’t give a shit about me! They couldn’t even
remember my fucking birthday when I was a kid!”
    “Where are they?” he asks, leaning back.
    “Eastern Europe. The Middle East, maybe.”
    He raises one bushy red eyebrow. “Why would they be in the
Middle East?”
    “My father’s a consultant. He works with a lot of foreign
companies. So they move around.”
    The interrogator smiles. “Are a religious man?”
    Do I look religious? I think. Do they think they caught me
praying? Have they been watching me on some security camera somewhere, tucked
away, watching me shit in a bucket? “No.”
    “Are you a Jew?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know?”
    My eyes burn. I squeeze them shut. “My parents never talked
about our heritage.” My parents hardly ever talked, especially not to me. They
worked. And when they were home, they fought.
    “You love your country, though. You’d kill to protect it.”
    I don’t respond. It’s not a question—he’s made up his
mind on the issue. He’s probably lived in his home country all his life. He’s
probably never had to learn another country’s history on an intimate level just
to fit in. I spent my elementary school years in the Middle East while my dad
worked for a power utility. I learned about the history of the Holy Land, made
friends with three boys who believed in three different gods and then my family
moved again. And again.
    And again. And every time, I had to learn about a new world
just to fit in.
    “You would risk your life to defend this country,” the
interrogator says.
    “No.” How am I supposed to explain it to him? The absence of nationalism inside my body? The fact that I never felt closer to anyone than
my grade school friends in the Holy Land who were wrenched away from me before
we could plan a sleepover, before we could chase girls on the street with mud.
This country is piece of land with an imaginary line around its border, nothing
more.
    “I want names,” he says.
    “Of who?”
    “Others who are planning like you.”
    “No one’s planning anything.” I lean forward, eyes wide. It’s
the serious look I give employees who stretch their lunch breaks. “Listen, you
have to have the wrong person. I swear to God, I wasn’t planning anything. I’m
just a supervisor.”
    “You’re a terrorist!” the interrogator screams.
    “No,” I say, shaking my head again and again. “No. No. No. I
just want to go back to work. I’ll work for free if you let me go. Whatever you
need! I can’t be in that cell! I need my medicine!”
    “Take him to isolation,” he says to the guard, in my
language, for my benefit.
    “I don’t even know what the Coalition is!” I scream. “You can
take whatever you fucking want, I don’t care! Take my home! Take my money!” The
interrogator jerks back slightly, staring at me, watching the color drain from
my face.
    He waits. But I have nothing left to say. My mind has never
prepared for this.
    Finally, he waves me away.
    The soldiers pick me up and put the hood on again, dragging
me back out into the hallway. I let them do the work so they can earn whatever
pay they’re getting for this mockery of justice. I’m too weak to walk on my
own, too weak to fight even though I’m already anticipating the blasts of cold
and hot air on my skin and my heart’s begun a snare roll against my rib cage.
God, what I wouldn’t give for my medication right now. Three years of drugs and
now I’m quitting cold turkey. A medication that came with a fucking novel
filled with warnings.
    They drag me down the hall, taking one turn and then another
and then another and I’m sure they’re just walking me in circles around the
compound. Trying to confuse me or something. Trying to turn this place into
something it’s not.
    Finally, they stop me and remove the hood and handcuffs. I
see a pale man standing next to the soldiers, in his late thirties