handfuls of snow on the glowing lock as soon as it dropped from the door. The bigger problem was the lock on the other side of the door. They crawled back into the small yard. A barred window opened into the corridor behind the door through which Esi Goldfingers and Mamad Cucumber went to the other side; Esi because Mamad had told him he would be the first of the four to leave the place, and Mamad because he had promised Esi not to leave his side until the end. Salman and Big Boback went back to the storage room and waited. The minutes passed slowly. Behind the other door, Salman could hear two officers laughing. Big Boback wheezed as he looked nervously at Salman. They could barely hear the weak sound of scratching on the other side, but nothing happened. Salman tapped lightly on the door to transfer the anxiety and make them hurry. Then came some clanking. They were fidgeting with the lock. When he could not stand it anymore, Salman tiptoed to the backyard and army-crawled to the narrow window. The two had forgotten the last line of the poem. Esi Goldfingers had scratched his version on the shackle but it had only warmed up the lock and created a strong light. Mamad Cucumber had crossed out Esi’s last line and scratched his reworded version, which had proven wrong, too. Through the window, Salman handed them fistfuls of snow to soothe their blistering hands, and whispered the right order of words. But there were already too many wrong words and scratch marks on the shackle and the poem would not form.
“Write it on the body,” Salman whispered.
Esi and Mamad took turns scribbling the poem onto the rusted body of the padlock with a nail. A few minutes later there was a hole in the middle of the lock, but still it would not open. Big Boback came to the window, panting from exertion, with a fine screwdriver from a toolbox on a top shelf. With his directions whispered through the window, Mamad Cucumber pried the lock open after nervously running his hand across the crew cut on his round scalp a few times. Down the corridor and into another room they went until they reached the grate that covered the sewage. Drenched in slimy waste in the putrid dark, Salman, Esi Goldfingers, and Mamad Cucumber inched their way through the narrow tunnel toward the street. Big Boback got stuck and no matter how hard Salman pulled, he could not free the big boy. Big Boback was arrested in the morning and a week later, as the protests unfolded in the streets, he was suffocated in a tub full of excrement with his wrists handcuffed behind his back, the investigator’s gloved hand pushing his large head all the way down until his nose was crushed against the bottom of the tub.
* * *
—
THE PRISON BREAK WAS A slap in the face of the new Prime Minister, a challenge to his inflated authority. The secret service raided the prison and confiscated all the belongings of the prisoners. Yard time was cut in half and the amount of meals was reduced. The few that raised their voices in protest were immediately taken away.
Published in newspapers and circulating from mouth to mouth as one of the three fugitives, Salman’s name warmed Ahmad’s heart. He felt like he had made up for the speech that they said had started the crackdown. He threw the newspaper into Khan’s lap. By the headline he had penned, in large letters, I DID THAT.
Khan put his glasses on and read without haste. “You’re helping those cats then,” he said.
I helped my friend.
“You’re wreaking havoc.”
Ahmad found in himself no remorse for what he had done. Was it not Khan himself who had blamed the havoc on the cats? Had it not been he who had drawn the charts and marked the maps and done such persuasive calculations? He had predicted things and they had come true. The old man was now contradicting himself. His mental astuteness had begun to decline. His body was already worn out, his limbs were weak, and his hair had fallen out of his crest, leaving a band of sparse, white bristles around his head. The only remnant of the vigor, charisma, and power he had exuded years before was his mustache. He had not stopped waxing and twirling up the ends of his whiskers.