to another door, this one with a combination lock.
“Turn away,” an agent said.
“What?”
“Turn away from the door.”
I followed instructions and was turned away when the other agent tapped in the combination. We then went through and I was led into a dimly lit hallway of doors with small square windows head high. At first I thought they were interview rooms but then I realized there were too many. These were cells. I turned my head to look through some of the windows as we passed and through two of them I saw men looking back out at me. They were dark skinned and of Middle Eastern descent. They wore unkempt beards. Through a third window I saw a short man looking out, his eyes barely at the bottom level of the small window. He had bleached blond hair that had a quarter inch of black at its roots. I recognized him from the photo I had seen on the computer at the library. Mousouwa Aziz.
We stopped in front of a door marked “ 29,” and it was popped open electronically by some unseen hand. One of the agents stepped behind me and I heard him working a key into the handcuffs. I was beyond being able to feel it. Soon my wrists were free and I brought my hands around so that I could rub them and get the circulation going again. They were as white as soap, and a deep red welt ran around the circumference of each wrist. I had always believed that cuffing a suspect too tightly was a bullshit thing to do. Same with hitting a custody’s head on the frame of the car door. Easy to do, easy to get away with. But always a bullshit move. A bully’s move. The kind of thing a boy who enjoyed teasing the younger kids in the schoolyard would grow up to do.
As the tingling feeling started to work its way into my hands a burning sense of anger started building behind my eyes, edging my vision with a velvet blackness. In that darkness was a voice urging me to retaliate. I managed to ignore it. It’s all about power and when to use it. These guys didn’t know that yet.
A hand pushed me toward the cell and I involuntarily braced myself. I didn’t want to go in there. Then a sharp kick hit me behind my left knee and my leg buckled and I was hurled forward with a stiff-arm shove from behind. I crossed the small square cell to the opposite wall and put my hands up to stop my forward momentum.
“Make yourself at home, asshole,” the agent said to my back.
The door was slammed before I could get back to it. I stood there looking at the square of glass, realizing that the other prisoners I had seen in the hallway had been looking at themselves. The glass was mirrored.
Instinctively I knew the agent that had kicked and shoved me was on the other side looking at me. I nodded to him, sending the message that I would not forget him. He was probably on the other side laughing back at me.
The light in the room stayed on. I eventually stepped away from the door and looked around. There was a one-inch-thick mattress on a shelflike outcropping from the wall. Built into the opposite wall was a sink-and-toilet combination. There was nothing else except a steel box in one of the upper corners with a two-inch-square window behind which I could see a camera lens. I was being watched. Even if I used the toilet I was being watched.
I checked my watch but there was no watch. They had somehow taken it, probably when they took off the cuffs and my wrists were so numb I could not feel the theft.
I spent what I thought was the first hour of my incarceration pacing in the small space and trying to keep my anger sharp but controlled. I walked without pattern other than that I used the entire space, and when I came to the corner where the camera was located I raised the middle finger of my left hand to the lens. Every time.
In the second hour I sat on the mattress, determined not to exhaust myself with the pacing and trying to keep track of time. On occasion I still gave the camera my finger, usually without even bothering to look up while I delivered it. I started thinking about interview room stories to