I was strapped to the feeding chair by my legs, my arms, and my head. The chair was one of six in a room with concrete walls and barred windows. The other five were empty. My eyes still watered from the insertion of the feeding tube through my nostril. I had quit eating their meals, and now they forced blue glop into my stomach twice per day. A medical technician and two guards stood together in my peripheral vision.
I wore white socks, plastic sandals, and the orange jumpsuit given those prisoners at Guantanamo Bay deemed non-compliant.
Several men in camouflage uniforms entered the room and were saluted by the guards and technician. When formalities had been concluded, they stood before my chair, discussing me in a language I did not understand. I could not infer rank from their insignia, but one of them was older, with white hair cut close to his head and a stomach that pressed against his shirt, and the others listened carefully to him. I had not seen him before, and I thought that perhaps he was a visiting leader.
“Please, sir,” I said to him in my language, “let me die.”
He spoke with a young translator I knew and then turned to me and answered in his language with a smile like a thorn. Many of them laughed, but the translator looked grim as he delivered the message.
“He said, ‘Do you call this living?’”
Daniel Wilmoth is a writer and economist living in urban Maryland. He enjoys finding the wild places hidden amid the asphalt and concrete.
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