On Dangerous Borders

“I already told you what happened! How many more times do we have to go over the same damn story over and over again? What part of ‘I was knocked out and then woke up in Pakistan’ do you not get?!” Several heads turned to where my lawyer and I sat. The visitation room, which wasn’t very large, was old and depressing-looking. It felt like a dungeon of sorts. There were only about half a dozen other inmates with visitors present. Instead of steel tables and chairs bolted to the floor, there were heavy wooden tables, heavily scuffed and scratched. The inmates and their visitors sat on metal folding chairs. The jail’s lack of modernism didn’t lessen the gloomy atmosphere. I could hear one inmate sniffling as she spoke with her visitor. Another had a screaming kid I wished would be thrown out. Four female guards, each holding assault rifles, adorned the walls of the room as they kept a close watch on their charges and their guests. The louder I yelled, the closer they watched me. I looked at my lawyer. His long, scraggly beard hardly made him look very professional. Who the hell was I to even know if he was a real lawyer to begin with, or if he had any idea of what he was doing if he was? “I know it’s frustrating, but please, please try to understand, Miss Warner.” “Understand what? That you don’t believe me?” “Well,” the scruffy-looking attorney said, “these things don’t happen regularly. It’s not like we see…” “If I were here to spy or with any other ill intentions, why would I knock myself out first?” “I’m not saying you came here intentionally. Please, Miss Warner, that is not at all what I am saying. I believe your story. All I am saying is that this isn’t something we see much of here, and it may be hard to convince a judge that you are innocent.” “Oh, so you don’t see many people ending up here who didn’t mean to, but you do see people kidnapping themselves and then knocking themselves out in your backyard?” I asked incredulously. “And why would they do that?” Just then, the door to the visitation room opened and Ahsad walked in, also bearing an assault rifle. She quickly exchanged words with one of the other guards, who left the room. I pretended not to notice Ahsad. I’m not sure why, but for some reason, I thought it would be in my best interest if I didn’t pay too much attention to her when we weren’t alone. I guess I feared anyone finding out that I liked her and was attracted to her. Pakistan was anything but liberal. “Look,” I finally said to my supposed line of defense, “just lay the cards out on the table for me, and in plain English, please tell me what’s going on. What do I do? What can I expect?” “I don’t know.” “Gee, that helps,” I said a little louder than intended. I could practically feel Ahsad’s curious eyes boring into the back of my head. “How could you not know? You are a lawyer, aren’t you?” “Miss Warner, please don’t insult me. I am…” “Insult you?” I said, not caring who heard me. “If you’re this easily insulted, I’d hate to see you in my shoes!” The lawyer eyed me with a mix of emotions on his face: sympathy, frustration, sadness. I could hear officers approaching as I rose from my chair. “Try being kidnapped!” I shouted. “Try waking up in a country that hates your kind and finding yourself stuck in jail, not knowing if you’ll ever get out! Then you’ll know the real meaning of what it’s like to feel insulted!” “Miss Warner, please,” begged the lawyer. But I was already marching toward the door. Sure enough, Ahsad was close by. I almost ran into her as I spun around to leave, tears streaming down my face. “What happened?” she asked with curiosity and concern. I flung the door open, stepped into the corridor, then stopped abruptly. Several inmates were running down the corridor. Ahsad raised her weapon and shouted orders at them in Urdu. The inmates stopped. In English, she then took me by the wrist and ordered me to step behind her. I stood there frozen in fear. With every word being exchanged in Urdu, I had no idea what was going on or whether or not I was in danger. Maybe I should have learned some of the damn language after all. Before I had much more time to wonder about what the hell was going on, four heavily armed officers came and led the inmates in the opposite direction, two of them eyeing me with a mixture of curiosity and distaste. I turned toward the west wing, now crying audibly, as an unarmed Officer Darrah, an older, chubby woman who usually worked with Ahsad, came heading toward us from the west wing. I assumed that someone in the visiting room had called to let her know I was on my way back. Her eyes darted from Ahsad to me, and it was the first time she actually had some concern written on her matronly face. I quickly glanced back toward Ahsad, who spoke to Darrah in Urdu, motioning and pointing at me. Darrah quickly turned and came up behind me. “Wait, wait, wait,” she said a little less fiercely than usual. She took hold of my wrist with one hand and unlocked the door to the west wing with the other. Still shaking and sobbing, I ran ahead of her and toward my cell, even though I knew I couldn’t enter it until she unlocked it. The bitch in the large cell shouted her usual slew of insults at me. And I was not in the mood. “Go fuck yourself!” I screamed. I lunged toward the cell door, shouting every obscenity and threat imaginable, as strong arms suddenly seized me from under my arms and curled up around me, rendering any movement of my upper body impossible. I began to kick and scream until Ahsad shouted just inches from my ear. Where the hell had she come from? “Calm down!” she demanded. She slowly released her grip on me, and I turned to face her. I had assumed she returned to the visiting room, but there she was, now as unarmed as she usually was when she worked the west wing. “What happened?” “I don’t want to live!” I cried. “I don’t want to live!” I stepped toward my cell, but Ahsad pulled me back. I cried loudly, and I could sense her empathy and that she wanted to hug me. “He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.” “Shh-shh, no swears. Now tell us what happened?” Darrah looked at me expectantly. “The lawyer, if he really is one, is worried the judge may think I had something to do with my own kidnapping. Why and how could I drug myself up, cross the border while unconscious, and then wake up here?” I cried with exasperation. I had to pause a moment because my panic attack had caused me to hyperventilate. “Why would I want to be here surrounded by people who hate me?” “Not everyone hates you,” Ahsad tried to comfort me. The door to the west wing suddenly opened, and the lunch cart was wheeled in. “Ok, come sit in here,” Ahsad said, opening my cell door, “and then we will talk some more after.” She said something in Urdu to Darrah, who stood outside the door, periodically glancing at me and the activity in the corridor. Ahsad stepped into view with a tray. “I’m not hungry,” I said, despite the weight I had lost. “No? You don’t want to eat?” I shook my head, keeping it down and focusing on the old, beat-up cement floor that appeared to be a couple of hundred years old. I had no idea that such old jails existed. I began to sob again as I focused on my desperate situation. To say that I didn’t feel like a hopeless and helpless trapped animal was an understatement. My shoulders shook as I cried. Gone was my life and everything I had known it to be. After lunch was served to those in other cells, the door was unlocked once again, and Ahsad stepped in. I barely heard her as she reached for my wrist and firmly yet gently pulled me to my feet. “Come. Come with me.” “Where are we going?” I asked breathlessly, as I swayed with dizziness. Ahsad pulled me close against her to steady me. “We’d like you to come with us,” Ahsad said as she and I made our way toward the staff office along with Darrah. “I’m dizzy,” I moaned. “Yes, you’re very upset, and you haven’t eaten.” Darrah remained quiet as she walked along Ahsad’s right side, arms folded across her chest, while I walked snugly against Ahsad’s left side. Under much better circumstances, I would admire the way her body felt against mine. She was strong despite her slender frame, and I’m sure the security I felt being so close to her would have turned me on. Right now, however, I was anything but turned on as I wondered where in the world they were taking me.