Doctor Gross made a note on his legal pad. “Yes, and the day before, where were you? What did you do?”
Azra shook his head, nettled.
“Were you in heaven? Were you on earth? Were you working somewhere else? Were you a person, yourself, on the day before – a person who got killed and became an angel?”
“I… I don’t… I don’t know…” Azra said. The doctor looked up. His hairy brows furrowed.
“Were you an angel before, charged with some other duty? Or were you a human? You had to be something on the day before.”
“I said I don’t remember.”
Doctor Gross smiled affably. “Well, that’s the first part of sorting this all out. Let everybody else worry about what you’ve been doing in the last fifteen years. We can focus on what you were doing before that. What you were. Who you were.”
“But if I can’t remember-”
“Would you be willing to be hypnotized?” the doctor asked. “The mind often represses memories that cause intense psychological pain. It’s a survival response. But now your survival depends on remembering, not forgetting. Hypnotism is one way to remember.”
Azra looked between the two, his fingers tightening on Donna’s hand. “I don’t know. Hypnotism can introduce suggestions. It can create memories instead of uncovering them. It’s playing with nightmares.”
“We’re already doing that,” urged Doctor Gross, not unkindly.
Donna patted Azra’s hand and wore a grim smile.
“Please, Azra. We have to start somewhere.”
Reluctance ghosted across his eyes. “Yes. Go ahead.”
The doctor’s sigh echoed through the space like a contented wind. “Lean back, Azra. Get as comfortable as you can. Good. Close your eyes. Good. Take three deep breaths: one… two… three… Good. As you draw your next breath, feel the air flowing across your lips, your nostrils, through your nose, down your throat, into your lungs. Feel the lightness and coolness of it. Now breathe out, sending all the heaviness and darkness out with it. Okay, let your next breath go even deeper. Let it lighten and cool you even further, down to your navel and up to the crown of your head. Breathe out all the heaviness from those regions. Good. Your upper body feels light and comfortable, like a cool pillow on a warm window seat in April. Breathe in again, letting the lightness suffuse you to your very toes and the ends of your hair. Breathe out. What is left is soul only, a light and cool and floating creature. Good.
“Leave this place, now. Let your soul drift beyond your body, beyond this room, beyond these walls. Let your soul find its place of bliss, its home, the one place where there is no worry, no fear, no guilt, no pain. You’ve breathed all those things out, and they are gone from you, and now your soul is drifting to the place where those things cannot enter, cannot reach you. Are you there, Azra?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to, but if you would like to, you could tell us about this place.”
“It’s Donna’s love seat. She’s beside me. The bay window is dark behind us. The TV is showing a play by Tennessee Williams. There’s popcorn in a paper bag between us.”
Donna teared up, biting her lip. Doctor Gross offered her a tissue, but she shook her head.
“Good, Azra. Very good. This is your place of bliss. Nothing evil can reach you here. You are safe here. You can talk about anything in this place. You can remember anything in this place, and do so without guilt or fear or pain.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve brought with you a scrapbook of memories. It is your most precious personal possession. It tells you who you are. Would you like to look at it?”
“I don’t know if-”
“Nothing can hurt you here. No memory can bring guilt or fear or pain.”
“Yes. I would like to look at it.”
“Would you be willing to let Donna look at it, too?”
She shot a fearful glance at the doctor, but he nodded gently at her.
Azra said, “Yes.”
“Share something with her. Open the scrapbook and show her a picture of something.”
“What about this one, here?”
“Yes. That’s a good one. Describe the picture to her.”
“I’m eight years old. That is my bike. It had a banana seat. It didn’t have a sissy bar. I bent the rim jumping a rock.”
Donna blinked, uncertain. “Are you riding the bike?”
“I’m standing by it. My hand is on the seat. There is a yellow house behind me, and an oak tree. The sidewalk is all broken up from the tree roots. That was a good day. Later that week, I fell and scraped my knee, but that day not even once.”
Donna smiled, her eyes watering. “That’s a beautiful picture, Azra. A beautiful picture.”
“Good, Azra. That was a good day. And even remembering that you scraped your knee – that doesn’t hurt now, or make you fearful or sad.”
“No.”
“Good, Azra. That was a good day. Would you like to show Donna another picture, of a day that wasn’t so good? One that had lots of pain and guilt and fear?”
“How about this one?”
“That’s an excellent one. Describe it to her.”
The wind scorpions are gathering on the cell window again. It will be a cold night. They come at dusk, after the rocks and sand have given up their heat and before the bats begin their nighttime feasts. They crawl up the side of the cell and sit on the windowsill and let their bodies soak up the last heat of the day. When the sun is gone, I will be their heat.
I lie on the stone bed and watch the bugs gather. One of them is as big as my hand, which means he is old and doesn’t have much venom left. I call him Bush III because Bush I sent me to Iraq and Bush II sent me to Gitmo – and Bush III, seems he’s got a plan for me, too. He calls his coalition of the willing, and the wind scorpions gather. I count them. Six so far. They are my saints. I venerate them. They alone command my attention, my memory. All else is insignificant. Only the saints, who come every evening to wait like votives on the windowsill, are worth remembering, for they cure the wounds that appear across my body.
Bush III is tending the knee that won’t straighten. The two smaller ones on either side of him – they are sisters. Their needle-like legs are the best ones for stitching up cuts. The one that is waving its head and seems to have a mustache is John Bolton. He tends the wound lowest down on my foot and blesses it. They like to eat dead flesh, so I am a feast. Once the waterboarding and wires and fists are done, I’ve got plenty of food for them. Letting them eat at my wounds keeps me from rotting.
Rot has to go. Only what is holy can remain. Marines come to the bars and tell me to come. I do not, wanting to pray to my saints. One for every wound. But there are only eleven. I have a long way to go. Marines tell me I will regret making them wait. I ignore their insignificant voices. I am a Marine, and no one listens to me.
There comes the twelfth.
And then, suddenly, the bars swing into the room and there are two Marines with them, and wounds are coming faster than wind scorpions.
“-but you are not in that terrible place. You are only viewing it from your place of bliss. Yes. Remember. Good. Good. Two more breaths. Breathe back in the solidity of your body. Settle back into your flesh. Let your soul sigh. One last breath, and you will be fully awake.”
Azra opened his eyes. The hypnotic spell faded away behind walls of pink paint and cinder block and steel bars.
Donna opened her eyes as well, but they were brimming, and her face was the color of paper. She blinked, and a tear dropped from her eyelid and painted a red line down her white cheek.
“Good, Azra,” said Doctor Gross, a smile knifing beneath his mustache. He tried to look pleased, but he wore an expression that he himself would have called an angry grin. “You’ve opened the archive of memory. You’ve begun to touch once again the person you had been.”
Azra bent his head toward the table and rubbed his forehead with his hands. “But they aren’t memories. They’re fantasies. Suggestions. I was talking with my cell mate. That’s where all that stuff about Gitmo came from. It’s all a lie.”