It started to come back to him. The light, once such a rewarding presence,penetrated through his just opened eyelids and caused immense pain to his half a century old retinas. He managed to squelch a gasp of surprise that bubbled up right before it escaped his throat. His mind was a mess.
"Where am I?" he thought, but no answer could satisfy his inquiry. Vague,broken up shards of memories slowly swarmed through his brain. At that moment, the earth shifted. No, not the Earth, him. He had been roughly lifted up.His vision had crossed the boundary between blindness and blurriness and he could barely make out his feet dragging on a concrete surface. A language he could not make out was being spoken in hushed anger. After what seemed like miles, his body was carelessly deposited into a small room with no light to speak of.
"Where am I? What's going on?" he groggily questioned, but the only response he received was a blow to the head, which sent him reeling back into utter darkness.
He awoke, much later, with a clarity that was absent previously. He tried to make sense of his predicament, but his lack of recollection impaired his ability for coherent thought. The only thing he was sure of was that at sometime he had been in an airplane. He tried to dig into the inner depths of his memory for his name, and after several moments, it came to him. Hassan. His name was Hassan.
A quiet mechanical noise buzzed above his head. It was too dark to know for certain, but the flickering of a red light seemed to be about 10 feet above him.
A camera? Approaching footsteps seemed to confirm this and Hassan was consumed with fear. What now?
The door violently burst open and fluorescent light flooded in immediately, blinding Hassan enough for the source of the footsteps to grab him without struggle and move him to yet another room.
A wooden table and two metal chairs were all that occupied this dimly lit room and Hassan was unceremoniously dumped into one of the chairs. Three men entered the room from a side-door and stood behind him while the one that had transported him seated himself.
Without even hearing them speak, he knew they were American. But what did they want and why was he here?
What followed sent Hassan into a delirious state of hopelessness and mortal terror. In numerous folders provided to the main American through the hours, they implicated him of countless crimes and conspiracies. It didn't matter that Hassan had grown disillusioned with religion as he aged and had not attended the mosque in years. To the Americans, he was an Islamic terrorist bent on the murder of innocents.
Hassan knew he had no way out of this. Deny or confess, he would still be held captive indefinitely and possibly tortured. He had viewed the Arabic language stations and was aware that Muslims were being abducted all over the world.
He thought of his children and grandchildren. Did they know what had happened with him? His status as the local shopkeeper kept his family from utter poverty. Would they be able to survive without his advice and guidance?
The combination of louder threats coming from his captors and the growing panic of his situation made the butterflies in his stomach rise up and attack his chest rabidly until he blacked out once again, this time for good.
A victim of a heart attack.
A victim of extraordinary rendition
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