#KillAydaKhoury

I Can Get Him To Let You Go

Ayda Khoury

Beirut, Lebanon

I'm not actually in that much pain. But the concussion made me throw up in the bag, and the smell keeps making me dry-heave, and he hasn't let me take it off. I cried when he whipped the undersides of my feet until I stopped feeling it and it all kind of went numb and all I could think about was the taste of mucus and tears mixing with vomit in the bag, and then he left me, chained to the chair, hunched forward so I don't asphyxiate. My eyes have had time to adjust and there's a tiny bit of light through the bag, enough that I can see that it's flashing like a nightclub strobe. I close my eyes against it and see afterimages behind my lids.

What did Abdul Rahman say at the hotel? He said a professional wouldn't hurt me much at all. He's not supposed to hurt me. The feeling is coming back to my feet, and I can feel the blood trickling down them, and trying to wipe them on the floor to get rid of the sensation moves the flaps of torn skin and rips a whimpering sound from my throat again. He lied.

Or he doesn't believe I have an edge for Iran or even an edge over Iran.

Abdul Rahman tried to warn me, if Sacha tortured me, nothing I said would help. He said, "They are not interrogating you, they are punishing you."

That's what he's doing. Punishing me. This is the whole future. Stop. Destructive, just depression.

It's hard to call it catastrophizing when you're literally chained to a chair in a sack of your own vomit.

I dry-heave again and bring acid into my throat.

Pray for her and give her a cyanide capsule.

Omar didn't, you know. Do either.

He's a secular humanist with a pathological fear of death and he didn't give me a way to end my own life.

I hear cyanide is a terrible way to die. It's a respiratory decoupler, so you keep breathing while you suffocate to death.

It takes a long time to suffocate.

But it would end. This is the whole future.

When weev, an unforgivable troll of an ex-Anon, got imprisoned, they put him in solitary confinement like Abdul Rahman's doing to me now. His lawyer got the American Association for the Advancement of Science to kick up a fuss, pointing out studies that say solitary causes irreversible mental atrophy. Your brain shrinks.

Nothing came of it. Even he deserved better than that.

They took my laptop bag. And my purse with the medication in it.

There are voices in the hall, Abdul Rahman arguing with someone. I'm not doomed to be alone.

The other man's voice is rising into the register of hysteria, and maybe I'd take being alone over listening to people fight. Finally I recognize the other voice, like I've heard on Vent in so many raids, Omar screaming at Abdul Rahman, demanding to see me on the grounds that this was a joint operation, that their services had a deal, that I'm not a hezbollahi.

The wet bag is sticking to my face with new tears.

"I'll talk to him!" I scream through the bag and the door, and I pray they can hear me. "Send him in here and I'll talk to him!" The last chance I have to get out of here is for the Saudi service to believe the Qataris.

The door bangs open. The strobe switches off. Hands pull the bag off of my head, clumsy, pulling my hair.

"Oh my God, Ardor, what did he do?"