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Iraq - General Image

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63%
2.75 

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Mumbai India
A Prisoner's Diary - II
Jun 28, 2003 10:08 PM 3934 Views
(Updated Jun 28, 2003 10:08 PM)

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June 7, 2003 - 5:30 AM. (Guantanamo Bay, in a specially erected hi-security prison camp for me and my pal, OBL)


For Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, thirty seven long years, have I ruled over this land of heroes. Sadly, the infidels have set their sights on the huge oil reserves that my country possesses and are now ravaging it to satiate their selfish ends.


“Everything is fine”, my aide was saying. “Just lie back and relax”. His voice was miles away in the distance and he seemed to be gesticulating frantically. It was another terrible night with the white dogs ravaging my beautiful motherland. My aide rushes in to inform that my majestic Presidential Palace has been blasted to smithereens and a reward of USD 1 billion has been announced for me, dead or alive. Off with his head! Boom! Suddenly, there is a blur in the images and concentric circles are whirring fast.


I’m rudely woken up with a kick on my backside. Over me stood my friend, philosopher and guide (not necessarily in that order). He was a tall and gawky man, in his mid-forties, with a smooth, silken beard that overflowed onto his chest. He could be charming with the ladies, obsequious with the rich, sober with the religious minded and domineering with the weak. Not even great men are without their share of faults and so it was that my friend was highly unreasonable. I find that to be a very imprudent attitude, and on deeper pondering, not an entirely unselfish one either.


We were in detention for the last one month. At our “welcoming ceremony”, the general of the camp gave a speech and listed out the perks we were eligible for. We were given 5 credit cards, a months supply of food coupons to eat at the Mc Donald’s outlet nearby, four free tickets for the movies at the small theatre next to our quarters and $ 100 to buy clothes and other assorted accessories from the Wallmart Extension counter just outside the prison camp.


All of a sudden I had a wild urge to yawn loudly but felt it was a waste of energy unless the poker faced general could see me do it. It was simple logic actually, if I was not yawning directly into his bulldog like face, I'm was going to be deprived of an unspeakable ecstasy.


Here we both were, my pal and me. In chains and treated like a normal bunch of renegades or terrorists. Don’t these people realize that they are playing with scud missiles and flying airplanes? As we were being hustled to the huge open ground next to the detention bay to discharge our “morning discharges”, I caught sight of a woman. American she was. That much I could confidently assert even from the profile I saw. The face itself seemed very familiar, one of those faces that is neither beautiful nor attractive, but with a kind of raw beauty that’s normally associated with the ladies from the mountains.


Then I remembered. She was my first and only American girlfriend nearly 20 years ago. Her name was Lizzie and she was the cousin of my third British wife’s first husband’s second sister’s daughter and the niece of my second uncle’s fifth wife’s first son’s seventh girl friend. She was born of an Iraqi father and an American mother. We quickly re-ignited our past flames of passion and got married in the camp amidst gunshots and lobbing of hand grenades.


Sadly, just 3 weeks later, we got divorced. It was too late but when I realized it, it hit me hard. America was a land of opportunity for women. They already own about 90% of the wealth of the nation and soon will have it all. Divorce is a lucrative process, simple to arrange and easy to forget; and ambitious women can repeat it as often as they wish and swell their alimony winnings into astronomical sums.


These days, young men marry like over-enthusiastic dogs and invariably face an ex-wives club comprising three ladies by the time they’re barely 35 or so. To support these ladies in a manner to which they are accustomed, the men are forced to slog away like slaves on a roman galley, which, on second thoughts, is exactly what they are.


The theme of these ever-recurring tales is always the same. There are three characters – the unsuspecting husband, a two-timing wife and the scoundrel who, in 9 out of 10 cases is the husband’s best friend. As some sympathizers huddled around me at the watering hole that evening and began narrating their own tales that seemed remarkably similar to mine, I realized that most of them were too inane to repeat and far too sensitive to be put in print considering that they were all celebrities in their own right.


I feel very much like a dead rat these days. In other words, a long departed soul. ''Even in death, I escapeth not.'' That sums it up succinctly. If ever I was to rise from the grave of eternal sleep, I promise the first thing I'll do is run to the nearest AT&T telephone booth or shout out for deliverance from the rugged crags of Colorado. Till such a time, all I can do is drown my sorrows in tears and alcohol alternatively and contribute my mite to the American economy. Sigh...


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