The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2008

The Last Hours of Marion H

 Margaret Davis

Baghdad, 2004

The cell where they kept her was cold. Probably deep underground, she thought. They’d brought her to this house three months ago after abducting her on her way to open up the clinic. Since then, she’d remained in this gloomy room except for two occasions.

The first was when they blindfolded her and took her to a room somewhere else in this house. Upstairs somewhere, where it was warmer. Men she couldn’t see had told her they were holding her for ransom. What they demanded, they had said, was for the oppressors who occupied their country to release all female prisoners. They knew, and she knew, this demand would not be met. But at that time, she still was hopeful they would release her anyway because of the general outcry at her abduction.

They didn’t.

The second time they took her from her cell was about a month after the first time. Again, she was blindfolded. She was taken to a room and seated at a table. The blindfold was removed and she saw she was surrounded by hooded men and camera equipment. They gave her a speech to read for the camera.  In the speech, she pleaded with the outside world to meet their demands for otherwise she was to be executed. By beheading.

That time, she was really frightened. Her distress on the videotape was genuine.

Last night, she had a visitor in her cell. A tall bearded man, hooded as all the men were. Only the two women who attended to her in her cell were not hooded. The man told her, “Your people are not acceding to our demands. Now you must die.”

“When?” she asked.

He didn’t reply, turning abruptly to leave the room.

She awoke the next day after a fretful night. But every night was fretful in this place. For three months now, she had barely slept thinking of those who were agonizing over her fate. Friends and family and especially her husband. An Arab himself, he would be heartsick that his fellow countrymen would commit such a heinous act. Her stomach tightened in pain every time she thought of him He would be making himself ill in his tireless, frantic search for her.

It was probably dawn. Some birds sang at dawn every day. She could hear them even though she couldn’t see the outside. She sat up in bed to pray, first arranging a shawl around her shoulders. It was so cold in here.

Some time later, a woman jailer came in. She nodded a greeting and said, “Would you like breakfast?”

“What’s happening? Has anyone heard from my people yet?”

The jailer looked surprised. “They told me they’d talked to you last night and explained. No one is going to free you. This is the end for you.”

Her eyes filled with tears. She started to sob. The jailer opened her mouth to speak but she begged, “Please, give me a moment.” She kept sobbing. Then the jailer said, “Come now. You have to get ready. Would you like some breakfast?”

It seemed an odd request under the circumstances. She shook her head. But as the jailer turned to leave, she said, “Maybe a sip of water. Or tea.”

The jailer looked pleased. “I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”

When the jailer left the cell, the prisoner lay back in the bed, overcome by nausea. Dry heaves. She was still heaving when the jailer returned with the tea. The jailer said, “Now, sit up and drink this. It will settle your stomach.”

As devastated as she felt, this struck her as comical.  She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed before taking the tea. Then she clutched her shawl and pulled it around her, shivering. “It’s so cold in here.”

The jailer said, “It’s nice and cool. Outside, it’s so hot.”

After a few sips, she asked the jailer, who seemed like a reasonable woman, “Do you think they’d let me write a farewell letter to my husband?”

“A farewell letter?”

“Yes, I’ve never said goodbye to him. I want to tell him that I love him and give him messages for my family in England.”

The jailer looked doubtful. “I don’t know about that.”

“Well, would you please ask them?”

The jailer left. The prisoner sipped more tea and pulled the shawl around her tighter. After a few minutes, the jailer returned. She was accompanied by two burly hooded men.  She said, “No letter.”

“No letter?  But surely…”

The two men interrupted. “You’re to come with us now.”

The jailer took her tea cup from her. She bent down to put on her sandals, then stood up, gripping the shawl. The jailer reached out and pulled the shawl from her. “You won’t need this. I’m telling you, it’s hot outside.” She protested but the two men gripped her arms, one on each side.

“Please, let me go to the toilet first.” The men made sounds of exasperation, then released her, pushing her in the direction of the curtained-off drain in the corner. The jailer accompanied her. She squatted awkwardly over the hole in the floor. She hated these squat toilets. The jailer held her arm throughout as though she thought the prisoner might escape. Another comical thought.

Then the two men, one each side, walked her out of the cell, along a narrow stone passage, up a steep flight of stone steps. It was unfamiliar to her and it suddenly dawned on her why.  It was because the previous times she’d traveled this route, she’d been blindfolded. Was this a good, or a bad, sign that she wasn’t blindfolded now? Maybe after all these months, she’d get to see the sky again.

They took her upstairs to a room she recognized. It was the one where she’d made the videotape. The windows were blacked out. No sky to be seen. The room was full of hooded men. One gave an order, and a set of handcuffs was produced. They cuffed her hands at her back—firmly, but not so tightly the circulation was cut off.

One of the men produced a hood and pulled it down over her head. “No, please, I’m suffocating,” she pleaded.  But he fastened the hood around her neck. She protested again, and someone said, “If you keep making a noise, we’ll have to gag you. And that’s not pleasant.” She kept quiet.

Someone opened a door to the outside and a blast of hot air entered the room. They marched her toward the hot air and then outside where she felt the suffocating heat of the sun descend on her.

They marched her to what was evidently a car. “Get in the car,” they told her. But she couldn’t see with the hood on her head and couldn’t feel her way with her hands secured behind her back. In the end, a couple of the men roughly lifted her up and into the car, into a sitting position on a bench seat. Then they pushed her down so that she was lying on the seat. They put some kind of a blanket over her, evidently to hide her in case they were stopped at a check point. This made her hopeful that maybe they would be stopped. But the blanket was terrible—hot and smelly, and when they covered her head, more suffocating than ever.

She felt the panic creep over her. Maybe they intended to kill her this way, by suffocation. Maybe they’d just dump her body in a ditch. She forced herself to stay calm, to take little regular breaths.

She heard the men get into the front of the car. No one got in the back with her. They started driving. The men didn’t talk much as they drove. No one stopped them along the way. It was only a short ride—no more than 15 or 20 minutes—but it seemed an eternity to her in her suffocating cocoon.

At first, as they drove, she heard the sounds of the city.  Not too much traffic this early in the morning. Then they were on a smooth paved road, probably one of the main highways heading out of town. After a short while, the car turned off at a dirt road and they bumped along for a couple of miles.

Finally, they slowed and stopped. She heard new voices join her captors. They must be in the country, she thought; she could hear chickens clucking. Her mind wandered, far from the dust of this place to the green countryside of her early childhood in war-time England.  Her father grew vegetables to aid in the war effort. He kept chickens to augment the family’s meager food rations.

The car door was opened. Someone reached in and—oh, thank goodness—pulled the suffocating blanket off her.  Then they pulled her out of the car, feet first, her skirts getting hitched upward. They placed her on her feet on the ground, but she felt too dizzy and disoriented to walk by herself. First, one arm and then the other was grabbed by a captor and they dragged her away.

She heard the car door slam. Then a sudden frantic squawking, accompanied by laughter. Oh, please, don’t hurt the chickens.

Into a building, cooler here, down shallow steps. She felt horribly disoriented with the hood still covering her head. Finally, into a place where they propped her up against a cold masonry wall. The men released her arms and she leaned back against the wall for balance. One captor untied the string from around her neck and pulled the hood up and over her head. Her first silly urge was to smooth her hair.

She blinked and peered into the gloomy room ahead of her. Men in hoods on each side of the room. Equipment—tripods, cameras, lights—facing her. No doubt, to film her execution.

She remembered seeing the execution of an American hostage on Arab TV. They stopped short of showing the final gory details. Too unsettling for the viewers. She and her husband had commented on how the victim had looked.  Not particularly frightened but dazed, uncomprehending.  As though he didn’t believe it. Or he’d been drugged. 

She hoped they would drug her first. Although, she thought, they’d want her to be sufficiently alert to look terrified for the cameras. She trembled and one knee buckled. One of the men who’d been holding her arms reached out to steady her.

A stir in the room. Someone was coming in, someone important. He was hooded too—a tall, slender figure dressed in black. With a shiver of horror, she saw the knife in his hand. This must be the Executioner. He barked an order. Two of the captors grabbed her, one each arm, and dragged her forward a few feet. They pushed her down onto her knees. The Executioner walked up behind her, flanked by the two captors.

Then suddenly they were flooded with light and the television equipment started to hum. In a loud voice, the Executioner started intoning something—a prayer, a declaration—in Arabic. She remembered that in the execution she’d witnessed on TV, there had been this ceremony where the Executioner appeared to justify his gruesome deeds to Allah.

But where were the drugs? She called out, “You must drug me. I’m an innocent woman. I’ve done nothing wrong.  It’s not fair that I’m made to suffer pain.”

The Executioner didn’t reply. Just kept droning his prayers.

In the background, she could hear the sound of planes overhead. Not unusual. But then an explosion outside rocked the building. The Executioner’s drone stopped. He muttered to the men who flanked him. She lifted her face and saw the hooded men exchanging glances. Clearly, this was unexpected.

There came another, closer explosion. And then another. And then the building was hit. The men abandoned the cameras and threw themselves on the ground. The Executioner flung himself down too. The sounds of the plane receded and then came close again. Someone was determined to destroy this insurgent hideout. What irony.  These men around her had come to glory in her death and now they would be accompanying her.

She tensed her body for the direct hit that she knew was coming. And for the predictable chaos that would follow—the thunderous sounds of an exploding building, the accompanying screams of rage and fear.

She was still on her knees when the roof collapsed. A giant beam pushed her over, pinning her down. There was pain only briefly before her body went numb. She forced her eyes open. Her vision was blurry and the world was getting dark. But she willed herself to look upwards through the swirling clouds of dust enveloping the shattered building.  And, yes, finally, she could see the sky again and it was blue.