Internment(71)

The police outside the fence turn their heads over their shoulders to look at us. We few, causing this ruckus. Other internees who’ve left the darkness of the Mess see our line and join in. Some nod at me as they step into the formation. Others smile. I scan the line—old, young, black, white, brown. We are all here.

Then I glance beyond the fence at the sea of people. In this place where I thought I was lost, the world has found me. Hope courses through my veins.

Outside, a man with a bullhorn begins chanting, “Set them free! Set them free!” Others join, their voices carrying across the desert and resounding through the valley. Tens, then hundreds. People are streaming out from the Mess now, and guards are running toward us. Someone yells, “Back to your blocks! Now!” But the protestors and the internees drown out the commands.

A shot is fired into the sky; the sound ricochets through the camp. Screaming. A free-for-all. I hear a voice from the outside yell, “They’re shooting them!” Then more screams, and the crowd outside surges forward, toward the fence.

The fence.

I’m frozen.

The police outside struggle to push back the protestors. Exclusion Guards race toward the line, and I see another guard rushing to the security booth, yelling, “Cut it off! Cut it off!”

He’s screaming about the fence.

The electric fence.

I assumed the electricity for the fence had gone down with the lights. The protestors must have thought the same thing. Shit. They’re pushing toward it.

I force myself out of my trancelike state and run toward the fence from the inside. “No! No! Go back!” I scream, but I can barely hear my own voice above all the noise.

When I turn back to look toward the internees, I see guards seizing some, pulling them out of line, shoving others. Some slip away, but one guard has Ayesha by the arm. I run back in her direction. “Get off! Let go of her!” Then I see Fred, Jake’s friend, tell the guard who has Ayesha to report elsewhere. He takes Ayesha by the elbow and leads her away. She’s safe. For now.

But another guard pulls off Suraya’s headscarf and throws her to the ground. One guard punches one of the uncles who joined us in the line. I stop moving. It doesn’t even feel like I’m breathing. I’m outside my body, watching the chaos unfold as if I’m not in the middle of it. I fall to my knees, crying. Huge, heaving sobs. I can’t stop. I can’t catch my breath. What have I done?

“Layla. Layla.”

I look up, searching. “David?”

Jake steps toward me amid a whirling cloud of dust. “Layla, you’ve got to get out of here.” He lifts me to my feet like I’m a rag doll. As he steadies me, all the lights come on. Full force, temporarily blinding everyone.

Jake prods me in the direction of my block. “Now. Go. Now.” I nod, still blinking against the artificial brightness. I turn back for a moment to look for David, but he’s lost in the crowd.

And that’s when I see him, a protestor in the glaring spotlight on the other side of the fence.

Shit.

It’s not just a protestor. It’s Soheil.

No. No. No.

Of course he’s with the protestors. He would never walk away and just leave us here. My screams rip through my body, but he doesn’t hear me.

He knows better. He’ll stop.

Stop, Soheil. Please.

He pushes past a cop, and for a fleeting second, our eyes meet.

He skirts by the orange plastic barrier, then jumps toward the fence, like he’s going to scale it. Like he can bring it all down with the power of his leap. Caught in midair, like a ballet dancer, defying gravity.

Soaring toward eternity.

Like that poem. “Hope is the thing with feathers.”

I watch his fingers reaching through the metal.

The action swirls around me in slow motion. My focus blurs.

A hum and a crackle.

A sickening buzz.

A bone-shattering scream.

Then the air is thick with shouts like daggers.

The guards, who were breaking up the protest inside the camp, sprint toward the fence. The hum stops.

Too late.

Soheil falls to the ground. His body jolts and then goes limp.

Some jump to help him; others wrestle with the police.

“Go! Go! Go!” I hear someone yell at the guards, who are spilling outside the gate to help the police control the Occupy protestors. They are outnumbered and overrun. Chaos, everywhere. People pushing, being shoved, and tripping all around me.

All I see is Soheil and his beautiful, broken body.

Someone jostles me from behind. I run.

I dash for my trailer, tears blurring my vision while the horrible sound and image of Soheil on that fence engraves itself onto my brain and my heart. The swirling dust clings to my wet cheeks. Hundreds of people flood the Midway, rushing to the relative safety of their blocks. I lose myself in the crowd, and my mind swirls. David. My parents. Jake. Ayesha. Poor Ayesha. I can’t even remember if she was there, if she saw. I pray everyone is safe even as I know that no one is safe. Not anymore.

Soheil.

God. Why?

And what about everyone else? Maybe the others have made it back to their trailers. It was dark while the guards were breaking up our demonstration; maybe most of the people got home without being recognized. Maybe they’ll be okay? A montage of images and sounds plays before my eyes: people getting hit and kicked by guards, hijabs and topis being torn off, and Soheil and that sound and his scream and that briefest of seconds when I saw him, right before. Bile rises in my throat.