Free Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera

the strangers add a sharp thrum of boots to his side and a fiery agony explodes over Khalid’s body as, stunned and shaken, he snorts desperately, trying to get air in through the tape stuck fast across his mouth.
    Dad. Dad , Khalid pleads silently. This must be what happened to him. Khalid twists and turns, unable to breathe or scream or stop his heart from thumping. He recoils in terror as they lift him like a crate, hot fists on his legs and shoulders, and silently carry him out. Dumped in the back of an open truck, he groans as his face and body smash hard against the floor. The sudden movement of the truck jolts him from side to side as it drives off, the men breathing heavily and crowding over him with their smells of warm flesh and tobacco.
    Paralyzed by fear, Khalid wonders desperately where they are taking him. Who are they? Why him? What for? Questions he can’t even speak out loud.
    The sounds of the city die away as the truck speeds along a potholed road that sends Khalid rolling across the truck in agony. He breathes in oil stains and the stench of animals, knocking his head on the uneven metal floor. A hefty boot kicks him back to the center each time he slides their way. Pictures of his kidnapping flash quickly, one after the other, through his mind, building to an overwhelming fear that he’s going to be dumped at the side of the road any second and left there to die.

6

POWER
    As the truck rumbles over another pothole, Khalid’s cloth-covered face is pressed into the spreading dirt and dust flying across the hot, hard floor. Head pounding, arms tied back and aching like mad, eventually all he can think is, Why put a gun to my head? Is this really what happened to Dad? The situation is so way beyond Khalid’s everyday reality, he can’t take it in. Things like this don’t happen in his world. Things like this can’t happen to him. It’s more like a movie or a computer game. Again and again he thinks back to Abdullah always hanging round the house. About what Nasir and Tariq told him about people lying for money. Are these men US soldiers? But why would they be interested in a British kid like him? There must be a mistake. If they’ve got his dad, then they’ll work that out soon enough.
    Khalid rolls to one side when the truck turns a corner and a big boot nudges him away. One of the men at the edge of the truck shouts angrily, which makes Khalid want to scream. His mum, his sisters, his aunties, they’ll go out of their minds when they find him missing. First Dad and now him.
    After a while the truck stops. Two men lift Khalid out to carry him across a concrete forecourt with footsteps and cars nearby.
    Inside the building the cloth hood is whipped off. A bright ceiling light dazzles Khalid for a moment as he tries to make out the faces of his kidnappers hidden behind tightly wound black cloths. Only their angry eyes and rough fists give a small clue that the blue-eyed one might be a Westerner, with his freckly pink hands. Without warning someone behind Khalid rips the duct tape from his mouth, slashing his lips and skin to bits, tearing wisps of hair from his face, making him feel he’s been stung by epic-sized bees. He screams in pain as his eyes flood with water. Clenching his jaw as they leave the hand- and ankle-cuffs where they are.
    Now out of his mind with fear, pain and anger, Khalid gazes down at the state of his jeans, covered in dust, totally wrecked, and feels so weak and dizzy he can barely breathe or utter a sound. What the hell are they up to? No one will believe this—it’s too crazy for words. He almost smiles with delirium at the thought of what Holgy or Nico would say if he tried to convince them.
    “Who are you?” he asks desperately, almost whispering, but no one speaks.
    They all sit there until a podgy-looking Pakistani with immaculate hair and neatly pressed shalwar kameez, a huge gold ring on his right hand, appears from nowhere and shuffles him into a gray room,