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Prince Sabir's Harem Girl I once knew with absolute certainty who and what I was. Now, I realize that identity is a slippery concept. Who am I? What am I? What made me what I am today? These are such essential questions that no one ever asks them. Instead, we rush through life presuming we know the answers. For most of us, this startling lack of self awareness never causes a problem. The very act of KNOWING those answers causes us to mold ourselves in ways that fit our own self image. Unfortunately, my life hasn't been that simple. In fact, my life has been so complex I find myself with a desperate need to understand. That's why I am writing this memoir. Maybe I will find my answers, and maybe I won't. Either way, I am certain I will gain self knowledge. And, in the end, is there really anything else that matters? The Beginning: My parents were royally pissed when their oldest and most beloved son Kevin Johnson decided to join the Army (okay, I was their only son). They were also scared. It was, after all, January 2002 and I had just graduated from high school one semester early. In the post 9/11 world, the question was not IF I would see combat, it was WHERE I would fight. My parents thought I was foolishly risking a great future. Looking back, I guess I can understand their point of view. I had spent my entire life nurtured in private schools in the hope I would matriculate back East someplace with leafy green Ivy and an over- abundance of affluent alumni. I had the grades, I had the SAT scores, and I had a nauseatingly well-balanced resume of extra-curricular activities: chess club, hospital volunteer, fiction editor of my high school literary magazine to go along with my trophy collection from childhood gymnastic competitions. When I announced my plan two days after receiving my diploma, my parents threw a bloody fit. They yelled at me. They tried to reason with me. Then they stomped their feet and pulled their hair. When I told them I had already signed my enlistment papers, their faces turned a ghastly white. My Dad told me he hoped I wouldn't pay for my youthful mistake with my life. My Mother thought I suffered from an over- abundance of patriotism. She, really, didn't have a clue. I didn't have the heart to tell her my true reason. I suffered from a disease far more virulent than materialism, far more consuming than professionalism and decidedly more profound than patriotism. You see, what I honestly had was an incurable case of AMBITION. I craved power. I was focused on a political career because there simply wasn't enough gravitas in the corporate world to sate my appetite. I wanted to shape people, nations and the world to a design of my choosing. You might ask, "Why were you so hesitant to share this dream with your parents?" Well, I can't blame you for wondering. All I can say is: my parents are weird. To them, wanting too much was just as bad as wanting too little. Instead, I was supposed to study my eyes out in school, take a series of corporate jobs with 80 hour work weeks; until, by some amazing miracle, I was vice-president of a fortune 500 company at age 55 or 60, with a knight's ransom in stock options. Then, I could respectably retire to a mausoleum in the suburbs and tell everyone in the country club how I truly never expected such lavish success. Shoot me. Please. I think wax museum dummies lead more interesting lives. I had a far more challenging path in mind. After flying choppers in the war against terrorism, I would indeed go an Ivy League school. Then I would build my fame and fortune by DOING THINGS: you know, start a company, write a book, maybe be an actor or foreign news correspondent. Or, failing all of the above, I could marry an heiress like John McCain or John Kerry. After making a name for myself in the world, I would then turn my talents to politics. Maybe, I could end up in the White House. Yeah, I might fail. In fact, the odds were heavily against me. But, at least I would NEVER end up as a gray-haired corpse with a receding hairline, pontificating about how I positioned my division in the correct market niche. I still get nauseous just thinking about it. Of course, all of those goals and plans lay in the future. In the short term I had far more pressing concerns: such as learning how to fly an attack chopper REALLY REALLY well. I mean, getting my ass shot off could put a serious crimp in my plans. Sure, McCain gets tons of mileage out of being an ex-POW, but there was no guarantee he would ever emerge from that prison. And, even before that, I had to get through basic training without making a fool of myself just to get my hands on that chopper. Well, I shouldn't have worried. Basic was a snap. Oh, it was a pain in the ass, make no mistake. They yell and scream at you. They make you run a lot, jump in mud, and crawl over all kinds of unlikely obstacles that look like the sort of thing a deranged playground architect might have designed during a stint in the asylum. While you are going through it, you think it is the stupidest, most useless thing in the world. But, it actually does have a purpose. In a relatively short period of time, the Army would be putting weapons designed to inflict all kinds of mayhem into the greedy hands of teenagers who, 6 months ago, had problems getting to home room on time. The Army had to be pretty damn sure you would do what you were told with those weapons. That's what all the stand-on-one-leg and recite- the-star-spangled-banner orders are about. The second major purpose of Basic is to develop a sense of brotherhood with your fellow soldiers. Yeah, I know, it sounds like rah-rah sis-boom-bah bullshit. But, after being in combat, I realized it was really very important. Because, once the bullets start flying, you don't fight for Mother, God, or Country. You fight for the respect of your brothers and sisters in arms. And, if you don't care what your fellow soldiers think of you; well, I don't want you in my unit. The real key to surviving Basic is to realize that its going to end. Someday, fairly soon, they will stop yelling at you and treating you like crap. Eventually, they will have to make you useful, and constantly grinding you into the dirt isn't going to make you useful. Once you understand it's going to end, and you understand its purpose, you can look at all the hardships with a sense of gallows humor. Then it's over. Now, learning to fly an attack helicopter is both far more difficult and far more interesting. It's nothing like the fixed-wing air combat simulators I used to play against online opponents. The biggest danger to your continued existence isn't other aircraft, instead its ground fire. Consequently, many many hours of training are spent learning how to use terrain contours to make it difficult for ground forces to locate you. That's why helicopters hug the earth. The idea is to give that nasty individual pointing a "Stinger" at you mere seconds to bring his weapon to bear. By that time, you've hopefully blasted your target into oblivion and your heat signature is lost in ground clutter before a surface-to-air missile can track you. Or, better yet, it's never even launched. A Comanche light attack helicopter is a truly amazing weapon. Your rocket pods and 20mm cannon are coordinated with your helmet, so that when you turn your head, your weapons swivel in their nacelles to follow your line-of-sight. A Comanche can bring firepower to places a tank simply can't go. Of course, a chopper is also more vulnerable. It FLYS. So you can't have thick composite armor that makes an Abrams tank so difficult to kill. In a strange way, you are both the most powerful, yet fragile, piece of equipment on the modern battlefield. Maybe this dynamic helped me accept what came later. Who knows? All I can tell you is it sure is weird. And nothing that I could have expected. I mean, when you go to war the possibilities seem pretty cut-and-dried. You can escape without a scratch. Or you can get captured, wounded or killed. If you are weak- minded or particularly unlucky, you can have a traumatic experience that you can't overcome for the rest of your life. I, however, am anything but weak-minded and I'd had pretty good luck all my life. Given the tactical dominance of the U.S. military, I believed I had a better chance of walking away unscathed than if I took up street- racing. God, was I ever naive. Disaster Strikes: (or, more accurately, I Fuck Up Big Time) I wasn't quite out of chopper school when we invaded Iraq. But, I was deployed soon afterward, in April of '03. Of course, the occupation was more dangerous than the war. The longer we stayed the more unhappy the people became, especially the Shiite mullahs in the south. That's not to mention Saddam's loyal henchmen left in pockets all across the countryside. As time wore on, these men became more proficient in their tactics, learning the ways of guerrilla warfare. I, however, wasn't too worried about the hajis (Literally, the Arabic word for one who has seen Mecca, but our word for the hostiles). When you're 19 years old and flying around with the firepower of twenty tanks at your fingertips, there really isn't a lot that intimidates you. Sure, I was scared at first. But after I was in country for a month or so and I had a few dozen sorties under my belt, ground fire didn't shake me anymore. Usually, "resistance fighters" scurried away from the roar of my chopper blades like mice running from an alley cat. That all changed one day in late July. I and Tom "Buzzsaw" Wilson were flying cover for a supply convoy in the suburbs of Tikrit when the trucks started to take mortar fire. We frantically gained a bit of altitude and tried to spot the attacker. That's when I saw it, a battered light pickup truck on a street 3 blocks east with a mortar firing from the bed. As I banked toward the truck, it rapidly turned away from the convoy and accelerated toward the parking garage of a apartment building. I quickly tracked my prey, intent on closing to point-blank range before it reached the safety of the garage. Being a Bush-era, kindler gentler soldier, I didn't want to spray a residential neighborhood with uranium-depleted 20mm shells. What I didn't realize was the 'Raqis real target was ME, and not the convoy. I learned my error when five men with RPG's (rocket propelled grenades) launched at me from balconies overlooking the cul- de-sac. I yanked back on the collective, reflexively laying down chaff, but it didn't do any good. One of the unguided rockets clipped my stabilizer. There was nothing I could do. I was going down. I screamed, "RPG!!!!!!!!!" into my helmet radio just before I slammed into the street. That simple, stark sentence just doesn't do justice to what happened. Yeah, I was only about twenty five feet in the air, but when a 10-ton helicopter drops from a two-and-a-half story height, it hits HARD. Metal screeched, like 10,000 iron nails drawn across the largest blackboard in the world. The wildly spinning blades kicked up massive clouds of dust as my Apache neared the earth, until my craft tilted and the main rotor shattered. I was thrown toward my instrument panel, stopped only by my harness; the impact cushioned by my bulky body armor. Looking back at it now, I can sit here and think, "God, how stupid could I have been? How many times in training did I hear the "Black Hawk Down" story about Somalia? We were told over and over we could be vulnerable to RPG ambush in urban centers or ravines in open country. The truck with the mortar mounted in the rear was the "bait" to draw a chopper into a spot with triangulated fire. I had heedlessly stuck my head in the trap. An RPG is a simple, point-and-shoot, armor-piercing weapon with an effective range of 100 meters. It's unguided and it takes about 1 hour of instruction to use effectively. The Soviet bloc had manufactured large numbers of them during the cold war, so they were readily available on international arms markets. In the 80's, the mujadeen in Afghanistan had perfected techniques to bring down Soviet helicopters by RPG ambush. Apparently, someone was teaching those tactics to the Iraqis. But, I didn't have the luxury to think about all that then. Kicking myself came much, much later. In very short order, Iraqi militia poured out of the building in front of me, intent, I suppose, on my capture. Of course, I was disoriented and groggy. But, when two dozen armed thugs come running toward you, you don't have time to coddle yourself. As my eyes locked onto the rushing figures, I heard the most beautiful sound in the world: the gears of the Comanche's 20mm cannon bringing its weapon to bear, still tracking my line-of-sight. I smiled as the head-up display in my visor gave me range information. Then I depressed the trigger. I had fired my 20mm Gatling gun many times during training, but never in such a contained space as that cul-de-sac. My god, the roar of the weapon was deafening as cannon shells chewed up the poor fools running toward me. The 20mm Gatling gun, the standard weapon on the Comanche, weren't really ONE cannon. Instead, it features three cannon barrels arranged in a cylinder. As the barrels rotate, one shell fires and the next barrel is brought into action. This design gives a weapon that normally has a slow firing rate a very fast one. Those guys in front of me didn't have a chance. I smiled maniacally as I sprayed the street in front of me. I remember thinking: My God, I'm going to survive this! It was, unfortunately, the last thing I remember. I wasn't looking as more Iraqi's snuck up from behind and bashed my helmet with their rifle butts. I, again, had no time to kick myself because I was too busy falling into unconsciousness. This really wasn't my day. Descent Into Wonderland: I had a splitting headache when I woke. It was so bad that for a few moments I didn't even notice my surroundings. Instead, the only thing my brain could process was the throbbing in my head. Eventually, though, my brain began to register what my eyes were seeing. What the hell????? I was in what looked to be the most luxurious hotel bedroom I had ever inhabited in my life. Check that, this place was BEYOND luxurious. The only comparison that comes to mind is I once saw a documentary that toured high-roller suites in Las Vegas, you know, the kind of room that comes comped if you deposit a million or more in the casino. I was lying in a sumptuous bed with crisp white sheets. Surrounding me was elaborate furniture that looked like it could have belonged in Versailles. Classical frescoes adorned the ceiling, depicting Greek deities from Mt. Olympus. No, I can't give you an exact inventory. I did recognize Venus, with a clamshell at her feet, just emerged from her bath. In fact, after a 2nd glance I realized ALL of the deities were female in various states of undress. Well! The decor certainly had my approval. Sitting up, I realized someone had removed my fatigues and most likely bathed me. I was clad only in a fresh smelling pair of white boxer shorts. On second thought, I MOST CERTAINLY had been bathed. I had that clean-skin feeling that a soldier in the field NEVER has, especially one drenched in the fear-stench of combat. Despite my immaculate surroundings, my body wasn't in nearly as good shape. The slack muscles in my arms and their sluggish response as I moved, told me I had been unconscious for at least a couple of days. The sounds of a TV playing and the voices of three men drifted in from the open bedroom door. Wobbling a bit on my rubbery legs, I climbed out of bed and shuffled into the next room. I found myself in the main room of of what again, looked like a penthouse suite of a Vegas hotel. Three young men about the same age as me lounged in overstuffed wing chairs grouped around a giant plasma TV watching what I recognized as the movie "Titanic". All three wore identical white cotton boxers with house slippers. I stared at them in complete and utter shock until the blond haired guy with a military haircut looked up and grinned, "Welcome to Wonderland." For a moment, I thought I was the only clueless person in the room. Then I noticed the wry puzzlement of the other three faces. I asked the rhetorical question that I'm sure was on everyone's mind, "What the fuck is going on?" Contorted faces and puzzled shrugs gave me my answer. "Dude, there's food in the kitchen if you're hungry," mentioned the blond-haired military guy. Until that moment, I had been too puzzled to think about anything but the weird surroundings. But, after hearing the word "food", I realized I was ravenously hungry. I guessed I hadn't eaten in days. I went into the kitchen and gorged myself on roast chicken and Pepsi. Grabbing a bag of Lays potato chips and a beer, I headed out into the main room where the others were watching Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet ride the stern of the Titanic into the ocean. When I came back into the room, the skinny guy holding the remote pointed it at the TV and stopped the movie. They wanted to know my story. It turned out I wasn't the only one taken in combat. Steve had just arrived in Iraq when his rifle company was attacked by a child suicide bomber, then ambushed by the hajis. He was the blond guy with the military haircut. Mike and Alan were college students, that had been visiting Europe. Mike last remembered backpacking in Italy. He didn't remember getting kidnapped. Instead, he simply went to sleep on night in his tent and woke up here. Alan had been on a tour taking a day trip to Morocco with his parents. He had vague memories of getting separated from his group in the Kazbah, then getting attacked from behind. Alan had been the guy holding the remote. None of them had seen another person since waking up in the suite. The other three hadn't been conscious much longer than I had. Steve, the blond marine corporal, had been the first one awake. He guessed it had been five or six hours ago. Mike and Alan emerged into the main room about 4 hours ago, and the three of them had started investigating the suite. There was a fully stocked kitchen, (with plastic glasses and eating utensils), four lavish bathrooms (with jacuzzis), and four bedrooms. We also had a work-out room with exercise bikes, a Stairmaster, treadmill, a mirror with ballet-style railing for stretching, and a multi-station fitness machine. There was, however, no telephone, no windows and one dis congruently plain metal door that we couldn't open. Apparently, this door was the exit to the suite. Knocking on the walls indicated the internal rooms were built with standard plaster and wood frame construction, except for the wall with the metal door. That one was plaster set over concrete. That didn't sound good at all. It seemed like we were in some sort of freaky gilded cage. This suite made absolutely no sense to us. Three of us had obviously been kidnapped and that reality lent an ominous, captive air to our situation. Even so, the readily available creature comforts lulled us into a strange sense of security. If our situation was hostile, why in the world were we given such extravagant accommodations? Who houses prisoners at the Waldorf? Steve had scouted the suite looking for objects that could be used as weapons. The best he could come up with were metal desk lamps from our bedrooms that could be used as proverbial blunt instruments. After "arming" ourselves, we gathered in front of the TV once again (I mean, what else was there to do?). I had wondered why 3 guys were sitting around watching a chick flick like "Titanic". Now I knew the answer. Despite the huge number of movies, ALL of the DVD's were either light comedies or girlie movies. Maybe this WAS hell. After sorting through the DVD's once more, we found "Brokedown Palace". Again, another chick flick, but one that seemed to fit our circumstances. The movie starred Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale as teenage best friends who are unjustly imprisoned in Hong Kong for heroin smuggling. What kind of prison was this place? Well, we were soon about to find out. Ali Baba's Harem: Any lingering doubts about the hostile nature of our situation dissolved when 8 soldiers armed with AK-47s burst into our suite. We were ordered to take seats in the living room as a small Arabic man dressed in an precisely tailored charcoal-grey suit briskly entered the room. "Good afternoon," he said in a completely American accent, "I do hope you have found your accommodations comfortable?" He accepted our shell-shocked nods as acceptance. He smiled. "Excellent. I am sure you are wondering why you are here. That is why I decided to hold this little meeting. I will explain your situation and I will tell you what is expected of you." "I am Mohammad al Aziz and I am well...what you might call the Chamberlain of this household for his Highness Prince Sabir al Fayid. "His Highness believes the hostility between our two cultures to be a most unfortunate circumstance. At the core of the problem is your nation's men simply do not understand their proper place under Allah. Despite your country's great wealth and riches, your unquestioned technical and economic successes, American men are hopelessly weak. America could have conquered the planet long ago, but your leaders and your soldiers simply do not have the strength of will to unify the world. For this reason, your struggle against the Arab people is doomed to failure." I was getting rather restless by this point. I would have liked nothing better than to shout down this fool with a profanity-laced tirade. Eight armed men poised to club you into submission is quite a deterrent to pointless theatrics. I suppose the other guys agreed with me, because none of us said a word. Perhaps he sensed our hostility because he paused for a moment, looking each of us in the eye, daring us to voice an objection. When it became clear we would say nothing, he continued, "Prince Sabir, however, wishes to give you four the opportunity to bring your lives into harmony with Allah's will." Oh joy. What a guy. "His Highness has observed that American men are weak because you have been conditioned by a poisonous culture since birth. This tragic influence has robbed you of true manhood through no fault of your own. Unfortunately, His Highness does not believe we can repair the damage done to you in the depths of childhood. Since your culture has given you the spirit of a woman, His Highness has decided the only way you can be at peace in this world is by giving you the body of a woman..." Alan couldn't take any more of this crap and rose swiftly from his chair, shouting, "YOUR FUCKING PERVERTED PRINCE CAN...." One guard rushed forward and smashed his rifle butt into Alan's gut, knocking him back in his chair, while a second pointed his barrel right between Alan's eyes. The other six leveled their weapons at the rest of us, making sure we would not intervene. "Do not mistake His Highness's sympathy for your plight with weakness," continued Mohammad mildly. "While His Highness has housed you in comfort, I will not hesitate to impose necessary discipline." Mohammad paused, then continued his lecture, "His Highness has studied with great interest the surgical technologies that the West has devised to transform a man into a woman. He clearly understands such a technology is your medical community's subconscious recognition that western "manhood" is fundamentally flawed. Our Mullahs, however, have wisely understood that in the few cases where a boy is not correctly nurtured to follow Allah's path, your western surgical procedure is simply an updated approach to the problem of flawed manhood which Princes from the Golden Age solved by creating eunuchs. His Highness hopes that once your body has been harmonized with your spirit, you will then be ready to take your proper place in this household." "And what place would that be?" asked Steve, his voice clearly restraining both apprehension and rage. Mohammad looked sharply at Steve and said, "Your address is improper and overly bold for one such as you. But, since you have not yet received instruction, I shall make allowances." "If you completely submit to Allah's will, you may be fortunate enough to earn a place in the entertainment wing of this palace, where His Highness and favored guests retire for leisure activities." "Failing that, you could earn a place on the serving staff, or you could be released into the city to whatever fate that Allah wills." "Do you mean to tell me we're supposed to become harem girls!?!" exclaimed Mike in utter shock. Mohammad leveled an icy glare at Mike, then said, "You state the matter crudely, but you have grasped the essence." "I understand this revelation comes as a shock to you," continued Mohammad in a soothing tone. "Please be assured. Nothing will be done against your will. His Highness understands no one can truly submit to Allah except through their own free choice. Instead, His Highness has instructed me to enlighten you. If you do indeed choose to submit to Allah, you will learn the ecstasy that comes from accepting your proper place in the world." Mohammad glanced at his wristwatch and said, "Ah. I have another appointment. If you will excuse me, I shall return with further instructions at another time." This Prince Sabir was far more twisted than any captor I ever could have imagined. Why couldn't he just behead us and be done with it? Probably, that would have been just too easy. The four of us were Sabir's private little ant farm. I hoped that he was just poking us with a stick to stir us up. Otherwise, we were in the hands of a raving lunatic. Free Will, Arab Style Well, we all had had ideas about what was going on, but NO ONE had been prepared for Mohammad. After Prince Sabir's Chamberlain left our suite, the four of us sat in our chairs numb with shock. After Mohammad's speech, I looked at my fellow captives with new eyes. With a sinking sensation, I realized that all of us were good candidates for Sabir's insane plan. None us were particularly large: Steve was the tallest at 5'10, Alan and I were both 5'8 and Mike was 5'7. And, despite Steve and I having upper bodies clearly built by weight training, none of us was big boned. Alan had been a bicycle racer in high school while Mike had been a distance runner. Alan was almost foaming at the mouth. "God, I can see why no sane country wants ANYTHING to do with these fucking Arabs. This Sabir al Perverted can wait until doomsday before I'll submit to his will. Allah can blow me." The rest of us ignored Alan's tirade. Yelling and screaming would just make us feel more helpless. Instead, Mike sneered briefly at Alan, and glancing at Steve and I, he tried another tactic: analyze the problem so we can pretend we are in control. "Do you military guys have any idea where we are?" I shook my head. Steve, however, went with Mike's diversion. "Well, we can't be in Iraq. Any palace this size would be occupied by coalition forces. We could be in Saudi Arabia. While the Saudi government supports the U.S., many remote factions of the Royal Family know their only chance at power is to bring down the current system." Mike nodded thoughtfully. "Could we be in Brunei? I remember seeing a 60 minutes episode about the Sultan's brother hiring some American beauty queen for a 6 figure "PR job". He really wanted her to "entertain" his guests. She had a hell of a time getting out." As Mike and Steve's conversation buzzed in the background, my mind kept churning. Al Fayid. Al Fayid. Why did that name seem so familiar? Suddenly, I got it. "Wasn't Princess Diana dating Dodi al Fayid when she had her wreck? Where was he from?" Alan came back from his ranting long enough to interject, "Maybe we're in England. I always knew the limeys were inbred perverts." I must admit, it felt good to have an excuse to laugh. Mohammad let us stew for two days. Our only useful accomplishments during that time was consuming more food and watching more chick flicks. Steve and I hit the fitness machines. We griped to each other that we couldn't get a "real" workout because the weight stack didn't go past 200lbs. None of us talked about Prince Sabir or his plans for us. Talking about it would make it real. Anyway, dwelling on our lack of control over our own destiny wasn't going to make us feel very macho. And, really, what we were doing during those two days was encasing ourselves in bright, shiny masculine armor hoping that Prince Sabir would recognize his own stupidity. We might as well have saved our energy. We would have had better luck convincing a frat boy to judge Miss America's swimsuit competition on "health and fitness". Mohammad returned with his 8-man thug brigade two days later. He was again impeccably dressed, appearing to be every inch a competent western-style professional. "Good morning. I do hope you have spent your time considering Prince Sabir's wisdom. I have returned to explain to you how this place operates and how you can take advantage of His Highness's generous offer." We sat sullenly in our wing chairs and said nothing. What, after all, was the point? Mohammad was nonplussed by our lack of enthusiasm. "As I indicated earlier, His Highness knows that YOU must choose to submit to Allah; or you shall, deep in your own mind, deny your womanhood. Since the Prince understands this, he gives you this decree: you four have 18 months to earn a place in this household. If you have failed to do so in that time, you will be released into the city with the clothes on your back to meet the fate Allah decrees for you." "While you reside in the palace, you may have access to any medical consultation or treatments you desire. If there is clothing, makeup or exercise equipment you require, you only have to ask. If there are feminine arts you wish to learn, instructors will be found for you. Furthermore, we will give each of you access to the Internet and to the Prince's personal library, to chart the course of your transformation. Of course, to prevent unauthorized communications, any web search or message you post on the Internet must be submitted for approval to a security officer his Highness has assigned to oversee you." "I must remind you, the pace at which you manage your transformation and the methods you choose are entirely up to YOU. The type of woman you believe will please the Prince is for you to determine. Two months from today, the Prince will schedule regular encounters with each of you to check your progress." "After six months in the Palace, I will evaluate your progress on a weekly basis to see if you are eligible to spend time in the pleasure wing of this palace to interact with other women. Until that time you will not be allowed outside this suite." "It is the Prince's sincere hope that you will avail yourself of the remarkable opportunity he has given you to realize your proper place under Allah and achieve personal satisfaction." After delivering this speech, Mohammad briskly left the room, apparently oblivious to the surly expressions with which we greeted his pronouncements. After Mohammad left us once again, we said nothing for agonizingly long minutes, simply digesting what he had told us. Steve seemed deep in thought while Alan writhed in his chair. Eventually it was Alan that broke the silence, "Mohammad is freak'n insane if he thinks any of us is going to cut his dick off when all we have to do is wait 18 months and walk out the door." Alan then issued a fake laugh and said, "Guys, it could be worse. I never thought being a POW meant sitting in the Donald Trump suite watching videos all day." Part of me hoped that Alan's hopeful assessment was correct. Taken literally, Mohammad's rules would allow us to do exactly what Alan said. But somehow, I knew Mohammad would not let us reject his Prince's beliefs that easily. Alan, apparently, did not share my reservations. As the afternoon wore on, and the rest of us listlessly watched videos, raided the kitchen or retreated to the gym, Alan's outbursts become more and more profane. He abused Mohammad, lampooned Prince Sabir's sanity and manhood, then ridiculed Arab culture. To this day, I do not know why the rest of us did not join him in venting our anger. Perhaps my reticence rooted in a deep intuitive lesson I absorbed in basic: the best way to deal with irrational demands is to nod, agree, then express quiet distress when confronted with your failure to meet expectations. I suppose I will never understand my reasons; but I thank God, my intuition, the Army and the pure blind luck that saved me from Alan's fate. I did not know anything was amiss until I woke up to screams in the night. If I had been thinking, I suppose I would not have opened my bedroom door. But some force; curiosity maybe, or the need to know what was happening or the simple reality that I had lived in a heretofore inviolate cocoon of safety, compelled me to enter the suite. A swarm of Sabir's thugs in sandy desert fatigues filled the room. Alan lay in the middle of the floor naked with wires running from his genitals to sinister machine sitting on a metal cart next to him. Alan writhed and screamed in agony; while, with demonic calm, an impeccably attired Mohammad told him, "Before this night is done, you WILL learn respect." That night destroyed my unconscious belief in the inherent justice of the world. Mohammad glanced in my direction and said, "You are allowed to watch, but you will be wise not to interrupt. Any disobedience, any cry for mercy, any dispute of my will and you shall take his place." At this moment, I belatedly realized we ALL were awake as Mohammad's eyes moved about the room, addressing all of us at once. We answered in stunned, grim nods, too shocked to allow even our faces to register anything but horror. I suppose my mind knew what was to come. I KNEW that I was about to witness torture first-hand; but no foreknowledge, no steeling of my gut could prepare me for what I was about to witness.