As crimson wells on my skin, then starts to roll towards my wrist, I let out a quiet whimper. A single tear escapes down my cheek. The first time I cut myself, I was twenty-two and still in the hospital after the police rescued me. The last? Two years ago. When the power went out at my apartment and I woke up in pitch blackness.
No one’s touched me. Not once. No one’s even talked to me. I tried to ask Hamid about Ivy and Mia, but he just shook his head and grunted for me to keep quiet.
The loud noises cease, and a second cut…this one to my inner thigh, lets me breathe again. After the last meal, I took a chance and used the lukewarm, brown water from the sink to wash my underwear and pants. The idea of giving up my underwear for even an hour left me shaking and nauseous, but I couldn’t stand my own stench anymore. Every time I inhaled, I was right back inside that railcar.
At least I still have the abaya covering me.
The silence doesn’t last long. Footsteps head for the trap door, then the scraping sound of whatever hides it follows. I spring up, my joints aching from disuse, lack of sleep, and so little food, and I sprint for the sink where I draped my clothes.
They’re still damp, but I’ll be damned if I let these men anywhere near me wearing only the abaya. The fabric clings to my skin as I struggle back into the pants and I barely manage to zip them up before the door bangs open.
Hamid thunders down the steps, an angry string of words in a language I don’t understand flying from his lips. Full-Beard chases him, and when Hamid reaches me, cowering against the wall, he backhands me, hard, then whirls on Full-Beard and berates him as I cup my throbbing cheek.
“You are trouble,” Hamid spits at me, then yanks up my abaya and paws at my pants as I kick and scratch and try to fight him off. “You brought them here. You and the other two whores.”
“Our orders say she is not to be touched,” Full-Beard growls, and then Hamid’s weight disappears, and he hits the wall a few feet away. “We will be gone within the hour. Go upstairs. Now.”
Hamid continues to mutter in his native language as he limps back up to the main floor, and Full-Beard looks down at me. “Hands.”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Hands!” He reaches down and grabs my wrist, jerking me to my feet and then shoving me against the wall. I can’t offer him my hands fast enough, and he duct tapes my wrists again, gags me, and pulls the boshiya over my head.
“Sit. Wait.”
I don’t have a choice, so I sink back down to the ground, the boshiya shrouding the room in semi-darkness, and try not to hyperventilate. Not more than ten minutes later, No-Beard and Full-Beard stomp down the stairs, followed by two other men I don’t recognize. Their coloring is a little different. Darker, smoother skin. Slicker hair. Better clothing.
One of the new men takes my arm and pulls me up. He’s not gentle, but not exactly rough either, and he leads me up the stairs behind Full-Beard, through the house, where Hamid makes a rude gesture, and out to a different, slightly smaller van.
Full-Beard opens the back doors and pulls up a false floor in the van to reveal a compartment—maybe two feet deep, six feet long, and three feet wide. “Put her in there,” he says to the man holding me.
No. Anywhere but in there.
I plead through the gag, sobbing, but it does no good. The one holding me scoops me up and lays me in the compartment. “You will be silent, or we will make you be silent. This is the only way over the border. Do you understand? He wants you alive and able to work, but he said nothing about causing you pain.”
My vision starts to tunnel, but I nod. What choice do I have? There are four of them, one of me, and I’m bound, weak, and terrified. As the lid of the storage compartment slides closed, I give in to the darkness pulling me under, and everything around me fades away.
A slight breeze through the black mesh of the boshiya dries the tears and sweat staining my cheeks, and I force myself to come back from wherever my battered mind sent me when they locked me in this compartment. I only know it was dark and hot and full of so much pain.
One of my newer captors, a man with a skinny face and a groomed beard holds out his hand. “Out. We are over the border.” His English is excellent, better than any of the others, and I raise my bound wrists, wincing as my shoulders, back, and legs all protest the forced confinement.
He’s almost careful as he maneuvers me against the wall of the van, then slides the metal flooring back into place. The rear door is open, and I try to see around him to orient myself. The movement sends pain singing up my arm, and a choked sob escapes—all I can manage through the gag.
“Keep her quiet,” Full-Beard snaps.
The man kneeling next to me shakes his head and mutters something under his breath in Pashto before switching to English. “Are you thirsty?” He’s so much more…refined than Full-Beard and No-Beard. Like he’s…above them somehow.
I nod, then wish I hadn’t as the interior of the van starts to spin. I’m so dizzy, I don’t even notice when he lifts the boshiya and loosens the gag. But then a bottle of water is pressed to my lips, and I grab it, sucking down as much as I can.
“I’m…Joey. Who are you?” I can’t keep making up names for these guys, and if I have any hope of getting out of this mess, I need to try to make my kidnappers see me as a person.
“Zaman.”
Zaman. He seems…nicer than the others, so I risk another question. “Where are you taking me?”
“To the Amir Faruk,” he says, as if that’s supposed to explain everything.
My hands start to shake, and I can’t stop myself from asking him every single question running through my mind. “Who is the Amir Faruk? And why did he have us kidnapped? I’m an American. He can’t do this. Where are my friends? Someone took them away days ago—”
