The next day I bade Mhammad’s family good-bye and headed to the border crossing at the Allenby Bridge to Jordan. In the three hours I spent in Israel’s “exit interrogation”—What did I do in “Israel”? Where did I go? Who did I see? What’s the name of my mother? My father? My clan? Where was I born? What do I read? What music do I listen to?—I could think of little else but Bilal, imagining going back, running into his outstretched arms.

V. Jordan, Again

V.

JORDAN, AGAIN

The Cube, Up & Down

THE CUBE, UP & DOWN

A BLACK EYE sits in the center of my sky. A half sphere, dark zit in the ceiling that sees and records everything I do. Hours upon days upon years of me, sleeping, bathing, reading, masturbating, brushing my teeth, braiding my hair, dancing, talking to myself, singing, carving the walls and my skin with my nails, hitting my head against the wall, shitting, pissing, dressing.

That’s all there is in my sky. Gray paint with a dome camera. I wonder why the spiders never go there, why they don’t weave a web over it.

The floor of my universe is just like the walls, gray concrete, only it slopes slightly toward Attar, where a drain is hidden under a perforated dome.

Klara, the Russian guard, is back after a long absence. I missed her. We don’t really talk much. She says a few nice things to me sometimes, and I answer, trying to strike up a conversation, but she usually doesn’t answer or simply says she can’t talk. She’s still trying to get me some books on communism. She once entered my cell when I wasn’t locked to the wall, which I took as a gesture of solidarity. If I don’t plug my security bracelets in when they buzz, the Cube fills with a high-pitched sound that rings in my brain for hours. I can control only the direction I face when I lock them in.

I suppose wanting some control in my little world is also why I used to try to clog the toilet, to make it overflow, just to make something happen. To make a decision, formulate a plan, implement it, and suffer the results. I took off my shirt, stuffed it in the toilet, but it would not flush until I removed the shirt, as if mocking my effort. I tried again, only I shat in it that time, but it still wouldn’t flush. I waited until I felt defeated, and retrieved my shirt from my own excrement. I had to wait for Attar just to wash it out. It took a while—several meals and multiple light/dark cycles. The stench was terrible. Finally the toilet flushed, and everything went back to normal. I lost.