II.

IRAQ

THE CUBE, WEST

VISITORS AND GUARDS have told me that the Cube is a technological marvel, the first of its kind. As an almost completely automated solitary cell, it has made me famous in “security circles”—private prison corporations, surveillance tech companies, and various ancillary suppliers of bondage.

The bedposts are concrete, but the bed platform is made of thick plastic straps attached to the posts. There are no springs. In fact, there’s no exposed metal, except the door. They say there’s not even a metal screw. Gray sheets and a gray blanket cover a thin foam mattress wrapped in plastic, a cream pillow stained yellow from my body’s oils.

A concrete sink sits partially inside the western wall (opposite the wall where light enters from the glass-block window, which I decided was east), under a hole that delivers water when I press a small button next to it. It runs for three seconds at a time and the button can be pushed up to ten times a day before it stops working. I stick my finger inside the hole sometimes. I wish I could put my head under it and drink directly from the hole, but the sink opening isn’t big enough.

The shower abuts the sink. This is the truly revolutionary part of prison technology. There is no visible showerhead, just a horizontal slab that juts overhead from the wall, like a corner shelf with small holes from which water emerges, much the same concept as the sink. This shower rules my life. It is my friend, my lover. I named my shower Attar. I have no way to turn him on or off. Before water falls from his small concrete holes, a red light will buzz, its glow tinting the whole of the Cube. I don’t think of it as a light anymore. They are Attar’s eyes, his warmth, his arrival and presence. I watch it sometimes, waiting. And when his eyes make my body and the room one in red, I quickly remove my clothes and stand to receive him. I never know if his water will be cold or warm or hot or scalding. Before he was Attar, when he was it, the strange shower, I would stand away, my hand stretched to feel the water temperature. Now I don’t care. I love him whether the water is hot or cold. When it is perfect, I imagine Attar loves me. But it does not last. Attar stays only seven minutes. I counted the minutes several times. I never know when he will return. Sometimes he is absent for days. Sometimes he comes while I am sleeping, and I rush to disrobe.

I have one bar of soap. Occasionally guards push small shampoo bottles through a slit in the metal door. I have not given a proper name to Metal Hole.

I tried to keep a sleep and waking regimen, to structure and account for my days, but that’s not the nature of time in here. There are no days or nights. Light and dark, just like Attar, come and go randomly.