In the Heart of Babylon Read online

  “I'm going to get Zahi.” Nadifa stood, playing the one card he knew would win. He turned to leave the dorm. “Maybe you'll listen to her.”

  He was almost to the door when his grandmother finally sighed and opened the packet.

  The two of them sat with her while she ate, the seconds ticking by in silence.

  “Nadifa, listen to me,” she finally said in Somali. “Keep your soul filled with love, no matter what happens to you down there. Do not let them take your heart from you.” She must know about Ray's murder, then. Nadifa wondered how Ayeeyo always managed to find out about everything. “And be careful,” she added. “That place is evil. God has left it to Al-Shaitan.”

  Nadifa was glad Darnell couldn't understand what his grandmother said. He didn't need another dire speech today. But then he felt guilty for the thought. Maybe it would be a good thing if the newcomer were more afraid, especially after the way he'd acted earlier with the Klexters.

  Darnell stayed with them for another few minutes while Ayeeyo finished her food, then followed Nadifa from the dorm, through the deserted cafeteria, and down the ramp that would take them to the train. Their feet carried them deeper into the earth, closer to their captors. Nadifa knew they might never return, but if they refused, no one would eat. Some of those left behind couldn't afford to miss a single day without food now. No, there was no choice but to follow orders, and hope to discover a way out.

  “Wait,” Nadifa said, stopping short, suddenly remembering. “There's something I need to do. You go ahead.”

  He turned back and saw Malik and Kevin walking toward them. They passed by without saying anything, followed by Luk and Mike.

  “I'll come with you,” Darnell offered, but Nadifa had already broken into a jog, racing back up the stairs. He hurried through the corridor beyond the dorms, only vaguely aware of Darnell keeping pace beside him. How could he have forgotten?

  The smell of livestock was nearly overwhelming as they rounded the corner and entered the butchery.

  The butcher sat with his head down, staring at a pool of blood at his feet, and with a hissed curse, Darnell stopped short at the doorway.

  “I'm sorry I'm late,” Nadifa said. “I meant to be here, but seven of us are called down to The Resort.”

  The butcher raised haunted eyes at Nadifa and nodded. It's okay, he seemed to say.

  He looked down at the weapon in his hand—a spear-like contraption that Nadifa had seen send a bolt through a cow's skull with pressurized air or something. Nadifa knew the butcher had been dreading the day that the last of his cows would be killed, and he'd meant to be here to offer some sort of moral support to the man. The blood told him he was too late.

  Nadifa was never sure if his presence made a difference to the butcher, who lived in perpetual sadness, but he hoped not being alone gave him some comfort, at least.

  None of them knew anything about the man they called ‘the butcher’—not even his name—but since the day Nadifa first discovered the sad-eyed man in his cramped apartment, he knew the man was in extreme pain. More pain than the rest of them even, he was sure of it. And so Nadifa visited him every day, bringing the older man fruit from the orchards and sitting with him while the butcher cared for his cows. When the Quran showed up one day on Ayeeyo's bed, wrapped in clean material, Nadifa knew it was the butcher who'd left it for her.

  “I'm sorry I missed her passing,” Nadifa told him now, remembering the gentle cow. “She was a good girl. She deserved open pastures and blue skies.”

  The butcher nodded, smiling sadly as he stood, taking the weapon to the sink—as far as its chain reached—and began rinsing it. “Yes,” he said, his voice hoarse. “She was a good girl.”

  He replaced the weapon on the wall next to other chained instruments that he needed for sawing, carving, and packaging a single cow into more than 400 pounds of meat for The Resort's kitchens.

  Nadifa turned to leave, but as he reached the doorway the butcher called after him.

  “Be careful tonight,” he said, his voice filling the grim space. “There are no cows left.”

  Nadifa glanced at Darnell. The newcomer had gone rigid at his side, no doubt feeling the ominous threat in the butcher's words.

  Yeah, there was a reason no one except Nadifa visited him.

  Nadifa nodded, clearing his throat. “Well, we'd better go,” he said.

  “We all go someday.” The butcher's smile was even more sad than usual. “One way or another.”

  Nadifa left without another word, and he and Darnell had to run to catch the train. The Klexter on the platform turned his head to watch them race up, and stepped forward, hand on his weapon, as the “doors closing” lights began flashing. But the boys jumped through the sliding panel just in time and a moment later the train began to move.

  The single passenger car of the train was nothing more than a metal box lined with round, shatter-proof windows. There were no seats, and no poles to hold. The second car was refrigerated to take produce—and occasionally meat—straight from the weighing machine to The Resort's largest kitchen. Zahi said it was never full to capacity.

  Rumor had it the train was equipped with some sort of scanner that would find anyone attempting to smuggle any kind of weapon into The Resort—even a stick or branch, or a small rock would cause the train to stop. Klexters would show up and kill every passenger inside. Luk said he believed this, and Nadifa was not prepared to test the rumor.

  The tunnel was about three miles long, Nadifa guessed, but he'd never been able to explore it. An iron barrier sealed it off for all but the few seconds it took to let the train pass, and a Klexter always stood guard when it did. Nadifa had been to The Resort only once, hoping to find more for his maps. Within minutes he'd realized that exploration beyond the guarded laundry room was not an option. He'd sweated for three hours, unable to think beyond his thirst, and had not even been offered the promised shower. Zahi said he'd probably been assigned to laundry because he wasn't “presentable” and would upset the guests with his scowling.

  Nadifa wondered what had changed as he looked around at the other boys—all similar heights, ages, and scowls. They shared nearly-identical skin tones, as well, what Zahi liked to call mahogany-walnut fabulousness. Each guess Nadifa had was more disturbing than the last, so he decided not to think about it.

  “I thought,” Darnell panted, catching his breath, “that we were gonna pick fruit and plan our escape.”

  “That was then,” Luk said. “This is now.”

  “They haven't made anyone serve at The Resort since we've been here,” Nadifa told him. “I didn't even know they knew our names.”

  “Isn't it obvious?” Mike said. “They want us for sex. I mean, just look at us. We're all full of youthful beauty, in our prime, all—”

  “Man, shut the fuck up,” Luk and Kevin told him in unison.

  Nadifa looked around at the six boys. Jamal and Kevin stood looking at the floor. Darnell was pacing back and forth past Mike, who was busy trying to see out the window. Luk, of course, leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, glaring at the door like he would smash his fist through the face of the first person he saw on the other side of it. Malik sat on the floor at the back of the car, his arms on his knees, hands hanging limp as he stared at the opposite wall.

  “The Klexter said dinner,” Nadifa told them, “so they probably just want us to wait on them while they pretend it's 1830 or some shit. Whatever it is, we do it. We gather information about this place's exits, and we stay alive, okay? There's gotta be a way out of here. These sick fucks don't live in an underground hotel year round—Zahi is sure they don't—and we know they don't come through that damn gate.” He pointed back the way they'd come. “So we find their front door.”

  “There you go again with false hopes,” Luk said. “Exits, my ass.”

  “All I know is, I ain't having sex with no one,” Mike said, peering into the darkness. “I'll kill a Nazi motherfucker with my own teeth, I don't even
care.”

  Everyone ignored him.

  “If I'm right,” Nadifa told Luk reluctantly, “they won't let you keep your hair.”

  Luk's jaw moved as he gritted his teeth, but he nodded, his dreadlocks moving against his shoulders. Malik dropped his head onto his arms, and Darnell stopped pacing. Kevin muttered, “Fucking white supremacist kidnapping motherfuckers.”

  They all felt the train slowing down. Within seconds, it stopped. The doors slid open to reveal four blond men in white and red security uniforms, military-looking rifles held ready at their chests. Nadifa wondered why he was even surprised by how young two of them looked.

  “Out!” one of them bellowed. “Keep your hands where we can see them and follow the yellow line. Move!”

  Time slowed, and Nadifa's vision narrowed as he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Rage threatened to take over every cell of his body, crackling like lightning beneath his skin. Stay alive, damn it!

  “Don't look at me, boy,” Nadifa heard another guard say as his fellow captives lined up along the yellow line on the ground. “You look at me one more time, you lose that filthy head of yours, hear?”

  No one said a word as they entered a white-tiled room, and Nadifa kept the screaming roar in his throat from bursting out. He followed Luk's lead as the guards ordered them to strip and stand under high-pressure showers that felt like needles and smelled like chlorine. The guards watched them with beady eyes that reminded Nadifa of a reptile's, cold and distant.

  After their shower, they filed into a different room and stood with their backs to a low platform where a fat man wearing rubber gloves and a filthy apron waited with a tired smirk. He chopped off their hair with haphazard impatience, leaving them with what might be generously described as ‘messy waves, no fade,’ the guards laughing at their discomfort as they tried to cover their genitals.

  Nadifa really hoped they would get some clothes next as he began to seriously worry that “dinner” involved the naked-slave-boy-holding-fruit-platter ambience. Instead, they were herded into another shower room. At least here the water was hot and there was soap, even if it smelled like cheap lavender lemongrass car freshener.

  Nadifa noticed Darnell shivering under the steaming downpour, and he worried the newcomer was going into shock. When he swayed on his feet, Luk and Nadifa both put hands out to steady him.

  “This can't be happening, this can't be happening,” the boy whispered over and over again. Nadifa glanced at the guards, trying not to panic at the thought of what the men would do if Darnell fainted.

  “Look at me,” Luk said, his voice at once stern and soothing in a way that surprised Nadifa. “They guard us because they're afraid of us. They point their guns at us because deep down, in their cold, greed-infested cowards' hearts, they know what they're doing is wrong.”

  At Luk's words, Nadifa felt Darnell relax a little. The others held their heads up, too, their shoulders back, and they began using the soap, determined not to be humiliated by their nakedness.

  “Breathe,” Nadifa told Darnell, keeping his eyes on the guards as the newcomer's trembling began to slow.

  “Two minutes!” one of the guards bellowed, slapping his rifle for emphasis.

  This time, not one of them flinched.

  When the water turned off, one of the younger guards stepped forward and waved to a set of lockers. “Find your name. Put on your uniform. Report to the kitchen.” He spoke slowly and loudly, as if the seven boys were incapable of understanding English.

  The uniforms turned out to be navy suits embroidered with The Resort's logo of a red star beneath three white crosses, white shirts, and rubber-soled patent leather shoes. Nadifa was not comforted by the fact that everyone's shoes and clothes fit perfectly.

  They followed a narrow metal corridor to an enormous kitchen of steel and white marble where a sweating man with a blond crewcut stood chopping carrots next to an enormous bowl of mashed potatoes. He looked at them with the cruelest smile Nadifa had ever seen.

  “Well, well, well,” he drawled. “The help has finally arrived.” He yanked the towel off his shoulder and wiped his forehead. “Okay, listen up. You boys don't touch the food with your filthy hands, you hear? You move it to the dining room on these here trolleys, and you serve it to the dinner guests. Wearing gloves. Then you bring the dishes back here. You stand quietly against the wall behind the guests' chairs, fill their glasses once they're half empty, and you don't say one fucking word, you understand me?”

  The seven of them looked at the man, and Nadifa thought Zahi would need a better word than scowl to describe their expressions.

  “Good,” Crewcut said, turning back to his carrots. He pointed with a knife. “Get yourselves some gloves and get to work. The appetizer won't wait all goddamn day. And remember. We're watching you. So don't even think about trying any kind of hood bullshit.”

  Seven silver trolleys waited for them, laden with little gold-rimmed plates. Each held either crab cakes, deviled eggs, or some kind of mini rolls stuffed with something ground up and topped with fancy garnish. Nadifa realized how hungry he was as he resisted the urge to shove food into his mouth. Instead, he kept his eyes down and followed Jamal and Kevin through the wide kitchen doors. They pushed the trolleys down another narrow hallway and into the most lavish banquet hall Nadifa had ever seen. The indigo ceiling looked like a star-studded night sky, chandeliers seemingly hanging from thin air. The floor was veined marble, and vases full of fresh flowers decorated every surface.

  An enormous table stretched across the center of the room, weighed down with gleaming silverware in neat lines, crystal glasses of various shapes and sizes, and more flowers. Gold-rimmed plates with The Resort's logo gleamed in front of guests dressed in bright silks and dripping in diamonds and jewels.

  Nadifa lost his appetite completely.

  He moved along the table as if in a nightmare, hardly aware of his limbs. A man seated near the middle of the table said in a nasal voice, “Yes, but Mitch! The left cannot and will not help. Socialism continues to gain ground at unthinkable proportions every day, while we merely ponder.”

  “While immigrants grow bloated with the wealth of our people,” a man with thick glasses and no chin added, slapping the table as Nadifa placed a plate in front of him.

  “One must have the will and the courage to speak the truth,” the man sitting at the head of the table spoke, and every man fell silent, listening with rapt attention. “We know there are only two possibilities for the survival of this great nation. Victory for the great Aryan—or victory for the immigrant.”

  Nadifa glanced across the table at Luk, who seemed completely engrossed in his task. Only his clenched jaw gave any indication that he heard.

  “Very true,” said a man with grey hair and sunken eyes at the foot of the table, and every head turned to him when he spoke. “But truth, Mitch, has no value if one lacks the indomitable will to turn the realization into action.”

  The room fell silent, only the sound of the plates being served filling the room. Two equally dangerous men, Nadifa thought, were facing off. Entertainment.

  “We point out the dangers which have insinuated themselves into our midst,” continued Sunken Eyes, “a danger which millions failed to see and which led to our near-complete ruin. Everyone here knows we have a duty as Christians, as men, to stand up and fight for justice. And yet, incredibly, you ask us to support the conspiracy against peace!”

  He slapped the table, causing china to rattle against the brocade linen, and Nadifa looked up to see a vein standing out in his reddened forehead. His glass nearly tipped over, but for the woman next to him, who held out a jewel-encrusted hand with a smile of adoration that sent a chill down Nadifa's spine.

  “Mocked, insulted, and scorned,” the man continued, his voice rising. “We have been slandered into retreat! Please tell me we will not allow the infection of liberalism to slit our throats completely and not move to defend ourselves.”

&nb
sp; “No one is calling for non-action, Doctor,” the first man, Mitch, said, his manner a forced calm. “Our peaceful efforts of rebuilding—”

  “Are failing. And no thanks to you and your board's ill-advised decisions. There are only two options. There have only ever been two options. Victory or defeat!”

  Nadifa watched the pale faces of two dozen guests turn back and forth as the men spoke, as if they watched a tennis match.

  “Our movement offers the straying masses a new solution that will not fail,” Mitch said slowly, as if he spoke to a child. “It takes time and diplomacy to crush all criticism, all opposition. It takes patience to show the lost masses the real wound of our people, and light the way for our nation and the rest of the world to blessed salvation.”

  Nadifa nearly sent a fat woman's silverware sliding into her lap as he snatched the last few empty plates from the table and almost threw them onto the cart. He had heard enough. He focused all his attention on walking, not running, back to the kitchen. He stopped in the hallway, taking in deep breaths, reminding himself of how Ayeeyo would feel if he didn't come back tonight. He thought of Zahi, and what she would say if she could see him, trembling with the effort to conceal his rage. Probably something about holding your shit together under pressure.

  Something slammed into the other side of the wall right behind him then, startling Nadifa. He heard someone female sob, then sniff.

  “Hello?” he said before he could stop himself, realizing how thin the barrier between the hallway to the kitchen and whatever was on the other side was.

  The voice said, “Who is that? Are you in the wall?”

  “I'm… We're serving dinner,” Nadifa told her. “This is the way to the kitchen.”

  “Are you black?”

  “What? Yes.” Crazy crackers. Nadifa shook his head and turned to leave. I don't need this fuckshit. The soup course won't wait all goddamn night.