Chapter One

Floating on my back, the sky blue as a robin’s egg and as fragile. A tern soars above, hovers, cocks its head to check what bobs on the calm ocean. I turn my body and swim lazily, looking across at the edge of the sand. There she is, sauntering along the beach, her legs bare, a chiffon scarf blowing around her shoulders, a straw hat hiding her face, collecting shells or tiny fragments washed onto the shore by the rippling waves. She is my wife, and when I open my eyes, I know that in this dank, stinking cell shrouded in gloom, this image is the only thing that helps me survive.

I limit myself to ten minutes a day. More and I get maudlin. It must be the highlight of my day, not a replacement for the yawning gap of time that passes without signs of movement or change. Measuring time has become a guessing-game. The ten minutes of my visual meditation is measured in Julia-time. A strict limit. I am also disciplined, though not as limited, in my Duncan-time. I can even cheat and include Julia in my Duncan-time, which covers all parts of my life. My Julia-time is an eternal ten minutes.

My attempts at keeping track of time were thwarted early on because I didn’t think about it for what must have been several days, and because I had no way of knowing if the guard who delivered my rations and collected the slop bucket did so on a regular or random basis. It felt random, and designed to be so to add to my disorientation. I’m certain of this now. My senses are heightened to sounds and smells, so I can tell when food is coming, but my stomach tells me there is no rhythm to it, otherwise my body would alert me to the next mealtime. The guard may come once a day or twice or once every two days or more. I have no name for this time. It is inscrutable and uncontrollable. I dare not call it the present. I cannot exist here.

At first I struggled to make sense of time passing. I kept it up with increasing terror and decreasing certainty until Julia came to my rescue when I discovered time could exist for me only in the past or the future. The calculation that I have been here for eight months brings little emotion since it has no meaning. Perhaps when I get home I’ll write the handbook for visitors to Iran. Part one, “How to Survive a Year in Jail.” At least it would avoid the embarrassing irony of what I came here to do.

I rise from the oblong padded board which poses as a mattress, stretch my arms above my head, bending the wrists back and placing my palms on the ceiling. Count slowly up to a hundred. Stoop to touch my toes, legs straight for another hundred. There are ten exercises, all derived from workouts at the gym, with refinements in deference to the absence of weights and restrictions of space. This adds up to one thousand measurements of Body-time which I carry out by my estimation twice every day, although it varies according to food intake when my physical strength is reduced.

I have a choice now. Duncan-time has two options – Reflection, which is the past, or Vision, which is the future. I made a breakthrough recently when I managed to sustain a positive, clearer future Vision instead of the fragmentary glimpses of possibilities that faded as I kept getting drawn back into the unnameable present. I sit cross-legged in the corner of my cell, facing the square of light emitted through the door. This reduces the chance of the guard banging on the door to check if I’m alive. I inhale deeply through my nose, count to ten while I exhale through my mouth. I will engage in Reflection.

Where to go? I press the replay button on my internal remote allowing memories to run through. The challenge is to arrive at somewhere I haven’t visited. I flip through images of Julia and the boys. The beach comes up a lot. Move it back faster. It doesn’t have to be a happy occasion. Not Marcus though. I’ve been there and I know there is more. Not yet. Harold stares through the screen in my head; a single frozen frame of him sitting behind his impossibly cluttered desk peering at me over his glasses, not yet my mentor, still a cynical shadow of the legendary news editor I’d been told about. I’d already been offered the job at the Herald, but I imagine this was meant to be my real interview – the one where he decided how I would measure up and what I’d be assigned to. Harold Denton was reputed to make or break journalists. My predecessor fled Calgary to return to the relative safety of the Toronto Star to escape the wrath of Harold.

“So you studied English Literature?”

His look and tone indicated such disdain I almost denied it.

“I also took a journalism course at Mount Royal.”

He sat back, threw up his hands with an expression of awe. He’d won in two decisive moves. I was destined for Obituaries.

“Well now, Mr. Lindsay, since our editor thinks you can write for the Calgary Herald, how about doing something with this?”

Looking back now at him handing me a sheet of paper filled with single-spaced typing, I recall the panic I felt. I lean my head against the cell wall and feel the smile spread across my face, which the advantage of blessed retrospect confers upon me. It was my first test, which he tore into in such a way I wished I had a home in Toronto I could return to, until he came around the desk, stood with his hand on my shoulder and growled that I showed promise.

Images fast-forward to Harold guiding me through the pitfalls and magic of writing for a newspaper. I force myself to remain focussed on that first time, studying his facial features, the deep lines across his forehead, the jowls that wobbled when he turned his head, the blue eyes staring through the metal-framed spectacles preparing to burn a hole in my defenses. His voice, emanating from his chest through the constant blanket of smoke within his lungs reminded me of Leonard Cohen singing “I’m Your Man.” If anyone was my man, it was Harold Denton.

I sit, holding fast to Harold’s image, allowing nothing to divert my attention until a faint scratching noise enters my consciousness. It’s not one I’ve heard before. It’s not a rat. More metallic. Rhythmic. Coming from the wall near my head.

 

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