The Three Missionaries -Captor

_{I hurt myself today to see if I still feel.
I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real.
The needle tears a hole. The old familiar sting.
Try to kill it all away, but I remember everything.}

Adil's hands are shaking, the same way that they did when he first injected himself as a younger boy. His first time had resulted in a blister swelling just beneath the skin, burning as it was slowly released into his body over a period of hours. The second time he'd been more successful, checking to see if the needle drew out blood before injecting the precious liquid. A slight queasy stomach, a mild headache, and a toilet bowl of vomit later and Adil was unsure what that meant for he and his heroin.

This younger Adil curled up into a fetal position in the corner, crying. At eleven years old, other children in other parts of the world would not even have a mind to try something like this. Their pain was not his pain. Their pain was a scraped knee when they fell off their bicycle. Their pain was breaking a leg if they didn't get the proper footing when climbing in a tree. Their pain was not receiving the best banana pancakes for breakfast and having, instead, to eat oatmeal.

Adil's pain was greater, at eleven years old. His pain was a lifetime of being raped for money. His father called it work. How else would they eat every day? Adil had to sell himself, hold back his tears, and take it 'like a man'. Since the age of five, he'd been through these humiliating and painful work days. At home, his father drank the money away before a loaf of bread ever reached the table. In his heart, the fear was turning to confusion. Now it had reached a frenzied panic. His heart screamed for some form of medicine.

A boy had offered him a small chunk when they left 'work' together. He said it helped to chase away the pain. Roughly the size of two tic-tacs, Adil was afraid he'd lose it on the way home. Following his friend's advice, he managed to get it into liquid form.

After getting sick the second time he'd tried it, Adil wondered if there would ever be a way to get away from this pain. His eyes had red fireworks exploding in them from crying so hard, his teeth chattering together as he held back the sobs. He had tried so many other things. He'd had to get rid of the barbed wire he'd pull across his chest because his father said it 'worried the customers'. No one wants visibly damaged goods. No drinking, it left him unfocused on the job. No smoking, because no one wants to taste the smoke in his mouth.

This had been the only thing that would have worked.

He wept.

Now twenty-years-old, Adil had similar scars on his chest from a piece of jagged rock he'd found by a river he went to so that he could think. The scars were a sign of weakness, his boss said. Not once did he ask Are you alright, Adil? or anything similar. Just the words The prisoners are not intimidated.

He knew the response to drinking and smoking without even attempting it. He turned back to the heroin he'd tried to give up at seventeen. Heart pounding, he felt the needle tear a hole into his flesh the way it had all those years ago. In his mind, he pictured the drug killing away all those memories of being in the beds of countless men and women, but instead it slipped between the cracks of the memories and left him wanting more to fill the holes. Adil remembered everything, perhaps even more vividly. Only now he did not care.

_{What have I become, my sweetest friend?
Everyone I know goes away in the end.
And you could have it all, my empire of dirt.}

He went back to work, holding the missionaries underwater for as long as he was able, strings of black hair swinging in front of his eyes. His laughter was forced, any light emanating from his eyes was not his own. He forced himself to not get close to anyone. Friends were unlikely in a job like this, if it could be called a job. There was no pay, no true satisfaction for him. It was something he had been raised into. Do it or die. He held guns against temples, kicked and broke numerous ribs, and slit throats on command. Each death led to another injection. And another. Another. His veins were withering away. He wouldn't live to see many more years than the men who died at his hands.

Adil looked down at the needle in his hands, grimacing. "What have I become?" Heroin was his dearest, sweetest friend. All he had left to pass on to his daughter was his empire of dirt, a burial mound piled high with his shortcomings. Guns and bandages and dirty needles. "You could have it all, princess."

_{I will let you down.
I will make you hurt.}

It was harder still to make eye contact with the missionaries. Their three newest captives grabbed his heart in ways he could not explain, ways that they should not have been spiritually able, and yet the feeling was there. Stronger and stronger with each torture session.

I forgive you. said the youngest.

Forgiveness? As they beat him. Over and over. Reopening tender wounds, his life dripping onto the stone floor. He forgave them? His comrades were angry, demanding that they be allowed to make this young man pay.

That night, Adil slipped down the hall to the young boy's cell and opened the small barred window on the door to see into his cell. The young missionary was sleeping, curled in on himself, hands clasped as if he had fallen asleep while praying. Adil's heart ached. Their faith was so strong. They needed no needles, no alcohol, no cigarettes. Even when they took their Bibles and their crosses, they were not left writhing from withdrawals. What they had was ever-present. Slowly, he shut the window and returned to his quarters.

In the morning, they pulled the young boy out of his cell, tying a bag tightly around his head to keep him from seeing. They marched him out and Adil took note of how the missionary still limped on his bad leg. Adil stood beside the other men, his heart pounding. The missionary did not seem the least bit frightened, standing still. If there had not been a bag on his head, Adil could almost imagine him admiring the scenery.

'Run..' Adil thought. 'I cannot save you...I will let you down. I will make you hurt...'

No sooner had he thought it, than they pressed a gun into his hands. Tears fell freely, his dark hair swinging as he shook his head and forced the gun away. He would not do it. He could not kill this boy. As one entity, the others turned their own guns on him.

In their own tongue, his boss shouted, "Do it or die, Adil!"

Fear, remorse, pain that would turn into a needle in his arm that night, shone in his beetle black eyes as he fired five rounds. The first two missed, but the last three hit the young boy and he fell on his bad leg. Almost at once, Adil hit the ground as well. Crying and wishing that he had instead let himself be killed.

_{I wear this crown of thorns upon my liar's chair.
Full of broken thoughts I cannot repair.
Beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear.
You are someone else, I am still right here.}

Sitting back in his quarters, his heart was spiritually bleeding. They had released one of the other three captives that was still living. They would go after him later, kill him even though he had renounced his faith. It was their game. What other amusement did they have? In his head, the memories swirled. Fragments. Broken thoughts that he almost didn't want put back together. It didn't matter because he couldn't repair them anyway.

Each bloodstain on the time line of his life was erasing his feelings. Was there any way he could be capable of loving another human being? He thought he loved his daughter, but would he be like his own father and sell her to put food on the table? Would his wife?

In his head, he saw the little boy he was and his father standing over him. 'No..' he thought. 'You are someone else, Adil. I am still right here.'

For the first time, he put down the needle.

_{What have I become, my sweetest friend?
Everyone I know goes away in the end.
And you could have it all, my empire of dirt.}

What was he becoming? He would not ask the needle this time. His footsteps led him to the final prisoner's cell. There had been talk of killing him in the morning. One hand he held his gun, tighter than usual, the safety engaged. In his other, he held the only surviving Bible from their raid. As he opened the door, he made sure that the barrel of the gun entered first.

Groggily, the captive lifted his head and watched him enter. Adil forced his face to remain expressionless even though as he watched the prisoner struggle to get into a sitting position he felt racked by guilt. He could see the confusion on the man's face, the question going through his head of what he could have done in his sleep to warrant another torture so soon. Yet there was no anger or fear. There was pity.

Adil watched as the man's eyes landed on the Bible. Slowly, as though questioning what insanity had come over him, Adil held out the Bible to him. He could have it all, even his empire of dirt. There would be more meaning in Adil's death than him living and killing another innocent man.

_{I will let you down.
I will make you hurt.}

The missionary peered forward at the Bible, to the page Adil had it opened to. It was not the words he was curious about at that moment. When he saw a child's drawing while flipping through the pages in his quarters, it had held his interest like nothing else. He knew next to no English, but the sight of this one stick figure on a wobbly cross held him by the heart fiercely. A man that would not let him down the way Adil had let down the young missionary only a few days ago. A man who would not make him hurt the way Adil had just yesterday when he forced the man in front of him to keep his head underwater for up to ten minutes without air.

Jesus. the missionary said.

_{If I could start again, a million miles away.
I would keep myself.
I would find a way.}

In very broken English and Arabic, they talked about Jesus and his life. Adil learned how Jesus was as a child, learning from his earthly father how to use his hands to build. He learned about the older Jesus, traveling the world to tell people that there was a better way to be if only they would listen. He learned of Jesus' death on the cross, where the drawing of the stick figure was truly flesh and bone and blood. Where he was life. A life unlike any other. He allowed himself to die and then, shockingly, came back.

It was difficult for Adil to ask some of the questions he wanted to ask, but together the two men managed to figure out what was needed. It had been two hours since Adil had entered the missionary's cell. Afraid at this point that someone would wake, he kept glancing at the door, but at the same time there was a feeling rising in his chest that he could start again. In his heart there was a feeling of being destroyed and reborn at the same time. He mimed the motions that he had seen the youngest missionary do. The man understood he meant he wanted to pray with him and so they did.

The captor helped the captive to his feet, pushing a tattered sack into his hands. He also shoved a small, whittled cross into the missionary's hand that they'd found in the pocket of his clothes when they'd taken him. Adil noted the small smile on the man's face when he realized exactly what he was holding.

He led the older missionary outside into the cool air, unusual for their part of the world. His eyes roved over the older man's face where scars stood out in raised rows across the flesh. The man's eyes were closed, a smile slowly forming. Adil held his gun lax in one hand, the Bible tightly in the other. When the missionary seemed ready to go, he was hesitant to hand it over to him. Finally, he did, but before the older man turned away he extracted the drawing and passed it over to Adil. For the first time since he was a child, Adil smiled, looking down at the little stick figure on the wobbly cross, and instantly drew the man into an embrace.

Slowly, they parted from each other, and the missionary parted from the compound.

Adil watched him go, and then looked down at the drawing in his hand. He would keep himself exactly as he was now. He would find a way to maintain feeling whole because, truly, it was the only time he had ever felt fully alive. Folding the paper carefully, he slid it into his pocket and returned to his quarters.

He threw the needles away, knelt down, and prayed.