NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

The America Diaspora is a sequel to The Chinese Century.

Where am I? Where was I?

Oh, yes. I have become quite an expert on torture. It has a lot in common with sex. Not just that some of it’s sexual. But a lot of it is about anticipation, and much of it happens in your head.

The physical brutality is different. What’s startling about that, to an intellectual, is just how inescapable it is. Pain sears in, from the back, from the legs, from the genitals, from wherever they want to concentrate it, and there is no way on Earth to block it out. You can’t talk, can’t think. You really are reduced to meat.

Which is what they want. Because once they reach the animal brain, they can get anything they want. A dog will do whatever anyone trains it to do, and the method of training is always some form of torture. No matter how the nice British lady dresses it up, she’s witholding what the dog wants, what it needs, and applying pain until she gets compliance.

I laughed about that in my cell one day, and the man below me – a doctor I think he was before the War – he laughed. “We are all dogs,” he said. “We are the dogs of war.” Then he howled, and he laughed too. A big Marine came by a few moments later and ended the laughter with pain.

It’s the inescapability of pain that makes torture so unbearable, even in memory. Once you’ve been through it, you can’t forget, and sleep with dreams is torture as well. I remember in high school one year we had to read Darkness at Noon and I remember recoiling from it, skimming the real nitty-gritty, focusing on the character’s journey, avoiding the pain at all costs.

I’m going to re-read that one day.

So where am I exactly? I don’t know. All I remember of what happened a few hours ago is we were bouncing along in what I took to be at truck. I was blindfolded, found hand-and-foot, and then another foot came at me from the left and rolled me over, hard, falling, onto a dirt street. I landed on my back, and howled through my bonds, yes like an animal, then a few moments later hands grabbed the bonds that held me and ripped them apart.

They were only cloth.

I blinked into harsh Sun and black faces, childrens’ faces, most of them wearing white and others, nothing at all. I saw that I was clad in an outfit from the movie Papillon, gray slacks and a striped top that fit more like a cloak than a shirt. I had none of the language they were gibbering. The truck was nowhere to be seen.

I motioned with my hands toward my mouth. My tongue was like sandpaper, and I wondered how long I’d gone thirsty. A stream of liquid was aimed at my mouth from what looked like a clotheskin bag. It was water, held by one of the children, and nothing in my life has ever tasted that good.

Small rough hands grabbed my hands, pulled me up and away. It was then I heard the car horns, men late for something forcing their way down this path. Then we were in shade, and I sat back down, hard, the children all around me.

I must have been quite a sight to behold. I don’t know how many white men fall out of trucks in Abuja, I’m guessing not many. Because these children treated me, not as a broken shell in prison garb, but as a possible source of future gifts. An older boy came up, all in white, and took my hand, while the rest crowded behind as in a parade. Then the older boy led me down the street, up another street, and into a bright-lit room filled with computers. He sat me down at one, motioned with his arms that he would pay for my online time, and then sat behind me as I double-clicked the Firefox browser icon and found out just where I was.

It was the city’s home page and I laughed as my eyes and mouse flowed over it. One of the illustrations showed a man in an LA Laker’s uniform, and below it was a box marked “Nigerians in Diaspora.”

I quickly clicked the top line to clear it, and entered mail.google.com. I gave the page my password, and brought up my e-mail. There was very little there – I seldom use my gmail account – but I could send a message, to my wife, to my life, that I was indeed alive, that I was probably in Abuja, Nigeria, and that when I knew exactly how to be reached I would need money and travel.

I wrote this in English, with the young man over my shoulder. He thrust a paper in front of me. On it was scrawled, also in English, an address, and a string of numbers with the words Western Union below it, and an arrow pointing from those words to the numbers. I shrugged my shoulders and the young man grabbed my head roughly, then pointed me to a sign above my head. I squinted and saw this was the Western Union identification of the Internet Café we were sitting in, probably keyed to the address. I nodded, half-drunkenly, wondering if I were about to be robbed but caring little about it. Then I entered the number into the message, added Mark Cuban as an addressee, and hit send.

It was only then that I was introduced to Samson Olajuwon, great nephew of an an agricultural economist, the last name meaning honorable in Arabic and the first name denoting strength. He was a student at the University of Abuja , 60 kilometers from town, dreaming of becoming an agricultural economist like his famous ancestor. He was about the age of my daughter, 17, and spending the Sabbath visiting his mother. Aroused by shouts and a crowd, he had taken control of me in the name of Allah, the Merciful, and hoped I would find myself among friends soon.

He explained all this in very-halting English over an orange soda he insisted I share, and a very sweet meat pastry that I would have rejected most days, but which on this day tasted like ambrosia. We sat on a long bench, outside what I took now as an Internet Café, and just as I finished eating there was a shout from inside.

We both turned around and found a man holding a printout, excitedly chattering in Arabic. Samson spoke back for us, calmly, then began smiling more-and-more broadly as the man continued to chatter. He took the printout and another piece of paper from the man.

“Check,” he said. He took my elbow and we walked some more, as he explained that the amount on the check was for more than the Café carried, so he would help me cash it at a nearby branch of the Zenith Bank .

As we walked he read the rest of the paper, which was in Arabic. After a pile of crisp Naira were thrust into my hand by the teller, Samson looked about me for pockets and, finding none, slipped the pile into what he was wearing. We walked back to the Internet Cafe, where the man in charge was paid from Samson’s pocket (and my funds), then he whistled and within a few minutes we were inside a car.

The car, in turn, took us to a huge skyscraper, which I later found out was Le Meridien Hotel. The driver looked nonplussed, but Samson stuffed him with enough bills to draw a smile from him, and hustled me into the lobby.

There an argument began at the concierge desk, but Samson thrust his paper at the man, and suddenly my life changed utterly. The concierge snapped his fingers, led us to the check-in desk, and pointed to a line on a piece of paper, which I took to mean my signature was requested. My signature is bad in the best of times, but I took my time with it and there were smiles on both sides of the desk, along with a good deal of back-slapping.

The concierge tried to push Samson away, but I pushed back. “Interpreter,” I said, pointing to the young man. Then, “please.” The concierge shrugged, Samson beamed, and an electronic key card was thrust into my hand, which we used to work both the elevator and a door at the end of a long hallway.

Now it was Samson’s turn to gasp, for this was the one of the hotel’s Family Suites, the kind of room visiting ministers might be given if they had brought family members with them. There were flowers on a table and, I noticed, a piece of paper on another table with writing in English.

I leaned into it. My glasses has been gone for some weeks but I could still read if things were close enough to me.

It was from Cuban. He told me to relax, that clothes and transport were coming, and that I would be “home” within 48 hours. Jenni was being notified and would be waiting for me at the Johannesburg Airport when I arrived.

Samson turned on a laptop computer at the desk, overlooking a window. He bowed and made as if to leave. I shook my head and said, simply “Room Service,” then “Big Meal,” and finally “for two.” I motioned to a phone by the bed.

This had been his dream, too, this chance meeting of a wealthy westerner, and I was determined, now, with my senses slowly returning, to make that dream come true.

After a long bath, wrapped in a thick robe, I found Samson holding a linen suit, motioning for me to put it on. Then the food came, on a large table, brought in by three waiters, who served me a plate and treated me like a wealthy man. They would have treated Samson like a servent, but I would have none of it. “American Plan,” one muttered on the way out, and I spent the next hour getting through to Samson Olajuwon, in halting English, the plot of Preston Sturges’ movie Sullivan’s Travels.

After we ate, as the Nigerian sky outside filled with stars, Samson found that movie through my laptop. Another knock at the door brought a fresh pair of glasses, my exact prescription. Then Samson put a sweetened yogurt drink by my bed, motioned me toward my laptop, suggested he would be on guard all night, and closed the door behind him.

I passed out five minutes later.