So much of it was waiting. For half an hour I sat alone and listened to the voices of many. They were stood together somewhere in the distance. I could hear the sound of their footsteps, of the door opening and closing, of people moving around one another, of the unknown edges of unheard words, the smeared sounds of expression. In the language that we shared from birth, they spoke of me, these people, in hushed tones they spoke of me and I could not hear it. Birds muttered and flapped their wings, branches shook, winds glided through the trees in a broken whistle, and I sat waiting. When finally they came, they came together. With my legs crossed beneath me, my cuffed hands pressed on the bark, I straightened my back in preparation as I heard and felt them crowding in around me.

A chair was passed forward, the sound of its legs strangely unmistakable as they dragged through the dirt, settling a meter in front of me, where a man lowered himself to sit. Unseeing, I turned to him. Out in the open space, I felt the walls close in and the air grow sparse, as for a slow minute they seemed content to merely study me up close in silence. ''Do you know why we took you?'' asked the Chair Man quite suddenly. His voice deep but free from the hoarseness of age. ''No I don''t'' I sincerely answered. Having barely spoken for these last two nights, the words tripped a little on exit and I cleared my throat to steady them. ''I think you have taken the wrong man''.

''No'' he replied, his tone slow and considered, exuding confidence and authority, ''we well know who we have taken''. ''I am a priest in the church.'' ''And you think we don''t know that?'' he asked. ''Then what use do you have of me? I have nothing for you''. ''You, like all of them, you all cooperate with the Americans''. ''No'' I shook my head and answered, ''I have never dealt with Americans. I don''t deal with them and I have no dealings with them''. ''Well, we will see'' he said skeptically, ''Inshallah (God willing), we will see''.

Emboldened by the truth I spoke, by the fact that I could not be rightfully accused of actively cooperating with the American Army, I pressed on with the point. ''Go ask the people'' I requested, my voice growing firmer with each word, ''ask the people about the priest, ask them about me. About who I am, and when you go to ask, don''t ask the Christians, go ask the Muslims, ask the Muslims about the priest of this area and see what they tell you about me''. ''We have asked, and we will ask, and soon we will see'' he said before pausing, and I could feel him looking at the others, I could feel them evaluating what I had said and whether there was need for any further questions. ''Do you want anything?'' he finally added. ''I don''t want anything'' I answered, ''I want you to let me go''. ''We will'' he said, ''we just have something that must be done first, and then Inshallah, we will let you go''. With that he stood from out his seat and I heard them all walk off together, to leave me as I was beneath the tree.

For some time I remained there as they went back inside the house to no doubt speak of me, and that unsaid thing in need of doing. An hour passed before the sounds of the outdoors were punctured by the footsteps and revving engines of those departing. After which my guards returned and escorted me back to the small room and the mattress on the ground, only this time I would see it. For soon after taking me there, the guard entered once again with a tray of food and a glass of water, however on this occasion, after he unbound my hands, he did not stay in the room with me. ''Eat'' he had said, before I heard the door of the room close behind him. Cautiously I lifted up the blindfold, looking downward and to the side so that if he happened to still be in the room, then the only part of him I would see would be his foot. He was not there. Two days may not seem too lengthy a period, and when I look at it now in the scheme of it all, it once again does not, yet they were the first days and the first of anything is different.

My eyes ached as I opened them and I was unsure whether the pain was real or of my own making, an extension to the fear I felt from the sudden influx of light after so much darkness. Either way there was little time to dwell on it, the guard would soon return and he would take the light with him. Squinting, I ignored the food and looked about the little room that was my prison cell. It was disappointingly much like I imagined. Sometimes you don''t need your eyes to see. It was small, I would estimate it to be fifteen feet in length and ten in width. The white tiles that covered the floor where in good condition and not overly filthy. In fact none of it was.

Even the thin mattresses, of which there were three, were un-ripped though somewhat grey and dusty. In the far corner was an empty cabinet with its drawers half opened to varying degrees. I stared at it and a sad feeling crept over me. This had been someone''s house . Someone''s home which these people had taken. I wondered what clothes once filled those open drawers? A child''s perhaps, and as I began to think of that, I thought of the echoes that move throughout this world without dissipating. Of a heavy stone falling in the vast and open ocean. Of the splash and then the ring of consequence that grows from all directions, moving through the endless mass of people that surround it, and as it does, as it sends them bobbing inside the waters, their arms begin to flail in a desperate bid to stay afloat, and so the one large rings gives birth to a million others, which may seem smaller from above but are everything for those inside them.

It is the way we are all connected, and it is wonderful and dangerous, marvellous and hideous, and I can''t but worry. I worry that the effects of the hideous are far harder to halt, I worry that it only takes selfishness to stop the good from spreading, but to stop the bad, to stop the bad you need forgiveness, and what can be harder than that? (excerpted from chapter 4).