Noah, a slim and pale prison guard, walked in the pristine corridors of a family prison, a prison just like any other. He had started this little summer internship recently and was nineteen, always with a swagger, always with a smile. This time he was smiling because he had just heard a fresh piece of news.
He opened the flap in the window of one of the cells. The flap was such in this modern prison that it didn't make a sound. Yet still, all the people in the room looked towards the door when he had opened the window flap. Three children under fourteen along with a man bound by single fatherhood.
Noah looked around in the room, smiling still, watching the family be still, his blue eyes shining as he considered them.
'Not this one,' he said to himself. 'The next one.'
He closed the flap and walked onwards.
This time he went to the left side of the corridor, but skipped the cell that was closest.
He continued skipping, imagining the stones on water.
Noises of babies, skip, stern admonishments, skip, wild childish laughter, skip.
Noah opened a flap.
Again everyone in the room looked up. One woman and two young children.
'Hey,' he called out, laughing shortly and smiling still. 'Guess what I just heard…'
This family prison had a communal area too, just like any other prison, but one that was a kids play area for recreation, with various slides, swings, sandboxes. Yet you won't see more than three children there at one time. A simple reason. Terrorists are not allowed to talk to one another.
Noah was by the window looking down at the playground. He loved looking at the families in this family prison; particularly at the parents, who seemed so frustrated, not so much at their imprisonment, or that their children were imprisoned, but because they had to be imprisoned with their own children. They were spending all their time with their children. All. Their. Time. Why couldn't they have been in an adult prison separated from their children, they all asked themselves...
To Noah's amusement but not surprise, he saw that his fresh piece of news had brought the families closer, for nothing brings people closer than something fresh to talk about. He looked down at them from the window with a list in his hands. The list in his hand had ten more empty spots…
Amirah had been in this family prison for a year now. Her eldest was eight, and her youngest three. All of them had been arrested for terrorism and sent to this same prison.
What was to happen no one knew. There was no trial, no process, no consultations. Nothing. All there was was waiting. For something.
Amirah was talking to her eldest. Both were sitting on separate swings while the two youngest children were going down the curiously big slides.
'But how will they choose, mama?' Amirah's daughter asked. The child's name was Leila.
Leila was excited, so excited that she was almost crying.
'I don't know,' said Amirah seriously. 'Women and children they said. But I think they will choose the families of martyrs.'
'Who's a martyr?' asked Leila, mesmerised.
'The fighters.'
'Is that us?'
'No. Your little brother was caught throwing rocks to get us arrested, remember?'
'Oh yeah.'
They both looked towards the two children on the slide. Neither older than four.
'I'm talking about the families of dead fighters. It's not us. Your father died of an allergy, pistachios…but I don't know. I don't know if they have a list of people that they want released and the authorities then go through the list and say yes or no.'
'So who decides then, mama? Can they say no to one, and yes to us?'
'Can who say?'
Leila paused for a moment but then Amirah answered.
'The authorities?'
'Yes,' said Leila quickly.
'I don't know. Or it could be that they're the ones who have a list and say yes or no and our people just give a number.'
'So who is it going to be, mama? We've been here for so long.'
'Yea. Maybe it's a date thing. The longer… But I don't know who it's going to be. If there was some way…'
'Mama, what if they have only three places left and we're four?'
'Hmm. What then…' mused Amirah, lost in thought.
A family prison is by definition a prison of families. There were no individuals there. People come in as a family and leave as a family.
'I know some families here are made of five people,' continued Amirah musingly. 'I suppose if there's four spots we would get it - maybe. If there's five spots left, there would be one person left after giving us four spots, and there is no one person family here. So not if it's five spots. It has to be -’
'What if there's two families of two. Would they take the four spots? Or would one family of four?’
'Damn! I don't even know, haha,' laughed Amirah despite herself, thrilled by the mechanics of a prisoner swap. 'I'm not a maths person…all these numbers..’
The atmosphere in the prison became more electric once news of a prisoner swap went around, with everyone making their own calculations.
Noah continued along his normal patrol, smiling still, holding his list. Now when he opened the flap, people either smiled back at him, or threw something at him. He continued to look at them with bemusement.
Amirah found herself smiling at Noah, as she did with any other guard that she came across. But Noah's gaze lingered on her once or twice. She wasn't a bad looking woman…
Amirah perked up.
The room she stayed in had two bunkbeds for four people, a little living room area and a television. Only a few channels were available.
The confines of this room, along with the presence of her demanding children began to dissipate as she noticed Noah's lingering looks. Her time in the family prison might soon be over.
This was not the first time that she had seen a prisoner swap. From the last two times she remembered that it would take three days after the initial word for the swap to happen.
Her youngest child bumped her head in play and started to cry. One week earlier this would have plunged Amirah in despair, since this was the fourth time that day in an enclosed space, but it didn't bother her that much to coddle the child for thirty minutes as they stopped crying.
‘Soon,’ she would say to her child, ‘soon, you'll go to school.’
The flap opened. Noah looked at Amirah's family with his habitual bemusement. A metal cup crashed against the window. Noah didn't flinch as with his smile he closed the flap, noting Amirah's flash of anger at her son, who had thrown the cup, and then a helpless smile as she looked at the young prison guard.
The next day the door to Amirah's cell was opened. They were told that they would be swapped with hostages on the other side and released in the hands of…
The family found itself back in their old house soon, grateful for the prison swap that allowed their release, from a closed prison to an open prison but at least it wasn't a family prison.
Amirah would have to do something about her young son's penchant for throwing things, though, that's for sure. These first days she would keep him at home, just in case, for freedom's jubilation makes people excited, especially kids with ADHD.
But they were home at least, for the first time in a long time, and Amirah could sleep in her own room, away from her children, who could cry themselves to sleep for all she cared. She needed solitude, dereliction of duty, from time to time...
The next day, early in the morning, before the family were woken by sunrise, they were woken by loud bangs, explosions nearby. Amirah realised quickly what was happening. She tried to make her way to her children but before she reached them, one such explosion sent Amirah's roof crashing down on her and the rest of her recently released family…
Meanwhile, in the family prison, Noah was doing his rounds, opening the flaps, smiling at the families still locked away in their prisons thinking about what he would do once he finished his internship in the family prison. Maybe an architecture course at Tel Aviv university, he said to himself. Or something else maybe. He still had time to decide.
DISCLAIMER. THIS IS JUST A STORY. I'M NOT SAYING ANYTHING HERE IS REAL OR ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THIS MANNER. IT'S SATIRE.
