Read Online JOHNNY GONE DOWN by Karan Bajaj - Free Book Online

slowly clambered into the back. My swollen belly hit against the edge of a log, and I sprawled face down on the pile. They tied my wounded left wrist to the partition between the driver’s side and the back of the jeep. The steel scraped against my wound, still raw from the manacle, and I moaned. As the jeep began to move, I forced myself to stay conscious to take in the first view of the place where I had spent the last several months - or years. It looked like a… a school. Yes, it was a school, I realized. The garden was actually a playground with the remnants of a soccer goalpost. The classrooms in the yellow brick building had been converted into holding cells, one of which had been my home, and the man who had just interrogated me sat in what was probably the principal’s office. They had converted a school into a torture chamber for the educated bourgeoisie - did they even see the irony of this wonderfully symbolic gesture? I chuckled, and realized that I was slowly going insane. Ravaged by starvation, a wrist that had been all but sawed off, crippled by pain as the wood struck against my brittle bones, and on my way to certain execution - yet, I was tickled by the unintended irony.
    We began crawling through the city of Phnom Penh. Abandoned cafés on the roadside, factories that had closed down, deserted buildings, damagedvehicles, rubble, tires and skeletons; no living being in sight, not even a dog, except a few vultures that hovered around the decaying bodies strewn along the sides of the road. The jeep continued its bumpy ride through the debris-strewn dirt tracks, and soon the city gave way to the vast, empty countryside. I remembered Ishmael talking about the forced movement of people to the villages. Perhaps I was being taken there, I thought, and felt a little cheerful. I would prefer to die in the open than in that airless cell, wallowing in my own shit. The steady rumble of the jeep lulled me out of consciousness.

    I woke with a sharp pain in my side. Daylight had given way to dusk and the jeep had entered a forested area with deep valleys on both sides of the road. The road became less bumpy but the turns became sharper. We swerved dangerously with every turn; again and again, I was thrown about on the wooden logs.
    The jeep took a sudden, sharp turn as we entered an even thicker forest. I was thrown to the other end and banged my head against the opaque front partition. Painfully, I tried to adjust my body and realized that the manacle which tied my wrist to the partition had come loose. I didn’t plan what I did next, I didn’t even actively think about it; I just did it.
    Scrambling to the edge of the logs, I jumped outof the speeding jeep as it navigated its next sharp turn. Down I fell, maybe twenty feet, and landed with a deafening splash in a shallow stream. For a second, I just lay face down in the cold water in disbelief. The water rose up my mouth and nose, and sputtering, I raised my head and looked around. I couldn’t see anyone in the stream, or in the forests on either side. I looked up at the road. The jeep didn’t seem to have stopped. If they hadn’t heard me, it would take a while for them to notice my absence. The logs were piled high and they could neither see nor hear me, nor had they shown any inclination to stop during the journey.
    I was free. I am free , I repeated to myself, still in shock. A sudden thought struck me. There was only one forest indicated in the Cambodian map, which meant that this was the forest that bordered Thailand. After months of darkness, I could see a tantalizing ray of light in the distance - elusive, but suddenly attainable. I could escape, I thought with sudden resolve. But first, I needed to get out of sight. Slowly, I picked myself up and began to wade towards the bank - and fell in the water.
    Come on, Nick, you can do this.
    I picked myself up again - and fell. Again and again, I tried and kept falling. I began to cry in frustration. Just