1001 Nights Cast

I’ve been cooking the meals for the officers of the Psychological Operations Unit. They’re interrogators, really. The lowest rank among them is Colonel. They’re twice the age of the snipers. They’re a completely different type of man compared to the average marine. They’re grey-haired at the temples, but they can step across a room in stone total silence, coming over in slow motion but getting to you quickly.

Imagine them. Even in the mess hall, they’re always deciding which parts of everything mean nothing at all. And sussing out which little detail will pull the heart from a man’s chest.

They seem almost holy, the good ones. Like monks. All that patience. All that perseverance.

Well, each one’s like a monk, yes, but like a surgeon, maybe, too. Each one’s got some red tincture that’s smelling metallic and soaking the skin of his right hand.

A new officer came in yesterday. Dropped in by chopper.

Is he a good one, this new one?

Observing him at his meals yesterday, I could see he’s got technique. I could see he’d have a way to bring on the revelations. He’d have it all memorised in terse little mottos, a technique he’d have summarised in quick reminders. Such as:

Sit still in front of a mystery.

Don’t clutch for the answers, let them come over to you.

Flush some small whiff of fear into every situation.

So, that’s what I learned about him yesterday—how he’s got technique so smooth you could catch it in three mottos.

Today, I’ve discovered he’s not only an interrogator. He’s also an instructor. At dinner, among the young men, there’s a trainee’s notebook lying face-up on the table. A List in the notebook. Five compacted lessons scribbled by a mudcrab-sized hand.

But here’s a warning: If I tell you these five lessons right now, then I’ll have to curtail the signal straightaway afterwards. So, these are the Five Lessons:

NUMBER ONE: ‘Try to see whatever you’re taking for granted, but give it completely wrong colours. Now look at it again, but describe its OUTLINE this time—how it really appears, except for its colours.’

NUMBER TWO: ‘Look for secrets in places and people. Analyse the things they do, the times they do them, where they come from and where they go to.’

NUMBER THREE: ‘Sedition is usually committed using some kind of object. Even if it’s language, it gets carried like a thing. So you should look closely at things. Ask yourself, can any thing become a tool or weapon of some sort? A word, for example. Imagine you are in a movie where every thing, even the soundtrack, even the conversation, is brought toward you in close-up.’

NUMBER FOUR: ‘Once you’ve taken things away, you must examine them slowly.’

NUMBER FIVE: ‘When a man’s eyes can still focus, they can jitter and dilate. But once the life is gone from them, once you’ve done too much to him, his eyes are taken from you and you’ve got nothing you can bring to me. Earlier today, when you held him at the right balance, each shining eye held a sign of the riches his blood carried from his mind to his soul. But when you lost the shine in his iris, you lost his special meaning. And you became as useless as he is.’