Snapshot of a Turkish Prison

Darrell knew his time was limited. There were four sealed envelopes laying on the table in front of him, and one would unlock his future. He took the first one in the palm of this hand. He slide the letter opener through the top left corner as a bead of sticky high salt content sweat landed on his knuckle. He'd been waiting for this moment since his first encounter with his Turkish prison cellmate twenty years ago that September. There had been rumors among the prisoners that Darrel was in the joint for smuggling office supplies into Uzbekistan out of fear that the Uzbeks might learn to read and write with Bic mechanical pencils and Ampad notebooks. This was of course a decoy by his boss "Mr. Cameron" who had arranged for his incarceration as a chance to finish writing his book called "Treatise on the theorems of Leo Strauss". The book would actually be collection of Baha'i poetry posing as a book about Leo Strauss. Darrel's roommate, Simon, was in prison for knocking his nephew's house down with a backhoe, but had recently resorted to establishing an organization for retired fighting dog's in Eastern Europe. Simon's day consisted of waking up at 6:00 to go work out in the gym, followed by a fruit smoothie at 7:00. After that he reviewed show times at the local cinemark 14 in Izmir.