Literature / Internment

Welcome to the Future.

Internment is a 2019 Dystopian Young Adult novel by Samira Ahmed set 20 Minutes into the Future.

In the near future, the Federal Government of the United States of America falls to a far-right electoral coup. Neo-Nazis march on Washington to support the new regime and receive its tacit approval. The annual census is used to catalog and register American Muslims in government databases. The Attorney General argues that the Supreme Court decision Koremetsu v. United States allows the internment of Muslims during times of war. The Secretary of War (formerly Secretary of Defense), a die hard theocrat who envisions a grand war between Muslims and "The West" is confirmed by the Senate. Though a popular Resistance movement pushes back, a lack of media coverage and quick use of overwhelming police force quickly sweep them under the rug and label them as "rioters".

Layla is a teenage Muslim girl in a small college town out in the suburbs of California, trying to live her life in the new reality of America but it's getting harder by the day. Her father is unceremoniously fired from his tenured teaching gig at college, her mother's chiropractor practice is seeing fewer customers every week, she is suspended from school for kissing her Jewish boyfriend David in the hallway, and her neighbors are enthusiastically attending a Book Burning of Muslim texts.

After breaking curfew to meet David for a late-night makeout session, Layla finds herself and her parents shipped off to Mobius, a Concentration Camp in the American Southwest. Under constant surveillance by a sadistic Black Shirt security force and a Camp Director trying to create a perfect model for implementing such camps nationwide, Layla struggles within the prison walls to find a way out of the living nightmare.

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Internment contains examples of:

• Agonizing Stomach Wound: Jake suffers one from the Director after he orders the private security team to shoot Layla and the other protesters. Jake dies surrounded by the prisoners.
• America Saves the Day: Inverted and Played Straight. America creates the Dystopia. The U.S. Military saves the day.
• Artistic License – Military: The U.S. Army shutting down the camp is likely a breach of the chain of command, effectively a full on military coup. The Army may swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, but the President is still the commander-in-chief and most soldiers aren't exactly scholars of Constitutional Law.
• Artistic License – Politics: The camp being cleaned up into a Potemkin village so it can be presented to the Red Cross as if they'd have power over the United States Government is laughably absurd- and the Director says as much after Layla's initial "hunger strike" prompts an outburst from him.
• Black Shirt: Layla remembers the President's tacit support of a Neo-Nazi march on Washington D.C. gave him increased power to enact his anti-Muslim policies, along with the activation of neighborhood "Patriot Alliance" organizations that allow individuals to report on their neighbors to the government via a phone app.
• Black Site: Jake implies the Director has access to one, where the adults that go missing are sent. Even he doesn't know if they're merely locked up, tortured, quietly killed, or all of the above.
• Bury Your Gays: A pair of Muslim boyfriends are the first (and some of the few) characters to be "disappeared" from Mobius.
• Dangerous Eighteenth Birthday: For some reason, the Director and the guards won't inflict any of the worst tortures and punishments on anyone under the age of 18. Layla is conveniently a few weeks from her eighteenth birthday.
• Day of the Jackboot: It's been roughly three years since the Day, though the Jackboot is still in the process of marching as the story begins.
• Deadpan Snarker: Layla wears her snark on her sleeve, using it against the guards for their cruelty and her parents for their (perceived) naivete over their circumstances.
• Divide and Conquer: Subverted and played straight. The Director separates the Muslims in the camp by nationality and shared languages, hoping to pit the different groups against one another. The strategy fails, but there is a generational gap between young and old that forms inside the camps and leads to blows at one point.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Too many instances to fit in one sentence.
  • Muslim internees are branded with a QR code on their wrists (though the Authority uses invisible ink).
  • The internment camp is practically next door to Manzanar.
  • The "Minders" act eerily similar to the Kapos in Nazi Germany.
  • Layla and her friends in the ad-hoc resistance movement compare themselves to a famous anti-Nazi resistance group. One that was guillotined by the Nazis.
• Fake Relationship: How Layla and Jake are able to subvert the Director. Jake pretends that he's "taking advantage" of Layla to secure enough privacy to smuggle in burner phones and helps smuggle out her written blog posts.
• Fascists' Bed Time: A nightly curfew is in effect across the United States (though it seems to only apply to Muslims).
• Faux Affably Evil: The Director, who keeps a fake grin on his face and talks about unity and prosperity to hide what a horrible place the internment camps really is. None of the inmates are fooled.
• The Generation Gap: The adult prisoners within Mobius are absolutely against the idea of any resistance to the Director, rationalizing that the situation won't get any worse or just blow over if they quietly follow orders. The younger generation realize the camp is a prototype, that their suffering will be inflicted nationwide if it's allowed to become a perfect model, and work to subvert the Director through any means.
• Genre Blindness: Layla's first day in the camp is full of moments that border on the Too Dumb to Live trope. The fact that she's been hauled off into an extrajudicial concentration camp on order of the President seems to have not fully dawned on her...
  Layla: There are tons of people outside. Besides, there are so many armed Exclusion Guards around, it's not like I can get mugged.
  Mom: The men with the guns are the ones I'm worried about.
• Inspirational Martyr: Soheil becomes one after being very publicly electrocuted to death by the camp's fence in front of a crowd of protesters and media.
• Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: Layla is horrified to find out her beating and torture at the hands of the Director was leaked to the web by the National Guardsmen. The Attorney General and the President can't bury the footage and her face is blurred, but she's still absolutely horrified about it.
• Instant Web Hit: The written "blog posts" smuggled out by Layla seem to instantly become net sensations and trigger an ongoing mass protest and media presence outside the gates of Mobius.
• Invisible President: For being spoken of as a raging demagogue, racist, and the one who gave the order to implement Mobius, the President is never "shown" in the story—even through a TV or phone screen.
• Just Following Orders: The chief of police tries to offer this as a defense for helping the Secret Police arrest and intern Layla and her family.
• Last Villain Stand: After the National Guardsmen initiate a takeover of Mobius and leak the Director's actions to the public, he holes up in his office with his private security group and Layla's parents as hostages all while the guardsmen and the prisoners gather outside. He uses Layla's family to break the siege, but tries to have her shot by his private security group. The bullet grazes Layla's father and kills Jake.
• Les Collaborateurs: The camp "Minders" are Muslim Americans that speak both English and the language of their charges and report any unrest to the Director.
• Living Is More than Surviving: Layla's father and mother refuse to engage in taqiya, public denial of one's Muslim faith in order to survive persecution. They view the open practice of their religion as an affirmation of their human dignity.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: You have to squint (or in some cases, do some research) but most members of the Administration are based on modern U.S. politicians.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The Director delivers one to Layla during her interrogation, forcing his removal by the guards.
• No Party Given: The President and his party are never named, but if you know much about U.S. politics, you have a 50/50 shot of which party they're from...
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The vague "High Command" referred to by the camp guards. Jake hints that the Command includes the Secretary of War, the C.I.A. Director, and the F.B.I. Director. By the end of the book, the Command is in a circular firing squad mode trying to escape the wrath of the public and not be the President's scapegoat as he tries to avoid the political consequences of the Mobius camp.
• Offstage Villainy: The actions of the President and the "High Command" (the ones who green light the Mobius project) are never shown on the page. The closest we get to seeing their actions or orders are the Director's monologues.
• Oppressive States of America: The United States is utterly transformed over a period of three years prior to the beginning of the story. Police crackdowns, Black Shirt "Patriot Alliance" organizations, public book barbecues, destruction of Mosques, and a weaponization of the Census become regular things by the time Layla is imprisoned.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: The Director, on top of assuming that his Muslim prisoners are all latent Middle Eastern Terrorists who harbor desires to implement Sharia law and are undeserving of the rights of (white) Americans, also holds barely concealed anti-Semitic hatred.
• Released to Elsewhere: Layla and Ayesha begin to notice people in the camp are disappearing in the night, then they watch as a trio of Hijab-wearing protesters are hauled off after starting a brawl with camp guards. Jake indicates they were taken to an illegal black site and probably killed.
• The Scapegoat: Muslims serve as one for the administration. David's comments indicate Jewish Americans are probably next in line.
• Secret Police: Aside from the Patriot Alliance groups that monitor the streets, the Exclusion Authority is a new government force formed to carry out the roundup and internment of Muslim Americans. The guards are a glaringly all-white paramilitary organization that manage the internment operations and security of the camp. Some of the guards (Jake and Fred) are actually National Guardsmen, quietly inserted to document and close the camps before they can be implemented nationwide.
• Slave to PR: The only thing seeming to prevent the Director and President from stepping into Final Solution territory. The camp has been sold to the public as necessary to prevent terrorist attacks and Sharia law, but Mobius needs to be proven as a successful endeavor before the camps will be built nationwide. As soon as the Red Cross, the media, and the protesters show up the pressure is on to maintain a facade of a perfect, clean, and safe camp with no resistance or violence in sight. The President throws the whole Mobius crew under the bus to try and preserve his re-election chances when the model fails and the public learns the truth of the Director's torture.
• Sliding Scale of Law Enforcement: The chief of police oversees Layla's arrest and transport to the train station, makes it clear he's not ok with what's going on- but he's still doing it.
• Straw Character: The Director. He exists solely to spout platitudes about "Unity" and "Security", threaten the camp internees, and give political monologues that border on Lampshade Hanging and Take That! speeches.
• Torture Technician: The Director. He seems to enjoy it, though he dislikes how engaging in it means he's not in full control of the camp's prisoners.
• Totalitarian Utilitarian: The Director sells the Mobius camp to the inmates as a borderline summer camp experience, for their own benefit and protection. It's implied that the camp is going to be sold to the American public as a necessary defense against Sharia law, illegal immigration, and terrorism.
• Velvet Revolution: The entire resistance movement as set up by Layla and the other teenagers amounts to several blog posts, a video, a hunger strike, and two quiet marches to the front door. None of them lifts a finger against the camp guards.
• Voice of the Resistance: Layla's blog posts, which become an overnight social media hit as they detail conditions inside the camp.
• Walls of Tyranny: The camp barriers are made up of guard towers with armed sentries, searchlights, barbed wire, and electric fences with enough power coursing through them to kill a man. As Soheil finds out.
• Would Hurt a Child: The Director has no qualms about beating teenagers and breaking noses. Often.
• You Are Number 6: All prisoners are given a QR code tattoo with invisible ink prior to being sent to Mobius. No one can see it, but the prisoners know they have a number.