The Storm Inside
It’s April 2016, and I’m in London to edit a documentary. I’d just spent six weeks in Iraq, embedded with the country’s special forces as they battled for control of the largest province against the Islamic State. Now I’m standing in the lobby of the Ace Hotel in my underwear, surrounded by police. There’s a chair in my hands, and the smoke detector is giving me secret instructions to use it as a weapon. I feel adrenaline rush through my body as it had days earlier on the front line. Stepping forward, I swing the chair like a trapped animal. “Get down!” an officer screams. I can see the red dots of tasers swirling on my chest. Finally, I drop to my knees, and feel a pair of handcuffs close tight around my wrists, before I’m wrestled to the ground. I refuse to stand, so half a dozen officers lift and carry me into the back of a Metropolitan Police van. After twenty-four hours in a jail cell, drinking water out of a shit-stained toilet to quench my thirst, I’m taken to a mental hospital.