by Jean Sasson
“At her mother’s insistence, Sara went back to class. And sure enough, her nightmare came true. Within a week, those same men came for her. Forbidding Sara to telephone her mother, they arrested her and threw her here, in Baladiyat, and they have been torturing her ever since. She learned during her interrogation that someone had anonymously accused Adel of being in a conspiracy cell that opposed Saddam’s regime. These men believed Sara knew the names of other conspirators. But, of course, there was never a conspiracy. Those boys were so busy with medical school that they didn’t have time for such activities.”
Sara was obviously listening to Samara’s words, for her sobs now grew more wracking. “Youma! Yabba! Please help your daughter,” she cried. “I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it!”
Then Muna interrupted, reminding them of yet another shadow woman whose fate was unknown. “Samara, I am also worried about Safana. She has been gone for too long.”
“Cell 52 has become a revolving door,” Samara said, looking at Mayada with the greatest sorrow.
Sara’s sobs filled the room. All the shadow women gathered around her—some holding hands, others weeping softly.
Mayada sat and stared at the ceiling, praying that she was at home in bed, and that Fay and Ali were safe in bed just down the hall.
9
The Chirping of the Qabaj
The shadow women looked up anxiously when, less than an hour later, their cell door was flung open and an unseen hand pushed Safana back among them. Although she lurched through the door on her own feet, she was not the same Safana who had walked out of cell 52 earlier that day. Once inside, she stumbled two or three steps, then reached for the wall to keep from falling. Her head scarf was askew and the flaps of her abaaya hung wide open. The day’s ordeal had aged her youthful face, and her once-firm cheeks now sagged, blotched and flushed. Her back was bowed into a terrible stoop, as though her spine had been twisted during interrogation. Her blood-shot eyes scanned the cell wildly.
Safana’s legs trembled and bent like rubber, and Muna ran toward her with outstretched arms. Muna gripped her around the shoulders, crying out, “Safana? Are you all right?”
Confusion quivered in Safana’s eyes before she wrinkled up her face to utter a low moan. Her body corkscrewed, then crumpled. Muna wrapped her arms around Safana and held tight, then called to the other women, “I need help.” Dr. Sabah rushed to assist, and the two shadow women slowly pulled Safana toward the bedding they had prepared for her.
Samara stood watching, her eyebrows narrowed in concern. “Look at her back,” said Samara with a small shake of her head. “Blood is seeping through her dress and her abaaya.” She nodded toward the bedding on the floor. “Lay her on her stomach.”
The three women slowly lowered Safana. Once she was down, Samara carefully slipped her bloodstained dress off her shoulders and lowered it down to her waist.
Mayada was overcome with pity and wanted to assist, but when Samara saw Mayada fumbling with her blanket and leaning forward to get up, she ordered, “You stay where you are, Mayada.”
Mayada did as she was told, but sat propped on her elbows, examining Safana’s back. From the base of her neck to the top of her buttocks, Safana’s back was a mass of bloody tissue.
She had been viciously beaten with a whip.
Samara busily tended to Safana’s wounds. First she probed gently, dabbing the wounds with a dry cloth, then she gently washed them with a damp cloth. She rinsed the reddened cloth in a small pail of water.
Safana grimaced in pain, groaning, “Oooooooh. . . . Oooooooh.”
Samara, too, looked pale and tired, but she paused in her ministrations long enough to whisper consolingly in Safana’s ear before proceeding.
Mayada lay and watched, letting her eyes travel slowly around the small cell. All of the women were gathered around Safana, and Mayada saw that every woman’s cheeks were wet with tears.
Safana’s friend from the bank, Muna, silently wept while she clung tightly to one of Safana’s hands.
Rasha squatted on the floor a few feet away, her legs tucked beneath her, rocking back and forth.
Dr. Sabah watched as the women tended to Safana. The ever-widening crinkles around her eyes and lips revealed her fifty years.
Mayada glanced over at Sara, and feeling Mayada’s gaze on her, Sara’s eyelids flew open. The two shadow women exchanged a long, sad look. To Mayada, Sara seemed like a child among all the shadow women. If Mayada was allowed to select just one prisoner to set free, she would choose Sara—she was, after all, only a few years older than Mayada’s precious daughter, Fay.
Sara had shed all the tears her tortured body could produce, but nothing relieved her physical torment. She had overheard other shadow women whispering about the smoke that had billowed from her mouth. She had been thinking about that smoke for a long time. Now she haltingly explained in a muffled voice, “Rather than quick short blasts, they set the machine for a low voltage and shot the electricity into my body very slowly and for a long time. After a while, I could not even force my eyelids to close. My eyeballs swelled so large that I felt them pushing against my eye sockets.” She sobbed, “I thought my eyeballs would pop out of my head. They were frying my insides. That’s why that smoke came out of my mouth.”
Samara looked up and said, “Someone give Sara more water. Sara, you need to drink as much water as you can. That is the only thing that will heal your insides: cool water. And stop thinking about that smoke.”
Iman pushed her thick eyeglasses back up on her nose. She stooped to pick up a glass of water and shuffled to Sara’s side with it. With her thin brows twisted in concern, Iman convinced Sara to drink down the full glass. Iman remained by the young woman’s side, affectionately patting her back with one hand while she held the now-empty glass in the other.
Iman, who was fifty-four and married, was one of the older shadow women. She was plump, with extremely pale skin. Iman had arrived in Baladiyat because she tried to do good for her community. Though she had never joined the Baath Party, she was selected as a member of the people’s council for her district. She accepted the appointment with enthusiasm, eager to improve her community. But Iman was uneducated and naïve. She didn’t realize that complaining about uncollected litter could trigger serious trouble for her in Saddam’s Iraq. Iman was arrested for making “trivial” criticisms of the government.
Wafae, the shadow woman nicknamed “Tomatoes” for her hair color—a cross between a ripened tomato and golden wheat—dashed back and forth between Samara and the toilet, where she emptied the small pail of water that had turned pink from Safana’s blood and refilled it with fresh water. Wafae had been seized by the secret police because her brother had escaped to Syria.
Anwar was a tall woman with strong shoulders. She was very attractive, with blond hair, hazel eyes, a delicate nose and thin lips. She puckered her lips as she leaned over Samara, offering her opinion on how to best stanch Safana’s blood flow. Mayada was not familiar with Anwar’s story because she was an intense, silent woman who rarely complained about her own problems. Mayada knew that she had a degree in the arts, and that she taught social sciences. Mayada also recalled that Anwar’s sister was an invalid, and that the two women together took care of their combined families.
Anwar was the only woman in cell 52 who had actually committed a crime. Her job required that she travel to Yemen to teach some courses at a Yemeni school. Anwar that she couldn’t afford to pay for a passport, so she borrowed her invalid sister’s passport, since they looked so similar. A relative who wanted to curry favor with the local secret police had reported her transgression. Anwar had been warned to expect a long prison sentence. Now her biggest concern was that she’d left her invalid sister to manage their family alone.
Two other inmates of cell 52—Hayat and Asia—stood side by side, their fingers interlocked. The two women had been imprisoned together seven months earlier over two missing boxes of floor tiles. The pair had been arrested at their office in the Q
aQae Establishment for Construction Materials, a company hired to build most of Saddam’s many palaces. When two boxes of floor tiles disappeared from the establishment, Hayat and Asia were blamed. Hayat had signed the document that verified two cartons had left the company’s inventory. Asia’s signature confirmed that those same two boxes had been loaded onto the delivery truck.
Hayat was a thirty-two-year-old unmarried woman who had previously lived with her brother and his five children. She had a sharp, thin face, and her body was emaciated. Hayat could never speak calmly, and she constantly paced and wept. With frightened eyes that continually darted from one corner of the cell to another, she reminded Mayada of a rabbit caught in a trap. Hayat once admitted she was scared to be set free: She claimed that her brother would be so angry that her arrest had brought suspicion onto the entire family that he would beat her.
Asia, on the other hand, was a forty-two-year-old woman who had been the happily married mother of three young boys. Asia was always in a state of anxiety, desperate for her children. She wept night and day, explaining that the faces of her three boys never left her mind’s eye. Her steady tears had left permanent violet patches under her eyes.
Overwhelmed by loneliness for her own two children, Mayada wrung her hands, wondering if she would live to see Fay or Ali again. Or would she die under torture, like poor Jamila? While Mayada didn’t fear death from old age, death today or tomorrow terrified her. She simply couldn’t die until her children were grown. They were young and needed their mother.
Yearning for the touch of her children, to breathe the scent of their fresh-smelling hair and to stroke the soft skin of their faces, Mayada lifted a finger and brushed aside a tear. She then turned on her side to stare at the wall. But she was unable to sleep, for the light was always bright in cell 52 and the noise never ceased.
Mayada had been in Baladiyat for less than a week, but that week felt like a lifetime. The long days and longer nights dragged endlessly, reminding her of her former full life, when she didn’t have enough hours in the day to accomplish all of her chores. Now, in prison, there was not enough life to fill the long hours. Time became Mayada’s enemy as the days and nights merged together.
Every twenty-four-hour period was the same. At night, the women were either subjected to torture or forced to listen to others being tortured. At dawn, they would rise for the first prayer of the day. They would then take turns using the toilet and the small shower. Next came breakfast, which consisted of tasteless lentils and moldy bread. If they were lucky and no one in the cell was called out for torture, the women would spend the morning weeping or praying or reminiscing about the loved ones central to their lives. After noon prayers, the women were served dirty rice in a watery substance, an unappetizing mush. Occasionally they were served warm bread, which smelled of moss because it was intentionally made of rancid flour. Their afternoons were the same as their mornings: talking and praying and waiting for torture or nursing the ones who had been tortured. After evening prayers, they received a final meal for the day—once again, lentils and bread. Then the dreaded nighttime lay on them once more, when the prison rang with screams.
Of all the shadow women, only Samara kept busy, maintaining a strict schedule of daily tasks. Unless she was incapacitated by torture, she cleaned herself or organized her belongings or tended to whatever other women needed her attention. Samara was so particular about personal cleanliness that she made a daily routine of washing her one set of clothing and her abaaya. While other shadow women ignored vomit splashes on their clothes or bits of food stuck between their teeth, Samara could not abide such untidiness. Each morning before bathing, Samara would remove all of her clothes and scrub each piece by hand. As soon as she showered, she would slip the wet garments back on, leave the toilet and walk briskly around and around in the small cell, her abaaya flapping, claiming to the smiling shadow women that her rapid movements dried her garments as efficiently as a brisk wind.
Mayada spent her days moping, daydreaming about her children, studying the faces of the other women or staring at the door in feverish expectation. While other shadow women were called out for questioning and torture, it appeared that the torturers at Baladiyat had forgotten Mayada Al-Askari. She was not taken to torture, nor was she called for questioning. It seemed her case was being neglected.
Afraid that no one on the outside knew where she was and that she would die in Baladiyat, Mayada’s will began to sag. She felt pushed down into a pit of depression. She was forced to confront death as a new and unanticipated issue in her life. The topic was so discouraging that after two weeks of waiting to hear about her case, she began to emulate Asia and Hayat, crossing her arms and walking around and around in the small cell, pacing and weeping during all hours of the day and night.
Samara, who was naturally sweet and kind and always eager to offer an answer to every problem, now tried to lift Mayada’s wretched sadness. “Listen, I want you to believe me,” Samara told Mayada. “No one at Baladiyat goes without torture for weeks. Our jailors have discovered that you are poison for them. One day you will be released,” she snapped her fingers, “just like that.”
Mayada looked sidelong at Samara, and seeing her confident face staring back with such affection, Mayada smiled apologetically before bursting into tears anew.
Samara hugged her and said, “You cannot lose your energy for this struggle to survive. You must hold fast to your emotions.”
But Mayada was too disheartened to act with conviction.
Then one Thursday morning, everything changed in a flash.
Mayada was lying quietly in bed, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes drifted to the small, barred window at the top of the back wall. She waited for the sun to rise and to stretch a few kind rays of sunlight into cell 52.
Then Mayada thought she heard the chirping of a qabaj, a kind of partridge.
An old Iraqi folk tale says that to hear a qabaj singing is a sign you will soon move from your current place.
Mayada’s heart skipped a beat. She sat up. Confused between her dreams and the reality of Baladiyat, she looked around the cell to see if anyone else could confirm the qabaj’s welcome cheeping. Mayada had been in this ugly room for nearly a month, and today was the first time she had heard a bird of any sort.
The qabaj continued singing. A light breeze pushed the bird’s song through the barred window. Its welcome notes spread through the cell.
The bird’s song roused the other women from their beds. It sounded as though it had been piped through the open window like an extraordinary message straight from God. The happy song circled the room and filled every woman’s heart with hope. One by one, the inmates of cell 52 sat up and scanned each other’s face with fresh optimism. Each woman prayed that the qabaj sang his message for her.
Samara then echoed musical time with the bird, singing an old Iraqi song that matched the bird’s pace. As the qabaj continued its trilling, Samara jumped from her bunk. “Listen to that persistent qabaj. It is right outside our window. Someone is leaving Baladiyat, and soon.” Her green eyes flashing, Samara twirled around once. She halted her spin with her right arm extended and her finger pointing at Mayada. “And that would be our Mayada.”
For days, Mayada had been too despondent for conversation, and she resisted Samara’s gaiety now. But she loved this wonderful Shiite woman and couldn’t bear to hurt her feelings. She smiled faintly. “Thank you, Samara, for trying to raise my hopes. You are very kind. But I have been forgotten. I will die in this place. It is written. I foresaw that my fate was to die here the moment I saw I was locked into cell number 52. This cell will be my tomb.”
Samara stared at Mayada with her pretty, steadfast face. “This is a feeling I have had for days—this qabaj is confirming it,” said Samara. “You are going home—and soon. Mayada, you must start memorizing our telephone numbers, our addresses and the names of our family members. Now. Today. There’s no chance for any of us unless one of us is released. It will be
you, and from outside, you can help us all.”
Deeply miserable, Mayada shaded her eyes from the overhead light with her scarf. She was too depressed to accept Samara’s hopeful prediction. She knew she would never be freed from cell 52.
But the qabaj kept singing, its little voice never once faltering.
After morning prayers, Samara cornered Mayada and insisted quietly, “I will say this again, Mayada. I feel it deep in my heart. You are leaving Baladiyat, and soon.” Samara always had a plan. “Now, you must pretend you are a parrot. You must learn many names and numbers. Repeat this number for me: 882-6410.”
Mayada listened quietly. The qabaj bird still sang, and it began to kindle her hopes. For the first time, she wondered if Samara might be right that her release was imminent. So she obediently repeated, “882-6410.”
“Here are your instructions,” Samara told Mayada. “You will call 882- 6410 and here is what you will say: Samara is rotting away in the Amin Al-Amma [the main security building]. She needs your help. Sell everything you can and bribe a guard. That is the only way.” Her eyes gleamed as she thought of every possibility. “My family will need to know that you were truly sent by me, so here is a secret code: How is Salma’s husband?”
“882-6410. Samara is in Amin Al-Amma. She needs your help. Sell everything you can and bribe a guard. That is the only way. The code is: How is Salma’s husband?” Mayada repeated Samara’s message like a well-trained parrot.
Asia called out, “Samara, that bird is still singing.”
Both women stopped and listened. The qabaj was still singing. This unusual event had been going on for nearly an hour now.
Just then, the cell door opened and a guard spoke, saying in an unusually humane tone of voice, “Mayada. Get ready. The judge will see you now.”
Samara squealed with joy and jumped forward. “Who is this judge? Is Mayada being released?”
“Mind your own business.”
Mayada ran to wash her face.