My Torturess

by Bensalem Himmich

  “That’s between me and my Creator,” I replied.

  “No,” he interrupted, “it’s something that is significant to the investigation and interests me specifically. Otherwise how can I befriend you and trust you when I call on you to take the oath? I assume that you’ve either stopped praying as a subterfuge or to dispel certain misgivings you may have; either that, or you’re being extra-cautious and praying in secret, just like someone praying the fear prayer. Which of the two possibilities is correct?”

  “In the past I’ve prayed intermittently,” I replied. “But now, while I’m your guest here, I’ve come back to it, ailing, scared, and sick. I can only perform virtual ablutions, turning towards Mecca in mind, not in actuality, reducing the number of prostrations and occasionally lying on my right side or else simply making gestures.”

  I noticed him shudder and his neck muscles tighten.

  “In the past,” he told me, “some prisoners managed to get hold of some pieces of stone to rub themselves clean, but then they started using them as weapons. I had to take them away and stop them using them in order to avoid chaos and preserve some semblance of order. As an exceptional gesture of sympathy I’ll do my best to get you some smooth materials to use to cleanse yourself. My only request is that you do not replicate the behavior of a former prisoner here whose file I had to deal with (I think he’s dead now). He confessed to me that he had spent his entire life right up to the time of his imprisonment only performing the prayer of fear, keeping the whole thing short and truncated and still wearing his shoes, with his finger poised over a trigger, whether real or illusory. He explained to me that the reason was that he was perpetually afraid of people and even of his own soul which was the advocate of evil. . . . But now let’s get back to more important matters.”

  The judge now paused for a while, blowing pipe smoke either into the air or in my face. He addressed me once again in a gentle tone of voice.

  “As I look at you from close up,” he continued, looking straight at me, “I can see strands of good in a fierce battle with the vicious claws of evil; God the Merciful’s armies are fighting the jinn of Satan himself. So choose which side you’re on, and God grant you victory. Place your bets on the horses and see who will turn out the winner! Up till now you’ve been following a policy involving wise silence and tacit wisdom. That’s been a good idea, in that in what follows your words will emerge decorated with pearls of truth and the clarity of accurate testimony. From the state of your cleanliness that I can smell and your general condition as I observe it, I can tell that your situation is not satisfactory. I’m going to issue instructions that you’re to be given a lengthy shower with genuine local soap and to be fed properly so that your body and soul will be suitably refreshed. Once you’ve recovered your proper state of health and are back on your feet, you’ll be spending an evening with some colored pencils. On some smooth paper you’re going to compose a brief account of the murder of your mother’s husband. There’ll be a second report as well, this one in much more detail—the central core of the whole business—about yourself, your cousin, and the group of friends you both had; this one will have to be crystal clear, fresh water for the thirsty soul. By my very life, this is obviously the right thing to do at this point; it’ll save valuable time and move things along. By relieving distress, we might say, we’ll help the nation progress. Let me also underline the advice I’m giving you: make sure that everything is expressed in the very clearest syntactic style, using only the most immaculate language in order to serve as a lamp that will illuminate the course of the thread and the excellence of what is said. All this will be a confirmation of the what the great polymath, Abu ‘Uthman Bahr al-Jahiz,* said many centuries ago, he being, as you are well aware, one of the great champions of Arabic rhetoric, of ornate discourse, and the heritage of Arabic learning. Remind me again of what it was that he said—and may God grant you a good testimonial when your final moments come!

  This nonstop swirl of verbiage and utter nonsense made my head spin.

  “If I remember correctly,” I replied, “Al-Jahiz said something like this: ‘All meaning is potentially out there in the public domain. What has an impact is the way in which phrases are balanced, the right words are selected, the phonetics are appropriate, and the water flows freely. The whole thing has to be properly presented and well crafted.’”

  “That’s right,” he said. “You’ve reminded me. Our renowned scholar says in his Book of Misers . . .”

  “No, actually it’s in his Book on Clarity and Clarification and The Book of Animals. When he uses the phrase ‘the water flows freely,’ he means the water of truth.”

  “I’ll check the source. If you’re right, what would you like me to give you? Swiss or Dutch chocolate? Do you like such things? Who doesn’t like chocolate?!”

  The judge now leapt to his feet, held me gently by the shoulder and, with a superficial grin on his face, took me over to the door.

  “Takes these pens and paper with you,” he said, his eyes blinking behind his spectacles. “They’re a gift from me. Get moving on your project, my fine and conscientious littérateur! I have this sense that it won’t be long before we’ll be seeing eye to eye on matters of mind and vision; through intuition and sheer good taste we’ll coalesce. As for now, I’m entrusting you to God’s care, so you can go back to your refuge safe and sound. Farewell!”

  He stretched his hands towards me, still holding the paper and pencils, but then he realized that they were tied behind my back. He summoned his other secretary, the one who had brought me in, and she appeared immediately.

  “He’s leaving,” he told her. “This chap’s got two degrees, so his hands should not be tied like this.”

  He gave a signal, and she put the paper and pencils in one of my pockets, then accompanied me to her office. Once there, she informed the guard of the instructions that the judge had given.

  4

  A Wounded Man on My Bedcover

  My refuge, safe and sound!

  So here I am once again, back in my cell, with the rhyming phrases of the judge and his cryptic and ambiguous intentions still spinning inside my head. By now it is nighttime, and, as usual, I have surrendered both my hunger and worries to the opiate of a troubled, yet compulsory sleep. I have no idea how long it lasted, except that I was awakened by a gushing shower of water being directed straight at me by a man holding a hose by the door of my cell. I rushed over to another corner, assuming that the man must be from the fire-brigade who had been called in to put out a fire either in my cell or close by that was about to flare up. But the thought soon disappeared when the man threw me a towel and yelled at me that, by order of the investigating judge, I was to be bathed and soaped in the hope of recovering my health and energy. The water was suddenly turned off, and the man vanished. I took off my soaked clothing, rubbed myself down with a cloth that had stayed dry, then threw myself shivering on the bedcover to wait and see what would happen next.

  I did not have long to wait. The door was flung upon, and a gigantic black man came in carrying a young man whose head and body were completely covered in bandages. He threw him down on the bed opposite mine and left without saying a single word. I went over, intending to introduce myself, and immediately noticed his crossed eyes and stub nose. From that I assumed that he had to be the young man whom the judge had been interviewing yesterday before me. I felt his pulse and jugular vein and determined that he was still just about alive. It seemed to me that he had been subjected to some horrific torture, akin to a surgical operation with no anesthesia. Hurrying over to the iron door of the cell, I started banging on it with both hands. “Have some mercy!” I yelled. “This man’s dying.” I kept on yelling till I was exhausted; my voice gave out and I choked up.

  I went back to check on the young man; he was saying a few obscure phrases with his finger raised. Was he trying to conceal his wounds and bruises or struggling with an imminent death? What’s to be done, I asked my impotent, grie
ving soul. I started yelling again, this time using a metal plate to bang on the door, but I had to stop when my neighbors started complaining and I was threatened with “solitary.” According to those who had experienced it—and we seek God’s protection against it!—this “solitary” involved being put into a dark cell on your own. People were lost when they went in, everyone said, and a different person when and if they came out, depending on the length of time inside and the conditions once there—the lack of food, drink, and air. For that reason I decided to give up and comply, since I had no desire to complicate my situation and make things even worse than they already were.

  I sat down beside my severely wounded cellmate and spent quite a while in a complete panic. I heard him ask for some water, with his tongue hanging out, and gave him as much as I had left. He asked for more, so I squeezed some drops into his mouth from the cloth that had been dampened by the shower that had woken me up that morning. He muttered something, and, when I put my ear close to his mouth, I gathered that he was thanking me and asking if I was the one whom he had spotted in the judge’s office the day before. I told him that I was, and expressed my relief that he was showing signs of regaining consciousness. I begged him not to talk too much so he could recover his strength and well being, but he insisted on talking, albeit in clipped utterances. Even though his voice was still very unsteady, his statements became gradually clearer and were more and more comprehensible. In that way I told him briefly who I was, how I had come to be arrested, and what the charges were against me. I was anxious not to get him too worked up, so I did not ask him the same things, but even so he started muttering to the effect that his name was Ilyas Bu Shama. He had both suffered the same fate and been subjected to the same trials and tribulations, the only difference being our places of origin. He was from Tizi Ouzou in Algeria, and I was from Oujda in Morocco. All of a sudden he started breathing so heavily that he could not speak, so I asked him to stop talking till he had recovered. He did so, and that allowed me time to wipe his sweating brow and clear my clogged ears. Looking at the meager amount of food I had left on my table, I urged him to eat it, but he refused. From his gestures he made it clear that by now his stomach was inured to hunger; food was the very last thing he wanted to bother about.

  Now there was a ringing silence filled with misgivings and paranoia. The person lying on the bed was clinging to life, obviously gravely wounded both outside and inside, palpably fragile and sick. His breathing was weak, as light as a hair or a feather, and the body involved was within an inch or less of turning into a corpse ready to be buried and forgotten. And now, here I was, totally unable to help him, even if it only meant using my voice to reverberate through the corridors. I am not one for crying, but I could feel tears of frustration in my eyes, which kept dropping on to my cheeks. The only thing that stopped them was the voice of the guard telling me to take my food as he passed it through the aperture in the door. He made it clear that the food was only intended for me; my cell companion was to be denied food for three consecutive days. I took the bowl and saw that the contents consisted of a broth mixed with pieces of bread, onion, and potato. I put it down next to my colleague.

  “What’s happened?” he muttered as his eyes opened slightly.

  “My friend,” I told him, “what really needs to happen is for you to give up your hunger strike and eat some food . . .”

  He pulled my ear close to his mouth. “I’ve been through so much,” he told me, “that my breathing makes it hard to talk. What’s more, if I eat anything, I’m afraid I’m going to throw up or foul myself in my bedcovers. No way!”

  I did my best to reassure him. “If that happens,” I said, “I’ll carry you on my back to the pit over there in the corner. Everything will be fine.”

  The young man gestured his agreement and even gratitude, so I propped his head up on my cushion as best I could and started using my wooden spoon to feed him what was in the bowl. I kept encouraging him to keep eating, and eventually he managed to consume it all. I congratulated him and then listened carefully as he thanked me profusely. Now I was feeling even happier: he had eaten something, and there was a real hope of saving him. God be blessed!

  He now asked me to let him lie back, so I cleaned his mouth, wiped the sweat off his brow, and put a cover over him so he could relax and get some sleep. I promised to stay close by, ready to help him, and not to doze off. He pulled my head towards him and kissed it.

  “Did the judge ask you the same thing as me?” he whispered in my ear. “I’ve refused to compose any statements about you.”

  “Yes,” I replied, “he gave me pencil and paper. I don’t know where I’ve put them. In any case, I’m not going to do it.”

  “My dear friend,” he said, “you should do it. I would advise you, in fact, I would beg you, to carry out his instructions immediately. Otherwise you’re going to suffer the same fate as me or even worse. They’ll hand you over to the professional torturess, who’s an expert in all kinds of degradation. The worst of them she’s learned in specialized foreign centers, but she’s also invented others of her own that she delights in testing on imprisoned suspects like you and me. Compared with the torture she inflicts, the torments of the grave are a joke, child’s play. I don’t want you to fall prey to the woman they call Mama Ghula—and may God protect you from her barbaric madness! I’m begging you from the very bottom of my heart to do what the investigating judge says so you won’t make him angry. That way you’ll be able to avoid his revenge just as you would avoid AIDS and other contagious deadly diseases. Beware, I tell you! As the proverb has it, ‘He who warns is thereby excused’ . . .”

  He was so insistent in offering me counsel that he collapsed; I was worried that he might have had a sudden heart attack or a life-threatening brain hemorrhage.

  “I fully sympathize, my friend,” I told him. “But think of yourself and of me, and stop talking. Tomorrow morning we can talk some more about this topic and others as well.”

  “I need to piss, damn it!” he said. “Help me up.”

  I carried him over to the corner, helped him relieve himself, then carried him back to his bed.

  “My friend,” he said, “let what I’ve been through have some benefit for you. Mama Ghula was not satisfied simply to put me through all kinds of torture. She handed me over to that enormous black man. He took away my honor and subjected me to anal buggery of the worst kind, all because of my stubborn resistance. Promise me you’ll write those statements for the investigating judge and lay out things with crystalline clarity. That way you’ll save yourself from unbelievable torture and all kinds of degradation.”

  I gulped in sheer panic and horror when I heard what he told me about the buggery.

  “May God fight them all,” I managed to say, “and place them in hellfire for evermore! And I’ll do my best, my friend, particularly since I’ve nothing to hide.”

  He gestured his approval.

  “I may not make it through the night,” he managed to get out. “O God, I hereby testify that I have passed on the information to this poor servant and have offered advice . . .”

  He pulled me head close and kissed my forehead with tears in his eyes. I in turn kissed his bandaged head and wished him a restful night. I lay down on my own bedcover; as I tried to get some rest, I was thinking about what my companion had told me.

  5

  How Can I Write My Report about Myself?

  I slept very badly and woke up abruptly to the sound of the guard yelling at me to get up because, as he put it, exercise is better than sleep. I got up at once and looked for my companion under his bedcover, but there was no sign of him. I asked the intruder into the cell, but he refused to say anything. My mind in a whirl, I had no choice but to stumble my way behind him. He brought me to a courtyard enclosed by high walls on the top of which were watchtowers. The guard told me to start walking in a circle along with all the others and not to talk; he warned me that his eyes and those of the other guards would
be on me all the time. I obeyed his instructions, but, whenever I could, I asked the people near me if they knew where we were being held and if they had any information about a prisoner called Ilyas Bu Shama. The only reactions I got back from my fellow sufferers in this prison were reluctance and denial. Once this “exercise is better than sleep” period was over, everyone went back to his cell; I found myself yet again facing the guard who locked the door and went away. I decided to keep exercising and started pacing around the cell, although my mind was preoccupied with questions and doubts and I continued to be deeply worried by my situation.

  My routine inside the cell now continued unchanged. The time I had spent with the prisoner named Ilyas Bu Shama had left a whole series of questions that I was anxious to clear up and finally resolve—the time had gone by so quickly and with such bitter consequences. Maybe there was nothing to it, but I was eager to know how those crafty monsters had managed to come in and take the sick man out without his yelling and protesting or my hearing a thing. Had they drugged him or put something over his mouth?

  And now was I supposed to respond to my companion’s insistent pleas to write reports about myself and my contacts, all in order to accede to the investigating judge’s demands? Yes indeed, I had to do it, if only to avoid adding recalcitrance to the list of crimes in my file or, at the very least, to find something to pass the time and relieve the endless pressure on my nerves.

  My stomach may have been empty and my mind distracted, but even so I took the pen and pencils out from under my pillow. First I did some breathing exercises and set my mind to concentrate, then I sat down to write. I composed the paragraphs that now follow as requested. After some editing and finishing, this is how they came out: