My Torturess

by Bensalem Himmich

  “Look,” she upbraided me, “here’s my body. See how they’ve carved trenches on my back! There’s hardly a bone or muscle that the ghoul and others have not destroyed with electric shocks and various other torture devices. Now that you’ve seen all this, can you still accuse me of being a spy or infiltrator?”

  “But you’re the one,” I responded bashfully as I looked at her cuts and bruises, “who started things by accusing me of evil intentions . . .”

  She put her clothes back on and then sat down with a sigh.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Suspicion and caution are both rampant, spreading like a cancer among us, even those people who have experienced the dungeon and humiliating torture. Those tyrant pigs have managed to completely subvert documents and roles. Companions in misery have turned into enemies—may God destroy them all and bring their own treachery down on them!”

  From the way she was talking, this new cell mate of mine seemed both badly scarred and yet perceptive.

  “By the way,” she went on, “the fact that your number and the cell’s are the same is not a pretext. The fact that this complex is packed with prisoners means that no prisoner can regard a cell as being his own. Many times they’ve put me in cells with women; and at other times with men. All too often men have used the situation to take advantage of my body and destroy my honor. Don’t be scared. I’m not going to seduce you or rape you as hired female prisoners sometimes do. Like them, I may have syphilis or AIDS, but I swear by the God whom I fear, I’m not going to infect anyone with any disease I might have contracted. That even applies to my enemies and people who’ve done me wrong . . .”

  She suddenly fell silent and closed her eyes, as though by suppressing her tears she could somehow control her emotions. At this point I took a look at her face, with its attractive but harsh features. She was forty or so, and her already thin body had clearly been worn out by starvation and violence. Her hair was streaked with hints of grey that gave her appearance and speech a staid and august tinge.

  “So, my dear servant of God,” I asked her as tenderly as I could, “tell me about yourself. Who are you, and what has brought you to this appalling center?”

  She smiled as she wiped her eyes and then gave me a look filled with a profound sadness. Moving over to sit beside me, she took a pair of white gloves out of her pocket and put them on my hands.

  “Rub my back for me,” she said. “That’ll give me some relief while I tell you part of my life story. My stage name is Fayruz, and my companions honored me by giving me that name because they thought I was the best imitator of the famous and much beloved Lebanese singer, Fayruz. My dear fellow believer, my situation is exactly the same as yours, except with regard to the particulars of our personal situations. We’re both victims of injustice and dark times, oppressed and totally crushed until we are broken, at the beck and call of tyrants and subject to their Fascist projects and evil intentions. For reasons I don’t understand they transferred me from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to here. Their only question asks me to provide the names and addresses of nationalist, Shi‘i and Communist resistance fighters to whose organizations I belong. My traitorous husband betrayed some of them, so I shot him in the head and left him dead. For two years now the very worst American torture experts have been wearing me out with their cross-examinations and torture, but my Job-like endurance has defeated them. With cross in hand, I have decided to be a martyr and to meet my Lord whenever He wishes and ordains. Is the river supposed to behave differently, I ask myself, simply because its source bursts forth and the distant sea pulls its course toward it?!”

  I now understood that this woman was an Iraqi Christian resistance fighter.

  “May God grant you long life, my Lady!” I told her with admiration, “and record you as one of those pious saints and freedom fighters who deserve respect in this world and the delights of paradise in the next. You mentioned that you were transferred here from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Where exactly are we here?”

  “I don’t know precisely,” she replied, “but I get the impression that we’re in a desert location either in the African continent or somewhere close to it. But God knows . . . I’m feeling tired and I need to sleep. God willing and if I’m still alive, I can tell you more about myself tomorrow and hear your story as well.”

  Hardly had she completed this sentence before the cell was invaded by four guards who grabbed her off my bed and dragged her forcibly outside, totally oblivious to my shouts and protests. They simply made do with swearing at me, calling me a fornicator, and threatening to come back for me.

  “My name’s Hamuda al-Wajdi,” I yelled as they pulled her out. “Hang on and be strong; God is with you!”

  “If God is not with people like us,” she yelled back, giving me the victory sign, “then who is He with? Tell me, who is He with?!”

  From the entrance to my cell and all along the corridor I could hear her Fayruz-like voice singing to the accompaniment of other prisoners’ voices and applause:

  Radiant fury is on its way.

  And all of me is a believer.

  Radiant fury is on its way,

  And I shall forget about sorrows.

  From every direction it comes,

  It comes with fearsome steeds.

  There followed a sudden silence. Stretching out on my side, I started singing Fayruz’s glorious and defiant song; at the words “radiant fury is on its way” I kept punching my pillow and crying. But my chronic cough forced me to stop. I managed to suppress it by squirting spray into my open mouth, something that was especially necessary since some of my neighbor prisoners were vying with each other in urging me to ask for a transfer to the TB wing. With a good deal of effort I managed to get it under control and stop coughing. All I could think about at this point was what kind of awful things might be happening to Fayruz; I also thought about my own situation and the fact that, by dint of sheer endurance, I had managed to exhaust all the vicious and criminal activities of my torturers. It felt as though, according to their rules, I had now become a hopeless case, someone with no potential benefit or utility. Wrapping myself in my flimsy loincloth, I consigned some of these thoughts to my collection of notes, as follows:

  I’m no Job, Hercules, or even ‘Antara, the pre-Islamic poet-cavalier. In any case, if even people with their fortitude and endurance were to find themselves at the mercy of the ghouls and sadists in this rendition center where I’ve now spent any number of years, their sense of terror and oppression would be just as bad as my own. My body is broken and my soul feels shattered. Even so, I’m not defeated yet; in fact, I’m convinced that the only way they’ll defeat me is with a single terminal blow—and that is something the higher authorities are hesitating to do in my particular case, because they’re eager to destroy me and make me grovel and beg for mercy. As it is, staying alive in this virtual death situation doesn’t bother me anymore. My only value and significance, I have decided, lies in putting a spanner in their works and a thorn in the soles of their feet. Dear God, thwart all their efforts to enslave me and crush my honor, and protect my mind from all harm and loss of control, even though I may at times have to pretend to be crazy for some particular purpose I have in mind.

  This experience of imprisonment has taught me something I did not know. It has revealed certain proclivities and stimuli within me of which I was not previously aware and indeed never even supposed that I possessed. In those earlier days of my clearly mistaken sense of freedom, you could apply to me the words of a writer whose name now escapes me, but this is approximately what he wrote: ‘Many, many are the rains and winds to which my body has been exposed in a quest for the sweet scent of sanctity and a modicum of happiness. But all their raging fury brought me was a severe cold and a bronchial cough!’

  Hardly had I written down that last sentence before the four men who had dragged Fayruz away reentered my cell. I quickly shoved my notes under the bedcover and uncovered my face. The guard told me to stand up
and accused me of fornication.

  “We’ve just given that slut we dragged from under you a hundred lashes,” another man said, “and we’re going to do the same with you very soon.”

  I told them that their accusation had no validity because there were no witnesses, to which the third responded that they were the witnesses, four of them. In legal terms, that was quite sufficient. He now ordered me to collect my possessions and get ready, whereupon I showed them my swollen feet with their wounds, all the while cursing them for their false testimony and calling down God’s vengeance on them. I gave them the choice: they could either carry me on their shoulders or else provide me with a crutch. However, I then recommended an intermediate solution that would work for everyone, if only for a while.

  “And what’s that?” they asked.

  “That you leave my cell and let me be.”

  After a bit of argument they silently withdrew—wonder of wonders!—with heads lowered.

  Accusations of fornication, threats of a hundred lashes, followed by the incredible way the guards had responded to my last suggestion, all those things were clearly part of the evil intrigues and games being played by Luqman, the investigating judge—May God never show me either his face or his shadow! He might well decide to send me another woman who would swing between promises and enticement at one point and curses and intimidation at another. But, through the strength and power of Almighty God, he would discover that I remained steadfast to the pledge and rock solid in my chaste behavior.

  My thoughts now turned to Fayruz and the way in which the old scars on her back would have been inflamed by a hundred new lashes. I now recalled the wonderful words she had used: “Is the river supposed to behave differently, simply because its source bursts forth and the distant sea pulls its course toward it?” That’s a saying that demands contemplation and interpretation; it’s one that, if I ever manage to be rid of my suffering and escape from this diabolical center, I dearly hope to sit and explore in all its various dimensions and significances. And I am still thinking of cracking the code of the little containers that my fellow townsperson Na‘ima had given me and understanding their underlying message.

  There was a knock on the door indicating that I should take my lunch. I replied that I was not going to stand up or eat until they brought me two crutches and bandaged my feet. The guard came in, put down the plate by me, and then left, saying: “All the messenger can do is to convey the message.”

  I covered the plate with a cloth so the insects, rats, and mice would not smell it. I stayed there, flat on my back, staring at a tiny aperture in the skylight and gauging the passage of time by the way the light changed. I kept wondering what would transpire as a result of my request and my refusal to eat.

  From the other cells adjacent to my own there emerged a variety of sounds: one person was reciting verses from the Qur’an; another was inviting his neighbors to listen to his tales as a peerless dormitory storyteller, and still another was suggesting that we all listen to his sex jokes with a particularly Marrakeshian quality to them. As the din grew louder and louder, a powerful, gruff voice with a tone like a bugle yelled: “Quiet!! Quiet! No more noise for the rest of the day. Time will tell, as the old saying goes. Democracy demands that people take turns to talk. Anyone who causes trouble will be shown no mercy or sympathy.”

  These words were the cue for a total silence to reign over the entire cellblock. I kept waiting for the storm to break, but nothing of the kind happened. As the atmosphere of silence spread, accompanied by a lacerating cold that promised a freezing, rainless winter, I huddled under my blanket and surrendered all my fears and concerns to a restless slumber prompted by Morpheus or some other sleep promoter . . .

  17

  Appointment with the Disciplinary Committee

  When I woke up, my memory was still recalling snippets from a dream in which my cousin, al-Husayn, appeared and asked me to forgive him for the things that had now happened to me because of him. He told me that he had not given me any information about his resistance activities so that I could avoid any suspicion or complication that might have dire consequences. However, the blind, raging fury of the despots had managed to ruin his sincere wishes and intentions toward me. After calling down all kinds of eloquent and pointed curses on such people, he advised me to remain steadfast in the face of their atrocities so that the word of God should eventually emerge triumphant. He then disappeared from view, accompanied by a group of armed men who made for the forests of some daunting lofty mountain peaks.

  My response to his image was one that I framed once I had woken up. I proceeded to write it down immediately:

  “You’re not at fault in what has happened to me, al-Husayn. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re so right: endurance is now my richest resort and patience in adversity is a natural instinct. So rest assured about me and concentrate your attention on your own situation and that of your men—and may God grant you all such success as He desires.”

  I wonder now whether it was just to pass the time or rather to suppress the rampant hunger I was feeling that I fainted or else fell asleep, but only after I had hidden away my notes.

  The thing that woke me up again with a jolt was the noise of pounding feet in the cellblock as a whole squad of detectives arrived to search every cell, inside and out. The majority of them were foreigners. When a group of them entered my cell, the senior one told me to stand up and face the wall, with my hands up. I showed them my feet, and they understood that I was crippled. They lifted me off my bed and used an electrical device to check all over my body. My pockets were emptied, and the contents were carefully examined. The man gave me back my spray, but kept Na‘ima’s little containers. Now everything around me was searched both by hand and with the same electrical device. One of them showed me my containers, mirror, notes, and old magazines and asked me in awful Arabic what else I had. Was I concealing hashish, a knife, a razor, bribes? I shook my head. Once they had left, I waddled over to my now rumpled bed and collapsed on it, thinking all the while about the fact that my notes had been taken away and what evil consequences might ensue as a result.

  The fact that I was staying away from the cafeteria, the courtyard, and the recreation area may well have convinced the authorities that I was in danger of becoming completely paralyzed and that my hunger strike was serious. Only a few hours after this group of detectives had left, two male nurses arrived and transported me to the hospital on a stretcher. Someone started tending and bandaging my feet while another person force-fed me using a plastic tube that he stuck up my nose and down into my stomach. I had no choice but to endure the variety of pain that these twin operations caused me. Even so, I managed to spend some of the time thinking about Na‘ima and her friend, the foreign doctor, about both of whom, as a precautionary matter, I had declined to ask for any information.

  Once the two nurses had finished their task, they stood me up on two fresh crutches and handed me over to a portly guard with a shaved head. Looking at his watch, he took me to a lower level in the same hospital building and positioned me in front of a small table facing a huge dais. Two men and a woman now emerged from a door at the back and sat down on their chairs, whispering to each other. They were then joined by the female ghoul, who placed headphones over her ears, and Na‘ima herself—yes indeed, Na‘ima—who had a file under her arm. They sat at either end of the table. I assumed that the people whom I did not know had some particular function at the detention center. The guard whispered in my ear that I was in the presence of the Disciplinary Committee. After sitting me down, he stationed himself behind my back, holding on to my neck.

  The woman was the first to speak, reading out a text that identified who I was. Once she had finished, she asked me to confirm the information that she had read out. I nodded my agreement, but the guard cuffed me on the neck and instructed me to stand up and respond “Yes, Madam President,” so I did so. She asked me to remain standing and to observe a minute of silence out of re
spect for a dead lady who had passed away. I did as she asked. Once the minute had passed, I asked her to tell me who had died.

  “Your mother,” she replied gruffly. “We have the information from a reliable source.”

  I collapsed on to the chair, thunderstruck and grief-stricken. But then I got a grip on myself, deciding that the resort to this grotesque method of talking about my mother was clearly a pack of lies; the only purpose had to be to make me crack.

  “We are members of the august Disciplinary Committee,” the woman went on. “We’ve taken a look at the document about you and deduced from the investigative judge’s report that you’re a stubborn person, determined and resolute. You have displayed a remarkable ability to absorb blows and joined the hit parade in your willingness to tolerate pain; you deserve a gold medal for both. The judge actually characterizes you as a masochist, someone who relishes the thought of pain being inflicted on him. Such a group is as valuable as it’s rare. For that reason your own cooperation is of extreme interest to the directors of this center. They are prepared to accept—indeed, they actually desire—that you should join the service. Your health would be restored; your accusations would be dropped, including that of murdering your neighbor, the man with the bag, and that of fornicating with the woman who calls herself Fayruz. We’re willing to overlook all your crimes and faults, including your apparent craving for pornographic literature, your hunger strike, and so on and so on. All that would come in exchange for your signature on a document to join the service. What do you have to say?”

  With the greatest imaginable difficulty, I managed to stand up and I raised a point of order in the usual fashion: