My Torturess

by Bensalem Himmich

  “Madam,” I declared, “it may be that my dear mother has gone to her God, but I will only believe it if you can produce a proper death certificate. With regard to those accusations, I hereby proclaim my innocence, be they old or new. The accusations of fornication and a craving for lewd literature are a pack of lies, and . . .”

  “And what about your role in the death of your neighbor, the man with the bag?” asked one of the two men, a frivolous Tirimmah*-like figure, tall and lanky.

  “I only ever heard that neighbor’s voice, Sir,” I replied. “I never even saw him. The contexts of the bag were excrement . . . shit.”

  The guard now gave me a cuff that sank me to the chair again.

  “Clean up your language, you ass” he yelled at me, “when you’re in the presence of this distinguished committee!”

  The Tirimmah figure and his dumpy colleague now proceeded to pin me down with a whole host of questions. Still seated, I proceeded to interrupt them with another point of order.

  “I’ve been on hunger strike before, and they force-fed me with a tube. As a token of the determination that you referred to earlier, I’m now proposing to strike from any further discussion until you remove this gorilla attached to my back.”

  A moment of silence followed, then the woman gestured to the guard to leave, and he did so.

  The woman now resumed her cross-examination, asking me a series of short questions. I duly responded, with corresponding brevity.

  “What about those plastic containers?” she asked me pointedly.

  Na‘ima was busy recording the conversation, and I avoided looking at her.

  “They were in the trash bin at the clinic,” I replied.

  “Why did you steal them?”

  “To play with in my spare time.”

  “And the mirror you had hidden away?”

  “To look at the bruises on my body from the torture and to count them.”

  The Tirimmah man now muttered something and then yelled at me, “Or was it for killing someone or committing suicide?”

  “I have no right to kill myself, something that God Himself has forbidden, or to kill anyone else.”

  “No matter. Let’s get to the important point. The investigative committee has come across an article by some unknown writer about the Arab-Israeli conflict. You’ve written on some of the pages. Do you support its findings?”

  “The article is from a newspaper. It’s one of the newspapers and magazines that someone put in my cell; I’ve no idea who. You’ve looked at it too, no doubt. I’ve scribbled notes on those paragraphs because I believe them to be important and correct. Remind me of some part of it . . .”

  “Just a few parts, because of the time. ‘From the Israeli standpoint Palestinians must choose between submission and obedience on the one hand and exile or martyrdom on the other. So how are we supposed to put any faith in Western concepts of justice and humanity and assess them according to the yardsticks of necessity and comprehensiveness?’”

  “So,” I asked eagerly, focusing on the quotation,” how do you respond to that trenchant question?”

  “We’re the ones asking the questions,” the Tirimmah person yelled.

  I was totally unafraid to speak the truth at this point.

  “Oh yes,” I went on in a reproachful tone, “now I remember that the writer, whom I regard as a truly outstanding model of just and liberal ideas, goes on to say; ‘I can see no reasonable justification for punishing Arabs for Nazi crimes, nor can I detect the slightest legality during the current crisis in initiating an expansionist movement based on references in the Torah . . . ’”

  “So you agree with all these assertions?” the dumpy man asked.

  “Yes,” I replied, “and I also agree with the way the article ends: ‘The Arab struggle against Israel and its supporters is the other aspect of their struggle against their own weakness and backwardness . . . ’”

  “This writer of yours comes close to anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Do you also deny that?”

  “I did not read any such thing in the article in question. If by the Holocaust you mean the massacre that the Nazis committed against European Jewry with the aim of eradicating them altogether, then Israel as a state, both before its creation and throughout the period of its existence, has been emulating the same massacre in their treatment of the Palestinians. It has involved repression and requisition, breaking bones, a continuous seizure of land, and destruction of houses and whole quarters. Every day the Palestinian sense of honor is belittled, and they find themselves thrust into detention camps. Their holy sites are desecrated, their ancient sites are Judaized, not to mention their trees and rocks. As the old battle lament puts it, ‘O Mu‘tasim!’”*

  “That’s enough nonsense, enough!” the Tirimmah person yelled, shouting me down and emphasizing it by beating his gavel on the table. “Let’s turn to the most important point here: Your letter to your cousin who is a wanted man . . .”

  “It wasn’t a letter,” I interrupted. “It was just some thoughts I jotted down from a dream I had in which my cousin, al-Husayn, appeared.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “On top of a high mountain with streams and trees. I have no idea where it was . . .”

  “And what did he tell you?” the dumpy man yelled at me threateningly.

  “The gist was that he loved me and thought about me so much that he had never told me anything about his personal fight. That was a way of saving me from suspicions or complications that might have dire consequences.”

  “How many fighters was he commanding?”

  “I only saw him . . .”

  “Can you swear that you did not notice any other people with him?”

  “It was just a dream. What am I supposed to swear to?”

  “True enough!” the woman commented. “Now you can return to your cell. You should think very carefully about our offer for you to join our service. You can communicate your eventual decision to the investigating judge. Don’t burn all your notes. Use the ones you have left well, and there’ll be more. The session is now concluded.”

  I could not help bursting into laughter.

  “You talk about my notes, Madam!” I said. “Ever since I arrived at this detention center, I haven’t had any notes to burn, not a single one or even several . . .”

  I looked briefly at Na‘ima, who was leaving the room by the back door along with the committee members. Leaning on my two crutches, I stood up and went over to my scowling guard. Covering his face, he asked me gruffly if I wanted to have my feet tended to. When I said that I did, he told me to follow him.

  In the clinic, I was examined by a doctor who looked like a surgeon and was wearing a blood-stained apron. He might have been a butcher coming from a slaughter house or something like that. Arching his eyebrows, he spoke to me from behind his medical mask. He told me that my left leg was very swollen and purulent; gangrene was starting to show. In a few days it might be necessary to amputate. I begged him to do it immediately, but the guard who was standing next to me told him that would not happen till I have told them everything I was keeping to myself.

  “By God,” I told him, “I’ve told you everything I know.”

  The guard stood me up on my feet and ordered me to leave with him. Even though I was feeling dizzy and weak, I kept walking, my assumption being that the doctor’s prognosis was yet another of the fiendish tricks and games being played on me by the investigative judge—may God never again show me his face!

  If only it were possible for me to get rid of this heavy-handed and heavy-footed spy! Then I could go on my own and take a look at other wings and spaces in this center that I had never seen. I would be able to meet other human beings whom I had never met, even though I sensed their existence and surmised that they might be living in conditions that were even more foul and cruel than the ones to which I was accustomed. But my guard stuck close to me until he had delivered me to my cell, the very location of my wea
kness and frustration. Before he locked the door and went away, I asked him why he had covered his face.

  “So I don’t have to smell the prisoners’ disgusting stench,” he replied, “yours among them.”

  What curs they are! Worse than children with no faith or creator! When it comes to the water supply, they are particularly stingy: the daily ration is no more than half a bucket, and from that you have to drink, do your ablutions, wipe your backside, and rinse parts of your body. They then proceed to blame you because it smells bad, the stench of their very essence and elemental nature which is, by God, even worse; all the waters and perfumes of this world are of no use in getting rid of it. I thought about explaining such things to my veiled guard, but I felt so tired and disillusioned that I saw no point in doing so.

  Once I had lain down on my bed, I discovered that my neighbors were asleep, which was very unusual. I could not hear any snoring, although maybe some of them were like me, concealing their pains and anxieties in either total silence or else in muted groans and secret expressions of misery.

  18

  The Condition of My Leg Worsens and the Block Starts to Sway

  Next morning, I was sipping my coffee and chewing a few morsels of bread when I suddenly remembered a dream in which my mother had appeared alive and healthy. Standing in the middle of a group of women, she was weeping and wailing as she complained to God about her bereavement and misery. She kept begging Him to encompass her one and only son in His great mercy and forgiveness. When the women tried to calm her down and tell her that I was sure to come back, she slapped her thighs at times and raised her hands to the heavens at others.

  “I know my son!” she groaned. “Even if he were in the deepest pit imaginable, he would never forget me and neglect to send me a card. Either the earth has consumed him or he’s been swallowed by the great whale.”

  No, Mother, it’s not that. It’s the tyrannical ghouls of darkness who are doing their very best to rip me apart and destroy my resolve. Even so, I’m still standing firm, thanks to God’s help and satisfaction with me, your son who has always done well by you and has never spoken ill to you.

  My enforced incapacity made it difficult for me to move about the cell; some of my urgent functions involved my crawling. Even the guards preferred not to have to accompany me to the general refectory and the exercise yard. This same exemption also covered cleaning dishes in the main kitchen, sweeping halls and corridors, and cleaning the cells of prisoners who were sick or incapacitated, except for my own cell, of course.

  I now concentrated on the state of my left leg and trying to distract my mind from the overwhelming sense of frustration and claustrophobia. When the guard brought me my subsistence rations, I begged him to bring me pencil and paper. He asked for some form of compensation, and I promised to pray for him and his loved ones. He laughed in my face at first, but then asked me seriously whether my prayers were answered. I told him that, if intentions were good and came from a soul that was both believing and severely tested like mine, God might well answer them, He being the generous provider.

  “I’ll bring you what you’ve requested either with lunch or later,” he told me earnestly. “But you have to say a prayer for me first. From my first wife I have a daughter who is still unmarried at the age of thirty. Pray that she may find a decent man to marry. My second wife has only given me daughters, but now she’s pregnant again. Pray to God that this time she’ll give birth to a boy.”

  I responded to his request as best I could, and he hurried off grateful and happy. On the positive side, I made a note that for the first time since I had come to this detention center, I had exchanged some genuinely humane words with one of the guards, even though at this point I still could not guarantee that there would be a good outcome.

  In the cellblock opposite ours, there was now a good deal of unusual activity. I crawled across to the door to listen and look at what was going on. I noticed that the guards and supervisors were busy moving some prisoners—the sick or dead—and replacing them with others whose foot-pounding and general din suggested that they were many in number. They had all been given the task of sweeping and cleaning their new cells.

  This new influx made me happy, since its sheer size was creating the kind of activity that might be able, if only to a certain extent, to eradicate the rust of utter boredom and stifling loneliness. It might also succeed in limiting the effects of a rainless and perishingly cold winter.

  My hopes were not in vain, in that, at dinnertime, when the new prisoners had rested for a while, a loud voice invited the block’s residents to come to their doors. Using my crutches, I did as the voice asked. Here is some of what I heard:

  “Servants of God . . . these tyrants have decreed against us such things as God Almighty and all legal systems have forbidden. I and some of your new neighbors have spent two years and more in Block 7, known to its custodians as Olympic Hell or the Torture Hit-Parade Laboratory. In their warped view that place is enough to make Qays* deny his own Layla and ‘Antara* abandon his ‘Abla. Some inmates have died of illnesses, others have taken their own lives after going mad—may God forgive them! And, in full view of people susceptible to terror, still others have been executed in killing fields and forced to dig their own graves—may God shroud them all in the wideness of His mercy and install them in His heavens. Verily to God do we all belong, and unto Him is the return!

  “Your humble addresser and his colleagues who remain alive have now been placed in this wing—for just a while perhaps—because our torturers have grown tired of us. They have preferred us to vacate the space so they can bring in other people who they think are less steadfast and strong in enduring the kind of hellish torture that I’ve just mentioned . . .

  “Fellow prisoners . . . We new occupants of these cells are no angels, infallible and without sin, nor do we belong to any mystical fraternities or other ascetic communities. We’re just like you. We’ve chosen to live a life of freedom and honor and have devoted our lives to that cause, even though it may involve pain and suffering for which we would seek no alternative. Our choice is the same as yours; for us, it is the balance that enlightens, the guarantor of eternal life, and the self-evident triumph. In times of trial and tribulation it alone transforms us into hot coals beneath the ashes and strengthens our resolve and our endurance, bringing our deeds into line with our aspirations . . .

  “Dear God, I have come to an end. Let us make ready for our group the means of ease and contentment and for the time we have here that which will make it both tolerable and useful. As God Almighty says in the Sura of Joseph (Sura 12): ‘We will tell you the best of stories,’ while in ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib’s* Durar we find: ‘Like iron, hearts can turn rusty. So you should offer them some pearls of wisdom.’”

  The preacher’s voice suddenly stopped. I realized the reason when a whole column of guards invaded the block and told the prisoners to remain silent and move back into their cells. We could then clearly hear their commander launching into a tirade of insults, from among which I managed to glean the following: “You lousy conspirator, you phony devotee, you promised me to stop proselytizing. Now you’ve broken your promise, so our only choice is to cut your tongue out. Gag his mouth and take him to the place where he’ll get his just deserts in front of witnesses . . .”

  No sooner had the guard troop left the block than a scary silence descended, only amplified by the advent of darkness. Prisoners now wrapped themselves up in their blankets in an attempt to ward off the icy cold of nighttime. I did as they did, particularly since it was now clear that we would not be getting any dinner. We had paid too much attention to the preacher, who was the object of such opprobrium and had failed either to confront him or use deterrent language and accusations of heresy to shut him up.

  My diseased leg was now causing me pain all over, even though I did my best to suppress it. Added to which, O God my Creator, was chronic insomnia and a whole series of spotted images that crowded my mind, all of whi
ch combined to make me want to scream out loud and ask for help. The only thing that stopped me from doing so was my worry that I would wake up my neighbors and disturb their sleep. For that reason I made do with uttering a few low-keyed groans that were only audible to me, like someone struck low with diarrhea.

  I stayed like this, with only God being aware of my sufferings, till night was almost at an end. Just then, a cry rang out: a prisoner was asking for a clamp so he could pull out a tooth that was hurting. I listened as a number of voices rounded on him, while others advised him to grin and bear it till the morning guard arrived. All the while, the poor man kept groaning in pain and mouthing deeply moving words to the effect that the chief nurse in the clinic had told him that he would only fix his tooth if he provided the names and addresses of a Salafi* mafia group that they claimed he belonged to, whereas in fact he did not. He kept on shouting and asking the prisoners who were yelling at him what he was supposed to do. Suddenly his yelling stopped abruptly, as though he had fainted or else he had been gagged and taken away.

  “Some people’s troubles are other people’s boons,” as the poet al-Mutanabbi* tells us. That was certainly the case with my present situation. My concern about this other prisoner in pain distracted my attention from my own problems, and the fact that he may have suffered dire consequences made me give thanks to God for suppressing my own pain. That was in spite of the fact that, according to my own reckoning and physical senses, my own pains were far worse than a mere toothache, even if it involved a molar. After such feelings of gratitude and the distraction evolved, I succumbed to a much needed slumber that felt for all the world like a drug-induced stupor.

  19

  Another of the Judge’s Whims

  My Appointment as Mufti

  The way I woke up this morning was unusual—in fact, unprecedented. The sound of drums and clarinet echoed through the block, accompanied by the din as my neighbors jumped up and started asking questions. I was totally stunned and amazed when a music group made up of two men invaded my cell, preceded by the gigantic black guard carrying two platters on his head. I was sitting there with my two crutches beside me as he put them both down in front me. No sooner had his two companions stopped their playing than one of them came forward, cleaned my hands, then placed my right hand on a copy of the Qur’an on a platter, and asked me to swear. I asked him what about.