A large number of people of both sexes began to populate the bar. As I watched, mouths and bodies started responding to the glasses of alcohol, not to mention the music, which attracted more and more people to the dance floor. Hands and legs intertwined, and the dancers rocked and swayed as they kept up the bump and grind, and so on and so on . . .
Na‘ima came over to me as I sat there at the edge of this scene. She gave me a glass of water that I smelled but did not drink. My expression showed how much I disapproved of the whole thing, but the words that she whispered in my ear had the opposite effect, bringing me a sense of warmth and serenity:
“Here’s a vial of blood. Hide it. When your interview with the judge comes to an end, break it open and spit the contents out. Complain to him that you have a bad cough and think you may have contracted tuberculosis. But don’t mention me. Farewell!”
It was only a few minutes after my adviser, Na‘ima, had disappeared into the crowd before someone tapped me on the shoulder.
“Get up and follow me,” they said.
24
A Final Meeting with the Judge, Then the Dormitory with No Sleep
The person who had instructed me to follow her was wearing a military uniform; in all likelihood she was a foreigner. As I followed her through corridors and halls, the din from the nightclub gradually diminished. She took me through one door, then a second and a third and made a telephone call on her mobile. After a few minutes’ wait, she was authorized to enter. I followed her into a wide lounge with muted red lighting. I spotted the judge sitting cross-legged on a wheeled couch, his face showing all the signs of an advanced state of drunkenness. My escort sat me down on a chair, gave a military salute, then left.
I sat there like a statue, waiting for the person who had summoned me to say something and let me know why I had been invited to appear before him in such a luxurious environment. But he seemed distracted; something weird was going on underneath his table. Just then, a half-naked girl emerged and went out of the door. I watched in utter disgust as the judge pulled up his trousers and poured himself a glass of whisky as though it were water. I found it necessary to let him know I was there, so I let out a cough, all the while fingering Na‘ima’s vial. I coughed louder, but then suppressed it when he started spouting nonsense:
“Fantastic things: fucking in water, using pregnant women as permitted by law, menstruating females, having clusters of gorgeous whores under tables . . . I’ve done it all—no stake involved and no pretense either . . .”
He started rocking to and fro on the bench, eyes closed and utterly drunk. I started coughing again, and he sat up and asked who was coughing. I told him who I was, and he was surprised to find me there. I reminded him that he was the one who had summoned me. After a moment’s thought, he told me to sit down close to his table, but only on condition that I did not cough any more. I managed to stop.
“So, Hamuda from Oujda,” he told me between gulps of whisky and puffs on a cigarette, “this is your very last chance. If you take it, you’ll be set free; otherwise it’s the end for you. All the long years I’ve been working, I’ve never encountered anyone as stubborn and resistant as you. But let me be totally clear: I’m not going to let you be a thorn in my foot or a rock in my path. I’ve devoted a lot of my valuable time to you, even though you’re not worth it. I’ve stopped the female ghoul from torturing you even more; I’ve given orders for you to be washed and cleaned; I’ve seen to it that your leg has been cured; I’ve appointed you as mufti and given you all kinds of gifts on the two platters. But here you are, you ungrateful bastard! All my kindness and gifts have been rewarded with stubborn resistance and recalcitrance. You’ve closed your heart and soul in my face! You revealed a number of details to the Disciplinary Committee that you’ve kept from me. I’ve a feeling—in fact, I’m certain—that you’re still concealing information, most importantly about your terrorist cousin, al-Husayn al-Masmudi, and his gang. So now the final hour has struck: either you tell us what you know in return for which you’ll join our service, be pardoned and have your previous crimes wiped clean; or else you’ll carry on rejecting this and that, in which case you’ll go back to the penitents’ wing, where you’ll be killed by one of the professional murderers. Once you’re back there, there’ll be no guarantee that you’ll remain alive. Anyone who issues such a warning is forgiven if things go wrong. Your fate is now in your own hands. Make your mind up and don’t delay!”
As I listened to these words, my heart was in my throat.
“Sir,” I told this debauched and totally drunk judge between coughs, “I’ve told you about my cousin a thousand times. I’ve nothing to add to what I put in my report for you, or do you want me to make something up? That would be wrong, and in both religious and moral terms. My state of health makes it impossible for me to enter the service. The atmosphere inside your center does not agree with me; as you can tell, it’s had a negative effect on my health.”
I watched as the judge’s face altered in fury. He came round the table and attacked me with a series of blows. He told me not to cough, then lifted me up and delivered a savage blow to my head that sent me reeling; I almost lost consciousness. When he went back to his bench and took another drink and puff from his cigarette, I took advantage of the moment.
“No to violence!” I yelled, “no to violence! Isn’t that part of your personal credo, Judge?”
While I was expressing those words, I put the blood vial in my mouth and did what Na‘ima had advised me to do. Getting a good amount of blood mixed with my spittle, I went over to the judge, started coughing, and splattered a glob of blood into my hands. I protested that I had tuberculosis and was afraid I might be infecting him too. The judge leapt up and moved away. He covered his face with a handkerchief, then pointed to the backdoor.
“Get out of here, you tubercular creep!” he yelled. “Get out of my sight!”
At first I did not obey his order. I decided to play the fool a bit so this raving judge would have another pretext for ruling that I should go back to my homeland. It now occurred to me that I no longer had anything to lose in this detention center. My tuberculosis was my weapon, whether I actually had it or not. With that in mind, I started chasing the judge all around his wide lounge, coughing all over him and spitting blood and threatening to pass on my disease to him. All the while he kept maneuvering his elephantine body around the copious supply of furniture, holding his handkerchief over his nose and mouth. So here we are, Na‘ima! Your boss is behaving like a scared child, running away from a genie or ghoul who’s chasing him. If you happened to see him looking so scared and panting for all he’s worth, with sweat pouring off him, the pretense would fall away completely, and you would realize that this would-be lion who determines the fate of tortured souls in this facility is merely a paper tiger, someone who is as afraid of death as any other poor wretch.
When I noticed that his esteemed excellency had taken refuge in the toilet and locked it, I decided that it was time to close the circus and leave the lounge by the door that his now vanished eminence had pointed to. It opened out to a cement cellar with dim lighting suitable as an escape route or some such thing. At the end it led to a sandy area with hills and mounds of earth. The light of the full moon showed clearly how vast the space was and how closely packed and well-arranged its sections were. For a few moments I stood there wondering what to do, trying to make out the direction that would take me back to the detention center buildings. One thing I knew for certain: wandering around in the desert without food or compass was guaranteed to result in my demise, either buried under mounds of sand or else as fodder for birds of prey and other rapacious animals.
Not wanting to die in such an undignified manner, my mind—or what was left of it—led me to work out that the jeep that had transported me to the spot where I was standing had not traveled more than five kilometers or so. So I had to walk in the opposite direction, invoking all my senses to pick up any noises, smells, or lights that
might guide me. And that is precisely what I did.
A fair amount of time went by, and I covered a distance that I could only assess by how tired and cold I felt. Just then I heard dogs barking, and, as I increased my pace and overcame my fear, the sound grew gradually louder. Before long, a patrol appeared with their dogs. They shined a powerful searchlight in my face, surrounded me, and learned my identity and cell number. They had a shackled prisoner with them, and their leader asked me in the light if I recognized him. I pursed my lips so as not to say his name—‘Umar al-Rami—and for caution’s sake pretended I did not know him. However, ‘Umar hastened to remind me of the night he had spent with me in my cell before the female ghoul had ordered his second testicle removed. They now allowed him to give me a hug and kiss.
“In front of these people, my brother,” he told me tearfully, “I confess that I’ve tried to escape from this prison. I now accept the death sentence that has been passed against me.”
“No, ‘Umar,” I replied distractedly, “that’s an unjust verdict. You must demand an appeal!”
“The law’s the law,” the leader interrupted loudly. “It’ll be applied to you as well, since we’ve caught you trying to escape. In your case I’m going to ask for an accelerated decision because, unlike ‘Umar, you’ve donned a nice set of civilian clothes and were obviously trying to deceive people and put them off the track . . .”
In some distress, I made a statement to the effect that I was wearing these clothes, which were not normal prisoner’s garb, because the investigating judge had invited me to pay him a visit. Hearing that, the entire troop of soldiers burst into laughter, and the desert echoed to their guffaws. The leader was now forced to issue an order to carry out the death sentence. They bound ‘Umar’s eyes and stood a few meters away, with their rifles pointed at him. The leader made me stand beside him and asked what was his final statement of wishes.
“I want you to put Hamuda from Oujda in my cell,” he said. “He is to inherit my belongings and preserve my memory.”
With that, he pronounced the statement of faith, fearlessly and without flinching. The men who had taken me over to him now pulled me back. The leader gave the order to fire. My poor friend fell to the ground, soaked in his own blood, which could be seen in the brilliant moonlight.
Shivering with both emotion and the bitter cold, and holding back my tears, I begged them to bury him with the four prayers in praise of God and a personal prayer for him. The leader rounded on me and told me to go with them and keep quiet. I had no choice but to do as he demanded.
“No praises of God and prayers for people like him,” I heard him mutter to himself. “Too bad for them! That’s the law when it comes to people who try to escape and fail. People who run away don’t get buried. It only takes a few hours for only bones and skull to be left, and they’ll be covered by the sands for evermore . . .”
We reached the gate of a prison building whose number I could not make out. There the soldiers handed me over to a gorilla-like guard. The leader told him to put me temporarily into the cell of the deceased prisoner, ‘Umar al-Rami, in the dormitory where no one slept. The corridor leading to my temporary new abode had cells with iron bars on either side so that you could see what was going on inside. In this particular block the level of privacy and personal intimacy was zero or even less! Once the guard had locked the door, all I could do was throw myself down on the bed and try to sleep off the trials and tribulations of the previous day.
It was not daylight that woke me up, but the sound of a variety of song and dance tunes that reverberated in my cell in continuous clashing waves of noise. Even though it was still night, I opened my eyes and realized where I was now. I got up to investigate and discovered that the cell opposite mine was occupied by the figure of someone wrapped in his bedsheet, most probably asleep. I yelled to him several times, asking him what was going on, and requesting that he let me sleep and have some peace and quiet, but there was no response. Going back to my bed, I lay down and contemplated my new misfortune, the noise that was now emerging from transistor radios and the loudspeakers on the walls and ceilings. I was anxious to find some distraction for my senses and nerves, so I started checking on the late ‘Umar al-Rami’s belongings. All I found was a medium-sized radio that I immediately hid, a circular-shaped comb, two tubes of toothpaste with no brush, and a blue prisoner’s uniform, which I put on over my Western suit so as to give me extra protection against the cold. My sense of smell told me that there was some food in a sealed bag, so I opened it and proceeded to assuage my hunger with some bits of bread, olives, and boiled potatoes. I then used water through a thin tube to clear the mucus from my nose and cleaned my teeth by putting some toothpaste on my finger. I lay down to get some rest, but the deafening noise of the music made that impossible. As time went by, it never let up.
Late at night, there was a sudden silence. I seized the opportunity to get some sleep, but almost immediately a ringing voice could be heard intoning the phrases “In the name of God” and “Thanks be to God.” That was followed by a homily and advice concerning the proper way to perform ablutions, wash the bodies of the dead, and say the necessary prayers over them. The devout Muslim was enjoined to practice that prayer is better than sleep and reminded to consider night and day the punishments of the grave inflicted by the two questioning angels, Munkir and Nakir,* not to mention the Day of Gathering and Judgment. This was the kind of sermon that put you in mind of the poor and stupid preachers you might encounter in the desert or the countryside. This particular preacher of the end of time included in his premonitions certain verses from the Qur’an, our sacred text that is far too lofty to be soiled in this foul and demeaning place. The dreadful way he was pronouncing the verses was even worse than a donkey braying. Once he had finished and his voice had turned hoarse, his words were immediately followed by some recorded songs with lewd lyrics. It was totally impossible to get to sleep. I noticed a guard passing by, so I hurried over to the bars at the entrance to my cell and yelled my complaint to him. He signaled back to me that he could not hear what I was saying, then left.
I was left on my own to mutter angry words of complaint to myself. I used moistened bread to make some earplugs and held them in place with my tie, but they did little good. This incredibly loud noise, completely nerve-shattering was another means that the people in charge of the prison were using to torture prisoners and drive the weaker and more sensitive ones to breakdown and madness. I turned to my own devices, invoking whatever help I could to protect myself against their evil and thwart their devilish schemes—God is enough for me, and good is He as a trustee.
Dawn is the time for prayer for those who will. As I did so, the situation in the wing was no different from what I have already described. It was only when morning broke that things calmed down. A guard brought me breakfast. I begged him to ask the inmates to lower the volume on their music at night so people who wanted to get some sleep and relax could do so. In a gruff tone he informed me that the basic principle of this wing required that prisoners inure their bodies to being deprived of sleep or to get whatever they could to the accompaniment of popular verses and contemporary songs, interspersed with sermons on Fridays and holy days. When I asked him why the noise happened during the night rather than daytime, he scoffed.
“You idiot!” he replied as he locked the door, “It’s at night that you’re sleepless. The music you’ve been hearing is merely a warm-up for the even greater soirée tonight. Haven’t you heard about it?!”
“The even greater soirée tonight?” I was still asking as he left.
If I am invited to attend, it will be certainly easier than staying in this block, which seems to be inhabited by people who are not actually alive—human specters with God knows what problems and afflicted with how many scars.
Apart from performing my prayers—something that by now has become my fondest activity, the only way of passing the time of day is what I have been training myself to do: huddle
in a corner in a lump and withdraw into myself so I can engage with my inner being. Then I can probe and search, hold conversations, recollect and recall things, battle against fancy, and declare victory. I can pose those ultimate questions and seek the remotest of signs; I can broach the discourse of the impossible, that elusive elixir that is so hard to grasp; I can circle around myself like a snake and chew the soles of my feet, and all in search of a small amount of sleep and quiet. Perhaps I can also indulge in still deeper contemplation and replace my current, horrendous reality with a more luminous dream. But fat chance of that!
The entire corridor is ringing with the sound of feet and voices chattering. The stretcher-bearers are taking the sick and dead prisoners out of their cells. Among the latter is the prisoner opposite me who was always wrapped in his blanket and two of his neighbors. As I watched, I prayed to God to grant them all mercy. Through a megaphone, a loud voice then kept announcing that the major soirée would be happening and encouraged all healthy prisoners to attend. To make sure it was a success, they were told to get themselves washed and remove the foul stench from their bodies. The same voice went on to say that the people who were invited had to get rid of any weapons—knives, razors, and the like. Anyone who did not do so would be caught by the electronic screening devices; the punishment would be twenty consecutive days in the dungeon.
The man making the announcement looked into my cell and urged me to wash myself. The sound of his voice kept babbling until it faded away down the block. I struggled to my feet, telling myself that the gang in charge of the center seemed to be claiming to have plenty of machines to collect foul stenches! As I took off my clothes, the whole idea forced a reluctant chuckle out of me. I went over to the water tap and discovered that there was plenty of water to be had, something very unusual. I washed my shirt, sprinkled water over my body, beginning with my armpits, buttocks, and pubic region, and, as a crowning gesture, performed a ritual ablution that was worthy of the name. After performing the obligatory prayers, I sat cross-legged on my bed, waiting for my shirt to dry and to see what happened next.
My Torturess Page 20