The Republic of False Truths

by Alaa Al Aswany

  Voices rose and mingled. A minority of the workers around Mazen were demanding that he be given the floor while the majority were against letting him get up onto the platform. Uncle Fahmi went on, “You want common sense? I’ve written a petition to the owners’ representative in which we undertake not to strike and not to hold sit-ins and we agree to let a new director for the factory be appointed, with his knowledge, in return for the reopening of the factory. Agreed?”

  Cries of agreement rose and Uncle Fahmi said, “Let’s get down to it, then. The petition’s down there. Please, each of you, sign it. The owners’ representative has promised me that if you sign the petition the factory will reopen in two days maximum and he’s promised me you’ll receive full pay for the days when the factory was closed.”

  It seemed to Mazen that everything had been prepared ahead of time. Below the platform there was a table where an employee sat to take the workers’ signatures. With the exception of Mazen’s small group, the workers were pushing one another aside to sign the petition, obliging some to intervene and organise them into a long queue, after which each one signed his name alongside his national ID number. Mazen approached the queue, and some of the people standing in it averted their faces to avoid looking at him, while others gestured at him angrily and muttered disapprovingly. Mazen stood there a while with his supporters, then suddenly turned to them and said, “I’m going.”

  He didn’t wait for their reply and didn’t shake their hands. He walked slowly till he had left the factory and crossed the road to the embankment, where he found a minibus taxi and got in, heading for the city centre.

  68

  Was Asmaa dreaming or living reality?

  She felt she was halfway between sleeping and waking. Everything she saw around her was imprinted on her mind in the form of vague, tattered images. The only thing she was sure of was that she hurt—extreme, unbearable pain in every part of her body that would die down a little in one place to be renewed in another. She was sure that her right arm was enveloped in a thick covering of plaster of Paris. She recalled the face of the doctor as he wrapped her arm in the plaster but avoided looking at her. She was sure, too, about the metal shackle that connected her left wrist to the back of the bed. With her tired mind she followed the faces of the young nurses who went in and out, giving her pills and changing the compresses without talking to her. And finally she remembered the head nurse, the expression on whose face, brimming with hatred and contempt, she would never forget, as she would never forget how she came close to her and said, slowly, enunciating the letters as though jabbing her with a knife, “Slut! Traitor! You and your like have taken money from America to destroy the country. I wish they’d killed you all and spared us the headache. Your kind ought to be killed so that the country can be clean again.”

  Asmaa could say nothing in return. Speaking hurt. Every movement hurt. There was plaster on one hand and a handcuff on the other and together they made moving impossible. One kind-hearted nurse would come to her when she was alone in the room (as though she secretly sympathised with her), smile, bend over her, and whisper, “Do you want to pass water?”

  Asmaa would nod, and the nurse would bring her a metal chamber pot and put it beneath her. She avoided going to the bathroom as much as possible because it was a complicated process. There was a soldier, who undid the handcuffs and escorted her, a wheelchair to which she was transferred, causing her extreme pain, and a nurse, who would go in with her and sit her on the toilet. She was absolutely exhausted. She’d lose consciousness for a while, then open her eyes and find the same pale light, the same white-painted walls, and the same empty bed in front of her. She didn’t know whether it was night or day. Sometimes, without warning, she’d remember what happened and pant and sweat and feel she wanted to scream. She’d see herself at that last moment: she was standing talking with Karim, Asmahan, and some of the others at the sit-in in front of the cabinet building, then heard the uproar and the screams and one of those standing there shouting as he ran, “The army’s attacking!”

  Everyone fled. Karim and Asmahan ran in the direction of Tahrir. For some reason, she ran in the opposite direction. She’d thought that the army was attacking from Tahrir. After running a few metres in the direction of Qasr El Eini, she was detained. She’d never seen soldiers in such huge numbers before (it was a special army unit called, she found out later, 777). The soldier didn’t speak to her and didn’t ask her any questions. He grabbed her by her hair and dragged her over the ground, while his colleagues set about hitting her with batons they had in their hands, then took her into the Shura Council building. There they led her to “the Ladies’ Department,” as the officers called it, where she saw more than twenty soldiers beating seven female demonstrators as hard as they could with their batons. A girl would try to fend off the blows with her hands, exposing her body, and a hail of blows would descend on the exposed part. Then she’d fend off the blows from her body and the soldiers would go back to hitting her on her head. Asmaa was subjected to the full reception party, and then the officer came. She remembered his piercing eyes, his moustache, and his gruff voice. He pointed to her as she lay there on the ground and shouted to the soldiers, “Bring me that one!”

  They had dragged her, while continuing to beat her, to a side room where she was left on her own with just the officer and three soldiers. The officer laughed and said, “What’s your name, champ?”

  She couldn’t remember how she’d answered but he said, “Listen, Asmaa. Today, you’re our bride. We’re going to party with you.”

  The officer fell silent and looked at the soldiers. As though this was a signal, a hail of blows rained down upon her without stopping, blows that fell on every part of her body. She started screaming and continued until her voice gave out. It hurt so much she wished she could lose consciousness. The officer gestured to them and they stopped, and he came over to her and said, “Would you like me to stop the beating? Say, ‘I’m Asmaa the Whore’!”

  She didn’t answer, so he gestured to the soldiers and they resumed the beating with all their might, and the officer’s voice grew louder, saying, “I swear to God, you little bitch, we’ll beat you to death if you don’t say ‘I’m Asmaa the Whore’!”

  She couldn’t take it anymore, so she cried out in a tearful voice, as though apologising, “I’m Asmaa the Whore!”

  The officer stopped the beating and said, “I can’t hear you. Speak louder!”

  She cried out, “I’m Asmaa the Whore!”

  “Again.”

  “I’m Asmaa the Whore!”

  “Again.”

  “I’m Asmaa the Whore!”

  The beating ceased and the officer gave a quite normal laugh, lit a cigarette, and said, “Okay, Asmaa, if you’re a whore, why are you so upset?”

  He looked at the soldiers and said, “Strip the whore.”

  Two of the soldiers came forward, the third at their side. Asmaa didn’t resist any further. She didn’t cry out. She surrendered. She let them do to her whatever they wanted. They took off the trousers and woollen blouse she was wearing, so that she was now lying in her underwear. The officer said, “Take off her bra, private!”

  The private took her bra off roughly, causing it to rip. Her breasts hung down. “Give her tits a tickle!” the officer said.

  She remained stretched out and completely silent. The private approached and started grabbing her breasts with his fingers. Then he pulled back and looked at the officer, who said, “I want each of you to play with her tits. One by one.”

  The second soldier now came and bent down and started grasping at her breasts with his fingers, then the third, who just touched her breasts quickly. The officer shouted, “Tickle them properly!”

  The third soldier now rubbed away at her breasts. She noticed for the first time that he was crying.

  “Is that good enough for you, whore?” the of
ficer said. “No? Not enough?”

  In a hoarse voice, as though issuing an order of execution, he shouted, “Grab her cunt, private!”

  She felt the first soldier’s fingers playing around between her thighs, and then the second soldier came and put his fingers in. The third soldier didn’t move; his weeping had turned into sobbing, and he started saying, “Enough, Basha! That’s not right, Basha!”

  The officer’s voice rose in anger and he cried, “Carry out the order, faggot!”

  The weeping soldier approached her and put in his hand, trying to touch her gently.

  The officer went up to her as she lay there on the ground and said, in a calm voice, “Do you see, Asmaa, how little you’re worth? You’re worth nothing. I’ve had the soldiers play around with your tits and your cunt and I could have them fuck you now in front of me and you wouldn’t be able to say no. You’re nothing, Asmaa. Nothing. Know your worth, then, and don’t be impertinent to your masters. Got it?”

  69

  The judge refused to allow the journalists and the cameras of the satellite news channels to enter the courtroom, so they gathered in a mass outside. The only people allowed to enter were the lawyers and families of the accused and the witnesses. The accused officers entered the dock, making an attempt to appear natural—waving to their families in the courtroom, whispering to one another, and smoking—but none of this could conceal their nervousness. A single glance was enough to distinguish the poor families of the victims from the families of the officers, with their smart clothes and the costly sunglasses on the faces of the ladies. This time the session took only a few minutes. The usher cried, “Court in session!” and the judge and assistant judges entered and took their seats, and the judge began to read the names of the accused, followed by the articles of the law on which the charges were based. Finally, he said in a loud voice, “The court finds all of the accused innocent. Court dismissed!”

  The judge hurried to his chambers, the assistant judges behind him, while screams and wails broke out among the families of the victims, and trills of joy among the families of the officers, who started hugging one another and crying “God is great!” It took Uncle Madany a few moments to absorb what had happened. Then he began yelling, “What do they mean ‘innocent’? The officer Heisam killed my son.”

  Khaled’s colleagues gathered around him to calm him down. Hind screamed “Shame on you!” and burst into tears, and Danya embraced her. Everyone was then surprised to see Uncle Madany rush from the courtroom. He passed through the door of the court and went out onto the street, the others running after him and calling out. They caught up with him as he was trying to flag down a taxi.

  “I’ve had it. I’m leaving this country. I’m going to the post office to take out my money so I can go abroad.”

  They tried to calm him down but the idea had taken such a firm hold on him that he was no longer listening to anyone. He started stopping passers-by. He grabbed a young man and said, “My son was your age. A student at the Faculty of Medicine, called Khaled. The officer Heisam El Meligi killed him in front of his colleagues and the judge found him innocent.”

  Voices could be heard from the passers-by:

  “That’s the way it is in our country.”

  “God alone can help us!”

  “May God recompense you!”

  “Even if they find him innocent, where can he go to escape God’s accounting?”

  At the top of his voice Uncle Madany yelled, “I don’t want to stay another day in this country! I have sixty thousand pounds in the post office, my life’s savings. I’m getting them out right now and I’m leaving in the morning.”

  Some of the passers-by, along with the lawyers and Khaled’s colleagues, tried to calm him down, but he kept on shouting the same words over and over again. He appeared to have lost all self-control. Danya spoke to Hind, then went over to Madany and took him by the hand, saying, “Enough. Come along with us, please. We’ll go to the post office.”

  70

  My darling Asmaa,

  This is the first time I write you a letter on paper rather than an email since the Friday of Rage, when they cut the communications networks, and the first time I’m writing you a letter of any sort in two months. When the workers agreed to submit to the Italian management, I felt frustrated for the first time. I felt the same disappointment I felt as a child when we were building beautiful sandcastles on the shore at Alexandria and a wave would come and knock them over and they’d disappear in an instant as though they’d never been. I called you that day but found your phone was turned off. I wrote you an email telling you what had happened. Believe me, I’m not angry at the workers. Each of them has commitments to his family and they can’t gamble with their children’s daily bread. At the same time, the media, which deluges them with lies, has unfortunately made them hate the revolution. I believe they will soon discover the truth. My father taught me to put my trust at the end of the day in our people’s own capacities. Even if they are misled for a while, they will quickly return to the truth. You can’t fool people forever. Tomorrow, or in a week, or in a month, the Egyptians will understand what happened. They will, inevitably, turn again to revolution. I haven’t the slightest doubt of that. Asmaa, when I rode the minibus to go home, I felt that they were going to arrest me. I thought that if I were in the authorities’ place, I’d arrest us now. Once public opinion had been turned against us and our reputations had been blackened, once everyone had been persuaded that the revolution was a conspiracy and they’d been terrorised and made to feel that the alternative to the old regime was chaos, the time had come to arrest us. Perhaps you’ll ask me, if I was convinced they were going to arrest me, why did I go back to the house? Why didn’t I hide out somewhere far away, with one of my friends or relatives? I was still suffering from the shock of the workers’ submission to management and I couldn’t bear feeling that I was running away. If I hid, I might avoid detention but for sure I’d never be able to escape the feeling that I’d run away from the field of battle. You’re free to reject that logic and say I should have saved myself. I wasn’t capable psychologically of doing so. I went home and was so exhausted I fell asleep. I woke up in the late afternoon, took a shower, and drank a glass of tea. The strange thing is that, when I heard the knocking on the door, I knew for sure they’d come. I opened and found an officer accompanied by a number of police goons wearing civilian clothing. The officer said politely, “Mr. Mazen, we need to have a couple of words with you.”

  I asked him to wait while I quickly got my suitcase ready and he agreed. I went downstairs with them and we got into a minibus. The moment the bus started moving, they beat me painfully. I don’t want to remember the details of the torture to which I was subjected. For forty-two days I was cut off from the world. The officials at the Ministry of Interior and the military police denied to my lawyers that they had arrested me. I stayed at a Central Security camp whose location I don’t know because I was blindfolded when they moved me. I was subjected to hideous torture, Asmaa. Their goal was to force me to confess that we got our funding from the CIA. The officer would present me with a list of the names of foreign officials so that I’d sign a confession that I’d received money from them. After each round of torture, they’d show it to me again and I’d refuse again, so the torture would begin once more. Once I yelled in his face, “You’re wearing yourself out for nothing. If you want to kill me, kill me. I shall never betray the revolution.”

  Suddenly, after forty-two days, the torture stopped. Either because they’d despaired of getting me to sign false confessions or because Essam Shaalan’s interventions with high-up officials had been successful or because our colleagues had made such a row over my detention in the Western press or for all these reasons. A colonel whom I hadn’t seen before summoned me and told me he was sorry about the mistreatment I’d received and asked me to please bear in mind the delicate circumstances throu
gh which the country was passing. He assured me that, in spite of everything, they didn’t doubt my patriotism, even if our views differed. It’s just a common practice executioners use to give you hope, after which they start torturing you again, so that you’re destroyed utterly. I said something ordinary and meaningless to him and he told me that I’d see for myself how my treatment would change and that I’d be leaving tomorrow for Turah prison, where conditions were much better and I’d be getting my first visit within a few days. I didn’t believe him. However, contrary to my expectations, I was indeed moved the next day to Turah and two days later received my first visit, which was from Essam Shaalan, as a mark of respect for whom the prison director left us alone in his office. I’ll never forget the first moment when Essam saw me in my prison clothes and with the marks of torture on my face and body. Can you believe he embraced me and burst into tears like a child? It was only at that moment that I realised how much I love the man. The visit was supposed to be for a quarter or half an hour but the director left us for two whole hours. Essam still has strong relations with the security apparatuses, and he told me that he’d heard about my detention and had tried to see me, but they’d told him, “Mazen Saqqa is a dangerous and influential element. Leave him to us for a few days.”