Radical

by Maajid Nawaz

  It might also have been that there was a tightening of security after my return. After all, this was the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and the policy situation was still quite fluid. No British citizens had yet been tortured in a foreign country as part of the War on Terror. I was a member of a group that was perfectly legal in the UK, and it seemed out of the question that I could be arrested without cause and without any blowback.

  However, things were starting to change. It is hard to say how far and how deep the intelligence sharing was between countries after 9/11. But the fact that Aman al-Dawlah knew all about me suggests it was happening. The timeline is important here: by early 2002 the Taliban had been defeated, and the focus on military operations was giving way to the interrogation of captured prisoners. For the first time, your citizenship didn’t matter. Neither did such niceties as the Geneva Convention. It may have been that, in those weeks after my return from Jerusalem, I became fair game to the authorities. Maybe they’d just gotten the green light that the British government wouldn’t intervene.

  Whatever the truth, I returned to Egypt less worried than I had been a month or so before. I was relaxed enough to give the all-clear for Rabia and Ammar to return to the country. I was still careful to maintain my distance from other HT members—I didn’t go and see Reza, for example, or go back to recruiting. It was as if the situation were back to normal. Little did I know that this calm was an illusion—and a storm was about to come.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Welcome to Egypt: We Do As We Please

  APRIL 1, 2002

  The banging on my door came at three o’clock in the morning. I was awake, as I’m sure they knew. Thinking about it later, they’d probably followed me all evening. My last night of freedom was spent with Hassan, enjoying the unmistakable quality of Alexandria at night: the intoxicating smells of coffee and shisha smoke, intermingling with the cool crispness of the sea air. I was lucky to have wandered the streets underneath the stars that night: it would serve to give me a shard of civilization to remember in the months and years ahead.

  They must have already been there when I said good night to Hassan and made my way back to the flat. I must have walked straight past them, as they gestured to each other and sent a radio message that I had returned.

  Did they sense me, as I tiptoed through the dark and sleeping apartment, careful not to wake my son, my wife, or her friend Zahra, who was staying with us?

  Did they see me as I stepped out onto the balcony, soaking up one last look at the glistening skyline before bed?

  Did they hear my one-year-old son stir before I did, his restlessness and murmuring giving way to needy cries?

  I tiptoed over to Ammar’s cot and picked him up, held him against my shoulder and rocked him gently. In those days he would wrap his little hand tightly around my index finger as I soothed him with Ayat al-Kursi, the sacred Muslim prayer, Allahu La ilaaha illa huwa al-Hayyu al-Qayyum . . .

  T. S. Eliot famously wrote that the world would end, not with a bang, but with a whimper. My world ended with both—the whimpering of my son and the banging at the door. It was the sort of noise that rings louder in your soul than in your ears, as the bottom of a police boot kicked at the door, again and again, and the double lock offered some resistance.

  Even before I saw the soldiers I knew instinctively what was happening. Even before little Ammar started weeping, clinging to my arms from terror, I knew what had happened. And then . . . the door, I thought tangentially, I must save the door. I calmly walked over to the door and opened it before they could kick it down. There was nowhere to run to in this high-rise flat, nowhere left to hide. As the soldiers burst into the flat in full armor, protective vests, carrying stun grenades and machine guns, I rushed back to shelter Ammar.

  First they secured the area, checking to see if any resistance would meet them, and then they zeroed in on me, all guns trained on father and son as they barked orders in Egyptian Arabic at this young father trying to shelter his crying little boy from the barrels of submachine guns. I stood subdued, not moving, just praying to heal Ammar’s fear, chanting God’s name in rhythmic tones gently in his ear, Allahu Allahu Allahu Allah. In the background, I could hear them approaching the bedrooms. They will storm in on my sleeping wife, I thought. I don’t care what they do, I will not let them wake Rabia with their guns. I lifted a lead-heavy foot and started moving.

  “Maagid Nawaz, where are you going?” a voice asked in accented English, with the Egyptian pronunciation of the J as a G. In front of me, the phalanx of machine guns gave way to a smartly dressed man in a suit. He was young, in his early thirties, clean-shaven. His dark hair was combed back. I knew instantly that he was the one to fear. He was the zaabit—officer of Aman al-Dawlah—and he didn’t need a machine gun to assert his authority.

  “Are you Maagid Nawaz?” he asked.

  “I am,” I replied.

  The zaabit nodded. He knew this already.

  “You need to come with us.” The way he said “need” made me flinch.

  “Look, I opened the door, I let you in, I’ve got nothing to hide. Can I please just wake my wife? You can follow me in if you like,” I said as I was trying to calm Ammar.

  “OK, let’s go.”

  And he followed me to the bedroom door as I walked in and woke Rabia with a low, trembling voice.

  “Rabia, wake up, it’s me.” It didn’t take much, she was up immediately, wondering why Ammar was crying. “You have to get up, it’s time, they’re here.” Knowing instantly what I meant, Rabia shot up, threw her long jilbab (gown) over her body, and quickly covered what modesty she could with her hijab.

  “What, are they really here?”

  “Yes, right by the door, you better wake up sister Zahra. Be strong for Allah’s sake. I’m afraid I’ll need to leave you shortly.”

  I could hear a slamming of drawers and cupboards as I tried to keep calm. They were ransacking the house. Rabia rushed to wake her friend Zahra in the guest room as I walked back out to the sitting room. As Ammar still clutched to me in terror, I asked one last favor from the zaabit.

  “Can I take this small Qur’an with me?” I asked calmly.

  “Sure,” came the steady reply.

  My immediate fear was not what they might find—I had no weapons of any sort—but what they might pretend to “find”: the planting of evidence.

  “Wait here,” said the agent, as he left me guarded. Through the doorway, I could see that they were throwing my books into trash bags. I had HT literature in the house and plenty of it: enough to make my membership in the group incontrovertible. These soldiers, though, were just randomly taking handfuls of books off the shelves, normal books, available tomes about Islam and other subjects. That gave me a flicker of hope that these soldiers didn’t know what they were looking for, and that maybe they might miss the most damning texts. They carried out trash bag after trash bag.

  The zaabit spoke sharply, “You must come with us now, Maagid Nawaz.”

  I knew that traveling to Egypt as a member of Hizb al-Tahrir, and to actively participate in recruitment, was going to be a high-risk activity. It was a different situation from the one I’d come across in the UK or Denmark. Even in Pakistan the organization wasn’t banned until 2003, after Musharraf’s purge of my army friends. Before I went to Alexandria, I’d prepared myself psychologically for what might happen. I discussed with the UK leadership the possibility that I might be arrested and tortured, and what my response should be.

  The HT policy was clear. I was to give my name and that I was a member of HT. It was important to state that—to show you had courage and principles. To deny your membership, even to save your skin, was an affront to your beliefs, cowardice in the face of tyranny. This was the only information you should give your interrogators: whatever they did to you, you were not to reveal any further details o
f the group’s activities. As far as I am aware, this remains the group’s policy even though it is a deeply unrealistic one.

  To give an interrogator that carrot—to stand there and say I’m in HT but I’m not going to tell you about it—is asking for trouble. Everyone has a threshold when it comes to torture, and the HT line is simply impossible to sustain. It would have been better not to admit membership at all and hope the interrogation didn’t go any further.

  HT’s policy was particularly absurd given the group’s response to a member’s arrest. While the arrested were told to stand tall, the group had an active policy not to support what they considered to be fallen soldiers. While the HT member is interrogated and tortured, HT would carry on as though that person was no longer their responsibility. Of course the group would make noises about its fallen members, but there would be no support officially provided by the group to the families. So while the HT member was under orders not to disown the group, the group would essentially disown the HT member.

  The reason that I was willing to put myself in such a dangerous position was because of the elements of HT’s teachings. In the numerous halaqahs I had attended over the years, the importance of sacrifice was drilled into me. Stories were told and retold about Prophets, companions, and martyrs who gave up everything in order to establish Islam. We were taught to believe that our struggle was so absolute that it was impossible to contemplate victory without blood being spilt. If that sacrifice was to be mine, I knew Allah would recompense me in the hereafter. I had considered the possibility of shahadah (martyrdom) and had reconciled myself to this outcome quite decisively. Never one to do things by halves, if the shahadah was in store for me, it would not only be Allah’s will, it would be my honor.

  The final part of my preparation was to discuss with Rabia what would happen if I got arrested. As a fellow member of HT, Rabia understood why I was doing what I was doing. We discussed all the consequences of my possible arrest, because the Aman al-Dawlah left no stone unturned when it came to extracting information. There were stories of wives and children being brought in front of arrested husbands, in order for him to watch them being tortured.

  The one advantage that Rabia and Ammar had in such a situation was that they had British passports. We came up with a plan to follow if I was arrested: Rabia was to get herself to the British Embassy without delay and to make sure that she left the country at the first opportunity. My arrest would mean an uncertain future for Rabia and Ammar—we knew my family would be given no support from HT while I was incarcerated. My sacrifice would be hers as well as my own. And in a certain sense, I’m still unsure who suffered more.

  As I was about to be taken away that night, I spoke to Rabia one last time, quietly and quickly, as they began tugging at my arms.

  “Do as we agreed,” I said, looking at her desperately straight in the eyes. “Do you understand?”

  Rabia looked at me that final time, stricken with grief, and nodded. I knew she understood. She knew she had to get to the consul in Alexandria and then get herself and Ammar out of the country quickly.

  “Where are you taking him?” Rabia suddenly asked the agent. “When are you bringing him back?”

  The agent looked a little surprised at her questioning but took it in his stride. “In three days’ time,” he said calmly.

  “And how do I get in contact with you?” she asked. “Who are you, anyway?”

  The agent smiled a little patronizingly at my wife. As if I carry a badge, he seemed to say. He wrote down a number and handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The number would turn out to be a false one. What she didn’t know was that our phone socket had been ripped out. A number that wouldn’t work, to be called on a phone she couldn’t use. I later learned that she had to go out into the streets at 4 a.m., knowing no Arabic, begging people to let her use a phone to call the consul.

  Rabia’s questioning stirred up something within me.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said. “You can’t just come in here in the middle of the night like this. You haven’t told me what I am being arrested for. You haven’t read me my rights. I haven’t seen any ID. Do you even have a warrant to search my flat?”

  The agent listened to my diatribe with a look of faint amusement. When I had finished, he laughed and shook his head, like I just didn’t get it.

  “Welcome to Egypt, Maagid. We do as we please,” he said with a sneer.

  The calmness of his demeanor then cracked. Ammar’s crying, which had been incessant, was the last straw. He came over to me and wrenched Ammar from my arms. It was a flash of temper, all the more brutal for the fact that it was the little boy who bore the brunt of it. To have Ammar’s hand ripped away from me like that in those final moments was the most painful thing. He looked me straight in the eyes, bawling, his arms outstretched as the zaabit shoved him toward Rabia. That image is still scorched in my memory. This was to be my parting image, and the last time I was to see him, or his mother, for a long time.

  The zaabit then grabbed my arm, quite aggressively, and I remember thinking that this was the first time since the police had burst in that anyone had touched me.

  “Right,” he snapped. “Let’s go.”

  There was no chance to say goodbye, not even a final glance back as he half pushed me through my front door, frog-marching me down the stairs to the police van below. She didn’t know it yet, but that night Rabia was to lose her husband forever.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Ghimamah Has No Rules

  The cold of the night air smacked me in the face. I could see that the whole area had been cordoned off: there were more armed police standing at the front of my building, further vans and cars sealing the road. The zaabit spat an instruction in Arabic to a shaweesh—police conscript. Kalbishuh—cuff him, he said, and my arms were duly shoved behind my back. I could feel the sharpness of the metal scoring my wrists as I was shoved into the van. A heavy hand pushed me forward on the back of my head, and it was a balancing act not to stumble on the steps as I got in. A horseshoe of wooden benches ran along the sides. U’ad—sit, someone barked. I sat in the middle as the benches filled up with shaweeshiya, the van swaying each time another jumped in.

  The zaabit shouted another instruction as the back doors of the van slammed shut, “ihna mashiyeen, ghammimooh.” I didn’t understand this but soon found out. The shaweesh next to me pulled out a rag, a dark, dirty, stained piece of cloth, and motioned at me to lean forward. It was a blindfold, and now, for the first time, as the gift of sight was taken from me, I began to feel petrified, complete fear—the kind that cannot be described but only felt. The rag was wrapped tightly round my face, tied roughly at the back. I could feel the pressure of the cloth pushing against my eyeballs, the unpleasant odor battling the lingering traces of Ammar’s baby talc.

  Most of all, there was the unremitting blackness as the driver started the engine and began to pull away. It now dawned on me that in the back of this van, with heavily armed shaweeshiya surrounding me, I was powerless to use my hands to stop them if they attacked me, and I would not see it coming. This was helplessness. My remaining senses began to strain for any clues of sudden movement. The flicker of confidence I’d had in the flat seemed part of a different world. I was totally at their mercy, and I knew it.

  The ghimamah, or blindfold, answered the question that the zaabit had ignored. I knew now that I was in the hands of Aman al-Dawlah. If they had been ordinary police, I’d have been starting down the civil jurisdiction route. I’d be processed and deported, my rights as a British citizen granting me some semblance of respect. Egypt, however, was a country with two parallel judicial systems; the second, the Emergency Law track, wasn’t bound by any rules. The ghimamah told me this. You don’t blindfold someone unless you’re taking them to a place that’s off the radar.

  My m
ind, as always, began wondering about details:

  The ghimamah. It’s a filthy, torn piece of rag; it’s not even a proper blindfold. That offends me. I’m worth more than a rag.

  I wonder where it’s been. I wonder how many other petrified souls have shared this yard of cloth. Their sweat and mine will now share a common foe.

  Actually the fact that it’s a rag frightens me. Rags are unofficial, unaccountable.

  Real blindfolds have to be purchased and processed with receipts, in the cold light of day. Rags are free of rules.

  My body began to tremble uncontrollably. As if the odor of my ghimamah had finally defeated Ammar’s last act of defense for me, the scent of his baby talc on my neck, and the odor assaulted my brain, my nervous system. I am in deep trouble. Subhan Allah! I am in serious deep trouble. As it began beating its war drums my heart didn’t want to surrender to the rag. Preparing to defend my body from whatever may come, I began breathing out, deeply, to try to calm myself.

  I thought of how odd my twenty-four years of life had been. Essex, Newcastle, London, Lahore, Raheem Yar Khan, Copenhagen, Cairo, Alexandria, Amman, and al-Quds all flashed before me. I thought of Tai Ammi and her stories, Patrick, and the unintended path that his small act of racism had set that scared, lonely boy upon.

  I thought of my first girlfriend Sarah crying on that first day at Cecil Jones after I told her there were too many new girls to choose from.

  I thought of N.W.A, and “Fuck tha Police,” and my stomach turned as it struck me that only those with the luxury to speak could afford to be so defiant, and to get rich out of being so.