by Maajid Nawaz
“Please,” the prisoner begged. “Please not that.”
“Did I say you could speak?” the guard snapped. The prisoner, by now, was whimpering. And with a snorting shakheer, the guard barked: “Put it in your mouth . . .”
“Number forty!” My moment was coming closer as I struggled to remember my prayers. But my attempts to focus were interrupted by the brother next to me, the brother I was leaning against, who by this point was gently beginning to cry.
“Brother,” he whispered to me, “akhi, I’m next. I, I don’t know what to do.”
“Sssh,” I said quietly, trying to listen for a guard was nearby. If anyone heard us talking to each other, we’d both be beaten.
“Help me, akhi,” the prisoner whimpered. “They’re going to torture me, I know they are and my number’s next. Help me for Allah’s sake.”
But what could I say to this brother of mine to ease his pain while I couldn’t even find a way to comfort my own soul? Poor man, he’s next; at least I have another few minutes for myself. Let me try to help him.
“Calm yourself, my brother,” I gently whispered. “You need to be strong now. Remember you are here fee sabeelillah. You will be justly rewarded for the sacrifice you are about to make.”
The prisoner, number forty-one, continued, “But I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get through.”
It was heartbreaking to hear a proud man broken. His sobs were the sound of someone whom al-Gihaz had worked its twisted magic on. He was a wreck. The only thing I could think to do was to recite a passage from the Qur’an for him, in the hope that it would give him the courage he so desperately needed. Slowly, and ever so quietly, so low that only he and I could hear, I willed my voice to utter the sounds of Allah’s words. It was a risk, I knew, especially as it was our turn next to be called. If we’d been caught speaking, we’d have been accused of collusion, and any punishment meted out would have been that much worse.
What I recited to him was a passage called al-Burooj: an ancient story about a boy and a king. It is especially pertinent for those who find their eeman being tested. The king demands that everyone in the village worship him. But a boy, who converted to believe in the one true God, refuses. The boy stands by his belief and is persecuted by the king for it. Like the others in the town who stand with the boy by the one true faith, he is thrown into a pit and burned alive. It took the use of all my energy to get my voice out:
I swear by the mansions of the stars,
And by the promised day,
And by the bearer of witness, and those against whom witness is borne,
Cursed be the makers of the pit,
Of the fire fueled, and by where they sat,
They will surely bear witness to what they did to the believers,
Persecuting them for no other cause, but that they believed in Allah, the Mighty, the Praised,
Whose is the Kingdom of the heavens and earth, and Allah is a witness unto all things . . .
I recited the entire passage to him in Arabic, in the low, rhythmic tones of recitation, or qira’ah. Swallowing after each line to catch my breath, control my palpitations, and calm my fear: hoping that my words would somehow summon the very angels of our Lord, descended by His command in a righteous rage to protect us from these animals. Like a child, his crying slowly stopped, his sobs drifted further and further apart as he listened intently to my voice, to Allah’s words. The beauty of each ayah, each verse, seemed to me to sparkle ever more in the grit and grime of that dungeon.
“May Allah reward you, akhi,” the prisoner said as soon I had finished. “I don’t know who you are, but you are a good man. Wallahi, you are a good man.”
“Number forty-one!” the guard shouted.
“And so are you,” I whispered. And as I lay there, my ghimamah soaking up my tears and itching my eyes, the brother was hauled to his feet and taken to be tortured.
Now I was alone. When the numbers had been lower down, I wondered if a phone call might come before they got to me. Perhaps the British Consul would have found out where I was. The guards would have been told to get number forty-two up and out of there, before anything happened. But as the roll call got higher, I knew that there would be no hope of escape.
But I still had my eeman. Helping number forty-one—I never learned his name nor saw him again—had stirred me. It showed to me that for all my fear, I still had my core strength. I was not yet a broken man. I was not weeping and begging number forty-three for help. And I had a plan, too. For while I was lying there, my hands had not been idle. Little by little, I had worked away at the rag behind my back. It was loose now. I was holding the knot in place with my fist: otherwise, my hands were free.
All my life, I had been in situations involving stabbings and assaults, but not once had I been the one beaten. I had never been forced into a humiliating position where I had no choice but to take a beating. It had happened in front of me but never to me. And I decided that I wasn’t going to let it happen now. Somewhere in the vicinity, I could hear the tortured screams of number . . . brother forty-one.
If they try that with me, I thought to myself, they’ll have to kill me for the wrath I intend to unleash upon them. They may have guns and torture machines, but I’ve got surprise on my side. My hands are free. I braced myself, and decided that at the moment of torture I would jump on my interrogator. I would jump on him and simply bite down into his neck, and bite and bite until they would have to shoot me dead to make me stop. I would die fighting, without pain, without suffering, with glory.
It sounds surreal now. But al-Gihaz is a surreal place, and listening to the screams of grown men pleading over forty-eight hours can do surreal things to one’s mind. It’s as if the outside world—the normal rules—no longer existed. The dehumanizing nature of the regime turns even the most rational minds to their animalistic instincts. Like a tiger in a corner, I was seriously prepared to fight viciously, ruthlessly—to sacrifice my own life rather than suffer the indignation the other prisoners had been put through.
The screaming suddenly stopped. I heard the guards drag brother forty-one back, body limp like a sack of potatoes, until they dumped him beside me. Stillness. My time had come. I was next. And I steadied myself in preparation for my number to be called. The anxiety at that moment is not something I will ever, ever wish upon my worst enemy. The seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes turned to irrelevance as time drifted out of the window, my mind running from the sheer inhumanity of my situation. The war drums of my heart began to gather pace, and I prepared myself for the last moments of my life. Be strong, Maajid, Allah is with you, be strong and embrace your martyrdom.
Itnain wa arba’een!
There it was. Number forty-two. My whole body literally shuddered. It is my turn. Number forty-two. Odd, I thought, as my mind wandered off into that all-too-familiar place of randomness. Forty-two is my age, twenty-four, but backward. How strange. I wonder if I’ll ever reach forty-two years old. I gathered the strength to speak. My voice came out weaker than I would have liked:
“Na’am—Yes.”
And I stood up.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Assalaamu Alaykum, You’ve Just Come out of Hell
To be asked to voluntarily walk toward your own torture is the cruelest of requests. Why can’t they just carry me? Each step is a personal betrayal. My body is convulsing in revulsion against my commands. Every instinct is screaming at me to turn the other way, but I am expected to walk on. Try standing in the middle of a highway watching an oncoming bus without flinching—that’s hard. Now try voluntarily walking toward that bus instead of stepping out of the way: impossible.
My legs are buckling under each step, but I force compliance and walk on. Guard, your chaperoning hand that helps me walk blindly to my own torture feels perversely merciful; for
how could I avoid stepping on my brothers in the corridor were it not for you? Alas, without sight I cannot help but feel so disgustingly dependent on you. Now it is hard to breathe. Fighting to stay hidden away deep within me, even my breath fears coming out to face my torturer. My heart is attempting to escape the cage that is my chest, and my mind is beginning to shut down. I am in shock. Ya Allah, I need you right now. If any mercy I have ever shown to anyone has amounted to any value in your esteem, then send me your angels now to shield me from these monsters. I am trying to be brave for you, my Lord, but the truth is I am scared. Help me, my Lord, for I am very scared.
The interrogation room. I can hear my interrogator in front of me, his electrocution device crackling in anticipation. My whole adult life I’ve spent in preparation for this moment. This agony. Training my soul to accept what my body cannot. Now, I am so tense and tight that my jaw begins to ache. What will happen next? Will he hit me hard to warm me up? Will he attack me without warning, as an indication that he is brazen?
If I were him, if I had sold my soul to the devil in this way, if I was going to do unspeakable things to my helpless victims, that’s how I would do it. In a terrible, unpredictable, twisted way. Why sell your soul only to be useless at being evil? My mind is racing. The possibilities are too many. Come on! Do it properly, man! I can’t stand the wait any longer, just get it over with. But I waited, and waited, and it didn’t come. Instead, I heard the shuffle of feet and the door close.
I had assumed that they would just attack you with the electricity there and then. What I learned later from other prisoners was that there was a whole process to electrocution. They stripped the brothers naked, pulled them down onto the floor, pinned a chair on top of them, and while someone sat on that chair to hold them down, they electrocuted them via their teeth or genitalia, or both. At the time though, I didn’t know any of this, or else I’d have known I wasn’t about to be electrocuted. But I didn’t know, so I just stood there, waiting for the impact, my hands ready to be released, preparing to pounce on my interrogator’s neck and bite it until death came to me.
I heard the squeak of a chair as someone sat down.
“Maagid Nawaz?” This was a different person from the one who had interrogated me back in Alexandria.
“Yes,” I replied. The effort it took to make my voice audible was a battle in itself. At this moment, I felt brave just by being able to speak without breaking down.
“So tell me, Maagid. Tell me about Hizb al-Tahrir in Egypt.”
I swallowed hard. Staying defiant in Alexandria, without forty-eight hours of listening to torture, was one thing. But now I saw, I heard, I knew what they were capable of. You will stand among the Sahabah, Maajid—the Companions of the Prophet, do not give up now. The shaheed—the martyr—will not die. Like a green bird flying beneath the ‘arsh (the Throne of Almighty Allah), you will live under His shade. You will be that happy little boy once again. Do not give up.
“My name is Maajid Nawaz,” I replied in English, in whatever level of voice I could muster, which probably wasn’t very loud at all. I was still remembering my training, but barely.
“I am a member of Hizb al-Tahrir in Britain. I am in . . .”
A pause as I gasped for air.
“. . . in Egypt to study.”
I could hear the quality in my voice: though the words I was speaking were defiant in meaning, the way I was saying them was pleading. I scolded myself: Be a man, what’s wrong with you, is this how Yasir and Sumayyah, after whom you named your child, behaved? Stand strong, man!
The interrogator said nothing. He let the silence unsettle me. Then, in Arabic: “OK, Maagid. I think you should listen to this.” My interrogator got up and opened the door. As the door opened, the sound of screams flooded in from a nearby room. As I heard the screams and pleas, trying not to listen, a terrifying recognition dawned upon me. The person being tortured was pleading in English.
“Kallim ‘Arabi!” the interrogator shouted back. “Speak Arabic!”
“I’m trying,” the tortured soul replied, attempting through the shouts in badly broken, barely understandable sentences.
My God, I thought. That sounds like Reza. They’re torturing Reza Pankhurst.
Subhan Allah! My last trump card, my British citizenship, really did mean nothing to these bastards. If they’re torturing Reza, then there’s no reason they won’t torture me. Poor Reza, how on earth was a man supposed to speak in any language, let alone a foreign one, through the pain of electrocution!
The door to the interrogation room slammed shut again. The interrogator sensed from my reaction that I knew who was being tortured. Now he was right up to me, lowering his voice with menace.
“You hear that, Maagid? You hear what we are doing to your brother? Don’t think we can’t do that to you. For your own sake, stop these games and start speaking to me in Arabic.” He was shouting at me now. “Start talking to me about Hizb al-Tahrir . . .” He spat the name of the group out in disgust. “. . . Everything! I want to know everything about your group in Egypt!”
The next thing I knew, I felt his fist in my stomach. A big, deep, powerful punch; it took all my strength for it not to knock me over. My mind went black and I struggled to breathe as the wind left my lungs. Somewhere in my distant memory, during more innocent days, I remembered that I hailed from a place where someone called Patrick had done this to me. But I had survived, I had lived to tell the tale and see Patrick cower in fear before me many years later. And that memory brought me back up with strength and a renewed eeman. Allah is with me. I see it now. This is His sign! Allah never abandoned me. He has been with me all along. And now I knew what I needed to say next to my enemy.
“I have nothing more to say to you. Do whatever you want.”
And I loosened my hands in preparation for my attack. To this day, I find it hard to believe that I actually stood there and said this to him. There are many moments in my life, and in this story, I am ashamed of telling. But knowing that I uttered this one feeble sentence on that day fills me with pride. Ammar will surely be old enough one day to read these words, and right here he will know that his father tried with all his strength and all his might to be a noble, honorable man. Because he was named Abu Ammar, named after martyrs. And the rest is for the world to judge.
My enemy paused. I could hear him pacing. Then, to my surprise, almost as an anticlimax to what I had just embraced as the inevitable, he said in a dismayed tone, “I’m sending you back to your place. You have twelve hours to think about what you just said to me. And if, after those twelve hours, you still don’t tell me the truth, be in absolutely no doubt that I will torture you in ways you have never imagined. Is that clear?”
I said nothing. The interrogator came close again, close enough that I felt his breath on me. Behind him I could hear the door being opened, and more footsteps entering the room. “You know, you’ve got such a nice face, Maagid,” he hissed. “It would be a shame to have to ruin it.”
With that, I was shoved and manhandled down the corridor. The guard was laughing.
“Such a nice face,” he repeated. “He likes you. You know what we do to people we like, don’t you?” The implication was clear as he dumped me back down on the floor. And he left me with that thought, to fester and rot in the darkest corners of my imagination.
The beatings continued. The numbers kept on being called, higher and higher: up into the hundreds.
I replayed in my head again and again the comments that the interrogator had said to me. Such a nice face. I remembered the pleas of the prisoner being assaulted in the cell behind me. What was going on? Why hadn’t he just tortured me and got it over with? Why was I being spared in this way? I began to feel guilt, as if somehow I had escaped unfairly while all the others, even my brothers from the UK, were treated in the same, brutal way.
I had been in situa
tions before where I had escaped by the skin of my teeth. Matt’s stabbing by neo-Nazi hooligans in Southend was meant for me. The murder conviction in Newham was almost me. Somehow, I had always managed to get away with it. Was Allah saving me for something else? But as the night continued, punctuated by the sharp screams and sound of electricity ripping through the souls of men, it was a hope I was finding it increasingly difficult to cling to.
In my exhaustion, both mental and physical, I entered a sleep-deprived daze. I was in danger of losing it. The regular roll call prevented us from sleeping, and by this time it must have been three and a half days since my arrest in Alexandria. Alexandria, Rabia, Ammar, how long ago that all seemed now. How much had changed in these few days. I knew already that I would never be the same again, that Rabia had lost the Maajid who woke her gently from her slumber in order to spare her the ordeal of being woken by guns. Then it came. The phone rang. It was like civilization was calling to catch up on the denizens of some type of underworld. Like in a dream, I could hear it ringing down the corridor, fuzzy and out of focus at first. But when the guard started speaking I immediately zoomed in on what he was saying.
“Aywa effandim—yes, sir,” he said with a sharp formality. “Correct, we have the five of them here . . . Aywa, I will, sir, right away.”
The five of them. My alertness returned. My mind was light with the possibility. The five of them—he had to be talking about the foreigners. I knew there was me, Reza, Hassan, and Hiroshi there. I’d figured that if Reza was there, then Ian Nisbet was probably there as well. He’s the fifth! My heart leapt at the thought that we were the five. Rabia must have got hold of the consul.
“Itnain wa arba’een.”
My number was called again. Taken back to the interrogation room, I was positioned to stand in the same place as before. The interrogator arrived. This time, though, he didn’t sound as aggressive as before. Disappointed, perhaps.