Radical

by Maajid Nawaz

  “Maagid, well, well, hazzak sa’eed—you are a very lucky man.”

  That was all he said. I was bundled out of the room again, and then, to my excitement, escorted the opposite way along the corridor. I could hear the screams from the torture rooms receding behind me, getting fainter and farther away.

  A door opened in front of me.

  Thank you, Door, you are my door to life, to civilization. I will owe you a great deal, Door. My apologies for stepping through you like this. Instead I should be garnishing you in celebration as my hero.

  Then, that sweet smell, the taste of fresh night air. The real world. Life. Civilization.

  Back in the police van, my new guard was an ordinary shaweesh again, rather than the state security zaabit. He spoke to me gently, “Assalaamu alaykum, you’ve just come out of hell,” as he helped me up the steps into the van. There was no menace in what he was saying. It took me a second to recognize the tone. Then I realized. He was just being friendly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Luxury of an Audience

  As I guessed, it was indeed the foreign prisoners who were being taken away: Hassan, Hiroshi, Ian, Reza, and me. Once the van pulled away, I broke the silence and started asking after the others. The relief of having just escaped hell itself overcame us. Each of us began thanking Allah to be alive and congratulating each other on getting out.

  I quickly discovered that apart from Reza, the other foreigners had also escaped electrocution. Reza was in a different place from the rest of us and would remain there for the remainder of my days talking with him. Eventually, blindfolds and hand rags removed, we pulled up at the Public Prosecutor’s Office. To be able to see again, after so many days, was a liberating experience. I found myself looking at anything and everything. How beautiful the world suddenly was when the ability to look upon it had been taken from you! And we were given food—something to eat that wasn’t a hard lump of salted cheese. We had pita bread stuffed with ful, the sturdy staple bean mash of Egyptians; we wolfed them down, grateful for such small pleasures.

  We were each assigned a public prosecutor. Mine was different from my previous interrogators. There’s an Aesop’s fable about the sun and the wind, in which the two weathers compete to see who can get a man to take his coat off: the wind uses brute force to try to blow it off and fails; the sun makes the man feel warm and relaxed and he removes his coat. The more the interrogators shouted at me, the more I buckled down and prepared for a fight. It was just how I had grown up in Essex; that’s how we survived back in the day. But in the warmth and civility of that office I felt comfortable talking to the prosecutor. His name was Walid Minshawi, a suited, rather obese, educated man. Minshawi spoke about how he’d visited London on many occasions, and that his sister lived there. He played his “good cop” routine down to perfection.

  “Do you know what they just did to us? They’re torturing people down there!” I exclaimed.

  “That’s a shame,” Minshawi said, “but if you don’t cooperate with me, we’ll have to send you back there. That decision is yours to make. If you refuse to cooperate, then I’ll have little choice.”

  “I need a lawyer.”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary.”

  “What about the British Consul?” I asked. “When do I get to see him?”

  “They know you’re here,” he said.

  The consul should have been allowed to make contact with us within forty-eight hours. The Egyptians had been incompetent at best, mendacious at worst in getting back to them. But in the warmth of that office, and the relative civility of Minshawi’s approach, I began to talk. I answered his questions in Arabic and in detail. I explained to him why I was in Egypt, discussed my studies in Alexandria, and emphasized at length that I simply wasn’t there to propagate HT’s message. Minshawi listened intently to my answers, then looked across to the scribe and told him which points he wanted written down.

  “But that’s not what I said,” I would protest.

  “It’s OK, we’re writing what you said, don’t worry.”

  I found myself constantly correcting how my answers were being recorded, telling the scribe what he should write. But Minshawi would just laugh in his cheery, rotund way, and carry on. After four hours of questioning, each of our prosecutors wrapped things up, presumably at dawn. Without a chance to say goodbye, Hiroshi, my al-Quds companion, was released into the streets of Cairo that very morning. The prosecutors must have realized that his only misfortune was to have befriended me. I never saw him again.

  For Reza, Ian, Hassan, and me, the situation was somewhat different. We were handcuffed—metal, not rags (it’s strange the way that such small details make one feel relief)—and driven in a police van to what we later discovered was Mazrah Tora Prison. There we were placed in habs infiradi (solitary confinement) away from the main prison cell blocks.

  After returning from hell itself, battered bodies lying over more battered bodies, the relief of having my own little space again was overwhelming. These cells were bare. They had no bed, no blanket, no light, no toilet, no sanitation, but this was my space, alone, where no one was questioning me any more, a place without screams and electrocution, a place where I could rest my weary head without fear of being beaten for oversleeping roll call, and so right now, in this moment, it was home. I had been awake for the best part of four or five days, and been put through the most extreme psychological distress. I was still in the same clothes I’d been wearing on my night out in Alexandria, and I was spent. I took my shoes off, used them as a pillow, and just slept on that concrete floor.

  As the week dragged on, going back and forth to the prosecutor’s office, I became hyperaware of my conditions. The fact that there was no toilet meant that I had to use a corner of my cell. I became aware of the cockroaches that covered the floor. And how hard the bare concrete floor was. And, having bitten on grit and insects in my food on more than one occasion, how tasteless the gruel being pushed through my cell door each day was. And how ever so lonely it was to be trapped in solitary confinement.

  After seven days, the public prosecutor handed me a statement to sign. How much correlation it had to the answers I had given I had no idea. It was handwritten in impenetrable Arabic, and I could make nothing out of it. I literally had no idea what I was putting my name to. But the thought of being sent back to al-Gihaz was too much to contemplate refusing. Walid Minshawi had his way. I signed it.

  Only after the questioning had finished were we allowed to see the British Consul. Gordon Brown* was a career civil servant in his late forties, well-meaning and sympathetic, but it was probably hard to offend his hosts without incurring diplomatic consequences. We were the first British political prisoners to be held in Egypt, and no one was quite sure what the rules of engagement were. In the post-9/11 world, it was unclear what was and wasn’t permissible. From that initial meeting, it was clear that our case was of a different dimension from the ones that usually came across his desk.

  * Not future UK prime minister Gordon Brown.

  Brown apologized for taking so long to see us. “We simply had no idea where you were being held,” he said. This, it turned out, wasn’t the only information the consul hadn’t known about: Brown had no idea as to why we were being detained or what charges we faced. He was as lost as we were, and it was hugely dispiriting.

  “What about our families?” I asked. Here, at least, there was a sliver of good news. Brown told me that Rabia and Ammar were safely back in the UK. But that was the only concrete answer we got. Cooperation between the British, American, and Egyptian intelligence authorities was clearly going on in the wake of September 11. A number of times in my interrogation with Minshawi, he had introduced details like, “We understand from the British that . . .”, or “American sources tell us . . .” So even if the British Consul wanted to help us on a personal level, their i
nstructions were probably not to upset an important ally in the War on Terror.

  The night after Gordon Brown’s visit, we were taken out of our cells and blindfolded and handcuffed again. As if to remind us of our place, we were frog-marched into the prison offices and interviewed again by Aman al-Dawlah. I recognized the interrogator immediately as the one who had questioned me back in Alexandria.

  “We just want to be certain you’re telling us the truth,” the zaabit said. I asked him how long we were going to stay in prison.

  “A week or two,” he replied.

  “That long?” I asked aghast.

  The zaabit and his colleague burst into laughter. They must have known that a week was nothing inside Mazrah Tora. Some prisoners had been detained for years, even decades, under Egypt’s Emergency Law, without so much as a charge. These were the mu’taqaleen. At the time of my arrest, 25,000 mu’taqaleen lined Egypt’s prison system, all political detainees. I realized much later on, only after befriending some of these mu’taqaleen in Mazrah Tora, how green I must have sounded to the zaabit, fretting over a week in prison.

  We were kept in solitary confinement, in those bare cells and sordid conditions, for over three months before we were ever charged. In the arid summer heat, it was difficult not to be overwhelmed by the sheer helplessness of my situation. The Aman al-Dawlah was the worst of both worlds: brutal and incredibly incompetent. I became consumed by this twisted combination of fear and boredom, which swirled around inside me until it became pure rage.

  If driving to the African student’s house that night of Ayotunde’s murder had been my lowest moment, this was my darkest. With no one else to talk to and nothing to do, my mind began to wander. My cell had no lights, so once it was dark, it was dark. And as I tried to sleep at night on that hard concrete floor, I found myself flinching and flexing in case of cockroaches. I missed Rabia, I missed Ammar, I began to miss Southend; the life of that “Click”-suit-wearing B-boy seemed a distant dream now. I may have only been twenty-four years old, but from now on I would forever feel forty-two.

  My mind began screaming out for activity, pleading with me for attention like Ammar used to. Boredom was on the verge of defeating me. I looked around, seeking anything to keep myself occupied, but all I had were the small stones on the floor. Tai Ammi! What did Tai Ammi do when I was unable to sleep, back in those days that seemed so distant now? That’s it. She would make up stories. Those stories that sent my mind on adventures in magical lands of beautiful princesses and noble heroes. Hey, stone, how are you, man? I name you Freddie-Fred, and you, stone, I name you Johnny-John, you know, after the old way, like Flavor Flav of Public Enemy. Yeeeeah, bwoyy! Freddie-Fred, can you beat Johnny-John in a race? Let’s see. Ready, get-set . . . go! And with a flick of my finger I would project the two stones, over and over again, across my cell floor, to see who won the most races.

  And there were plenty of times in that dingy cell, during the darkest hour, when the only sounds in the still of night were the crickets somewhere far off in the reeds, that my mind turned to revenge. I wanted absolute, pure, and unadulterated vengeance upon Aman al-Dawlah. “My name is Maajid Nawaz, I am a member of Hizb al-Tahrir!” Rubbish! Did that stop Alaa’ from having his teeth and testicles electrocuted for weeks and months till I could hear him pleading like a child? Did that stop Hisham from Kafr al-Shaikh being hanged by his arms till his joints gave way and he begged for mercy while his tormentors snorted shakheer at him like pigs? Did it stop the rape and electrocution of prisoners’ wives right before their very eyes? Did any of it help Reza while he was tortured just for being unable to respond in Arabic? And why wasn’t I tortured? Why was I spared this pain? Are they playing with my mind? Was Combat 18 playing with my mind? Where’s Matt now? You took a stabbing for me. To protect me. What did I ever do for you?

  Nonviolence? Nonviolence is only for those who have the luxury of an audience! An audience is an amazing thing. If people fear what you may do, if they fear the masses you may incite, they listen to you before you do it. What they really respect is your propensity to hurt them. The more you can hurt them, the more they respect you. But if people laugh at your pain, mock your suffering, goad you and prod you, knowing that you can do nothing, except sit back and say, “My name is Maajid Nawaz, Maajid, Maajid, Maajid Nawaz, I am a member of Hizb al-Tahrir” . . . Maajid! Maajid! Then what do we have left? Our own government couldn’t even give a damn. La’anatullahi ‘alaykum—May Allah curse you!

  You preach nonviolence while you fund Mubarak and sell him arms. You train his men, and shake his hand with your bloodstained palms? Well, now I refuse to play by any rules. Let Nasim work for the Khilafah—he doesn’t need me. But Walid Minshawi, the thought of vengeance upon your ilk right now is what feeds me. How many years do you think you can keep me? I am but young and still so full of fire, it will take you many years to defeat me. You underestimated the flame that burns within me. And even as you catch me and eventually subdue me, I will kill as many of you as possible before you take me. And you will come to know how I went crazy, because of the poison that your own hands fed me.

  And in the confines of that solitary cell, this all made perfect sense.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Penguin Is Hit by Slippers

  When we were finally charged, we came to hear about it second-hand. Some of the other prisoners had been listening to the radio, BBC Arabic, and they caught the announcement. Immediately they shouted the news over the wall, and the shaweesh guarding our cell told us what had happened. A few days later we received another visit from Gordon Brown, who confirmed the charges in detail. Hassan was not charged. He was released soon after and deported back to London. Reza, Ian, and I had been charged on two counts: first, for propagating in speech and writing the ideas of a banned organization called Hizb al-Tahrir; secondly, for possessing literature of said organization. Additionally, Reza also had a third charge: possession of a computer printer.

  If our situation hadn’t been so serious, the charges would have been laughable. Reza was facing a prison sentence for having a printer. None of us had been charged with what would have made sense, something that in our interviews we had all defiantly admitted to: being members of a banned organization. Instead, the charges were somehow more insidious: they were to do with discussing ideas and reading books—the right to free expression. This wasn’t about HT or about Islamism; it was about something far more fundamental. It was about liberty, one of the basic tenets upon which civilized society is supposed to be based. Judge us by our Islam, and we will judge you by your freedoms.

  The charges exposed Egypt, and the Emergency Laws of President Mubarak, for the police state that it was. We knew by now that our chances of getting off were nonexistent—they could make stick whatever they wanted to. We were looking at years in prison. By charging us in this way, it stripped them of any sense of moral authority. It made us prisoners of conscience. It meant that Amnesty International could take up our cause. And for Western leaders, it created uncomfortable questions for their entire Middle East strategy; they were supporting a regime that was torturing and imprisoning British citizens for “speech and writing.”

  Brown looked embarrassed as he discussed the charges with us. I could see him clearly for what he was: a career civil servant in an impossible position, the man in the bureaucratic chain who was seeing firsthand the human cost of the “price worth paying.” There was a war on—the War on Terror. The first casualty, as the saying goes, is truth. I looked him in the eye and saw that he knew what we knew: Mubarak’s Egypt was no great friend or ally. His state was built on the opposite of what the West was meant to hold most dear.

  The trial, if one can call it something so legitimate, lasted the best part of two years. It would run for a week or two at a time, then there’d be a wait of another couple of months before the next session was called. There were twenty-six defendants being tried at
the same time. In the courtroom, all dressed in white because we had not yet been convicted, we were held in a cage in the corner, like animals. The cage was so cramped that we would have to take turns sitting on the few benches provided, while the rest of us stood squashed round the sides.

  Our group was taken to the courtroom each day in a convoy of blue police vans; the other defendants, all Egyptians, were being held in a mixture of other prisons. Each of us would be handcuffed to a guard for the journey. But rather than go in silence, we wanted to show Mubarak and his acolytes that he had not defeated us. We would not go quietly, we wanted the world to see us, and the world was watching. Each time we went in and out of that courtroom, we let off a huge cacophony of chants, rallying, and sloganizing. The TV cameras, BBC, al-Jazeera, and others, all of them loved the spectacle we were creating.

  “Usqut, usqut Mubarak!”—“Down, down Mubarak!”

  “Laa nakhafu lawmata laa’im, al-Khilafatu fardun da’im”—“We don’t fear those who blame us, the Khilafah will forever be an obligation!”

  We would shout these slogans in Arabic, all around Cairo’s streets, as we were transported in those blue metal police vans in the scorching heat of summer, drenched in sweat. To speak so openly against Mubarak while under arrest was a shocking thing for Egyptians to hear at the time. Most would stand open-mouthed and gape as we passed, some would raise their fists in salute. Many broke down in tears of sympathy right there in the middle of the street. Anyone who caught a glimpse of our regular convoys in the streets of Cairo in 2002 will remember the sheer pandemonium we caused. After the total defeat of the jihadists in 1999, no one dared denounce Mubarak in public the way we did. Several years before the Egyptian people found the confidence to stand together in Tahrir Square, we were hoping to inspire the courage and confidence it would take for them to do exactly that. We wanted people in the streets to think: if they can do it from their prison vans, we can do it from our streets.