Season of Martyrdom

by Jamal Naji

  Rasha immediately put all the responsibility on me, for not paying enough attention to them, not spending enough time with them and not taking care of them.

  “That blessing is yours,” I said sharply. “You’re the one who spends the most time with them. So why are they acting this way?”

  She looked me directly in the eye and said, “I’ve done what I can, but they have a devious bloodline.”

  I was furious. I screamed at her and scolded her. I was in a rage and started threatening her and breaking everything I could get my hands on – plates, glasses, pots and pans. Suhayl came running from his room and stood between us, stopping us from swinging at each other.

  That fight led to a rift between us that lasted many days. It was useful because I really needed Rasha to stop asking me about the Basha and about what was going on with me. That need fortified me and gave me the ability to persevere while she avoided me and gave me the silent treatment.

  She was too smart, however, not to figure out my scheme. She made up with me after four days and immediately went back to questioning me.

  That was the first time she had ever been the one to apologize first.

  Muntaha al-Rayyeh

  Ten years have passed since al-Walid left.

  He contacted me only once, when he found out Nael had died of a brain aneurism. He very casually conveyed his condolences, without shedding a tear. He was cold.

  “May God have mercy on his soul,” he said. “He was an upright man and carried out his religious duties with loyalty and dedication. But this is God’s wisdom and will. May Paradise be his abode, with God’s permission.”

  I asked him how he was doing and he told me he was living the purest moments of his life. Then he fell silent. I thought he must be upset about Nael’s death.

  “What’s wrong, al-Walid?” I asked. “Why don’t you say something?”

  “I was going to ask you about a certain matter,” he said hesitantly.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Nothing, Mother,” he answered tersely. “Nothing.”

  He was having difficulty speaking. Maybe he thought my phone was bugged. He didn’t extend the conversation and I didn’t get his phone number. He didn’t own a cell phone and didn’t care for them either. That’s what he had told me, anyway.

  Most likely the news of Nael’s death reached him by way of his sheikh friends at the Swayleh mosque. They were associated with the mujahideen, according to what Nael had told me.

  A man who must have been around fifty years old came to see me at the clothing store in Swayleh. All I knew about him was that his name was Sari and he was heavy set and fair skinned. He had thick hair parted on the right and a heavy mustache, which, like his hair, was black and speckled with silver-gray. And he spoke with confidence, though he was constantly looking all around himself.

  He said he had come on behalf of Fawaz Basha.

  “And who is Fawaz Basha?” I asked.

  He said he had entrusted something into my custody.

  “He has entrusted something into my custody and I don’t know who he is?” I asked.

  He looked me in the eye and said, “Mrs Umm al-Walid, I am talking about what Fawaz Basha entrusted to you on the trip to Paris, more than thirty years ago!”

  I held back my astonishment and asked, “What did he entrust to me?”

  He glanced over at the door to the store, then back at me. “The Basha’s son. Where is he now?”

  Then he proceeded to inform me that he knew all about what had transpired between Fawaz and me, and about my previous employment at the Malco Company, and the trip to Paris, and the son who was born seven months after my marriage. He told me it was in my best interest to answer his questions in order to keep my secret buried. Then he interjected a quick question, “I’m going to make things easy for you. Your son, Walid, where is he now?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  He pursed his lips, opened his eyes wide and raised his eyebrows. “‘The messenger’s duty is but to convey the message.’vi I’ve given you my advice.”

  Darrar al-Ghoury

  I didn’t know what secret lay behind the alarming task the man called Sari hired me to do after I got out of prison, where I’d been locked up in solitary confinement for seventy-five days and nights.

  I didn’t know where he got my address. How did that devil find me?

  In this country, certain things went on that made a person feel vulnerable and as though his personal liberties had been violated and infringed upon. The paranoia was enough to drive a man insane.

  Before this Sari character found me, I was baffled about how the Jordanian authorities were able to find out about our arrival from Afghanistan – myself and the three mujahideen who accompanied me – despite having shaved our beards and dressed in Western pants and shirts and suits.

  Where did they get the information that led to our being arrested and charged with plotting terrorist activities in the country?

  There were four of us – myself, a Moroccan mujahid brother, and two others from Iraq. We came all the way from Afghanistan and crossed into Jordan at the Iraqi border, but the security officers on the Jordanian side seized us before we could get our passports stamped. They were waiting for us, as I found out later on. They led us to an armored car and took off to a place that was unfamiliar to us at the time.

  After getting us out of the car, they took each of us to a different location, and I never saw the three others again. They put me in solitary lock-up and tried to get information out of me about the mujahideen and their secrets.

  As for why we came . . . we were given orders to go to Jordan and wait for some instructions and assistance we would receive once we arrived. That was all, no other directions or guidance.

  They confronted us with lots of information I had thought was secret. Then they asked me if I preferred to be called by my original name, Shaher Abd al-Qadir Mahmoud al-Zarman, or by my jihadi name, Darrar al-Ghoury, and started laughing and jeering – may God’s wrath fall upon them.

  But I didn’t know anything about the assignment we’d been sent to carry out, which it seemed was all part of the precautionary measures taken by the people who sent us.

  A few days into their interrogation I could no longer sit down because of their abominable torture methods. Then I started spitting up blood and the soles of my feet turned the color of tar and what was left of my right ring finger also became infected – the one that was blown off by shrapnel from a bomb that exploded near me when I was in Afghanistan.

  The cell was cramped and my chest also felt tight, to the point where one day I wished and prayed to God to forgive me for hurting myself and then proceeded to bang my forehead against the iron bars so hard that my forehead started to bleed. If it hadn’t been for the prison guards who came to my aid and stitched up my forehead in one of their clinics, I might have lain there on the floor of my cell until I bled to death.

  The remnants of that wound remained above my right eyebrow, in the form of a long scar, five centimeters in length.

  In the prison cell there was nothing to read except a Holy Quran that had yellowed with age.

  But even the Holy Quran was impossible to read in that loathsome cell that was like a grave above ground.

  I felt claustrophobic again, like I was choking. The prison guards must have noticed my agitation and weakened state, and relayed that to their superiors, which was evident in the fact that they let up on interrogating me and hitting me in order to allow the panic attack to do the job. That was truly the severest punishment they could have imposed on me.

  I came to the conclusion that torture was easier to bear than solitary confinement. At least when they were torturing me there was something happening and I could occupy myself with my pain as a way to feel time passing.

  When I reached the breaking poi
nt again, I started screaming and pounding on the bars and the walls with my palms. Just a few days later they took me to the interrogation room. There the interrogator, who couldn’t have been more than forty years old, informed me that they were going to keep me locked up in solitary indefinitely, and that he could help get me released on condition I divulged all the information and secrets I knew about the mujahideen brothers.

  Then he stood up and said, “If you don’t want to answer me now, I won’t be able to see you again until a month from now and in the meantime you’ll stay in solitary confinement.”

  I didn’t answer. I started thinking, and he seemed to guess what was going through my mind because he picked up the phone and ordered me a cup of coffee.

  I thought to myself: I know who I am, thank God. I fought in Afghanistan for eighteen months; I tended to numerous injuries; I asked to carry out a suicide bombing on a NATO camp but my captain didn’t grant permission; with these two hands I have shot bullets at many an enemy and buried many a dutiful martyr as well.

  But being placed in solitary confinement was much harsher than I could have imagined. My chest clamped up and I was short of breath. The world became tinier than the crack in a date pit. I began having wet dreams and soiling my clothes and had to remain in my impure state until it came time for my weekly bath. On the floor of that vile cell there was no point of reference. I could neither pray nor read the Holy Quran, which “none shall touch but those who are clean.”vii

  I couldn’t tolerate being inside that cell, which tortured my soul, destroyed my convictions, and crushed my ability to be patient. I remembered that they knew a lot about me and the mujahideen, and I thought about what they wanted in return for my freedom. And I also recalled the words of the Sublime One in his precious book:

  “On no soul doth Allah place a burden greater than it can bear. It gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns. (Pray:) ‘Our Lord! Condemn us not if we forget or fall into error; our Lord! Lay not on us a burden Like that which Thou didst lay on those before us; Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear. Blot out our sins, and grant us forgiveness. Have mercy on us. Thou art our Protector; Help us against those who stand against faith.’”viii

  The guard brought a cup of coffee and a glass of water, put them down in front of me, and left. I drank both quickly. The coffee was lukewarm.

  I said to the interrogator, “Do you promise you will release me?”

  He stood up from behind his desk and put down a stack of blank sheets of paper and a pen. Then he said to me, “I knew you would use your head. Now you will go to your cell and write down everything you know. If what you write is truthful and contains information of use to us, then we will let you go in a matter of days. And remember that we can tell the difference between fabrications and the truth.” He smiled as he said this. Then he turned to leave and added, “Tomorrow I will come for you at this same time to see what you have written.”

  He called for the guard to escort me back to my cell with the pen and paper.

  Samah Shahadeh

  I never liked politics, and I got fed up with what they labeled the “Arab Spring.”

  My father, too, was quite agitated by what was happening.

  I liked the description he gave to Fawaz one evening. “In every person’s heart,” he said, “there is a secret and an innate being. What’s happening in our Arab world is that this being has broken free of his chains and burst onto the world ready to kill and smash and destroy whatever is in its path, with the savage brutality of a Hollywood horror movie.”

  And when Fawaz asked him if this being was ever going to stop, he said, “Absolutely not. There is nothing indicating it is possible for him to return to his hiding place. At least not in the foreseeable future.”

  As far as Fawaz was concerned, all that mattered was the effect the situation was having on his interests in Arab countries and in Jordan, where one couldn’t be sure how long we would stay out of the fire.

  For me, it wasn’t so much about the effect on interests as it was about all the killing and the blood and the repression, and also my desire for life to remain stable in our world.

  Fawaz told me that Uroub told Sari that the people of Syria would be in conflict for ten years, and would be divided into four nations, and afterwards they would spend ten years rebuilding their country.

  “And what about Jordan?” I asked him. “Why didn’t you ask her that, Fawaz?”

  Sarcastically, he answered, “Someone hearing you might think Uroub’s sayings are divine revelations. What’s your problem, Samah?”

  He was right. I had been too quick with my question. It sounded like I was sure everything Uroub said was really going to happen.

  Fawaz tried to catch me up from time to time, to make himself look smarter than me.

  I felt as though he laid snares for me, so I might get caught trying to escape the net of my patience – my distinguishing characteristic. Actually, that didn’t bother me so much. His traps were clever and not too harsh.

  I thought about what he had told me Uroub said with regards to dying at the hands of a thirty-year-old man. Could that have been one of his traps?

  When I visited my father at his house after a three-week absence, he scrutinized my face and looked me up and down. I felt – as I always did – like a little child in his presence despite my fifty-seven years. He was the only thing I had left connecting me to my childhood and my youth.

  “What’s bothering you, Samah?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I answered. “I just missed you.”

  He threw his head back in a manner that made me think he didn’t believe me. “Your face is emaciated, and so is the rest of you.”

  I looked down at my chest and my legs. I remembered how the waistband of the black trousers I put on before leaving the house had felt a little loose, and how I also had to brighten up my cheeks with some make-up so they wouldn’t look so gaunt. I had chalked it up to the effects of time. Before I snapped out of my daydream, my father ordered the housekeeper to bring the bathroom scale. Then he asked, “When was the last time you weighed yourself?”

  “Fawaz’s birthday,” I answered.

  “How much did you weigh then?”

  “Around sixty-five kilos,” I said in a manner indicating I wasn’t sure.

  The housekeeper came back carrying the scale. She placed it on the carpet and I stood on it. How great was my shock when I saw the needle pointing to the number fifty-five.

  He peered into my face again and said, “You can prevent me from knowing what’s going on with you, but you can’t hide that you’re emaciated!”

  “It’s nothing, Father,” I said in a fluster. “Nothing. Would I dare hide something from you?”

  He appeared unconvinced. I felt he had discovered my lie, but then he shook his head and said, “I was going to say to you that you’re free like fathers say to their children in order to place the responsibility for their actions on them, but you’re not like that.”

  Forgetting I was a grown-up, I childishly protested, “What do mean, Father?”

  “What is worrying you?” he asked without looking me in the face.

  Darrar al-Ghoury

  When I had reached the age of twenty-six, I knew for certain that I’d chosen a thorny path in life that was full of land mines, but I’d always believed it was the only path.

  Now I was starting to see that there were many other roads to take in this life. Roads with fewer thorns and land mines and possibly more benefits.

  The interrogator was true to his word. They let me go two days after I gave my statement. But when I complained that life had turned its back on me, he said, “It’s not life that has turned its back on you. You are the one sitting backwards.”

  How did he come up with this expression I had heard once before?


  I returned to my father’s house, hoping to share with my parents and my siblings the burden of making a living in Mashari’, our village in the Jordan Valley, and to start a new life.

  I had a feeling of nostalgia for the market place and its shops, so I decided to go take a stroll. I noticed that people who knew me pretended not to know me, or moved out of my path, or at best shook my hand quickly and made excuses about having to tend to some matter.

  I borrowed a motorcycle from one of my relatives and took a drive through the Valley’s fields and villages. I thought about this world and what I had come to be – a young man with a Bachelor’s degree in nursing he didn’t know what to do with. The country was full of nurses, male and female, and even if I did find a job, surely the security forces would bar me from joining any clinic or medical center.

  What was I to do, without a single dinar in my pocket, while people chased desperately after life and withdrew into themselves and to their money, snubbed each other and plotted against each other? My father worked as a low-level municipal employee, barely making enough to feed my three brothers and my mother.

  But, praise be to God, less than a month after getting out of prison, this man called Sari contacted me and told me that he had a job opportunity for me and wanted to see me.

  I said to myself that maybe relief from my misery had been sent to me from Almighty God.

  I went to Amman and waited for him on a street called Rainbow Street in Jabal Amman, in some café with a strange foreign name.

  He was the one who chose the place when he contacted me. He had said, “Just tell the taxi driver ‘Rainbow Street’ and he will take you there.”

  I hadn’t been waiting more than a few minutes when a fifty-year-old man came through the café entrance. He had a white face and a black mustache with touches of gray.

  He was wearing an ash-gray suit with a white shirt and no necktie. He came directly to the table where I was sitting, as if he knew me.