Bensalem Himmich - My Torturess

I chose to say nothing.

“There’s a huge temporal gap between the defeated pre-Islamic poet and you, but there’s an element of similarity as well. While he chose to express his love and frustration over ‘Abla in the form of a magnificent poem that has lasted through the ages, your relationship with the former secretary, Jumana, is best described by the old proverb: ‘there’s many a trial that brings its own reward.’ At least you’ve proved that your masculinity is still intact. God be praised, and to Him be all gratitude!”

He now lit his pipe and offered me either a cigarette or cigar. I refused both.

“In my own humble opinion,” he said with uncharacteristic modesty, “there’s no text that forbids tobacco (unlike the proscription on wine). In both cases I strive to maintain a moderate position. In your case I suspect that you avoid alcohol and use analogy to deny yourself tobacco and opium. Am I right?”

“Certainly,” I replied. “Health is what matters for everyone. It’s better to be cautious than to get sick and have to be treated.”

“True enough, by God, true enough! And yet, these times of ours are full of tensions and annoyances. You need some form of tranquilizer to deal with them all.”

He fidgeted in his chair, blowing smoke right in my face.

“I used to let suspects come in this office,” he told me nervously, “with all their filth and stench. For the sake of truth and the need to discover it, not to mention pleasing God Almighty, I would put up with it all. But when I returned from responsibilities abroad, I issued instructions that from now on nobody would be allowed in until they had been properly cleaned and perfumed. You’re the very first one to be treated this way. The thing that’s made me take your side and stopped me forwarding you to a much nastier interviewer is that we share something in common. Do you know what it is?”

“You told me about it earlier, Your Honor,” I replied in spite of myself. “We’re both graduates of colleges in Arabic-speaking countries. You have a degree in law and so do I; you also have one in literature, and so do I.”

“That’s right,” he replied, “and yet fate and careers have sent us in different directions. So all praise be to God who has so arranged things that we meet and can thus expose the truth and eradicate falsehood.”

He paused for a moment, giving me a hard, inquisitive stare.

“But what truth and what falsehood, Sir?” I asked in dismay. “In what particular spot on earth am I currently located? What’s the purpose of this arbitrary imprisonment and excessive torture that is sapping my health? Do you want me to burst into tears and beg you to take your collective hands off this poor body of mine that is starting to lose weight and deteriorate?”

The judge’s face turned purple with rage, and he started thumping the desk.

“No questions are allowed,” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Come in, Nahid, and read this stubborn idiot Article Ten of the section on non-permitted conduct. .”

The young woman took down a tome from the shelf.

“The tenfth article from the section on internal regulafions states. .”

At this point, the judge who was frothing at the mouth in anger, snatched the tome away from her and carried on reading.

“‘Questions are the particular province and competence of the investigator alone. He alone is legally permitted and competent to formulate and pose questions. The accused person is not permitted to engage in questioning unless he is asked and permitted by the investigator to do so. However the investigator is in no way obliged to record the question or to answer it. End of article.’”

He continued smoking his pipe.

“So, Hamuda from Oujda,” he went on, “do you have a joke for me, something to restore the sugar balance in my blood?”

I was so overcome and perplexed that I could think of nothing to say. The secretary slapped me to make me pay attention.

“The judge is asking you a question,” she said.

“No violence, Nahid, no violence,” he told her in a gentle tone intended to calm things down. “God is my witness that, even when I’ve been cross-examining the very worst offenders, the kind of people who hate having to tell the truth, I’ve never tortured anyone, hit anyone, or spat on anyone. It’s just the way I was made. Violence spoils my mood; more than that in fact, it ruins my religious devotions. This rogue sitting in front of me here is trying to provoke me and refusing even to tell me a joke. Okay, so I’ll tell myself one, in the hope that it’ll calm me down. As the proverb says, ‘Nothing scratches you as badly as your own fingernails.’ You can listen too, Nahid, before you leave us. ‘Once upon a time there was among the Bani Khafajah a shaykh, who, when night fell, used to get a particular type of ache, the kind in which cocks with hens partake. . But, what’s more significant that all that, is that this shaykh of ours had an ongoing feud with his colleagues because they accused him of confusing the months of Sha‘ban and Ramadan. He regarded this accusation as an obscenity and forcefully denied it. ‘If you all think it’s fair to accuse me of something,’ he told them, ‘then at least make it something that I really do; then I’ll admit it.’ When they asked him what that was, he replied that it was not confusing Sha‘ban and Ramadan, that was his main point. It was actually two other months, Shawal and Dhu al-Qa‘da! His colleagues spent a month and a half cackling over that one!”

As Nahid left in consternation, the judge sat there guffawing and rubbing his stomach.

“My good shaykh of old,” he continued with a chuckle, “may you have been well rewarded, and you tribe of Banu Khafaja, I trust that you received God’s blessings! You’ve improved my mood by giving me a good laugh — may God grant you to laugh on the Day of Gathering and afford you not one, but two paradises from His bounty! But now, Hamuda from Oujda, back to you, and let’s get serious again. You’ve put me in mind of someone who’s stopped talking for months as a kind of fast, and then decides to break the fast with an onion, or, worse yet, with shit. Your report’s badly written; in fact, it’s drivel. I’m an investigator, so why should I be bothered about land and drought, your love for your mother and hatred for her husband — that stuff, and all other kinds of irrelevant padding? Any more, and you’d be telling me about the day you were circumcised or the first time you fucked a woman or a cow. There’s a disjuncture about your discourse, one that’s far removed from that elegance and clarity that I requested of you. You neither accepted nor responded to my call. As a result you’ve lost a golden opportunity to get away from those pedestrian modes of expression that are now so current and to invoke more refined and tasteful concepts and phrases. There are countless possible examples I could cite: things like ‘tomb,’ ‘grave,’ ‘fate,’ ‘perdition,’ ‘gloom,’ ‘darkness,’ ‘commitment of grievous sin,’ ‘to be bad,’ ‘to be scared,’ ‘to go crazy,’ ‘to become level,’. . it’s all a veritable catastrophe, a horrendous crime for us to abandon the contents of our glorious Arabic lexicon, allowing it to be ignored and forgotten, to be ravaged by the savage jaws of ignorance and contempt.”

He paused for a moment to catch his breath.

“How is it possible,” he went on in a blunt tone,” that you got a degree in literature? Is it a fraud? Maybe you filched it or managed to purchase it in these corrupt times when standards have fallen so badly. You’ve been trying to show that you’re innocent of the crime of murdering your mother’s husband and to portray yourself as a peaceful and ethical person. But that’s just one charge against you, and there’s still another one that I’m aware of. In spite of all the suspicions hovering around you, I’m prepared to overlook it, but only on condition that you provide me with the fullest possible account of all the perverted activities of your cousin, al-Husayn al-Masmudi — all his secrets, his movements, and his dangerous secret contacts. Your life preserver rests in your own hands. I want to know everything about the person who uses the street name Abu al-Basha’ir. Forget all about the kindnesses he may have done you in the past. I know all about that already. That’s what’s led my agents to arrest you and place you under supervisory detention. Think things over carefully, then write me an eloquent and relevant report. That’ll save your skin, allow us to be rid of you, and let you have some peace.”