Bensalem Himmich - My Torturess

As I thought of dogs, I was suddenly reminded of a poem, “In Prison,” written in the 1960s by the Egyptian poet, Fu’ad Nigm,* when he was being held in the Qal‘a prison in Cairo. I could only remember bits of it, but recited them to myself and then yelled them out loud to the walls and bars of my cell:

Here in prison, good grief!

Death and suffering,

But suffering for whom?

They’re all curs,

Guard dogs,

Hunting dogs,

Standing there with chains,

Alongside ‘Antar and Abu Zayd. *

So these dogs — God protect you, Na‘ima! — and their masters have these fiendish schemes to subdue and enslave the earth’s most wretched people in accordance with their tyrannical desires, and here am I, the one and only master of myself. Only I can come up with something to thwart their program and counteract their designs and calculations. My plan has to involve a combination of feigned idiocy and sickness. Yes indeed, I myself — and I ask God’s forgiveness for invoking this “I”—am that one individual seed, weak perhaps in body and size, but yet strong in faith, something that in my current situation is the strongest and most resolute quality I possess. I will either save my spirit from imminent and dire destruction and emerge safe and sound, or else I will die a martyr’s death. In either case, Na‘ima, I shall raise the flag of victory as a shining point of light and significance, to be added along with all the others like it to the lists of revolutionaries who have risen up against tyrants, and equally against those who have allowed themselves to fall prey to thoughts of resignation and submission.

At first I thought about grasping my pen and some pieces of paper so that I could record my dreams and ideas and then hide them under my bedcover along with the mirror, but I postponed the idea when a masked guard suddenly entered my cell and tied my hands behind my back. He then escorted me along corridors and hallways that were unusually packed with guards and prisoners. When we reached a back yard that I had not seen before, he placed me in the middle of a crowd of other prisoners. He told me that we were there to witness the execution of five terrorist leaders who had all confessed to accusations of murder and other crimes that had been made against them. When I opened my mouth to ask a question, he ordered me to shut up.

The crowd was made up of scattered groups of prisoners. The guards who, as usual, mingled with them, prevented any individual conversations. The sun was high in the sky, which suggested that it was close to midday. The atmosphere was as heavy as lead. The only sounds were people clearing their throats, clanking chains, and general fidgeting. All of a sudden, speakers that were partially visible on the guard towers started blaring out drumbeats, and five men, hands and feet tied, came out of a steel door in one of the buildings facing the other prisoners. They were followed by two masked soldiers with loaded weapons. They ordered the five men to stop, spaced a few feet apart, with their backs to a dilapidated high wall

I was standing in a spot from which I could look straight at the faces of the men facing execution. There were no signs of panic or anxiety. I told myself that these were genuine heroes, willing to sacrifice their lives in the cause of their struggle, not showing the slightest fear in the face of death. As I took a closer look and focused more carefully, there was Ilyas Bu Shama standing to the far left of these heroic figures. His head was held high, his expression was clear, and he had a smile on his face. I can swear the oath that Ilyas himself would have me swear: “By the fig and olive, by Mount Sinai” [Sura 95, The Fig, vv. 1–2] it certainly was Ilyas. I yelled his name as loudly as I could.

“God is with you, Ilyas,” I shouted as loudly as I could. “You’re dying in the cause of the truth and will rise again in Paradise along with the companions and martyrs. .”

The guard punished me by hitting me on the head from behind. He pointed out that Mama Ghula had just come into the yard on what looked like an inspection tour. She was wearing dark clothing and carrying a collection of black plastic bags. This time she was not accompanied by her gigantic black assistant or any other gorillas With her fat, fleshy body and stunningly ugly appearance, she was the only person who was walking around, strutting like a peahen at times and prowling like a leopard at others. She headed over to the crowd of onlookers and gave them all vicious looks full of contempt, chewing on gum and rubbing her thighs in a suggestive manner that managed to disgust even the most sexually repressed of the prison population. I noticed that she gave me special attention, just in case I decided to surprise her with a lewd wink or salacious gesture. She may have realized that I was challenging her, cursing the day she was born and everything she did; either that, or else that my madness had worsened and intensified. But the whore turned away and ignored me. Then, all of a sudden, a primitive-looking prisoner came into the middle of the yard and galloped toward her like a horse.

“Long live jihad,” he yelled. “Long live revenge! God is most great! He is the only victor. .”

But before he could reach his target, a soldier shot him dead. Witnesses immediately pronounced the fourfold “God is great,” while the man’s killer removed his body from the scene.

Mama Ghula completed her inspection tour without batting an eyelid at what had just happened. She then headed over to the five men and conducted the same sort of inspection routine. Accompanied by a man wearing a clerical costume (which made him look like some kind of demon), she stood in front of each one of them, talking to him as though she was going to either cuff him or bargain with him. That done, she covered his head with a black sack, and the cleric pronounced what I assumed to be the statement of faith or the prayer for forgiveness or both. They both did the same routine with the other four men. When she reached the last man in the row, Ilyas Bu Shama, he resisted having the sack put over his head. He launched himself at her, and bit her on the ear, making it bleed. She cried out in pain, and the cleric rushed away to get help. Soldiers hurried over and rescued their boss.

Defying the iron grip of my guard, I yelled words of triumph and support to Ilyas, accompanied by a muted buzz from the prisoners, which soon became a crescendo of noisy objection and abuse. All the while, the soldiers were emptying their rounds into the bodies of the five men, following the orders of Mama Ghula, who gradually withdrew under the protection of male orderlies. When the guards set about loading the corpses into the back of a truck that was ready to take them away, a tremendous hue and cry arose and threatened to get worse. However, everyone promptly heard the whizz of bullets being fired into the air from some of the guard towers, and the yard was soon wrapped in a silence more profound and deadly than that of the grave.

There now prevailed a truly funereal atmosphere as the prisoners were led away under intensified guard to the communal cafeteria. There they sat down to eat a meal, the repetitive contents of which told me that it was lunch.

I had no desire to break into everyone’s silent contemplation, but rather I needed to perform a religious obligation.

“My friends,” I told the community, “men of profound faith with dreams as large as mountains have today died before your very eyes. We can do no less than turn, one and all, towards the qibla , say the prayer of the absent, and pray for them. . My brothers, let us all say the four ‘God is greats’. .”

Nobody responded or even moved. At some tables, they started laughing out loud, and it gradually spread to other tables as well. The whole thing astonished me, and I was utterly disgusted. How could I not be? How? When things returned to their normal state, I happened to hear something uttered in my direction from one of the tables: