Bensalem Himmich - My Torturess

With the greatest imaginable difficulty, I managed to stand up and I raised a point of order in the usual fashion:

“Madam,” I declared, “it may be that my dear mother has gone to her God, but I will only believe it if you can produce a proper death certificate. With regard to those accusations, I hereby proclaim my innocence, be they old or new. The accusations of fornication and a craving for lewd literature are a pack of lies, and. .”

“And what about your role in the death of your neighbor, the man with the bag?” asked one of the two men, a frivolous Tirimmah*-like figure, tall and lanky.

“I only ever heard that neighbor’s voice, Sir,” I replied. “I never even saw him. The contexts of the bag were excrement. . shit.”

The guard now gave me a cuff that sank me to the chair again.

“Clean up your language, you ass” he yelled at me, “when you’re in the presence of this distinguished committee!”

The Tirimmah figure and his dumpy colleague now proceeded to pin me down with a whole host of questions. Still seated, I proceeded to interrupt them with another point of order.

“I’ve been on hunger strike before, and they force-fed me with a tube. As a token of the determination that you referred to earlier, I’m now proposing to strike from any further discussion until you remove this gorilla attached to my back.”

A moment of silence followed, then the woman gestured to the guard to leave, and he did so.

The woman now resumed her cross-examination, asking me a series of short questions. I duly responded, with corresponding brevity.

“What about those plastic containers?” she asked me pointedly.

Na‘ima was busy recording the conversation, and I avoided looking at her.

“They were in the trash bin at the clinic,” I replied.

“Why did you steal them?”

“To play with in my spare time.”

“And the mirror you had hidden away?”

“To look at the bruises on my body from the torture and to count them.”

The Tirimmah man now muttered something and then yelled at me, “Or was it for killing someone or committing suicide?”

“I have no right to kill myself, something that God Himself has forbidden, or to kill anyone else.”

“No matter. Let’s get to the important point. The investigative committee has come across an article by some unknown writer about the Arab-Israeli conflict. You’ve written on some of the pages. Do you support its findings?”

“The article is from a newspaper. It’s one of the newspapers and magazines that someone put in my cell; I’ve no idea who. You’ve looked at it too, no doubt. I’ve scribbled notes on those paragraphs because I believe them to be important and correct. Remind me of some part of it. .”

“Just a few parts, because of the time. ‘From the Israeli standpoint Palestinians must choose between submission and obedience on the one hand and exile or martyrdom on the other. So how are we supposed to put any faith in Western concepts of justice and humanity and assess them according to the yardsticks of necessity and comprehensiveness?’”

“So,” I asked eagerly, focusing on the quotation,” how do you respond to that trenchant question?”

“We’re the ones asking the questions,” the Tirimmah person yelled.

I was totally unafraid to speak the truth at this point.

“Oh yes,” I went on in a reproachful tone, “now I remember that the writer, whom I regard as a truly outstanding model of just and liberal ideas, goes on to say; ‘I can see no reasonable justification for punishing Arabs for Nazi crimes, nor can I detect the slightest legality during the current crisis in initiating an expansionist movement based on references in the Torah. . ’”

“So you agree with all these assertions?” the dumpy man asked.

“Yes,” I replied, “and I also agree with the way the article ends: ‘The Arab struggle against Israel and its supporters is the other aspect of their struggle against their own weakness and backwardness. . ’”

“This writer of yours comes close to anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Do you also deny that?”

“I did not read any such thing in the article in question. If by the Holocaust you mean the massacre that the Nazis committed against European Jewry with the aim of eradicating them altogether, then Israel as a state, both before its creation and throughout the period of its existence, has been emulating the same massacre in their treatment of the Palestinians. It has involved repression and requisition, breaking bones, a continuous seizure of land, and destruction of houses and whole quarters. Every day the Palestinian sense of honor is belittled, and they find themselves thrust into detention camps. Their holy sites are desecrated, their ancient sites are Judaized, not to mention their trees and rocks. As the old battle lament puts it, ‘O Mu‘tasim!’”*

“That’s enough nonsense, enough!” the Tirimmah person yelled, shouting me down and emphasizing it by beating his gavel on the table. “Let’s turn to the most important point here: Your letter to your cousin who is a wanted man. .”

“It wasn’t a letter,” I interrupted. “It was just some thoughts I jotted down from a dream I had in which my cousin, al-Husayn, appeared.”

“Where did you see him?”

“On top of a high mountain with streams and trees. I have no idea where it was. .”

“And what did he tell you?” the dumpy man yelled at me threateningly.

“The gist was that he loved me and thought about me so much that he had never told me anything about his personal fight. That was a way of saving me from suspicions or complications that might have dire consequences.”

“How many fighters was he commanding?”

“I only saw him. .”

“Can you swear that you did not notice any other people with him?”

“It was just a dream. What am I supposed to swear to?”

“True enough!” the woman commented. “Now you can return to your cell. You should think very carefully about our offer for you to join our service. You can communicate your eventual decision to the investigating judge. Don’t burn all your notes. Use the ones you have left well, and there’ll be more. The session is now concluded.”

I could not help bursting into laughter.

“You talk about my notes, Madam!” I said. “Ever since I arrived at this detention center, I haven’t had any notes to burn, not a single one or even several. .”

I looked briefly at Na‘ima, who was leaving the room by the back door along with the committee members. Leaning on my two crutches, I stood up and went over to my scowling guard. Covering his face, he asked me gruffly if I wanted to have my feet tended to. When I said that I did, he told me to follow him.

In the clinic, I was examined by a doctor who looked like a surgeon and was wearing a blood-stained apron. He might have been a butcher coming from a slaughter house or something like that. Arching his eyebrows, he spoke to me from behind his medical mask. He told me that my left leg was very swollen and purulent; gangrene was starting to show. In a few days it might be necessary to amputate. I begged him to do it immediately, but the guard who was standing next to me told him that would not happen till I have told them everything I was keeping to myself.

“By God,” I told him, “I’ve told you everything I know.”

The guard stood me up on my feet and ordered me to leave with him. Even though I was feeling dizzy and weak, I kept walking, my assumption being that the doctor’s prognosis was yet another of the fiendish tricks and games being played on me by the investigative judge — may God never again show me his face!

If only it were possible for me to get rid of this heavy-handed and heavy-footed spy! Then I could go on my own and take a look at other wings and spaces in this center that I had never seen. I would be able to meet other human beings whom I had never met, even though I sensed their existence and surmised that they might be living in conditions that were even more foul and cruel than the ones to which I was accustomed. But my guard stuck close to me until he had delivered me to my cell, the very location of my weakness and frustration. Before he locked the door and went away, I asked him why he had covered his face.