Bensalem Himmich - My Torturess

“So I don’t have to smell the prisoners’ disgusting stench,” he replied, “yours among them.”

What curs they are! Worse than children with no faith or creator! When it comes to the water supply, they are particularly stingy: the daily ration is no more than half a bucket, and from that you have to drink, do your ablutions, wipe your backside, and rinse parts of your body. They then proceed to blame you because it smells bad, the stench of their very essence and elemental nature which is, by God, even worse; all the waters and perfumes of this world are of no use in getting rid of it. I thought about explaining such things to my veiled guard, but I felt so tired and disillusioned that I saw no point in doing so.

Once I had lain down on my bed, I discovered that my neighbors were asleep, which was very unusual. I could not hear any snoring, although maybe some of them were like me, concealing their pains and anxieties in either total silence or else in muted groans and secret expressions of misery.

Next morning, I was sipping my coffee and chewing a few morsels of bread when I suddenly remembered a dream in which my mother had appeared alive and healthy. Standing in the middle of a group of women, she was weeping and wailing as she complained to God about her bereavement and misery. She kept begging Him to encompass her one and only son in His great mercy and forgiveness. When the women tried to calm her down and tell her that I was sure to come back, she slapped her thighs at times and raised her hands to the heavens at others.

“I know my son!” she groaned. “Even if he were in the deepest pit imaginable, he would never forget me and neglect to send me a card. Either the earth has consumed him or he’s been swallowed by the great whale.”

No, Mother, it’s not that. It’s the tyrannical ghouls of darkness who are doing their very best to rip me apart and destroy my resolve. Even so, I’m still standing firm, thanks to God’s help and satisfaction with me, your son who has always done well by you and has never spoken ill to you.

My enforced incapacity made it difficult for me to move about the cell; some of my urgent functions involved my crawling. Even the guards preferred not to have to accompany me to the general refectory and the exercise yard. This same exemption also covered cleaning dishes in the main kitchen, sweeping halls and corridors, and cleaning the cells of prisoners who were sick or incapacitated, except for my own cell, of course.

I now concentrated on the state of my left leg and trying to distract my mind from the overwhelming sense of frustration and claustrophobia. When the guard brought me my subsistence rations, I begged him to bring me pencil and paper. He asked for some form of compensation, and I promised to pray for him and his loved ones. He laughed in my face at first, but then asked me seriously whether my prayers were answered. I told him that, if intentions were good and came from a soul that was both believing and severely tested like mine, God might well answer them, He being the generous provider.

“I’ll bring you what you’ve requested either with lunch or later,” he told me earnestly. “But you have to say a prayer for me first. From my first wife I have a daughter who is still unmarried at the age of thirty. Pray that she may find a decent man to marry. My second wife has only given me daughters, but now she’s pregnant again. Pray to God that this time she’ll give birth to a boy.”

I responded to his request as best I could, and he hurried off grateful and happy. On the positive side, I made a note that for the first time since I had come to this detention center, I had exchanged some genuinely humane words with one of the guards, even though at this point I still could not guarantee that there would be a good outcome.

In the cellblock opposite ours, there was now a good deal of unusual activity. I crawled across to the door to listen and look at what was going on. I noticed that the guards and supervisors were busy moving some prisoners — the sick or dead — and replacing them with others whose foot-pounding and general din suggested that they were many in number. They had all been given the task of sweeping and cleaning their new cells.

This new influx made me happy, since its sheer size was creating the kind of activity that might be able, if only to a certain extent, to eradicate the rust of utter boredom and stifling loneliness. It might also succeed in limiting the effects of a rainless and perishingly cold winter.

My hopes were not in vain, in that, at dinnertime, when the new prisoners had rested for a while, a loud voice invited the block’s residents to come to their doors. Using my crutches, I did as the voice asked. Here is some of what I heard:

“Servants of God. . these tyrants have decreed against us such things as God Almighty and all legal systems have forbidden. I and some of your new neighbors have spent two years and more in Block 7, known to its custodians as Olympic Hell or the Torture Hit-Parade Laboratory. In their warped view that place is enough to make Qays* deny his own Layla and ‘Antara* abandon his ‘Abla. Some inmates have died of illnesses, others have taken their own lives after going mad — may God forgive them! And, in full view of people susceptible to terror, still others have been executed in killing fields and forced to dig their own graves — may God shroud them all in the wideness of His mercy and install them in His heavens. Verily to God do we all belong, and unto Him is the return!

“Your humble addresser and his colleagues who remain alive have now been placed in this wing — for just a while perhaps — because our torturers have grown tired of us. They have preferred us to vacate the space so they can bring in other people who they think are less steadfast and strong in enduring the kind of hellish torture that I’ve just mentioned. .

“Fellow prisoners. . We new occupants of these cells are no angels, infallible and without sin, nor do we belong to any mystical fraternities or other ascetic communities. We’re just like you. We’ve chosen to live a life of freedom and honor and have devoted our lives to that cause, even though it may involve pain and suffering for which we would seek no alternative. Our choice is the same as yours; for us, it is the balance that enlightens, the guarantor of eternal life, and the self-evident triumph. In times of trial and tribulation it alone transforms us into hot coals beneath the ashes and strengthens our resolve and our endurance, bringing our deeds into line with our aspirations. .

“Dear God, I have come to an end. Let us make ready for our group the means of ease and contentment and for the time we have here that which will make it both tolerable and useful. As God Almighty says in the Sura of Joseph (Sura 12): ‘We will tell you the best of stories,’ while in ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib’s* Durar we find: ‘Like iron, hearts can turn rusty. So you should offer them some pearls of wisdom.’”

The preacher’s voice suddenly stopped. I realized the reason when a whole column of guards invaded the block and told the prisoners to remain silent and move back into their cells. We could then clearly hear their commander launching into a tirade of insults, from among which I managed to glean the following: “You lousy conspirator, you phony devotee, you promised me to stop proselytizing. Now you’ve broken your promise, so our only choice is to cut your tongue out. Gag his mouth and take him to the place where he’ll get his just deserts in front of witnesses. .”

No sooner had the guard troop left the block than a scary silence descended, only amplified by the advent of darkness. Prisoners now wrapped themselves up in their blankets in an attempt to ward off the icy cold of nighttime. I did as they did, particularly since it was now clear that we would not be getting any dinner. We had paid too much attention to the preacher, who was the object of such opprobrium and had failed either to confront him or use deterrent language and accusations of heresy to shut him up.