Bensalem Himmich - My Torturess

“The law’s the law,” the leader interrupted loudly. “It’ll be applied to you as well, since we’ve caught you trying to escape. In your case I’m going to ask for an accelerated decision because, unlike ‘Umar, you’ve donned a nice set of civilian clothes and were obviously trying to deceive people and put them off the track. .”

In some distress, I made a statement to the effect that I was wearing these clothes, which were not normal prisoner’s garb, because the investigating judge had invited me to pay him a visit. Hearing that, the entire troop of soldiers burst into laughter, and the desert echoed to their guffaws. The leader was now forced to issue an order to carry out the death sentence. They bound ‘Umar’s eyes and stood a few meters away, with their rifles pointed at him. The leader made me stand beside him and asked what was his final statement of wishes.

“I want you to put Hamuda from Oujda in my cell,” he said. “He is to inherit my belongings and preserve my memory.”

With that, he pronounced the statement of faith, fearlessly and without flinching. The men who had taken me over to him now pulled me back. The leader gave the order to fire. My poor friend fell to the ground, soaked in his own blood, which could be seen in the brilliant moonlight.

Shivering with both emotion and the bitter cold, and holding back my tears, I begged them to bury him with the four prayers in praise of God and a personal prayer for him. The leader rounded on me and told me to go with them and keep quiet. I had no choice but to do as he demanded.

“No praises of God and prayers for people like him,” I heard him mutter to himself. “Too bad for them! That’s the law when it comes to people who try to escape and fail. People who run away don’t get buried. It only takes a few hours for only bones and skull to be left, and they’ll be covered by the sands for evermore. .”

We reached the gate of a prison building whose number I could not make out. There the soldiers handed me over to a gorilla-like guard. The leader told him to put me temporarily into the cell of the deceased prisoner, ‘Umar al-Rami, in the dormitory where no one slept. The corridor leading to my temporary new abode had cells with iron bars on either side so that you could see what was going on inside. In this particular block the level of privacy and personal intimacy was zero or even less! Once the guard had locked the door, all I could do was throw myself down on the bed and try to sleep off the trials and tribulations of the previous day.

It was not daylight that woke me up, but the sound of a variety of song and dance tunes that reverberated in my cell in continuous clashing waves of noise. Even though it was still night, I opened my eyes and realized where I was now. I got up to investigate and discovered that the cell opposite mine was occupied by the figure of someone wrapped in his bedsheet, most probably asleep. I yelled to him several times, asking him what was going on, and requesting that he let me sleep and have some peace and quiet, but there was no response. Going back to my bed, I lay down and contemplated my new misfortune, the noise that was now emerging from transistor radios and the loudspeakers on the walls and ceilings. I was anxious to find some distraction for my senses and nerves, so I started checking on the late ‘Umar al-Rami’s belongings. All I found was a medium-sized radio that I immediately hid, a circular-shaped comb, two tubes of toothpaste with no brush, and a blue prisoner’s uniform, which I put on over my Western suit so as to give me extra protection against the cold. My sense of smell told me that there was some food in a sealed bag, so I opened it and proceeded to assuage my hunger with some bits of bread, olives, and boiled potatoes. I then used water through a thin tube to clear the mucus from my nose and cleaned my teeth by putting some toothpaste on my finger. I lay down to get some rest, but the deafening noise of the music made that impossible. As time went by, it never let up.

Late at night, there was a sudden silence. I seized the opportunity to get some sleep, but almost immediately a ringing voice could be heard intoning the phrases “In the name of God” and “Thanks be to God.” That was followed by a homily and advice concerning the proper way to perform ablutions, wash the bodies of the dead, and say the necessary prayers over them. The devout Muslim was enjoined to practice that prayer is better than sleep and reminded to consider night and day the punishments of the grave inflicted by the two questioning angels, Munkir and Nakir,* not to mention the Day of Gathering and Judgment. This was the kind of sermon that put you in mind of the poor and stupid preachers you might encounter in the desert or the countryside. This particular preacher of the end of time included in his premonitions certain verses from the Qur’an, our sacred text that is far too lofty to be soiled in this foul and demeaning place. The dreadful way he was pronouncing the verses was even worse than a donkey braying. Once he had finished and his voice had turned hoarse, his words were immediately followed by some recorded songs with lewd lyrics. It was totally impossible to get to sleep. I noticed a guard passing by, so I hurried over to the bars at the entrance to my cell and yelled my complaint to him. He signaled back to me that he could not hear what I was saying, then left.

I was left on my own to mutter angry words of complaint to myself. I used moistened bread to make some earplugs and held them in place with my tie, but they did little good. This incredibly loud noise, completely nerve-shattering was another means that the people in charge of the prison were using to torture prisoners and drive the weaker and more sensitive ones to breakdown and madness. I turned to my own devices, invoking whatever help I could to protect myself against their evil and thwart their devilish schemes — God is enough for me, and good is He as a trustee.

Dawn is the time for prayer for those who will. As I did so, the situation in the wing was no different from what I have already described. It was only when morning broke that things calmed down. A guard brought me breakfast. I begged him to ask the inmates to lower the volume on their music at night so people who wanted to get some sleep and relax could do so. In a gruff tone he informed me that the basic principle of this wing required that prisoners inure their bodies to being deprived of sleep or to get whatever they could to the accompaniment of popular verses and contemporary songs, interspersed with sermons on Fridays and holy days. When I asked him why the noise happened during the night rather than daytime, he scoffed.

“You idiot!” he replied as he locked the door, “It’s at night that you’re sleepless. The music you’ve been hearing is merely a warm-up for the even greater soirée tonight. Haven’t you heard about it?!”

“The even greater soirée tonight?” I was still asking as he left.

If I am invited to attend, it will be certainly easier than staying in this block, which seems to be inhabited by people who are not actually alive — human specters with God knows what problems and afflicted with how many scars.

Apart from performing my prayers — something that by now has become my fondest activity, the only way of passing the time of day is what I have been training myself to do: huddle in a corner in a lump and withdraw into myself so I can engage with my inner being. Then I can probe and search, hold conversations, recollect and recall things, battle against fancy, and declare victory. I can pose those ultimate questions and seek the remotest of signs; I can broach the discourse of the impossible, that elusive elixir that is so hard to grasp; I can circle around myself like a snake and chew the soles of my feet, and all in search of a small amount of sleep and quiet. Perhaps I can also indulge in still deeper contemplation and replace my current, horrendous reality with a more luminous dream. But fat chance of that!