Bensalem Himmich - My Torturess

He stretched his hands towards me, still holding the paper and pencils, but then he realized that they were tied behind my back. He summoned his other secretary, the one who had brought me in, and she appeared immediately.

“He’s leaving,” he told her. “This chap’s got two degrees, so his hands should not be tied like this.”

He gave a signal, and she put the paper and pencils in one of my pockets, then accompanied me to her office. Once there, she informed the guard of the instructions that the judge had given.

My refuge, safe and sound!

So here I am once again, back in my cell, with the rhyming phrases of the judge and his cryptic and ambiguous intentions still spinning inside my head. By now it is nighttime, and, as usual, I have surrendered both my hunger and worries to the opiate of a troubled, yet compulsory sleep. I have no idea how long it lasted, except that I was awakened by a gushing shower of water being directed straight at me by a man holding a hose by the door of my cell. I rushed over to another corner, assuming that the man must be from the fire-brigade who had been called in to put out a fire either in my cell or close by that was about to flare up. But the thought soon disappeared when the man threw me a towel and yelled at me that, by order of the investigating judge, I was to be bathed and soaped in the hope of recovering my health and energy. The water was suddenly turned off, and the man vanished. I took off my soaked clothing, rubbed myself down with a cloth that had stayed dry, then threw myself shivering on the bedcover to wait and see what would happen next.

I did not have long to wait. The door was flung upon, and a gigantic black man came in carrying a young man whose head and body were completely covered in bandages. He threw him down on the bed opposite mine and left without saying a single word. I went over, intending to introduce myself, and immediately noticed his crossed eyes and stub nose. From that I assumed that he had to be the young man whom the judge had been interviewing yesterday before me. I felt his pulse and jugular vein and determined that he was still just about alive. It seemed to me that he had been subjected to some horrific torture, akin to a surgical operation with no anesthesia. Hurrying over to the iron door of the cell, I started banging on it with both hands. “Have some mercy!” I yelled. “This man’s dying.” I kept on yelling till I was exhausted; my voice gave out and I choked up.

I went back to check on the young man; he was saying a few obscure phrases with his finger raised. Was he trying to conceal his wounds and bruises or struggling with an imminent death? What’s to be done, I asked my impotent, grieving soul. I started yelling again, this time using a metal plate to bang on the door, but I had to stop when my neighbors started complaining and I was threatened with “solitary.” According to those who had experienced it — and we seek God’s protection against it! — this “solitary” involved being put into a dark cell on your own. People were lost when they went in, everyone said, and a different person when and if they came out, depending on the length of time inside and the conditions once there — the lack of food, drink, and air. For that reason I decided to give up and comply, since I had no desire to complicate my situation and make things even worse than they already were.

I sat down beside my severely wounded cellmate and spent quite a while in a complete panic. I heard him ask for some water, with his tongue hanging out, and gave him as much as I had left. He asked for more, so I squeezed some drops into his mouth from the cloth that had been dampened by the shower that had woken me up that morning. He muttered something, and, when I put my ear close to his mouth, I gathered that he was thanking me and asking if I was the one whom he had spotted in the judge’s office the day before. I told him that I was, and expressed my relief that he was showing signs of regaining consciousness. I begged him not to talk too much so he could recover his strength and well being, but he insisted on talking, albeit in clipped utterances. Even though his voice was still very unsteady, his statements became gradually clearer and were more and more comprehensible. In that way I told him briefly who I was, how I had come to be arrested, and what the charges were against me. I was anxious not to get him too worked up, so I did not ask him the same things, but even so he started muttering to the effect that his name was Ilyas Bu Shama. He had both suffered the same fate and been subjected to the same trials and tribulations, the only difference being our places of origin. He was from Tizi Ouzou in Algeria, and I was from Oujda in Morocco. All of a sudden he started breathing so heavily that he could not speak, so I asked him to stop talking till he had recovered. He did so, and that allowed me time to wipe his sweating brow and clear my clogged ears. Looking at the meager amount of food I had left on my table, I urged him to eat it, but he refused. From his gestures he made it clear that by now his stomach was inured to hunger; food was the very last thing he wanted to bother about.

Now there was a ringing silence filled with misgivings and paranoia. The person lying on the bed was clinging to life, obviously gravely wounded both outside and inside, palpably fragile and sick. His breathing was weak, as light as a hair or a feather, and the body involved was within an inch or less of turning into a corpse ready to be buried and forgotten. And now, here I was, totally unable to help him, even if it only meant using my voice to reverberate through the corridors. I am not one for crying, but I could feel tears of frustration in my eyes, which kept dropping on to my cheeks. The only thing that stopped them was the voice of the guard telling me to take my food as he passed it through the aperture in the door. He made it clear that the food was only intended for me; my cell companion was to be denied food for three consecutive days. I took the bowl and saw that the contents consisted of a broth mixed with pieces of bread, onion, and potato. I put it down next to my colleague.

“What’s happened?” he muttered as his eyes opened slightly.

“My friend,” I told him, “what really needs to happen is for you to give up your hunger strike and eat some food. .”

He pulled my ear close to his mouth. “I’ve been through so much,” he told me, “that my breathing makes it hard to talk. What’s more, if I eat anything, I’m afraid I’m going to throw up or foul myself in my bedcovers. No way!”

I did my best to reassure him. “If that happens,” I said, “I’ll carry you on my back to the pit over there in the corner. Everything will be fine.”

The young man gestured his agreement and even gratitude, so I propped his head up on my cushion as best I could and started using my wooden spoon to feed him what was in the bowl. I kept encouraging him to keep eating, and eventually he managed to consume it all. I congratulated him and then listened carefully as he thanked me profusely. Now I was feeling even happier: he had eaten something, and there was a real hope of saving him. God be blessed!

He now asked me to let him lie back, so I cleaned his mouth, wiped the sweat off his brow, and put a cover over him so he could relax and get some sleep. I promised to stay close by, ready to help him, and not to doze off. He pulled my head towards him and kissed it.

“Did the judge ask you the same thing as me?” he whispered in my ear. “I’ve refused to compose any statements about you.”

“Yes,” I replied, “he gave me pencil and paper. I don’t know where I’ve put them. In any case, I’m not going to do it.”