Fariba Hachtroudi - The Man Who Snapped His Fingers

The voice in me talks to the shrink as if to a friend. Calls him by his first name, to my great surprise. I never told you how I got out of the country. I have very confused memories of the final moments of my imprisonment. And there are black holes regarding what came next. It all happened so very quickly. I can’t remember a thing about how I left the country. How I ended up here, in your country. A place I knew nothing about. I’m a child of the sun, the desert, and now here I am in this glacis of fjords. Snatches of events without any apparent link coalesce in my mind then disappear. I clutch at a series of images. And the sensory markers which connect them. More precisely, there are two negatives, as if from a film. As if they were imprinted on my flesh. The first is that of my body covered in blood and curled up in a corner on my cell. And in the second, I have been propelled onto the back seat of a Patrol. The link between the two is the invisible man who sprang me from prison with a snap of his fingers. As simple as that. Just a few snaps of the fingers. I am trying to reconstruct it all, as if with computer-generated images. My eyes are like the computer screen where I have sketched the identikit of my savior thanks to my corporeal memory. Hearing replaces eyesight. I imagine him to be tall and thin, even bony, with square hands and protruding eyes. Features inspired by the abrupt, rhythmic clicking of his fingers. Features that would suit an unremarkable sort of man. Which doesn’t necessarily justify the protruding eyes. And then I see myself, a dark tangled mass wedged in a fetal position onto the back seat of the powerful car. When the joy ride began, I disconnected, I was tossed about, filled with vague sensations, my psyche cut in two. Fear in my belly and a desire to die. Animal instinct and human thought are rarely compatible when one is aware of impending death. Except when a vital need for rest overpowers everything else. Eradicates fear. Lulled by the purr of the engine and the thought of this salutary death, I passed out. I came to in a bed. A clean bed. Sheets that smelled of my grandmother. I wasn’t at home. Or at my mother’s place. But in a hospital, or a clinic. The light was gentle, dim. A greenish light. It hardly lit up the room, I had needles in my veins, and tubes hooked up to transfusion devices next to the bed. I had trouble keeping my eyes open. There were shadows and silhouettes, smiles and moving lips. They faded, then were interspersed with each opening of my eyelids. Hands busy with me. Examining me. Blood pressure. Pulse. Injection. Then they tucked me in. Gone the torturers and the rapists. Farewell, solitary confinement. White coats, taking care of me. But not speaking to me. Whispering among themselves, smiling, writing who knows what onto papers removed from one file and put back in another. Where am I? Who are you? No answer. Just lips palpitating in the doorway. I had difficulty reading them. Were they addressing me or someone else? A multitude of hidden, invisible people? Yes, I could hear a voice repeating the same sentence at regular intervals. You are here to rest. You are extremely weak. Like a soundtrack. A recording. As if they were making fun of me. As if it were all an act. Were there any other patients in this hospital? Any other broken bodies? People wrenched from that dump, Ravine, like me? Did the white coats know where I’d come from? Were they the healers of the tortured women of Ravine, escaped from hell? Or were they angels? Was I dead? No. I knew I wasn’t. But I didn’t know whether I was right in my head. I asked them. Once again their closed mouths were suggestions and smiles. When I pressed them, one of them gave me an injection. Another one stroked my cheek with all the tenderness in the world. I could hear a man’s voice. He said, Put plasters on the soles of her feet. He must have been the doctor. My feet were in shreds, torn to bits, I knew that. The Sardive brothers were experts at flagellation, and they used only electric cables to whip us. They had a preference for the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, starting with the fingertips. The doctor said, Change her bandages every hour, and leave her feet to air for ten minutes. Someone whispered, she has such little feet. That’s what he used to say. Del would say, You have the prettiest little feet in the world. Another injection. More caresses. And I dozed off, and on my feet I was wearing the red sandals he had given me on one of our sun-filled trips. I fell asleep. I slept with my little feet bound in red sandals. Lulled by the scattered words of my love, “an apple… an orange… I cannot… your feet… stamping the floor… ” It was gentle. So gentle when he spoke to me. It was perfect. Out of paradise.

I awoke — after I don’t know how many hours or days — and my mother was by my side. How could this be? Prisoner number 455 from Section 209 of Ravine Prison was entitled to a visit from her mother! Was I at the prison infirmary? Was I about to go back to the men who raped me, their spit, their inflamed members? No. I was not in the kennel for battered dogs which they wrongly called an infirmary. But in a clinic worthy of the name. Who had informed my mother? Who had told her where I was? Who had allowed her to come and visit me? What had I done to earn the right to such privileges? It was the sort of favor that stank of collaboration. Had I sold our friends for the sake of my grandmother’s clean sheets? My mother swore to me that I hadn’t, and she never lies. Her ravaged face came close to mine. Her breath, stinging me. I heard her praying. She spoke to me of a miracle. A providential man. A savior. She blessed him. Her prayers would go with him all her life. I was stunned. Exhausted. Drugged. I left my other questions for later. Shortly afterwards, I found myself in another bed. Another room with a high, gleaming ceiling. No more white coats. No more needles in my veins. No more drips. My mother was still there with me. She was washing me while she spoke. She said, We’ll leave as soon as you’re on your feet. In a week or ten days at the most. We’re going to leave the country. You will be free at last, and safe. I gathered all my strength. All my strength to say no . A clear, short, irreversible no . That famous no , the envy of all my companions in misfortune. Those two letters which elevated me to the status of the heroine of Ravine. No, I won’t go anywhere without him. I will never leave the country, never abandon him to the vultures. My mother said, He’ll get out. The man promised. Del will join you. I swear. He told me he would.

For a long time my mother’s tears had no longer been salt but bitter. Like bitter almonds. No, concentrated opium. An acrid, viscous taste, which stung my palate. I’ll never get rid of the taste. I know that. I already told you, doctor. From the first bite my food takes on the taste of her tears. Moldy, with an aftertaste of bile, just so I don’t forget. Never forget anything. How much longer did I go on sleeping in that spacious room with its large picture window, overlooking a garden? All that remains of the den of my last, clandestine days in my forbidden country are the pearly ceiling and my mother’s tears, overflowing, submerging me. I see her again, waving a piece of paper in front of my face and saying, You didn’t want to trust your poor mother. Look. Open your eyes, wide. You recognize Del’s handwriting, don’t you? Read it. Read what he says. I looked away. My mother’s frozen expression and her conniving smile exasperated me. It was a theatrical mask, lifeless. Writing is falsification. Starting with the holy scriptures. The dictatorship of God teaches us this, at our expense. No. I do not trust writing or signatures. Any more than I trust voices. I have held in my hands dozens of pages of confessions supposedly signed by friends or by Del. Certified by God! I did not trust them at all. In those latitudes, everything is faked. Everything is lies… They would say, You can see it’s your terrorist husband’s handwriting. You see, he has confessed to his crimes. Don’t tell me you’re blind, you scumbag. Not yet anyway. You can see his signature at the bottom of the page. Go on pretending you’re blind and I will personally gouge out your eyes, you whore. Sign at the bottom of the page and you will be free. To my mother I said, I don’t want your paper. I don’t trust signatures. She begged me, Read the message and then decide. It’s the man who saved you who brought it to me. My tears flowed in spite of myself. Del, my love, my man, my husband in chains. I trembled. I grabbed the paper from her hands. Skimmed it, just to put my mind at rest: “Get out as soon as you can. Go away. Leave the country. I will join you. Djadjal.” My eyes opened wide. Djadjal was a password that only he and I knew. Had there not been this secret code, the stamp of love, I would have gone on saying no until I was blue in the face. I would have shouted it so loudly that he would have heard. But this note really was from Del. He was the one who was ordering me to leave, who was promising to come and find me. I looked at my mother and said, All right, we’ll leave. She burst into tears. Did not even try to hide them. They were tears of joy but tears all the same. Get some rest now, she said. You have to be in shape for the departure. Where? How? Who with? Don’t worry about a thing. He will bring us some fake ID papers that will open the way to freedom. He? She didn’t know anything more than that. It was better not to know. To respect the golden rule of safety through anonymity. Until further notice. When Del came to find me, he would explain the miracle.