My Torturess

by Bensalem Himmich

  “If you’re a woman of steel,” I said, “come on out! Now to the final round when I’ll beat you fair and square. It’ll be a knockout.”

  The underlings carried their boss to the middle, albeit with the greatest difficulty, and stood her up on her two feet. With a blow of the whistle the referee indicated that the second round should begin. Mama Ghula was looking exhausted and shattered, so I took advantage of the situation to aim a merciful blow to her right temple that sent her crashing to the floor unconscious. The referee counted to ten in order to stop the fight, while the guards outdid each other in making fun of her. I made my way over to the group of spectators, who were all proclaiming victory, yelling, “The bee’s the winner, three cheers for the bee!”

  Flushed by my success, I hugged all the prisoners who were celebrating my victory one by one, including a female prisoner who was wearing a head scarf. I then went back to the defeated woman, who was still spread-eagled on the floor, and strutted around her like a peacock. I told the referee to count out another ten or more, but he refused.

  “No, no!” he said, “The rules are the rules.”

  I was getting ready to move away victorious when, right out of the blue, the woman pounced on me from behind like a leopard and threw me to the ground with a gymnastic move that only a category-one professional wrestler could manage.

  Now I realized why it was that throughout the fight her assistants had never stopped laughing. Mama Ghula had been simply toying with me, turning our fight into a farce. I had obviously been wrong to imagine that any boxing match with her would follow international rules. I was even more in error when I had imagined that in any bodily contest with a female opponent, whether involving Roman or Japanese rules, I could be the winner; at the very least it would be a draw. As it was, I now found myself collapsing under the weight of this barbaric female ghoul, groaning as she throttled me and completely unable to move or resist. At this point I had good reason to doubt my previous masculine calculations. Could I somehow comfort myself with the thought that “there’s many a trial that brings its own reward”? Perhaps my idiotic behavior might convince her that there was something wrong with my head; she might show a little mercy and treat me with less violence.

  My thanks to God were profuse when this harpy loosened her grip on me and left me on the floor panting desperately. She meanwhile went over to her corner and sank down on a chair in front of a table filled with files, telephones, sandwiches, bottles of beer and wine, and other things that I could not make out because the guards ordered me to stay where I was. I could, however, see that the woman who had beaten me was busy eating and drinking, all the while uttering uncouth things in French and expressions of utter disgust like “Yuk” and “Ugh”—all as a way of expressing her complete contempt for the effort she had had to exert in order to deal with a puny, lily-livered, and insignificant weakling like me. Sure enough, she soon started venting her spleen and mouthing her disgust.

  “This is a total insult,” she said, spewing spittle as she did so, “It’s a crime! Here I am, having to deal with scum and idiots, most of whom faint as soon as I start torturing them. The general and his coterie can play around with drug cartels, terrorist bosses, and organized crime, using all sorts of funds and cash, not to mention the pretty boys and prostitutes. Equal rights for men and women! My ass, a thousand times, my ass!!!”

  It was not enough for her to keep on talking about equal rights. She knelt down, bared her enormous backside, and then started doing the rounds of the room. She kept repeating the most disgusting phrases in Arabic; I was unable to block my ears and only record them here only with the greatest reluctance. But then, my only excuse is that it is not obscenity to repeat obscenity.

  “Equality, equality!”

  “Damn equality, my ass!”

  “Equality, equality!”

  “My ass to equality!”

  All the while her assistants kept clapping as she made her way around the room.

  “She’s for real!” they kept chanting, and then they ordered me and all the other prisoners to repeat the chant, “She’s for real . . .” None of us was in any position to refuse.

  Was I in a prison or a lunatic asylum? What was clear enough was that in this case the difference between the two was as thin as a spider’s web; above all, there were no signs or dividing lines to tell you when you were leaving one for the other. As an indication of that fact, no sooner had this woman finished dancing around and yelling with her backside exposed and then stood still again, sweating profusely, than she singled me out with a wine-soaked gesture. The guard rushed over, grabbed me from my corner and once again put me in her clutches. I decided to wear them out by running backwards and doing various feints and other stunts, but this time the female ghoul, duly aided now by the gigantic black man who was presumably performing another one of his functions, managed along with the other guards to grab hold of me and tie my hands behind my back. They placed a bottle between my legs and withdrew.

  “Sit on it,” she said in a lewd tone of voice.

  The wine bottle test, I told myself.

  “Sit on it?” I said, pretending that I didn’t understand. “Sit on what?”

  “That’s right,” she yelled after emptying the bottle of wine. “Sit on it so the mouth goes up your ass! God damn your mother’s religion!”

  “Don’t insult my mother, I beg you. Seek refuge with God and his Prophet from foul talk and debauched conduct!”

  She repeated her instructions, but this time as a final warning.

  “I’ll sit down, yes,” I replied, trying to control my nerves, “but on a chair. That’s only right and proper, Mademoiselle!”

  The guards started laughing again, and the gigantic black man joined in as well. I laughed along with them, not because I was that naïve, but to try to keep the atmosphere as conducive as possible. However, I soon changed tack and became serious again. I tried as best I could to address her in such a way as to arouse her sympathy.

  “Why are you insulting me like this?” I asked.

  With chewing gum in her mouth, she chuckled and winked at one of the guards.

  “Oh, no reason at all,” he replied mechanically. “To kill the time, or maybe because the boss doesn’t like your filthy face! Sit on the bottle!”

  “Never,” I protested, “my religion totally forbids such things!”

  Mama Ghula responded to my protest with an outburst of abuse against my mother’s religion, the like of which I have never heard in my entire life. Her assistants rushed over, still laughing, and attached one of my legs to a rope hanging down from the ceiling. The position I was now in promised nothing good; I looked like a slaughtered sheep about to be flayed. The ghoul now came up to me, with a cigarette between her lips, her features a tissue of hatred and disgust. She now started stubbing her lighted cigarette on the soles of my feet, my backside, my back, and my armpit. Even though I mustered the proverbial patience of Job to counter this onslaught, I still emitted some suppressed groans. However, she then spread my thighs apart and thrust the bottle hard into my anus; this time I could not help filling the entire room with screams of extreme pain. My torturess now seized the opportunity to tighten the noose by asking me over and over again about my cousin called Abu al-Basha’ir and his cell and my own involvement in what she kept calling a sleeper cell. When she did not get the information she was after, she leaned close to my ear and pleaded with me—for the last time, I reckoned—to tell her the truth and offer her my help. She told me that she was a widow with a family to take care of; she pleaded with me to take pity on her crippled daughter and other children. I could help by responding to their needs and guaranteeing their future lives. When she still did not get what she wanted, she showed me her dagger and started sticking various parts of my body, in simultaneous admiration and disgust.

  “There’s nothing to cut,” she yelled in her foul French. “This sheep’s got no flesh on him. He’s all skin and bones.”

  H
ow I congratulated myself on being so incredibly thin; I was so grateful! The torturess made do with scratching my backside and thighs with her dagger, then proceeded to pound me with a cane on the soles of my feet, which had been dampened with cold water. When she was exhausted and I was totally destroyed, it was time for the swing and seesaw routine, something that is infamous, even for prisoners who have the strongest possible constitution. Trussed up like a sheep for sacrifice, I was spun around horizontally in two directions while she launched insane attacks on my backside, stomach, and genitals.

  If it had been a matter of swinging gently as in childhood days of old, it would not have been so bad, but in this case they were doing it to cause maximal pain and damage, flaying my body and making it bleed every time I crashed into a wall studded with sharp, pointed protrusions. No human intellect, no legal system, could possible justify such bestial activities.

  One of the consequences of my gruesome and painful ordeal was that the bottle came shooting out of my anus, leading to the most incredibly intense stomach pains and severe internal convulsions and distress. My head, meanwhile, was finding it hard to tolerate the vertigo and the continual collisions with the walls, so that gradually I began to waver between a marginal consciousness and a sense of detachment from my surroundings. Even so, this fiendish woman kept up her crazy assault, kicking me savagely as she accused me of being hard-hearted toward her. In a bizarre twist, she was still insisting that I needed to stop torturing her and provide her with the information that would help her keep her job and look after her children.

  All of a sudden she stopped and stood me up. She begged me to sign a piece of paper, accompanying the gesture with mechanical kisses that were rough and cruel—almost crushing my lips and chattering teeth.

  Even though I was feeling dizzy, I managed to respond, “I’ve no objection to any woman kissing me on the mouth,” I raved, “but not a barbaric ghoul-woman with foul breath and crooked artificial teeth!”

  My torturess now completely gave up hope of using her normal methods on me, and put me back on the seesaw machine. This time it was even more vicious and insane than before. I now made good use of the disgusting meal that they had fed me before it all started and that was now causing me all sorts of intestinal pain. Taking advantage of the situation to have my revenge on this ugly fiend of a woman, I raised my head every time I passed by her shoes and used every ounce of energy I had left to plaster her face with a shower of thick, viscous vomit. By doing so, I hoped she would deliver a final crushing blow to put me out of my misery. In fact, the female ghoul whom I had insulted soon decided to prod my back with an electric stun gun and followed it with a savage blow to my head. I heard the other prisoners who were waiting for their turn utter cries of panic and fear, while the single girl among them started wailing and fainted away. In my semiconscious state, I heard the ghoul order her assistants to bring over some onion and throw some cold water on me, and she told me to remain conscious. However, the space around me started to become a blur, and everything turned head over heels. All my eyes could make out were vague shapes, all fuzzy, and a few other moving figures. Soon afterward it all disappeared down a dark and bottomless pit.

  11

  These Are My Injuries, and Then They Cut My Hair

  When I woke up the next morning, I was aching all over. Everything hurt, but some pains were localized while others were everywhere throughout my body. With a fair amount of effort, I managed to sit up and felt a bandage around my head. My teeth were in a complete mess: three of them were only attached to the jaw by a slender bit of flesh. I hurriedly rid my mouth of them. Just then, I remembered the mirror hidden under my pillow. I took it out to take a look at the injuries on my face and body. My vision was impaired enough as it was, but the general sight was appalling: bruises and contusions everywhere; wounds, swellings, and scars. My nose was totally stuffed with phlegm, which meant I could only breathe through my mouth.

  I need to piss, so I struggled gamely to my feet to go to the toilet. That made me aware of the fact that I was walking like a young boy who had just been circumcised. Once I had relieved myself, I started pacing back and forth in my cell and repeating to myself that my morale was still intact. I needed to make sure that I did not give way or show any weakness. They would never be able to take away my self-respect and pride, even if they broke my ribs and nose. This then was the routine I undertook for just a few minutes, and, when I felt exhausted, I collapsed on the bed. I wonder what day it is, I asked myself in a tone that, while weak, was still defiant . . .

  When you are stretched out in bed the way I was, what can a patient do except think long and hard about the situation he is in and the possible outcomes that await. Once all thoughts have been exhausted or become too convoluted, there’s a tendency to indulge in illusions, some of them fanciful, others more concrete and insistent. Examples of the first type included women and more women, the majority of whom took the form of Nahid,* the secretary, her name and reputation being completely deserved. Within the second category I would see myself using my hands and whatever digging equipment I could lay my hands on to escape from this prison and go back to the place where I was picked up; I could disappear for a while and repair my body and soul under the protective eye of my loving mother. All kinds of frustration and roadblocks would stand in my way, but I was confident that I could either work my way around them or else jump right over them, inspired and guided by my determination and my burning desire to rescue my life from a deadly treadmill of futility and the clutches of a sudden oblivion.

  These illusions started to pile up and reproduce, but all of a sudden the stream dried up as a result of my inevitable collapse into a place than which there is nothing more obscure and rotten—in fact, just like the one I am in, situated under the oppressive tread of its denizens and myrmidons, some of whom I met, others whom I never even saw.

  These sessions involving contemplation and illusion had by now become addictive. However, on every occasion, I would lose track of things, either because I was struck by a crushing sense of impotence or because I would be interrupted by the arrival of a guard with food or a warder to take me for further interviewing and torture.

  On one occasion the thing that bothered me was the din coming from the corridor of the cells next to mine. The reason for it became clear when three sturdy men invaded my cell carrying a spray machine and proceeded to spray every single corner of my cell, after which they aimed it at me, concentrating on my head, armpits, and crotch. When I asked what was going on, one of them told me that, by order of the higher authorities, there was a campaign in every part of the detention center to eradicate the ever-increasing insect population during the summer season. He went on to tell me that, as part of the instructions, the heads and beards of all prisoners were to be shaved and the hair was to be put in sacks for burning. The hairdresser advised me not to make a fuss and to let him shave my head. Other prisoners who had resisted and made a fuss had had both their beards and moustaches completely shaved off as punishment. Watched by his two companions, he sat me down on a stool and started using enormous clippers to cut off hair wherever he found it, almost as though he were using a scythe to cut wheat sheaves or weeds. He then moistened my head, temples, and chin with foamy water and proceeded to remove any hair that was left with a razor. Before they left, one of the men spoke to me.

  “Now you’re ride of fleas, gnats, and cockroaches. You should be grateful!”

  Here I am now with my mirror that I have taken out of its hiding place. When I take a look at my face, I can hardly recognize myself. All the bumps, bruises, and bald spots that used to be covered up by my hair, all the cracks in my lips—some the result of smiling, other resulting from incredible pain—are now exposed, as is the absence of most of my front teeth. May God grant me an even greater profusion of hair to make up for what has been shaved off and burned, and a bushy beard, too, which can accompany me on nights when I shall devote myself to higher things. When it comes
to Your enemies, O God, those who abuse helpless people inside this place, send down upon them lice, flood, a plague of frogs, and blood, just as you sent down as clear signs of Your wrath against the tyrant Pharaohs of old.

  Next morning, the guard woke me up with an invitation to a communal breakfast. I waddled my way after him to the usual prisoners’ mess. No sooner had I set eyes on them with their heads and beards completely shaven than I remembered that I now looked exactly like them. It was difficult to recognize people and even more difficult to talk, particularly when, like me, you had no particular friends there. At the table to which I was assigned, I noticed that there were some prisoners with no eyebrows, and, when I looked round, there were others like them as well. I guessed that they had been punished that way for resisting yesterday’s shaving routine and causing trouble.

  A general mood of suspicion and caution hovered over the scene at the tables, not surprising in view of the fact that some of the so-called prisoners were actually plants among the real internees. For that reason, the major sound was the clanking of spoons, sipping noises, and the clearing of throats, all of which covered up the lack of any conversation. Beyond that, there were the usual suspicious movements going on close to and underneath the tables.