My Torturess

by Bensalem Himmich

  For someone like me who was now inured to hardship, this kind of advice from the boss was not hard to follow. By now I was more than able to cope with whatever harsh blows were aimed at me! I got used to the noise the workers were making all day long, and at night I came to appreciate having my door blocked. I had the strong impression that I was now totally forgotten in this cellblock, perhaps the last one; there were no meals or water. If it was not for the food and drink that the kindly black guard brought me to keep me alive, I would have been starving and suffered severe stomach problems. I read verses from the Qur’an in the dim light and, when darkness fell, recited such proverbs and poetry as I could remember. Those things provided me with another kind of more spiritual sustenance which helped me overcome my loneliness and disillusion—all in an attempt to connect to loftier values and ideals.

  The repairs went on for several days, during which the gigantic black guard came to visit me at night and bring a bag of food and some water. Once the work was finished, there was activity in the block that indicated that some new prisoners would be arriving and entering the cells. The process was accompanied by drums and clarinet. A megaphone announced that from now on the block would be known as the Penitents’ Wing. To mark the occasion, the new occupants received bags of food and bottles of milk and water. Although I had been in the block for a long time, I was included in this largesse which obviously was not in any way inspired by any kind of God-given principle.

  Once the ceremony was over and the guards had left, a voice near my cell was raised in objection.

  “No, people,” it said. “I’m not supposed to be here. I’ve not murdered anyone, nor am I a thief. I’ve never harmed anyone. I’ve spent six years with political prisoners, and they’ve imposed all the very worst kinds of punishment on me. At night they intentionally deprive us of sleep, using what they term ‘nonstop Qur’an recitation.’ Even so, they’re hoist with their own petard since the verses have given us welcome relief and transported us to realms of peace and paradise! I’m a salafi* counselor; I want to go back to my companions. I have no regrets over my choice and my commitment to the cause. I seek no forgiveness from anyone. God alone is the Merciful Forgiver.”

  “Oh no, Shaykh!” yelled another voice from the other end of the block, although it was still audible. “Pedophilia, raping innocent boys, is a foul crime forbidden by the laws of heaven and earth. Punishment for such a crime occurs in this life even before the next. Isn’t that so, people?! Listen, you faker, your previous pedophilia has caught up with you here and now. It’s a blot on your character and a disgusting crime that completely nullifies your debauched and phony claims to be a popular Muslim figure.”

  The fundamentalist paused for a while, maybe to catch his breath after such a deadly assault on his character.

  “That man with the foul tongue,” he yelled at the top of his voice,” the one you’ve all just heard, is a secret policeman who’s tracked me wherever I’ve gone. He’s been picking up snippets of information about me and other people in order to pass it all on to his bosses and employers. I have material proof of what I’m saying, and I’m asking those of you who can hear me to pass it on. You in cell 112, did you hear what the other person said about me, even though he’s in a cell far down the block?”

  I replied loudly that I had indeed heard, and my response was passed along to the prisoners, one after the other.

  “If the spy’s voice can be heard from one end of the block to the other,” the accused man continued, “then it must be because he’s using a secret electronic microphone, one supplied from the arsenal of miniature devices that are used by informers among us to carry out their devious functions. If anyone can get close enough to him to carry out a search, he’ll be able to confirm what I’m saying and prove that the man is a slimy and corrupt character; one of those people who make a living by trashing the reputation of devout people and practicing all kinds of scandal-mongering—may God fight them and thwart their intentions till the Day of Judgment!”

  Voices were now raised in support of the shaykh, while others cursed the informer. It was only when a unit of the rapid response force arrived that things calmed down. They went around brandishing their truncheons and threatened the inmates, all to the accompaniment of their barking dogs. Some of them stayed behind for several hours to reimpose order, keeping prisoners on their toes with unexpected probes. I myself had my share and more. There can be no doubt that the state they found me in, lying on my bed, was enough to convince them that I was behaving properly and had no evil intentions; that made them stop observing me and flashing lights into my cell. They simply left me in peace.

  I took advantage of the fact that they left me alone to remove the earth from the hole in the floor and whispered through the tube to my new neighbor. I was delighted when he responded. I rapidly gave him my name and the principal details of the accusations leveled against me, swearing to God that I had no part in them. He did exactly the same, with the fundamental difference that in his case the charge was correct and there was no question of appeal or invalidation. When I asked him to explain, he counted off for me the number of murders he had committed, including his mother and daughter, both whores, a pimp, and three of their customers. He told me that all the inmates in the penitents’ wing had committed similar or even worse crimes—robbers, con men, and murderers, drug dealers, sex-and wine-retailers. He made an exception when it came to the salafi counselor about whom he knew nothing and whom he had never set eyes on before. He went on to say that public law criminals such as himself were being asked to join the secret services and to work as contract killers, all in return for pardons, cancelation of indemnity, and payment of a paltry salary. Before his voice completely disappeared, he warned me to be careful when it came to the other prisoners in the wing.

  Evening fell. When the night was far advanced, a harsh voice could be heard.

  “Listen, you people in this cave,” it said. “While you’re waiting for your regrets to ripen and ferment and for your repentance to result in pardon and forgiveness, why don’t you lighten your nights with some jokes and stories? When you want to have a good laugh and take the weight off your mind, the best ones are the dirtiest, the ones below the belt. So search your own repertoire so we can cancel our worries and kill the time. Be generous, all of you, and tell them well, or else you’ll all become depressed and time will kill you. In order to sharpen your talents and inspire you, I’ll start. Have you heard the one about the man from Marrakesh who was a homosexual? He used the mountains as his base and went on sex raids through forests and plains. His targets were young boys, teenagers, and even older men. This homosexual managed to outwit both the police and the national guard. One gorgeous spring day, a senior officer was walking across a mountain slope when about a hundred meters or so away he spotted three men praying, with their backsides in the air. He discovered that the three were some of his own men. When he asked them to explain what they were doing, they all stood up and saluted. They told him that, since every attempt to arrest the elusive homosexual had failed, they had decided to lay a trap for him by using the method he had witnessed. The officer told them all to get dressed again and ordered the detachment accompanying him to put them in prison and open an investigation into their sexual orientation.”

  The entire wing burst into laughter, all of which encouraged the disgusting storyteller to move on to even worse jokes. I used pieces of bread to block my ears, anxious as I was to protect my own space which contained a copy of the Qur’an. I now ate a little bit of supper and hung my food bag on my crutch, which I placed horizontally between two holes at the back of my cell. Did I not say that my crutch had other uses?! I used the toilet and checked on the area before wrapping myself in my blanket and lying down on the bed. I whispered a few phrases to myself in praise of sleep, hoping that my eyes would be closed.

  I was abruptly woken up in the middle of the night by a voice begging for help and groaning. I removed the bread from my e
ars and went over to the door.

  “O God,” I heard from somewhere in the block, “I give witness that I’m being killed, I have not committed suicide. I witness that there is no deity but God and Muhammad is His Servant and Prophet. I witness . . .”

  The voice suddenly grew weaker, then disappeared completely. As loudly as I could, I begged the other inmates who were asleep to help the poor prisoner who was being murdered. There was no response. When I tried again—it still being pitch dark, a hand reached through my door-window and grabbed me by the neck. A voice now threatened to strangle me if I said another word. I found myself being pushed back to my bed, where I lay quivering.

  After what I had heard and what had then happened to me, I did not sleep a wink. When the cackling of some winter birds announced the arrival of dawn, there was a din of voices in the block close to my cell. Some of them announced that the salafi preacher had committed suicide by slitting his left wrist, only confirmed by the fact that a bloody knife was still in his right hand, which proved the veracity of the findings. Peeping through the window I could see a doctor in a white apron, guards, and a number of the new prisoners.

  “The salafi has committed suicide,” one of them said. “It’s a pre-Islamic kind of death, so we should not pray over him or ask for God’s mercy on him. To avoid any contamination he should be buried like an animal corpse.”

  “His cell should be thoroughly cleaned of his blood,” another voice commented, “not only that, but his bed and sheets as well. Witnesses have given their testimony and the file is closed with official legal signatures. Break it up now and return to your cells.”

  It occurred to me that I needed to pronounce the fourfold praise of God and say some prayer for the poor man who had been treacherously murdered. The facts of the matter were clearly the exact opposite of what the false witnesses had testified, but I found myself having to assess the consequences of reporting the matter when I was housed among a whole cluster of professional killers. With that in mind, I resorted to silence and said nothing.

  After eating some breakfast, the inmates in the penitents’ wing were ordered to leave their cells and go to the exercise yard. I hesitated to come out, but a guard came into my cell, forced me out, and thrust me into the midst of my new neighbors whom I was now able to see in person for the first time, albeit without their knowing who I was. Every one of them had a paunch and bulging muscles, as though they were former boxing champions or Sumo wrestlers. The thin ones looked for all the world like giraffes in height and stride; some of them had long beards that hung down like poisonous stinging scorpions. They were wearing earrings, and their bodies were covered with tattoos in weird shapes. As I walked as part of their moving column, I looked like a monkey or a young boy. Some of them decided to have some fun, yanking my beard or cuffing me on the neck and head; they kept laughing at me and poking fun at my crippled gait. There was no way I could complain or protest, so I simply tolerated the whole thing as long as the exercise session lasted, something that now seemed even more taxing than usual.

  When the group reached the wide yard, it broke up into separate groups, one to play basketball, another to wrestle, and a third to lift weights. It was members of this third group that took me and started using my body in various ways, as though I were one of the weights, tossing me around as they saw fit and exercising their bulging muscles.

  I was not of a mind to let them use and insult me as they wished, particularly when I heard them negotiating as to who would be using me as a bags of skin and bones to toss around; anyone who failed to catch it (meaning me) would have to pay his dues, implying a round of drinks or hashish. I took advantage of this chatter and their rest time and slunk away. I ran around the courtyard, hither and yon, looking for somewhere to hide or escape. When some of the men I had run away from caught up with me, I managed to avoid them by slipping out of their reach and getting away. Just as my breath was beginning to run out, I hurled myself at a guard and told him my name and cell number. I begged him to protect me and take me to see the investigating judge. How I rendered praises to God when the guard ordered the men who were chasing me to go back to their exercise.

  “You’re Hamuda!” he yelled at me. “What a lucky chance! The judge has been asking me about you. Let’s go to see him now. But first you need to shower, shave and put on some fresh clothes. Follow me.”

  Duly amazed, I followed him. My only hope was that, now that I had escaped from the bulging-muscle brigade and was on my way to see the judge who would decide my fate, I was not simply going from the frying pan into the fire. To convince me that nothing worse could possibly happen, I obeyed the guard’s three injunctions. A few hours later I had washed my body and mouth, shaved my beard and head, and put on a black suit, white shirt, and red tie, keeping my Nike shoes to help me walk.

  For hours, the guard kept me in a narrow room that was locked, but I did not mind; quite the contrary in fact, I was enjoying the quiet music that emerged from speakers in the ceiling, not to mention other services being offered by a beautiful, dark brown hostess: refreshing drinks, a splendid lunch followed by cups of decent tea, and a variety of delicious sweets. I tried to get the hostess to talk and gathered that she was Filipina and only spoke English. In a few broken phrases I communicated to her how grateful I was and that I did not know much English. I apologized for my awful accent.

  As I sat there alone in this room, I spent several moments in front of the mirror, staring at my body and noticing how incredibly thin it was and how bad my face looked: Few teeth in my mouth, sunken cheeks, a jutting nose, dark eyes with little glow to them, hair and beard flecked with grey. Escaping from the realities of the miscreant mirror, I sat down on the bench, unable to decide whether to stop thinking about things and relish the current moment, or else to try to guess what was going on in the judge’s mind; what new tempting offers or unpleasant surprises would he be springing on me if I stuck to my guns or, as he would term it, my stubborn behavior.

  I remained in that state until the hostess returned in the evening and invited me to accompany her at once. With her, I got into a jeep with its armed driver. For about five kilometers we crossed the desert at high speed. The jeep stopped in front of a sturdy-looking building with fences all around. I followed the hostess inside, where the air conditioning gave one a sense of relaxation. After I had gone through an electronic screening machine, a foreign soldier subjected me to a detailed manual search of my body. He told me to remove my shoes and put them in a basket, and I did so. After he had disappeared into a side room, he came back and handed me some moccasins to replace my own shoes that he was going to keep for reasons that I could not ask about because of the language problem. Putting the moccasins on, I followed the hostess through lobbies and halls with American décor and furniture till we reached a bar with the name Zemzem Bar written above the door. She told me to sit on a separate bench that she pointed out for me, then said her farewells and left.

  The bar had an American design, at least as far as my knowledge of Western movies made me aware. The majority of the people in it were Americans; theirs was the only language that was to be heard. I tapped out a rhythm on the low table and whispered the tune sung by the late Husayn Salawi: “All you hear is Okay, Okay, come on, bye-bye.”

  One of the barmaids caught my attention, not just because her breasts were almost naked and she was extremely beautiful, but also because she looked very much like Na‘ima, the judge’s secretary, the woman who had been so kind to me. Without even realizing what I was doing or thinking about the possible consequences, I rushed over to her and whispered her name. She pretended not to know me and told me that she would be bringing what I ordered. I went back to my spot as quickly as possible so as not to disturb her or arouse suspicion in any prying eyes. A few moments later, when I realized that no one was paying me any attention, Na‘ima came over and put a glass of orange juice on my table.

  “If you talk to me,” she whispered, “you’ll ruin my entire
life.”

  And with that she melted rapidly away.

  “No, a thousand times no, Na‘ima!!” I told myself. “I’ll never ruin your life. It’s quite enough already that my own life is in ruins, quite enough . . .”

  But how could I keep quiet about these soldiers and foreign detectives, strutting around so arrogantly. Dear Na‘ima, they will never make you an exception to the way they treat waitresses and other barroom girls. One of them taps your backside for pleasure, while another squeezes your breasts, puffs his cigarette smoke all over them, and raises a toast to their beauty. Yet another pulls you toward him and gives your mouth a passionate kiss.

  So, tell me, Na‘ima, am I supposed to say nothing as I watch these disgusting goings-on? Should I simply swallow my fury, or do I have the right to pounce on these Yankees and curse them for fooling around with you? Should I tell them: “Listen, you pig, don’t touch any Moroccan girls, or else . . .”

  Or else what, Hamuda?! You’re so weak, so sick and completely crushed; a surefire candidate at any time for murder by a knife thrust or fatal blow to the heart or head. You’re a total nonentity, a flea. By God, all you can do is cower in your chair and grovel. You’re dreaming if you think you can put up a fight. So you disapprove of the lewd behavior you’re watching and giving this haven of debauchery the holy name of the Zemzem well in Mecca. Fair enough, but you had better keep it all under wraps. If you so much as air it in public, it will be the end of you.