My Torturess

by Bensalem Himmich

  Afterword

  Glossary

  Afterword

  The English dictionary does not contain the word torturess. While the feminine suffix “-ess” certainly continues to exist and be used to depict certain categories: princess, hostess, heiress, seamstress, and so on (and, in former times, a woman who wrote poetry might well be called a poetess rather than what seems to have become the current preference for poet—or even female poet), it might be assumed that the generally horrific functions associated with the torture of human beings has been an exclusively male preserve and thus the term torturer has been sufficient. In this novel by Bensalem Himmich, however, the Arabic title Mu‘adhdhabat is unequivocally feminine in form. It is out of a desire to underline the clear indications of the title and the fact that it consists of a single noun that I have coined the English title I have used.

  This is the fourth novel written by Bensalem Himmich that I have translated into English. The first (in order of their publication in English) is Al-‘Allamah (1997: The Polymath, 2004), which recounts the later life in Cairo of the great Arab philosopher of history, Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406)—that topic being, not coincidentally, the field of scholarly specialization of Himmich himself; the second, Majnun al-hukm (1990; The Theocrat, 2006), is devoted to the controversial life of the Fatimid Caliph, Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (985–1021); and thirdly, Hadh al-Andalusi (2007, A Muslim Suicide, 2011), which follows the life and death of the controversial Andalusian Sufi physician and theologian known by the nickname, Ibn Sab‘in (1217–68)—and I need to note here that the title of the English translation is a reflection of the author’s original intentions that were not reflected in the original Arabic version’s title. In other words, all three of these novels in translation are narratives in which the life and career of a famous figure from the Arab-Islamic heritage are placed into a fictional context which, while based to an extent on textual accounts of the persons and periods in question, are primarily the products of the author’s own imagination. One might therefore identify them as contributions in Arabic to the subgenre of the “historical novel,” thus following in the path pioneered by Sir Walter Scott with his Waverley novels and replicated in various world literary traditions by such illustrious figures as Leo Tolstoy and Honoré de Balzac. However, Himmich himself has expressed the view—in many personal conversations and public presentations that we have done together—that he does not wish to use the term historical novels in connection with these works. For him, these and his other fictional works are novels (and it needs to be mentioned here that he is also a poet and, as already noted, a scholar in the field of historiography). In expressing that view he joins the great European critic, Georg Lukacs, who similarly declares that novels that utilize history in one way or another—and there are indeed many such ways—are indeed simply novels. Indeed, Lukacs goes beyond that to suggest that, in one way or another, every novel can be considered “historical”—whether it treats the topic of history and figures from the past or whether it is a reflection of the era in which it is written. In the Arabic literary context, one might suggest that Jamal al-Ghitani’s (b. 1945) famous novel, Al-Zayni Barakat, is certainly a classic example of a novel that makes use of history to comment on the present, but that almost any novel by his compatriot, Najib Mahfuz (1911–2006), can now be considered “historical,” whether we talk about the world-famous Trilogy of novels about Cairo in the interwar period (in the case of the novels, approximately 1917–44) or Al-Summan wa-al-Kharif (1962), which is set during and immediately after the 1952 Egyptian Revolution.

  My Torturess is then first and foremost a novel, and yet it too fits into a particular period in history—indeed, a very recent one—the ramifications of which are still very much before us. During the period following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and as part of its consequences in terms of the “war on terror,” the novel’s primary character, a young man called amuda from the Eastern Moroccan city of Oujda, is subject to the process dubbed by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as “extraordinary rendition,” involving arrest and transfer to a secret camp in one of several nations whose posture toward the use of torture was and is somewhat less punctilious than in other countries. Himmich himself has served as Minister of Culture in Morocco, and whatever information is available about these secret camps and the methods that were used to “render” those suspected of being “terrorists” suggests that Morocco may have one of those secret sites. However, the process whereby Hamuda is “rendered” to the place where he is to spend six years of his life does not indicate where the location is—whether in Morocco or another country.

  Hamuda is to suffer at the hands—and other parts of the body—of the novel’s title figure, a woman of apparently French origins nicknamed “Mama Ghula” (Mother Ghoul). She is the “torturess” of Himmich’s and my title, and her presence in the camp and indeed the nickname coined by her victims serve to accentuate the highly unusual circumstance, it would appear, of utilizing a woman, and especially a woman’s body, in the exercise of torture involving male internees. Hamuda’s own statements throughout the narrative and his regular invocations and prayers make it clear that he is a devout Muslim; indeed, at one point during his lengthy incarceration he is appointed as the prisoners’ mufti (religious counselor). However, it emerges during interrogation that it is the activities of his cousin, al-Husayn al-Masmudi, a member—we later learn—of a jihadist group operating in the Atlas Mountains, that appear to arouse the interest of the security forces who subject Hamuda to the process of “rendition.”

  Among the variety of “trials and examinations” that Hamuda is forced to endure are exposure to the treatment of a variety of guards in different segments of the prison, cellblocks subjected to intense noise, the placement of “plants”—other “prisoners” who actually are not in that category—in Hamuda’s cell itself and both the exercise yard and cafeteria (when and if he is allowed access to them), and fake firing squads. However, the most direct method takes the form of cross-examinations involving two primary figures. The first is the investigating judge, a fellow Arab, it would appear from his lengthy discussions of the pedantries of correct Arabic language use and his delight in debates on literature and style—whose very pedantry is responsible for many of the cultural references that make up the entries in the glossary accompanying this translation. In justifying the methods of torture employed by the second figure, Mama Ghula (the “torturess”), the judge reveals to Hamuda and the reader exactly who those “foreign agencies” are:

  She should be punished, not merely for what she’s done to you but also because, when it comes to monstrous conduct and illicit behavior, she has no peer; when it comes to terror and violence, no one else comes even close. But how can I be blamed when Uncle Sam has written her a blank check? What am I supposed to do? The Yankees have given her a green light—in fact, it’s so green that there’s nothing fresher and greener. And, if you’ve never heard of the Yankees and Uncle Sam, then let me tell you that it’s the Americans . . .”

  It is only when the efforts of this judge to persuade Hamuda (and other prisoners) to reveal information about themselves, their “terrorist activities,” and, in Hamuda’s case, the whereabouts and activities of his cousin, fail to produce the needed results that they are consigned to Mama Ghula’s ministrations. The sequence of the narrative manages to provide a terrifying accumulative picture of this fiendish woman, but the narrator’s first actual view of her occurs when he participates in a vicious soccer game that she is supposedly refereeing between the prisoners and a set of thugs who essentially flatten their opposition. Soon afterwards, however, it is his turn in the torture chamber about which he has already heard so much. As one of the narrator’s cell mates has warned him:

  They’ll hand you over to the professional torturess, who’s an expert in all kinds of degradation and torture. The worst of them, she’s learned in specialized foreign centers, but she’s also i
nvented others of her own that she delights in testing on imprisoned suspects like you and me. Compared with the torture she inflicts, the torments of the grave are a joke, kid’s play. I don’t want you to fall prey to the woman they call Mama Ghula—and may God protect you from her barbaric madness!

  Once again, the reader’s attention is drawn here to the “specialized foreign centers” where Mama Ghula has received training, but it is the “other” methods of torture that inject into the narrative aspects of sexual perversion that are indeed more than liable to “upset the squeamish.” Indeed, they involve “degrading” practices that are so extreme as not only to cause maximum harm and offense to those prisoners who adhere to beliefs of Islam and the norms of Arab society, but also to replicate in the reader’s mind the general outrage generated by the release of the photographs taken inside the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq and the debates over the practice and very legitimacy of “waterboarding.”1

  It is only when these procedures fail to achieve their goals that the torturess resorts to other means of physical abuse—stubbing out lighted cigarettes on his body, hanging him upside down, thrusting a bottle into his anus, and then ruing the fact that he is too thin to scrape off parts of his flesh as she has done with other victims. Even with this, Mama Ghula is still not finished with her attempts at using forms of sexual torture in order to extract “information” from this particular victim. In a truly grotesque scene, Hamuda later finds himself in bed with his torturess. She claims that they are married and even brings in “witnesses” to corroborate her story. As if that is not enough, she enlivens the events of the night by summoning her “court jester,” a midget who specializes in telling dirty jokes.

  Bearing in mind the vicious and perverted ways in which Mama Ghula has utilized sexual perversion as a means of assaulting the unfortunate inmates of this detention center, it is hardly surprising—indeed, perhaps fitting—that her own demise should result from violent confrontation. At a grotesque evening entertainment organized for the prisoners by the “administration”—all of whose principals are present, an enormous, deaf-mute black guard is invited to play his drum. As his expert performance works his audience up into a frenzy of action and movement, Mama Ghula gets to her feet and rides on the black drummer’s back, noting, as she does so, that she has previously been a wild-animal tamer. Suddenly, the drummer throws her to the ground and delivers a series of deadly blows before he is shot dead by guards. With that, the entertainment is brought to a rapid and chaotic close.

  The narrator’s “re-rendition” is brought about through the intervention of the medical authorities at the center and with the tacit support of Na‘ima, one of the succession of secretaries to the investigating judge, she being a fellow Moroccan to whom the entire narrative is addressed at its beginning and end. She provides Hamuda with a vial of blood so that he can replicate the symptoms of tuberculosis in yet another interview with the judge. As the narrative reaches its conclusion, Hamuda has begun the process of resuming something approaching a normal life in the Oujda region. In fact, thanks to the good offices of a local shaykh, he is now residing in the plains outside the city at the house of an elderly widow whose daughter, Zaynab, he has married. It is in such quiet rural surroundings that he can begin his life afresh and write a record of his horrendous experiences.

  In conclusion, it seems important to emphasize again that this work of Bensalem Himmich is indeed a contribution to fiction. However, that said, it clearly manages to fulfill one of the primary purposes of that particular genre of fiction that is the novel, in that, to quote Lionel Trilling’s description, it serves as “an especially useful agent of the moral imagination.”2

  The reader of this text encounters in its starkest form the full impact of the policies adopted by the government of the United States in its attempts to counteract the perceived threats of international terrorism in the wake of the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and implemented at secret sites situated in a number of countries—apparently in both Europe and Africa. The resulting account, told from the point of view of a Moroccan who finds himself ensnared in the web of suspicion that results, is utterly shocking, and deliberately so. The novel reveals the moral depths to which humanity is capable of descending; it not only describes in painfully vivid detail the processes of torture—physical, mental, and, in this case, sexual, but also reveals all kinds of cultural biases that at times show themselves as overt racism.

  The former Minister of Culture in Morocco, Bensalem Himmich, here paints an unforgettable picture of a prison camp somewhere, perhaps even in his own homeland. The period involved is six years of imprisonment—only computable at its conclusion, preceded by an apparently normal life and followed by a struggle to return to it. This novel is thus a very different contribution to its author’s oeuvre available in English translation—certainly concerned with a particular and highly controversial period in twenty-first-century history, but also a major contribution to prison fiction. But, above all, a wonderful novel.

  I would like to thank Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar for accepting this novel in their excellent series of translations and also express my gratitude to the editorial staff at Syracuse University Press. A special word of thanks is due to the two readers of this manuscript, the majority of whose suggestions have been incorporated into the text.

  Roger Allen

  1. A detailed investigation of the Abu Ghraib Prison is: Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). The literature on waterboarding—particularly following revelations in 2007 of its use by the Central Intelligence Agency, its lengthy history as a form of torture, and its (il-)legality, is enormous.

  2. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (New York: Scribner’s, 1940/1950, vii).

  Glossary

  ‘Abbas ibn Firnas (810–77): of Andalusian-Amazigh extraction, he was a polymathic scientist, engineer, musician and poet.

  Abu Zayd: the hero of one of Arabic’s most famous epic folk sagas, Sirat Bani Hilal.

  ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (601–61): cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad and fourth Caliph of Islam. The Shi‘ah community was founded in his name. The Durar al-Kalim is a collection of his short sayings and aphorisms.

  ‘Antara ibn Shaddad al-‘Absi (6th cent.): a renowned pre-Islamic poet-cavalier whose many exploits and challenges posed by the father of his beloved, ‘Abla, provide the content for the multi-volume epic, Sirat ‘Antar.

  Abu Yazid al-Bistami (d. c. 877): an early ecstatic Sufi of Iranian origins.

  Al-Busiri (1212–c. 1294): an Egyptian poet, best known for his “Burda” (Mantle) poem in praise of the Prophet Muhammad.

  Gnaoua: the name of a tribe and language from the regions to the south of Morocco, whose musical performances are especially popular.

  Hajj: the pilgrimage to Mecca; with an elongated “a” vowel, the honorific title given to a Muslim who has undertaken the pilgrimage.

  Hassan ibn Thabit (7th cent.): the most famous of the poets associated with the career of the prophet Muhammad.

  Hatim al-Ta’i (d. 578): a pre-Islamic Christian poet proverbial for his generosity.

  Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292–1350): a scholar of Qur’anic studies, hadith, and rhetoric, and author of Rawdat al-muhibbin (Lovers’ Meadow).

  Ibn Manzur (1233–1311), compiler of the Arabic dictionary, Lisan al-‘Arab.

  Ibn Sa‘d (d. 845): a hadith scholar whose biographical dictionary, Kitab Tabaqat al-Kabir, details the lives of the Prophet Muhammad and of the earliest personalities in Islamic history.

  Abu ‘Uthman Bahr al-Jahiz (776–868): Arabic’s most illustrious essayist, prose stylist, and critic.

  Al-Jalalan: the title given to the two most important collections of Prophetic “hadith” termed “sahih” (authentic): those of al-Bukhari (810–70) and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (c. 815–75).

  Muhammad al-Juzuli (d. 1465): a Moroccan Sufi scholar and author of Dala’il al-Kha
yrat, a collection of prayers to the Prophet Muhammad.

  Maquis: A French word, meaning literally “scrub, bush,” that was used during the Second World War to describe the French resistance forces.

  Mu‘allaqa: the name given to the collection of seven (or ten) long odes composed in the pre-Islamic era and much prized as early monuments in the Arabic poetic tradition.

  Munkir and Nakir: the names of the two angels who will question believers following their death.

  Al-Mutanabbi (915–65): Arabic’s most famous premodern poet, renowned equally for his panegyrics and lampoons of rulers and patrons.

  O Mu‘tasim: in Arabic, “y mu‘taimh,” a proverbial cry of distress, allegedly first pronounced following the defeat of the Muslim armies in Anatolia.

  Shaykh Muhammad al-Nafzawi (15th cent.): the author of Al-Rawdat al-‘Atir (known in English as The Perfumed Garden for the Heart’s Delight), a famous sex manual, originally prepared for a Tunisian vizier, Muhammad al-Zawawi.

  Nahid: the secretary’s name in Arabic means “buxom.”

  Fu’ad Nigm (1929–2013): a renowned Egyptian folk poet who often composed poems that were sung to music composed by Shaykh Imam.

  Qays and Layla: Qays is the renowned “Majnun” of Arabic lore, the lover driven to insanity by his love for Layla and the fact that he is forever banned from seeing her.

  salafi: literally, connected to one’s forebears, this term now implies an adherence to the tenets of Islam in its earliest phases.

  Sura of the Poets: In Sura 26 of the Qur’an, poets are said to be lost and wandering around in valleys.

  Jalal al-din al-Suyuti (1445–1505): a polymathic scholar and author of over 500 works of enormous variety.

  Al-Takfir wa-al-Hijra (approx. Anathema and Emigration]: the name of a radical Islamist group, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, that emerged in Egypt during the 1960s.