by Peter Hobbs
Even a few minutes of torture seem to last for ever. I remember strange details. The smell of paan on their breath. A pair of metal pliers on a table top. I can still picture them, and the thought comes with a shiver: their steel was blackened and tarnished, rust speckled like a lichen at the hinge. Willing it all to be over. Thinking that yes, I could bear this moment, this pain, perhaps the next, if only they would stop. And then an agony would squirm in my body again and I would be lost, only slowly returning to my senses. I would wonder how many days I had been tormented, only to find, on being returned to the cell, that I had been gone no more than an hour or two.
At the beginning, I thought that they did this to punish me for what I had done, and so for a while I accepted the pain. How unfaithful my heart would be if it failed you now, if it felt that you were not worth the suffering. I asked the men to forgive me.
But the guards did not discriminate between the prisoners. They seemed to choose one or another of us almost on a whim. They did not call us by name, did not rebuke us for our crimes, and I came to understand that they were not punishing us. They did not care who we were, or what we had done. Their actions were guided by neither justice or retribution, nor even by malice, but by something far more banal, far more terrible. Simply, they were bored. They subjected us to appalling tortures, roused terror and agony in our eyes just so that they might be briefly relieved of the boredom of their jobs, and to remind themselves that they were not like us, that the time we spent in the prison was theirs, laid claim to, and could be controlled as they wished.
This knowledge was shattering to me. I had withstood the first weeks because I believed there was an order to things, whether that order was just or unjust. That my suffering continued even after I had understood its senselessness, its absurdity, was a terrible blow. The darkness I had felt forming inside rose up, immense, and engulfed me. I had no defence against it. It was such an unspeakable thing; I feel as though I have known it as intimately as I could, and still I do not have the words to explain its horror. If, at first, I had struggled against my lack of freedom, like a bird beating its wings on its cage, then that struggle lessened and finally ceased, and a stagnant resignation came upon me. I registered very little. My body became filled with disgust for itself.
I thought of you, but my thoughts were damaged. I conjured you, imagining you stepping among the prisoners, coming to lie beside me, to stroke my wounds and hold my head. You were my only recourse, the only thought that brought relief to my mind, and I thought of you constantly, until I understood that I did not want you in that place, that I should keep you from it, and save you only for the quietest, most desperate moments in the dark of the night, when you could walk through the room unseen and remain uncontaminated by it. You were the only good in my life, and I protected your name as though it were a sacred thing.
Trying now to remember all this is hard. The order of events is confused. I cannot pull the years apart, and arrange them as they fell. I know that there came a time when the memory of you alone was not enough to save me. I thought I would not see you again, and your visits, in my mind, began to bring more pain than they eased. The darkness consumed me. My mind was black. I began not to care if I lived, and then after a while I began to long, more and more forcefully, to die: every part of my body yearning for it, for the relief of death. The need persisted for so long that it wiped almost every other desire from me. I needed to be free from the prison, saved from the punishments, and it seemed the only exit. If there had been an easy way, a sure way, I would have taken it.
*
Even these memories begin to cloud. They are horrific, but they do recede. It is a strange thing, because I thought the intensity of those times would always be with me. I almost feel as though I should hold on to it, to remember what was done to me. But though we are built to heal, or at least to survive, to forget, suffering has inscribed patterns of thought deep into my mind, and I think that some of the damage will not heal, even after the memories are long faded.
The Notebook
How I love this paper! Abbas gave me this notebook. He had bought several of them for Alifa to use at school. There was a pile of them at the end of one bookcase. He came in one day to find me holding one of the books, turning it over in my hands, running my fingers, their tips still scarred from burns, over the rough surface.
‘Do you read and write?’ he asked me.
‘A little,’ I said. I had not written since I was a child. The only text I had read was the Qur’an.
‘Did you go to school?’
‘No. I learned at the mosque. We had classes sometimes, after prayers.’
‘Show me,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you can help Alifa with her school work.’
And then later, after I had tried to make my broken hands control the pen, had struggled to form letters that once came easily: ‘Or perhaps Alifa can help you.’
I have had to learn again how to write. I had almost forgotten, and it was painful to grip the pen in my hand for any length of time. My thumb tingled with numbness, and my palm would freeze in agonising contortions so that I had to massage my grip free. But my two teachers, one old and one young, have been patient with me, and my long-ago lessons had not left me entirely. I was soon able to sit and write with Alifa. It is true that my hand still aches as I work, that I must pause often and stretch my fingers before I take up the pen again, to allow the cramps to fade, but the process of adding words to the page brings so much pleasure that I do not mind the discomfort that accompanies it. In the cold morning air it takes a minute before the ink in my pen flows, and I write with it against the skin of my arm until it comes, not wishing to deface the pages of the notebook until I can write on them cleanly.
And, yes, the notebook: its covering card is dyed violet, like the sky at dusk, at the last moment before darkness. Its paper is handmade, mulched together and pressed down then dried in the sun, before it was cut into sheets and folded into books. The pages bear the marks of their construction, and recorded in the texture of each page must be some evidence of the individual who made them. Within the paper are fine flecks of chipped wood, and threads run beneath the surface like the fossilised remains of creatures that we used to find in the rocks, in places along the roadside. The firm tip of my ballpoint pen travels pleasurably over them. Along the spine, three holes have been pierced with an awl, and the loose leaves are tied through them with rough string. The string is long, so that it may be wrapped around the book to bind it; it trails loose now, as I write in the opened leaves.
It is a wonderful luxury to own, and the greatest pleasure of my day is to sit down with it, whether in the orchard or here in the garden, and write a little. Sometimes I stop to smooth my hand across the sheet, over the new thread of ink, and my attention settles for a moment on the physical details of the page, on the paper, its beauty and solidity, and I find I have drifted away into thought, losing myself for a while, and when I wake it takes several moments before I remember where I am, or how I came to be here.
*
How easily these days pass. The months are wearing lightly; I hardly feel them as they go. After the slowness of time in prison, it is a shock. No longer unbearable, time has become a comfort, as soft as a blanket. I could sleep it away and still be satisfied. Abbas has been encouraging me to use my time to read, as well as write – he thinks it will lessen the boredom of recovery – but the truth is that I am not bored. Boredom is something I no longer experience. It is gone from me, lost during those years of enforced stillness. I could watch the sky all day, and breathe the air, and never once grow tired of it. It is enough, more than enough, not to suffer.
In any case, I could not read for long to begin with, but as my stamina has returned, so have the headaches lessened. Reading comes more easily now. Abbas has so many books in his study, more than I have ever seen. Varnished wooden shelves cover two of the walls, from floor to ceiling, and they are full of books written in many languages. I cannot believe he has read them all.
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‘How is it possible to read so many?’ I ask him.
‘You begin with one,’ he says. ‘And then you move on to the next. And Insha’Allah, your life will be long.’
In his house are works of history and philosophy, and many books of poetry. Some bear his name, though they are too difficult for me to follow. In any case, the books I like best are those on nature. I have read his gardening books, which are filled with beautiful pictures of flowers I do not recognise. He even has a book written in English which tells you about all the birds, and though the alphabet is foreign to me, with the help of the pictures, and with Abbas as translator, I have been learning as much as I can.
Saba, beloved, let me tell you about:
The Swallows
I would never have believed there were so many different kinds, until I looked in that book. There are pages and pages of them, so many that I was confused, and did not know which of them represented our swallows; if they were the ones called red-rumped, or perhaps streak-throated.
But I persisted, and looked in greater detail, and finally among the pictures I saw one with a blue mask across its eyes and a rusty crown to its head, and I know now that the swallows that arc among the trees in our orchard are known as wire-tailed. Their tail feathers are long, you will remember, like fine threads trailing their flight, as though they were at the end of a long kite string, only the furthest filament visible as it glints in the sun.
According to the book they are solitary birds, and so I suppose that it is unusual to see as many as we have here. They nest near water, and must therefore come to the orchard from the lake, perhaps along the irrigation channel, tracing their way along the ribbon of water to feed on the insects that buzz among the trees.
They have become accustomed to my presence here in the morning. They flash white and blue as they swoop and veer ever closer, so that sometimes I hear only the distinct flap of a wing beside my ear as one turns over in mid-flight, changing direction impossibly to swerve around me. They are so quick, so perfect in their lines, like little miracles in the air.
One day, when I lay in the prison cell in a stupor, my eyes unfocused on the ceiling, I saw a flutter of the light at the window. I am not sure how long I had been there. Many months, certainly, though it might as well have been a lifetime. It was in my mind’s darkest weeks. But the flutter of light: I have told you that the window was small, and high on the wall, and from where I lay I could not see the sky. Yet there was that flicker there, as though the sun were a bulb losing its electricity, or a candle guttering in the breeze. Too sudden, too complicated, to be a cloud. Perhaps I had seen it many times, without once thinking of its significance. This time, however, something deep inside woke up, the first stirring of an old familiarity. So I kept my eyes on the window, and the slant of light it cast against the wall, waiting for the flicker to repeat. And when it did I saw a shadow pass, too quick to leave a shape.
Alert now, I rose into a sitting position. I knew what it was. I knew, but my mind would not remember. I sat for a long time, my brain reaching for something just beyond it, until the feeling of familiarity grew and became overwhelming, until at last I was able to name what I had seen as a bird, and I was sure, simply sure, that it was the exact flutter the swallows made, as they reached a perch. A dipping and braking, a folding of their wings as they landed.
There were swallows nesting in the eaves of the prison wall. It was frustrating not to be able to see them, but I pictured their nests, neat bowls lined with mud. They were not the same swallows I knew, and I thought for a while that perhaps they were just swifts or martins. But sometimes in the yard I would catch a glimpse of one looping over the top of the wall, and I was able to recognise it.
And on those occasions thereafter, when we were taken from our cells and made to march, chained, around the dusty yard, I would crane my neck upwards, blinking into the light, looking for the swallows. I would trip, often, holding up the march, and be beaten for my trouble, told to watch my step. But I could not watch the ground. My eyes strained upwards, greedy for a sight of the birds, even if they flew high and were only dark specks against the blue. And when I raised my head and saw them flying free there was the feeling in my heart of something I had not known for a long time. It was joy, and it was the most painful thing I have ever felt, because it reminded me of everything we no longer owned. But now I had two visitors to my prison: you, in the secret moments, and the swallows. Two secrets to protect, two poles to hold on to, and so balanced, a hope began to rise that I might survive the days.
The Orchard
The monsoon is here. It does not fully reach us, high in the valley. But the air has become more humid, and from the mountainside I can see the clouds, low and heavy on the distant plains. It is a strange season to be walking, the land so dry one day, and then the next, half the road will have been washed away by a sudden downpour.
I wonder, as you read this, what you think of me. Of my calmness. Do I sound reconciled to everything that happened? Do I sound as though I have no anger?
Listen: I knew a man in prison, Ibraheem Jamal. He was tall, and soft with wealth when he arrived with us, his flesh heavy on his body. He sweated copiously in the heat, his shirt soaked and his forehead bright. He had been convicted of murder, though he was dismissive of the charge. It was a false accusation, he said, brought by a family with a feud against his own. He was made hostage by his imprisonment until a financial disagreement could be settled. Perhaps what he said was true; there were other men in the prison with similar stories. The guards did not treat him unjustly.
From the moment he entered our cell he spoke angrily about his enemies, about those who he believed had plotted to destroy him.
‘I have killed no one,’ he said. ‘But they have turned me into a killer.’
He was consumed by fantasies of revenge. In the night he would mutter to me their crimes and the violence he would do to them in return. He recited the details of imagined punishments with a fervour that disturbed me. It was like a physical thing inside him, and it consumed his mind. Another man told him to trust in Allah, who would repay his enemies for their sins. But Ibraheem Jamal raised his finger, which shook with anger as he held it close to the man’s face. ‘Every wrong is avenged on earth,’ he said.
So, among the powerless, do dreams of power proliferate. Within two years the prison broke him. He was released, but the man who left was unsound. Physically, he had suffered: his once-full frame was gaunt and the skin of his torso hung wrinkled and loose. But more than this, he had become a darkened shadow of a man, paranoid and distrustful. He believed we conspired against him, that we sought to poison his food. His moods were unpredictable, switching in an instant from friendliness to violence. His obsession had undone him; his dreams had constructed a new world, and he had gone to inhabit it. He saw this world everywhere, and reality escaped him.
It is true that I, too, was angry for a long time, first at those whom I blamed for my imprisonment. My hatred for your father tormented me for years. And in my confusion I was also angry with my family, for not seeking me out, and I was angry with you, too, for not pleading with your father to find out where I was. I could not believe it possible that you knew, and yet could not persuade him to take pity on me. I understand now, of course, that even if you had known, you could have done nothing.
The anger has faded. I have no desire to seek revenge. I do not think it was anything I did. I think, simply, that I was just fortunate that my rage did not overwhelm me. Perhaps I came to understand that it was not real. And as I write to you, the last of my resentment is subdued. I seek only peace. I seek to be better than the person I am.
I do not even regret that I was imprisoned. It would be senseless to do so: our lives are leaves, and the wind takes them where Allah wills. The days fall as he allows, and this I accept. But I do still regret, for one reason only, the years. I regret them because we were apart, because I was not with you, and everything that might have been be
tween us was never allowed to be. I regret, because we cannot have the time back.
Perhaps you will think me foolish. Perhaps you have put the past behind you, and whatever regrets you might have had have been set aside, because you do not see their purpose. Time softens all griefs, they say, and it is useless to dwell on lives that might have been. We are granted only one life, and one life is enough. Whom do such regrets profit? What do they achieve, except to bring us unhappiness?
Listen: I feel regret because love is priceless, and because I do not wish to deny it its value. Because I know what might have been, had you and I been together. How I still long for those years! They were taken from us, and can never be returned. But they are precious beyond measure, and I will be loyal to the love I have felt for you, and will not lay it aside. If I did not feel regret, I would forget its value; I would keep nothing of its worth.
Every day I long for something I will never have, and I am learning to live with that longing. Is this not better than forgetting – to face our regrets for what they are, to know their measure, to know the value of what we have lost?
The Waterfall
Do you remember in the marketplace, at the corner of the square, the area where they sold birds? The narrow walkways formed by cages piled high, each packed with so many birds – twenty or fifty or a hundred. The musty, feathered smell, their deafening song. As a boy, I was thrilled by them, by the noise and scratching life as I swept through there with my friends. We would run our hands along the rough cages, feeling the metal vibrate and the birds react, and then the merchant would shout at us and we would scatter. Or we dared each other to push our fingers into the holes, to be pecked by the birds. Always one of us would be scratched or bitten deeply enough to draw blood, and sometimes tears.
