“Ilyas Bu Shama?” I asked her. “How is he? Where did he disappear to?”
“I’m the one asking the questions, bastard!”
“Oh no, I’m perfectly legitimate. You may not insult my mother!”
“So how many times did you sleep with Ilyas; I mean, fuck him?”
My entire body shuddered in horror.
“Never, never!” I yelled as loudly as I could.
“Never?” she replied with raised eyebrows. “Not even a caress or a kiss?”
“Never. My faith totally forbids homosexuality.”
“So is that your final word?”
“Yes, my final word, Madame. .”
“It’s Miss, you ass!”
I wanted to placate my interviewer and lessen the tension
“Mademoiselle?” I said. “You mean, you’re still unmarried?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re still beautiful and desirable. I would imagine that someone must have raped you at some point or got you into bed. .”
“Listen! My personal life is sacred. Do you hear me, sacred?!”
“Cigarette!” she yelled to the guard.
The guard lit a cigarette and put it between her lips. Meanwhile, she kept clutching me without relaxing her grip at all. She started puffing away nervously at the cigarette and put the ash in my ear. As politely as I could, I suggested that my ear was not an ashtray, but that made her furious. She stubbed it out on my chest and threw it away, totally unconcerned about my cries of pain.
I tried to control my nerves as much as possible. It occurred to me that I could take advantage of the somewhat lightened atmosphere and at the same time earn her sympathy if I played the fool a bit. I would accept her invitation to solve our dispute by engaging in a boxing match with her, following the usual rules for the sport. I was surprised when she accepted the idea with a guffaw. When she told her assistants, they guffawed too, and, once the news spread to the other people who were waiting to be cross-examined and tortured, some of them let out a strangled sort of laugh as well.
I was well aware, of course, that the balance of strength was not in my favor. Mama Ghula was much heavier; I was something like a flyweight. Even so, I decided, at least mentally, to put my faith in my own innocence. Every wronged person, I told myself, was obliged to defend himself. In any case, I had always felt an inborn proclivity for the honorable life and was always keen to endorse the loftiest examples of human advancement. As I was doing some warm-up exercises, I started rehearsing some of those principles, including expressions like “Even gnats can make the lion’s eye bleed,” “There are things in rivers that you won’t find in the sea,” and similar expressions.
Mama Ghula yelled at me to stop talking nonsense. She selected a prisoner to act as referee and gave him a whistle. She then forced the small group of prisoners waiting there to testify that I was the one who had suggested this contest, no one else. The referee now brought the two of us together and reminded us both of rules forbidding either scratching, biting, or striking the head or the sexual organ. My hands were wrapped in strips of cotton (with the agreement of the boss-lady), then the whistle was blown to signal the start of the first round.
I decided to defend myself and protect my honor by extending my tied hands and giving my opponent threatening looks. I imitated the tactics of the Muslim American boxer, Muhammad ‘Ali — May God cure his Parkinson’s disease and grant him a long life! — by taking on the role of a bee, painful opportunistic stings involving a lot of feinting and rapid dancing movements, but avoiding any clinches or bodily contact. I was able to land some painful blows to her face, chest, and stomach, all to the accompaniment of a veritable shower of cheers from the guards, followed by the prisoners as well. However, no sooner did the first round drawn to a close than — wonder of wonders! — my opponent looked scared and ran over towards her assistants who were competing to see who could emit the most piercing laughter. Wanting to continue my display of defiance, I took several steady and courageous steps in her direction. I taunted her and told her to come away from her corner and show herself.
“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.