With that he gave me an inquisitive look.
“My dear Judge,” I replied, plucking up my courage, “what I know about my cousin consists of the things I put into the report that I submitted to your exalted self. There’s nothing to add to it, and the only falsehood will come when torture makes me reveal things inspired by the devil himself.”
“God, my God!” he interrupted, his eyes closed, “what lovely melodious speech. Let me relish it for just a moment! I won’t even bother about the flattery behind it or the fact that it is so far removed from the truth. .”
“Sir,” I interrupted in turn, “even if my words are the way you have chosen to judge them, I have to tell you that whatever melody you detect is purely coincidental, not as the result of some artificiality. Above all, I don’t intend to flatter. And my only intention is to tell the truth.”
His beady eyes stared hard at me through his glasses.
“Every prisoner I have ever met, past or present, keeps playing the same old tape. Even those with a criminal record continue to claim that they’re telling the plain, unvarnished truth; they’re completely innocent of the charges leveled against them. They all make themselves out to be just the way their mothers bore them: innocent virgins regarding their actions, intentions, and natures. But, when we’ve conducted a patient and thorough investigation with them — using the best methods possible and, when necessity decrees, the most cruel and vicious, they finish up acknowledging their faults. At which point they start asking for reduced penalties; indeed, in the majority of cases they request permission to join the security forces and secret police. We usually grant them such requests, but only, of course, after they have gone through all the necessary psychological and physical tests. If you yourself might be interested in joining that particular group, then you should do your utmost to satisfy the preliminary requirements and not come back to talk to me again until such time as you have done the right thing. That way you’ll be able to give both us and yourself some peace and quiet. As for now, retrace your steps and think things over very carefully. But before you do even that, I suggest that you rid yourself immediately of behavior that harms your interests and does you no good. Your nose and hands, for example, even if they have to be cut off. In fact, avoid using prophetic hadith out of their proper context, the most famous of which is: ‘Grant your brother victory, be he oppressor or oppressed,’ or ‘He who offers a Muslim cover, will be covered by God on the Day of Judgment,’ things like that. And don’t cite verses from the Qur’an either. They’re all merely pretexts you’re using to protect your cousin, who insists on taking his own heretical path, following narrow interpretations and adopting extremist and fanatical views that are contrary to the moderate tenets of our tolerant Islamic faith. By so doing, he completely ignores the injunction of God and His Prophet to avoid all excess in matters of faith. Instead, he chooses to imitate the actions of the Kharijites, Sabeans, Barghwatis, and other fanatical extremists from Islamic history. This is my best advice to you: Don’t pretend you don’t know and don’t spout heresy. Above all, don’t play the infidel after being silent for a spell, and don’t drink piss after so long being amiss. .”
I could no longer stand to listen to this endless flow of verbiage from the judge who wielded such power over me.
“You mention piss, Sir,” I interrupted.
“Oh, do you have an opinion on the subject?” he asked.
“No, Sir, but I do have an urgent need. . to piss. I’ve been afraid of not being able to hold out while I’ve been sitting here. I might wet my trousers, and that wouldn’t be fitting in your exalted presence. .”
“Okay then, get up and go. But don’t forget that, if you‘re stubborn and keep things to yourself, Mama Ghula will straighten your teeth for you. .”
I pointed at the sky above.
“God alone created me,” I replied. “He’s the one who gave me straight teeth.”
“But Mama Ghula will make them level with the ground,” he yelled at me as the phone started ringing again.
In the secretary’s office, Miss Na‘ima thrust a piece of paper into my pocket, then took me to the door and handed me over to the guard, who immediately bound my wrist to his. He was furious and vowed a solemn oath that in future this would be the only way I would be allowed to walk anywhere with him. I paid no attention to his rants, but used my free hand to check on the piece of paper in my pocket. I was looking forward to the opportunity to open and read it once I was left alone.
13. The Letter That Is a Gleaming Light, and I Witness Executions
Back in my cell, I searched high and low to see if there were any hidden cameras or concealed microphones and made sure that at the very least nothing like that was visible to the eye or tangible to the hand. Even so, I decided to wrap myself up in my thin wrap and huddle up to read the contents of the thin sheet of paper.
And how amazing and wonderful were the things I read!
“My dear Hamuda,
“I have sensed in you the scent of my beloved homeland, coupled with your innocence of the charges leveled against you, charges in which you have no part. There is neither time nor need for me to tell you my own story. Yours is more noteworthy because it is more painful and bloody. Take great care. Every heroic act of defiance you perform, every resistance to torture, makes you a candidate for their designs: that you become a double agent to be inserted by the Americans and other Western secret service agencies into groups that they consider to be extremist or terrorist. Every single investigator at this center and its multinational directors have one aim, to create cooperative and well-programmed agents, and then to bump them off with deadly weapons if they should happen to go astray or resist in any way. It does not matter whether or not you reveal things to them; that’s just a means whereby they can get you to be compliant and turn you into a convinced tool in their hands ready to perform specific designated functions for them. Then they have you trapped in a deadly vortex from which the only escape is death. Through suffering and bitter experience, the woman writing these lines to you is well aware of what you’re saying. I had no choice but to enter this service — God curse poverty and unemployment!! At this point I see no way of getting out of it alive. .
“So, my dear Hamuda, If you find it difficult to become what they want, a willing servant of their devilish designs, then you need to come up with a solution that may help you escape if you can do it right: you need to pretend to be crazy and sick. Shower your interrogators with every conceivable kind of ridiculous and crazy talk; threaten your torturers with your hacking cough and the risk of contagion from your illness. Maybe they’ll eventually give up and send you back to your homeland or somewhere close to it. You may well be drugged again, and, when you finally wake up, you’ll find yourself tagged with an electronic monitor and permanently at risk of a bullet to the head, which may hit or miss if you so much as tell your story to anyone else or raise a complaint against some unknown entity.
“Time is short, and the danger is immense.
“Make sure you don’t look for me or ask any questions. If you should happen to appear before this same judge again and I still happen to be in his service, bear with me in silence if I’m forced to curse you and even hit you.