“This letter that I’ve written to you places my life in your hands. By God, if it were to fall into their hands, they’d tear me limb from limb. Hide it where no one can find it or else destroy it completely. I pray that everything will eventually turn out well for you. .”
I mouthed a prayer of fervent thanks to my fellow countrywoman, who had shown me such kindness, and immediately started looking for somewhere to hide the letter. While I was searching and assessing the situation, the guard yelled to me to get my food. With that, I ripped the letter into tiny pieces, shoved it all down my throat and under my tongue, then took the broth and swallowed it all, along with everything I’d stuffed into my mouth.
“So, Na‘ima,” I told myself, “your letter’s now become its own blessing!”
Yes indeed, a blessing that I had literally ingested, so there was no need to worry about its being discovered or disseminated. I’ve nourished myself on it so that I can now gain strength from its valuable advice. Now my path ahead is illumined.
Thanks to this short message from Na‘ima — a kindred spirit who resides inside my heart and mind, I can now begin to make out some of the principal features of this cryptic labyrinth in whose infinite recesses I find myself wandering helplessly.
I’ll confess that I once had a nagging suspicion, a devilish thought, one that made me think of that message as a poisonous ruse or trap. But I rapidly squelched the very thought and put it out of my mind, not least when I thought about the woman who had risked her job and even her very life in order to offer me some help. Her behavior and the message she had given me seemed to be totally truthful and trustworthy. And, if that were not the case and the opposite were true, then there was no hope for mankind nor anything else I could lose. A life of complete futility and death itself would be one and the same.
In my inner soul and being then, Na‘ima was indeed my gleaming light and my support. Through God’s power, the road to salvation lay with my own mind and its ability to come up with some cunning ploys, things that would involve concealment, deceit, duplicity, ambiguity, and outright distortion. Fair enough, then! Let heart and slate remain open to all eventualities, adjusting to the subtleties of circumstance and situation as may be necessary — and all following the dictates of mind and insight and the intuitions of the heart.
Some of the strands in this maze were now becoming clearer. What I had to do, but very gradually, was to uncover other strands that were still hidden or obscure. However, what was now completely clear and not subject to the slightest doubt was that this secret prison of unknown location was being directed by unknown foreign agencies. The policies were being implemented by people of a variety of nationalities (I had also encountered Arabs up close). Within that system I had been programmed to go through a variety of trials and examinations, duly labeled torture, abuse, and brainwashing. Once I had managed to survive the worst of these dreadful processes through my own endurance, I would then be a candidate for one of a number of disgusting positions that were in hot demand from the spy agencies that were clearly in charge. Those positions included agents who would infiltrate opposition groups, some who would collect valuable information, others who would become hired assassins, and still others whose functions I neither knew nor could even conceive.
The designers of this fiendish scheme can undoubtedly rely on a reserve army in the millions, one that only grows larger with time and is reinforced by the unemployed and people in search of a morsel to eat. The misery of such people is a positive boon for these forces; their misfortunes become the dung and poison needed to tame whole nations and terrorize their peoples.
So here I find myself facing one branch of a worldwide network, pyramidal in structure, and with tentacles that reach in every direction to grasp all kinds of false gods in their clutches and dogs of various breeds and specialties to implement their policies.
As I thought of dogs, I was suddenly reminded of a poem, “In Prison,” written in the 1960s by the Egyptian poet, Fu’ad Nigm,* when he was being held in the Qal‘a prison in Cairo. I could only remember bits of it, but recited them to myself and then yelled them out loud to the walls and bars of my celclass="underline"
Here in prison, good grief!
Death and suffering,
But suffering for whom?
They’re all curs,
Guard dogs,
Hunting dogs,
Standing there with chains,
Alongside ‘Antar and Abu Zayd.*
So these dogs — God protect you, Na‘ima! — and their masters have these fiendish schemes to subdue and enslave the earth’s most wretched people in accordance with their tyrannical desires, and here am I, the one and only master of myself. Only I can come up with something to thwart their program and counteract their designs and calculations. My plan has to involve a combination of feigned idiocy and sickness. Yes indeed, I myself — and I ask God’s forgiveness for invoking this “I”—am that one individual seed, weak perhaps in body and size, but yet strong in faith, something that in my current situation is the strongest and most resolute quality I possess. I will either save my spirit from imminent and dire destruction and emerge safe and sound, or else I will die a martyr’s death. In either case, Na‘ima, I shall raise the flag of victory as a shining point of light and significance, to be added along with all the others like it to the lists of revolutionaries who have risen up against tyrants, and equally against those who have allowed themselves to fall prey to thoughts of resignation and submission.
At first I thought about grasping my pen and some pieces of paper so that I could record my dreams and ideas and then hide them under my bedcover along with the mirror, but I postponed the idea when a masked guard suddenly entered my cell and tied my hands behind my back. He then escorted me along corridors and hallways that were unusually packed with guards and prisoners. When we reached a back yard that I had not seen before, he placed me in the middle of a crowd of other prisoners. He told me that we were there to witness the execution of five terrorist leaders who had all confessed to accusations of murder and other crimes that had been made against them. When I opened my mouth to ask a question, he ordered me to shut up.
The crowd was made up of scattered groups of prisoners. The guards who, as usual, mingled with them, prevented any individual conversations. The sun was high in the sky, which suggested that it was close to midday. The atmosphere was as heavy as lead. The only sounds were people clearing their throats, clanking chains, and general fidgeting. All of a sudden, speakers that were partially visible on the guard towers started blaring out drumbeats, and five men, hands and feet tied, came out of a steel door in one of the buildings facing the other prisoners. They were followed by two masked soldiers with loaded weapons. They ordered the five men to stop, spaced a few feet apart, with their backs to a dilapidated high wall
I was standing in a spot from which I could look straight at the faces of the men facing execution. There were no signs of panic or anxiety. I told myself that these were genuine heroes, willing to sacrifice their lives in the cause of their struggle, not showing the slightest fear in the face of death. As I took a closer look and focused more carefully, there was Ilyas Bu Shama standing to the far left of these heroic figures. His head was held high, his expression was clear, and he had a smile on his face. I can swear the oath that Ilyas himself would have me swear: “By the fig and olive, by Mount Sinai” [Sura 95, The Fig, vv. 1–2] it certainly was Ilyas. I yelled his name as loudly as I could.