16. Between My Walls
The Christian Fayruz
How many long hours, or maybe whole days, I spent asleep, elongated periods that were interrupted only by abrupt episodes of wakefulness, about which I cannot remember any specific details but only the terrifying impact of their visions.
When I rubbed my eyes — it was noontime, I was appalled to see rats and mice congregating to consume the food that had piled up while I was asleep. What appalled me even more, however, was to see a woman’s head poking out of the bedcover in front of me. When I tried to stand up, I found that I could not do it. I shooed the mice and rats away, and they went back down the holes from which they had emerged. I hobbled over to the toilet and put the stone over it, then towards the door and pulled myself up using the bars. I started yelling, pointing out that, contrary to the practice enjoined by both God and His Prophet, there was a woman in my cell. The only result of my yelling was to hear my voice echoing back weak and feeble. That was followed by a remark from the prisoner who was my closest neighbor:
“You moron!” he said. “They bring you a woman for your bed, and you turn her down! What are you, a man or a hermaphrodite? Fuck the harlot for free, you lucky man! If not, then give her to me, and I’ll fuck her as I’ve never fucked a woman before. I’m so frustrated, it’s unreal. Give her to me for a fair piece of hashish and a bit of spare change for the guard. What do you say?”
I paid no attention to such foul-mouthed drivel, but still decided to give my breath and vocal chords a rest for a while. I then resumed my yelling and shouting. This time all I got out of it was waking up my newly arrived cell mate, who proceeded to accuse me of being a plant and spying on her in her cell while she was asleep. I immediately denied her any ownership of the cell, pointing out that the number 223 coincided with my own number. In exchange, I expended some choice words on a counterattack, accusing her of being an informer herself, someone whose function was to tempt me with sex as a way of getting information that the female ghoul had been unable to do by torturing me.
I imagined that the investigating judge might be watching me through some hidden camera and laughing his head off at us. With that thought in mind, I leapt up, grabbed my blanket, and used it to cover myself as I squeezed against the back wall. I forced my mind and body to put God’s protective veil between me and this woman and imposed all possible barriers between us. But no sooner had she watched as I calmed down and avoided looking at her than she too leapt to her feet and stripped off her prison clothes.
“Look,” she upbraided me, “here’s my body. See how they’ve carved trenches on my back! There’s hardly a bone or muscle that the ghoul and others have not destroyed with electric shocks and various other torture devices. Now that you’ve seen all this, can you still accuse me of being a spy or infiltrator?”
“But you’re the one,” I responded bashfully as I looked at her cuts and bruises, “who started things by accusing me of evil intentions. .”
She put her clothes back on and then sat down with a sigh.
“You’re right,” she said. “Suspicion and caution are both rampant, spreading like a cancer among us, even those people who have experienced the dungeon and humiliating torture. Those tyrant pigs have managed to completely subvert documents and roles. Companions in misery have turned into enemies — may God destroy them all and bring their own treachery down on them!”
From the way she was talking, this new cell mate of mine seemed both badly scarred and yet perceptive.
“By the way,” she went on, “the fact that your number and the cell’s are the same is not a pretext. The fact that this complex is packed with prisoners means that no prisoner can regard a cell as being his own. Many times they’ve put me in cells with women; and at other times with men. All too often men have used the situation to take advantage of my body and destroy my honor. Don’t be scared. I’m not going to seduce you or rape you as hired female prisoners sometimes do. Like them, I may have syphilis or AIDS, but I swear by the God whom I fear, I’m not going to infect anyone with any disease I might have contracted. That even applies to my enemies and people who’ve done me wrong. .”
She suddenly fell silent and closed her eyes, as though by suppressing her tears she could somehow control her emotions. At this point I took a look at her face, with its attractive but harsh features. She was forty or so, and her already thin body had clearly been worn out by starvation and violence. Her hair was streaked with hints of grey that gave her appearance and speech a staid and august tinge.
“So, my dear servant of God,” I asked her as tenderly as I could, “tell me about yourself. Who are you, and what has brought you to this appalling center?”
She smiled as she wiped her eyes and then gave me a look filled with a profound sadness. Moving over to sit beside me, she took a pair of white gloves out of her pocket and put them on my hands.
“Rub my back for me,” she said. “That’ll give me some relief while I tell you part of my life story. My stage name is Fayruz, and my companions honored me by giving me that name because they thought I was the best imitator of the famous and much beloved Lebanese singer, Fayruz. My dear fellow believer, my situation is exactly the same as yours, except with regard to the particulars of our personal situations. We’re both victims of injustice and dark times, oppressed and totally crushed until we are broken, at the beck and call of tyrants and subject to their Fascist projects and evil intentions. For reasons I don’t understand they transferred me from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to here. Their only question asks me to provide the names and addresses of nationalist, Shi‘i and Communist resistance fighters to whose organizations I belong. My traitorous husband betrayed some of them, so I shot him in the head and left him dead. For two years now the very worst American torture experts have been wearing me out with their cross-examinations and torture, but my Job-like endurance has defeated them. With cross in hand, I have decided to be a martyr and to meet my Lord whenever He wishes and ordains. Is the river supposed to behave differently, I ask myself, simply because its source bursts forth and the distant sea pulls its course toward it?!”
I now understood that this woman was an Iraqi Christian resistance fighter.
“May God grant you long life, my Lady!” I told her with admiration, “and record you as one of those pious saints and freedom fighters who deserve respect in this world and the delights of paradise in the next. You mentioned that you were transferred here from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Where exactly are we here?”
“I don’t know precisely,” she replied, “but I get the impression that we’re in a desert location either in the African continent or somewhere close to it. But God knows. . I’m feeling tired and I need to sleep. God willing and if I’m still alive, I can tell you more about myself tomorrow and hear your story as well.”
Hardly had she completed this sentence before the cell was invaded by four guards who grabbed her off my bed and dragged her forcibly outside, totally oblivious to my shouts and protests. They simply made do with swearing at me, calling me a fornicator, and threatening to come back for me.
“My name’s Hamuda al-Wajdi,” I yelled as they pulled her out. “Hang on and be strong; God is with you!”