One of the children crawled over to him on all fours and begged for a cigarette. But Farid had none. The stink filled his lungs, and he could hardly breathe. When would Rana hear about his arrest? He thought of Josef and his mother, and was sure they were thinking of him at this moment. Suddenly he felt warmth protecting him.
Someone shouted his name. He woke up. The jailers were standing in the doorway with flashlights, sweeping their beams around in circles. Two men in civilian clothes were already waiting in the brightly lit corridor. They led him through the stairwell again, up to the first floor this time, and then down a long corridor past waiting men and into an office without any windows. At the door they handed him over to a dark-skinned man with an ugly, tattooed face.
In the office itself a young, clean-shaven first lieutenant was sitting behind a desk. The man with the tattooed face led Farid to a chair and pushed him down in it without a word. Then he took the handcuffs off.
“Try anything stupid and you’re dead,” he said with an Egyptian accent before he left the room.
The officer spoke the Damascus dialect, and was courteous but pedantic as he took down personal details. A soldier came in and told Farid to place any valuables as well as his belt and shoelaces in the carton he was holding out to him. The officer watched with indifference.
Farid was in the grip of a strange fear. The officer reached for the telephone and dialled a single digit. “I’m ready. You can collect him now,” he said, unmoved.
Soon two tall soldiers came in, and having handcuffed Farid again they led him back to the cellars below. This time he counted four floors before the soldiers opened a metal door and pushed him into a corridor.
It was dark, and again it stank of urine. Naked light bulbs, spaced far apart, hung from the concrete ceiling on rigid cables. They passed iron cell doors through which Farid heard the sound of blows, and men and women screaming. His heart was racing and his knees felt weak, but the soldiers drove him on. There was no window anywhere. Corridor followed corridor in a labyrinthine system. He felt dizzy. At last the doorway to the staircase reappeared, and the soldiers drove him into the corridor yet again. Then they stopped, as if at an order.
Farid tried to steady his breathing, and listened. He hear raucous laughter and a stifled scream nearby. One of the soldiers took a step back, stopped at the door, pushed a metal flap aside and looked through the peephole. His face was briefly lit. He beckoned to the other soldier, who led Farid over to the peephole.
The room was almost empty, lit by three large neon lights that made the white walls look like ice. A naked man lay on his back on a table in the middle of the room. His feet were tied to ropes descending from the ceiling. In front of the table stood a soldier with his trousers down, forcing his mighty penis into the man. The man was bleeding. He screamed, his eyes wide with pain and horror. But only a whimper could get past the gag in his mouth. A second soldier stood there, smoking, and laughed at every scream.
Farid turned his eyes away. A blow immediately struck him in the face.
“Take a good look, you bastard,” said his guard. Farid felt no pain, he just thought he was going to throw up. After a while the soldiers led him on again and opened another door. The room behind it was almost empty, except for a rusty metal chair and a dirty old table with an ashtray full of cigarette ends on it. Farid had to stand in front of the table. One of the soldiers disappeared, the other stayed with him.
A little later the first soldier came back and stood to attention as he held the door open. A rather stout officer entered the room, with a thick folder under his arm. He was dark-skinned, and wore a sweaty uniform and strong glasses that made his eyes shrink to the size of small marbles.
“So whom have we here?” he asked in an accent that Farid knew from Egyptian films.
“Farid Mushtak, a communist. Head of their youth organization,” replied the soldier.
“Let’s keep this short and sweet,” said the officer in almost paternal tones, while he looked Farid up and down. “You’re a good lad from a distinguished family. You’ve been led astray, lured into this imported foreign communism.” He sat down on the chair, opened the folder, and took a sheet of paper out of it. “Here, sign this and then clear out. Your mother will be worrying about you.”
The officer pushed the sheet of paper over to him. Farid knew what it was from many Party reports: a standard declaration in which you expressed remorse and total submission to the President of the state. By signing it you were saying you condemned the communists and would do anything to serve the Fatherland. The Party’s orders were for no communist to sign in any circumstances. Anyone who did would be expelled from the party and publicly branded a traitor. Neither sickness nor weakness was any excuse. So Communist Party members were in a dilemma: either you died or you were a traitor. Farid decided to die. He shook his head.
“Did you two ever see anything like this?” the officer asked the soldiers. “I speak to him as a friend, and he shakes his head, stubborn as a donkey. What do you think of that?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but turned back to Farid and pointed to the sheet of paper.
“Sign it and you’re out of here. You can go to the cinema, kiss your girlfriend, sleep soundly at home. The alternative is to die, and no one will trouble about your fate. Think about it. One of these days you’ll tell yourself: oh, if only I’d listened to Captain Muhsin, what a fool I was. Because once you get into here you’ll never get out again. Well, do we want to reconsider?”
“I’m not signing anything,” said Farid firmly. A blow struck the back of his head, knocking him to the ground.
“You son of a dog, you have to begin and end everything you say with ‘sir’,” he heard the soldier standing over him say.
“No, no, Ismail. You mean well, but he’s not one of those primitive fellows. He’s a leading light of the movement and a student. So restrain yourself a little and help him get up, please,” said the officer mildly. He turned back to his victim, speaking in a gentle, explanatory tone. “Why do you hate our dear Fatherland so much? Surely there can be no reason.” For the first time bitter rage rose in Farid. Here, of all places, in this torture chamber, the lying serpent before him spoke of the dear Fatherland.
Farid would have liked to reply, “You know something, sir? You’re the biggest asshole on this earth.” But he was badly scared, so he just shook his head.
Then the soldiers waded in. Farid fell to the floor. One of them drew his leg back and kicked him in the kidneys. The last thing he felt was a stabbing pain.
196. The Forecourt of Hell
Loud noise roused him from his uneasy sleep. “Get up! Get up!” shouted a warder, and he was already unlocking the next cell with the same amount of racket. Farid didn’t know what the time was. He had forgotten how many days had passed since his interrogation too. His internal clock had stopped working, and there was nothing to help him measure the rhythm of time. Sometimes the warders left him without any food for ages, then they would bring some horrible soup and a piece of bread in quick succession.
The prisoners had to stand by their cell doors. In the end about fifty men were standing in the corridors. Soon after that they were taken to the level of the garage where a truck with a box-like superstructure was waiting to take them to a camp. All the prisoners were chained together for the journey.
Outside it was light. Some whispered that they were going to the camp at Gahan in the steppes north of Damascus, others that they were to be taken to Tad, the worst camp of all, far away in the desert to the north-east of the capital. The driver steered the truck through the New Town. The prisoners peered through the slits between the boards of the superstructure. Some recognized the streets where they lived, and started crying. When the truck was stuck in a traffic jam a few hundred metres further on, Farid saw a boy of about six sitting in a garden under a maple tree, eating an ice cream. His mother was sitting beside him doing crochet work. Farid thought of Claire, and convulsively bit his lip.