Much worse than this dreadful media show was humiliation in front of your friends and family. By signing you admitted that your entire career up to this point had been a failure.
Amran’s government needed repentant sinners, you could sense that in Tad. Prisoners weren’t asked about what they had done any more, they were tortured at once en masse to get recantations.
The Interior Minister was putting pressure on Garasi. The captain stepped up the tortures and made the already near-inedible food even worse, but only very few abandoned their resistance and signed. Gradually, Garasi came to realize that he was dealing with a particularly tough, battle-hardened generation. He had never before had so many prisoners who still defied him, some of them even after years, and refused to be his flock. He was often near tears in his fury to find that some bleeding, trembling thing lying on the floor was still morally superior to him and the state.
249. At Night
Night hung like a black cloak over him, and the moon was the slit cut by a sharp knife in that garment. Farid stood at the grating for a long time, listening to the silence. At last he lay down on his mat and fell asleep.
In the middle of the night he was woken by a kick. “Get up, you bastards!” two guards were shouting. The light was glaring. Farid saw the others already standing with their faces to the wall, and he turned to it too. A whiplash intended for his neighbour struck his own back as well, burning like fire. The guard shouted, “Hold your tongue!” Evidently the man next to him had said something before Farid himself woke up. Within minutes all the prisoners in Hut 5 were on their feet.
Now Garasi appeared in full uniform. Out of the corner of his eye, Farid could see him striding past. “No heroes are going to survive here, only sensible men,” roared the captain. “I warned you, and now what do I hear? One of you has smuggled in a newspaper.”
Four guards and three soldiers spent a long time searching for the alleged newspaper. Finally they found it underneath the straw mat where a man called Marwan slept. He was well known as one of the Muslim Brotherhood. Garasi was fuming with anger. He hit, kicked, and shouted abuse at the prisoner, who just kept repeating, “God’s punishment of the unrighteous will be great!”
By now the captain was in such a rage that as he swung his foot back to deliver a kick, he slipped and fell right beside his victim. Marwan saw this as aid from heaven, summoned up all his strength, shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” and spat his own blood into Garasi’s face. Farid saw some of the inmates laughing soundlessly as they faced the wall.
The commandant swiftly got to his feet and left the hut, his face smeared. His soldiers followed him with his victim, and did not allow the other prisoners to stand easy, as they usually did after such nocturnal raids. But as soon as the last guard had left, they burst out laughing. Everyone claimed to have seen yet another detail of Garasi’s humiliation.
Marwan didn’t come back for two weeks, and then he was only a pale shadow of himself, encrusted with filth. He could hardly keep on his feet, and he stank horribly. A week later he had to be taken to the military hospital in Damascus, and never came back. Contradictory rumours were in circulation, varying between a heroic death and freedom dearly bought.
250. The Quarry
The guards came at six in the morning. Huts 4, 5, and 6 were due for punishment. Some three hundred prisoners were made to run in circles, calling out, “Left, right, long live the Fatherland! Left, right, unity, liberty and socialism! Left, right, long live the Arab nation! Left, right, we are a nation with an eternal mission!”
About twenty guards were lined up, and the column of prisoners had to run the gauntlet past them. They made very sure that everyone was shouting at the top of his voice. Farid was running in silence when a guard’s whip suddenly caught his ear. After that the man fell out of line with the other guards, caught up with Farid, and kept whipping him until he finally heard this stubborn prisoner shouting. As a punishment, all the prisoners had to run five more rounds that morning. Farid realized that it was best to go along with orders from the first, to spare yourself and the others pain.
After that the three hundred prisoners had half an hour to go and use the earth closets. Only now came their real punishment: they were to work in the basalt quarry. The reason for their punishment remained Garasi’s secret. In double quick time, they went through the east gate, where they were handed hammers, shovels, and iron bars. A broad path with barbed wire on both sides led to the quarry. Once there it narrowed and wound its way down into the depths, which resembled a landscape from old science fiction movies, with bizarre, sharp fractures in the rock. The prisoners had a steep downward climb of twenty metres. Slowly, the yellow of the desert gave way to a greyish black colour, darker the further down they went, until they were surrounded by a ghostly nocturnal black at the bottom of the quarry. Now Farid knew the source of the dark gravel covering all the roads around the camp a metre deep: it was the volcanic basalt from the quarry.
The prisoners had hardly arrived before armed soldiers followed and took up their position at the top of the ravine. The NCOs sat under large sun umbrellas and kept watch from that vantage point. Down in the basalt ravine there were three umbrellas for the guards too.
As soon as the sun was out the black rock quickly warmed up, and the higher it rose the more unbearable the heat became. “No one’s ever managed to escape from here,” whispered one of the prisoners when he saw Farid’s questioning glance.
Large pieces of rock had to be broken out with hammers and iron bars, then reduced to gravel, and pushed all the way up again in rusty wheelbarrows. It was dangerous work, for the fractures in the basalt were as sharp as razor blades. Splinters stuck up everywhere, piercing the prisoners’ bad footwear. By midday the entire place was a huge oven, and the air flickered with heat. The guards kept whipping the prisoners for no reason. It was hell on earth. Everything blurred before Farid’s eyes, and his movements were purely mechanical.
At some point they could break for half an hour, but they got nothing to eat. The guards just distributed water, half a litre for everyone. The water tasted of rubber, but it quenched the fire in Farid’s throat.
His hands hurt. As the day wore on he couldn’t feel his feet any more. He was feverish that night. One of the prisoners gave him a bitter-tasting pill that he had taken from a hiding place. It was supposed to bring his temperature down, but after an hour he felt so bad that his neighbours called the guards. They just grinned derisively. “If he snuffs it we’ll save on his food. But rats don’t die that easily.”
Farid threw up several times. His temples were thudding and there was a roaring in his ears. Only at dawn, exhausted, did he fall asleep. When he woke up he was alone in the hut. He heard someone weeping, and another man comforting him.
Farid was sweating. He felt cold inside, and he had stomach cramps. He threw up again; his fellow prisoners had left a bucket beside him. All he vomited was yellow, bitter fluid.
Garasi stopped briefly by the entrance to the hut. “That dog will die soon. He has sunstroke, he’s spitting blood,” said the man with the commandant.
“Oh, they don’t die. The Devil himself got their mothers pregnant. I’ll bet you this one’s only playing sick. If he’s not in the quarry tomorrow bring him to me, and I’ll soon get him on his feet again.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the other man. Farid lay motionless under his blanket. Had he really been spitting blood? He began to feel his life would end here in this camp, and he longed so much for Rana. He began shedding tears under the blanket.