In fact the ring of silence around the camp was complete. The prisoners knew nothing of the outside world if the commandant did not allow it. So Mahdi Said obviously wanted them to hear the news of Nagi’s death. No one knew why.
272. The Injection
Mahdi Said interrogated the most important prisoners by night, and on those occasions he did not, unusually for him, go back to Damascus. Night was the worst time for interrogations; it made you feel small, lonely, and weak. The day had drained the prisoners of all their strength, while Mahdi Said had enjoyed a siesta of two or three hours. If questioning went on until dawn it was sheer hell for the exhausted detainees. After two endless nocturnal interrogations, Ali Abusaid left the camp where he had buried five years of his life in the sand. Farid was in despair, for with Ali’s departure he had lost a valuable support.
It was after midnight when two soldiers appeared in Hut 5 and told Farid to come for questioning. He felt the same unspeakable fear as he had felt in his boyhood at the monastery gate. A fear of what was about to happen, and infinite loneliness. “Mother, oh Mother, where are you?” he heard himself whisper in the voice of a thirteen-year-old boy.
“Get moving, son of a whore,” barked the smaller guard. He was obviously uneasy. “Your mother would have done better to bring a dog into the world!” Farid could feel no strength in his legs. His temples were throbbing, his heart was ramming his ribcage as if to escape from it.
Outside, the sky was clear and cicadas were chirping. For a moment Farid thought of Rana. She loved nothing so much as the music of the cicadas by night.
“I hear you’re a dangerous fellow. To me you’re a cockroach! A rent boy. A queer. I could tell right away from your face!” said the guard as they went along, his voice hoarse with agitation.
“Let him alone, calm down,” the other guard intervened. When they arrived he sent away the smaller man, who was snorting with rage, and escorted Farid up the stairs by himself.
“Here,” he said quietly outside the camp commandant’s office. When the door opened, Farid shot across the room. A blow had caught him in the middle of the face. He staggered around in a circle and saw the two guards who must have been waiting for him. A radio was playing in the office. The folk singer Lamia Haufik was singing a song about Arab honour and generosity to strangers. As Farid lay on the floor his fear receded for a moment. He thought of the rather plump singer, whom he had always regarded as terrible — vulgar and dull — and he had a feeling that these thugs were peasants avenging themselves on any city dweller for the ignominy the cities had inflicted on them over the centuries, doing so even without the urging of their superior officers and for no reward, just as a kind of lynch justice supervised by the state while they wore its uniform.
Mahdi came in through a side door and sat down at his desk. One of the guards switched off the radio. “That’ll do, boys, you’ll get plenty of chance to play with him,” said the major, casting a final glance at the file before him and closing it. Farid was still lying on the floor, pressed up against the drawers of a second desk. “So you’re Farid Mushtak, the dangerous underground military expert and true leader of the strike. Congratulations!” Mahdi gestured to the men to pick him up and seat him on a chair. It was only a small wave of his hand, but as precise and effective as a traditional temple ritual of long standing. The men dragged Farid over the floor, put him on the chair in front of the camp commandant’s large walnut desk, tied his hands behind the chair back, and retreated into the background.
“Would you like a cigarette?” asked Mahdi Said, offering him a French pack. Farid was surprised by the sound of Mahdi’s voice. It seemed familiar to him, but he didn’t know who it reminded him of.
“No,” he replied.
“And are you really called Farid Mushtak, or is that one of your many cover names?”
“It’s my real name.”
“But you’re also called Salih, Ali, George, Samer, Shams, the Palestinians even called you Omar in their training camp, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Farid, trying to keep calm. He stared at a curious metal box on the desk in front of him.
“I don’t care for people who tell me lies, so I’ll ask you again: is Farid Mushtak your real name?”
“Yes,” said Farid, rather surprised.
“And were you in the monastery of St. Sebastian, as your file says?”
“Yes. I said so when I was first questioned, and that’s correct,” said Farid, trying to lighten the atmosphere slightly so as to shed some of his fear, which had been heightened by the commandant’s suspicions.
“When were you there?”
“From the summer of 1953 to the summer of 1956,” replied Farid. “I was only a boy, and my father made me go into the monastery.”
“Ah yes, your father,” repeated Mahdi Said, standing up. “Let me tell you something,” he went on in a different, almost agitated voice, which suddenly sounded much higher. “I don’t believe a word of it. You weren’t in the monastery, you were in the partisan training camp run by those two bastards Tanios and Salman who ruled the mountains between 1953 and 1956. Do those names mean anything to you? Don’t give me that stupid look. I just want to find out why Mr. Farid Mushtak always happened to be at the centre of rebellions. For instance, he just happened to be photographed with George Habash in Jordan in 1965, and two years later, in Lebanon in the summer of 1967, with Nayef Hawatmen, George Hawi, and other notable Christian and communist figures, isn’t that so?”
The major took out an old photo that Farid immediately recognized. It had been taken at a farewell dinner in Beirut.
“And furthermore,” said Mahdi, putting the photo back in the folder, “is it true that you were able to accompany the Popular Front’s first operation in Israel as an observer?”
“Yes, that’s so, but it was …” stammered Farid, astonished by the extent of the Syrian secret service’s information.
“What an honour!” continued Mahdi. “And is it a fact that, quite by chance, you found yourself at the Israeli front and equally by chance joined the Radicals there?”
“Yes, I’ve said all that before. And the Radicals threw me out because I refused to bear arms.”
“So they did,” agreed Mahdi, laughing. “When it came to fighting Israel you played the angel of peace, but you had no scruples about our President Amran. The kind of revolutionary I really like. But let’s get to the heart of the matter: I want to know what threads have been interwoven for twenty years to create unrest in Arabia and prevent our nation from taking its rightful place in the sun. You must tell me all about it, calmly and objectively. I believe you to be a very dangerous man, not even a communist, but a man commissioned to commit yet greater crimes. You must help me or I’ll be disappointed, and my boys here will be upset, and that will be really uncomfortable for you. So let’s begin with that monastery. What was your task there?”
“None at all. I didn’t know about the rebels at the time, I was only a naïve child. I didn’t want to go into the monastery. It was my father’s decision …” replied Farid quietly.
“If you’ll allow me, sir,” one of the thugs interrupted in the accent of the Mediterranean coast, “if you’ll allow me I’ll get him to spit out everything you want to hear, along with his teeth.” And both guards laughed. But Mahdi Said waved the offer away. “No, no, this is not what you coastal folk would call a little anchovy, this is a shark whose teeth and everything else will grow again. But I know his kind. Never fear, when I need someone I’ll send for you two,” he said, opening the metal box. Farid saw the syringe and two ampoules as well as a small flask containing some kind of powder. He heard the two thugs leaving the room. And the clerk who had been sitting in a corner almost motionless all this time, taking down every word of the interrogation in shorthand, closed his notebook and went out of the room without a sound as well. There were to be no witnesses, so other prisoners who were given injections had said. Farid felt paralysed by his fear. It was so overwhelming that for a moment he had no voice left, and his tongue was so dry that it stuck to his palate.