15

“To them, a prisoner’s mind is the instrument of his crime. So they take possession of it by force.”—Tarek al-Masri

I was never able to tell her how I felt about her when we grew up. Whenever the moment arose, I chickened out. And the moments were many, and more favorably arranged for me by fate than I could have ever planned myself. I can’t count the times I felt she was ready to receive my declaration of love and to reciprocate it. Her eyes seemed to beckon me to take her into my arms whenever we met. All that couldn’t have been an illusion. But then she changed. The extent of the change dawned on me the day my mother died. Suddenly it was show over, lights on, and you find yourself alone in an empty movie theater. It was probably the class difference between us. She was bound to leave me eventually. If I tried to draw near, she’d back away like a sun dipping below the horizon, abandoning me to an eternal night of loneliness, poverty, and want. “Auntie Zeinab” would never accept me, that was for sure. She always looked down on me as her servant’s son. Why did my mother submit to that degradation? As for Abbas, I could never dare speak to him about my feelings for Nadia, let alone ask for her hand in marriage.

My foot lashed out against a pebble as I wandered down the street. It flew up and struck the windshield of a nearby car, causing fine cracks like a spiderweb and a big gauzy spot right in the middle. How could an insignificant pebble cause that much damage so quickly? A deep echo inside my head supplied the answer as though someone else were speaking: “Because glass is weak and fragile. If it had been a harder surface, like steel, the stone would have ricocheted and maybe even wounded you.”

I continued on my way, fed up with my weakness and lack of resources. The words “Auntie Zeinab” brought a bitter smile to my lips. How she hated it when I called her that. Her face would turn into a nasty scowl. She’d yell some curse and try to poke me in the ribs with her cane. When I was younger, my ears felt the wrath of the flat of her hand, sometimes even after she’d sent my mother after me.

After hours of aimless wandering, I descended the three steps to the front door of our apartment and fumbled to insert the key in the lock because the lightbulb hadn’t been replaced. Once inside, I flung my books down on the nearest table and called out to Uncle Salem. He didn’t answer. I found a note on the fridge door telling me that he’d gone up to Alexandria for a week’s holiday. I crumpled the paper into a ball and kicked it into a far corner. Why would anyone go to a summer resort in mid-April? Uncle Salem was weird, about everything. I went to bed and tossed and turned for a while. Just as I was finally about to drop off to sleep, I heard a pounding at the door. Before I could open it, one of the panels of the double door flew open and fell off its hinges. At least seven men burst into the apartment and spread out like locusts. Two of them cuffed me. As they dragged me outside to the police van, I saw others rifling through my books and papers. There was nothing for them to find there but foreign magazines about foreign music bands. Nadia used to bring them back as gifts for me from her summer holidays abroad with her family.

It wasn’t until twenty days later that I learned the reason for my arrest. The first stage in that journey was military prison. The interrogator was in a hurry. He fired one question after another without waiting for an answer or even a nod or shake of my head. The moment a question was out of his mouth a heavy hand thwacked the back of my neck, as though this was one of the rites and rituals of the process. Before I could understand what had happened, the next question was out of his mouth. To my left, someone was taking down my confessions.

A month later I was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. I was one of several in the dock. An imposing officer called Gamal Salem presided. I can’t recall the two others. In the first session, they introduced the witnesses for the prosecution. For the first defendant, a guy with a PhD in science, four colonels took the stand. Altogether, their testimonies took less than ten minutes. The next defendant was an employee for the Social Insurance Authority who had a BA in commerce. Four captains stepped forward from the second row, performed a military salute, and testified against him. When it was my turn, the judge asked me what my degree was as he shuffled through his papers impatiently, unable to find the answer among them. I told him that I had failed my third year at the university, that I would like to continue my education, and that I’d done nothing wrong. He cursed me, cursed my mother, and reminded me that I’d already confessed to everything during the interrogation. He signaled toward the back of the courtroom. Four conscripts stepped forward to testify that I was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and was plotting to overthrow the government by force. They swore that (a) they knew me personally, (b) I’d taken part in weapons training exercises, and (c) I’d told them I hated the current government. I wanted to shout, “If they can testify to all that, they must be my accomplices.” But I didn’t. I lacked the courage. After the fourth witness saluted, clicked his heels, and withdrew, a lawyer I’d never met, who’d been engaged by God knows who, and who spoke so softly I couldn’t hear him, stepped forward to defend me. Or, for all I knew, instead of defending me, he might even have told the judges to hand me the maximum penalty.

After three hours on my feet with the others in the defendants’ cage, Gamal Salem pronounced his verdicts in a booming voice that shook the walls of the courtroom. Ten years for me. We greeted the end of our first session with relief. Now we’d be able to see the world in a new light. We were to be sent to a graveyard mistakenly called the military prison.

After several weeks in isolation in a room that was as dark in the daytime as it was at night, I was moved to a more spacious cell, though more than ten inmates were crammed in there. Not all of them were Muslim Brothers. What we all had in common was that the officers in charge of the prison thought we were opposed to Nasser and his regime. I didn’t have an opinion one way or the other about Nasser. I was sincere when I told the interrogators that I didn’t know him. They thought I was pulling their leg.

I don’t have to relate the types of torture inflicted on me. I only have to show my back and chest to anyone interested in my life in prison and let their imaginations roam. And that would hardly begin to tell the brutal reality.

The only relief I had during the first weeks in that cell came from a colossal Nubian who had the heart and mind of a child. He told us that he’d been arrested because of a pamphlet that had a picture of someone called Hassan al-Banna. They were handing out this pamphlet after Friday prayers, so he took one and kept it. The police found it when they searched his home and arrested him because of it. He must have told us this story a dozen times, still unable to grasp how it could have happened to him. Did any of us know this Hassan al-Banna, he’d ask with wide eyes. “I swear I don’t know him. But maybe if I could just speak with him face to face, he could get me out of here.” Then, peering at each of us in turn, he’d ask, “Can you believe what happened to me?” We didn’t have the heart to tell him that al-Banna was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and was long dead. We’d shake our heads sadly, out of pity for him—and for ourselves as we were in exactly the same position. The Nubian would heave a colossal sigh, saying, “Oh dear Lord!” Then he’d lie down and fall asleep with an innocent smile on his face, as though weary after playing soccer in the street the whole day long.

“Stand still!” commanded the sergeant in the military prison. “Not a move out of any of you!”

We stood in front of our cells in two rows, facing each other, as they decided who to set the dogs on that day. If you listened closely enough, you’d hear the prisoners’ silent prayers and recitations of Quranic verses. Even from the communists.

The mere sound of the dogs barking made bodies jump and teeth rattle. Puddles of urine had already formed at the feet of those who’d lost control of their bladders. Now imagine our reactions when they started to parade their dogs in front of us, growling and straining at their leashes, eager to leap on us. I found myself wrestling again with the same thought that had reoccurred at such moments during the past year: what did they do to those dogs to make them hate us so much that they wanted to tear us to shreds, even though we were the ones in cages and they were free? They would come within a hair’s breadth of lacerating us with their sharp claws. They were only restrained by their trainers, who calibrated the play in the leashes with the skill of professionals at inflicting fear and pain. The trainers walked with their chests puffed out, filled with the status and prestige that came from being at the other end of the leash. Should a prisoner move back just a little to avoid a dog, the guards would show no mercy. One of them would whip the prisoner with his crop until his back burned.

To keep myself from moving, I closed my eyes and muttered a silent prayer: “Dogs are kinder than humans. May God protect me.”

Suddenly a trumpet blared. We looked at each other in surprise at this unexpected interruption. The prison warden rushed toward the door as the eyes of the soldiers and guards followed him with alarm. To us, it was as though the trumpet had sounded from heaven above. We were blessed with a few scarce minutes of comfort, safe from the dogs and beatings, although the guards ordered us to keep still if we shifted in place to ease our feet.

The surprise visitor was Hamza Basyouni, director of the military prison. The trumpet sounded again. We snapped to attention and the guards clicked their heels and raised their guns in a salute. General Basyouni marched between our rows, inspecting us with a steely glare. At his side strutted a mammoth bull-like dog whose pugnacious jaw and drooling chops did not bode well at all. The general, looking even fiercer than his dog, pitched his voice at a boom to issue orders. A step behind him, near the dog’s tail, followed a younger and less-senior officer, neck craned to pick up the general’s instructions, which, in a nutshell, were: these sons of whores need constant disciplining.

Basyouni walked all the way to the end of the line and returned. We knew what was coming from his previous intermittent inspections. He would pick one of us at random, have him thrown into a nearby cell, and release at least three dogs into the cell after him. The prisoner’s agonized screams would echo down the corridor, then quickly subside into fading groans amid the growls and snarls of his attackers. Later in the evening, we’d mourn our late cellmate and enumerate his virtues. The younger officer whispered something in the general’s ear. We couldn’t make it out, but it apparently pleased his superior because he left with a smile on his face after handing his dog’s leash to the officer. As soon as Basyouni left, the officer turned to us with a glare, as though preparing to settle an ancient vendetta. I leaned toward the ear of my cellmate and friend, Adel Ramzi.

“Who’s that guy?”

“That’s Major Murad Kashef, director of the office of the defense minister. God help us!”

“Why’s that?”

“Basyouni’s a two-winged angel compared to him.”

The major took up a position in the middle, so that he could see us all. As he scanned our lines, he had to tighten his grip on the leash of Basyouni’s dog, who had grown excited at the barking of the other dogs and had to prove to them—and to us—his superior ferociousness and supernatural strength.

“Where’s Tarek Hassanein al-Masri?” Major Kashef shouted.

“Sir!” I said feebly, raising my hand slightly.

The sergeant whacked me on the back of my neck and pushed me forward.

“You don’t raise your hand, bastard. You step forward!”

Murad scrutinized me with a crooked smile. “So you live in Zamalek, you piece of scum?”

I nodded. At a signal from the major, the sergeant pushed me forward, hitting and kicking me until Kashef told him to stop. With that same twisted smile, he spread out his arms like an emcee and said, “This time, we’ll use the general’s dog!”

Murmurs ran up and down the lines of detainees until a sharp look from Major Kashef silenced them. They had already begun to pray for my departed soul. No one had ever survived Basyouni’s dog. That mammoth beast had no mercy for its victims: it went first for the neck, then shredded the legs and eviscerated the rest of him. I’d managed to evade random selection for a whole year. My luck had just run out. I was about to face my last duel with destiny in my life on earth.

“You’re a lucky son of a bitch. The dog hasn’t been fed for two days. He’ll finish you off quickly. Go meet your maker, asshole.”

They shoved me into the cell, unleashed the dog after me, and slammed the door. I scrambled to a corner and cowered. I wet myself. I could hear my heart beating in my ear. That’s no exaggeration. I clutched my knees to my chest as hard as I could. Snot blocked my nose and I suddenly got a violent urge to puke. I squeezed my eyes shut. The last thing I saw was that huge dog approaching, teeth bared and emitting a deep, slow growl. Then I passed out.

I swayed back and forth in the prisoner transport van. I was being transferred from the military prison to Abu Zaabel. The soldiers and guards talked of nothing but the miracle that had occurred a few days earlier, when the general’s dog abstained from mangling my flesh and bones even though he hadn’t eaten for two days. I’ll never understand why, but when I came to, after God knows how long—days and nights are the same in prison cells—I found the dog crouched by the door and myself in one piece. He hadn’t even touched me. They opened the door and tossed in some food. The dog sniffed at it, so I left it to him. I was starving, but I was scared to touch it. He didn’t eat it. He looked at me as though to reassure me he had tested it and it was safe. I ate until I’d had my fill, then fed him the remains. He ate, then went back to sit by the door.

For the next couple of days I was “Sheikh Tarek.” All forms of physical abuse had stopped. I was taken to the prison doctor, who treated me for some old wounds. Then, twenty-four hours later, we heard that General Hamza Basyouni had been killed in a traffic accident. The Muslim Brothers rejoiced and praised the Lord. They collected around me as though my blessing would rub off on them. The prison guards’ treatment changed 180 degrees. Some asked me to explain certain points of Islamic law. Others asked for fatwas concerning their conjugal relations. Three broke down in tears and begged my forgiveness.

It was all so weird it made my head spin. Yet, even though the owner of the dog had died, I knew that the man who had called me a dog was still alive and kicking, even if he never reappeared at the military prison before my transfer.

The warden called me into his office. He treated me courteously and then notified me of the decision handed down from above to have me transferred to Abu Zaabel. At least it’s a civilian prison, a long way from this hell, I told myself. Adel Ramzi and three others were in the van with me. None of them were Muslim Brothers, which was how they’d classified me.

The van groaned, then jerked to a halt. We’d arrived. Abu Zaabel was totally different, just as Adel had told me. “It revives your spirits,” he said.

It was calm and tranquil there. The treatment was extremely humane. The wards were spacious. Ours had some twenty inmates, but there was room for more. There was a high window with enough space between the bars to let in sunlight and a lot of air. Each of us had his own clean bed, and we had enough time to chat and tell stories. They even allowed us to wear wristwatches, which Adel found both strange and amazing. More importantly, there was no physical torture whatsoever.

“It’s like they’ve been saying. You’re a holy man!” Adel said, and laughed.

But after only a week in paradise, either he or I must have bitten the forbidden apple. One morning, the loud clang of the cell door jerked us out of our sleep. A new officer entered, surrounded by a train of guards and soldiers. One of them pointed toward me and whispered something in the officer’s ear. He pointed toward Adel and whispered something again. I trembled, but Adel was optimistic. He was sure the orders had come for our release.

He was disillusioned in minutes. We were led down a long corridor and put into a dark, and cramped cell. Its ceiling was so low my head touched it, and I was shorter than Adel. There wasn’t a single window or even a slit to let in light. I sat in a corner and started to follow the sound of dripping water from a nearby tap, which I was unable to see. The water dripped rhythmically onto what sounded like a metal surface at first. After a while, the vessel must have filled up some, because the sound changed to hollow plops. After an hour I began to get angry. Two hours later I stood up and turned in place, looking here and there, perplexed. After about five hours, now somewhat accustomed to the darkness, I began to move slowly around the room. I bumped into a metal pail. I moved it aside to stop the sound, but it picked up again from another part of the room. I tried to plug my ears, but my hands and arms grew tired. Somehow I managed to fall asleep. It might have been for half an hour, but was probably less. I was jolted awake when a guard poured a pail of foul-smelling water over me. Guiding myself by the crack of light from the open door, I tried to catch hold of him. But he slipped out and slammed the door before I could reach him. I banged on the door with my fists until I ran out of strength. I collapsed on the floor as the sound resumed, piercing my eardrums like a voracious bird feeding on my brain but never getting its fill.

During more than thirty hours in that cell, I only fell asleep three times at different intervals. I’d look at my watch every five seconds like a madman. I don’t think any of those naps lasted more than a quarter of an hour. When it was over, they took me to back to an ordinary cell, though not the same one as before. Only Adel was there. He told me we’d been separated from the others, and went on to explain the new torture system. He’d read about it once. The Nazis had used it. He’d predicted other means and his prediction came true the following day.

“So you’re a holy man too!” I said acerbically later that day.

When they led me to that windowless cell for a third time, I desperately tried to figure out what I had to do or say in order to avoid the torture. I told the guard the names of the Muslim Brothers I knew. I invented shortened versions of the confessions I’d given at the military prison. I confessed to other crimes I didn’t commit. I couldn’t speak fast enough. I was in a race to beat the clock before I got thrown into that room. But the guard was programmed to be deaf and dumb. He didn’t look at me or change his stern expression. He didn’t slow his pace. When we got there, he pushed me into the room and slammed the door, and I heard his footsteps recede. I sat in the corner waiting for the sound of the dripping water. It never came. After more than two hours, I began to think I heard it in the distance. Sometimes it seemed clear; sometimes it would go away. But in fact there was nothing. I sat in total silence, constantly looking at my watch, waiting for the sound of drips to come at any moment. Then I heard screams. Horrifying screams. Again and again. Those were people on the verge of an excruciating death. Then came the sounds of dogs growling; a child’s voice, then a woman’s, then a guy whose voice I thought I recognized. Then all the voices jumbled together and began to sound alike. They turned into intermittent groans of pain which then faded and segued into other sounds. Sounds of dogs gnashing their teeth, gnawing on flesh, and howling.

I felt a thin, warm stream of moisture on my inner thigh. It must have been the third time I’d wet myself involuntarily. I couldn’t find the metal bucket to pee in. I was too terrified to sleep. I called out for help. I screamed. No one came. Whenever I nodded off, the cries of pain would start up again and then suddenly stop, as though whoever it was had just died under torture. How could they see me in this dark room? How did they know I’d dropped off to sleep? I felt the walls. They were moist, as though water was seeping through them. The voices fell silent for a moment. I shut my eyes to welcome some lost sleep. This time a woman screamed. The piercing scream of a woman whose voice I felt I knew very well. I searched my memory but failed to identify it. I stood up and listened more closely. The sound faded, as though to test my patience; then it suddenly grew deafeningly loud. A woman crying and begging someone not to rape her. She pleaded for mercy. She wept and groaned. Then her voice sounded muffled. Had they tied her up and gagged her? Did they really rape her? They must have, judging by the silence. But then I heard rapid panting breaths and her voice pleading again. She must have escaped the rapist’s grip for a few seconds. I thought I heard her call out my name. Now I knew why I recognized the voice: it was my mother’s. It was my mother, crying out to me to help her. How had they found her and brought her here?

With a burst of energy, I flung myself at the door and started banging as loud as I could. I collapsed on the floor again. My head began to spin and the floor seemed to shift beneath me. All the contents of my stomach spewed out in one go. The screams began again, this time accompanied by the sound of whips cracking. Agonized groans of pain, followed by screams in rapid succession. Then came a muffled thump, like a body crashing to the ground from a height. At the end, there was an earsplitting siren that made me howl.

Who’s doing that? Where? Why don’t I hear his voice? Why doesn’t he show his face and do what he has to do and get it over with? The questions kept whirling around in my head as I paced in circles in the dark room. On the eighth day, I pounded the walls. I kicked the door. I cried out for my mother, desperately, again and again, until I nearly lost my voice. No one answered. Then a ray of light gently crept into the room and I heard Adel Ramzi’s voice next to me. Where had he come from?

“I keep telling you those are tape recorders and amplifiers,” he said. “They transmit those noises in order to drive us crazy. It’s a new type of torture method. Get a hold of yourself or you’ll have a breakdown.”

I went over and knelt before him, staring toward where I thought his eyes were. Then I reached up to take his face between my hands, and I shouted, “I heard my mother screaming, Adel!”

“Your mother died before you entered prison, Tarek. Don’t you remember?”

I moved away. I didn’t believe him. My mind was so messed up. I curled up in the opposite corner. The voice still rang in my ears. It pursued me into the torrent of dreams that invaded the light sleep I had for a few hours. After a month of this, I began to think I was stuck in this place forever. What I found baffling was that they never asked me to confess to anything.

“And they’re not going to ask. They want only one thing from you,” Adel said, tapping his head. Then he fell asleep again. I wouldn’t hear his voice again for a long time, because they transferred me out of his cell. We were physically separated but our souls weren’t. I thought about him always. He’d been as wrongfully detained as I had. I’d never met anyone so considerate and kindhearted. We shared a love for music and playing music. We shared the same cell for ages. We’d been neighbors at the wooden whipping post—the “bride” they called it—and we dressed each other’s wounds afterward. We slept on the same bedding, nearly touching. He stayed by my side to the end, giving me courage and patience. I saw him again a month or so later in the prison courtyard at recreation time. They’d stopped sending me to the windowless cell by that time. He came up to me and said, “The voices aren’t real. Don’t believe them, Tarek. It’s all amplified sound. Don’t let them take your mind away from you, no matter what. Your mother died a long time ago. I swear to God, she’s dead.”

I was extremely grateful to Adel Ramzi for all he did to try ease my pain, but I couldn’t believe him. No machinery in the world could strike such terror into your heart. I’d begun to fear everything. I’d constantly hear voices calling to me in the prison courtyard, but I couldn’t figure out where they came from. I knew I was right and that I had to carry out the orders of the voice that was calling me. I was right, and I would take revenge for my mother against all of them.

Yes, Adel Ramzi was merely there to ease my pain and comfort me. Otherwise, why would he have expressed his despair with his fingernails on the walls of the cell we’d shared for so long? With his fingernails, he wrote: “Have you ever tried to wish to die? To look forward to death with all your heart? I did and I succeeded.”

You’re the one who went crazy, Adel. They were real voices we heard, and they drove you crazy. You just pretended to be sane to keep me from losing my mind too.

The cell door creaked open suddenly. I curled up into a fetal position. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I couldn’t bear to be sent back into the dark room again. I wept and begged the guard at the door to leave me alone. I crawled over to him and kissed his feet. He looked down at me with contempt.

“Stop blubbering and groveling like a woman. Your release order came through. For good behavior.”