The worlds of Hajj Muhammad and Abd al-Rahman were now completely separate. Both were suffering through this trial in misery and languishing in the deepest dungeon – but each lived in a world completely different from that of the other.
For the first time in his life, Abd al-Rahman found himself witnessing a trial in court. Several trucks had been loaded with nationalists and guarded by black soldiers who pointed their guns directly at the prisoners. Each group got out of the truck, but the captives had barely made their way through the huge gateway to the court when they re-emerged with a two-year prison sentence hanging around the neck of each man.
Abd al-Rahman entered the court chamber in one of these groups. He was particularly curious, a feeling hardly diminished by the news of the harsh sentences being handed down to his colleagues, clear enough from their expressions as they emerged from the court gateway, even before they could make any kind of gesture. Court, judge, accused, lawyer, deputy prosecutor, legal proceedings… Abd al-Rahman had read about the way courts operated and how they were organised, and this was what he had in mind as he was driven to the court after a dark night spent cramped on the flat ground under the sky. Spurred on by the urge for knowledge, he wanted to see the judge applying legal logic in all his judicial splendour, to witness the arguments, and to listen to the deputy prosecutor – even though he himself was now the accused.
His group climbed down from the truck and were shoved roughly towards the gateway to the court. Each man was contemplating the fate that awaited him – but not Abd al-Rahman, who was thinking about the court before worrying about his own fate. Inside the court, the group was ordered to squat on the dirty ground like dogs. The court guards surrounded the prisoners, spewing a torrent of abuse and foul language, though none of this had any effect on them.
Abd al-Rahman waited to be ushered into the court, and started thinking about what he was going to say to the judge when he was asked to explain the things of which he was being accused. A wave of conviction came over him.
‘I’ll confess,’ he told himself. ‘I’ll tell the judge that no foreign interloper has the right to pass judgement on us. The people who’ve been arrested must go back where they came from.’
There was a commotion by the gate at the entrance to the court, which wrenched him out of his thoughts. ‘May God pour blessings on the life of our dear master!’ intoned a powerful voice that echoed around the space. The court officials all repeated the phrase, as they bowed their heads. Abd al-Rahman looked left and right. A hubbub permeated the great court chamber, but then a gruff voice rapidly calmed everything down. Abd al-Rahman focused on its source: a red-faced man with a handsome appearance, honey-coloured eyes holding a severe gaze, a face enveloped in a thick blond beard, a body that was hefty but short in stature, and a head crowned with a huge white turban carefully arranged on top of a red head-cap. There he stood, proud of his authority, his arrogance and vanity only increased by the fact that he was positioned amid a group of accused prisoners whose fate he was about to decide in the flash of an eye. Beside him stood another man, tall and pale faced, clean shaven, bare headed, wearing foreign clothes, and staring at the prisoners in sheer hatred and disgust, his vicious glances shooting out from behind his thick spectacles.
A deathly silence now pervaded the court. Abd al-Rahman stopped thinking. Anxious faces kept glancing at the pasha-judge. His eyes gleamed as though he were hunting for prey, and his face twitched anxiously as though he were eager for revenge; his tense body gave the impression that he wanted to leap on his quarry. The accused looked from the pasha to the governor; anyone who had been in court before was aware that the real judge was the French governor who lurked in the pasha’s shadow. Abd al-Rahman was not one of those people, so he continued to focus his attention on the portly body that filled his field of vision. He stared at the man’s mouth, expecting a verdict, not a political harangue.
For a strained moment the pasha turned to the governor; from the way his lips moved Abd al-Rahman gathered that he was asking a question. In reply the governor whispered a few words in his ear, but to the curious observer they were clearly focused and specific.
The pasha made ready to speak again. ‘May God pour blessings on the life of our dear master, the governor!’ he intoned again in the same terrifying tone. The aides and guards now realised something important was about to happen that required their total attention.
Having pronounced his obeisance in ringing tones, the pasha’s thick lips exhibited a slight smile, which was soon replaced by an expression intended to show that he was the authority: it seemed he felt the need to give people a true sense of his importance. He was eager for his assistants to present him as such to the prisoners, as the person who was about to announce his verdict on all of them – all the more since they had been accused of sedition, and so they must be given the clear impression that they were standing before an authority that would brook no such rebellion. It also seemed that the pasha felt the need to make them appreciate his position as someone enjoying the confidence of the governor. The fact that he could converse secretly with the governor pointed to the significance of his position, particularly in front of these rebels.
Thus, the ringing shout of ‘May God pour blessings on the life of our dear master!’ repeated by the court aides made the pasha feel his own importance. His dreams of authority, power, and force toyed with his mind as he found himself caught between his own feelings and the specific instructions he had received in his office from the governor, who had repeated those instructions in no uncertain terms in front of the accused in order to make it completely clear that, while the pasha was the law’s representative, the authority, power, and force did not reside in that corpulent body with its thick blond beard and huge white turban, but rather lurked inside the governor’s own bald head and his eyes hidden behind thick spectacles.
The pasha now cleared his throat, anxious for the prisoners to register his presence. This noise, which might normally result from something stuck in the gullet, was a way of confirming his presence before this group of people who might well disdain his status.
He proceeded to speak, mangling the ‘r’ sound to such an extent that he strained his vocal cords and his voice turned hoarse. The fat red face flushed, the blond beard quivered, and the gleaming eyes intensified. ‘Reprobates!’ he roared. ‘You’ve no shame! You incite rebellion and defy the government. Like idiots you go out into the streets stirring up trouble. Who do you think you are, raising your voices against the government? Obedience is an obligation for all. I will not forgive a single person who rebels. I’m… I’m the pasha who rules this land.’
There he paused for a moment, as though he had just said something wrong. He looked over at the governor, who appeared quite unconcerned but was actually paying close attention to every word the pasha uttered; he did not even bother to look over at the pasha, as though no one were looking in that direction.
‘You’re all rebels,’ the pasha went on, ‘and you must all be punished.’ At the mention of the word ‘punished’ his nostrils expanded, as though the very idea excited him. He went on. ‘And I know exactly what your punishment will be.’
He shook his hand to indicate a caning motion, as though somehow the words themselves were not enough to convey his meaning. As he uttered the word ‘punishment’ again his whole body shook, until his legs could barely support him. Abd al-Rahman had the impression that what the pasha really wanted to do was to pounce on them all like a hunting falcon; he was concerned the pasha might have a seizure as he availed himself of the authority represented by the governor who was standing calmly by his side.
‘If this man would just let me talk to him for a minute or two,’ Abd al-Rahman thought, ‘I’d be able to demolish his sense of power and authority and calm him down.’ But the pasha’s frenzy only increased, and Abd al-Rahman’s thoughts were disrupted as he heard his next statements.
‘If His Excellency the Governor had not interceded with me, I would have had you whipped right here and now, before the punishment you will receive in the prisons and detention centres. But I have no intention of showing you any mercy. I know from previous experience that the best way to put your perverted and errant minds back on to the straight path is to…’
Abd al-Rahman’s nerves were on edge, and his blood boiled. His ears could not tolerate the verbiage they were now hearing. He stood up and raised his index finger in the air, the way he used to do at the academy when responding to an opinion expressed by the teacher with which he disagreed. ‘Your Excellency, Pasha!’ he said in a muted but firm voice.
A pair of coarse and violent hands reached to his neck, grabbed him by the collar, and put him in a choke-hold using his jallaba, in an attempt to stop him opening his mouth again. They tightened their grip until he was almost throttled. A third hand came down on his neck with a mighty cuff that knocked him down. The rough hands clung to him as though he had just been arrested in the act of committing a crime. The pasha stopped speaking and looked daggers at him, like a victim who was trying to escape his clutches. All his aides now stared viciously at Abd al-Rahman, waiting to be told what to do with him. The pasha stared long and hard, knitting his thick eyebrows and examining him with eyes bursting with hatred. The room was as silent as a grave, as though some terrible event had rocked the havens of justice. The prisoners watched the pasha’s mouth, as if anticipating the fate that would soon emerge from it. He did not remain silent for long. Turning to Abd al-Rahman, the pasha addressed him in a tone dripping with contempt. It was almost as if he could not see the young man’s youthful form before his eyes. His voice was now much lower, as though he considered himself above the need to address a child whom he could only despise.
‘Who is your father?’ he enquired, rather than asking about Abd al-Rahman himself. He was too proud to talk to a child, but it would be appropriate to talk to his father and pass judgement on a man rather than on a child.
‘I am Abd al-Rahman—’
The pasha raised his voice. ‘I asked you who your father was.’
The rough hands came crashing down again. ‘Tell him your father’s name!’
Abd al-Rahman now raised his head proudly. ‘I am Abd al-Rahman, son of Hajj Muhammad al-Tihami.’
‘Abd al-Rahman, son of Hajj Muhammad al-Tihami,’ the pasha repeated. His eyebrows twitched as he recalled a name that resounded in his ears for some considerable time. ‘Your father’s a good man,’ he went on. ‘How is it he’s abandoned you to these’ – and here he used an ugly word – ‘to addle your brain?’
Abd al-Rahman’s face turned crimson as he heard the abhorrent term the pasha used to describe his fellow prisoners. It seemed to him that it was all his fault. ‘If only he didn’t know your father,’ his conscience told him. ‘If only you hadn’t raised your finger, if only—’
‘You must be punished,’ the pasha said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘The same fate now awaits you as all these others. That will put a stop to your bad behaviour.’
Abd al-Rahman felt somewhat relieved. He had been worried that, in addition to insulting his fellow prisoners, the pasha might also insult him personally by releasing him because of his age and out of respect for his father.
‘The government knows no mercy,’ the pasha now declared, reverting to his previous stentorian tone. ‘Your punishment… your punishment…’ He looked at the governor as though to check on something, and the governor nodded in agreement. ‘The punishment decreed for all of you,’ he announced, ‘is two years in prison. Now get out of here!’
With that, the pasha, the governor, and their aides turned and disappeared en masse through the door of the ancient office. Guards now surrounded the prisoners like a pair of handcuffs. Coarse hands grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks and pushed them out. At the court gateway they were loaded onto the trucks.
‘Court, judge, deputy prosecutor, lawyer,’ Abd al-Rahman thought to himself, ‘and now two years’ imprisonment.’