An Evil Cradling (24 page)

I tossed and turned, clamped my hands over my ears. Nothing would quell this crazy static. I stuffed balls of paper into my ears. I wrapped my towel around my head, and still the noise was unbearable; how long could I endure this. I rocked, slowly at first then savagely trying to create a rhythm beyond the noise. I tried to sing, I tried to pray but my efforts only added to the torment. I tried sitting on the cold damp floor with the foam mattress wrapped about me but there was no protection from the high-pitched screech. My head was burning inside, my body sweated in the heat. It was relentless.

Only in the morning, when the guards prepared breakfast, would the noise be silenced. I walked exhausted to the shower. The luxury of hot water and soap could not refresh me. It merely cleansed the night and nerve-shattered sweat from me. I returned to my cell and slept, dog-tired. For days this discordant pandemonium screamed at us. I could bear it no longer. One evening hearing it start up again I jumped to the door, kicking it and hammering it and leaning in fury on the bell.

Guards rushed quickly to our cell. I stood back as the door opened.

Facing them, weary but resilient with anger I waited. ‘What you want?’ ‘Turn off the radio,’ I answered with slow, barely concealed anger and deliberation. ‘I cannot sleep with that noise, turn it off,’ I continued. ‘We cannot, is orders,’ came the simple reply. John’s voice came from behind me, calmer but still insistent ‘Then turn the thing down, we have not slept in days.’ There was silence, then one of the guards entered and spoke in conciliatory tones. ‘But it is same for us, we sleep here also.’ I let loose a massive sigh of exasperation. ‘It is not outside your door.’ John followed my words quickly, finding some humour to defuse the situation. ‘If it is the same, then you sleep here and we will sleep in your room.’

Puzzled and silent, the guards stood looking at us. Then again that phrase which was the standard answer to every request: ‘Bukkra’, tomorrow. I sank onto the floor in silence. ‘Those brain-dead pieces of rancid shite wouldn’t hear an elephant’s fart in their ear while they’re asleep. There’s nothing inside their thick skulls but congealed emptiness. How could nothing hear anything?’ I spat at the four walls.

John’s voice came from behind me again. ‘Well it doesn’t seem to have affected your vocabulary any.’ We both laughed quietly, exhausted by the sleepless nights and the futility of speaking with these people.

That night I slept fitfully, overcome by exhaustion, both physical and mental. On occasions I woke, the noise continually wrenching me out of sleep. Even in that darkness I could feel the whiteness of the walls blinding and burning me. I wondered then as I do even now how noise can affect our perception of colour. The whiteness had become deafening.

During the days that followed we complained frequently about the noise. It seemed to have some effect. The volume of the radio was lowered. But too late: I was already beginning to experience an irritation in my ear. Unthinking, as we played dominoes, I would push my little finger into the nagging ear and vigorously satisfy the craving to relieve the itch. This itch was with me for days. I felt an almost sexual pleasure in satisfying it. But then early one morning before the dawn call to prayer came undulating into the hollow cells I awoke with an excruciating pain in my inner ear. Tears filled my eyes with the intensity of it. For hours it crippled me then slowly died away. I lay awake until breakfast came. Pain experienced in conditions such as those in which we were held moves out of pain and into panic.

What is this illness? How will it affect me? Will it get worse? Such questions were insistent. But there were no answers, no reassurance.

Not knowing was more frightening than the pain itself.

For several days this pain attacked me, moving from one ear to another. The night was torture. I had either to be on my back or on my face, smothering it in the pillow. For long periods I was deaf. The inside of my ear was fat and swollen. John’s comforting reassurance that I should not worry and everything would be all right did not calm me. Was I becoming deaf? A deaf man cannot teach. He is locked in a world of silence. The comfort of companionship is removed. The world is a silently moving image which he can only stare at and half understand. Such was my panicking thought, as if rocks were being piled on my chest, holding me in this silence. I tried to calm myself by saying it would clear up in a few days. But instead the pain grew worse and the deafness more complete. I complained to the guards. They listened and left. Their lack of interest compounded my panic. John too was becoming anxious. I could barely hear him speak. I tried joking ‘At least I won’t have to listen to your bloody idiocy.’ He would crack a barely audible joke in response. ‘See, what splendid relief not to listen to you.’

My complaints became more earnest. I now wore twists of tissue permanently in my ears to protect them from the dust and irritating heat. When the electricity was turned off we lay, unmoving and in silence, our bodies glistening with sweat and grime in the rising temperature. My deaf ears pounded and throbbed. I tried to imagine my life in this shroud of silence. What would I do without music? I could never speak to anyone because I would not know if they heard me. All the insignificant noises of humanity would be denied me. This self-pitying introspection annoyed me as much as it worried me. I needed some medication but more importantly I needed someone to tell me what was wrong with me. Fear is diminished when we give something a name. By simply naming it we take possession of it. I needed knowledge to break me out of fear. I resolved I must have medicine.

Every time the guards entered and tried to speak to me I sat in silence or asked John what they were saying. He answered me loudly, his face close to my ear. Again I told them I needed medication. One of them sat close to me and said ‘What is your problem?’ I shrugged, John again spoke loudly in my ear. In detail I outlined my ‘problem’, making a point of blaming the radio for damaging my ears. He listened in silence and then rose to leave. ‘I will speak with my chief,’ he said and left. Two days passed and nothing happened. The routine of complaint and silence continued.

On the third day I waited for John to return from the toilet. He returned and I was taken. In the small washroom, which contained only a wash hand basin and a shower head over the hole in the ground where we squatted and defecated, I washed slowly, careful to keep the water out of my ears. Having finished, I knocked on the door to leave.

Slowly I walked back to my cell led by a guard. Inside it was strangely silent; my hearing was impaired, but not absolutely. I felt the emptiness rather than silence. I lifted my blindfold. John was gone.

One mattress, one urine bottle, one bottle of drinking water remained. Each object emphasized the emptiness. To my surprise I did not feel shock or fear. The sudden vastness of the tiny cell hypnotized me. But slowly the emptiness pressed in on me; what would I do? How would I pass the days on my own? Quickly, almost instinctively I jumped up and began running on the spot. It had been weeks since I had exercised. Faster and faster I ran then slowly trotted myself to an exhausted collapse. I lay sweating and panting, my mind still racing, seeking some resting place.

When lunch was brought I asked where John was. ‘I do not know,’

came the reply. ‘If you have hurt him…‘The door banged shut before I could finish my intended threat. I passed the day thinking of our time together. Occasionally I stood, hauling myself up to look over into the cells opposite. Nothing, no movement, no noise. I called out his name softly, then louder, fearless of the consequences. Still no answer. That night I prayed for my companion’s safety and comfort as I knew he would be doing for me. We were apart but somehow we were in communication. A compassion greater than our need for each other created an invisible presence, shared experiences and memories filling the cell. I slept alone yet somehow not alone. One question preoccupied me: what would I do if I learnt John had been executed? I remembered the words of the guard as he walked me into this prison many months ago. ‘Your friends have gone to their home.’ I know he was referring to Peter Padfield and Leigh Douglas and I was beginning to suspect that their ‘home’ was a final and not a family one. My prayers were no longer requests. I demanded his life and safety.

Morning came. This time I walked awkwardly to the toilet, the calves and muscles in my thighs screaming from the punishment I had subjected them to the previous night. I entered the tiny shower exhausted from the short walk. My ankles felt as though they had been smashed with a hammer. I waited for the pain to ease, looking up at the bulb that lighted the toilet. Suddenly it hit me. Without thinking what I was about to do I committed myself to it.

I turned on the cold tap of the shower and cupped my hands under the spray filling them with water, then threw the cold water against the hot bulb. Explosion and darkness. Hot pricks burnt my shoulders and feet as the glass fell around me. I stood motionless, waiting and afraid to move. Would I be trailed out of this place and beaten again?

The door opened slightly, a hand reached in with a small piece of candle burning on a saucer. I set it on the shelf above the grimy wash hand basin. As the door closed a voice spoke ‘Douche, quickly.’ So far I was safe. I looked about me. My eyes fixed on a piece of shattered glass. I picked it up and placed it inside my cup. Quickly I finished washing and folding the glass inside my towel, knocked on the door, informing the guards I was ready to return. I was led back to my cell.

Crouching in the corner I felt excited by my scheme. A long day and night passed, my mind turning over what I was going to do and what the consequences might be. Early in the morning before the guards arrived with breakfast I took the glass fragment in one hand and with the other spread my toes open. Wincing and hesitating I cut the flesh until it bled. Hurriedly I took the twists of tissue with which I plugged my ears and dabbed them in blood. I set them on the stone shelf. I put more pieces of tissue between my toes to staunch the bleeding.

Carefully I placed the glass into a tear I had made in the mattress. By the time breakfast arrived the small wound between my toes had stopped bleeding. As the guard set the food in front of me I took the pieces of tissue from each ear and showed him the bloody ends. He took them from me asking ‘You have blood?’ I pretended not to hear him. He held the twists of tissue under my blindfold. ‘Blood?’ he said inquisitively. I simply replied ‘Medicine; Doctor!’ As I expected he took both my hands in his, turning them over and scrutinizing them.

‘Okay’ he said and left.

Each night and morning I carried out the same routine. After a few days, one of the guards who spoke good English informed me he had told his ‘chief of’my problems’. His chief had told him that after one week if my ‘problem’ continued he would come to see me. I knew now that the ball had started to roll; where it would stop I did not know. I only knew I had to go with it. I continued my ritual incision, daily becoming more worried that the glass might be discovered. I knew that there were days when my cell was searched as I showered. I could not explain or lie my way out of the severe consequences if it was found.

After five or six days of this game I sat one afternoon, trying to calculate mathematically the sum total of all the chapters and verses in the Bible, which had been given to me some days before after repeated pleading for books. Suddenly the door rattled open. I sat unmoved. I had always, in the presence of the guards kept up the pretence that my deafness was worse than it really was. A man whose voice I did not know squatted in front of me. He took my hand and shook it. ‘How are you?’ he asked.

I leaned forward, lifting the blindfold from my ear, gesturing that I could not hear him. He said something in Arabic to the guards who stood behind him. He put his face close to my ear and asked ‘What is your problems?’ I explained the great pain in my ears and that I had difficulty eating because as I chewed the pain became worse. I showed him the bloody tissues and told him I could hear what he asked me but his voice seemed to be far away. He asked me what medicine I needed.

I answered that I did not know. I had never had such problems before, ť. m and emphasized that the noise from the radio had caused this. He listened, asking me if I had other problems. I told him that living like an animal was a problem. He spoke to the guards, then, patting my shoulder and again shaking my hand, got up and left. I had no idea of what would happen next. The longer I persisted with this gamble the greater the danger of them finding the sliver of glass. Worse still, what if I got an infection in the cuts in my feet? How could I explain that? I could only wait and see, but the waiting was agony.

Two nights later my cell opened. One of the guards handed me my clothes. Trousers, shirt and shoes. ‘Quickly, put on,’ he commanded.

There was laughter in his voice. I remembered to play deaf. He tugged at my shorts. ‘Dress, dress,’ he said and left. I dressed and sat, again waiting. After about ten minutes the door opened and several guards led me out. As I passed one of them said ‘You have ID?’ I answered that my passport was in my apartment. He laughed and I laughed with him.

I was ushered along the prison passageway and hoisted up through the hole I had been dropped into, seemingly so long ago. Out into the warm night air. Things were happening fast. I was surprisingly calm.

They jostled me into an old van. Several men were there and I was pushed onto the floor. The van stank with the smell of sheep or goats.

A gun was placed at my temple. The thought of the dark tunnel when I was first taken came rushing back to me. The filth and stink of this van was such an undignified place to die in. I wondered where and by whom my body would be found. Then strangely I thought perhaps it would be better for my family if I was buried here. Having to go through the suffering over my death and then dealing with the agony of bringing me home and burying me would be too much for them.