I Was Saddams Prisoner
Chapter Eleven
Intellectuals in Iraq are damned. Most of the youths condemned to
indefinite stay in Tawqif were highly educated, intelligent and
politically aware members of the society. Their crime was that they were
vocal and articulate. Not all of them were votaries of Islamic state;
but they were all unanimous in their condemnation of unjust,
authoritarian rules in most of the Arab states.
There was a young man who seemed to live on the wings of fancy. Alone
in a corner, he spoke to himself, chuckled with a smile gradually
developing into a broad grin. Young in age, he had a face demure and
sage. We thought he was mad, till one day I found out that he was a
poet. He quoted several pre-Islamic literary giants, and recited their
lines with pride and admiration. At times, he read his own poetry to us.
The Muhaqqiq somehow knew that the fellow was well versed in metre and
rhyme. Naturally, he provided us a good diversion in a dungeon where
there was nothing else to do but to kill the parasites, stitch the torn
clothes, wash ourselves, pray, brood over our weird fate, quarrel over
trivialities, remember our family and helplessly weep.
The poet once came back from the Muhqqiq badly shaken. His face red
from the slaps and blows, his front tooth broken. The pyjama showed
blood, for he had been mercilessly kicked in his testicles. In an hour
and a half of incessant questioning, no respite was given to him as
various modes of punishment were meted out one after the other. He was
given a shock treatment, which sent him flying from the chair like fish
out of water, tottering to the floor semi-conscious. All this because he
was asked to recite few verses of his own to amuse the Muhqqiq. Call it
an audacity or foolhardiness, he chose some of the most provoking lines
from his notes, the pointed spikes against the inhuman Ba’thist regime,
and recited them with candour that was least expected. The Muhaqqiq flew
with rage and then hell broke loose.
Faisal, who had been there for nine months, was a lecturer in
Mathematics. He was from Jordan, teaching in a University in Baghdad. He
left Jordan as a political dissident, unable to reconcile with the
despotic rule, and came to Iraq to find a living. Here he married. A
year after his marriage, when his first-born was only a month old, he
was apprehended. I remember how one morning he woke up with tears
rolling down his cheeks. He had dreamt of his young wife and the newborn
child. He saw that the child was grown up-and in the arms of its mother,
it gave a toothless smile, spreading its arms towards him as if to say:
"Take me father, hug me, fondle me, kiss me, please." Faisal cried for
one hour. He was a Mathematician, and a human being. During my stay of
four months and two days, I never saw him go to Muhaqqiq. His ordeal
seemed to be over; but the protracted confinement tortured him further.
What had he done? While lecturing on Mathematics, he at times digressed
to touch the burning political issues of the Middle East, and frankly
castigated the monarchy and the despotic rules of Jordan and other Arab
states.
He never realised that the government's secret agents and informers
were everywhere. His own students reported him, and one day, the icy
hand of Mukhabirat descended upon him. "You cannot imagine how much they
beat me," he once told me. "They seem to have softened down now, for the
beating I see these days is not at all comparable to what I have
undergone. The rain of Sonda falling upon my body turned my skin
violet, then black and then violet again. I had a bloodbath" - he
said.
The young generation of Iraq and many other Arab states is condemned to
decadence. Only those who choose to live aimlessly, whiling away their
precious time in frivolity and gain less pursuits, ostensibly inclined
to the prevailing rule, can survive. A young man who thinks, has an
ideology and original persuasions, is religious and a true Muslim, gives
vent to his feelings and opinions, for him all roads point to the
gallows. With every young intelligent Muslim Iraqi who is systematically
brainwashed, wrecked, finally executed or banished, Islam incurs an
irreparable loss of genius.
Yahya, a student of psychology, came from Kuwait. Common to many
psychologists, he had his own psychological problems. His wife had
deserted him accusing him of impotence, and it became impossible to live
in Kuwait. So he came to Iraq where a job awaited him. Human behaviour
was his subject, and as he discussed human traits, he cited examples
from history. The Ba’thist regime found him a suspect, and pre-empted
his arrest before he could discuss the present insane rulers
psychologically. He was rounded up in Kerbala, and was immediately
consigned to a dark vault, which had a revolting stench of urine and
human excrements. Thereafter in a police cell, before his final transfer
to our cell, the Haras sexually assaulted him. Needless to say that
Yahya recalled his experience with profound bitterness. "They are
beasts, these Haras", he would say.