Radical (19 page)

Eventually, we were given some food to eat: one slice of bread and a small round blob of white, extremely salty cheese. A bottle of water was passed around the cells, from which we were allowed a swig. After what must have been the rest of the night, the guards were suddenly all action: the cell doors clanked open and one by one I could hear the shuffling of people being marched outside. It was my turn and the guard snapped at me to hold my hands out in front of me. Back on went the cuffs, and I was dragged out into the daylight.

The coldness of the night air was now a distant memory, and the heat from the sun washed over me. I was shown into the back of a van, only this time there were no benches, just a metal floor onto which I was shoved with Hassan, Hiroshi, and Yusuf. It was a closed van with metal on all sides except for a couple of tiny square windows, covered in a metal mesh. The door slammed shut and the van pulled away.

As there were no
shaweeshiya
in the back of the van, we were finally able to talk to each other. We had cautiously removed our blindfolds, keeping them round our necks.

“
Subhan Allah,
are you all right?”

“What have they done to you?”

“What did they say?”

It was Yusuf who was doing the apologizing. He was the Egyptian and we were the foreigners, and he felt that acutely. “I can't believe they are treating you like this,” he said as the van sped along an unknown road to an unknown destination. “I am so sorry.” Yusuf had naturally assumed that it was his membership in the Muslim Brotherhood that was to blame. I said nothing. This only made my guilt even worse. I knew from the questions that this was an HT case, and they were there because of me. But anything I told them would inevitably be used against them, forced out of them through torture. If my friends had mentioned that they knew I was with HT, it would only make matters far worse for them. The questions would keep coming:
so he has spoken to you about it, then? You have joined HT, too? Maagid has recruited you to his cause, has he?
Their best hope was to remain in blissful ignorance of my beliefs. The interrogators, I hoped, would soon realize that they knew nothing and just let them go. And so I suffocated my guilt and my overwhelming desire to apologize, in order to keep them safe.

The buzz of the Alexandria traffic began to disappear. It became clear that we were being taken out of the city, driven out into the desert. They shot people here, I knew. Took them out into the middle of nowhere and never brought them back. The van was getting hotter and hotter. The desert sun was baking down, turning the back of the van into an oven. Our clothes were soaked through with sweat—I could feel mine clinging to me with their wetness. Heat and sweat, heat and sweat. The saltiness of the cheese we'd had, and the fact that we were sweating so profusely, made us all desperate to urinate. The sheer pain in our bladders was reaching dangerous proportions, but where to go, and how? Soon we felt the van pull over to the side of the road. But it was for the driver to go, not us.

The van started up again. Yusuf banged on the partition wall.

“We need to go,” he said. “We need to use the loo back here.”

“Do it in the back,” the
shaweesh
shouted back. “We're not stopping for you.”

The van drove on. We were in that van for maybe four or five hours, and there was no way you could hold on in that heat. There was a spare tire opposite the doors, and we decided to take turns and just do it there. The urine went everywhere: all over the steel floor, where we were sitting and standing. The van stank with the putrid smell of sweat, urine, and heat. Degraded and humiliated, there was nothing we could do.

As the journey continued, we came to the conclusion that we were being taken to Cairo. From the distance we'd traveled, it seemed the most likely destination. Yusuf kept on apologizing, which just made the situation worse. In the heat of the van, I kept quiet and tried to pray:
Ya Allah, Ya Rabb al-'arsh al'-azeem,
Lord of the majestic throne, grant me the strength to pass this test of yours. I remembered my lessons back in London, about how our struggle would not be achieved without shedding blood. Sacrifice was an honor bestowed on a chosen few. I am thankful to Allah for this opportunity to be tested and counted as one of His true servants, for the chance to prove the depth of my
eeman
, my faith. Allah will never fail me: I must not fail Him in return.

There was the noise of a city now. The van stopped and started amid the hustle and bustle of busy streets. “Cairo. We're here,” I thought. The driver pulled the vehicle over, and as I swallowed hard I heard the door of the van being opened.

“Where are we?” Yusuf asked.

“Don't you know?” the
shaweesh
laughed as he began guiding us out. “This is al-Gihaz.”

Al-Gihaz.
The name sent a shudder through me. Aman al-Dawlah headquarters in Cairo—“The Apparatus.”

“My brothers, pray that Allah comes to your aid,” Yusuf struggled to speak, while his face changed to a color just off yellow. “This place is a torture center.”

A murmur. A groan. My arms were grabbed by a guard, my handcuffs roughly removed. A
ghimamah
was tightened over my eyes again and then, unceremoniously, my hands were pulled behind my back and tied together with another piece of rag. Another rag, another place of lawlessness. I winced as the cloth burned my wrists. Official procedures—like the handcuffs—were being left at the door. Manhandled down some steps, away from the sunshine and down into darkness, I was led into the underground cells of al-Gihaz to await my fate.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Number Forty-Two

I will never forget al-Gihaz. It is the sort of place that remains etched on your memory forever. The sort of place that still, a decade later, I can recall with disturbing clarity as it wakes me up in the night, slipping insidiously into my dreams. The piling of the bodies. The heat and cold. The begging screams from the torture room at the end of the corridor. The waiting. It's the sort of place that when you first enter, you cannot quite believe it exists. Something from a film. But it's real all right. If only my mind could come to believe that it wasn't.

Itnain wa arba'een.
Number forty-two. That was who—what—I'd become. My last vestige of identity and dignity was stripped from me as I was shoved down those stairs. I heard with mounting horror my fellow prisoners being called and taken down the corridor, the crackle of electricity. I heard the prisoners being dragged back, the “schlump” sound as their near-lifeless bodies were deposited back in line, the faintness of their whimpers and murmurs as they lay there, recovering.

I was only a number. This was the only order in that cretinous hellhole, the way the numbers called out moved up, ever closer to my own. Each individual torture session varied, but each must have been between thirty minutes and an hour. The wait for our own turn was over a drowsy, sleep-deprived day and night. I was at least sure of that, because I could hear the call to prayer, the
azan,
drifting in from outside the building: the morning
azan
is longer, with an extra line—“
al-salatu khayrun min al-nawm,
prayer is better than sleep.” I thanked Allah for letting me live through another night, for being with me, for preventing me from losing my mind. I'd heard that call twice since arrival, so I knew I was into my third day of imprisonment. Even in the abyss of that building, my faith was giving me answers and keeping me strong.

The crackle of electricity was getting closer. So too were the beatings. The roll calls continued day and night, and anyone who didn't answer or forgot their number was beaten there and then. The sound of beating a helpless, crying man is sickening. Others were made to stand for hours on end for failing to answer to their number. If they didn't stand still, or if their legs gave way, they were punished again. Some prisoners, while their hands were still tied at their backs, would have their arms pulled back and lifted from behind, hung by the edge of a door from the rope on their wrists, until their will or their body gave way and their arms dislocated from their sockets.

In a cell behind me, within earshot, I heard a guard march in and order a prisoner to sit up. There was a scuffle.

“If I tell you to do it, you do it,” the guard leered.

“Please,” the prisoner begged. “Please not that.”

“Did I say you could speak?” the guard snapped. The prisoner, by now, was whimpering. And with a snorting
shakheer,
the guard barked: “Put it in your mouth . . .”

“Number forty!” My moment was coming closer as I struggled to remember my prayers. But my attempts to focus were interrupted by the brother next to me, the brother I was leaning against, who by this point was gently beginning to cry.

“Brother,” he whispered to me, “
akhi,
I'm next. I, I don't know what to do.”

“Sssh,” I said quietly, trying to listen for a guard was nearby. If anyone heard us talking to each other, we'd both be beaten.

“Help me,
akhi,
” the prisoner whimpered. “They're going to torture me, I know they are and my number's next. Help me for Allah's sake.”

But what could I say to this brother of mine to ease his pain while I couldn't even find a way to comfort my own soul? Poor man, he's next; at least I have another few minutes for myself. Let me try to help him.

“Calm yourself, my brother,” I gently whispered. “You need to be strong now. Remember you are here
fee sabeelillah.
You will be justly rewarded for the sacrifice you are about to make.”

The prisoner, number forty-one, continued, “But I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I'll be able to get through.”

It was heartbreaking to hear a proud man broken. His sobs were the sound of someone whom al-Gihaz had worked its twisted magic on. He was a wreck. The only thing I could think to do was to recite a passage from the Qur'an for him, in the hope that it would give him the courage he so desperately needed. Slowly, and ever so quietly, so low that only he and I could hear, I willed my voice to utter the sounds of Allah's words. It was a risk, I knew, especially as it was our turn next to be called. If we'd been caught speaking, we'd have been accused of collusion, and any punishment meted out would have been that much worse.

What I recited to him was a passage called
al-Burooj
: an ancient story about a boy and a king. It is especially pertinent for those who find their
eeman
being tested. The king demands that everyone in the village worship him. But a boy, who converted to believe in the one true God, refuses. The boy stands by his belief and is persecuted by the king for it. Like the others in the town who stand with the boy by the one true faith, he is thrown into a pit and burned alive. It took the use of all my energy to get my voice out:

I swear by the mansions of the stars,

And by the promised day,

And by the bearer of witness, and those against whom witness is borne,

Cursed be the makers of the pit,

Of the fire fueled, and by where they sat,

They will surely bear witness to what they did to the believers,

Persecuting them for no other cause, but that they believed in Allah, the Mighty, the Praised,

Whose is the Kingdom of the heavens and earth, and Allah is a witness unto all things . . .

I recited the entire passage to him in Arabic, in the low, rhythmic tones of recitation, or
qira'ah.
Swallowing after each line to catch my breath, control my palpitations, and calm my fear: hoping that my words would somehow summon the very angels of our Lord, descended by His command in a righteous rage to protect us from these animals. Like a child, his crying slowly stopped, his sobs drifted further and further apart as he listened intently to my voice, to Allah's words. The beauty of each
ayah,
each verse, seemed to me to sparkle ever more in the grit and grime of that dungeon.

“May Allah reward you,
akhi,
” the prisoner said as soon I had finished. “I don't know who you are, but you are a good man.
Wallahi,
you are a good man.”

“Number forty-one!” the guard shouted.

“And so are you,” I whispered. And as I lay there, my
ghimamah
soaking up my tears and itching my eyes, the brother was hauled to his feet and taken to be tortured.

Now I was alone. When the numbers had been lower down, I wondered if a phone call might come before they got to me. Perhaps the British Consul would have found out where I was. The guards would have been told to get number forty-two up and out of there, before anything happened. But as the roll call got higher, I knew that there would be no hope of escape.

But I still had my
eeman.
Helping number forty-one—I never learned his name nor saw him again—had stirred me. It showed to me that for all my fear, I still had my core strength. I was not yet a broken man. I was not weeping and begging number forty-three for help. And I had a plan, too. For while I was lying there, my hands had not been idle. Little by little, I had worked away at the rag behind my back. It was loose now. I was holding the knot in place with my fist: otherwise, my hands were free.

All my life, I had been in situations involving stabbings and assaults, but not once had I been the one beaten. I had never been forced into a humiliating position where I had no choice but to take a beating. It had happened in front of me but never
to
me. And I decided that I wasn't going to let it happen now. Somewhere in the vicinity, I could hear the tortured screams of number . . . brother forty-one
.

If they try that with me, I thought to myself, they'll have to kill me for the wrath I intend to unleash upon them. They may have guns and torture machines, but I've got surprise on my side. My hands are free. I braced myself, and decided that at the moment of torture I would jump on my interrogator. I would jump on him and simply bite down into his neck, and bite and bite until they would have to shoot me dead to make me stop. I would die fighting, without pain, without suffering, with glory.

It sounds surreal now. But al-Gihaz is a surreal place, and listening to the screams of grown men pleading over forty-eight hours can do surreal things to one's mind. It's as if the outside world—the normal rules—no longer existed. The dehumanizing nature of the regime turns even the most rational minds to their animalistic instincts. Like a tiger in a corner, I was seriously prepared to fight viciously, ruthlessly—to sacrifice my own life rather than suffer the indignation the other prisoners had been put through.

The screaming suddenly stopped. I heard the guards drag brother forty-one back, body limp like a sack of potatoes, until they dumped him beside me. Stillness. My time had come. I was next. And I steadied myself in preparation for my number to be called. The anxiety at that moment is not something I will ever, ever wish upon my worst enemy. The seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes turned to irrelevance as time drifted out of the window, my mind running from the sheer inhumanity of my situation. The war drums of my heart began to gather pace, and I prepared myself for the last moments of my life. Be strong, Maajid, Allah is with you, be strong and embrace your martyrdom.

Itnain wa arba'een!

There it was. Number forty-two. My whole body literally shuddered. It is my turn. Number forty-two. Odd, I thought, as my mind wandered off into that all-too-familiar place of randomness. Forty-two is my age, twenty-four, but backward. How strange. I wonder if I'll ever reach forty-two years old. I gathered the strength to speak. My voice came out weaker than I would have liked: