The Devil Couldn't Break Me (20 page)

“What wrong?” I asked.

“You fucking stink, that's what's wrong.”

And almost immediately I knew what it was that smelt. I hadn't had a period for some months but a few nights back I'd awoken with familiar feeling stomach cramps. I thought nothing of it. The next morning I thought I'd felt a dampness between my legs but put it down to urine. My bladder control was weak owing to the fact that my body clock was all over the place and my internal organs battered and bruised because of the numerous beatings at the hands of the brothers Grimm. There were many occasions that I'd ended up lying in my own urine or faeces before I'd managed to make it to the sanctuary of the toilet.

“Over here you dirty bitch. Let me take a look at you.”

I shuffled over to the door and he pulled me into the light by my hair. I looked down between my legs. My jeans were stained a reddish brown colour and immediately we both knew what had happened. I was mortified, so ashamed, so embarrassed that a stranger had witnessed me this way.

The guard was furious as he screamed for his friend.

“You filthy bitch,” he spat.

As if I could help it.

“If you can get me some towels or tissue paper it won't happen again.”

“Take your clothes off,” he barked.

The soldier rived at my jumper and blouse and then tore my bra from me throwing it to the ground. He graciously allowed me to remove my soiled jeans and knickers myself and pushed me against the outside wall of the cell.

His colleague arrived and he told him to prepare the shower and some clean clothes. He made me stand naked for some time until his friend returned and they frogmarched me to the showers. I felt dirty and looked forward to the warm shower and the sweet smelling soap, it had been a long time and a change of clothes would be welcome too.

I was to be sorely disappointed as they pushed me into the corner and produced what looked like a powerful length of hose. They connected it up to a large tap that stood a metre from the floor and turned it on. The powerful jet hit me in the chest and knocked me over onto the shiny tiled floor. The water was freezing cold at first but like the showers I expected the hot water would soon kick in. I wasn't to be so lucky this time as the hose was only connected to a cold water outlet.

They laughed and giggled and squealed like tormented schoolboys as they tried their hardest to hose the flesh from my bones. At first the jet of cold water was painful and stinging but within minutes my whole body was numb with the cold and I felt no pain. They aimed the powerful jet at my head and the force of it cracked my cheekbone into the tiles. I could do nothing but crawl into a corner and curl up in a ball with my back to them. They swore and cursed at me and it became like a language of its own, every other word a foul mouthed expletive and whilst at first it bothered and hurt me I was beyond caring and expected no better from these animals. The hose stopped and I felt two hands grab me roughly as they turned me around and pulled me into the centre of the tiled area. One of them prised my legs apart and then they turned the hose on and aimed the cold jet between my thighs. Although I had my eyes closed I sensed one of the guards was quite close to me. He was telling his colleague how much I was enjoying the experience. I had lived in fear of being raped for months, surely this was it? But within a few seconds I made it back into the corner and curled up in a ball while they laughed and giggled.

It's hard to tell how long I was abused in the shower unit, probably no more than ten minutes but it was ten minutes that lasted an eternity. All the while they taunted me calling me the vilest, filthiest names they could dream up. Eventually they turned off the hose and lifted me to my feet. I tried to stand unaided but the signals transmitted from my brain to my lower limbs went unanswered and if they hadn't held on to me I would have collapsed in a heap. My teeth chattered and banged together which was a great source of amusement to them as they made comments about how a woman could never keep her mouth closed.

I don't know how I managed to walk back to the cell as my feet felt like two blocks of ice. They threw me back into my cell with a towel and my clean clothes. As I slowly began to thaw out my whole body seemed to tingle and burn and both hands were fixed like claws which meant I couldn't even hold the towel let alone dress myself. Thankfully it was summer now and the cell wasn't particularly cold. If it had been winter or even early spring, I wouldn't have survived the night. The pain was excruciating, my whole body cried out for release and my head ached like it had never ached before, like someone had squeezed a big bass drum in there, pounding away as if their life depended on it. The headache was the worst, relentless; I thought it would never end. I remembered my father telling me that if I was in pain to squeeze hard on a pressure point between my thumb and my forefinger. I tried the process for several minutes but it didn't take the pain away.

It was many hours before I was able to dress fully and the pain in my head eventually subsided. I wrapped myself up in the blanket and tried to fall asleep as I heard the cockroaches making their nightly expedition across the stone floor.

Why Do They Not Come for Me?

The days and the weeks rolled into one. I knew that I had been in my own personal tomb for many months now. The general change in the temperature of the cell told me that, as it turned from freezing cold to bearable and then week by week gradually started to warm up. As mid-summer took hold, at times it was stiflingly hot in there. And yet I longed for that sun, to see it rising up from a mountainside gradually casting light over the valley. I had forgotten what the sun looked like. I craved the warmth, the way it made you feel when you were able to sunbathe to the point of perspiration and then cool off in the sea or in a crystal clear blue swimming pool.

But I knew there was no hope of escape and by now I had given up the thoughts of anyone coming to rescue me, of ever seeing the sun again. I was lost in my mind that was by now playing strange hallucinogenic tricks on me and wondered if I could ever find myself again. I fought on and tried to complete everyday tasks that other people would take for granted. My fingernails were claw like and ugly and so I took to sanding them on the concrete floor but left them long enough so that I could scrape in-between my teeth. Keeping my teeth clean without a toothbrush was almost impossible but I tried by best with my fingers and my nails. I forget how many times I asked my guards for a toothbrush and toothpaste, for period pads and even a hairbrush but nothing ever materialised. It was probably as well they didn't bring a hair brush as by now my tangled, matted hair was falling out in clumps. I'd only have to drag my fingers through my scalp and the hair would come loose in my hands. My scalp was raw and tender, painful to the touch and my skin was dry and flaking off like talcum powder.

I cried myself to sleep many nights as I thought about my parents and because they'd never come to get me I assumed they had been murdered. It was the only logical explanation. Agi would never have allowed me to stay there so long.

I started to bite myself, sometimes as hard as I could and at times managed to puncture the skin and draw blood. It felt good. It felt that at least I was in control of the pain. It was different to the pain and torture my captors inflicted on me because it was my pain not theirs. I bit my fingers and my forearms and even my shoulders and my knees if I pulled them up towards my chin. On one occasion I remember biting my shoulder so hard that I could feel the sensation of the blood trickle all the way down to my hand. I waited and guided the blood stream using gravity and felt so pleased as it reached my wrist and then licked the trail all the way back up to my shoulder. I sat in the darkness grinning with blood smeared all over my face. At that point in time I knew I was dangerously close to becoming a psychotic, deranged lunatic. I wondered what my captors would have thought if they had walked in on me at that moment.

And yet I had moments of rational normality and lucid thoughts. I asked myself why I had never been questioned or interrogated again, analysing every little detail. It made no sense. If they really thought I was a spy then surely that one day of interrogation was not the first and the last time. And yet the more I thought about it the more it made perfect sense. They would never question me again because they knew the answers would always be the same, they knew I had told the truth, knew I wasn't a spy, just like Kupi and his gang, the truth had no relevance. The only thing I couldn't quite understand was why they were keeping me alive, why were they bringing me food every day?

My mood swings told me that I was heading towards the thin line where sanity ends and madness begins. It was incredible the emotions I went through in such a short time. I became aggressive, ready and willing to attack the guards as they opened my cell door and more than happy to fight the monsters I faced as I ran the almost daily gauntlet to the toilet. I'm ashamed to admit that sometimes I even enjoyed the confrontation.

Occasionally my energy levels seemed to increase for no apparent reason and I'd find myself pacing back and forward in my cell for hours at a time. I was hallucinating too, patterns would appear on the cell walls even though I could hardly see them and sometimes when I closed my eyes I'd see arrangements of stars and bright lights. As always I was paranoid about the rats and the mice coming into my cell. Sometimes I'd wake from a particularly bad nightmare as the vermin poured into my cell and ran all over me. I'd always wake up at the point when the largest, ugliest rat was creeping up my chest to my face so that our noses were just about touching. His whiskers would be twitching and I'd know he was just about to launch himself towards me.

One day that nightmare came true.

I could hear the guards giggling outside the cell door and I knew they were up to something. They shouted that there were some friends who had come to visit and did I want to see them. I suspected they were lying but they kept on at me and said that they would only allow them into the cell if I sanctioned the visit. One of the guards opened the small grill in the door by sliding the wood to one side.

I could see his face through the bars and he was quoting some provision from the Geneva Convention.

“Every prisoner has the right to a visit but every prisoner also has the right to refuse.”

I fell right into their trap.

“But who is it, who has come to visit me?”

“I can't tell you that I'm afraid.”

I dared to imagine that my father had somehow survived and had found out where I was. Could it be Brian or Peter, perhaps both of them or was it the lawyer or the solicitor I'd requested so often? Different possibilities and scenarios raced around my head. Had they checked up on my case number and verified my story, was it a policeman or perhaps a UN official?

The guards seemed unusually patient for a change, listening carefully as I asked questions. I knew it was a ridiculous situation because they could have opened the door any time they wanted and yet I began to wonder if they were perhaps telling the truth. It did sound as if the guard was reading from a sheet, perhaps the Geneva Convention stated just that.

“I'll ask you one more time,” he said, “do you wish to receive your visitors or not?”

Visitors... more than one. Brian and Peter

“Yes, yes, of course I do. Please open the door, I'll come and see them.”

“No need, they'll come to see you.”

At that point one of them laughed and I knew I had been duped. The cell wasn't big enough for me never mind more than one visitor. I took two steps back and almost fell against the far wall as I heard the key being turned in the lock.

No... no... surely not. Not that, anything but that.

They flung the door open and the two of them took a step inside. My eyes grew accustomed to the light and I focussed on a small cage one of the guards held up in front of me.

“Your visitors.” He grinned

I recoiled in horror as I focussed on a writhing mass of rodent bodies, at least half a dozen mice and poking his nose through the bars at the front of the cage was a huge black rat bearing his teeth.

“No please, please, anything, I'll do anything but don't...”

I didn't get time to finish my sentence before he'd knelt down and opened the front of the cage. The small mice scurried out into the darkness and disappeared while the big rat took a single step forward and paused as his whiskers twitched and he analysed the situation. Before I could react the guards had slammed the cell door and locked it leaving me alone with my worst possible nightmare. I could hardly breath as my lungs lurched into panicking spasms. Instinctively I ran forward and leapt at the door, grabbing the iron bars with my hands and lifting my knees up to the cold metal so that my feet were several centimetres from the floor. And I screamed. I screamed for all I was worth as my fear turned to panic and the tears flowed like they'd never flowed before. How could they do this to me? More importantly how could they take such pleasure and amusement at the sheer terror they were putting me through?

As weak as I was, as wasted as my muscles were, I held onto that door for dear life and if I'd had to hold on for twenty-four hours then I would have done so. I could hear the creatures scurrying around beneath me and there was nothing worse I could possibly imagine than to set my bare feet on that stone floor and give them access to me, a stepping stone to the rest of my body. I screamed and I pleaded through the bars in the grill but mostly I screamed. In the end I think they opened the door because they could bear the noise no more. When I was sure that every single mouse and the large rat had ran from the cell I collapsed onto the floor. My arms were on fire, my knees numb and my thigh muscles ached as though someone had pushed a thousand hot needles into each one.

I was at rock bottom, I couldn't stand it, couldn't take this anymore. I wanted to die and that night I asked Allah to take me yet again, begging him to listen to me and spare my anguish. I had taken the abuse and the punishment, the beatings and the threats, but this was one thing I knew I couldn't come back from.

The cockroaches were no longer welcome in my cell because in the darkness I convinced myself that they were mice and rats and I broke out into a cold sweat every time I heard them. I'd sit up in the corner by the door and wrap my blanket around me until I worked it up to my chin so that only my head was visible. And I'd fight the sleep because I had to be alert in order to kick those mice or cockroaches away as soon as they got anywhere near the bottom of my blanket.

The result was that I exhausted myself to the point of no return. I was a living zombie and for many days I didn't even have the energy to crawl over towards the door and take my food. I think the guards realised how close I was to death and thankfully their little joke was never repeated and they urged me to eat. And yet I could never understand that. Surely it was better that I would die? They weren't going to put me on trial and they weren't going to let me go so what was the point in keeping me alive?

Gradually, for some reason I couldn't explain, I began to eat again. One day I tore tiny strips from my blanket, crawled over to where the unassuming cockroaches made their nightly march across the cell floor and blocked up all of the holes. I figured they took off and found another piece of the building to play in and they never bothered me for several days until eventually the ate their way through the wool blanket.

I slept well apart from the occasional nightmare and steadily my energy returned. I tried to reserve most of that energy contemplating how I could commit suicide without suffering too much pain.