The Dark Side of Love (120 page)

Mahdi Said was an important man. He was regularly flown by helicopter to the Interior Ministry, and came back only a few days later. He seldom spent the night in the camp commandant's service apartment. Even if it was late, his chauffeur usually drove him to Damascus and brought him back next morning.

Yet Mahdi Said – unlike Garasi – seemed to have a perfect team. Not only was the atmosphere among the officers quiet and amicable, but all went to plan even when the commandant wasn't there.

It was two weeks before the first prisoners were fetched for interrogation. They were two men from Hut 5. Three hours later only one of them was brought back, a Muslim Brother called Sabah Kasem. What happened to the other man no one knew. He never reappeared. The commandant, unlike his predecessor, was a devout Muslim, but rejected the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood. Intellectually he was of a completely different calibre from that brutal drunk Garasi. “He knew my life from the records as well as if he'd grown up with me,” said the interrogated prisoner. But he also said that Mahdi Said had presented him with the choice between a slow death and re-education to make him a good citizen. He wouldn't have to reject his faith or sign some theatrical piece of paper, just show that he wanted to be a patriot. The first step in re-education, said the commandant, was total obedience. It was up to the detainees to cooperate, and when Sabah refused to cooperate in any way with the camp authorities the new commandant hadn't even seemed angry, just told him to go away and think about it. “But,” added Sabah, “there was more of a threat in those words than in all Garasi's hysterics. That's why I'm contemplating giving up and going back to real life, martyr or not. A hot shower, a water-pipe to smoke in my courtyard at home, sitting with my children among my pots of basil and rose trees – that's my idea of Paradise.” But his voice betrayed great fear as well as this modest hope. The detainees tried to soothe him, but that fear already had his heart in its cold hand.

Next day Sabah called for one of the guards and asked him to tell the commandant he wanted to be a good citizen. Soon after that he was taken away and disappeared for ever. The Muslim Brothers in the camp cursed him.

About ten prisoners had to go for interrogation every day. Some were treated gently, others brutally tortured. The torture victims spoke of a cold-blooded Mahdi Said who always stayed in the background and, unlike Garasi, didn't get his own hands dirty. He strolled back and forth between the rooms where the prisoners were being interrogated and tortured, gave orders in a whisper, and then went away again. He himself interrogated only the most important detainees.

Farid found it hard to come to terms with all this. The defeat of the prisoners was absolute. The world had forgotten them again, and the regime didn't mind about its poor reputation. The government in Damascus was even proud of it, saying it showed how revolutionary it was, and sure enough, the media of the socialist countries repeated this nonsense as if paid to do so by the state.

Microphones and presumably tiny cameras were installed everywhere, robbing the detainees of their courage. One day a new rumour went around: Mahdi Said personally lent his torturers a hand in only one thing, giving injections. No one knew the details. Some said that prisoners were injected with a truth serum, others mentioned pentothal, barbiturates, and other psychotropic drugs. Colonel Badran, they claimed, had ordered these things from East Berlin.

It was 17 April, Syrian Independence Day. The loudspeakers in the courtyard blared out the national anthem and Austrian marching music. Now and then telegrams from all over the world to President Amran were read out. But unlike his predecessor, Mahdi Said did not make the prisoners sing songs of praise to the President. He wasn't celebrating; even on Independence Day he came back from Damascus by helicopter early in the morning and went through his daily quota of ten prisoners. The journalist Ali Abusaid, who with Farid had carried through the strikers' demands, whispered to his partner of the time that many detainees were being “turned” during interrogation and then sent back to the huts. As good citizens of new standing they had to show their loyalty by spreading false information, recruiting more men to collaborate with the secret service, and sniffing out troublemakers.

And Ali Abusaid had another tale to tell. He had recognized one of the new guards as his youngest cousin, a nasty piece of work. His cousin had told him in a place behind Hut 1, the only square metre where anyone could go more or less unobserved, that several prisoners had now told Mahdi Said the names of all the leaders of the strike, the men who had won the battle against his predecessor. And almost
with relish, his cousin finally added, “And he doesn't want remorse and loyalty from you and your friends. He wants to crush you.”

The injection most often mentioned by the detainees, said the frightened journalist, was one of the new commandant's most diabolical methods. It contained a mixture of several psychotropic drugs, and depending on the strength of the dose it made people talkative, docile, or feeble-minded. If it was given in too high a concentration, or to someone with a nervous disability, it could be fatal.

A day later Bishara came back from exercise in the yard, beaming. “Mahdi is one of us,” he whispered. Farid froze.

“What do you mean?” he quietly asked Bishara, looking up at the holes in the beams. He knew he was overheard.

“He's a Christian.” And as if it were a state secret, Bishara added quietly, “And he's wily. He converted to Islam only to get promotion, had himself circumcized, said
Ashhadu anna la Illaha illa Allah
once … and the fools believed he was a Muslim now. But blood's thicker than water. He's one of us, and he's particularly courteous to the Christians. A very educated man. He speaks four languages.”

“And who put this nonsense into your head?” asked Farid, irritated by such naivety in an old communist suddenly keen to lay claim to his Christian faith. “From all I've heard Mahdi is a fanatical Muslim, close to the Muslim Brotherhood, and all he has against them is that they want to topple his government.” But Farid's anger with Bishara, who was desperately clutching at straws to give himself some hope in the ocean of his fears, gradually turned to pity.

It wasn't long before reality caught up with Bishara. A Christian detainee had been tortured until he went out of his mind. When Bishara heard of that he began to sob despairingly.

After a while the prisoners heard about the building of a camp for those who had been “saved”. It was between Damascus and Tad, in the middle of a green oasis with sports fields, an artificial lake, and clean little apartments. “They prepare people for a positive return to society there,” said Salih, one of the Palestinian prisoners, not without enthusiasm.

Farid was listening with only half an ear. He was stunned by another piece of news: the miserable death of the conscientious objector Nagi
Salam, whom he had liked. He had not come back after interrogation. It was said he had been taken away, supported by two soldiers, and was later found unconscious in Damascus, in the stairwell of the building where his parents lived. The doctor they called had been unable to do anything for him.

In fact the ring of silence around the camp was complete. The prisoners knew nothing of the outside world if the commandant did not allow it. So Mahdi Said obviously
wanted
them to hear the news of Nagi's death. No one knew why.

Mahdi Said interrogated the most important prisoners by night, and on those occasions he did not, unusually for him, go back to Damascus. Night was the worst time for interrogations; it made you feel small, lonely, and weak. The day had drained the prisoners of all their strength, while Mahdi Said had enjoyed a siesta of two or three hours. If questioning went on until dawn it was sheer hell for the exhausted detainees. After two endless nocturnal interrogations, Ali Abusaid left the camp where he had buried five years of his life in the sand. Farid was in despair, for with Ali's departure he had lost a valuable support.

It was after midnight when two soldiers appeared in Hut 5 and told Farid to come for questioning. He felt the same unspeakable fear as he had felt in his boyhood at the monastery gate. A fear of what was about to happen, and infinite loneliness. “Mother, oh Mother, where are you?” he heard himself whisper in the voice of a thirteen-year-old boy.

“Get moving, son of a whore,” barked the smaller guard. He was obviously uneasy. “Your mother would have done better to bring a dog into the world!” Farid could feel no strength in his legs. His temples were throbbing, his heart was ramming his ribcage as if to escape from it.

Outside, the sky was clear and cicadas were chirping. For a moment
Farid thought of Rana. She loved nothing so much as the music of the cicadas by night.

“I hear you're a dangerous fellow. To me you're a cockroach! A rent boy. A queer. I could tell right away from your face!” said the guard as they went along, his voice hoarse with agitation.

“Let him alone, calm down,” the other guard intervened. When they arrived he sent away the smaller man, who was snorting with rage, and escorted Farid up the stairs by himself.

“Here,” he said quietly outside the camp commandant's office. When the door opened, Farid shot across the room. A blow had caught him in the middle of the face. He staggered around in a circle and saw the two guards who must have been waiting for him. A radio was playing in the office. The folk singer Lamia Haufik was singing a song about Arab honour and generosity to strangers. As Farid lay on the floor his fear receded for a moment. He thought of the rather plump singer, whom he had always regarded as terrible – vulgar and dull – and he had a feeling that these thugs were peasants avenging themselves on any city dweller for the ignominy the cities had inflicted on them over the centuries, doing so even without the urging of their superior officers and for no reward, just as a kind of lynch justice supervised by the state while they wore its uniform.

Mahdi came in through a side door and sat down at his desk. One of the guards switched off the radio. “That'll do, boys, you'll get plenty of chance to play with him,” said the major, casting a final glance at the file before him and closing it. Farid was still lying on the floor, pressed up against the drawers of a second desk. “So you're Farid Mushtak, the dangerous underground military expert and true leader of the strike. Congratulations!” Mahdi gestured to the men to pick him up and seat him on a chair. It was only a small wave of his hand, but as precise and effective as a traditional temple ritual of long standing. The men dragged Farid over the floor, put him on the chair in front of the camp commandant's large walnut desk, tied his hands behind the chair back, and retreated into the background.

“Would you like a cigarette?” asked Mahdi Said, offering him a French pack. Farid was surprised by the sound of Mahdi's voice. It seemed familiar to him, but he didn't know who it reminded him of.

“No,” he replied.

“And are you really called Farid Mushtak, or is that one of your many cover names?”

“It's my real name.”

“But you're also called Salih, Ali, George, Samer, Shams, the Palestinians even called you Omar in their training camp, is that right?”

“Yes, that's right,” said Farid, trying to keep calm. He stared at a curious metal box on the desk in front of him.

“I don't care for people who tell me lies, so I'll ask you again: is Farid Mushtak your real name?”

“Yes,” said Farid, rather surprised.

“And were you in the monastery of St. Sebastian, as your file says?”

“Yes. I said so when I was first questioned, and that's correct,” said Farid, trying to lighten the atmosphere slightly so as to shed some of his fear, which had been heightened by the commandant's suspicions.

“When were you there?”

“From the summer of 1953 to the summer of 1956,” replied Farid. “I was only a boy, and my father made me go into the monastery.”

“Ah yes, your father,” repeated Mahdi Said, standing up. “Let me tell you something,” he went on in a different, almost agitated voice, which suddenly sounded much higher. “I don't believe a word of it. You weren't in the monastery, you were in the partisan training camp run by those two bastards Tanios and Salman who ruled the mountains between 1953 and 1956. Do those names mean anything to you? Don't give me that stupid look. I just want to find out why Mr. Farid Mushtak always happened to be at the centre of rebellions. For instance, he just happened to be photographed with George Habash in Jordan in 1965, and two years later, in Lebanon in the summer of 1967, with Nayef Hawatmen, George Hawi, and other notable Christian and communist figures, isn't that so?”