Never bury your shit too deep - Imprisonment in Syria
Written in 2009 as part of 'Write to Life', a creative writing group for torture survivors, Hassan shares his experience as a Syrian political prisoner.
They had been there for three years. More than sixty people, all men and most in their thirties and forties, rubbing shoulders – literally – in a space of about a hundred square meters, and in heat of more than forty-five degrees.
Living together like that meant sharing not only one hole in the ground called the loo, but their views, hopes, meagre and repulsive rations, cigarettes, and body smells. Within two years they became all alike physically: pale faces, staring eyes, long uncombed beards, and ill tempers.
So we ate the same food, had the same aspirations and the same yellowish colour, and we had to share the same influenza when it hit one of us; but still we were different! The tongues refused to be the same! Most people anchored their ships deep in the ocean of pessimism where nothing positive can come of any part of life. They loved to call it ‘realistic pessimism.’ They insisted on the gloomy future awaiting the whole of human kind, and that this future would only be made worse by people ignoring the facts and holding to their baseless, optimistic views. For their part they insisted to us, “We will not be free again; we’re here for good.”
There? Where?
Sorry, I forget to tell you, it was somewhere in a desert. We didn’t know exactly where; they brought us there blindfolded in closed trucks, and pushed us out of the trucks to open our eyes before a huge gate above which was written, “Who enters here is lost, who emerges will be reborn”. As far as concerns the place, or the cell we were in, it was like two boxes sharing one side, with a door between them and another door to another unit of the prison. Anyway, one of the two boxes was without a roof. It had been replaced with barbed wire, and two gunmen, called guards, were watching us all the time. The roofless box was the square where we could spend the day enduring the rays of the baking desert sun, in exchange for a breath of fresh air.
Along the long side of the open box there was a ditch, half a metre deep and about a metre wide, full of soil; yellowish soil. It did not take long for one cellmate, a civil engineer, to announce, with scientific serenity, that the ditch was for a sewage canal, and that canal was buried under this soil.
The ditch, which masked the sewage, was the only place full of life and changes, if you omit our presence in the other box. All along the ditch there were holes; rats’ hole and insects’ holes. We used the open box by day, and they used it by night.
To return to the pessimistic group, it’s true that that not all its members held the same views on everything. But, as usually happens, there was one who would inevitably take the lead; one who, just hearing you speak, would say a big “NO”, before he even had a chance to disagree with whatever you were going to say. It was his principle, in this life, to oppose.
One day a sergeant-gaoler came, shouted over to one of us by name, and ordered him to dress and follow him out.
Here was a big, very big issue worthy of analysis from every angle. Where he would be taken? Why now? Why him and not somebody else? Would they release him? Would they beat him? And what for? Or maybe they would transfer him to yet another prison?
Most of us hoped for a better outcome for him, if only because anything worse than his current situation was impossible to imagine.
But of course, the king of pessimists said ‘No!’ His big mouth curved into smile of scorn, he added, ‘But even between methods of execution there are big differences…. a bullet is the most painless one…’ This was as near as he could imagine to a hopeful resolution.
After an hour or so our comrade returned, escorted by two gaolers, smiling and carrying many bags and boxes.
He had had a visit. His wife had managed to get an exceptional permit to see him. She had brought a lot of food and clothes, as she knew we were many, all living together.
He recited every detail, from the moment he had left to the moment he was brought back. We heard every word with relief, but not without jealousy. He was the celebrity. ‘Why he, not me?’ That was the question, deep in every heart.
While we were emptying the bags and boxes with high expectations, the king of pessimists was standing aside, throwing his sour phrases at us with a sarcastic smile on his face, decrying our infidelity to the pessimistic creed.
‘Just one meaningless event, and suddenly you’re all happy stupid optimists….!’
But before long he knelt down and started searching the emptied bag and boxes and shaking them. This produced a handful of soil mixed with small pieces of onion and garlic peelings, and a few tiny seeds. He blew away the peelings, picked up the seeds, holding them gently in his hand, and said, full of conviction:
‘You will eat from these seeds.’ ‘But where will we find a big enough pot to cook them?’ one asked, looking at the tiny pile in front of him. ‘You will eat their fruits!’ was his answer. ‘Not all of you, of course. Some will die before then.’
He moistened the seeds with water overnight, and the next day, as soon as the door of the inner box, the ward, was opened, he took the seeds, and the soil he had found in the bags, to the ditch. He dug several holes in the soil of the ditch, then he put one seed, with a small amount of soil, in every hole. He covered them meticulously with ditch soil, watered them, and planted a small stick with a sign beside every one. To those watching him, he said:
“I am making a shade for you.”
“A shade, what kind of a shade?”
“Imagine yourself sitting under a pomegranate tree, in prison.” he answered.
“Oh, can’t you make it a linden tree? I like linden trees better,” another one put in.
“Seriously; these are pomegranate seeds’, he said, pointing at his newly planted orchard.
***
A week or so went by, before he declared to us, with triumphant voice and self-confidant smile, that three buds had appeared from the soil. ‘It is the life force!’
All day long there were groups of us around the buds, discussing the best ways to take care of them. The three buds became a subject of debate. One morning we found one of the buds was missing. We declared a merciless war on the rats. We made many traps for them, and killed dozens of them. Another bud died a few days later, but the surviving one began growing quickly, healthy and strong, as if eager to fulfil its master’s wish.
In contrast, everything around it was withering and weathering away. Our bodies grew thinner with malnutrition and bad treatment, and our hopes with narrowing prospects. The pomegranate tree was the only positive sign that all life was not degenerating.
When the roots of the pomegranate reached the sewage stuff it began to grow like crazy, and every day it added numerous leaves to its canopy.
Months passed, and it became possible for more than one of us to sit under its shade. Late the following summer the pomegranate gave birth to several, huge, red and passionate wide open flowers, ‘jull`naar’, which told us life is beautiful, no matter where you are or where you grow.
It was the first and last time we saw its flowers. Soon after, they transferred us to another prison. We felt heavy hearts and acute sadness at leaving the only living thing in those two boxes, the only living thing which gave us inspiration and shade.
‘Next year it will bear more Jull`naars, and maybe fruit!’ The pessimist uttered these words as if speaking to himself. He was sad to part with his pomegranate. Needless to say, he was quite sure they were taking us to yet another prison.
***
He was right. We were transferred to another prison. That prison was concrete everywhere, he could not plant anything there.
The next year a new wave of prisoners was transferred from the desert prison. He traced them, asking every one if he knew anything about his pomegranate. They told him that one day two gaolers came, cut it down and uprooted it; they hated to see prisoners sitting in its shade.
‘I can well believe it; they hate even the trees!’
He ate little that supper that night, and smoked a cigarette, though he had stopped smoking since being put in prison. Before he put out his cigarette, he said: ‘But if they had not cut it down, and we were there still, you would be eating pomegranate fruits now’.
Image credit: Delil Souleiman / Getty Images
