Memòria

Montaha, who was barely sixteen years old, was the wife of one of the men who was executed in 1979 with the accusation of being a part of an armed anti-government movement. Montaha had married him without her parents’ consent, so when he was executed, her parents refused to take her and her unborn baby into their home.

“I don’t even want to look at her,” she heard her father say.

“That’s what she gets for disobeying me.”

Montaha spent her customary four months of mourning at her in-laws. After that, she lived off charity, charity like the kind Hajja Riyad distributed in Amman. One night, the Mukhabarat dragged Hajja Riyad out of prison and forced her to lead them to Montaha’s house. She did not dare refuse their request after the torture she endured.

When the Mukhabarat raided the house where Montaha lived, Montaha tried to escape. She ran out of the house clutching to her newborn baby, but the Mukhabarat caught her, snatched her baby out of her arms, threw the baby back into the house and drove off with Montaha to the Mukhabarat headquarters.

At the worst possible timing, some other detainee mentioned Montaha’s name during a confession. The Mukhabarat discovered that Montaha had recently received a marriage proposal from Mustafa Kassar, a wanted member of the Ikhwan, and for that they punished her like they punished Hajja Riyad. They stripped her, chained her to the ceiling and tortured her in all the ways they knew how. During the torture, Montaha admitted to receiving the letter with the marriage proposal. They didn’t care when she told them that she had refused the proposal.

Montaha also confessed to receiving four hundred liras as a gift from the Ikhwan for her baby, to help her out after her husband’s execution, but she insisted that she had nothing to do with the anti-government movement. They believed her admission, but not her plea

to innocence. After more torture, the Mukhabarat imprisoned her in Al-Maslamiya Prison in Aleppo and later transferred her to Kafar Suseh Prison.

Along with Hajja Riyad and Montaha came another girl from Aleppo; her name was Eman. She was in grade nine. She was convicted with delivering the marriage proposal letter from her brother, Mustafa Kassar, to Montaha. Because that was the only accusation against her, they did not torture her in the ways they tortured Hajja Riyad and Montaha. The Mukhabarat considered her “sin” an act of juvenile delinquency. They released her in 1984, along with Um Shaima.

The Mukhabarat arrested the fourth and fifth of our new inmates, Raghda and Lama, in Beruit. Raghda and Lama had gone to Beirut to meet a man who promised to help them join the Ikhwan movement.

However, the Mukhabarat found out and raced to the meeting place and arrested the women when they arrived. Their torture was not as severe either. Like Eman, they were only in grade nine.

Lama told us that during her interrogation, they brought her cousin into the room, her cousin who allegedly recruited her into the Ikhwan, so that he could testify in front of her. Her cousin walked into the room with one of his eyeballs in the palm of his hand and blood gushing out of his empty socket.

After her transfer to Kafar Suseh Prison, the Mukhabarat put Lama through another round of interrogation. They brought her back to our cell puffy eyed and sobbing uncontrollably.

“What happened?” asked Hajja Madeeha.

“He slapped me and he cursed my father.” Lama’s voice quivered with rage. That was the worst of what she encountered.

The Harmooshiya Party

Torture in prison takes many different shapes and forms. A slap across

the face, a beating with a stick, curses, and insults are only some of the forms. Other ways include stuffing tens of people into one cell, where they can find no air, no escape. They include forcing a large group of individuals, each of whom has her own distinct habits, opinions, and background to become intimate neighbours.

A new prisoner joined us one day, a woman from the town of Daraa who was convicted with smuggling and trading weapons. She stepped into our cell and without any introduction glared at us and said,

“I don’t like the way you look.” I wondered what her problem was.

None of us understood, until we thought to ask her about that initial comment some time later.

“From my first glance into this room, I noticed that the older women you call Hajjas were sitting on this side of the room and the rest of you were sitting by yourselves on that side. So, I thought that you guys were different from them and that each group sat with their kind,”

she explained.

Her name was Um Jibri. She was tall, broad and big in every way except for her brain. She was an ignorant woman, ignorant in everything, from politics to cleanliness. She left everything filthy: her body, the place she sat and the bathroom after she used it. And we were all crammed into this tiny space with her. Lice quickly spread from her head to the head of every woman in the cell. Moneera suffered the most for she slept head to head with Um Jibri. Soon, Moneera couldn’t bear it anymore.

“I have just the medicine for her,” said Hajja Madeeha.

She knocked on our door, called for Hussain and asked him to lend us a jug of gas. Hussain brought us a jug of gas. Hajja Madeeha took the jug in one hand and Moneera’s head in the other and poured gas all over her head. Hajja Madeeha poured the entire jug of gas, but the lice on Moneera’s head remained as active and alive as ever.

The lice did not leave Moneera’s head until Um Jibri left.

A month or two later, they released her due to some connections she

had to Mahmoud Al-Zobi, a minister in the government. Um Jibri had managed to drive all of us mad during her short stay, and not only us, but the entire team of interrogators too.

“Which party do you belong to?” the interrogators asked her, thinking that there might be a whole party involved in her weapons smuggling activities.

“I’m from the Harmooshiya party,” she replied over and over again. Harmooshiya was the name of her village. The interrogators tortured her more and more, thinking that she was trying to avoid the truth, but Um Jibri had no clue why her answer was making the interrogators so angry.