Estudis de correlació i de regressió

Ahmad’s reputation flourished and spread even amongst our families.

Whenever our relatives visited, they remembered Ahmad with gifts, and when visitation time ended, they argued over who would get to take Ahmad home for a visit. Ahmad became the centre of the entire prison’s attention. Guards, prisoners and their relatives all spoiled Ahmad to

ridiculous extents, and moulded him into the kind of kid whose nose dripped with blood or who dropped to the ground unconscious at the sound of a request.

Ahmad began to love some of the women in our cell and hate others. He never hesitated to create enmity between cellmates. We watched with wonder his amazing talents unfold and take shape. Once, Aysha did something that displeased Ahmad. Ahmad hollered for a guard to rush to our cell.

“She yelled at me,” he told the guard and pointed.

The guard looked at Ahmad with sympathetic eyes. He glared at Aysha.

“If this happens again, I’m going to cut off your visitation rights.”

I remembered a while back Aysha telling us that she had a feeling about this boy, that he seemed to have two personalities and that something was not right with him. Ahmad’s alter personality didn’t surface until one time when he was scheduled to visit Hajja Madeeha’s family in Homs. Hajja Madeeha dressed him in his new shoes and sat him in her lap and waited for visitation time.

“Sameer Jaffan,” one of the officers called out from behind our cell door.

Ahmad’s nose began to gush blood. Ahmad blacked out.

“Who were you calling?” Hajja Madeeha called out to the guard, confused at what had just happened.

“Didn’t you see how your buddy just fell to the ground?” the guard asked.

“Why?”

“His name is not Ahmad. His real name is Sameer Jaffan. Didn’t you see his picture a while back all over the news on television?”

We remembered that we had seen a broadcast about a lost boy and they showed his picture on the news. It didn’t occur to any of us that the lost boy could be our Ahmad. We remembered that when that

broadcast had aired, Ahmad ran to the television and turned it off. We thought he was just playing. My cellmates and I stared at the guard. We felt shocked and confused.

We washed the blood that streamed from Ahmad’s nose and splashed cool water on his face. An old man stood behind the bars of our door cell, cried and banged his head against the bars. The man was Ahmad’s father. The officer came in and took Ahmad to the Colonel’s office.

“Who taught you to say that your name is Ahmad and to claim that your parents died in Hama?” the Colonel asked.

“Heba,” Ahmad replied.

“Are you sure it was Heba?”

“Yes. Otherwise how would I know what to say? She’s the one who told me say this and do that.”

The Colonel called me to his office and began to yell and shout at me without an explanation.

“May God not bless you! Do you know that you are destroying the country’s reputation? You wicked, ill-natured… I thought you were different.”

Hajja Madeeha had accompanied me to the Colonel’s office.

“Take it easy buddy. Tell us what happened,” she pleaded.

“She,” he said pointing at me, “wants to destroy the country’s reputation. She is a wicked… hateful... vengeful...”

“Why are you saying all this?”

“Because she is the one who taught that boy to recite all those lies.”

“Let me tell you, all the girls bent over backwards to please him, except her. She’s the only one who didn’t give him any special treatment.”

The Colonel ordered me back to my cell. I felt more shocked and more confused. Hajja Madeeha tried to calm my fears as we shambled back to our cell. We passed an officer on our way back. Hajja Madeeha

stopped and asked him to please explain to us what was going on.

“This kid, God damn him, has been playing all of us, from the youngest to the oldest. He’s been claiming to be an orphan while knowing that his family was out there looking for him the whole time.

His poor mother and his poor father told us that every once in while he pulls a stunt like this. He runs away from home and starts deceiving people with wild, crazy lies.”

The Colonel took the boy into the interrogation room with his father and asked him again who had really taught him to say all those lies. The boy admitted that he had invented all of his own lies and that I had nothing to do with it. The Colonel swung his arm back and slapped the boy, a slap so hard it could have killed him. Then he pulled his arm back again and slapped the boy’s other cheek. The boy sat still and said nothing. He left the prison with his parents, dragging his feet one at a time down the prison hallways. I watched him shuffle away. Half of me tried to comprehend what had just happened and the other half felt like I had just returned from the cinema.

Release

Months and years passed and it was the year 1984 and we still sat withering away in Katana Prison and we no longer cared to keep count of the days or months. In prison, each day dragged by so slowly, so painfully that it felt like a hundred days.

On one of those days, Abu Motee, the warden’s assistant, came into our cell and began to shout out names, “Eman T., Eman K., Aysha, Haleema...”

The women looked up in wonder.

“Come on. Get your selves ready for release.”

The women stared, their faces blank. His words didn’t register.

They figured that he’d either spoken wrong, or they’d heard wrong.

“I said get yourselves ready for release.”

The women trembled.

“We won’t leave without everybody else,” Um Shaima and Eman said. Their eyes brimmed with tears.

Eman came up to where I lay on my mattress, still sick, and sat on her knees at my head. Tears rolled down her face.

“I won’t leave unless you let Heba leave with me.”

“You’re more than welcomed to stay here even though we’ve received orders for your release. Or if you want, you can sit at the front door of the prison and wait for Heba there.”

“No. I won’t leave. I won’t leave her.”

“How can I leave while you’re still here?” Um Shaima cried at my side.

The warden grabbed Eman and Um Shaima and dragged them out. Eman and Um Shaima lunged out for anything they could clutch, the wire mesh, the bars on the door, anything. Other officers helped the warden pull Um Shaima and Eman out. Um Shaima and Eman wailed.

They kicked and swung their arms until they found themselves standing outside the prison.

Later, we found out that the officers had taken them to the national security division first and from there released them. I never saw either of them again. The release of those women and the release of Sana a few weeks later, because of the haraka tas’heehiya, President Hafiz Al-Asad’s correctional movement, enlivened our hopes. The doors of freedom were finally cracking open and we couldn’t help but hope for our turns.

Days passed and proved us wrong and our hopes submerged once again. New prisoners poured into our cell, one group after the other, each one of them digging deeper into our wounds, making us feel more and more sure that our lives were destined to end between these four walls, in this cell, in this prison.