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they established in that sea of sand. I contemplate Abdel Azim Anis as he recalls what he taught to students at London University. He would write complex mathematical equations on the floor of the cell, acceding to the wishes of Mohammed Sayyed Ahmed, who wanted to learn. I fix my gaze upon imprisoned doctors who saved the life of the warden’s son, and the surgeon who performed an operation with the equipment on hand (and without anaesthetics) for Sergeant Mutawi, who had given orders for torture. I commit the scenes to memory like the stanzas of Fouad Haddad:
     
    All through the night
    I see the full moon slivered
    I see the full moon slivered behind bars
    I see the full moon slivered behind bars and its night is long.
     
    At school I studied the lines from Imru al-Qays:
     
    Night like sea waves has dropped its curtains
    Upon me with a multitude of woes to try me.
    So I said to it when, camel-like, it stretched its back,
    Lowered its hindquarters and crouched under its own weight,
    Oh long night, disperse,
    Though daylight be no brighter.
     
    But how was a girl in the first year of senior school to grasp the meaning behind these lines? How could she comprehend this complex imagery of alienation? A cavernous night of afflictions coming one upon the other like sea-waves, it surrounds you; you shoulder its burdens like a she-camel defying gravity, but in vain; you try to find release by looking toward morning, but give up the attempt; night or day, desert or sea, space open or closed, motion or stillness, present or future: no difference, no escape.
    Many years later I understood, and when I did, I found myself making a connection between Imru al-Qays’s lines and those of his distant descendant, Fouad Haddad:
     
    I don’t want dawn to come . . . oh people, I don’t want it.
    Each time dawn comes, I . . . I, poor anguished soul
    Wherever my father kissed me, there they beat me;
    Wherever my mother kissed me, there they beat me,
    Beatings like insults to your injured womb.
    For what did you carry me in your womb, nourish me on your food?
    For what did you call me by my name – and they call me
    By a number written on the skullcap, the mattress, and the blanket?
    For what, my mother, did we read,
    For what did I go to school,
    Learn the alphabet?
    For what, the books, the indexes, the tests, the Eid gifts?
    For what, my mother, did I start out human?
    Abdel Latif has inherited your son to be one more of his slaves,
    Abdel Latif Rushdie is his lord,
    Abdel Latif Rushdie is a knight astride the government’s horse,
    With an owl inscribed on his face:
    Behind him goes catastrophe, before him a cudgel.
     
    I heard these lines for the first time at university, and I memorised them, although it took years for me to learn their context. Take, for example, this line, which might not be the most eloquent of those selected: ‘Abdel Latif Rushdie is a knight astride the government’s horse.’ We need only infer that Abdel Latif Rushdie is one of the officers who tortured the detainees in order to understand this line. But its meaning is still incomplete, perhaps even deficient, falling far short of a context that infuses the picture with history, facts, agonies: insults and abuse, kickings, starvation and terror. Beatings on the head and face, beatings on the neck and back, beatings on the chest and stomach, the arms and legs, the feet. Beatings with canes, with truncheons, with palm-branches, with leather straps, with shoes. Blows delivered by the hands and kicks by the feet, lashes with whips, flayings. It was ‘Do as you’re told by the sergeant, you son of a bitch!’ ‘Say, “I’m a woman,” you son of a whore!’ and ‘Abdel Latif Rushdie is a knight astride the government’s horse,’ presiding over the action and carrying it out, torturing a line of men being transported to hard labour, their bodies emaciated, faces pale, clothing threadbare, hands ulcerated, feet cracked and swollen with suppurating wounds,