Part One

-“Water, Please!!” screamed Sheick Buddha feebly.
-“Shut up, dirty pig! Not before breakfast.” roared the zionist jailor who was tapping the corridor behind the massive iron door.
It was chilling hot and I was all sweating in that oven of a cell.

The cell was rectangular, too narrow to enfold the three of us; Kifah, me and a religious colleague who had a soft lean beard but he looks like a Buddhist monk now after they had shaved his hair and beard the next day they brought him in. He became ugly and comic at the same time and I started calling him “Sheikh Buddha” which irritated him a lot but I didn’t stop.

By the door, there was what can be called a “toilet” and it was a big deal when one of us was obliged to do it. At first we started to turn our faces away until he finishes but later Kifah gave up half of his rug and we managed to put it as a curtain. I started to wonder how our primitive ancestors used to do it and wither it was shame or forbidden to do it in front of each others, or was it a matter of civilization that was solved centuries later !!!

There was no use to ask such a silly question but I was lucky to sleep beside the door catching some fresh breeze. I was the shortest, so I was chosen to sleep there wedged between the door and the so-called toilet. I was happy to be the closest to the “out-world” but I was more happy to be as far as I could from “sheikh Buddha”. Puh! What a sluggish ghost! I hated him to death specially when I am to be left alone with him as they take Kifah for interrogation.

Still there is a long time for Kifah to come; they will not bring him before dawn and it is still around midnight. Buddha is snoring heavily now after getting tired of asking for water. Silence, the killing silence save the snoring Buddha. Oh! How can I sleep? They will not bring him before dawn. It’s been over a week now since they started the new round with Kifah; a soldier or two come at evening to take him there until early morning. They bring him back at the time of dawn call-prayer or a little bet after that dragging himself to lean against the wall to tell us a few words of his night then slumbers asleep as he sat there.

I didn’t pay attention when they opened the massive door, two zionist jailors came pulling Kifah between them, one cracked the door open noisily and the other pushed him strongly inside to stumble falling on his face on the harsh floor and it was useless to stop his falling body by my hands. They closed the door and withdrew silently without uttering a word.

I drew him and leaned his sagging body against the wall; he was fading and a shade of death swept over his childish face, he couldn’t open his eyes and his head sagged over his chest like a slaughtered goat. His hair was soaking wet and he was trembling like a little bird in a stormy evening. Surely he lost conscious several times, and his comma was heavy, so they flooded him with water. They brought him early tonight, still there’s a long time before the dawn call-prayer. Unconscious he came tonight, it was useless for them to continue interrogating a dead body.

Death has the smell of burnt dust, has the taste of a throne stuck into your throat, you smell it before it comes, you feel it brooding heavily on your chest, around your neck, it suffocates you till you stop breathing, compresses more and more till you see the whole world but a hazy shadow fading slowly to pull you suddenly into bottomless well !!!

He started jerking in his faint body. I looked at him foolishly then tried to support his dangling head but he started foaming out of his suffocated throat and beating the bare floor with his hands while his legs shuddered stiffly. I tried to stop his hands but they were waving hellishly with a satanic power, cracking strongly against the floor and the wall sweeping everything before them like a crazy windmill. With open eyesockets, like a foolish dumb, I thought of him dying, tearing his soul apart with the flying foam out os his gashed mouth. I was horrored looking at him stupidly and found myself knocking the door madly crying:

-“He’s dying …bastards!!… What did you do to him!! He’s dying !!” and I don’t know if I heared a hoarse voice coming from the corridor: “Shut up you, dirty pig, or I will come and smash your head!!!”

I don’t know, I don’t know, even now I am not sure, but I was sure only of my own screams splitting out my throat. I heard nothing but my hysteric crying deafening my ears:

-“he’s dying…scoundrels,,, he’s dying!!” and scratching the massive door with my nails.

I felt the door collapse, the cell topple, the heavy stones falling, accumulating over my head, piled ponderously on my chest crushing my bones, dumbing my face…air…air… I needed nothing but fresh air to free my chest, a gap to break through, a hole to open out at… but suddenly, the narrow hole in the massive door opened to show a sullen face of a zionist jailor to spit in my face: “Shut up, son of the bitch !!” and shut it again.

I raised my hand to fumble the spit on my face, I felt frustrated, weakness and exhaustion crept into my knees up to my soul, I felt utter lost and helpless. A queer feeling swept me, to demolish the cell, to smash the whole jail with my bare hands, with my nails, but I started to cry again, a crying that is more like weeping than shouting: “he’s dying… don’t you see… he’s dying !!!”

And I looked back to Kifah, he get quiet now but still his legs were trembling feebly while his face crumbled as his eyes rolled slowly. He lifted his head heavily to look at me strangely with primitive horror, and raised his hand slowly extending it to me as if of a humble beggar asking for charity. His face contoured and his lips trembled as if he was trying to say something to me, a deep sense of horrifying query came out of his eyes that opened widely, the black shade of death covered his childish forehead , but finally, like a hissing of a snake, he mumbled a strange word. Was it the carnation of death or the terminal question of life?… I don’t know…. I don’t know, but he frowned swiftly and his hand fell down like a stone and his eyelids stuck to his sockets to loose all the meanings of life, then his head rolled over his chest like a butchered sheep. I stood looking at him foolishly horrified, not able to free my soul from his begging look until I heard Sheick Buddha murmuring while spreading his hands towards they sky: “ Oh, Almighty God!!, Destroy the zionists and all who support them !!!”

To be continued- Part Two.

Sami, the Bedouin.