foot of the mountain, while the bachelors slept in a small building set aside for them. Only then, after the lights had been extinguished and silence reigned, would Taha lie on his bed in the dark and recall with total lucidity the events of his life, as though an amazing, illuminating energy were suddenly released from his memory, and he would see Busayna el Sayed and be overwhelmed with tenderness. Sometimes he even smiled as he remembered their good times. Then anger would sweep over him as her face contemplated him for the last time and she said contemptuously, “It’s over between us, Taha. Each of us goes his own way.” All of a sudden memories of his detention would rain down on his head like incessant blows — the beatings and the abuse; the feeling after each occasion on which they violated him sexually that he was weak, exhausted, and broken; his breaking into tears and pleading with the soldiers to stop inserting the thick stick into his body; his soft, stammering voice when they told him to say, “I’m a woman” and then beat him again, and again asked him his name, to which he would reply, in a dead voice, “Fawziya,” causing them to laugh loudly, as though they were watching a satirical film. Taha would remember all that and lose his ability to sleep. He would stay awake, re-opening his old wounds. His face in the dark would crumple, his breath speed up. He would gasp as though running and an intense hatred would possess him which would not abate until he thought of the voices of the officers, categorizing, distinguishing, and storing them away carefully in his memory. After this a desire so burning that his body almost shuddered with the pressure would sweep over him, as he hankered for revenge and pictured himself exacting exemplary punishment from those who had tortured and violated him.
This thirst for revenge took him over and drove him on, so that he made amazing strides in the camp’s training exercises. Despite his youth he learned to beat many who had greater experience of physical combat than he, and within a few months he excelled at using regular rifles, semi-automatics, and automatics, and had learned how to make hand grenades easily and well. His rapid progress amazed all the brothers. Once, after he had completed a shooting exercise in which he had missed only one out of twenty shots, Sheikh Bilal came up to him, patted him on the shoulder, and said, his eyebrow scar twitching as usual when he was excited, “God bless you, Taha. You’ve become a crack shot.”
“So when are you going to let me participate in the gihad?” Taha replied boldly, taking advantage of the opportunity to ask a question that had been occupying his mind. Sheikh Bilal was silent for a moment. Then he whispered affectionately, “Don’t rush things, my son. Everything in its own time.”
He left quickly, as though to cut the conversation short, leaving Taha unhappy with the ambiguous answer. He was thirsting for his revenge and felt he was totally ready to go on operations, so why all this delay? He wasn’t any worse than his colleagues who went out to gihad, then returned to the camp full of what they’d done and received the congratulations of their brothers. After that Taha went to Sheikh Bilal more than once to urge him to send him out on an operation, but the latter continued to put him off with ambiguous answers until, on the final occasion, Taha got angry and shouted vehemently, “‘Soon, soon.’ When is this soon going to come? If you think I’m no good for gihad, why don’t you tell me and I’ll leave the camp.”
Sheikh Bilal’s smile spread, as though he was happy at Taha’s enthusiasm, and he said, “Be on your way, Taha, and you’ll hear good news, if God wills.”
And indeed, not a week went by before one of the brothers informed him that Sheikh Bilal was asking for him. As soon as he had finished the noon prayer, he rushed to the sheikh’s office — a cramped room containing an old desk, a number of worn-out chairs, and a rush mat on which the sheikh was sitting reciting the Qur’an. He was deeply absorbed in his chanting and only became aware of Taha’s presence next to him a few moments later. He smiled in welcome and sat him down beside him.
“I have sent for you about an important matter.”
“I’m yours to command.”
“It is for God alone to command. Listen, my son, we’ve decided to give you a bride.”
The sheikh said this suddenly and laughed, but Taha didn’t laugh. His dark face grew stern and he said warily, “I don’t understand.”
“You’re going to get married, my son. Don’t you know what marriage is?”
At this, Taha’s voice rose: “No, Master, I don’t understand. I don’t understand how I can beg you to give me permission for gihad, and you talk to me of marriage! Did I come here to get married? I don’t understand it at all, unless you just brought me here to make fun of me.”
For the first time, the sheikh’s face contracted with anger and he shouted, “It is inappropriate for you, Taha, to talk to me in that fashion, and I would be grateful if you would keep a hold on yourself in the future or I shall lose my temper with you. You are not the only one whom they have tortured at National Security. They have tortured thousands of brothers. I myself bear the traces of torture on my face as you see, but I don’t go out of my mind and scream every day in the faces of my sheikhs. Do you think that I am stopping you from going to gihad? As God knows, my son, the matter is not in my hands. I do not have decision-making power over operations. In fact, I don’t even know about them till the very last minute. I am a camp commander, Taha, and I am not even a member of the Gamaa’s Consultative Council. Please take that in and give us both a rest. I am not the one who will make the decision. All I can do is put your name forward to the brothers on the Gamaa Council. I have been persistent in doing that and I have written a number of reports on your courage and your progress in training, but they have not decided to send you yet. So it’s not my fault as you think, even though on the basis of my experience I believe that they will send you soon, God willing.”
Taha said nothing and bowed his head for a little. Then he said in a low voice, “I apologize, Master, for my excitable manner. God knows how I love and respect you, Sheikh Bilal.”
“Don’t worry about it, my son,” muttered Sheikh Bilal, who went on telling his prayer beads. Taha continued in an affectionate tone, as though he wanted to wipe out the traces of the tiff, “But I really do find the marriage business strange.”
“What’s strange about it? Marriage is one of God’s customs for His creatures. He, Glorious and Almighty, made it lawful for the sake of the righteousness of the individual and of Islam. You are a young man and have natural needs. Your marriage is an act of obedience to God and His Messenger for which you will be rewarded, God willing. The Chosen One — God bless him and give him peace — said in a sound hadith, ‘He among you who is capable of marriage, let him marry.’ And he has commanded us — God bless him and give him peace — to facilitate and expedite marriage in order to protect the Muslims from abomination. Here we live and die according to the path laid down by God and His Messenger and we do not deviate from it one jot, God willing. I propose for you a righteous, virtuous sister — we give precedence over God to none.”
“I have to marry a woman I don’t know?” responded Taha without thinking.
Sheikh Bilal smiled and said, “You’ll get to meet her, God willing. She is Sister Radwa Abu el Alaa, an outstanding example of the Muslim woman. She was married to Brother Hassan Nur el Din from Asyiut. When he achieved martyrdom, God have mercy on him, she was pregnant with her small son and she came to live the life of Islam here with us.”
Taha said nothing and seemed unconvinced, so Sheikh Bilal went on, “God forbid, my son, that I should impose anything on you. You’ll meet Radwa and see her face and talk with her, as the Pure Law requires. Then you may take your decision with complete freedom. I hope, Taha, that you will review the book
Close to midnight, the child’s condition got worse and the indicators on the screens in intensive care started to register disturbances in the breathing and pulse. The doctor on duty was called and she quickly came and prescribed an intravenous injection. The nurse gave this to the child and his condition improved a little, but after less than an hour it deteriorated again and he soon departed this life. The nurse burst into tears, covered his little face with the sheet, and came out of the room.
As soon as Hidiya saw her, she let out an agonized, high-pitched scream that resounded throughout the hospital. Then she squatted on the ground, covered her head with her hands, and started wailing. As for Abd Rabbuh, his dark face crumpled and he ground his teeth so hard that they made an audible sound. He crushed the pack of cigarettes in his hand and ripped it to shreds, so that the tobacco scattered between his fingers like dust. He made a superhuman effort not to cry, but the tears flowed from his eyes in spite of himself; then he surrendered completely and sobbed out loud. Everyone there wept — cleaners and nurses and patients’ families. Even the doctor
