KAFILA - Journey Towards Freedom (Part 5)

PARADISE LOST

Day 13 - I am still alive?? How? Why?

Day 14 - Death seems like a luxury I can't have.

Day 15 - Waiting, just waiting.

The only indication I get of a day passing by is when they stop torturing me and when the little stream of light coming through the small hole in the wall vanishes. I have been in this hell for 15 days now. the first few days of this tortured living is absolutely clear in my head but as the days started passing, it got more and more blurry. I don't know how I got here. I was kept in a blindfold all the way. When my blindfold was removed I saw a middle-aged woman with garish makeup and flashy jewelry sitting in front of me, staring hard. I flinched knowing what they wanted me to get into, but I vowed to myself that even in the face of death I won't do what they want me too. I think they too got a whiff of my intention of not cooperating so they took me to another room and stripped me naked. I wasn't actually a room, more like a box, a pigeon-hole, small and damp. I cried ceaselessly for a miracle but what took place was a torture of the most extreme kind. I was beaten up every day. I was starved for a week, then fed again - how I don't remember.

All this while, I kept thinking of Rafique, my parents, my country, my home, my dreams.

Will I ever be able to go back?

Will I ever see my mother again?

All these thoughts made me angry instead of sad, I felt so very angry at Rafique, at the men, the women, who were torturing me, and at Allah.

When they saw that the beating and starvation had not broken me down, they started giving me electric shocks, day after day, night after night. At night sometimes I went unconscious or drifted off to sleep depending on the amount of torture I had to endure during the day. In my sleep I dreamt of the green fields of my village, the beautiful dawn I used to see from the broken roof of my hut, my loving parents and sometimes the haunted and beautiful face of Rafique. I often went over his last words to me. What did he mean by his sister? She was here too? Was she tortured like me? Where is she now?

But all these questions didn't matter to me anymore.

Day 20 - I feel like a ghost now, seeing everything feeling nothing. Even the pain seems like a long-lost friend. The only activity other than breathing that I am doing is keeping the count of days that have passed. When they saw that even the electric shocks have no effect on me, they started with needles. But still, I am not going to bend down, I will die but once not every day.

Alas if I knew that death doesn't come so easy and it definitely doesn't come quick.