On Monday, after spending six days in the General Security prison, I was informed that I needed to be transferred to the Bekaa, to the Zahle section, and detained there to attend the session with the judge on Tuesday. I grew anxious upon hearing about the poor conditions there, and that this prison, where I was currently held, was considered five stars compared to the one I was being sent to.
The girls tried to lighten the mood and make me laugh, especially one of them who was skilled at impersonations and had been there the longest. She mimicked each of our reactions upon first entering the cell. We realized that we all shared a common fear of the unknown, of the unfamiliar others. Each of us had expressed it differently. Some had screamed and cried out at the top of their lungs, demanding to be released. Others had worn their hands out banging on the iron door with no one to answer. One had simply stared at the others before retreating to a corner in silence, avoiding all contact. Another had smiled, trying to protect herself.
We all burst out laughing at our own fears and at our mimic’s exaggerated impressions. We reminded her of some of the girls she had forgotten to imitate, or those we hadn’t witnessed entering, the ones imprisoned before us. Yet, the laughter didn’t shield me from the pain of the trigeminal nerve (trigeminal neuralgia) I suffer from, which is triggered by changes in body temperature or mood. The electric currents started coursing through my face, the attacks coming one after the other, with the time between them shrinking, like labor contractions, signaling that the pain would soon escalate to the point where I’d lose control over my screams or my body’s convulsions. I tried to muffle my screams by burying my head in the pillow and covering it. I noticed myself holding my breath for a few moments. I had to warn the girls not to be frightened by my condition. It’s similar to an epileptic seizure. They wouldn’t be able to do anything. I asked them not to touch me, as I can’t bear to be touched when I’m in pain, and there was no point in calling for the “Bash” or asking to be taken to the hospital. The pain comes when I fail to take my medication on time or when I go through severe emotional distress — both of which were happening at the time.
In the past, this was known as the “suicide disease” because some patients would take their own lives from the unbearable pain. Some compared it to the pain of childbirth, but my pain fell somewhere in between, and I had reached a manageable stage after a long treatment journey. In fact, I had been happy to have avoided severe attacks in recent times. But what I always feared the most was for someone to see me in this state of pain and weakness. But here, there is no escape. Everyone will see me. Aren’t we all weak? Sharing our stories, our lives, our struggles both within and beyond the walls of this place.
Najwa, the Kurdish girl from Afrin, offered me a head massage. She claimed to know how to ease head pain. I rested my head in her lap, surrendering to any possible relief for my agony. Her fingers began weaving through my hair, and her voice reached my ears. I couldn’t make out the words at first, just murmurs, until I recognized the recitation of Quranic verses as she placed her palm on my forehead, pressing at times and relaxing at others. She continued this way until I calmed down and drifted off to sleep in her lap. I fell into a deep sleep I wasn’t used to, and woke up to the voice of the “Bash” saying, “Lilas, get up, you have five minutes. Come on, it’s time for your transfer to Zahle.”
“The Mawwals Unite, While the Mu’azzin Separates”
“Be careful. If you have money on you, put it in the safekeeping section. Here, they might kill you just to rob you.”
“With whom would I even be?”
“This prison is not like the one you were in. Here, they’ll eat you alive, without salt. It’s full of criminals.”
“Okay, is there a chance I can sleep somewhere alone?”
“No, but just ‘count’ a little and rest before you go in.”
My heart jolted with fear. The sympathetic looks from the security guards terrified me, their unexpected kindness, and the words, “It’s a shame they’re moving you here. May God help you tonight.” What awaits me in this cell? Who are the inmates? And why all this kindness? Did my lawyer have something to do with it, or my Lebanese and European friends who were doing their best to prove my innocence? Was my European passport a deterrent? Or was my work at a European media organization my advocate and savior? Perhaps all of these factors played a role in granting me some privileges, ones I felt ashamed to receive while others did not.
I saw in the eyes of one of them a gentle kindness, hinting at a good nature, something the female prisoners later confirmed. He asked me if I was hungry, and shared his food with me; the tastiest chicken sandwich I had ever tasted in my life, or so it felt at that moment, after days of barely filling my stomach with the awful prison food. I shared it with the girls, my share reduced to a single bite, as I could hardly even swallow water after entering the cell.
The cell itself felt like Assad’s dungeons and solitary cells: it was a meter by three meters, with a high concrete platform where a woman, four months pregnant, lay. On the floor was a thin mattress with fraying sponge edges, where a skinny, strong-built girl with harsh features sat, smoking heavily, using her bag as a backrest.
There weren’t any windows. What remained of the original wall color was a faint, dirty yellow, covered with the black and green mold of decay, layered with grime, carved with countless names, dates, injustices, love hearts, curses, and prayers. The space was unbearably cramped. The air inside was toxic. I couldn’t breathe at first. The smells here were sharp, and like Assad’s dungeons, the toilet was exposed to the rest of the cell. The girls had hung a blanket for some privacy and placed a plastic gallon over the drain, which reeked of sewage, making my nausea so severe that I nearly vomited. There was a hole in the wall with an empty plastic container from leftover food, and a side metal button, which I later discovered was for pressing to release water from a small hole above the cavity, to fill the container so we could wash both our faces and buttocks.
“Safaa, what’s the charge against the new girl with you?”
A man’s voice echoed from a cell at the end of the corridor, and Safaa answered from her spot:
“She’s saying forgery.”
“Is she the one who forged, or did someone forge for her?”
I interjected: “I swear I had nothing to do with it. It’s a false accusation.”
The man responded: “Don’t worry, tell her not to worry. No one will speak of it.”
A man from the adjacent cell then said: “Call her, let’s see her.”
Of course, there was no way for them to actually see me. There was just a narrow rectangular slit at the bottom of the iron door, where we had to sit on the floor and bend down to see each other’s eyes.
These narrow windows allowed communication between the prisoners, especially between the men and the women in this cell, as our cell was strategically placed at the front, at the end of the narrow hallway, allowing us to see all the side doors and the eyes of their prisoners.
We would pass a plastic plate to the neighboring cell, and it would return to us with two cups of hot tea with mint, “for the new guest.” They celebrated my arrival. I was a new story, a fresh topic for their daily conversations. They would debate the possible sentence the judge might pass on me, and they had their own ratings for each judge there — who was fair, who was racist, who was lenient, who was strict, who listened and judged fairly, and who, as they said, “just goes through the motions — it’s all luck.”
A young Syrian man called out to me, asking about the situation outside, whether I had heard any news about the potential handover of Syrian prisoners in Lebanon to the Syrian government. When I asked about his charge, he openly admitted to trafficking all kinds of drugs and that he had been living in Lebanon for ten years, since before he was even eighteen. I liked his honesty, and we laughed. I didn’t give him much hope when I told him that his transfer to Syria wouldn’t spare him a trial or serving his sentence in prison.
He asked me to contact his mother. Again, through the narrow slit, he threw a rope made of torn clothes, with a rolled-up piece of paper tied to a “masbaha” (prayer beads) to weigh it down, with his mother’s number written on it. I didn’t feel like he just wanted to reassure her. Maybe it was a gesture of apology or a desire to reconnect. I later discovered, after my release, that his family had cut ties with him long ago due to his repeated troubles, as his mother described it. I realized then that he simply wanted to remind them of his existence, of his loneliness, and his need for them. As for the masbaha, it was a gift from him, made from olive seeds, polished with the skill of someone fighting the inertia of time and thoughts in the silence of prison.
Then, another young man from the neighboring cell called out, but this time only his mouth appeared, not his eyes — the mouth of “Sheikh Hassan.”
“Hey, I want to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did the esteemed Sayyed appear?”
“Which Sayyed?”
“Sayyed Hassan.”
“Since when have you been here? Haven’t you heard the news that he was assassinated?”
“Did you see his body? Just wait, you’ll see how he reappears.”
“Whether I saw it or not, whether he’s dead or alive… he’s gone, finished.”
To be honest, I felt a small burst of satisfaction as I said these words. I wished I could have looked into his eyes, which he avoided showing me. He pulled back from the door and disappeared, and I didn’t hear his voice again, except during the call to prayer, which he repeated to us five times a day.
Sometimes, the call to prayer was interrupted by the singing of a prisoner in the far corner, singing mawwals of love and longing. The listeners in the neighboring cells would respond with a collective “Allah aaah,” and some would spontaneously form a chorus, repeating the verse and embellishing it, tapping on any plastic surface to keep the rhythm. This rhythm united the prisoners, bridging their religious, ethnic, regional, class, and political differences, even as fierce fights would break out over discussions of religion or politics, often forcing the guards to intervene and punish those involved by transferring them to other cells.
Sheikh Hassan was generally shunned, not because of his sectarian affiliation or his adherence to the violent policies of his party, but because of a dispute that escalated to physical assault. He had attacked his cellmate, a young Syrian man who had shared his experiences with Hezbollah massacres in Syria, their killings, thuggery in his region, and their trafficking of Captagon and hashish.
Their third cellmate couldn’t break up the fight, so everyone started shouting and banging on the iron doors, forcing the guards to intervene. The punishment, of course, was to move the Syrian prisoner to a distant, isolated cell. The second reason Sheikh Hassan was shunned was his tendency to separate lovers. The narrow windows were enough for eyes to meet, and for ropes to be thrown, carrying messages of love and desire, followed by late-night whispers of longing and affection that began with tender check-ins about the girls’ well-being, and ended in fantasies of touch, kisses, and sex, often culminating in a loud gasp as cold water splashed over their bodies.
Safaa, the girl in my cell, would laugh mockingly, saying to me, “The boys are taking a lot of showers these days, even those just listening in. Haha, anything but the ritual impurity.” She then chided our cellmate, saying, “It’s your fault they punished the guy. The poor guy got moved to the other corridor because of you. Keep it light, stick to sweet talk,” while making exaggerated hand gestures and sexual hints that made us all burst into laughter.
But the other girl, Nada, wouldn’t let it slide. “It’s the so-called sheikh’s fault. He went and snitched on us to the officer,” she said. I couldn’t help but add my own comment, “He was just scared of being tempted, so he played the holy man.”
Nada’s cheeks flushed — her skin was pale and her body full, with colored eyes — as she spoke of Bashir, his concern for her, his tenderness, and how he constantly checked on her after her severe bleeding, which had nearly caused her to lose her baby.
She then began telling me about her need for tenderness, something she had never felt from her harsh mother, who had controlled and beaten her out of fear that her beauty would lead her to sin or attract the deceit of men. Her mother never let her attend village weddings or family gatherings, and to avoid shame, she was married off to her cousin, who beat, insulted, and locked her in the house. If she ever complained to her family, they would send her back to him, for he was her guardian and could do as he pleased.
Her family’s words only emboldened her husband to escalate his abuse, as there was no one to protect or defend her. She still heard her mother’s words echoing in her nightmares and moments of silence — and there were many of those in prison: “If you leave your husband’s house, you have nothing. May he flay your skin from your flesh, and may you carry it in your hands.” Then the Syrian revolution came, their homes were destroyed, and they were forced to flee to other areas, giving her a chance to meet her current husband. They exchanged loving glances in secret, and the moments she stepped out to fetch water for the tent became her brief escapes from her husband’s imprisonment and abuse.
They would meet away from prying eyes, until they finally agreed to flee together to one of the camps in Lebanon. Kindness, something she had only known through her current husband, who she loved and who was now imprisoned in the Adlieh detention center in Beirut, became her weakness. She confessed to me that she loved both her husband and Bashir, the man in the distant cell, and that she wanted to stay in contact with them both after her release. When I asked why no one visited her, she said she was an Alawite from the coast, and her current husband was a Sunni from Idlib. Her family had disowned her, declared her blood forfeit, and would kill her if she returned. I was surprised by her accent, which didn’t resemble the coastal dialect at all.
“But your accent sounds like it comes from Deir ez-Zor.”
“No, I’m Alawite.”
“But as far as I know, Alawites don’t carry out “honor killings”. They might disown you, but not kill you.”
“My family would.”
I smiled, giving her a knowing look that she was claiming to belong to a certain denomination or area that wasn’t hers.
“Very well. Where did you learn the Deir ez-Zor accent?”
“My mother is from there.”
It didn’t dawn on me at the time that she was pretending to be Alawite to avoid being deported to Syria. She wanted to stay in Lebanon, close to her husband, as they had both been arrested not just for lacking legal residency in Lebanon, but also for theft.
I turned to Safaa, trying to ease the pressure of my questions on Nada, so she wouldn’t feel the need to invent more lies.
“And you, Safaa, why are you here?”
“An asshole accused me of stealing $5,000 from his car.”
“Do you know him?”
“I’ve never seen him in my life. He said I got in his car for a ride and robbed him. Let him prove it. Where are the fingerprints?”
Safaa was Palestinian, born in Lebanon. She was young, but the harshness of her life had aged her. She was thin, exhausted, her teeth likely fallen out from drug use. Her ex-husband had also abused her, and she had spent her married years between prisons, courts, and working to pay his bail and get him out of his messes, which ranged from theft to drug dealing. She had been hospitalized multiple times due to his severe beatings, and eventually left him and her children behind, with no family to turn to. No one cared about her, not even her siblings. “They’re just like him. My own sister threw me out of her house after just two days.”
“So why did he accuse you?”
“They showed my picture at the police station, and he pointed at it, just like that. Who’s going to hold him accountable?”
“So what will you do?”
“I’m smarter than him. I told them during the interrogation that I had been arrested before for prostitution, so the charge will be petty theft, which is a minor offense, maybe five months max. I’ve already served three, and theft carries a much harsher sentence.”
Since both girls often lied or hid many details, they understood each other, exchanging sly looks and secret comments about each other’s weak stories.
After a while, Safaa looked at me seriously, “Look, it’s just us in this room. Be honest, what’s your charge? Your story doesn’t add up.”
“Forgery, I swear.”
Then I burst out laughing, catching myself, “Damn, you made me say forgery, and I didn’t even do it. But honestly, that’s my story.”
It was not easy to trust each other in this prison. Unlike the previous one, there was no tolerance or compassion that might soften the harshness of temporary places. Here, the conditions were much harsher, inhumane even, and over time, we truly shed our humanity. Here, it was all about felonies and misdemeanors, prisoners ground down by life, stripped of their humanity in the struggle for survival. They saw each other as opportunities to seize — money, food, cigarettes, anything. Not because they were inherently opportunistic, but because they had never received anything in this life without seizing it, and the greatest triumph was snatching something from the lion’s mouth.
Relationships in this prison were complex, tangled yet separate, governed by unspoken rules and codes known only to those who had spent considerable time there. Those who gave knew they were being exploited, yet continued to give, either like someone casting their bread upon the waters, or as a means of asserting control and power. As the saying goes, drug dealers are often the most generous, their giving bound to dominance and authority.
One of them had been powerful outside, but the charges against him were backed by videos and witnesses, leaving no room for an acquittal, even if bribes were involved. However, he still enjoyed certain privileges in prison: good food sent by his family, plenty of money to buy whatever he wanted, distributing cigarettes and looking after the women who had no one to care for them. Like the weak and vulnerable, these women would praise his good deeds, flirt with him in their own ways, and shower him with blessings. At the same time, everyone knew who had a kind heart, who exploited the girls and those with money, who snitched to the guards, who liked to pass the time with idle chatter, and who withdrew into silence, falling easily into the traps of love and longing.
Nada often scolded Safaa for abandoning her children and choosing her own life over theirs. She sought my opinion on the matter, expecting me to agree with her, but was surprised by my response, which was the opposite of what she had anticipated: “You can’t judge her. She’s the one who lived through those circumstances, and I don’t believe any mother would leave her children unless she reached her breaking point, when she could no longer bear it… even if it was just to live her own life, that’s her choice, and no one has any right to judge her. Besides, who am I to judge her?”
This response opened Safaa’s heart. “Yes, by God, Lilas, only God knows what I’ve seen and lived through.” She started calling me by my name, sharing stories of her life, and I began sharing similar experiences from mine. I confided in her about the abuse I had suffered from my ex-husband, and the struggle of hiding it for fear that others would not believe me. We shared our pain and the survival tactics we, as women, had adopted. Some had fled, others had raised a knife against their abusers to protect themselves, while I had suffered for many years, lacking a law to support my right to divorce.
Despite our different backgrounds, educations, and circumstances, none of us had found protection. Families, too, could be as abusive as husbands. Some urged patience and endurance to avoid the shame of divorce, others simply lacked the means to support their daughters’ freedom, and the minority who did often faced state and legal barriers when trying to do so.
Nada eventually withdrew her accusations against Safaa, justifying her earlier judgment with her own fear of the harshness any child might face, especially since her own little girl was currently living in a tent with a neighbor. This neighbor, the only one who still visited her, was trying to sell Nada’s tent to help her pay the bail. For the first time, despite my previous work with refugees in the camps, I learned that a tent could be sold for as much as $400 or more. When I asked how she would come up with the rest of the money, Safaa jumped in with a sly grin, “Come on, you really believe that whole romance and nightly love scene act? I’d bet my hand, Nada, that you’re pulling him in to cover the rest of your bail, and I’d bet my other hand he’s even more desperate than you, looking for someone to carry his burden.”
Nada denied the accusations, and I believed her. The sparkle in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks never lied when she spoke of him.
“Can I ask you for a favor?” Nada asked me, hesitantly.
“Of course.”
“Can you write a letter to Bashir for me?”
For a moment, I didn’t register that both girls were illiterate. I hesitated, not wanting them to feel ashamed, shocked that in 2025 there were still young women in their twenties who couldn’t read or write. I quickly recovered from my silence and, without hesitation, said, “Of course, I’ll help you. What better way to end the night than with a little romance and longing? But how will you get it to him? His cell is far away, and you’re afraid to pass it from hand to hand, in case it reaches the sheikh’s hands.”
We all burst out laughing, and Nada began to think. The usual method was to toss what you wanted to send into the corridor. Each cell had cut a piece of sponge from their mattresses, which they would push through the narrow slit in the door, using it to slide cigarettes, bags of food, or whatever they wanted to send until it reached the intended cell. But for love letters, the trusted messenger was Umm Ali.
“There’s no one but Umm Ali who can get it to him.”
“Who’s Umm Ali?”
“The old woman who brings us our food. But be careful, she’s strong. Over seventy and tougher than a hundred men.”
We tore a piece from the paper the young man had used to send me his mother’s number. Someone threw us a pen, which we pulled in using the same rope that connected the cells.
I asked Nada to dictate her words, which she began with “My beloved Bashir,” expressing her longing for him, her longing for his tenderness and his constant concern for her. She didn’t forget to pray for the death of the sheikh who had separated them, and she asked her lover to “signal” for her if her message reached him, so she would know that Umm Ali had delivered it. I hadn’t expected the awaited “signal” to be a mawwal he used to sing for her, but when she heard it, she jumped from her mattress, pressed her ear to the slit in the iron door, her face flushed. She looked at me, her voice dancing with joy, “The message reached him!” and she soared into his voice and her fantasies.
“Last night, in my dream, I held my beloved close.
I woke from my sleep to find my embrace empty.
Last night in my dream, my beloved was in my arms.
He kissed my cheeks and put out my burning heart.
I told him, ‘My love, come closer, make up for my longing.
Would you leave me alone, in your honor, would you?
I’d die of grief and sorrow if you forgot me, even for a moment.
I’d choose a prison cell, if only you were my jailer.’”
From the other cells, the men echoed, “Allah… Allah,” and a collective singing session erupted.
“Ask About the Dadoo”
Safaa came closer to me and asked me to write down her full name and the number of her court summons, so she could send it to one of the generous prisoners who had promised to ask his lawyer about her case. That’s when I discovered that Safaa was just a nickname, a cover to avoid being identified after her release, and the same went for Nada. They both laughed at my naivety. “You’re so gullible. You actually gave them your real name when they asked? We didn’t have time to warn you. Who gives their real name here?”
Later, she asked if I could write a letter to her lover, Dadoo. She told me about him and their nightly flirtations. They had never even seen each other’s eyes, as their cells were far apart. He was just a voice to her, and the sender of letters she had never been able to read before. She pulled them out of her plastic bag and asked me to read them out loud. There are no secrets in prison, and while she wasn’t exactly on good terms with Nada, there was no way to hide the details from her.
One of the letters had us rolling on our backs with laughter. We felt Dadoo’s energy, his heightened desire, and his promise that she would never meet a man “more animalistic” than him. To add a touch of humor, he hadn’t compared himself to a raging bull, a tiger, or a lion, but to a donkey. I think he meant to say, albeit clumsily, that his love was primal and instinctive, yet not predatory.
Like a child’s love letter, he had drawn a heart with an arrow through it on the back of the letter. I loved his simple sketch — he hadn’t drawn a girl with large breasts, exaggerated curves, long eyelashes, or a mole on her cheek or above her lip. Instead, it was a simple, childlike figure, like the ones inspired by old cartoons, with a long dress fit for a princess. To him, Safaa was simply his princess.
I asked if I could keep this letter, which had lightened the gloom of our surroundings and brought tears of laughter to our eyes. She agreed, pretending not to care.
Time dragged on, passing slowly, with no chance of sleep, not because of worry or the weight of our burdens, but because of the biting cold. I tried not to drink water to avoid using the bathroom. I averted my eyes from the toilet drain, which filled me with horror and panic every time I saw it. I avoided leaning against any wall, focusing instead on my uneven breathing, made worse by the thick clouds of cigarette smoke. My tears weren’t from sadness, but from the burning, itching irritation that made my eyes boil. Finally, I gave in, lighting a cigarette with the girls, and then finished the whole pack. We had exhausted every topic, grown tired of interrogating each other and being interrogated in return.
I pulled out the book my friend had sent me, hoping a few pages would lull me to sleep. I hadn’t realized then that this book would fill my soul not with its words, but with the warmth it spread among us that night.
Nada asked: “What are you reading?”
“A novel called ‘Okay, Goodbye.’”
Safaa asked: “Is it good?”
“I don’t know yet, I haven’t finished it.”
“Read us some of it.”
I looked at them to make sure they truly wanted me to, and that no one would get annoyed. I saw their wide, eager eyes, full of curiosity and excitement. I felt a rush of warmth and decided to start from the first page, rather than where I had left off on previous nights.
I read, taking on the voices of various characters — the narrator, the writer, the people in the story — playing with my voice to capture every emotion the words held. It felt like I was performing a radio drama, and the thought made me smile. But I liked the idea.
I watched their faces, reading their reactions, the flickers of pleasure at the romantic scenes or when the text touched on sexuality. I could almost see each of them picturing their lovers in the other cells, until Nada stopped me at a line that read, “Did you know that eighty percent of women reach orgasm externally, while only twenty percent do internally?”
She asked, “What does that mean? I don’t understand.”
I assumed she hadn’t understood the word “orgasm,” so I explained it to her in colloquial Arabic, but her eyes remained confused. She was too shy to ask again, especially after Safaa mocked her, “You’re pregnant, you’ve got a kid, you’ve been wrapped up in love and escape stories, and you’re pretending you don’t know what it means for a woman to ‘get there,’ to arch her back?” Nada pretended to understand, but her wandering eyes told me she had just discovered something she had never known before. If I had to guess, I would say Nada had never reached orgasm.
I went back to reading. Safaa, the sarcastic one, retreated into her shell, covering her face with the blanket. She loved to hide her feelings, to mask her vulnerability with jokes and bravado, terrified of anyone seeing her weaknesses. I asked if she wanted me to stop reading so she could sleep, and she replied, “No, keep going,” and Nada quickly echoed her, asking me to continue. They both drifted off, lost in the images of the characters, the places, and the emotions I described, until sleep finally overtook them.
Incestuous Behaviors
Whenever I remember, I feel ashamed of my behavior, how I allowed myself to make choices on their behalf, anticipate their reactions in advance and decide based on my quick assessment whether to read this passage or skip it, only to find myself filling in the blanks so that the sentences seem coherent and the events seem sequential. Did I fear their disapproval as they have experienced life and what is written in all cultures and societies? Did I fear their reaction to something they might call incest? Would I find myself explaining the psychological dimension of such childish behavior, or would I go along with their understanding?
“Ghiwa was the eldest and I was the next, she was fifteen years younger than my mother and one year older than me, and I used to share with her what was happening with me, and show her my manhood that I was discovering little by little, and discovering its size and the details of its being, and when I emasculated myself the first time, I was about twelve years old, and I was surprised by this water that came out of me, I told her about it and she was very interested and asked me to show her how this happens, and I promised her what she asked… We went into the bathroom and closed the door, and my sister kept urging me to hurry, and when my water escaped, she approached it and started feeling it with her hand, as if she were examining a piece of cloth.” (From the novel Ok Goodbye by Rashid Daif)
My therapist advised me to trust my instincts and to allow myself the role of the censor, reminding me that I didn’t know what these two girls had experienced in their lives, or if my reading certain words might trigger trauma or panic attacks in them. But no matter what reasons I tell myself to ease my guilt, if I could turn back time, I wouldn’t have skipped that passage. I would have trusted their experiences and their ability to comprehend and process, qualities I lacked when I chose to cut the text out of its context.
I couldn’t sleep. It was my last night before the court session. I waited eagerly for the young men in the neighboring cell to wake up. I allowed myself to ask for a cup of coffee and asked them where they had gotten the hot water for their tea the night before. They laughed and admitted to burning some paper, and sometimes anything available, including plastic. Despite the harsh smell of burning plastic, which stung the nose and eyes, we inhaled the black smoke along with our morning cigarettes and savored the taste of boiled coffee.
Then, Safaa and Nada were called, each to her own session. They considered me a “good omen” and said my presence had brought them luck. I smiled, but I couldn’t speak. The tension rose with every passing hour. Court sessions here ended at two o’clock, and if they didn’t call me before then, I would have to wait another week, according to the judge’s schedule, which only allowed for sessions every Tuesday.
When the guard returned Nada to the cell, I asked him:
“Where is my lawyer? Has she arrived? Why hasn’t anyone called for me yet?”
“Your lawyer is here, but the judge is late. He hasn’t arrived yet. Hopefully, he won’t take much longer.”
I felt my breath grow short, my limbs trembling, my hands and feet freezing, and a numbness spreading through my head. Safaa sensed my anxiety and tried to calm me down, but for the first time, I wished she would just stop talking. I couldn’t bear to hear a single voice over the roaring in my head. Suddenly, the guard shouted at one o’clock, “Lilas… come on, quickly, to the session.”
For the first time, I extended my hands without hesitation or negotiation about the handcuffs. He was kind, in a way I will never forget. He walked in front of me, positioning himself to hide my hands so that no one would see me shackled, as we made our way through the crowded court corridors. He tried to comfort me, telling me that my case was simple and would be resolved quickly.
The hope of imminent freedom made me burst into tears as we climbed the stairs to the second floor. He stopped, giving me time to compose myself, saying, “No, I don’t want you to cry. I swear, I’m walking quickly, hiding your hands behind me so no one sees the cuffs. I know it’s hard for you, and you shouldn’t be in this situation, but it’s almost over. Please, for God’s sake, don’t cry. In an hour, your story will be over. The judge is a good man.”
I didn’t know why I broke down like that, but his empathy, his words, released a week’s worth of pent-up tears. For a moment, I thought I saw his eyes well up too. He had a soft heart, genuinely happy for me when the verdict of my acquittal was pronounced. He was the only one whose kindness didn’t feel like it came from orders, recommendations, or fear of my European nationality or my profession as a journalist. He hadn’t broken any laws, hadn’t granted me any special privileges that might breed resentment among others. He was simply a man of integrity.
I thanked him, and I wished I could have hugged him to express my gratitude before I left with my lawyer and friends.
My friends then asked me: “Tell us, what do you want to do now?”
When I was at the airport, just before my arrest, I had suggested to my friends and colleagues that we go to taste my favorite dish and drink at a restaurant in Gemmayzeh, something I would never miss:
“I want a plate of kibbeh nayyeh, a glass of arak, and then a hot shower. Goodnight.”
