In the belly of the whale

Eight hours into interrogations in Cairo airport, at 9 am, I was told that things were taking longer than expected and I could no longer wait with my family between bouts of interrogation. I was instructed to ask them to leave, to say goodbye without making a scene. It was time to “go inside;” being “outside” was a privilege that being a mother, or being surrounded by compassion, had afforded me till then. I hugged each of the children tightly but briefly, making sure their warmth did not outlast my courage.

I joined the officer “inside” and he walked me to the corner of the waiting room[1] where he thrust a key into the wall and tugged. A door parted from the wall, moaning as it gave way to musty darkness. He walked in and I followed him through what appeared to be a long dark corridor. While I stared into it, my eyes adjusting to the sudden extra dimension to the “waiting room,” the officer turned around, walked out and slammed the shrieking door behind him. I turned to the sound, and out of some instinct, started to pound on the steel door with both fists while shouting. In that fleeting moment of panic, I felt trapped. Abandoned. I stopped myself from pounding as soon as I became conscious of it. Just as I had not noticed a door before, they would probably not hear me in the waiting room. They may not realize that there was a fourth dimension to the space they inhabited outside, an extra realm of possibility, beyond their journeys being stopped or diverted. It also didn’t matter; pounding would not get me out. Instead, I turned around and thrust myself deeper into the corridor. On my left was a large bathroom, with four or five sinks, and an equal number of bathroom stalls. Soon, it would flood, and the only way to access the toilets would be wading in ankle-deep waters.

The end of the corridor was soft-lit. For a split second I was torn between walking further into the light, affirming my detention, or walking back to the door and continuing to bicker at the the threshold. The soft light drew me in toward it; was it my curiosity? Or that I felt it would be safer? That I would find more answers inside? I thrust myself further. The corridor opened up into a rectangular room that doubled as a storeroom with computers and office desks and chairs, and a detainment cell. Against its two longer walls were bunk beds — three bunk beds facing each other on each side. All of the lower beds were occupied by sleeping women. On the shorter walls to my far left and my immediate right were two long metal benches that stretched between the beds. One of them was inhabited, and I would soon occupy the other. A narrow window stretched across the far wall, high above the bench. You could not reach it, even if you stood on the bench. I tried. It was layered with so much grime that it gave a very dim light to the room, so that it always felt like dawn or dusk. Still, it offered a long patch of blue sky, a view I could access lying down on the cold metal bench. The room was stuffy but very cold. Rather than ventilate it, it seemed the strategy was to freeze the microbes out of the layers of existence that saturated its air. The air was so thick with a sweet mix of sweat, sleep and body odor; it was almost palpable.

Not able to sit for long, I started walking around, looking at the walls for any writings, signs, messages, instructions, any wisdom. I immediately found a prayer that read لا إله إلا أنت سبحانك إني كنت من الظالمين,” a praise to God, and a repentance: “verily, I have been of the transgressors.” Next to it, I found some other scribbles in different handwriting, and it was the same prayer. I soon realized that all of the writing on the walls, at different levels, in different handwritings, in different degrees of discretion, were the same prayer. The room pulsed with its murmurs. One read it inadvertently wherever one looked, as if the collective advice from every woman before us was to repent. Even if you didn’t want to repent, the prayer echoed around you constantly and consistently, like a chant, like a spell. You didn’t have to read it, the room was drenched in its sorcery. I couldn’t stand it.

The prayer, I later realized, was one that Younis recited in the belly of the whale and repeated for days as he lived in a darkness whose nature and end he could not ascertain. 

Where are we? هو احنا كده نعتبر فين؟

Although the story of Younis varies across the scriptures, the plot remains the same. Unable to persuade his people to God’s path, Younis decides to leave, to embark on a journey elsewhere. He boards a ship, and takes to the sea. The ship is soon caught in a storm and the crew realize that someone must be thrown overboard to lighten its load and increase their chances of survival. After a draw, Younis is thrown overboard into stormy seas, and before long, he is gulped by a whale. At first, he does not know where he is and questions whether he is alive or dead. In a vast expanse of darkness, questions of his existential and physical whereabouts continue until, it is said, he hears the whale moan and sing, possibly in prayer, calling to other whales, or to let Younes know where he was.  

Whenever the sense of my imminent departure comforted me, the sounds of a siren floated into the cell from the streets outside, and I coaxed myself out of that comfort, for my imminent departure may not be for home. 

“Huwwa ehna keda nu’tabar feyn? Where would one say are we?" was a question that erupted frequently and fleetingly in conversations with the two other inmates who had been detained at the same time I was. One was to be deported, and the other was stopped for incomplete paperwork when she attempted to travel with her kids to reunite with her husband. Of the 10 women in that cell, the three of us shared a tongue, Arabic. One woman, who had been there for two weeks with her son was Kurdish, and the others, all from sub-Saharan Africa, were also stopped for visa issues, even though some of them were flying through the country and not even transiting for long. While the three of us continued to be called by authorities using our names, the rest were called based on their countries; Kurdistan, Ethiopia, Kenya 1, Kenya 2, Guinea.

The longest-tenured person there, K, had been held with her one-year-old son for two weeks. They were flying through Egypt to Europe but got stopped at the airport for incomplete paperwork. The rest of her family were in the men’s cell(s). Soon after I arrived, an officer stepped in and called out to her, startling her out of her sleep. She got up, revealing beautifully braided hair and a flowing yellow floral dress. Her son was equally well-dressed. They washed their faces, packed their food and responded to their summons to a hearing. Later she explained that she often slept fully dressed and groomed in case she was awoken for a court session or hearing. Since her detainment, she had been summoned several times to the prosecutor’s office. She kept exuding confidence that it was just a matter of time before they would be let out. An officer had promised her that less time remained than had passed. But she didn’t seem to know or disclose why they were there, or what they were being charged for.

E said her name popped up on a list, as she was known to have helped others find their way into the country. She had been on her way out for good when she was stopped, but leaving now no longer looked possible. She walked back in from an appointment with the prosecutor mumbling to herself, “I’m in big big trouble now.” She told us the story, starting and ending it with those words. She continued to mumble this to herself throughout my eight-hour sojourn in that cell, rocking back and forth in her own embrace.

M mostly struggled with the idea that she was in detainment. She grappled with the shame of it. For a long time, at different points in time, she asked several people the same question, “where are we?”, her eyes wide, almost wild, as she asked, almost daring them to say what she found unthinkable. Everyone knew better than to answer and would simply say they didn’t know. In the first few hours, she had frequent fainting spells. She would walk to the bathroom and faint on her way there or on her way back, or think of the possible consequences and pass out. When she fainted, she fell like a tree, her body leaned and fell straight, without swiveling or folding; even her fall was dignified. But it was also harsh, always with a large thud as her head hit the ground. It was dumbfounding to behold.

The times that it happened, the women ran to pound on the door, loudly and simultaneously until someone opened. Someone would come in (usually a police officer) to check on her. When the officers came in, they always tried to bring her to consciousness by reminding her that she would be out before she knew it, that what she had committed was an “honorable” crime. She was trying to unite her family, her being there was only a matter of the law, some paperwork, and soon she would be out. Whenever they stressed that what she did was “hon-or-a-ble” (sha-rii-fa), they would turn around to give me a meaningful look as they stressed the words. Her crime was honorable, my own — political dissidence? oppositional opinion? wayward history writing? — was not. 

In the last hours of my airport detainment, in every bout of interrogation, I demanded to know when I would be released and was told consistently that it was just a matter of time. Whenever the sense of my imminent departure comforted me, the sounds of a siren floated into the cell from the streets outside, and I coaxed myself out of that comfort, for my imminent departure may not be for home. 

Like Younis, we had all set out on a trip, were caught in a storm at sea and could only hope to be whisked away within an embodied miracle.

Mothering in captivity 

When the whale swallowed Younis, it is said that it did not eat for as long as it carried him (between three and 40 days depending on the scripture). At times, the description of the whale saving him from tumultuous waters resembles his being carried in a womb. Eventually, Younis is spat out onto land, where he lives under a tree that feeds and shelters him and within whose leaves he finds a cure for his skin ailments. It was as though he was reborn somehow, after a death in the whale.

What has always enchanted me about whales is their communal mothering. A mother can nurse her calf for two years, always swimming with it by her side for that duration. And even after weaning and after mating, pod members continue to live with their mothers. A whale community is also known to collectively care for its young. Calves are raised (and sometimes breast-fed) by aunts and cousins as well as mothers. Mothers are guided through breastfeeding and supported through the first strides of motherhood by all the females in her pod. 

In this ward, and at several parts of my 24-hour journey, I found solidarity, nourishment and comfort.

There were three children with us, in what we eventually decided to call the ward. M had two beautiful boys, ages 8 and 3, and K had one, who was a little over a year old.

Much like she conducted her own life with a daily routine, including hair care, clothes washing, etc., K conducted her son’s life with a daily care routine as well. Every morning he had breakfast, even if they were rushing out to a hearing, and every afternoon, he had a bath. She changed him, washed him, fed him, sang to him, as if we were in some happier place. He ate healthy balanced meals, whatever she could muster (bread, a fruit, a tiny candy). The nutrition provided to the ward was very limited; a woman brought bread and halawa every morning that no one touched, and tangerines, which everyone devoured. 

Just watching her was a welcomed distraction. She walked across the cell with such measured grace; she seemed almost magical against the cell’s dull, morbid silence. That day, she came back from the hearing, put her son down for a nap, and asked us to watch him while she washed up. She waltzed out of the toilet, changed into her pajamas and flip flops, undid her immaculate braids and brushed her long hair while humming wistfully. She then created a different hairstyle, whose creation outlasted her son’s nap. We entertained him while she gathered her waist-long hair in two different kinds of braids and carried them in a bun. She was now ready for dinner, which consisted of bread and a few potato chips from a bag she carried. We were not allowed to offer him any biscuits, because he had already had his sweets ration for the day, but half a cup of juice was welcomed. The child was as at ease with the place as his mother was. He crawled from bed to bed and charmed the inhabitants, but was most enthralled with the coming of the new children, M’s two boys.

M, on the other hand, minimized her interaction with the place. After her fainting spells, or as a result of them, she did not get out of bed much, and would barely eat or drink. Offering her kids sandwiches smuggled in by our family members took tremendous negotiation. At first, the boys, especially the older one, would not leave her side. But even when they loosened up and tried to create imaginary jungles and parkour rounds out of the equipment stored in the room, she would demand they return to her side. Every now and then they slipped away from her, but just when they started to sound gleeful, she sternly summoned them back. To normalize the situation, to adapt even, was not something she could afford or tolerate. They were there temporarily, did not belong there, and would/could only wait.

When I first met M in the waiting room outside, she was with both of her children. We had both been stopped at the same time; she was on her way out of Cairo and I was on my way in. She walked in with her two sons and was distraught; I walked in with my two daughters and was trying to keep it together. She was crying, and fiddling with her youngest son who seemed a little sick, while her eldest sat there staring at her blankly, his eyes wide with tears streaming down his face quietly. He remained that way for the entirety of the time she spent in the waiting room and until she ended up in the ward: his face frozen, eyes wide with sadness like a Fayoum portrait. Inside the ward, her eldest continued to stare at her with grave concern, the tears still streaming down his face quietly, until her fainting spells ended. He almost looked like he felt responsible for her, watching her transform in ways he had not seen before, looking utterly helpless about it. But he carried her strongly fixed in his gaze, as if to keep her in a spell.

When we walked in, I maintained what I strongly believed was an air of nonchalance. I instructed myself, as I did throughout the experience, to feel and exude an air of patience, of indifference, a deep-set belief and conviction that I had done nothing worthy of incarceration. I denied nothing, but I imagined no consequences for my actions either. I explained them, but did not defend them. At that point in the waiting room with two of my children, I tried to rub some of my fragile confidence unto M. She did not know me, nor was she capable of or interested in engaging. Instead, she fed my children. At that moment, she had many treats up her sleeves; sweets, and snacks and munchies. Her husband lived in a small village in Europe, and she herself lived in a small town in Egypt. She had packed well for the long journeys to and from ports. She offered my children the treats she had brought for her own, despite the ambiguity of the length of her stay. Perhaps she sensed that I was less prepared than she was. I, more invested in how I appeared in the present, and she, desperately trying to decode the consequences, her head spinning with possibilities she could not even grasp. 

My older daughter does not engage in any recollections of this experience, actively avoiding any discussion of the topic. The only thing she has mentioned, more than once, is her gratitude for being fed by a family who seemed to be in far more trouble than we were. And that M, despite her own distress, recognized my daughter’s hunger/need for treats. Perhaps M’s open distress helped my daughter understand the parameters of a situation that my feigned nonchalance was only confusing.

The whale

What is the meaning of the Younis parable then? When I was inside the ward and recognized the prayers everywhere around me, they drove me crazy. Why would being in the belly of a tyrannical, unjust and arbitrary system such as this, warrant repentance as salvation? Everything around me was fluid, unpredictable. The only solid matter was my conviction that I would have done nothing in any other way. Why would this cell try to convince people otherwise?

I wondered if it was the whale that was being evoked in the wall prayers rather than Younis. Could it be a prayer to be whisked by a whale, rather than a repentance like Younis’? Everything about the ward evoked the whale. The dark dampness, the unresolved, unresolvable question of where in the (in)justice system/chain one was. Was this temporary detainment? Would we be deported? Would we be tried? Would we be thrust deeper into the system? Should we adapt? Should we resist? Should we feign nonchalance until the irrelevance of the situation fulfills itself?

When I was transferred to the state security prosecutor’s office, the formal interrogation started with a request to “begin at birth.”

What was the whale then? Was the whale the deep dark belly of the system? Was it where one felt one’s way around, testing relationships to decide whether or not to disclose, testing names for the site of incarceration on one’s tongue, reading the walls for clues as to where one was, for wisdom from those who came before us?

But what if the whale was being invoked, rather than evoked, conjured rather than referenced in prayer? All of us had embarked on a trip and found ourselves caught in a storm. A storm of male officials who tossed us from one desk to another, with little or no understanding of why we were there. Some went from hearing to hearing, not sure who was hearing them or why, or what process they were part of.

The whale carried Younis gently, depriving itself of food, until it was time to spit him out again. It delivered him far from the storm, far from the ingrateful, despondent population he was to save or enlighten, to an island where he was nurtured, sheltered and protected; in some scriptures by a bountiful tree, and in others by a deer that cared for and breastfed him.

In this ward, and at several parts of my 24-hour journey, I found solidarity, nourishment and comfort. Inside, when we found a name for where we were, and when I could eventually recount the interrogations, we could laugh. We discussed the kind of tone and body language I should maintain to seem oblivious to the speed and direction in which things were going — this involved a bit of theatricality, and I received adequate training. But it was not only the solidarity and scenes of beauty inside the cell that comforted me. I knew that outside of this place, beyond this airport, I was on the mind of many. I was on the mind of each of my family members whom I thought of continuously, on the minds of each of my friends, and mostly in the company of my late grandmother who made light of matters, and sometimes promised to intervene when a divine intervention seemed necessary.

Every burst of interrogation seemed to enmesh me deeper and deeper into an arrangement that I could make neither head nor tail of. It was clear to me that everything I said was being used against me and a bigger picture, which I could not see, was being built. The interrogations were tumultuous, the future away from them dimmed by the minute, but the ward was different.

Although with time my entanglement with this dark matter grew tighter and tighter, the lightness that carried me also grew, and with it my assurance that somehow, like Younis’ prayer pulsing around me, the thoughts and solidarity of many would continue to accompany me. When I was transferred to the state security prosecutor’s office, the formal interrogation started with a request to “begin at birth.” I went through educational experience after educational experience, job after job, career objective after the other, and I made sure to make it memorable for myself. I thought of everything I did and everything I went through. I thought of colleagues, comrades, and loves, without mentioning them, and they brought me warmth. We went through the revolution day by day from January 25 until the end of December, and then specific months and events in 2012 and 2013. I regaled and reveled in the details and the events, and I let their warmth and depth carry me forward, comfort and reassure me, fill me with who I am. I created a trajectory for my life that could not have been any other way. 

That, also, was my whale. A large body whose insides you only sense, and whom you have to trust, blindly. You recognize your existential whereabouts through its song, you are inspired by its endless communality, by the networks of care the beings evoke. You know without knowing, you rest without resting, you are assured with absolutely no knowledge, that you will be carried out of this storm, unto some island somewhere.

But a question that irks me, is whether one ever leaves the whale. That moment where physicality and existentiality are questioned in the dark dampness, where one loses total control over their own destiny and can only sense a deep descent, an enmeshment in a bigger dystopian web, or the (unverified) possibility of hope. That brush with the dark innards means the possibility of an invisible door in every wall, a floor or dungeon beneath every floor, a deep consciousness of the darkness, and of all those who linger and languish in it while we proceed with our lives, our fragile freedoms on the other side of the wall. This outer existence somehow pales in intensity and reality against the other. That parallel existence, the consciousness of it that binds us all, is also a whale.

If I was to ask myself once again that very same question I asked as I entered the cell: what messages, what wisdom have other women before us left on these walls? I would imagine that the spell and the prayer is that the cell somehow becomes the belly of a whale, a place of calm and communal care in the eye of the storm.

 

 

 

[1] The zone within the airport where those who were stopped by border control waited to be ‘processed’, for detainment, deportation or interrogation