Tahir Shah - In Arabian Nights

Be in the world, but not of the world.

Arab proverb

THE TORTURE ROOM WAS READY FOR USE. THERE WEREharnesses for hanging the prisoners upside-down, rows of sharp-edgedbatons, and smelling salts, used syringes filled with darkliquids and worn leather straps, tourniquets, clamps, pliers, andequipment for smashing the feet. On the floor there was a centraldrain, and on the walls and every surface, dried blood plenty ofit. I was manacled, hands pushed high up my back, stripped almostnaked, with a military-issue blindfold tight over my face. I hadbeen in the torture chamber every night for a week, interrogatedhour after hour on why I had come to Pakistan.

All I could do was tell the truth: that I was travelling throughen route from India to Afghanistan, where I was planning tomake a documentary about the lost treasure of the Mughals. Myfilm crew and I had been arrested on a residential street andtaken to the secret torture installation known by the jailers as'The Farm'.

I tried to explain to the military interrogator that we wereinnocent of any crime. But for the military police of Pakistan'sNorth West Frontier Province, a British citizen with a Muslimname, coming overland from an enemy state India set off allthe alarms.

Through nights of blindfolded interrogation, with thescreams of other prisoners forming an ever-present backdrop tolife in limbo, I answered the same questions again and again:What was the real purpose of your journey? What do you knowof Al-Qaeda bases across the border in Afghanistan? And, even:Why are you married to an Indian? It was only after the firstweek that the blindfolds were removed and, as my eyes adjustedto the blaring interrogation lamps, I caught my first burnt-outglimpse of the torture room.

The interrogations took place only at night, although day andnight were much the same at The Farm. The strip-light high onthe ceiling of my cell was never turned off. I would crouch there,waiting for the sound of keys and for the thud of feet pacing overstone. That meant they were coming for me again. I would bracemyself, say a prayer and try to clear my mind. A clear mind is acalm one.

The keys would jingle once more and the bars to my cellwould swing open just enough for a hand to reach through andgrab me.

First the blindfold and then the manacles.

Shut out the light, and your other senses compensate. I couldhear the muffled screeches of a prisoner being tortured in theparallel block and taste on my tongue the dust out in the fields.

Most of the time, I squatted in my cell, learning to be alone.Get locked up in solitary in a foreign land, with the threat ofimmediate execution hanging over you, a blade dangling from athread, and you try to pass the time by forgetting where youare.

First I read the graffiti on the walls. Then I read it again, andagain, until I was half-mad. Pens and paper were forbidden, butprevious inmates had used their ingenuity. They had scrawledslogans in their own blood and excrement. I found myselfdesperate to make sense of others' madness. Then I knelt on thecement floor and slowed my breathing, even though I was soscared words could not describe the fear.

Real terror is a crippling experience. You sweat so much thatyour skin goes all wrinkly like when you've been in the bath allafternoon. And then the scent of your sweat changes. It smellslike cat pee, no doubt from the adrenalin. However hard youwash, it won't come off. It smothers you, as your muscles becomefrozen with acid and your mind paralysed by despair.

The only hope of staying sane was to think of my life, the lifethat had become separated from me, and to imagine that I wasstepping into it again... into the dream that, until so recently,had been my reality.

The white walls of my cell were a kind of silver screen onwhich I projected the Paradise I longed to return to. The love forthat home and all within washed out the white walls, the blood-graffitiand the stink of fear. And the more I feared, the more Iforced myself to think of my adopted Moroccan home, DarKhalifa, the Caliph's House.

There were courtyards brimming with fountains and birdsong,and gardens in which Timur and Ariane, my little son anddaughter, played with their tortoises and their kites. There wasbright summer sunlight, and fruit trees, and the voice of mywife, Rachana, calling the children in to lunch. And there werelemon-coloured butterflies, scarlet red hibiscus flowers, blazingbougainvillea and the hum of bumblebees dancing through thehoneysuckle.

Hour after hour I would watch my memories screened acrossthe blank walls. I would be blinded by the colours, and glimpsein sharp detail the lives we had created for ourselves on the edgeof Casablanca. With my future now in the balance, all I could dowas pray. Pray that I might be reunited with that life, a melodiousroutine of innocence, interleaved with gentle calamity.