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Faisal Hayyat Jail Tale ( Part 4) Where’s Faisal Hayat
2011-10-04 - 7:26 am
 Faisal Hayyat: In the previous part, I told you about the severe beating that I endured during my last night at Noaim Police Station whose hero was the plainclothed man (I still remember all his face features) who was wearing the traditional Arab dress, everyday he took the trouble to serve me a session of torture, curses and insults and then left. The last night session was hysteric as he felt angry that he would lose his sadistic nightly enjoyment. What I have not told you is that day was 19th April which was my birthday. I was waiting for it to bear me the good news, but it came with the news of transferring me to the Dry Dock prison. It was my 36th birthday. Would I celebrate it among my children and family similar to every year? I waited it everyday hoping the morrow might have brought a release for me. In the morning of that day, two weeks had passed since my detention. One of the hardest moments I lived when I asked myself: "Do my loved ones remember that today is my birthday? Do they remember me now?". At the same night, a number of athletes of the handball players (I keep their names) entered the ward in a breakdown after the beatings they suffered on their hands and feet in the "Shrimp" position. After about an hour, I parted with them when I was transferred with a number of the detainees. I felt some comfort for what I thought an escape from Noaim Police Station. However, all my assumptions collapsed at the moment of my arrival at the Dry Dock prison. The Dry Dock Prison We boarded the bus. We received strict orders not to talk on the way. We reached the Dry Dock prison. As soon as I stepped on the ground with the other detainees on the bus, a policeman yelled: "Where's Faisal Hayat". I raised my hand and lamented my bad luck. No sooner than I got off the bus, than the blows struck me from every side, fists, kicks, and by the butt of a weapon that was carried by a policeman. All the detainees who were with me were surprised with my exclusive reception. I asked myself: "Why me in particular? Why all of that?". Then they took us inside the prison, specifically to Ward 2, Cellar 8. In order you imagine the whole picture, the Dry Dock prison was composed of several buildings (wards). They were twelve wards. The ward was a rectangular building that had twelve chambers, of them there were nine cellars. A long corridor extended across the ward separating the chambers. At the beginning of the corridor there were two chambers for the policemen and at its end there were toilets, bathrooms and wash basins. There was the fence chamber. Then there was a chamber for food distribution and there had been a prayer chamber which was turned into a cellar after the number of detainees had grown. The fence chamber or the "Fence" was an open place surrounded by a fence specially at the top. It was opened for the detainees to expose for the sun shine. The detainees, of course, were able to move in the ward among the cellars. Each cellar was designed to accommodate twelve detainees, however, sometimes the number of the detainees was eighteen in each cellar, e.g. Cellar No. 8 that I was in, had sometimes eighteen detainees. The excess number of the detainees would be given sheets that would be laid side by side so that the detainees could have slept on. Where's Faisal Hayat? I entered the cellar with the others. I was not allowed to sit like the others. Soon I heard the sound of the cellar door latch. The door was opened violently. Then the question that would go like a saying at the Dry Dock prison: "Where's Faisal Hayat?". I raised my hand. The policeman took off his boot and started beating me in front of everyone. Then he left with the other policemen. It was "The honour of Arrival" as the detainees called it, however, it was exclusive honour for me. Was that everything? Would I end there and things would settle down? With the policemen's shift change, the door latch opened violently again. The ward warden repeated the saying: "You're Faisal Hayat? Are you Bahraini? You must be an Iranian!". He was addressing me. I did not respond. After a few minutes, another policeman came, from his accent it was clear that he was from a Syrian origin. He was holding a cable. He addressed me directly: "You, traitor, I'll let you know what press means!". Then he punched me in the face in front of the other detainees. Then left. After an hour he returned to take me to one of the policemen's chambers, to beat me with a cable with the assistance of another policeman. It was severe beating that focused on my back with pauses of insult. I remained writhing under there beatings until the warden interfered and commanded them to stop and told me to go to my cellar. I returned to the cellar, to lie on the bed. I did not catch my breath, the latch again. The same question: "Where's Faisal Hayat?" I looked mourning myself. I was taken to two Yemeni policemen and a third Baluchi whose name was Murad. In front of him there was the ward large trash container. He ordered me to clean it. "That's your level, you'll clean the container everyday". I looked at it. It was large and full of filth that was accumulating on its walls. I felt humiliation and menial despicableness. I did not utter a word. I took the cleaning kit and started cleaning. I had to enter inside it to clean it. All that took place amid the detainees' shock who were wondering about the secret beyond all that assault against me. I cleaned the container, and almost suffocated by its smell. I felt indescribable disgust. Then I had to clean the floor below the wash basin because of the overflowing sewage. Then I was ordered to clean the toilets and the whole ward corridor. All that was to humiliate me and to insult me personally. That way I spent my first hours in the Dry Dock prison. Under that assault, the detainees sympathised with me and they covered me in cleaning the toilets during the many occasions when the ward warden asked them about me. The Door Latch .. By time, the movement of the door latch was enough to make me jump. The latch would move in my head after any violent attempt to open the door. The latch movement meant to me: "Where's Faisal Hayat?". Opening the door would open the fear beats and preparation for torture and insults. I did not hate the latch, as it was violence victim, just like me. The latch and the door were associates in being violated and tortured. If the door had spoken, it would have wept painfully. I had become permanently on the alert. I did not sleep when the cellar mates whispered. The door latch was shrilling inside me all the time. I became easily startled. I woke up terrified. My cellar mates suffered my light sleeping. No sleep, mere dozes. The day our hair was cut, was another day of violations. We were forced to surrender to the barber's machine and to his shearing. The barber treated us like he was shearing sheep. I felt humiliated. Why would my hair be cut that way? I was a detainee not a prisoner. I did not want my children to see my that way. If they had seen me like a criminal prisoner they would have broken down. I refused to surrender to the shearing machine. I fled and hid in the cellar. It chased me. My excuses did not help neither my persistent refusal. Hair-cutting continued its work callously and in the coldness of the machine. Unified Hearts In the following days, I began gradually to dissolve among the other detainees. I was placed among dozens of them. I was honoured to make friends with many of them. It was not a detention for hooligans. Among us were university professors and lecturers, doctors and nurses. I learnt the group spirit. I would not forget those friends who covered me during cleaning time. Targeting me by the policemen was compensated by the detainees support, the more those targeted me, the more I got the detainees' support. The ward warden ordered them to call for me in order to clean with them and when he left, they would ask me to sit aside and when he came they would give me one of the cleaning tools. No one of us had known the other before the detention walls gathered us. Those walls made us a hug to each other. We shared everything. We participated in everything. The food, the prayer and reciting Quran. We shared the sorrow. We soothed each other's hurts. We prayed for each other. Everyone of us became aware of the other's character and behaviour. There was no better than this place to know what you could not know outside. When some one was called for outside the ward, all the others would stick to Quran and prayer books to pray to God for his relief and safe return. We were suffering for each other and cried in joy when one was released. A detainee friend was called for interrogation outside the Dry Dock. He disappeared for five days. He was so close to me. I got so sad for his absence. I laid a Quran on his bed and opened it on Al-Hadeed Sura [Iron Sura]. His belongings were still there. I continued praying for his return. We were sure that he was not released. In the dawn of the fifth day, I was praying and prayed for him, suddenly he entered led by a policeman. I jumped quickly for him, hugged him and cried together, the both of us. "Where did they take you and broke our hearts?". He came back from Qudaibiyya Police Station with livid torture marks on his back. Safavid Rule On Monday, 25 April 2011, at around 3:00PM I was called again by the Syrian policeman. He took me to the policemen's offices. He blindfolded and handcuffed me. He told me to wait. After an hour, a minibus arrived. They boarded me on the minibus. They threw me under its seats and drove to an unknown destination. There the sequel of spitting and insults returned back. I did not know where I was, however, the smell reminded me of Noaim Police Station. After an hour of waiting blindfolded and handcuffed I realised that I was at Noaim Police Station, where a policeman brought me the dinner meal after around five o'clock. After that I was called from the the detention chamber and a policeman put an extra blindfold on my eyes and took me to one of the chambers. I entered and I was desperate to find an answer for a question: "What's next?". Once I entered a question confronted me: "Have you recognised me, Faisal?". At that time I suffered a weak memory after the the brutal beatings I got on my head, which was something I forgot to tell you about earlier. Normally I had a strong memory and numbers had their strong presence in my memory. However, the violent beatings on my head in the detention affected my numerical memory. It was damaged for a long time. One day I requested a detainee who was waiting his release to phone my wife and reassure her about me. I tried to remember my wife's number, after many trials I wrote to my friend a wrong number. I returned to Noiam Police Station to a question of "Have you recognised me Faisal?". I did not recognise whose voice it was, despite my hard attempts to recognise him. He ordered the policeman to take off the blindfolds, and after a time that was not short, I began to recognise whose voice it was. He was a senior security officer (I keep his name). He told me to sit down. Then began to gloat at my misfortune feeling that I was weak and humiliated before the oppression of the military authority. He talked directly in the topic: "You thought Bahrain like Tunisia and Egypt, you said let's be heroes. Faisal, you made a big mistake. We loved you and followed you on TV, and now you have to pay back for you mistakes". I replied: "I didn't take part in the athletes' rally, and my participation in the journalists' rally came after one day of the Crown Prince's speech on Bahrain TV when he stressed on the citizen's right in peaceful sit-ins". But he ignored what I said. "All of you say that, you want Iran, you want Safavid rule, you wronged ... (the same senior official)". After give and take, he promised that he would help in releasing me. But his talk was only mockery at me and a clear attempt to gloat at my misery! I was sent back to the detention chamber. After an hour the same minibus came to transport me back to the Dry Dock. I sighed a relief, as I was frightened to stay at Noaim Police Station with the possibility of the arrival of the military personnel and repeating the same scenario of having pleasure torturing me similar to what I suffered for thirteen days in the beginning of my detention. I returned to the Dry Dock around 8:30PM, and after that I dissolved among dozens of detainees, and turned into a number similar to the other numbers. The day I saw me in the mirror ..
What was my reward? It was a juice pack. Can you imagine how I and my cellar mates received that pack? That pack which did not mean anything to us during the ordinary days, deserved a special celebratory ritual as it had been a precious treasure. There we drank only tea that was full of camphor and water. I entered the cellar holding it like an athlete holding a winning trophy. I was fasting on that day. I put the pack facing the air cooler in order to cool. In the evening I shared it with some of the friends. We alternated drinking it, not believing that we were drinking juice. We had it in sips and relished it slowly like someone who did not want it to run out. My Sara Sara is my eldest daughter. She is 15 years old. She was the most persistent image on my mind while I was detained. I was worried about her in particular. Our relationship was not ordinary. We were close to each other and more or less friends. A clever girl who had her own views. I said to her at the beginning of the school year when she was preparing for the intermediate school certificate: "I want you to get high marks this year, so we, together, go to the newspapers at the end of the year, I put my hand in your hand and take pictures for the outstanding students". We agreed on that, and she promised me to put exceptional effort to get the honouring distinction. During my detention I was worried about her in particular, I knew her attachment to me and the impact of my absence on her. I knew that her age stage made things more complicated. After my release, I found on my Facebook page, among my friends' letters wishing me safe release, a bunch of letters that Sara sent to me while I was detained. She wrote: "Three exams remain for me then my summer break starts.. but before saying anything to you I wanna say sorry at first.. sorry as I won't get distinction, I know the results haven't been out yet, neither have I completed all the exams in the first place, but my only chance was in the mid-semester exams, this semester, my level came down in a crazy way..I try to convince myself that I can get higher, but this is a lie, this impossible at this stage, whenever I open the book, any book, I don't mean a certain book, your picture forms and appears or your voice when you call me My Sara.. it's been more that two months and you haven't called me My Sara, please, forgive me, you won't go with me to have pictures in the newspapers". I froze before her words. They were heavier than I could bear. I entered into a fit of acute crying. I imagined her condition and her tears while she had been writing each letter of single those letters. What suffering you went through My Sara in your dad's absence? Who was responsible for keeping your father away not because he had done something, but because he had expressed an opinion. Hoora Police Station At the end of May. Lieutenant Colonel Isa Al-Qattan visited us. He treated us kindly and in a civilised manner. He promised all the athletes and several medical staff who were with us at the ward that they would be transferred to Hoora Police Station. After twelve days of that visit and specifically on Friday 10 June 2011, all the athletes on the sports case along with two doctors were transferred to Hoora Police Station except me and the retired referee Abdulhussain Habeeb. That surprised me and kept me worrying, however, those feelings vanished on the following day when we were transferred like the others. Lieutenant Colonel Isa Al-Qattan allowed us to call our families. Then he supervised arranging three visits that I got while I was at Hoora Police Station. By the way, I made a few phone calls to my family when I was at the Dry Dock Prison, without being able to see them for more than two months and a half. Those phone calls I got where a mere reward for me by the ward warden for helping him in some paperwork (registering the detainees' names, where they had worked, and registering if they had chronic diseases e.g. diabetes and sickle cell anaemia...)
A few days before our release, we were surprised by an unexpected visit. It was the senior official whose name I only heard during my detention and torture. I had just waken up and left my bed. I was carrying my bed covers on my right shoulder and my towel on the left one. I was surprised seeing him enter shaking hands with the athletes one by one in welcoming and exaggerated smiles. He reached me, he extended his hand to shake, my face was expressionless, I did not put any effort to get rid of what was in my hand neither intended to do any thing or any reaction. I found myself saying to him: "I'm going to brush my teeth" and I left. Then he sat with us, and told us that we would be released in days and they would work on dropping the charges against us. Later we knew the story of FIFA threats to the Football Union in Bahrain of suspending Bahrain's football participation if the athletes continued to be detained for their political activities. A Sky Without Lines I stayed at the Hoora Police Station for eighteen days. I was released in the early dawn hours of Wednesday 29 June 2011 along with the other athletes. I had to wait for a new date for the trial that was scheduled for 11 July, however it was postponed to an unknown date after the martial tribunal had been cancelled by a Royal Order. I went out to finally see the sky. It was the first thing I wanted to see after my release from jail. A clear sky without lines. All the 84-days I saw the sky through the lines of the bars. I called it there the lined sky. On the day I left the Hoora Police Station, I asked the relatives and friends, who came to receive me, to give me a moment. I looked up the sky. I saw it free of the bars lines. I knew that it had become free, just like me, and it returned to fill my open space. I did not pay attention to myself, in a childish spontaneity, I jumped in the air and screamed, while my eyes did not abandon it: "Finally, O sky we, both, are together, without bars neither lines". |
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