Desert Prison: A Testimony

An officer I did not know greeted me outside the museum, drove an electric pulse through my belly. They broke up the sit-in. They knew our names. I was one of 18 women. They took us inside. Old Kingdom scribes watched wide-eyed as men poured water on us. Shocked us. Flung boots at us. I was sure it was the end. Then they put us on a bus. Before spring I had come from the south on a train. Walked right up to the frontlines of music and fear. Hours into the desert, I still had no idea where we were headed. Our hands were tied. When we arrived at Huckstep they dragged us across the sand like dead goats. Ripped our clothes. All night we were beaten and grilled. What do you want from this country? At the time we still had answers to a question like this. Had broken our breath singing  justice to the wind. We handed everything over. If we had them, we slipped the wedding bands off our fingers. A fresh portrait of the deposed president hung behind us like a blind. Even the scotch tape was new. What is he still doing on the wall? The officer said, we want him watching over us and used the word love. One more word I’ll bury you in the sand. I was sure he was serious. Swollen, I slept and saw a leopard-clad priest slaughtering a bull. Giant incense in the sky like palms. Lone foreleg twitching in the sand. Then a pail of cool water woke me. Now we test if in fact you are virgins. We said what test? One woman held her head in both hands. Another told stories about the mourners of the past; two women were paid to beat their bare breasts and smear their skin in dirt to lament the deceased. As stand-ins for Isis and Nephtys, these women had to be hairless—their bodies shaved like stone. And they could not be mothers. If you still have a hymen, make a line. I was one of seven girls. They took us one after the other into a room with a big window. Door left ajar. A jailer—a woman—asked us to undress. And the prison gate was wide open. She untied even our hair. Removed the pins from our scarves. Shook out our clothes like stiff winter blankets. Imagine your body, seen from the outside. I asked her to close the window. A whole wedding is watching me. She said, no. Daylight flickered like the limp spine of a kite. My hands are tied. The doctor who examined me was dressed in olive green. If he really was a doctor, why spend five whole minutes searching with his hand in me? We found the hymen, said the report. He gave me a blue pen. A space had been left blank between the finding and the dotted line. On my dead body, I said. You will be shocked and beaten. I signed. I wanted to die. What did you want me to do? You can’t look a lion in the eye and say let me be, I am a black-winged kite too far from home. In court they said we broke the sidewalk. Charged us with carrying white weapons, gas cylinders, Molotov cocktails. They looked us in the eye. I denied all of it.