Free An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan Page B

the younger Arab prisoners. It was not unusual to hear him shouting abuse at one of the passing prisoners and continuing the scolding until he had worked himself into enough of a frenzy to make his abuse more physical. Either outside my cell door or in the cell of one of the Arab prisoners he would kick and beat and scream at some unfortunate. It seemed as the days passed that he had one favourite, a pet he enjoyed tormenting. I would hear this pathetic creature trying to run past The Grim Reaper on his way to and from the toilet, and then there would be the familiar flurry of abuse followed by the beating and the screaming.
    The toilet was no more than a hole in the ground, and beside it a water tap, where I could fill a plastic jar to flush away whatever needed to be flushed away. It was a filthy place. I doubt if anyone had bothered to wash it in years and indeed, as I came to learn, no-one would want to wash it. We were prisoners, unwanted, unworthy and according to our jailors’ convictions, unclean. They would not enter a place which we had used to wash or relieve ourselves. But it was what lived in there amongst the rubbish and the filth that made those minutes in the toilet so disgusting. The place was alive with cockroaches, large and shiny. Their hard body armour and their claw-like legs made loud scratching noises as they moved. They scurried rather than crawled. Their speed and the hardness of their shell made it impossible to crush or kill them. The toilet was their nesting place. It was necessary on each visit to poke through the filth and chase these monsters out of our privy. I remember once trying to drown them in the water of the toilet hole and to my horror watching them climb unscathed from this pit of excrement and dart glistening around my feet again. Using the toilet was, because of this insect menagerie, a painful experience. I sat half squatting above the receiving hole while nervously watching every dark corner.
    The toilet was screened off from the cell block by a crude and tattered curtain. I would sit at times and watch the daily procession of bodies, their faces draped with filthy towels, move in slow silence to and from this place. It was like some unholy ritual at which I was a secret observer. One day during that first week, I can’t remember precisely when, they took me for my first shower. The shower space was like the toilet, a cubicle of filth. It was fitted with a brace of pipes and an ancient shower head. The walls were of crude block construction, about shoulder-high. I noted that some of the blocks had fallen away and revealed a dark space beyond; through it I could hear more clearly the noises from the street, voices of children and occasionally what I took to be their mothers calling to them. What was immediately beyond the shower room I could not clearly see, nor could I risk looking. But it was possibly a way out. I took my time showering, wanting to establish in the minds of my guards that when I was brought again I could be left there for some ten or fifteen minutes, enough I thought to climb the piping and slither like one of those cockroaches through the opening. But it would have to wait. I was also still trying to convince myself that I would soon be released.
    There was no point in pre-empting that freedom by making a failed escape attempt.

 
    Showered and refreshed, and my head filled with plots and hopes, I was returned to my cell. I think now how much like one of those hateful cockroaches I had become. Crawling every day, fearful and half-blind, to the toilet hole and back to my corner. My food awaited me. It was the same as before and would be the same for many days to come: a round of Arab bread, a piece of cheese, a spoonful of jam, a boiled egg. The bread was my plate, the floor my table and my fingers became my fork. This was my morning and my only meal. The guards came only to wash us and to feed us, much as one does with animals, the terminally ill or the deeply