Ibrahim El-Salahi

I realized that we had been moved to different cells

To the west of where we were kept for a while.

They ran from south to north, like the eastern cells.

They were grim, black, bleak, and ugly.

In front of them extended a clay court,

Littered with fungi and stinky water and clad with smelly clay.

They ordered us to come out.

I came out in the form of a python

Through three doors at once.

I came out alone.

No one else.

I lay on the ground, motionless,

My head to the south, anticipating

The sunrise in the east.

A saw-shaped knife was brought,

Like the mast of a wooden boat on the Nile.

My head was chopped off from the neck,

And my python tail was cut off.

When my head, neck, and tail went dry,

The rest of my body was cut into three equal portions.

Then the knife disappeared

And my head, neck, and tail, the python’s tail, vanished,

But the rest of my body remained.

My back was like that of a crocodile: three roasted blocks of flesh.

The snake disappeared,

And I ran about looking for my head, my tail, and my chopped neck.

They ordered us to go back to our burrows.

Without turning back, I returned, in one breath, through the doors,

Three crystal stones.

Ibrahim El-Salahi: I felt that I was lying down like a boa. And this boa was chopped into three parts. I was left there, and someone told me to put together those parts that had been cut off and go back into my hole. This is a reflection on the jail and the cell, on being tortured. You are torn apart.