نوال بشارة (nawal) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-06-24 21:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! narrative, nawal bechara |
WHO: Nawal Bechara
WHAT: How the (self) righteous have fallen
WHEN: Afternoon/evening of Monday, June 24 (Day 7 of the hunger strike)
WHERE: Solitary
WARNINGS: Hunger, misery
STATUS: Completed narrative
When the guards come for her, Nawal drops her arms and lets them take her without a word of protest. She thinks she would have done the same at full health, but she has no way of knowing for sure. All she knows is, she abhors violence. That's why she did this in the first place. The first thing she thinks when she sees her solitary room is that it is clean. Is it really bigger than her first cell at Ofer, or is it the pristine walls and her tainted memory that make it seem that way? The guards shove her in, and it wouldn't have been rough if she weren't so weak. She falls. She would cry, but she can't spare the tears. She pulls herself to her feet and stumbles to the bed, kicking off her shoes so she can pull her feet up to sit cross-legged. Her hands fiddle with the frayed edge of her keffiyeh, and a strange, buzzing nervous energy fills her. Her body is clean and pure, and she can wait here, biding her time and saving her strength to lengthen her fast. She resolves that, when she is released, she will go straight to confession. Burning the flag wasn't a sin, and she no longer has any way of knowing if what she confesses will be between her, the priest, and God (not when IVI can ignore universal medical guidelines at their leisure), but it seems like the right thing to do. It's the right thing, when she may have put herself and so many of her friends in danger, and for what? For IVI to keep them in a row of hospital beds and give them nothing? It doesn't make sense, she thinks. That's not how this works. Staring cross-eyed at her discarded shoes, Nawal remembers a knotted rosary she had as a child, and she pulls out her right shoelace to make a replica. Her fingers shake as she pulls each knot tight. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. The Fast of the Virgin Mary is fifteen days long. Nawal hasn't even reached half that yet. Jesus of Nazareth walked in the desert for forty days and forty nights without food or water. Gandhi. Marion Dunlop. Khader Adnan. Nawal loses count of the number of times she says the rosary before she falls asleep. Her first meal comes at what she can only assume is dinner time. In a week, she has not been this close to a plate of food, and Nawal crawls towards it on her hands and knees. She would have guessed the sight of nourishment would be tempting, but the smell only makes her nauseous, and she collapses in a heap. If she had anything left to expel, she might have retched, but her insides are hollow. Even though she knows she has weeks left, she feels like her body is collapsing on itself. She is a flag with no wind. Nawal holds a single, over-boiled green bean between her fingers and considers eating it. She could go back to the protest, and no one would ever know the difference, but the cameras can see. The Virgin can see. She could destroy the entire tray with just a flick of her wrist, but she can't bring herself to do it. Strangely, the thought of the smell of burnt plastic deters her more than the prospect of adding to her sentence. She could stay here, starve here, never return to training -- but she remembers what it was like, those first few months. Could she really do it again, without even the mediocre comforts of food? As she's flushing the food down her cell's toilet, head resting on the white plastic seat, she thinks about what she told Edwin, so many months ago: if she ever found herself in solitary, it would mean either that she was very wrong or that she had done something very wrong. The green beans circle the drain, never quite disappearing down the pipe. Could it be both? |