Blue Lorries (10 page)

Chapter ten

The Panopticon

It is fitting for me to open this chapter by explaining the title, which may seem cryptic and elusive, as well as hard to pronounce.
Pan/opticon
is Greek, actually a compound word the first of whose two components means ‘all’ or ‘the whole of’, while the second means ‘vision’ or ‘observation’. The expression is a term used by the English thinker Jeremy Bentham, in a report on prison reform which he published at the end of the eighteenth century. Bentham suggested that prisons be constructed so as to allow segregation of the prisoners, and surveillance of all of them by one or several guards. It was an economic project that would ensure through architectural methods a reduction in the cost of consolidating power whose hold on a large number of individuals requires dealing with them collectively.

The proposed prison would have a circular building consisting of several levels. On each level would be a number of adjacent individual cells, and at its centre would be a guard tower assuring continuous surveillance of all the prisoners, for each cell would extend lengthwise to the innermost portion of the building, from the façade looking toward the core housing the tower, to the outside wall of the prison. Each cell would have two openings, the first an iron-barred aperture looking on to the tower, and the second a window in the opposite wall to allow light to penetrate the cell so that the prisoner would be visible throughout the day to the guard on duty in the tower. Bentham suggested that the windows of the tower, in contrast to the cell windows, be enclosed with wooden screens, enabling the guards to see without being seen. He likewise proposed a design that would lay out the tower rooms in something much like a small labyrinth, preventing the prisoners from knowing by either sight or sound the position of the guard or in which direction he was looking. Thus it was all the same whether the guard was present or absent, whether he was conducting surveillance or not, for the presence of the guard would be a reality that the prisoners would internalise – it would be foremost in their consciousness and govern their conduct over the course of each day.

Bentham was well aware of the psychological and economic value of his invention, which he described as ‘a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example’.

Bentham’s idea was regarded as a clear model for reform and was implemented in the construction of prisons, hospitals, schools, and factories; I encountered it in the course of reading another book sent to me by my mother when I was in the fourth year at university – Michel Foucault’s book
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

From Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’, Foucault borrowed a metaphorical representation of the relationship between power and the citizens in modern society, and how power permeates their lives, to the point where it becomes a part of their very being, ruling them from within as well as from without.

Foucault begins his book with pictures of torture from a period prior to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: flaying, burning, severing of limbs – mortification of the flesh before and after execution, always in front of a crowd of spectators. Then he proceeds to the new reform that conferred absolute control upon those in power without its having to resort to exhibiting horrific scenes of torture, and thus without the need for punishment to be publicly witnessed. Foucault elaborates on his explanation of this political mechanism, advanced by power, in order to command the bodies of the people and thus bring them into compliance and submissiveness so as to make use of their energy: a political economy whose sphere of operations is the body of the citizen, its instrument a set of methods that have been studied, calculated, and well-organised – capable, without manifest violence or perceptible terrorism, of carrying out its mission with increased precision and reduced expense. For among the advantages of this technology was the difficulty of tracing it to any single aspect of power, or any precise apparatus or specific organisation within the overall matrix, for it would permeate the social texture, distributing itself throughout and penetrating so deeply into its soil that it would become one of society’s ongoing systemic functions.

Because in Foucault’s view modern society is a thing of shackling and punishment, the Panopticon is a metaphor for this society and its various agencies. Foucault says, ‘Why should we be surprised that a prison resembles the factories, schools, military barracks, and hospitals – which all resemble prisons?’

I was drawn into the book, even though I didn’t understand everything it had to say. In later years I would reread it more than once. Then I sought out Bentham’s book, so as to acquaint myself with his project directly, and this, too, I would read and reread. Each time, I picked up on something I hadn’t absorbed with previous readings, pausing at a paragraph in one book or the other, and lifting it out of its context as if it were a picture intended specially for me that I had clipped from a newspaper or magazine and saved along with my other personal pictures.

This is not the place to discuss Foucault’s book or Bentham’s, to reiterate what they said, or to try to draw a connection between them and my situation. What I wanted to point to is that the concept of the Panopticon opened a door for me, inviting me to contemplate – obsessively at times, at others less so – the relationship between us and power, the role of authority in either subjugating dissenters, or destroying them whether wholly or in part, and the possibilities for escape from its grip through some form of resistance.

Setting aside Foucault and Bentham for the moment, I focus my attention on the suicide of two of my comrades and the untimely deaths of dozens more. I mean death, literally, fate and divine decree, as when a person becomes ill, his condition worsens and deteriorates, and so he dies; or he’s not ill, nor does he show any sign of infirmity, until suddenly, without warning, his heart stops and he dies without knowing what hit him. I mean also the other death, metaphorical death, in which the body and spirit dissolve. The common element between the two is its premature occurrence, before the time when it would be normal and expected, before the person reaches an advanced age – say, sixty or seventy or eighty years.

I’ll jump now to the case file – I mean two national security cases: felony case number one, 1973, the high court for national security, District of Wayli 131; and felony case number 113 for the year 1973, national security, Giza. I say ‘the file’ for short, because the papers that were filed exceeded two thousand pages and comprised numerous dossiers, including charges filed by the secret service police, information obtained by the secret service on the detainees. There was a complete dossier on each girl or boy, starting with full name – consisting of several parts: personal name, surname, and sometimes two middle names that identified the individual’s father and grandfather – place of residence, college, and class-year. This was followed by a catalogue of the individual’s activities, a summary of his or her ideas, the wall-journals he or she had helped to edit, and sometimes a transcript of things he or she had said, whether at a conference, in a meeting, or in a private conversation. There was a file consisting of statements by witnesses for the prosecution (secret service officers, workers at the university, sometimes even professors and students), and still another file, a longer one, containing the interrogation of the suspects. Finally there would be the order to transfer the case to the high court for national security. In the first of these two cases the transfer order comprised a list of 56 suspects (students, male and female, from Cairo, Ain Shams and Alexandria Universities, as well as one male student from Al-Azhar and a male and a female student from the American University, in addition to a journalist, a poet, and two workers). The second case included 46 suspects (the accusation fundamentally revolved around the formation of a group of supporters of the Palestinian revolution. More than a third of the suspects were students from the College of Engineering at Cairo University).

There were other files, of course, for similar cases from years before and after (1972, 1975, 1977 and so on), but I’m confining myself to the files from 1973 for the simple and practical reason that I got a photocopy of them from one of my comrades; the other reason is practical as well, namely that what I read in these files is a part of my own firsthand experience: the name Nada Abdel Qadir appears on three pages of the information gathered on her by the secret service in the dossier for the first case, and then the name recurs once again in the suspects’ statements, at the top of 25 pages recording statements she made thirty years ago in response to questions during the interrogations.

I leaf through the files, read parts of my comrades’ testimonies, skipping over other parts. I go back to what I’ve read before, read the dossier on Siham’s interrogation, and then read it yet a second time – or a third, or a seventh – the same week, or a month or a year later, or years later.

‘She was arrested, on the basis of a tip from the secret service, on 3 January 1973, after she left the University Dormitories, Cairo University. She was interrogated by the office of public prosecution for national security through the public prosecutor, Mr. Suhaib Hafez, on Thursday at one-thirty in the secret service headquarters, and the interrogation lasted until eight o’clock in the evening. The interrogator asked her . . .’

Then, ‘On the morning of Saturday 6 January 1973 the public prosecutor – the interrogator – returned to the secret service headquarters to continue the interrogation of the student Siham Saadeddin Sabri . . .’

And again, ‘On Monday morning, 8 January 1973, at the secret service headquarters, Mr. Suhaib Hafez continued interrogating the student . . .’

The papers for the case consisted of dozens of pages documenting Siham’s statements in a period of twenty hours spread over three days, on each of which she was transported in one of the secret service cars, from Qanatir Prison to the site of the interrogation at Lazoughli. She sat before the interrogator and talked, after which they would shackle her wrists once more, and she would leave the building and the car would bring her back to the prison. She went and returned, went and returned, went and returned.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I took part in the resistance to oppression and to the role of the university administration and the student unions in terrorising the students rather than representing and protecting them.’

‘Yes, I participated in the sit-in. I participated in the march. I participated in the conference. I participated in the activities of the supporters of the Palestinian revolution. I participated in the call for establishing committees for the defence of democracy.’

‘Yes, in my articles I criticised the authorities for their repressive actions and unjust policy in addressing national concerns.’

She says, ‘On 26 December 1972, while I was at the College of Engineering, some students from the Law School came and told me that the student union was holding a conference there, and that any student expressing a dissenting opinion was accused of communism, and was at risk of being attacked with knives. And in fact four students were wounded and taken to hospital. No one was interrogated about that.’

She says, ‘On 27 December 1972 the student union and the organisation for Islamic youth in support of the government tore down the wall-journals in the Law School and threatened the students with knives. In response to this provocation the students gathered for a rally, and it was my responsibility to move the rally out of the College of Engineering quickly, to avoid a dangerous riot. I stood in front of the crowd of students and started shouting, “To the courtyard, to Gamal Abdel Nasser Hall!” As the group was leaving the College of Engineering, the group hostile to us was calling out slogans against us and breaking the wooden rods used for hanging the magazines in order to use them against us as clubs. I decided to stay at my college to confront them. They surrounded me and said, “Get out of here, you Communist! If you don’t get out, we’ll pick you up and carry you out and beat you up. We don’t want you to open your mouth at this college, ever.” I sat down on the ground and said, ‘This is my college, and I’m not leaving it, and I
will
speak. You want to beat me up, carry on.” ’

The students had begun heading down the stairs, and they found a girl, by herself, sitting on the ground surrounded by youths threatening her with clubs; they found themselves in an embarrassing position, and began to disperse. No one was interrogated about that.

The prosecutor general’s office made no investigation into the perpetration of various types of brutality, such as the beating of students with truncheons and chains, on the day of the 3 January demonstration.

No investigation was made into the matter of the knife one of them was carrying and using to threaten the students.

There was no investigation into the injuries suffered by dozens of students, who were carried by their classmates on to the main campus of the university. Some of them had head injuries, and some were bleeding; others were choking from the effects of the tear-gas bombs, and still others were unconscious.

The prosecutor’s office made no investigation into what the security officers did when they smashed cars and shattered their windows with huge clubs, so that afterwards they could accuse the students of causing unrest.

There was no investigation of what one of the security men did when he dragged a handicapped student behind him, yanking him sharply along; the student, unable to keep up with his rapid pace, tripped, stumbled, and fell on the ground, while, from behind, soldiers beat and kicked him, shoving him and trying to force him to stand up and run – he would get up and make the attempt, but, hampered by his condition, would fall down again, and the kicking would resume.