The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital, my wrist handcuffed to the bed. A soldier sat in a plastic chair reading a magazine. I must have mumbled, because she called a nurse. The rest was a blur. I was in constant strange and variable pain, at times sharp, then muddled by the drugs in a way that made my head feel thick, cloudy, and heavy to the point that moving it required herculean strength in my neck. I could not reposition my body either, because of the handcuffs. When I tried to pull out my IV line, they shackled the other wrist. Then I remembered that Sitti Wasfiyeh was dead. Or is she? Oh God, Bilal!

I don’t know how long I was in the hospital. They transferred me a few times to what I thought were other wards. When I finally regained my senses, I was in a prison clinic. I learned that I had suffered a head injury and fallen into a coma for two days.

“There’s no baby,” was the only response I could get to my repeated question. Suddenly my womb was a cavern, a carved-out emptiness in the place where love, life, hope, and future had been planted. Even now in the Cube, sometimes I hear baby cries echoing from my belly.

The initial interrogation was mild compared to what I expected. I was taken into a room, my head bandaged, various cuts and bruises at different stages of healing. I had a long red scar with stitches that spanned the side of my torso. The small room’s dingy walls were spattered with crimson specks. A used latex glove lay on the floor in a small puddle of dirty water. Two men in jeans sat me in a metal chair at a metal table. One wore a white T-shirt, the other a black one. Another man, in a suit, paced slowly around the room, all of us under the clink and hum of an old ceiling fan.

White T-shirt asked how I was feeling and whether I would like a cigarette. I said I didn’t smoke. “A glass of tea then?”

“No thank you,” I said.

“She’s polite, this one,” said Black T-shirt.

White T-shirt pretended to disapprove of Black T-shirt and said, “We have a lot of questions for you, Yaqoot. But first you have to tell us, where is Bilal?”

I saw that he immediately regretted asking me, because I must have smiled or somehow betrayed a sense of relief.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He tried but could not conceal his ire. Instead of getting information, he’d inadvertently told me Bilal had gotten away. All three men were rattled by my satisfaction. They unknowingly gave away one more bit of information.