Is it true I’m still fine?! They tortured me, broke my arms, shattered my bones, tore out my heart and threw it from the fifth floor right before my very eyes—and I somehow didn’t die? They did all that, while I suffered, endured, and fought. And in the end, I lived? Ah … It truly is remarkable, baffling, my ability to endure pain. I’m not really one of those people who love life or cling to it, for what good will it do me now that my claws have been pulled out, my weapons dulled, and I’m thrown into the den of murderers?

“What concerns us is your partial memory loss, on account, we believe, of the frightful shock you received, and the way your friend was murdered right in front of you. The mind sometimes refuses to remember atrocities that are too great for it to bear, and it proclaims its inability to function like some sputtering machine that needs time and rest before it regains its health … ”

No, you man in white, I have not yet lost my memory. It is my memory that has lost me on account of my compulsion to sleep after what your assistant, the nurse, told me. You allow me not to know my name or what happened to me, and you interact with me on that basis. You do not realize that the malady lies in my fatal recalling of every detail and my brain’s refusal to take in the full picture. So here I am, not grasping realities except through successive glimpses of the horizon, momentary flashes that reveal disparate, disjointed things, before putting them back together again. I know perfectly well that my four limbs were tortured, that I was crucified upon them, but I’m not certain if the blows were applied to my skull or not. If I were beaten there, how is it that I remember the beating? Wouldn’t I have lost consciousness?

The doctor poses several questions, but I do not turn to face him. I do not hear you, doctor. And if I heard, I would not understand. If I understood, I would not reply. You know my story, no doubt, so why do you ask me to repeat it? You certainly know it. Otherwise, how would I have been brought here? Would you have been able to receive me, if you hadn’t been made aware of who I am? Did the neighbors notify Sa’id, just like they notified the police, who brought me to you? And will he come to my bedside to be present for my final agony?