Boreal

Sohrab

The Rape of P...

They brought her into the room where Sohrab had endured so much pain, but nothing like the pain he was about to experience.

The guards stripped her of most of her clothing then four of them held her spread eagle on the table in the middle of room while a fifth raped her. It went on for what seemed like forever, each man taking his turn holding her down and raping her.

Sohrab was handcuffed to the same chair he sat in when they placed his hands in the boiling water then the cold, then the hot again... The young woman on the table was being raped for his benefit.

The guards' preferred victims were virgins who were raped before their scheduled execution because the shooting or hanging of virgins might displease Allah who placed a high value on unmarried women and girls who never had sex.

The young woman being raped was not a virgin; she was his beloved P…

She stared at him the whole time saying nothing, feeling nothing. The stare said it all.

The above is how I imagine the rape of P… Sohrab will only say she was repeatedly raped in front of him, to get him to talk, before he gets all choked up and does not want to remember anymore.

The guards had progress from brutality to the depth of immorality under the direction of a man who considered himself civilized.

His torturer did not take part in the assault. His torturer saw himself as a "learned" man, a man of letters who liked to talk philosophy with Sohrab even as he went about his gruesome painful business.

The Regime had gotten more sophisticated in the way it got people to talk. His new torturer did not look exclusively to Muhammad for ways to inflict pain to get prisoners to divulge what they knew, as did the people he replaced, who only knew the Koran and the ways of the Prophet.

He told Sohrab he would stop the rape of P… if he told him want he wanted to hear. Sohrab did not say a word. He was saving both his and her life.

It was years before Sohrab would see his beloved P… again. They both thought the other was dead.

P... was eventually released from prison and immigrated to Sweden. She came to visit him in Canada for a few days never to return.

How do you start over after what they had experienced in prison? They didn’t, and to this day for Sohrab she is the wound that will not heal.

Bernard P. December 2, 2010