Musa

When the anger subsided

Author's name: Fares Saleh

A boy lay face down in a semi-dark, filthy cell, with a high ceiling and a single window with two steel bars, and polished, shiny walls that made the place feel colder than it was. The lighting was dim and yellow, emitting an incessant hiss from above. Two metal beds were stacked on top of each other on the right side, opposite a toilet on the left. On the wall below the window, someone had carved with stone the phrase “Knowledge is not power, knowledge is pain, how delicious ignorance is.” He was lying motionless, with bruises scattered all over his body in several visible places, and undoubtedly in others hidden by his clothes. His lip was split from being punched, but the blood had clotted around it, as if he had lost hope in a tissue to stop the flow. His eyes, although swollen, looked withered. He was undoubtedly in pain, but without a sound, and that was the worst kind of pain.