Part 4/7 – Hbeich It Is

I’m now in the back seat of their car, what’s left of my T-shirt red with blood. We’re finally having a conversation but I still have doubts they’re truly from the police as they’re saying. I’m trying to behave as a good boy, and allude to the fact that I’m willing to give them “anything they want”, but not getting a clear answer.

I’m getting driven through Beirut, and I soon figure out I’m headed to the Hbeich detention center – the infamous Hbeich that I’d heard so many horrors about during college.

Hbeich's floor arrangement – Ground floor is 

'Storage house for the Drugs department’ (!!), 

'Mores' on 2nd, ‘Drugs’ on 4th, ‘Gambling’ on 5th,

‘Civil Matters' on 7th

Up two floors and into a hallway, they make me take off my pants and confiscate them (I later learned it’s because I could use the strings that serve as a belt to hurt myself). Then they make me strip off naked and do ten sit ups, in case I’m hiding something in there. Finally they push me into a cell where two other guys are asleep, in that unbreathable smell of urine.

Hours later, my head is still buried under my shirt as I’m desperately trying not to breath the smell. Occasionally I stick my nose through the tiny window opening in the door, which serves both as the only contact with the outside world (them) and the only air ventilation for the room.

I feel humiliated and miserable like never before, and still don’t realize what’s going on. It must be around 5 am when life takes yet another strike at me. Between two sobs, it sounds so quiet outside that I can hear the sound of my car coming out from the street: it’s this unmistakable noise that it’s been doing when I drive it at low speed.

Oh great. Now they’ve brought my car over. They’re gonna search it down. They’re gonna find the little piece of hashish I forgot in the hand compartment. I’m gonna be in for drugs too. I’m gonna be in months. Someone please help me die. I burst into tears.

--by GiL. Photo by GiB#2