Excerpt from ‘Huddud’s House,’ Named to Kirkus ‘Best of the Year’ List

Syrian author Fadi Azzam’s Huddud’s House, translated to English by Ghada Alatrash, was recently named one of the Best Books of 2024 by Kirkus Reviews.

You can see translator Ghada Alatrash talk about the novel, and its significance, and below, read an excerpt. Note that the contents, which take place in a prison, may be distressing.

Huddud’s House

By Fadi Azzam

Translated by Ghada Alatrash

CHAPTER 26

Anees

When he arrived at the security branch, they placed him in a large prison dormitory that had once been used as a shooting range. Odd machines were scattered everywhere, and the walls were plastered with wood, cork, and rubber to block the trainees’ bullets.

The dormitory seemed to be located two levels underground, or so he thought until he began to discover that things were more complicated than they had first appeared. He later learned of a secret floor (or more than one) in which several long-forgotten prisoners had been held for years. To the left of the entrance was a hall known as the Welcome Party, and to the right was a row of prison cells.

Approximately three hundred prisoners were detained in the former shooting range. Prisoners took turns sleeping in upright positions for their first six days and were collectively beaten with whips by the guards. Unable to escape the barrage of whips, they curled into fetal positions to protect their heads like a terrified herd facing a pack of famished wolves. Anees was tortured significantly less than the other prisoners, almost as if the guards were intentionally ignoring his presence. For the first week, he tried to hold himself together. It was nearly impossible to fall asleep amid the moaning of those with open wounds and broken ribs. One night, he was summoned by a guard. The guard led him to a room at the end of the dark corridor, where the investigator gestured for him to take a seat.

“As you’ve probably guessed, we’ve received orders that no one is to lay a hand on you. Consider this five-star treatment. But the time has come to talk.”

“And what exactly do you want from me?”
“You need to give us Samia.”
“But I don’t know where she is.”
“Surely you can get to her. We know that she’s in Ghouta. It should

be simple. Tonight, you will take a shower and sleep in a clean room. Then tomorrow morning you will find a way to communicate with her. You have three days. If you hand her over to us you’ll be free to go, untouched, and allowed to return to London. And if you don’t? You will regret the day your mother gave birth to you.”

“And how will you guarantee that I’ll actually leave this place after handing her to you?” he asked, trying to sound confident. The investi- gator exploded in his face, shouting to the guard, “Take this animal to dormitory six. It’s obvious that being good to him is a waste of time.”

“I would like to speak with the British Embassy.”

“Embassy, you said? You filthy, dirty agent. Do you think Scotland Yard? You asshole. You dog. Take him and let him talk to the Ambassador.” It was his first step into hell and its inhabitants. He was taken to the torture room. They stripped him naked, tied his hands together, and drew him up to the ceiling with a pulley like a lump of hanging flesh. His feet did not touch the ground. The officer called in three guards and said, “All of you. Listen to me very well. This is an enemy of our homeland, a traitor, and an agent working for British Intelligence. We caught him planting explosives in the market. I want the three of you to show me which of you loves our President the most. Whoever hits him for the longest time, without his hands growing tired, will be the winner. The one who stops first will be denied his employee-leave. And, the one who lasts the longest will have two nights off. Are you ready? One. Two. Three.”

The three contestants started beating him savagely, with no mercy. They were set on destroying the piece of meat hanging in front of them. After a few minutes, he lost all sensation. The cables fell on his body, leaving marks on his back, stomach, buttocks, and legs. Each time he passed out, they woke him up with a spurt of cold water.

He looked at the three of them. They were exhausted, and finally one of them collapsed panting.

The officer untied him. He fell to the ground like a piece of meat. One of the jailors dragged him to his feet, following orders to “Take this pig away.”

They threw him into an already crowded cell. He developed a fever and was delusional, confused about the time and place. He imagined that he was in his home in London heading towards the plush sofa that overlooked a garden highlighted with shades of enchanting green. He tried to reach the couch but was unable. All he wanted was to rest and contemplate the beautiful view. But something always got in his way, hindered him as if he were walking in a sticky muddy cesspit. Soon he came to see that he was actually trampling upon the bodies lined up inside the overcrowded cell. As two men struggled to hold him down, every step he took opened someone’s wound in a blinding darkness and unleashed shrieks from the wounded and the broken. He was completely disoriented, but it still took great effort to keep him pinned to the floor. One of the prisoners began to recite Quranic verses in his ears, in steady rhythmic whispers, and he was gradually brought back to reality. He had become part of a mass of carnage, sharing a similar fate, pains, and stenches, and faint glimmers of hope.

He was amazed to find God so close after he had built walls of steel to prevent the idea of God from ever coming near him. The pain that was pulsating in every pore of his paralyzed body brought him to regain full consciousness. The pain was his sign of being alive. He felt a warm fluid streaming between his thighs and was overcome with a feeling of intense pity for himself.

As he was having these revelations amongst the emasculated, helpless and numb bodies around him, a man stood up on the opposite corner and yelled, “Where is God! Where is He? Fuck you all. God Damn you all.” He then tried to run but stumbled on the piled bodies, urinating on himself. Fearing that the jailer might hear him and punish the entire group, the prisoners tried to hold the man down and cover his mouth.

Someone nearby whispered, “Another one has lost it.”

The next morning, a sheikh was dragged away from the “extermina- tion chamber” to the “numbers” chamber where he would most likely end up tortured to death, with a number stuck to his forehead, another photo to add to the archive. Finally, his body would be transferred to a mass grave in an unknown location.

The pungent stench and nauseating sight was reverse torture for the guard. As the jailer opened the door, he was covered his nose with a rag and tried to avoid touching anyone. The bodies would be taken out daily, three or four at a time and placed on a blanket. The corpses looked like heaps of human flesh covered with abscesses and sores. The prisoners turned their heads to the wall as they moved the bodies. Once a number had been placed on the forehead of each corpse, prisoners dragged the bodies to the basement and piled them in a storage space; a funeral cargo truck would later transport them to a burial site. Ironically, this process provided the prisoners with their only chance to leave the dormitory and possibly find something along the way that might prove useful later.

Dr. Anees was transferred to an underground dormitory. A door to the lower floor was pushed open and he was dragged down the stairs. One of the officers, who was short-tempered and intent on getting Anees inside as quickly as possible, slammed the door shut with his baton. Anything to get away from those on the other side, who had been forgot- ten in a horrifying darkness where time was stuck and meaning absent. A door was opened—they pushed him inside and quickly closed it, their feet racing to leave. He was alone, lying at the closed door, suspended in a meaningless, gelatinous void.

Underneath a pale-yellow lightbulb covered with a layer of soot from the prisoners’ rotten breaths, he caught glimpses of four ghost-like figures covered in tattered rags, each one curled up in a corner of the room. They looked frightened, staring blankly at the newcomer as if he had arrived from another planet or the Stone Age. Three of them had hair that hung down onto their beards, their bodies dried with the fermentation of time and decay. One of them had a scalp that was ravaged by alopecia, which left him with only a few strands of hair to dangle over his sunken face. His big nose and ears made him look like an extraterrestrial.

“Hello.” The stray word came out of Anees’s mouth, wandered around the place, and returned to him without being detected by any- one. There was only the sound of breathing in all the four corners. He stepped forward. The room was no larger than three square meters, but in contrast to what was happening above them, it seemed as if he were in a vast ocean.

Exhausted, he took three steps backward, turned around, and leaned his back against the wall; his body slid to the floor. A few hours later, he woke up and found himself in the same curled-up position as his co-pris- oners, his hands wrapped around his knees. He stared at the door trying to avoid the sight of the half-naked creatures whose rhythmic humming signaled their acceptance of the new guest. Soon the room was silent, disrupted only by raspy breaths.

The first day in the dormitory passed; then the first week; then a month went by with no interruptions except for when the door opened once a day, and a tray of food was placed on the floor with four loaves of bread and a bowl of broth. One of the inhabitants, who looked like a ghost crawling on his hands and knees, took his loaf of bread, returned to his designated corner and began to slowly chew his food. The other men followed and left Anees his portion. Following the same procedure, Dr. Anees fetched his portion of the food. He moved slowly and was careful not to disrupt the order of the place or cause any commotion that might provoke someone from the upper floor to have him transferred back.

The days passed monotonously. Aside from the daily meal, the only interruption to the austere routine was the defecation that took place in a hole next to the door, followed by the creaking of the water faucet. Each drop of water was a nerve-wracking reminder of the passing of time. Nothing was more brutal and terrifying for a prisoner than being reminded of time.

One day, to the rhythm of water dripping from the faucet nozzle, a rusted voice came from the right corner of the room as if from another world and asked him a single question, “Has Saddam Hussein left Kuwait yet?”

Anees only wished that he could see Sami. He realized that their names shared the same root: Sami and Samia. He contemplated how in life so many obvious signs often go unnoticed. He longed for his home in Willesden. He missed his work. He thought of his cold and steadfast London, a place that he never really cared for but was now the only place in the world he wished to be.

At dawn, before the dawn prayer, he was summoned by the guard. The guard’s voice was calm, free of insults. Walking with great difficulty, he entered the interrogation room located at the end of the hallway. The investigator composedly asked him to sit and ordered a cup of tea for him, a bottle of water, and a plate of fruit, with a few apples, oranges, and bananas.

He couldn’t believe his eyes, for this humble meal looked to him like a heavenly feast. Hesitantly, he studied the face of the officer. He looked familiar. It wasn’t long before things became clear.

“The last thing I would have ever expected was to see you here!” said the officer, who then reminded Dr. Anees that they had met years ago in London when he performed an open-heart surgery on his wife.

“I remember you,” Dr. Anees replied coldly, suspecting that he was being set up.

He didn’t care to hear the officer’s praise, nor did he hope for any potential promises this officer might make in light of his rank as a physi- cian. Satisfying his immense hunger was his sole focus in that moment. Expecting the worst, he was afraid to reach for anything. He worried a trap was being set for him. The officer quickly dispelled these doubts, saying, “I will leave you alone for ten minutes. Get comfortable and we will talk when I return.”

He was left with such unexpected bliss, and when the officer returned, Anees’s feast-engorged stomach was audibly expressing its gratitude.

“Dr. Anees. As of tomorrow, you will be moved to another location. This is no place for you. I don’t even want you to return to your dormitory tonight.”

Anees suddenly felt an urge to say goodbye to those he would be leav- ing behind in this living hell. In that moment, it was difficult to imagine being without them. He kept his thoughts to himself, afraid of this true desire, and decided to focus on the lifeline that shined down upon him from the abyss of oblivion.

“You will be taken to a better place,” the ambivalent officer officious- ly continued. “I don’t have any details, but I do know that some people in power are pulling for you.”

He knew not to argue or ask any questions, to listen quietly, not to build hopes, and to expect the worst.

“First, you will need to recover, and soon all will be well.”

With the little energy he had left, he collected himself and asked hesitantly, “Will I be released?”

Signs of displeasure appeared on the officer’s face. “No Doctor,” he said. “Your crime is significant and the standard punishment is for you to rot to death here. The only thing I can do for you is to spare you from dying here or at least from dying now. You will shower tonight, and tomorrow you will be seen by the prison’s physician. After a few days, you will be transferred from here. This is the most I can do for you.”

“Where will I be transferred?”

“To a much better place. But if you do something stupid, which I don’t think you will, then you will return to this place. And if this hap- pens, then I can assure you that neither I nor anyone else will be able to do anything for you.”

Here, Dr. Anees played the one card he had left. “Listen. I remember you clearly, when I left the surgery room and informed you that your wife’s surgery was successful. I remember your tears, gratitude, and ap- preciation. I remember that you told me that I could ask you for anything. Today, the only thing I am asking for is that you tell me where I will be transferred to.”

The officer paced around the room several times and answered in a different tone, one that betrayed his weakness and fear. “You will be in a place that I know nothing about except that it is a thousand times better than this place. Ever since I found out that you were here, I have been thinking of a way to get you out. Perhaps you are not going to like where you will be, and you may object. But at least I will have cleared my conscience.

“Look, Doctor. We are no longer one people. We are now at war. You are either the killer or the killed. I need to free myself from the guilt of not helping you so that I can concentrate on my work again. Since I discovered that you were here, I haven’t been able to focus on anything. Although I have been trained to separate work from my personal life, your presence here hurts me. Each time I go home and see my wife and children, I feel a sense of gratitude towards you. Where you will be going is not exactly the perfect place, and I know very little about it. But I’ve done the impossible to have you transferred there. I cannot do anything else. This will make us even, Doc.” He rang the bell and the guard came.

“Take the doctor to my room, and let him take a shower and give him new clothes.”

Filled with loathing and disgust, the guard led him to the room and said, “You are all motherfuckers.” He slammed the door and left.

It was his first night in weeks to sleep in a bed with clean clothes on. It felt unreal. He did not know what to do with the space. Despite its small size, the room seemed vast. He felt lost and didn’t know how to sit. The bed morphed into a mattress with spiky nails digging into his pores. It was another kind of torture, a ravaging torture, for he couldn’t bear to think of those who were lying only a few meters below him in their cells. He left the bed and curled up into a corner that was the size of one and a half floor tiles. Only then was he able to fall asleep.

Fadi Azzam was born in 1973 in Swaida, Southern Syria. He is an acclaimed freelance journalist and the author of Thahtaniat, a collection of short stories.

Ghada Alatrash, PhD, is an assistant professor at the School of Critical and Creative Studies at Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Canada. She holds a PhD in Educational Research: Languages and Diversity from the Werklund School of Education, the University of Calgary, and a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Oklahoma. Her current research speaks to Syrian art and creative expression as resistance to oppression and dictatorship.

This excerpt appears with the permission of Interlink Books; you can get a copy of the novel from them at their website.

Also read: ‘Today, We Need to Write at Least a Thousand Syrian Novels,’ a conversation with Alatrash and Azzam