The Prison Braek

The Prison Break 

writing on the wall

Mahmoud was the one who lifted the cover under the bath sink in the prison room. He discovered the weakness in the prison system, and saw the pit between the prison pillars.

Mahmoud and his prison mates used any tool they could get hold of, to hollow the pit. They used plates, aluminum trays, or any small pieces of metal they found as they were digging. They tactfully dumped the gouged out soil in the prison sewage system, or in the prison trash cans or around the prison spaces.

After six months of excavating, and of carving their bodies thin enough to fit their path for freedom, they escaped. Like a grand Hollywood movie, they escaped their imprisonment from one of the most heavily secured Israeli prisons.

On the sixth of September, at 1:30 after midnight, six Palestinian prisoners escaped their prison cell. They fled separately.

The next morning when the riveting news was out, there was a thrill in the air.  Emotions of pride and triumph, which for long Palestinians have been eager to feel, were celebrated. A theatrical, action-packed, and a stimulating film was imagined in the collective psyche. Songs were sung, memes were drawn, and fictitious stories of spoons as the tool used for digging were made up. Everyone saw them as heroes, who might have fled the country. Illusions of glory wrapped our minds.

The euphoria lasted only four days. On the tenth of September, two prisoners were arrested, Mahmoud was one of them. Brushstrokes of fear and despair crafted his face. He seemed terrified of the physical pain of torture and the hopelessness of ever having a chance to live freely in spite of a decision he made when he was very young. In a few days, the rest of the prisoners were also captured.

However, the discrepancy between the collectively constructed narrative of heroism and the simple truth is usually monumental. The incongruous between the imaginary and the real can be heart breaking. A key component in the story-making of heroes usually misses an element that unites us. It is that element which in the disturbing journey of disillusionment can be compelling, it is our human-ness.    

The prison break can be considered a very inspiring story. It needed discipline, organization, cooperation, secrecy, bravery, and will, but without that ‘element’ it would have never been successfully executed.  And the drive for Mahmoud was simply that.

Mahmoud for twenty-five years in prison longed for seeing his ageing mother, he yearned to embrace her one final time. His mother loved honey. He bought her a jar of honey he wished to give her. He wanted to kiss his niece that gave him the pink flowered socks when he was arrested, which he wore in his escape and walked the coastal fields with.  He reassured his mom, in a letter he wrote to her, that finally after twenty-five years he ate his favorite fruit, guava, from the fields. He also ate pomegranate and prickly pear; his two other favorite fruit.

It is those simple actions that in the end summarize the human story. In this incident, it was a superb story of a prison break, but great deeds in general have roots in the souls that are in touch with the human story.