Silenced Resistance

Sultana trembled. The two policemen had muscled her into the back of the ambulance. She looked down, horrified, at her own eye cupped in her right palm. Sultana tried to keep her balance, a struggle with cuffed wrists, as the wailing vehicle lurched and zigzagged through early evening traffic. Her fellow passengers, the police duo, were arguing over where to take her next. “Let’s go to el garaje,” said one, turning his head to spit on her. El garaje, Castilian for “the garage,” is the nickname given to a secret detention center in Marrakesh used specifically, Sultana tells me, for sexual forms of torture. “No. She’s going to the commission,” argued another, before bringing his truncheon down on the back of Sultana’s head once more.

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