9th December 2024 - The Unbearable Cold of the Cell

"The cold, always the cold. I talk about it every week, like an endless litany. I talk about it so much that people grow used to it, move on, and no longer even offer the scraps of support they gave a few weeks ago. But if I keep talking about it, it’s because it is killing my sister. You who are reading this, wrapped in your warm clothes, heated by your radiators, your stomachs full of warm, comforting food—remember Sonia’s torment. This torment she endures, not as punishment for a crime, but because she dared to utter a few words in a country where words have become a crime.

So, there it is. They’ve succeeded. Sonia has given up. She no longer gets up, she no longer washes herself. These faceless torturers, these figures frozen by hate, have gotten what they wanted. Sonia, who can no longer face the icy water, has relinquished this last refuge of dignity. Her hands, cracked by the cold, have turned away. Her fingers, swollen and red with pain, have become strangers to her. She suffers from rheumatism, a disease she had never known. They have transformed her hands, once skilled and full of life, into instruments of pain. And every morning, the icy water she can no longer touch becomes a torture that humiliates her as much as it destroys her. The cold has stripped her of everything: her cleanliness, her dignity, herself.

Sonia is imprisoned in a special wing of the prison. A prison within the prison. An isolated, deserted building where only a few women languish, cut off from the world, dying slowly from cold, loneliness, and silence. No sound, no warmth reaches this cursed place. Every wall oozes cruelty, every frozen corridor seems to whisper their condemnation. In this cell, in this building designed to break, Sonia is dying a slow death. Every drop of icy water that should cleanse her body has become an invisible blade tearing her apart. Sonia is no longer a woman; she has become prey. The filth surrounds her, scabies, lice... because that’s how they want it. Because her suffering pleases them.

Today, my father went to see her. Separated by an unyielding glass partition, he could only look at her, helpless, shattered by what he saw. Her hands, deformed and battered by the cold. Her features drawn with exhaustion. He saw what these torturers have done to his daughter. And he left more broken than ever. This 82-year-old man, who rises each morning to continue working with dignity, could do nothing to protect her. Nothing, except bear the weight of his sorrow in silence.

Sonia came to the visiting room, as always accompanied by a guard. A guard wrapped in a thick parka. Even they, these women carrying out orders, can no longer endure this icy cold. But they have the satisfaction of being able to warm themselves in their coats. Sonia, on the other hand, shivers in dirty clothes, on a dirty body. Sending out her laundry for cleaning is a right granted by law. But here, in this gulag run by Madame la Générale, that right is taken away. Why? Because this woman in uniform wants to see them bend. She wants to see Sonia and the other women hunched over basins of icy water, washing their clothes with bare hands in humiliation and suffering. Sonia no longer has the strength. Neither to wash her clothes nor to wash her body. So, she remains in this imposed filth. Not by choice, but because they want it that way. Because they take pleasure in seeing her sink.

And the food, cold as well, becomes another weapon. No hot meal to warm up, no moment to regain a semblance of life. Everything is designed to break, to crush, to kill slowly. Sonia dies a little more each day, not just from the cold, but from everything the cold represents: their hatred, their contempt, their will to reduce her to nothing.

She is angry. Angry at these men and women who punish not a crime, but a word, a truth, a free woman. But Sonia no longer screams. She no longer has the strength to scream. She can’t. She survives, each day, through the filth, the cold, the humiliations, but she no longer lives. They wanted to break her, and they are succeeding. Slowly, methodically, they are destroying everything that made her a fighter, a free soul.

So, I ask: why? Why doesn’t Sonia have the right to gloves? Why doesn’t she have the right to hot water in her cell to wash, to regain a bit of dignity? Why is the law trampled on to satisfy the cruelty of one woman? Why must Sonia, who has committed no crime, endure all this?

Today, we see men and women being released from Bashar al-Assad’s prisons. We cry when we see these broken beings, who spent years enduring torture, finally freed now that the dictator has fallen. Because all dictators fall one day. But remember, here, in our prisons, the same thing is happening. Not so far from you, a woman suffers. Women suffer. Men and women endure the same pain as those Syrian prisoners freed today.

Is it Madame la Générale, or is it this regime that has decided to kill Sonia Dahmani? That is my great question. But whoever it is, the day will come when they will have to answer questions and be held accountable.

You’ll ask me: why such cruelty? Because it’s their weapon. Because it’s not about punishing her, but breaking her. Sonia, this brilliant, beautiful, defiant woman, had to become something else. A shadow. A thing. A prisoner bent by filth, cold, hunger. A woman reduced to silence.

They have succeeded in breaking her physically, but they can never erase what she is, what she represents. One day, those who condemned her will have to explain why an innocent woman is dying of cold and filth in their hell. That day, they will have to look Sonia in the eyes—if she still has the strength to open her eyelids. That day, justice will return. And this regime, which made my sister a martyr, will finally have to answer.

But today, Sonia is cold. Today, she is dying of silence and ice. Today, my sister is a cry I scream to break this wall of indifference. Hear it. Feel it. And don’t forget it. Don’t forget Sonia. Don’t forget what they are doing to her. And never forget that one day, they will have to pay. This is not a threat; it’s a promise."

Written by my mother's sister Ramla Dahmani