Read Online Mortality by Christopher Hitchens - Free Book Online
Authors: Christopher Hitchens
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patients have exhausted all the possibilities of this feeble joke within the first few days of hearing it.) And almost at once I felt reassured in a different way, because that voice and that expression and that little pang meant that the pain would lift and my limbs straighten, and my day begin. And so it proved.
What if, though, as I once semiconsciously thought as I lay in similar distress, that friendly voice had had just the faintest hint of a taunt in it? What if it had been saying, in the merest possible way, “This won’t hurt— much ”? The whole balance of power would have been violently subverted, leaving me defenseless and petrified. I would also, instantly, have to wonder how long I could coexist with such a threat. The torturer’s intricate work would have begun.
I stress “intricate” because torture isn’t really a matter of sheer brute pain and force. As I found out when I was actually a torture victim, it is above all a matter of subtle calibration. “How are we doing today? Any discomfort ?” This is made additionally problematic by the tendency of modern medicine to fall back on the use of euphemistic words in any case, the polite evasion of the weak “discomfort” being one of the most salient of these. Another avenue of euphemism is laid out by the planned and coordinated approach; thus one might hear the question, “Have you met with our ‘pain management’ team yet?” Once you have heard it the wrong way, this can seem like an echo of the torturer’s practice, of showing to the victim the instruments that will be used upon him, or describing the range of techniques, and letting these threats do the main part of the job. (Galileo Galilei was allegedly exposed to this while undergoing the graduated pressure that eventually squeezed him to recant.)
I became a torture victim because I wanted the readers of Vanity Fair to have an idea of what was involved in the sordid and obscure controversy about “waterboarding.” And the only way left, or left untried, was to offer myself to this “procedure.” Obviously there were limits to the authenticity of its infliction—and I had to be in some sense “in control“ of the setting—but I was determined as far as possible to discover what a “waterboarded” person really undergoes. With the help of some very serious former Special Forces personnel, who knew that they were breaking American law on American soil, I arranged an appointment in the hills of North Carolina. Before we could even begin, I had signed a legal document indemnifying them in case they killed me by the infliction of physical or psychological trauma (a stronger word, there).
What happens, you may have been told, is a “simulation” of the sensation of drowning. Wrong. What happens is that you are slowly but inexorably drowned. And if at any point you manage to evade the deadly drip of water, your torturer will know. He or she will then make a minute but effective adjustment. When I interviewed my torturers later I was particularly interested in this aspect of matters. Oh yes, they said with mild bragging, we have lots of little moves and shakes and twists that will get the job done and not leave a mark. Again, you note this pride in technique and its almost humanist tone of professional expression. The language of torturers . . .
The reason I have decided to write about this in the present context is as follows. Ever since I composed and published the original essay, which was some time before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, I had been suffering from some form of post–torture stress that probably has yet to be classified or named. In my own case at any rate, it has to do with asphyxiation. And the “aspiration” of moisture can trigger a flood of panic and has become imbricated with the larger and deadlier symptoms of my various pneumonias. And every day, I am forced to prepare myself to be tube–fed through an apparatus of liquid nourishment, or to be
What if, though, as I once semiconsciously thought as I lay in similar distress, that friendly voice had had just the faintest hint of a taunt in it? What if it had been saying, in the merest possible way, “This won’t hurt— much ”? The whole balance of power would have been violently subverted, leaving me defenseless and petrified. I would also, instantly, have to wonder how long I could coexist with such a threat. The torturer’s intricate work would have begun.
I stress “intricate” because torture isn’t really a matter of sheer brute pain and force. As I found out when I was actually a torture victim, it is above all a matter of subtle calibration. “How are we doing today? Any discomfort ?” This is made additionally problematic by the tendency of modern medicine to fall back on the use of euphemistic words in any case, the polite evasion of the weak “discomfort” being one of the most salient of these. Another avenue of euphemism is laid out by the planned and coordinated approach; thus one might hear the question, “Have you met with our ‘pain management’ team yet?” Once you have heard it the wrong way, this can seem like an echo of the torturer’s practice, of showing to the victim the instruments that will be used upon him, or describing the range of techniques, and letting these threats do the main part of the job. (Galileo Galilei was allegedly exposed to this while undergoing the graduated pressure that eventually squeezed him to recant.)
I became a torture victim because I wanted the readers of Vanity Fair to have an idea of what was involved in the sordid and obscure controversy about “waterboarding.” And the only way left, or left untried, was to offer myself to this “procedure.” Obviously there were limits to the authenticity of its infliction—and I had to be in some sense “in control“ of the setting—but I was determined as far as possible to discover what a “waterboarded” person really undergoes. With the help of some very serious former Special Forces personnel, who knew that they were breaking American law on American soil, I arranged an appointment in the hills of North Carolina. Before we could even begin, I had signed a legal document indemnifying them in case they killed me by the infliction of physical or psychological trauma (a stronger word, there).
What happens, you may have been told, is a “simulation” of the sensation of drowning. Wrong. What happens is that you are slowly but inexorably drowned. And if at any point you manage to evade the deadly drip of water, your torturer will know. He or she will then make a minute but effective adjustment. When I interviewed my torturers later I was particularly interested in this aspect of matters. Oh yes, they said with mild bragging, we have lots of little moves and shakes and twists that will get the job done and not leave a mark. Again, you note this pride in technique and its almost humanist tone of professional expression. The language of torturers . . .
The reason I have decided to write about this in the present context is as follows. Ever since I composed and published the original essay, which was some time before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, I had been suffering from some form of post–torture stress that probably has yet to be classified or named. In my own case at any rate, it has to do with asphyxiation. And the “aspiration” of moisture can trigger a flood of panic and has become imbricated with the larger and deadlier symptoms of my various pneumonias. And every day, I am forced to prepare myself to be tube–fed through an apparatus of liquid nourishment, or to be
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