Inside a police station

A few days ago, I ended up at a police station on the outskirts of Lahore. I was with 2 colleagues, Arshad and Zahid, and we were on our way to an appointment in a village outside of the city.  Arshad and Zahid do a lot of unpaid work in the community, mediating people's disputes in an attempt to keep police involvement to a minimum.

They wanted to stop on the way to our appointment, to 'help out' with one of these family disputes. I thought it would only be a small diversion and was interested to see inside a police station, so agreed.  An argument over a marriage had led to one family lodging a complaint against a young man for kidnap of their daughter. At this point the daughter and the young man were nowhere to be found.  Wisely, it turned out.
 
The man being detained was the uncle of the suspected kidnapper.  First, my colleagues attempted, in the courtyard of the police station, to reason with the family who had lodged the complaint.   Policemen and prisoners behind bars looked on.  I stood around with the sun in my eyes, not helping or even understanding much of what was being said.

We went from one policeman's 'office' to another. I was given prime position in each room, and a chair was always found for me, even if all the men stood.  This was a poor area, which was clear from the police, family and prisoners and I was the only woman to seen.

We went to one last office.  Here the young man’s uncle, who had been arrested, stood in front of a desk.  I was told that the man behind the desk was the chief investigator in the case.  He spent a lot of time looking importantly through the documents in front of him, asking the occasional question.  The uncle looked afraid and his eyes were bloodshot.  He had no shoes and he stood in dirty ripped clothes.  I thought, he’s upset about the situation and worried about his nephew.

Next to the chief investigator, another man sat sprawled across the chair and a desk.  He was huge in every sense of the word.  He held a large knife, the length from my elbow to my fingertip, which he used to clean his fingernails.  It went through my mind that this must be the man who tortures the prisoners when darkness falls and the police station is empty.  I'd read about the torture.  I knew that it is widespread.  This man looked like the most stereotypical torturer imaginable. And yet this thought in no way prepared me for what happened next.

The huge man stood up and stretched.  He moved forward and I moved my legs aside as I thought he wanted to get past.  But instead he launched himself at the uncle.  The uncle cried and pleaded.  He hit him over the head again and again, from every angle.  The uncle tried to cower from the blows, but he could not and so fell to the floor by my feet.  The policeman kicked him, once or maybe twice.  The uncle merely pleaded for it to stop.  I had stood up and was gasping for breath.  And yet I did nothing to intervene.

No-one else moved from their seats.  My two colleagues looked worried but calm. The other policemen laughed, as the uncle was dragged from the room by the huge policeman.  They thought that my reaction was funny and talked about the English seeing police interrogation.  Even I understood that.

And so I stayed in the room almost glued to the spot.  I could not meet their eyes.  And then I heard the screams.  Screams pierced the air, accompanied by the sound of blows with something heavy.  In shock, I managed to walk out in to the courtyard at this point.

The men outside were pacing.  Smiling slightly, but in a resigned not happy way.  When I asked what was going on, Arshad said only "this is the police ways". I almost managed to smoke a cigarette.  Through the screams, I lit my cigarette and smoked half of it before I felt I would retch. I don't know how long it went on for.  I had no sense of time.

Then I was being led into a large room, with Arshad saying, "you're about to see a real torture room," as if this were a joke, not a nightmare.  There were beds on the floor and half a dozen men - I can only assume prisoners - sat around.  The uncle was lying on the floor, blue and sobbing uncontrollably. Zahid  sat me down and helped the uncle into a sitting position, patting him on the shoulder and trying to comfort him.

Arshad brought water for the uncle and for me. How bizarre that my well-being was as much of a concern as that of the man who had been tortured.  Through sobs, the uncle read numbers out from a few crumpled sheets of paper, that he held in his shaking hands.  Zahid rang a few, whilst telling me that he was trying to locate the nephew.

On one number, he got through and was talking, when the huge torturer came back.  He stood over us for a minute, so close I could smell him.  I felt afraid and vulnerable.  I was suddenly fearful for my own safety.  Then he swooped in, causing me to jump back, and snatched the phone away.  He ended the call, saying that he would do this their way.  I realised then that he was enjoying it.  He wanted to show us that this was his domain and that we were as powerless as the cowering uncle. We may not be being tortured, but that was a matter of his choosing not ours.

With a few loud words, he stalked off, leaving Zahid to hold the uncle's hand, pat his shoulder and tell me that we were leaving.  I wanted to get out of there.  The stench was overpowering, and the suffering was too much to bear. I didn't understand enough of what was happening to be sure, so I extended hopefulness to believing that the matter was now solved.  This middle-aged uncle would be allowed to go home to his family and try to recover from all this.

This was not to be.  Zahid told me that the family wouldn't compromise, the uncle wouldn't reveal his nephew's whereabouts and the police would not allow us to be involved.  There was nothing more we could do.  "The police give him trouble now," Arshad sighed. To comfort me, he then said, don't worry the man will live, he'll get through it.  God will get him through.

We drove on to our next appointment.  Zahid and Arshad were subdued but not surprised.  I asked if they expected it.  Yes, they said, it could have been expected.  Along the road, we saw some cattle being led by iron rods.  Zahid said, "see, there is torture everywhere, even for the cows," and Arshad replied, as the car fell into a pot hole, "even the roads are torture," and they both laughed with great gusto at the joke.  Even I laughed, despite myself, and the normality of it felt a relief.

They do this work every day, dedicatedly working to help ordinary people in their very ordinary disputes.   I suppose they are used to days like this one, and cannot dwell on not being able to help one man, because tomorrow they will have to do this again, for someone else.

For me this day was different. Afterwards, I understood more the meaning of being in shock - I couldn't eat or sleep. I have reflected again and again on what I could have done differently. The truth is that I did not fully understand what was happening.  The language was wrong.  The laws unfamiliar and the events so unexpected.  But even if I had known, the system is such that I'm not sure what I could have done.

More than anything, I have been confronted with how far removed legal work is from the lives of ordinary people.  The two exist in different worlds.  How they can be reconciled, I don't know. 

For now, I must just be content with the news I heard today that the families have compromised, the uncle has been released and the couple will not be pursued.  For today, one family must be enough.