A vivid "political" dream (nightmare?)

I had a weird dream last night, more like today morning.  I woke up all tired and two hours after I planned to , because of this (people talk about different cycles of sleep, etc. I wish there were ways to maximize the efficiency of sleep because I have noticed that sometimes I do wake up tired even if I sleep for eight hours straight. This is especially true when the brain is in overdrive dreaming up these fantastic things.)

The dream is set in Sri Lanka.  I don't know why I was there, maybe for a science conference. It was a large gathering of some sort and I knew some of the people too from school or work.  Many of us (actually a busload of us) wanted to see how life was for the people in the underground Tamil resistance movement (I know the LTTE has been officially obliterated, but this was just a dream) and how brutal the repression by the Rajapakse government had been.  This is how the dream begins, we are in military fatigues sitting in a bus, which is being driven through a jungle.  Before we can meet any LTTE or Tamil civilians we are intercepted by government forces (some mole has squeaked!)  and taken prisoner, to be returned in the same bus to Colombo.

This is where the real story begins. People are not sure how big a soup they are in.  Our actions could be interpreted as active collaboration with the LTTE and this would have serious consequences. Our best bet may be to project ourselves as neutral international observers with peaceful designs, and this keeps some of us hopeful and upbeat in the bus. We all start texting/calling up influential contacts on our phones.  After a lot of thought I decide to text my PhD adviser in the US, perhaps in the hope that all American citizens are powerful, but mainly because dreams can be ridiculous in places.

So anyway we are taken to this government facility,  the soldiers take turns to taunt us. We are in this line where one by one, we have to surrender our belongings (wallets, phones, ID) and sign in some consent form that's in Sinhalese and for all I might know I might be signing away my own death warrant.  The soldiers just bark at us to keep quiet when we try to ask questions and figure out what's going on.  When it's my turn to sign, a slim, young,  clerk at the desk with a kindly face whispers in my ear,  "Don't worry too much, they are going to let you go soon after some routine questioning and torture."  "What kind of torture?" I grow nervous.  The clerk replies with a sad smile, "It rarely ever gets to that, but the worst thing they might do is 'crushing'.  Sorry."   Before I can ask what 'crushing' means I have been pushed forward up the line.  The imagery the clerk has left me with is my testicles being poked and crushed by a hot pointy metal rod. Will they spare one at least seeing that I might like to beget children at some point?

How painful would this be? I have taken a few soccer balls and even a tennis ball down there and it was quite painful.  Will I even survive this shock and pain? Before my morbid ruminations could continue much further, we are led into a large room with long benches and chairs, that looked like the cross between a school classroom and the courtroom from Kafka's "Trial".

I have noticed that really adverse situations do not scare me very much : perhaps because I realize the fundamental meaningless-ness of life and wouldn't think much of dying suddenly.  Of course I am nervous and all that, but I take it a lot better than other people.  So I decide to cheer some of my peers up a little bit. I go and sit next to this woman I know from graduate school in one of these long schoolroom benches, and try to say something funny.  At this point, a young woman in a labcoat comes into the heavily guarded room,  stands near the front end of the room in the "teacher's place" and starts screaming   a polite and moralistic speech at us in a high-pitched voice through a megaphone.  "Ah so they start with the sweet-talking propaganda part!" I mutter to my neighbor who nods silently.  Suddenly there is a commotion, somebody in the front row has thrown her shoe at the propagandist woman. The guards rush in, grab her and take her away before she can aim the second shoe.  I look at my Iranian friend who is sitting a few places  to my right,  "Hey, isn't that your wife?!"  He looks worried and nods but doesn't really panic.  The Iranians are taking this a lot better than many others. They are probably used to this kind of state repression, and will respond aggressively whenever the chance comes.

The propagandist woman is replaced by a huge potbellied man with a huge mustache, who starts calling out our names one by one,  again in a ritualistic way that is strangely reminiscent of a school attendance call.  As a person's name is called, he is led up to the front by some soldiers.  They ask him a few questions which we can't hear very well, and decide to administer some "punishment".  For the first guy, it's caning on the bottom and for the second they hang a heavy looking metal frame on his neck.  They tighten some bolts and  turn a lever, and the guy turns blue from asphyxiation.  Just as he looks like he's about to collapse, they loosen up. This happens a few times.  All this is in full public view.  Luckily no one has been "crushed" yet, nor have they singled out the women for any kind of sexual harassment or humiliation.  Somehow this whole setting constantly reminded me of school, especially the very stiff upper lipped Anglicized school I went to as a kid, where children would be subjected to corporal punishment in front of the others to teach them a lesson.  Little did I know then that elementary schools and repressive governments are run on the same basic principles.

The tension continues to build, but before I get called up, I wake up sweating, unable to take the tension any more. I hope I wasn't subject to "crushing" afterwards. It sounds quite painful even if it were my little finger that were to be crushed.

Finally, I wonder what this dream is trying to tell me : I do often worry about political repression of all sorts, and did watch a video on the brutal repression of Sri Lankan Tamils by government forces sometime back. Maybe the prospect of moving to Israel is also playing at the back of my mind.  I have never been much of a political activist sort because I don't like to be a part of the herd, but this has also been possible because I have lived a largely peaceful, privileged life in a liberal, democratic setting for most of my life.  This dream perhaps is telling me how much I take that for granted.