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| EPISODE 3

Eating in my dreams, starving in prison

This episode presents a direct testimony about the experience of hunger inside prisons after October 7, and about how food became the central element of daily life in the cells. Omar recounts the impact of the starvation policy imposed on the prisoners, and how it shaped their dreams, their behavior, and their internal organization. From dreaming about food, to storing bread, to a rudimentary barter system, and finally to the tensions and solidarity among prisoners, a documentation of a life governed by severe scarcity, and of hunger turned into a tool of control and punishment.
03 December 2025
series [{"user_id":"3676","role":"Editorial support"},{"user_id":"1473","role":"Sound design"},{"user_id":"1408","role":"Graphic arts"}] https://inkyfada.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Assir-Episode-03-باكل-فالحلم،-و-بجوع-فالسجن.mp3 Podcast : Assir - Episode 03 : Manger en rêve, et être affamés en prison | بودكاست: "أسير" - الحلقة 03 : باكل في الحلم، وبجوع في السجن | Episode 03 : Eating in my dreams, starving in prison Episode 03 : Manger en rêve, et être affamés en prison | الحلقة 03 : باكل في الحلم، وبجوع في السجن | Episode 03 : Eating in my dreams, starving in prison
تروي هذه الحلقة شهادة مباشرة عن تجربة الجوع داخل السجون بعد 7 أكتوبر، وعن تحوّل الطعام إلى محور الحياة اليومية في الزنازين. يروي عمر تأثير سياسة التجويع التي فُرضت على الأسرى، وكيف انعكست على أحلامهم، وسلوكهم، وتنظيمهم الداخلي. من أحلام الطعام، إلى تخزين الخبز، إلى نظام مقايضة بدائي، وصولًا إلى التوترات والتضامن بين الأسرى، توثيق لحياة تُدار تحت ندرة قاسية، ولجوع أصبح أداة للسيطرة والعقاب.

This episode presents a direct testimony about the experience of hunger inside prisons after October 7, and about how food became the central element of daily life in the cells. Omar recounts the impact of the starvation policy imposed on the prisoners, and how it shaped their dreams, their behavior, and their internal organization. From dreaming about food, to storing bread, to a rudimentary barter system, and finally to the tensions and solidarity among prisoners, a documentation of a life governed by severe scarcity, and of hunger turned into a tool of control and punishment.

Pendant d’innombrables nuits, la nourriture fut le seul rêve possible : des plats imaginés, des bouchées volées dans le sommeil, des scènes entières où l’on mange pour retrouver un corps affamé. Cet épisode raconte comment la faim a été utilisée comme outil colonial, et comment une communauté minuscule derrière les barreaux a révélé, en même temps, sa fragilité, sa violence et sa capacité à aimer.
93424
Created by
Omar al Khatib
Editorial support
Manel Lassoued
Sound design
Oussema Gaidi
Graphic arts
Hathemi Smedhi

In this episode, Omar describes how hunger came to structure every aspect of life in prison. He recounts months of dreaming about food every night. Inside the cells, prisoners spent hours daydreaming about food: recipes, favorite dishes, restaurants from the outside. Not out of lightheartedness, but because their bodies were starved.

Yet solidarity proved stronger: thousands shared the little they had, convinced that an extra bite would not end the hunger, but could preserve dignity. Love, he says, survived the famine.

He ends with a family joke, a laugh that coexists with the memory of deprivation, and a reminder that hunger continues, inside the prisons and in Gaza itself.

Assir

Two years after October 7, 2023, Omar Al-Khatib, the Jerusalemite researcher and freed Palestinian detainee, returns to recount his sixteen-month experience in Israeli prisons.Through a five-episode documentary series, Omar documents the details of life behind bars, in conditions marked by hunger, illness, and isolation, with a profound sense of being cut off from the outside world.Between individual memory and collective experience, he traces the transformations experienced by Palestinian prisoners since the outbreak of the war on Gaza, in a time when the body and resistance have become two sides of the same struggle.

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Inkyfada Podcast is the first platform entirely dedicated to original Tunisian podcasts, and was conceived by Inkyfada media in collaboration with the in-house research and development laboratory, InkyLab.
Inkyfada joined the global podcast boom in 2017, when the team produced the first Tunisian audio documentary, diving deep into the belly of the El Kamour struggle taking place in the desert.
Since then, Inkyfada Podcast has produced a wide variety of documentaries, investigations, and podcast series, as well as articles accompanied by music; covering a multitude of contemporary issues in order to offer an immersive and alternative podcast experience.
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In addition to the permanent team, Inkyfada podcast works closely with various journalists, artists, illustrators, musicians and other content creators in order to diversify the platform and support artistic creativity.
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Additionally, Inkyfada Podcast uniquely offers subtitles in French, Arabic and English for all audio content, the majority of which is recorded in Tunisian or in the preferred language of the speaker in question.

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