The Question is an autobiographical piece that chronicles particular moments in the author’s life and the ordeals he faced in the “El-Biar” and “Lodi” camps. Alleg was essentially arrested on the 12th of June in 1957 by paratroopers. He was visiting someone who had already been arrested by the paratroopers.
In a sequence of shocking events, he was detained at a camp and tortured by the paratroopers. Despite all their efforts to intimidate him and get information out of him, he refused to surrender. He even survived waterboarding, one of the most dangerous forms of torture known today.
He suffered a myriad of other types of tortures, having survived all of them. He was put under severe duress. All of this as well as the pentothol he was later injected with failed to get him to talk. He was even threatened with execution, but he still refused to talk. They even tried to coax him by promising better treatment. Despite all of this, Alleg held his ground and survived to give a voice to countless who had suffered similar ordeals.
