When, despite unbearable pain, you are interrogated – including in your cell – for dozens of hours without a break, and an authoritarian regime’s entire system of coercion, including its media, is trying to discredit and destroy you once and for all, prayer becomes the only intimate, trusting, and reassuring conversation that one can have. God, one realizes, is one’s only friend and only available family, because – deprived even of access to a trusted priest – there is no one else in whom to confide one’s worries and hopes.
当你强忍着巨大的痛楚承受连续数十个小时的审讯（即便在囚室内也不例外），而统治当局的整个强制系统，包括其下属媒体，都试图彻底抹黑和毁掉你的时候，祈祷就成为一个人唯一私密，可信和安心的交流方式。你会觉得上帝才是你唯一的朋友和家人，因为在连一个可信赖的牧师都被禁止接触的时候，没有人能聆听你的忧虑和希冀。