Those in Peril (Unlocked) (31 page)

‘It is Friday so there are very many people in the town to attend mosque and to watch the public punishment,’ Tariq told him.

‘Of course. I had forgotten what day it is. But that’s not a bad thing. We will be far less noticeable in a large crowd.’

‘I overheard a group of men discussing the death of the Sheikh and the fighting in the desert. The new Sheikh is Adam Tippoo Tip and he has placed a bounty of five thousand dollars on our heads.’ Hector grunted. That was an enormous sum of money in this part of the world and he realized that there would be thousands of eyes looking out for them, hoping to earn it.

While they were talking, Daliyah took Hazel and Cayla behind the truck and showed them how to wear the black full-length abaya and burqa that covered them from head to foot. The wearer was completely veiled and she looked out upon the world through a mesh screen. Daliyah made Hazel and Cayla shed their unmistakably western footwear. Both of them slipped on the leather sandals which she had brought for them. The men were still squatting in a circle engrossed in deep discussion, so once they were fully dressed Daliyah showed them how to paint their hands and feet with red henna. This was in accordance with local custom and it would cover their pale skin. In the circle of men Hector asked Tariq if he had been able to find other transport.

‘Yes, I have found a man who will sell us a bus which will seat forty passengers. He says it is in good running condition, but he wants five hundred dollars for it.’

‘That’s promising. If he had asked fifty dollars I would worry somewhat. Did he let you see it?’ Tariq shook his head.

‘Daliyah knows him and she thinks he is honest. He says his son will bring the bus to town this afternoon. He also has as many AK-47s as we want to buy and much ammo. He is asking fifty dollars each for them. I told him we needed six.’ Tariq grinned. ‘I think he will take three hundred dollars for the bus, and another two hundred for the guns and five hundred rounds of ammo. They are probably not Russian anyway, but locally made.’

‘And the barrels skilfully crafted to burst with the first shot and blow the proud new owner’s head off,’ Hector said with a grunt. ‘But we can’t walk around toting state-of-the-art Beretta SC 70/90s, like these.’ He tapped the butt of the rifle that lay across his lap. ‘We will have to bury them as a fallback and abandon them and the Mercedes when we go.’

While the men were talking Daliyah gave the two women a crash course in correct female behaviour when in the presence of strangers, and Hector summed it up for them when he inspected Hazel and Cayla before they set off for the village.

‘Walk at least ten paces behind your male escort. Keep your face covered and your eyes downcast. Don’t speak. Pretend that you just don’t exist.’ He grinned at Cayla. ‘The same way that you always behave, Miss Bannock.’ She lifted the hood of her burqa and stuck her tongue out at him. Hazel marvelled at the relationship the two of them had established in such a short time. It was so obvious that Cayla was already looking on him as a father figure, and at the same time there was a real but easy friendship growing up between them.

I’ll be damned if he is not going to be able to manage her as nobody else has ever been able to do before
, she mused.
This man is a creature of many skills and virtues.
She watched them both fondly, until Hector turned his attention to her.

‘Hazel, not many ladies in this neck of the woods wear gold Patek Philippe watches. Hide it please.’

‘You’re wearing a Rolex Submariner,’ she challenged him.

‘In this neck of the woods every buck worth his salt sports a genuine-fake Bangladesh-made Rolex selling for twenty-five dollars a pop in the nearest bazaar. Impossible to tell them from the original. As you have remarked, I conform to custom very nicely.’

When they set off for the town, Tariq took the lead and the other men came close behind him. Hector walked in the middle of the party so as not to draw undue attention to himself. He had used a stick of charcoal to darken his beard, but he still kept the lower half of his face covered. The three women followed them decorously. The outskirts of the village were almost deserted with just a few cur dogs lazing in the shade and naked brown toddlers playing in the rubbish heaps that choked the narrow lanes, but as they approached the centre the crowds coalesced around them until they were jostled and bumped at almost every step. Soon they found themselves being carried along with the throng, and Hector was worried that the women would be separated from him or from each other. He glanced back surreptitiously and was relieved to see that Hazel had made them hold hands to keep them together in a tight bunch. They reached the opening to a deserted side alley and Hector whispered to Tariq to take this route to get them out of the press. But when they tried to leave the stream of humanity their way was immediately blocked by rifle-wielding militia who shouted and pushed them back into the crowd.

‘Public punishment in the square in front of the mosque. Everybody must be there to witness it.’

‘I did not expect this.’ Hector was appalled when he realized the effect this might have on Hazel and Cayla if they were forced to watch the horror of radical Sharia law in practice. ‘I have to warn them.’ He eased his way back through the throng until he was walking a few paces behind Hazel. He pitched his voice low, and hoped that the babble of Arabic all around them would cover the fact that he was speaking English.

‘Don’t look around at me, my love. Nod if you understand me.’ She nodded. ‘We are going to be forced to watch something so horrible that there are no words to describe it. You must be strong. Look after Cayla. She must try not to show any sign of distress. She must not cry out in protest, or in any other way draw attention to herself. Get her to close her eyes or cover her face with her veil, but she must remain still and silent. Do you understand?’ Hazel nodded again but uncertainly. He wanted to hug her or at least squeeze her hand, but he left her and went back to join his men.

The crowd debouched onto a dusty square in front of a green-painted mosque, by far the grandest edifice in the town. As they entered the square the armed religious guardians separated the men from the women. The men squatted in the front ranks facing the sunbaked open ground in the centre. The women were directed to the very back rows where they knelt and carefully covered their faces. A big jihadist with a potbelly and a curling black beard strutted up and down in front of them and harangued them through a loudhailer. His voice boomed and echoed off the walls so that it was almost unintelligible. The red dust was stirred up by the shuffling sandalled feet, and the heat was trapped by the surrounding buildings. Large bluebottle flies swarmed over everything, crawling on the faces and trying to creep into the mouths and eyes of the crowd. A heavily pregnant woman who was waddling along just ahead of Hector staggered and collapsed in a dead faint. The guardians dragged her to the nearest wall and propped her against it amongst the women. They would not allow her distraught husband to enter the ranks of seated women to go to her succour.

Assembling the entire population of the town and the surrounding district in the segregated ranks took almost two hours; only then could the administering of punishment begin. At last, accompanied by four lesser clerics, the Mullah emerged from the mosque and took over the loudhailer from the chief jihadist, addressing the spectators in stentorian tones.

‘In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful,’ he declaimed, his amplified voice booming around the square. ‘All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. My brothers in Islam, we are gathered here to witness punishment carried out in the name of Allah and by the power of his holy Sharia laws. Let all the virtuous know of his mercy and justice, and let the wrongdoers beware.’ The first criminal was dragged forward by two jihadists. He was a starveling about eight years of age wearing only a brief loincloth. His limbs were thin as dried maize stalks, and his ribs showed clearly through his dusty skin. He was sobbing and wriggling in the grip of his gaolers. Tears cut runnels through the dust and dirt that covered his face. The Mullah introduced him to the crowds.

‘This miscreant stole a loaf of bread from a stall in the market place. The Koran has instructed us that the penalty for theft is the amputation of the arms.’ The crowd showed their approval with cries of ‘God is Great!’ and ‘There is no other God but God!’

The Mullah held up his hand to silence them, then continued with his diatribe. ‘Allah, in his wisdom and compassion, has decreed that the punishment of amputation may be mitigated in certain circumstances. After learned debate with my fellows we have decided that in this case the arms shall not be severed entirely.’ He shouted an order to the guardians of the mosque and after some delay one of them drove a four-ton dump-truck into the square. The vehicle was loaded high with quarried grey stones, each one about the size of a baseball. When he saw it the child wailed shrilly and with a loud spluttering sound he soiled his already grubby loincloth. The crowd roared with laughter when they saw the extent of his terror.

The guards laid the struggling child on his stomach, and two of them pinioned him while a third slipped a rawhide noose over his wrists and pulled both his arms straight out in front of him, stretching him along the ground. The Mullah gave a signal to the driver of the truck and he rolled the vehicle forward slowly towards the boy’s prostrate form. Another jihadist guided the driver with hand signals until the offside front wheel was lined up with the elbows of the child’s outstretched arms, then the driver inched forward.

The boy’s entire body convulsed and he squealed like a piglet having its throat cut, but the sound of his agony could not blot out the sound of crackling bone as both his arms were crushed under the immense weight of the heavily laden truck’s tyre. The guardians released him, but the child lay racked by convulsions that contorted his entire body. One of the men hoisted him to his feet and shoved him in the direction of a side alley. The child no longer had control of his mutilated arms and they swung loosely at his sides. As he tottered towards the alley the limbs elongated grotesquely as the muscles no longer held together by bone stretched, until the boy’s fingers almost dragged upon the ground.

‘Allah in his wisdom and mercy has spared the arms of the thief,’ the Mullah intoned sonorously and the watchers shouted in chorus, ‘Allah is merciful! Allah is great!’

The next criminals were led into the square with their arms bound behind them with rawhide ropes. They were two men, one of whom was middle-aged, but the second was a strikingly beautiful youth with a graceful and effeminate gait. An executioner walked behind each prisoner. They carried curved Arabian scimitars at the present position in front of them.

‘These base creatures are guilty of the most perverse and unnatural crime against God, and against all devout believers,’ bellowed the Mullah. ‘They have committed the vile sin of Lot, coming upon each other as man does to woman, one with the other. Four sound and reliable witnesses have given evidence as to their guilt. The sentence of this Sharia Court is that they both be put to death by beheading.’ The watching crowds shouted their approbation and praised Allah for his wisdom and protection from evil.

In the centre of the square the two prisoners were forced to kneel facing each other so that they could look into each other’s face and see the guilt there. The crowd was still and tense with anticipation. Gazing into his lover’s face, suddenly the youth cried aloud in a voice that rang around the square, ‘My love for you surpasses my love for Allah!’

The Mullah bellowed like a wounded bull, ‘Strike! Strike off the blasphemer’s head!’

The executioner standing over him lifted the scimitar with both hands and swung it down in a glittering arc. The youth’s head sprang from his shoulders and for a moment a scarlet fountain pumped from the stump of the neck. Then the headless body fell forward. The older man wailed with grief, and threw himself forward onto his lover’s corpse. Two of the guardians seized him by the shoulders and lifted him back onto his knees.

‘Strike!’ howled the Mullah. The executioner swung the blade, and the headless man fell forward on top of the first corpse, united with his lover in death. The watchers screamed with excitement and exalted the name of Allah and his Messenger. Some of the women succumbed to the heat and the thrill of blood, and fainted away where they sat. They were left to recover without succour or interference from any of the other members of the crowd. Hector glanced around and saw that Cayla was one of those who seemed overcome. He suspected that Hazel had ordered her to feign unconsciousness to spare her further exposure to the horrors.

The last person to enter the punishment ground was a woman. Because of the long abaya and the full black veil it was difficult to judge her age; however, under her robe she moved like a young girl, supple and willowy. She knelt before the Mullah and hung her head with an air of total resignation.

‘This married woman is accused by her husband and four reliable witnesses of the mortal sin of adultery. Her accomplice has admitted his guilt and has already received one hundred strokes with a heavy cane. This Sharia Court, in the infallible wisdom bestowed upon its members by Allah and his Messenger, has condemned the woman to death by stoning.’

The Mullah signalled to one of the mosque guardians and again the big dump-truck came forward. Slowly it drove along the perimeter of the square, halting four times to lift the cargo bed and deposit a pile of the quarry stones in front of the crowd. The stones had been carefully selected to conform to the dictates of the Sharia law. They must not be pebbles that could not inflict a serious injury, nor should they be so large that they would kill the guilty woman with a single throw to the head. From the front row of the crowd the men scrambled forward excitedly to select their missiles, juggling them in their hands to judge their weight and balance. By custom Hector was forced to join in but he tasted vomit at the back of his throat as he stooped to pick up a pair of stones. In the centre of the square a hole had already been dug that was wide enough to admit the woman’s hips and deep enough to accommodate her body as far as her waist. The earth that had been removed from the hole was piled beside it. When all the preparations for the execution were completed the guardians forced the accused woman to lie face down on the earth. Then they brought a large bolt of white cotton cloth from the truck and, starting at her feet, they wrapped her in the cloth like a corpse in a winding sheet. When they had finished she was covered from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. Two of the guardians lifted her and carried her to the hole, then between them they lowered her feet-first into it. She was now standing upright with the upper half of her body exposed. The guardians seized the spades which were stuck blade-first into the pile of loose earth, and they shovelled earth into the hole around the lower half of her body, then stamped it down firmly. The woman was now almost completely immobilized. She could twist her upper body from side to side and bow her bandaged head forward but that was the limit of her movement.