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One
THE MEN OF ABU SHATT HAD NEVER stoned a woman.
A few had seen it done in the land of the Saudis, but because they were visitors they had not taken part. The sins of those women were against their own villages and it was up to their families to expiate their shame. To join in would have shown bad manners.
That in mind, this night's stoning seemed very strange indeed. The woman to be killed was not of this village, nor were those who had brought her. As if that were not enough to make the men ill at ease, they were told that the stoning would be recorded on videotape. The old sheik, their holy man, had said that this was all the more reason that the stoning must be done correctly.
Their village was a small one. It had always been poor. It lay eighty miles to the southeast of Cairo, though the distance could well have been measured in centuries. Its name, in Arabic, meant Father of Rivers but the village was a dry and dusty place. Not even the sheik knew how it got such a name. But the sheik had said that soon the name would have meaning because copies of the tape would flow from it like rivers and the faithful would know how things are done in Abu Shatt.
THE SHEIK CHOSE SIX men, three young and three old. The six would prepare the pit. They worked most of the night at the place he selected, lit only by the flame of a single tin lamp. The place was a small and rocky field that God must have cursed because not even millet would grow there. It seemed a good place for an adulteress to die.
Some of the men argued that first she should be lashed because adultery was said to be but one of her crimes. Fifty lashes to her back and her buttocks. Fifty more across her baredbreasts. But their sheik said no, this was not in the law because the woman's other crimes were unproven. Her accuser, moreover, was a friend of this village and he had asked that she not be beaten. He had asked that she be given a chance to repent. After that it would be enough that she be stoned.
The sheik, because he was old and feeble, needed two men to hold him as he stepped off twelve paces. That would be the width of the ring. Returning to its center, he scratched a mark with his cane. There would be the hole in which the woman would kneel. The two men who had held him began to dig. The others were sent to gather stones.
The gatherers had no lamp, only light from the stars, and yet the stones were chosen with care. There should be none so large that it would kill too quickly, none so small that it would merely torment her. They were to be arranged in four separate piles, one hundred and one stones in all. The odd stone would be placed before her where she knelt. It would be thrown by her accuser. The sheik had heard of no man, much less a woman, who had ever survived more than thirty or so. But by law each would have to be thrown.
The pit was finished not long before dawn. Her accuser, who had come in a big white Mercedes, was asked if he was ready to proceed. This man, named Bandari, looked over at the Englishman who had set up the lights and the video camera. The Englishman nodded, then yawned. Her accuser had also brought a third man with him, an American, tall and thin with cold eyes. The American and Bandari both wore dark suits and ties. The Englishman was known to always wear white from his shoes to his floppy canvas hat. The hat was pulled down over stringy blond hair that seemed ever in need of being washed. They had arrived from Cairo well after midnight an had brought the woman in the trunk of their car.
The old sheik was not pleased that two Christians were present. But the Englishman was needed because he would do the taping. Also he was the one who had tracked down the woman. It was said that he found many others like this one and grew rich from the bounties he had been paid. The sheik knew nothing about the American, only that he was a friend of Bandari, the accuser, and wanted to see the adulteress punished. Very well, he could stay, but he would have to watch from the car. The sheik gave the signal for the woman to be brought out.
She was dressed head to toe in a black abaya. A mask, called a burka, covered all but her eyes. A single length of cord bound her arms to her sides and it coiled very tightly from her shoulders to her hips. The old sheik frowned when he saw this. To bind her so was immodest. The cord should have been tied beneath the abaya so that the garment could hang freely and conceal what it should. This way it revealed the shape of her body and caused her breasts to thrust forward. Although most of the men kept their eyes on the ones who wanted her lashed, first her back and then her bare breasts.
But the sin, the sheik decided, was hers and not theirs. It was she, the adulteress, who put lust in their hearts. He urged the men all the sooner, would be hidden from them. In any case dawn would soon be upon them. This had to be finished before morning prayer.
A burst of brilliant light caused the woman to falter and the men to raise their hands to their eyes. A few of the men held back for a moment because they knew that the lights meant the camera was running. Not all were so happy about being on tape. Some had argued that they should cover their faces because stoning had been outlawed for several years now. They could end up in Cairo's Kanater Prison and how would their families survive if they did? But the sheik would not permit them to cover their faces. God's work, he had said, should be done in the open.
Now the woman could see the hole that had been dug and her chest began heaving in fear. Her burka blew out with each breath she exhaled and sucked back with each new breath she drew. She tried to resist by bracing one heel but she could find no footing in the hard-packed earth. Her shoes had already been taken from her and she wore only black cotton stockings. Next she fought them; she refused to walk. She twisted away from the men who were escorting her and threw herself to the ground. They saw that they would have to carry her.
Two men picked her up, taking care to touch only her forearms and elbows and not to touch any bare skin. A third looped a cord around her legs, being careful not to bare them, not even with stockings, fastening them together at a point below her knees. Holding fast to the cord, he pulled her legs up behind her. In this manner they carried her to the edge of the hole and lowered her body into it. The two held her steady as the third used a shovel to pack dirt and rock into the spaces around her.
A man being stoned is buried to his waist. A woman must be buried to her chest and this was done. But the shape of her breasts showed even more clearly now because the dirt was pushing them up. The sheik gestured to the man with the shovel. He wanted the dirt piled higher. As this, too, was done the woman's eyes darted from the face of one man to the next. They knew that she was searching for the face of her accuser. At last she squinted into the lights and made a sound like the hiss of a cat. She called out the name of Gamal Bandari.
"Gamal!" she shouted. It was more like a croak. She swallowed hard and called again, this time more clearly. "Gamal, for God's sake, don't do this."
When no answer came from behind the lights, she turned to the men of Abu Shatt. "I swear before God, I am innocent," she cried. "Don't you see what that murdering bastard is doing? He is using you. He is using Islam. He is—"
Her bad language brought gasps, but from some it brought sneers because they knew that this adulteress, not Bandari, was the murderer. A young man named Mahfouz strode into the pit. He was one of the four who gave evidence against her, but the only one born in this village. He bent and struck her with the back of his hand. The blow silenced her but it tore off her burka. Mahfouz wiped the hand against the sleeve of his robe as if to show that merely touching her had made it unclean. It was bad enough to touch a woman not of his family, but worse to touch one who soon would be in hell.
Copyright ) 1997 by John R. Maxim
