The searing, oppressive heat of the Saudi Arabian day bore down like a dead weight upon our shoulders as we made our way down the dusty road. King Faisal Street ran like a thread through the city of Ha’il from the mountains in the west past the souk and the main mosque and then petered out in the desert to the east. Down this road we walked taking in the familiar sights, sounds and smells of life on this Friday in the early afternoon. Only, today it is different. It is quieter with fewer people about.
The tailor’s shop, built of mud bricks with an adobe skimming and dating back to who knows when, had its iron door firmly closed. Outside on the pavement the wooden chair, on which the old man usually sat, basked unoccupied in the sun, its only companion a goat chewing on a discarded cement sack. Salem’s supermarket, which had recently become one of the only places for miles around to sell western-style convenience foods, was dark and empty. The sports shop further down should have a group of men sat in the shade drinking sha’i from small glass finjans but they, too, were gone. Apart from a few of the ubiquitous white pick-up trucks chugging their way towards the mountains, seemingly cursing the heat too, there were very few people to be seen.
By the time we reached the crossroads it was clear that something was going on. The opposite corner was the site of a mosque and midday prayers had finished a short while ago and now a couple of hundred men in white thobes were gathered on the vast expanse of sand that was the closest that the town had to a square. Police in their khaki uniforms were everywhere – amongst the crowds and also on the rooftops of adjacent buildings. Those high up scanned the square, rifles at the ready for any sign of trouble. By now we had become surrounded by Saudis and were aware that we were being swept forward with the throng to form a human arena. Not only that but we were definitely hustled to the front where we found ourselves in the company of another westerner who informed us that there was to be an execution.
A rapist and murderer he said. The man was on prime-time TV last night doing a re-enactment of his crime. Of how he raped and killed the wife of a friend in her home and when the husband returned how he killed him to cover up the first murder. But he was seen and death was the penalty – not automatically but the bereaved family would not take a financial settlement.
To my left crouched the tailor, old and thin, his face walnut in colour with a long grey beard stained from the juice of the paan he chewed constantly. A flume of bright red saliva shot from his lips, hit the dry sand and rolled and inch or two.
To my right a large white Cadillac nosed its way through the crowd and parked close to the wall of the mosque. After a moment the front passenger door swung open and out stepped a tall man in traditional white thobe with the red and white checked gutra or head-dress. Apart from his confident, almost swaggering, demeanour two things stood out. Firstly his black abaya or cloak that reached to the ground with gold filigree embroidered around its edges that shone in the sun. The second was the long pearl-handled sword in the ornate scabbard at his waist. The executioner had arrived for the show. For his day’s work. For death.
Once more to the right a red GMC SUV entered the square, the crowd closing ranks tightly behind it as it passed. Drawing up closely to where the executioner stood impassively the rear door was flung open and two guards alighted. Reaching back into the vehicle they helped the condemned man to the ground, blindfolded, shackled hand and foot. Some say that the condemned are drugged to calm them for their end. Others maintain that they are resigned to their fate, prepared to meet their God, and that is why they offer no resistance. Escape is impossible. Apart from the crowds waiting to see justice, or maybe just the blood, the guards on the roof were ever watchful, rifles at the ready.
Shortly, the man who was to die this fine day was made to kneel in the sand. The executioner approached and paused close to the figure doubled up in front of him before turning slowly to observe the crowd. Nostrils flared he breathed deeply as if drawing in the strength for the duty ahead. Replenished, he turned now to the man and with a long, slow movement drew the sword from the scabbard and hefted it in his hand once or twice as if to test the weight and his grip. The strike when it came fell quickly although to this day I can see as if in slow motion the sword rising up to the sky and, like a ball that has been thrown, reached the top of its arc and seemingly hovering before starting its descent towards the hapless victim. It came down so hard and fast that I swore it would cut through the neck and remove the head in one go but in the last fraction of a second the executioner seemed to restrain himself and with a deft flick of the sword cut through the spinal cord only. The condemned man slumped to the ground and rolled over whereupon the sword was drawn twice across his jugular. A pool of scarlet spread over the sand and the tailor spat once more and it blended indistinguishably with the blood.
In a while the man was declared dead by a doctor and loaded into an ambulance. Within minutes the crowd had dispersed and all that remained was the blood drying rapidly in the sand.
The tailor went back to sit on his seat. Salem’s tills at the supermarket rang out once more and the men at the sports shop drank their sha’i in the shade of the afternoon.
*Footnote. These events are my thoughts on what I witnessed one day in 1982. To this day hundreds of people each year are beheaded in Saudi Arabia.