I Am Pilgrim(33)

Fearing the worst, mentioning nothing to his mother or sisters, the Saracen got on his dirt bike, piled his friend on board and headed for the Corniche, the road that runs beside the Red Sea into downtown Jeddah.

Just as the two boys caught sight of the sea, noon prayers had finished at the main mosque and hundreds of men were spilling out to join masses of spectators waiting in the parking lot. In the harsh summer light the men in their stark white thobes made a stunning contrast to the knots of women in their black abayas and face veils. Only little kids in jeans and shirts added a splash of colour.

Executions are about the only form of public entertainment permitted in Saudi Arabia – movies, concerts, dancing, plays and even mixed-sex coffee shops are banned. But everybody’s welcome, women and kids too, to see someone lose their life. Eschewing such modern innovations as medical injections or even the firing squad, the Saudi method seems to be a real crowd-pleaser: public beheading.

It was close to 110 degrees on the Corniche that day, the heat bouncing off the asphalt in shimmering waves, as the dirt bike threaded rapidly through the weekend traffic. Up ahead, chaos was unfolding: the road was being torn up for a new overpass, construction machinery blocked all but one lane and cars were tailed back for blocks.

Inside his sweltering helmet, the zoologist’s son was also in chaos – frightened almost to vomiting, desperately hoping it was an African drug dealer being taken to the platform. He couldn’t afford to think that, if he was wrong, the last he would see of his father would be him kneeling on the marble, the flies already buzzing, the silver sword disappearing in a fountain of red.

He looked at the impenetrable traffic ahead and swung the dirt bike off the shoulder and, in a whirl of dust and debris, blasted into the badly cratered construction site.

Despite the size of the crowd gathering for the display, there was little noise in the parking lot – just the murmur of voices and the sound of a mullah reading from the Qur’an over the mosque’s public address system. Gradually even the quiet voices fell silent as an official car made its way through the cordon and stopped at the platform.

A powerfully built man in an immaculate white thobe got out of the vehicle and mounted the five steps to the platform. A polished leather strap ran diagonally across his chest and terminated on his left hip, supporting a scabbard which held a long, curved sword. This was the executioner. His name was Sa’id bin Abdullah bin Mabrouk al-Bishi and he was acknowledged as the best craftsman in the kingdom, his reputation built primarily on a procedure called a cross amputation. Far more difficult than a simple beheading and meted out as punishment for highway robbery, it requires the rapid use of custom-made knives to cut off a prisoner’s right hand and left foot. By applying himself diligently to this process, Sa’id al-Bishi had over many years steadily raised the overall standard of Saudi Arabia’s public punishments. Only occasionally now did the public see an executioner having to keep hacking at a prisoner’s head or limbs to detach them from his body.

Returning greetings from several onlookers, al-Bishi had barely had time to familiarize himself with his workspace when he saw a white van push through the crowd. A policeman lifted a barrier and the air-conditioned vehicle stopped next to the steps. The crowd craned forward to catch sight of the occupant as the rear doors opened.

The zoologist stepped out of the van into the cauldron barefoot, blindfolded by a thick white bandage, his wrists handcuffed behind his back.

Among those watching were people who knew him, or thought they did, and it took a moment for them to recognize his features. God knows what the secret police had done to him in the previous five months, but he seemed to have shrunk – he was a shell of a man, broken and diminished at least in his body, like those translucent old people you sometimes see in retirement homes. He was thirty-eight years old.

He knew exactly where he was and what was happening; an official of the so-called Ministry of Justice had arrived at his cell forty minutes earlier and had read him a formal decree. It was the first he knew that he had been sentenced to death. As two uniformed cops led him slowly to the steps of the platform, witnesses said he raised his face to the sun and tried to straighten his shoulders. I’m sure he didn’t want his son and daughters to hear that their father didn’t have courage.

On the Corniche, gridlocked drivers watched with a mixture of disgust and envy as the dirt bike blasted past, using the construction site as a private freeway. Damn kids.

The young boy slid the bike past coiled fire hoses used to spray the overworked Bangladeshi construction workers and prevent them passing out from heat exhaustion, then weaved through a forest of concrete pylons. He had about seven minutes to reach the square.