I Am Pilgrim(34)

I don’t think, even later in life, he could have explained why he undertook that wild ride. What was he going to do there? My own belief is that, in his fear and anguish, all he could think of was that he was of his father’s soul as much as his body and such a bond would accept nothing less than his presence. He swung the bike hard left, through a wasteland of piled debris, and flew even faster towards a road that fed into the square. It was blocked by a chain-link fence but, on the other side of bundles of steel reinforcing rods, he saw an opening just wide enough to squeeze through. Allah was with him!

He slid the bike even tighter left, slaloming through the bundles of rods, sending up clouds of fine dust, closing fast on the narrow gap. He was going to make it!

The zoologist, blindfolded on the platform, felt a hand fall on his neck and press him down. It belonged to the executioner and he was being told to kneel. As he lowered himself, the feeling of the sun on his face indicated that he was facing Mecca, forty miles away. Directly in its path was his house, and the thought of his wife and children sitting in its loving confines sent a shudder of loss through his body.

The executioner gripped the man’s shoulder – the swordsman had been here many times before and he knew the exact moment when a man might need steadying. A voice called out a command on the mosque’s public address system.

All across the square, stretching from the austere Ministry of Foreign Affairs building to the grass in front of the mosque, thousands of people knelt to face Mecca in prayer. As with all devout Muslims, the zoologist knew the words by heart, and he spoke them in unison with the crowd. He also knew their exact length: by any reasonable estimate, he had four minutes left on earth.

The boy, half blinded by the dust kicked up by his swerving bike, didn’t see one bundle of the steel reinforcing rods until a second too late. Protruding at least a foot from the others, one of the rods was already sliding between the spokes of his front wheel when he first registered it.

His reaction time was incredible – he hurled the bike to the side, but not quite fast enough. With the front wheel spinning, the rod tore the spokes apart in a fury of ripping metal. Chunks of thin alloy ripped through the bike’s gas tank and cylinder head, the wheel collapsed, the front forks dug into the dirt and the bike stopped instantly. The zoologist’s son and his friend kept going – straight over the handlebars, and landing in a tangle of flying limbs and spraying dirt. Badly stunned, the dirt bike fit only for the scrap heap, they were barely conscious.

By the time the first of the shocked motorists watching from the Corniche had reached them, the prayers in the parking lot had finished and the crowd was rising. The executioner stepped close to the kneeling prisoner and the whole square fell silent. The swordsman made a slight adjustment to the angle of the zoologist’s neck and those spectators near enough saw a few words pass between them.

Many years later, I talked to a number of people who were in the square that day. Among those I spoke to was Sa’id al-Bishi, the executioner. I had tea with him in the majlis – the formal reception room – of his home, and asked him what the zoologist had said.

‘It’s rare a man can say anything in that situation,’ Sa’id al-Bishi told me, ‘so of course it stays in your mind.’ He took a long breath. ‘It was brief but he said it with conviction. He told me: “The only thing that matters is that Allah and the Saudi people forgive me my sins.”’

Al-Bishi fell silent and glanced towards Mecca – apparently, that was it. I nodded reverently. ‘Allahu Akbar,’ I said in reply. God is great.

He took another sip of tea, gazing into the middle distance, lost in thoughts about the wisdom a man finds in his last moments. I kept looking at him, moving my head sagely. The one thing you don’t do in any Arab country is accuse a man of lying, no matter how indirectly.

As a consequence, I just kept looking at him, and he kept staring off at wisdom. Outside, I could hear the water tinkling from a fountain in his beautiful courtyard, the sound of servants bustling in the women’s quarters. Being state executioner must have paid pretty well.

Finally he began to move uncomfortably in his seat and then he shot a glance at me to see if I was just the quiet type or if I was really calling him on it.

I didn’t take my eyes off him, and he laughed. ‘You are an intelligent man for a Westerner,’ he said, ‘so now let us discuss what he really said, shall we?

‘When I bent down to the prisoner I told him to expose as much of his neck as possible and not to move – this would make it easier on both of us. He didn’t seem to care, he just motioned me closer. Someone must have injured the inside of his mouth – an electrode, maybe – because he had trouble talking. “You know the king?” he whispered.