Sentence (first published in Lilies and Cannonballs Review, 2/2: 45 – 49)
The sun had barely surfaced over the pearl-gray dunes of the nearby desert when the Land Cruisers, Range Rovers, and Nissan Patrols began to arrive in the barren lot in front of the prison, and Jebel Hafeet, the rhomboid mountain that rose behind the city like a bookend, was the color of rust in the dawn light as I watched the three prisoners being led out of the whitewashed fort by nine guards in graphite-gray uniforms, probably Moroccans, who without haste tied the condemned men to three stakes against a wall topped by turrets and barbed wire, and already the locals clumped around their cars simmered with expectancy and excitement, the men in freshly pressed white dishdashas, nightshirts to my eyes even after eight years in the Gulf, and the boys clad in the same, but with head cloths twisted like turbans instead of their elders' gutras held in place by ropes of black silk, while the women, who were mostly veiled, wore black from head to toe, like ninjas, as I had often heard young Emiratis joke, and the small girls wore knee-length party dresses of taffeta and lace in hot, bright colors, and ribbons and makeup, and hopped and jumped and tumbled and shrieked while their fathers and uncles and older brothers smoked and shouted pleasantly at one another, and their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and older sisters rolled carpets onto the sandy, stony ground, then began laying out breakfasts of rolls and cheese, milk and dates and other fruit, by which time the hawkers from Pakistan and Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka had arrived on bicycles with their wares, paper twists of peanuts and seeds, newspapers and magazines, cold sodas, candy floss, popcorn, sunshades (it was early October, still a hot month, and Sami, our meteorologist at The Abu Dhabi Times, had forecast a high of 37° Celsius, close to 100° Fahrenheit), and by ten a crowd large enough to fill a football stadium had gathered, a multitude, it occurred to me, which made me notice how Biblical the city beyond looked, with its domes and date palms and flat-roofed houses, like some opulent but accursed town in the Old Testament, and over Jebel Hafeet, the monolith that had already darkened to burnt sienna, Egyptian vultures were hanging in the dusty blue sky, black rectangles, stiff as boards, a sight that didn't strike me as macabre or ominous because I knew the scavengers often hovered over the lower slopes of the table-topped mountain near the zoo, where they could snatch meat from under the noses of the overfed lions and hyenas, but all the same I sensed an undercurrent of impatience in the crowd, to which I was not immune, for in spite of the repugnance I felt for the idea of a public execution, I recognized that my curiosity was piqued, besides which I had no desire to spend all day broiling outside when I could look forward to returning to my white villa in the capital, with its swimming pool and air conditioning, where my dainty Filipina wife and my books awaited me – so that at length I found myself speculating with the other men in my vicinity when the firing squad would appear, and a venerable white bearded Bedu muttered that it was about time the family of the murdered man started throwing the rocks, as was their right – he pointed out the pile about thirty feet from the condemned men, just inside the rope barrier that kept the crowd away – but his son told him in the harsh Arabic of southern Arabia that the security guard had been a Syrian, like one of the killers (the other two were Iranians, I knew), so it was likely that his kin were not even in the country and couldn't avenge him in the proper manner, to which the old man replied that in that case the jailors ought to dispatch the curs before everyone was tired and hot, and I daresay everyone agreed except the three men who sagged at their posts, their bearded heads drooping, their bony shoulders bowed, their yellow prison-issue dishdashas flapping like sails in the undecided, dusty breeze, their mouths opening from time to time as if they were pleading for a drink, but no one gave them a drop even though the guards had liter bottles of Oasis water – it was part of the punishment that the condemned men couldn't eat or drink, the old man told me dispassionately – and one of the convicts who seemed younger, in his early twenties by the look of his wispy beard, was talking to himself feverishly, praying or already delirious, and I felt sure they couldn't survive the heat unless someone relieved their thirst, though as the sun swung like a brass cymbal toward its zenith I was amazed they endured, albeit ever more bent and stricken, and still we waited and my editor called me on my cell phone wanting to know why I hadn't called and what the reason was for the delay, and he dismissed my excuses – that the guards refused to answer my questions and I couldn't find an officer or get into the fort – and it began to be unbearable although we had ice cream and cans of Pepsi and Lebanese pop music playing on car stereos, and now that it was nearly lunchtime the women were cooking chicken biryani on camping stoves and serving it up with salad kept fresh in coolers, and iced juices, and a family who had driven all the way from Ras Al-Khaimah, a journey of nearly four hours, invited me as a matter of course to eat with them, seeing that I was alone and without provisions, and I accepted, sitting on a fine red tribal rug from Iran with the menfolk while the women served us, and I took care to eat only with my right hand, rolling the rice into balls with my thumb – sometimes one of my hosts would pick up a particularly choice morsel in his fingers and force me to take it – while I praised the food, fortunately sweating little because the desert air was so dry, and I remember the topic of discussion was the war in Iraq which I agreed was unjust because Saddam had not attacked anyone this time, and I conceded that Christian soldiers had been barbarous in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, while the men nodded with dignity, giving me to understand that unlike some of my countrymen I was civilized, as Arabs were, and opining that Bush the father was a fine man but his son was a devil, and so we talked and talked yet nobody expressed concern about the agonies of thirst that tormented the murderers, though once a girl of six or seven wearing lipstick and a white frilly dress asked petulantly when they were going to kill the bad men, only to be rebuked for her impatience and given a boiled sweet, with the admonition that they would die very soon if it was God's will, but apparently it was not, for midday had come and gone and the muezzin had called from a nearby mosque and after everyone had prayed we roasted slowly in the heat of the afternoon, and still the cars came, mostly four-wheel drives but also sedans, white Mercedes and BMWs and Lexus, virtually all with black windows so that the women could not be seen from without, until the maidan was full and I estimated a quarter of a million people had come, a tenth of the entire population, and a good half of the locals, for fifty percent of the inhabitants are from the subcontinent and most of the rest are Filipinos and Arabs from North Africa and the Levant, though few of the expats were present – I saw one other westerner all day, a Mexican I'd once met in Al Ain – and still the vendors stridently hawked their goods, with increased irritation, and still I was unable to find out for sure what was going on, even when I tried to bribe one of the guards, though he did relate a rumor that the delay had to do with a sheikh whose family was supposed to be coming, and the young man, who was indeed from Morocco as I'd guessed, explained as if I were a child that until the sheikh and his party arrived the execution couldn't take place – while the three men wilted like flowers in a drought, causing me such pity that I asked him if I could give water to the men under sentence but he said it was haram, forbidden, and anyway the Emirati men wouldn't allow me, and everyone prayed again at four o'clock and my friends from Ras Al-Khaimah began to wonder if the convicts had died, but from time to time one of the scarecrows would stir, his head lolling, his tongue protruding like a dog's, his eyelids fluttering as if he were having a fit, which was horrible to see, as an uncovered young woman with a painted face complained to the other females, saying she couldn't understand why we had to look at them, why the guards didn't cover their ugly faces, and oddly enough, no sooner had she made this observation than the plump sergeant in charge pulled pointed black hoods over their heads and the crowd began to whistle and applaud, no doubt anticipating the imminent volley, yet the guards had no rifles and I couldn't imagine them using their revolvers although I wished they would because I was tormented by the men's suffering, or so I told myself, and we waited and talked, ate cakes, drank ice tea, smoked American cigarettes, and socialized, and I was treated as an honored guest although I knew perfectly well that my new Bedu friends from Ras Al-Khaimah regarded me as inferior, for I was neither Muslim nor Arab, let alone a Gulf Arab, while in the meantime the mountain smoldered as if it were covered in boiling lava and the vultures hung in the oily sky and the Indians dripped like candles and croaked like crows, their drinks nearly gone, and in truth the wait could no longer be borne, we yearned for blood, even I, the western liberal, was longing for the spastic release of violence, so that when a fresh detail of guards emerged from the fort with rifles angled jauntily over their shoulders, we could scarcely contain ourselves, we shouted and whistled and hooted and clapped, women ululated and little girls screamed, while the wind fanned our cheeks like the breath from a heated oven, the brass cymbal shivered and crashed amidst our bubbling thoughts, and now that the squad raggedly raised their rifles – minus one youngster who was doubled over, spewing on the sand – there was a sudden, sickening hush, a frenzied press of bodies – the pretty girl who had complained about the men's faces was pushed panting against me and incredibly none of her cousins or brothers tore her away – and dry-mouthed we tensed ourselves and I turned to look at the pullulating hosts, who were straining with intent, fervent faces, as if in the throes of sexual or religious ecstasy, and as I turned back to watch the execution, in a whirling blur I glimpsed the orange dunes of the desert and nearer at hand the white and pink mosques and villas of the town, the green groves of date palms, and deep in that eternal moment an officer barked, guns sounded like firecrackers, crimson splashes appeared on the yellow nightshirts, and the rag dolls jerked and jumped as if they had been electrocuted, then hung at unnatural angles, and everyone sighed, suddenly relaxed like moviegoers at the end of a tense thriller, as the sun set in a sky of seething scarlet magma, the desert turned pink and purple, and the guards cut the dead men's bonds at the precise moment that the cry rang out from the minaret, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, God is most great, God is most great, causing a quarter of a million people to kneel and praise the Lord of the Universe, the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Master of the Day of Judgment, with all their hearts.
Copyright © 2007 Garry Craig Powell.