Guy Fawkes Day

by KJ Griffin

  ***

  Sophie shot up from her chair. There was no longer any need to ask Hasan for a translation of the Arabic commentary. The shocks were pounding too quickly one after the other. First the prison van and the swordsman. Then the British prisoner screaming his furious abuse loud and clear across the airwaves. And the name he was shouting! Surely it couldn’t be the same? Wait a minute… The camera switched angles. Oh my God, it is! That’s Marcus’s father, Colonel Easterby, standing with the Ramli officials below the steps of the mosque.

  She froze on the balls of her feet. Her mouth tasted dry. She wanted to tear herself away from the gruesome spectacle, but found herself powerless, for morbid curiosity was stronger than fear. Surely someone would stop it all? Colonel Easterby, for example? Whatever insults the condemned man had just heaped on Marcus’s father, a respectable man like the colonel could never stand by and watch a fellow countryman put to the sword.

  Or maybe Omar was going to stop it? Yes, that was it! Omar had gone to stop the execution. But then she remembered the true nature of the man she was portraying as silent rescuer and she shuddered despite the hot flush on her face. Oh my God, it’s got to be him! Yes, it must all be Omar’s doing. He dragged me here to see this. And the irony is, I don’t even want to know why. I just wish he were standing right here in front of me now so that I could scratch his eyes out.

  The man on the mat had given up the struggle. Triumphant in the victim’s inevitable defeat, the TV camera now focused in close-up on his fat, sweaty face. The lips were mumbling, the eyes hazy, chest heaved in deep, sobbing gasps. Now came the swordsman. A cold terror paralyzed Sophie, making her cheek muscles tingle and her neck stiffen.

  But just then the camera swung round again. Instead of gloating on the pathetic figure of the condemned man, an amateurish hand swung it in wild orbit across the crowd, where it swooped in gruesome detail onto Marcus’s father’s face.

  Colonel Easterby looked sweat-soaked and haggard. His eyes were roving anywhere but straight ahead into the car park. Suddenly, they froze on something forty-five degrees to the right across the car park. The camera captured an indescribable look of shock and horror that could have won any number of photojournalism awards, so still and intense was the flabbergasted expression on the Marcus’s father’s face. And that single still hit Sophie with a dread and revulsion far greater than anything she had witnessed in the car park so far.

  She heard sandal slaps on the bare stone floor behind her. Hasan was standing next to her, for Sophie could smell his distinctive perfume. He stretched out a hand and grasped her wrist with feverish intensity, but neither of them looked round. It was one of those instinctive things—she could feel Hasan’s fear palpitating in heartbeats stronger than her own. But in her own alarm, she gave no thought to why the detached, unemotional Somali should suddenly have become so upset.

  Back on screen, the camera had flipped position yet again to catch the climax of the drama. The commentator had stopped speaking; the crowd, too, was heavily silent.

  The strength of Hasan’s grip on her wrist mirrored the swordsman’s next few movements. Two steps forward. Sophie caught a flash of the thin blade. More pressure on her wrist. Swordsman standing arm’s length from prisoner. Abrupt stop. He seemed to be hesitating.

  Wrist now starting to burn. Executioner gives prisoner abrupt prod into small of back with point of sword. Prisoner’s head bobs up out of shoulders. Glint of steel in the sun. Sword arm thrashes down. Head rolls from shoulders, landing lazily, almost comically on the mat. Hasan’s grip now burning her wrist. Prisoner’s torso still kneeling in macabre upright position. Dark blood pulsing from base of neck, spewing in soft jets onto the plastic sheeting on the top of the rug. Body still kneeling.

  ‘Stop it!’ Sophie shrieked at Hasan, struggling to pull her wrist from his grip. He let go, and Sophie saw the emotional turbulence boiling over on his face. He took a step towards her and clasped her in a tight hug. But there was nothing sexual in the embrace. It was the passion of life, the passion to be alive and to have survived death. Life and nothing but.

  They stayed that way for some minutes. Eventually the TV commentator’s voice started to fill the silent airwaves again, this time in a calm and dignified drawl. Sophie looked over Hasan’s shoulder at the screen. Hasan’s greater distress had given her unexpected reserves of strength. She was no longer afraid to watch.

  The truncated body was still kneeling. A policeman approached and kicked it roughly onto the ground with the sole of his boot, while other figures were approaching with a sack to scoop the severed head.

  The camera switched again. This time Sophie felt the fear return. She was looking again at Colonel Easterby’s face. It was still locked in the same direction, gaping dumbfounded at something in the crowd forty-five degrees to his right. The features were calm and blank, but the eyes and the intransigent immobility said it all. He had seen his nemesis. The colonel stood and stared. Stood and stared. Still staring. The lids weren’t blinking despite the noonday heat. The camera feasted on him like a vulture. It was the most grotesque sight Sophie had ever seen, and she now knew with utter certainty that the whole horror show was all Omar’s doing. The prisoner on the mat was not the only one he had brought there to suffer. Oh, if only he would dare show his face right here and now. I’d cut Omar’s head off with a blunt knife!

  But he didn’t come. Hasan held on to Sophie for another couple of minutes, then left abruptly as if nothing had happened.

  Sophie retreated to a chair on the terrace. For hours she simply stared into the distance, numb inside, neither sick nor frightened. Just empty. Dusk came. The Indian servant brought her a drink that she sipped at disinterestedly. He asked her to come inside for supper; she refused. The servant reappeared half an hour later with the same request; again, she refused.

  Sometime after eight Hasan returned. Still no sign of Omar.

  ‘You must leave tomorrow morning, Miss Sophie. Please be ready for an early flight.’

  ‘Where to? Home, I hope?’

  Hasan shrugged laconically,

  ‘Breakfast at six o’clock. Please to be ready.’

  Sophie smiled back bitterly at the man who had held her for so long that afternoon in his vice-like terror. Obviously Omar wasn’t going to appear to explain his foul deed; he was going to let her anger fester. The question was, for how long?