Haven Read online

  HAVEN

  BY

  JOHN R. MAXIM

  ONE

  The men of Abu Shatt had never stoned a woman.

  Two or three had seen it done in their travels from this place but none had ever actually taken part. The crimes of those women were against their own villages and the shame to be expiated was the shame of their families. It would not have been good manners to participate.

  That in mind, this night's stoning seemed all the more strange. The woman had been brought here. She was not of this village. The old sheik, their holy man, said that this was still another reason why it must be done correctly. The first reason was that the stoning would be videotaped.

  Their village was a small one. It had always been poor. It lay eighty miles south by east of Cairo but the distance seemed sometimes to be measured in centuries. The name, in Arabic, means Father of Rivers but the village is a dry and dusty place. No one knows how it got such a name. Even the old men can barely remember the last time the Nile flooded this far to the east and gave needed new life to the soil. But the sheik said that soon their village will be famous. Copies of the tape will flow from it like rivers and the faithful will know how things are done in Abu Shatt. The men, therefore, must be strong in their resolve. They must not shy away from their duty.

  The sheik chose six men, three young and three old, and these six would prepare the pit. They worked most of the night at the place he selected, lit only by the flame of a single tin lamp. The place for the pit was a small and rocky field that God must have cursed because no crop, not even millet, would grow there. It seemed a good place for an adulteress to die.

  Some of the men argued that first she should be lashed because adultery was but one of her crimes. Fifty lashes well laid to her back and her buttocks, and fifty more across her bared breasts. But their sheik said no, this was not in the law because these other crimes were unproved. Her accuser, moreover, had asked them not to beat her and he was a friend to this village. He asked that she be given a chance to repent. After that, it was enough that she be stoned.

  The sheik, because he was old and feeble, needed two men to hold him as he stepped off a ring that was twelve paces wide. Returning to its center, he scratched a mark with his cane. Here would be the hole in which the woman will kneel. The two men who held him were now told to dig. The others were sent to gather stones.

  The gatherers had no lamp, only light from the stars, and yet the stones were chosen with care. There were to be none so large that they would kill too quickly, none so small that they would merely torment her. They were to be arranged in four separate piles, one hundred and one stones in all. The odd stone would be placed before her where she knelt. It would be thrown by her accuser. The sheik had heard of no man, much less a woman, who had ever survived more than thirty or so. But each would be thrown because that was the law.

  When the pit was finished it was well before dawn. Her accuser then said that he was ready to proceed and the man who worked the camera was ready as well. In his car was a third man who had come as a witness. The sheik was not pleased that these other two were Christians, one British and the other an American. But the first was needed because he knew about cameras and the second had promised to watch from the Mercedes. The sheik gave the signal for the woman to be brought out.

  She was dressed head to toe in a black abaya. A mask, called a burka, covered all but her eyes. A single length of cord bound her arms to her sides and it coiled very tightly from her shoulders to her hips. The old sheik frowned when he saw this. To bind her so was immodest. The cord should have been tied beneath the abaya so that the garment could hang freely and conceal what it should. This way it revealed the shape of her body and caused her breasts to thrust forward. It showed the flatness of her belly and the roundness of her hips. Although most of the men kept their eyes on the ground, a few were already stealing looks at her bosom. These were the same ones who wanted her lashed, first her back and then her bare breasts.

  But the sin, he decided, was hers and not theirs. It was she, the adulteress, who put lust in their hearts. He urged the men to quicken their pace so that her body, all the sooner, would be hidden from them. In any case dawn would soon be upon them. This had to be finished before morning prayer.

  A burst of brilliant light caused the woman to falter and the men to raise their hands to their eyes. But it also caused them to stand more erect and more proudly because they knew that the lights meant the camera was running. Not all were so happy about this, however. A few had argued that they should cover their faces because stoning had been outlawed for several years now. They could end up in Cairo's Kanater Prison and how would their families survive? Because of that law, passed to please the Americans, adulteresses were more often burned these days. Burning can be made to look like a suicide or even an accident while cooking. But the sheik did not approve of such cowardly artifice. The true law said stoning and stoning it will be. Nor would he permit them to cover their faces. God's work should be done in the open.

  That question decided, the men had other concerns. Some did not fear arrest nearly as much as they feared that they might do this badly. Already their hearts were beating too fast and some had to make fists to keep their hands from trembling. Those few who'd seen stonings had told stories about them. They'd seen men who would otherwise not kick a dog get all wild-eyed and crazy once the throwing begins. To some it's not justice, it's a time to get even.

  They know that all women have Satan inside them because they know the bad thoughts women cause them to have. They remember all the women who have scorned and rejected them and then taken other men as their husbands. This makes some men ten times more cruel.

  It is also not so easy to throw a stone when the night is this cold and one is wearing heavy robes. Quite a few offered prayers that they wouldn't be clumsy and would throw in a manly way. They prayed that those who view this tape will not say, ”See this one. He misses so badly that it must be on purpose. Shame on that coward for shirking his duty." Or, worse, that they might be laughed at. "See that one. He throws in the manner of a girl. Look there. He almost hit the sheik.”

  Now the woman could see the hole that had been dug and her chest began heaving in fear. Her burka blew out with each breath she exhaled and sucked back with each new breath she drew. She tried to resist by bracing one heel but she could find no footing in the hard-packed earth. Her shoes had already been stolen by someone and she wore only black cotton stockings. Next she refused to walk. She twisted away from the men who were escorting her and threw herself to the ground. They saw that they would have to carry her.

  Two men picked her up, taking care to touch only her forearms and elbows and not to touch any bare skin. A third looped a cord around her legs. Being careful not to bare them, not even with stockings, he fastened them together at a point below her knees. Holding fast to the cord, he pulled her legs up behind her. In this manner they carried her to the edge of the hole and lowered her body into it. The two held her steady as the third used a shovel to pack dirt and rock into the spaces around her.

  A man being stoned is buried to his waist. A woman must be buried to her chest and this was done. But the shape of her breasts showed even more clearly now because the dirt was pushing them up. The sheik gestured to the man with the shovel. He wanted the dirt piled higher. As this was done the woman's eyes darted from the face of one man to the next. They knew that she was searching not for a friend but for the face of the one who had accused her. At last she squinted into the lights and she made a sound like the hiss of a cat. It was as if she knew he would be hiding there. She called out a name.

  “Gamal,” is what she said but it came as more like a croak. She swallowed hard to try to moisten her throat.

  “Gamal!!” she called aga
in, this time more clearly. ”For God's sake, don't do this, Gamal.“ But no answer came from behind the bright lights so she turned to the men of Abu Shatt.

  “In the name of God, I am innocent,” she cried. ”Don't let that murdering bastard do this to me. He is using you men, don't you see that?”

  Her bad language brought gasps but from some it brought sneers. A young man named Mahfouz strode into the pit. He was one of the four who gave evidence against her. He bent and struck her with the back of his hand and the blow tore her burka away. Mahfouz wiped the hand against the sleeve of his robe as if to show that just touching her had made it unclean. Bad enough to touch a woman who is not of his family but worse to touch one who soon would be in hell.

  Mahfouz, in truth, had not seen what he testified to have seen and yet he had no doubt of her guilt. Gamal Bandari had sworn that it was so and Gamal is a pious man. He is not corrupt like the rest of them in Cairo even though he's a Deputy Minister. He is also a very generous man. As for the woman, she's the widow of his brother and Gamal is the head of the family.If Gamal says she's guilty, she's guilty.

  Gamal had found her in Alexandria, in a hotel there, in the company of a male who was not of her family. Gamal and the bounty hunter, the Englishman named Pratt, had caught her in the act of committing her sin. They caught her, they said, giving sex to this man in exchange for false papers with which she had planned to flee Egypt. She had schemed to run off and go live in America where family means nothing and all honor is lost. All this while her husband, Gamal's only brother, wasn't even three weeks in his grave.

  Mahfouz, in his excitement, now said much of this aloud. The villagers nodded. Some mumbled agreement. A second man, the other who had testified against her stood erect to add charges of his own. In a loud, high-pitched voice he said that this woman, this Lebanese whore, had seduced Gamal's brother in the first place. Like all lying whores she tricked him into marriage and then, helped by lawyers who must all have been Jews, spent the next fifteen years robbing him of all that he valued. But Gamal was never blinded by the wiles of this whore. He went to Avram, his brother, with proof of her crimes and Avram was about to divorce her. But the whore found him out and before he could act she quickly plotted his murder. ”As terrible as this is," the second man asked, "who among us should have been surprised that it happened? Poor Avram Bandari, good man that he was, was ten times a fool to have married a Christian, even if she swore to convert." This was answered with a chorus of agreement.

  Mahfouz was relieved that this other man had spoken. Adultery was probably the least of her crimes but it troubled him still that they both had sworn falsely. They did so because Bandari had pointed out that the sin would be theirs if they didn't help convict her. To convict for adultery, four men must give testimony that they saw with their own eyes the act of penetration. But a realist, even an illiterate farmer, must ask how this could ever happen. Could four men be hiding under the bed on the chance that a wife is unfaithful? Do four men find a way to sneak into her closet and leap out when the bed springs start to squeak? Yet he and this other man had sworn that this happened. They claimed that they, with Gamal and the Englishman, had burst into that hotel room at just the right moment in time to witness her sin.

  Gamal did not try to fool them when he asked of them this favor. He said, ”Yes, it is usually a sin to swear falsely but it won't be a sin in this case. Yes, it's true that swearing falsely can get you eighty lashes but no one's going to call you a liar. You'll be swearing only to what my eyes have seen unless you think it's me who is the liar.”

  “I believe you,” Mahfouz had answered, although in truth he had strong misgivings. ”But this is not the same as knowing.”

  “Mahfouz...my friend,” Gamal had put an arm around his shoulder. ”Who knows better, you or me?“ he asked. “In fact, who knows better, you or God?”

  Mahfouz and the other man had to agree. If swearing falsely was a sin, the sin was now on Gamal. As for God, if it was Gamal who lied, and if this women had no guilt, surely God would not allow her to be stoned.

  The sheik was speaking. He was quoting from the law. It was hard to hear his words because his voice was not strong and because the woman was still shouting into the lights saying terrible things to Gamal. This caused the sheik to stop quoting the law and start talking about women in general. All the trouble they cause when they don't know their place. Women, he's saying, shouldn't learn how to read and should never be allowed to watch television. Reading and television fill their weak minds with poisoned ideas from the West....which everyone knows is controlled by the Zionists...with whom there can never be peace....and so on....and so on. Mahfouz had heard all this a thousand times. He wished that the old man would finish. He wished that they could just get this done and go home.

  Behind the bright lights that stood on a tripod, Gamal Bandari balled his hands into fists so that no one could see that they were shaking. His brow and upper lip were beaded with sweat even though it was March and the night was quite cold. He drew deeply on the remains of a cigarette, then dropped it at his feet where it fell among others. He was a man nearing fifty with thinning black hair and a body, always stocky, that was going to fat. He wore a dark suit from Italy that no longer fit him. His jowls spilled over the collar of his shirt.

  The man in front of him working the camcorder was the Englishman

  named Cyril Pratt. Always, as now, he dressed entirely in white from his shoes to his floppy canvas hat. The hat was pulled down over stringy blond hair that seemed ever in need of being washed. He was Bandari's age but his face was more lined and he had a pot belly from drinking, not eating. His legs were like bird legs from drinking as well. Bandari could not see the bounty hunter's face but he knew that his eyes would be shining by now and that he might even have an erection. Bandari detested this Englishman pig.

  During the two hour drive down from Cairo - with Pratt still not quite sober, he gets drunk every night - he had begged to be allowed to take part in the stoning. ”The sheik won't say no to you," the Englishman argued, "you built him his own fucking mosque, for Christ's sake. Tell him If he'll let me throw just one stone, as long as it's one of the first five or six, I'll leave him my camcorder after we're done.”

  Bandari now almost wished he'd said yes. He should have answered, ”There's no need to ask. Just pick up a rock and throw it." The other men would have killed him before it even stopped rolling.

  Unfortunately, however, he still needed Pratt. Pratt had found Leyna but his job was not finished. But Bandari now wished with all his heart that he had never allowed Pratt to tape this. He envisioned men watching it in every city slum from Morocco to Lebanon, in every cinder block mosque like the one he built here, as the widow of his brother brings down curses on his head and calls him the worst kind of murderer. Pratt said don't worry about what she says, he can edit or mute before copies are made. But perhaps, hoped Bandari, it need never be shown. It won't if Leyna gives him what he needs.

  Bandari heard footsteps approaching behind him. He knew that it could only be the American, Tarrant, although Bandari had told him he must wait in the car. He had asked him, in fact, to wait back in Cairo but Tarrant had insisted on seeing this done. This one, in his way, is worse even than Pratt. At least Pratt gets excited. This one feels nothing. Leyna, to this one, might as well be a bug.

  “Bandari...” came the voice of Lawrence Tarrant. ”Get on with this, please. Go ask her.”

  “Not yet. But soon. When she is frightened enough.”

  The tall and thin American looked past him at the woman. Her chin was now trembling, her eyes wide with terror and her voice had become a hoarse rasp. She was not yelling now; she was trying to breathe; she sucked air in great shuddering gulps.

  “Frightened,” he sniffed. ”She's going into shock. Make your offer, Bandari. Make it now while you can.”

  “Mr. Tarrant...I have told you. This must be done correctly. The sheik must first finish reading his fatwah.”

/>   Tarrant glanced toward the old man who needed help just to stand and was probably on death's door himself. This sheik, he had learned, had once banned dark glasses on the grounds that God meant the sun to be bright. He had ordered that the vaginas of all girls be sewn shut lest they tempt some man into sin. Tarrant looked about him. He shook his head in wonder. ”How ever do you find these people, Bandari?”

  The Egyptian did not answer. In truth it is not easy; most sheiks can't be bought. Most are wise and compassionate if that's what you need but there are always those few who have the heart of a cockroach. That this one was sick and confused was even better. All that mattered was that this one was the law in Abu Shatt. And the law was whatever he said it was. That the two who gave evidence were desperately poor, and ready to believe anything about the wiles of a woman, was equally helpful in making this case. They will now be rich men by the standards of this village. Mahfouz, who is single, will be able to marry. He had already narrowed his prospects to three, the oldest of whom is thirteen. The other, who is married, might take a second wife because his first wife can't seem to make sons. He will also now be the first in this village to have an electric refrigerator. That's unless the old sheik says God meant food to rot.

  Above all, Bandari needed their friendship. You don't want these men as your enemy. A number were fighters who had gone to Afghanistan and now used what they learned there to ambush policemen. A cousin of Mahfouz stabbed two German tourists when they tried to take his picture near the pyramids at Giza. He said he didn't mind the picture as much as he minded that they both were wearing short pants. Another shot at tour boats so many times they don't sail down to Aswan anymore.

  Like it or not, such men and such sheiks run more of this country than does Cairo. The whole south of Egypt is already in their hands and Cairo is content to let them have it. It will not be long, he was more and more sure, before the rest of Egypt goes the way of Iran as is already happening in Algeria. But the real war will come when they rise against the Saudis. When they win, the West will come hat in hand although first they'll try to come with their tanks.