Jerry Lovell, Herr-Lippi and I are shopping at the zook (say sook), the gold market in downtown Jeddah. Jerry’s been coming to the same jeweler for twenty years down here, both he and Mark have flown for different Sheiks in past lives.
The minarets start to wail their call for noon prayer, and the shopkeepers, hundreds of them, chase their customers out and close-up shop. They lock their doors and pull across their metal security gates.
Khaki clad, heavily bearded Matawah, religious police, pass quickly through the streets, ensuring compliance with their orthodoxy.
Yesterday, one of our male flight attendants was busted, and shipped out of the Kingdom. He had made the mistake of sitting on a public bench adjacent to a female who wasn’t his wife or blood relative. He wasn’t talking to her, just sitting, resting. Sometimes the Matawah sweep through American or Brit compounds looking for booze or drugs. Often, they set-up roadblocks checking the work-documents of all the Packies, Egyptians, Bangladeshies, or whoever else is in the city, making sure their work visas haven’t expired.
Suddenly, we are surrounded by Matawah. We are force marched without explanation towards the central square, across the street, near the mosque.
“Oh shit.” says Jerry. “What day is it?”
“Friday.”
“Fuck,” Lippi says, “it’s chop-chop time.”
The crowd gathers, and the Matawah make sure that all us western infidels are pushed up front, the better to watch Islamic justice. The prisoners are marched out. This is going to be my first viewing of a public execution. We all know that, except for during Ramadan, all Islamic justice is meted out every Friday, immediately following noon prayer.
The kneeling man’s eyes are fixed, as are ours, on the executioner standing before him. He is holding a long, scimitar-style sword. In the blink of an eye, the man’s head is in the basket. No one ever noticed the second executioner step up from behind and swing his sword.
Today were in for a treat. A Muslim husband has accused one of his wives of infidelity. Worse yet, as Jerry works out from the crowd, she’s been caught being unfaithful with a non-Muslim. She will be stoned to death. Lucky for her, however, Jeddah, unlike most other Muslim cities, has gone ‘high tech.’ We watch as she is lowered into a prepared pit, about 10’ x 5’ x 8’ deep. The throaty rumble of the tractor is enough to clear a path for it through the side of the crowd. We watch a front loader full of huge chunks of rock and concrete pieces lifted high above the pit. At a nod from the Imam, the tractor operator releases his load. The woman is no longer visible, buried beneath tons of rubble and dust.
“Man, it was much worse in the old days,” says Mark. They used to have the husband and his male family members and buddies just throw rocks at the bitch until she died. Took forever.”
We manage to sidle out of the crowd, and escape back into the maze of the zook, before the next beheading or hand chopping. “I’ll be more careful to make sure what day of the week it is before I zook-it again,” I tell the other guys.
“Hell,” says Jerry. “Sure keeps the crime rate low.” He’s right, but Islamic justice can be a little too arbitrary, from where I stand, as a non-Muslim (and secret Jew).
Herr Lippi asks, “know what they cater their beheadings with?”
“No, Mark, what?”
“DeCap-achino! get it? Get it?”