The killers left the desert, heading for the alley, and quickly vanished in the darkness. Four human shapes rose to stand at a spot near the scene of the crime, and could be heard sighing and weeping quietly.
“Cowards!” one of them shouted. “You held me back and wore me out, so he died undefended.”
“If we had obeyed you, we would all have been lost, without saving him,” another told him.
“Cowards!” Ali repeated. “You are nothing but cowards.”
“Don’t waste time talking,” sobbed Karim. “We have a terrible job to finish before morning.”
Hussein raised his head and trained his tearful eyes on the sky, and muttered anxiously, “It will be dawn soon. Let’s be quick.”
“A man whose life was as short as a dream—but in him we lost the most precious thing we knew in life!” wept Zaki.
“Cowards,” muttered Ali through his clenched teeth as he headed toward the scene of the crime.
They followed him, and all knelt in a half circle to examine the ground searchingly.
“Here!” shouted Karim abruptly, like a man stung. He sniffed his hand. “This is his blood!”
“And this fresh area is where he’s buried,” shouted Zaki at the same moment.
They crowded around him and began to scoop the sand away with their hands. No one in the world was more wretched than they, because of the loss of their cherished one, and their helplessness at his death. Karim experienced a moment of madness and said simplemindedly, “Maybe we’ll find him alive!”
“Listen to the delusions of cowards,” snapped Ali, his hands still working.
Their noses were full of the smell of dirt and blood. A dog howled from the direction of the mountain.
“Slow down,” called Ali softly. “This is his body.”
Their hearts pounded, and their hands relented slightly as they heartbrokenly felt the edges of his clothing, then they began to weep loudly. They all helped to draw the corpse out of the sand, and gently lifted it up as the cocks in the alleys and lanes began to crow. Some of them said to hurry, but Ali reminded them that they would need to fill up the hole. Karim took off his cloak and spread it on the ground, and they laid the body on it. They all helped to refill the hole. Hussein removed his cloak and covered the body with it, then they took it up and marched toward Bab al-Nasr. The darkness was lifting over the mountain, revealing clouds, and the dew fell on their tearful faces. Hussein led them along the way to his tomb until they arrived there, and they preoccupied themselves silently with opening the tomb. The light of day spread gradually, until they could see the shrouded body, their bloodstained hands, and eyes red from weeping; then they lifted up the body and descended with it into the tomb’s interior. They stood humbly around it, pressing their eyes to stop the unseen tears that flowed.
“Your life was a brief dream,” said Karim in a voice choked with tears. “But it filled our hearts with love and purity. We did not imagine that you would leave us so quickly, let alone that you would be murdered by a member of our infidel alley, which you healed and loved; our alley, which wanted only to murder the love, mercy and healing that you represented. It has brought a curse upon itself until the end of time.”
“Why do the good die?” sobbed Zaki. “Why do the criminals live?”
“If it had not been for your love that lives on in our hearts,” moaned Hussein, “we would have hated people forever!”
“We will never know peace until we expiate our cowardice,” added Ali.
As they left the tomb, heading back into the desert, the light was dyeing the horizons with the melting hue of a red rose.