Huda took care to wake up early and step quickly out of the house, leaving her husband sleeping the sleep of the dead. She walked through streets that were nearly empty, heading for a famous bakery. She bought fresh, hot bread, which her husband liked more than meat or fruit and would be very pleased to have for breakfast. Suddenly people started running as fast as they could in the direction of the main square. Curiosity got the better of Huda, and she followed without thinking. Once there, she saw a gallows already in place, soldiers carrying guns, a man about to be hanged, and a sun about to rise. The noose was already around the condemned man’s neck, and he cast a glance upon the spectators milling around the scaffold. He heard only the sounds they made but saw no one except Huda, the woman with dark hair and fair hands and face, staring at him with eyes as wide open as they could be. She noticed that he had seen her, and she smiled like a child on whom snow had fallen for the first time.
When the condemned man became aware that what he was standing on was about to slip away from under his feet, he gave Huda a look that appealed for help. She was amazed, for she had never thought that one day a thin young man with a gentle face and gentle eyes would seek her help. For a few fleeting moments she felt he was her younger brother hanging on to the edge of her dress asking for protection but she did not know what to do. The hubbub and the crowd around the gallows grew more dense, especially when the young man dangled, a lifeless corpse with a blue face. Huda felt she was about to suffocate and walked quickly away, leaving the people behind and heading home before the bread got cold. She came into the bedroom and found her husband awake. “Now that you’re awake,” she said, “I’ll make your breakfast.”
“The world won’t go to pieces,” he said as he reached for her, “if breakfast is delayed.”
He started pulling at her clothes. She was disgusted and felt like moving away from his hands, but she did not stir. She smiled, pretending she could not wait for what was coming next, and her hands began to help his. She was stunned by what she was doing and became angry at herself for being so weak. She longed to cry out at the top of her voice, but she jumped into the bed with a cheerful motion and slipped under the quilt as she said, “A little while ago, I saw a man being hanged.”
“Many are hanged every day,” he said, laughing, “without rope or spectators.”
She said nothing. “What did he do to deserve hanging?” he asked. “Disobey the traffic laws?”
“I heard the policemen and other people say he killed an entire family because one of them had killed his brother,” Huda answered. “He killed the men and the women, and the boys and the girls. He even killed their cat, and felt sorry for no one except the cat.”
“This is the state of the world,” he said as he embraced her. “He who kills only ten people is a criminal to be hanged. But he who kills hundreds of thousands is a hero among heroes.”
In that silent room with the door bolted and the curtains drawn Huda saw with half-closed eyes a man moving on top of a woman who had around her neck a rope that forced her to gasp for breath, and he was ready to choke her every time she tried to break free of him.
The man gave the woman a long, hard look, like a merchant who had bought a cow and wanted to make sure he had not been cheated. She felt embarrassed and closed her eyes and wanted to turn into lifeless flesh, but her body paid no heed and set to doing all that pleased it and made her angry. She heard her husband say jokingly that after all this effort she would certainly give birth in nine months. She was about to say something disapproving, as she might to one who would never one day father any child she would bring into the world, but she chose to say nothing. She imagined that she had gone back to the gallows at night and cut the noose surrounding the neck of the hanged man, and that he had felt his neck with his fingers and with a distracted look had thanked her in a halting voice and promised he would never kill another cat. At that moment her husband stretched and yawned and asked about breakfast. She wanted to tell him to hurry out to the nearest restaurant, but she quickly put on some clothes and rushed into the kitchen.