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The attorney general’s office chose to carry out the reenactment of the crime while Detective Hanash was still in the hospital, recovering from the gunshot wound, which, thankfully, had just missed his heart. All media outlets were invited to attend, and television crews reported live from the scene. At ten o’clock in the morning a police van pulled up with Abdel-Jalil handcuffed inside, surrounded by four muscular police officers. The crowd was so large that all the roads leading up to the crime scene were barricaded, and traffic in surrounding areas came to a standstill. When Abdel-Jalil was taken out of the vehicle, shrieks and jeers rang out from the crowd, demanding his public execution.

Hamid, who had been with Hanash every step of the way, oversaw the reenactment of the crime. He was surrounded by the nation’s top security officials, all dressed in black suits with dark sunglasses. Despite the incredible satisfaction that accompanied solving a double murder of this caliber, the officials who gave television interviews did not present themselves as the heroes in some crime drama, as usually happened. Instead, they showered their bedridden colleague Detective Hanash with praise, and gave him all the credit for solving the crime.

A male and a female officer played the roles of the victims during the reenactment. They stretched out on the bed and a white sheet was placed over them. They asked Abdel-Jalil, who seemed completely bewildered, to reenact how he had murdered the victims. Baba provided him with a plastic sword, just like the ones children play with. In front of all the cameras, Abdel-Jalil yielded to his orders and began swinging the plastic sword down on the victims. The whole thing didn’t last more than five minutes. Hamid intervened twice to demand that Abdel-Jalil deliver a more realistic reenactment of the murder. It was obvious that Abdel-Jalil was putting on a poor performance, simply trying to do what he was told.

 

Eight months later Abdel-Jalil was sentenced to be executed, despite having denied throughout the trial that he had committed the double murder. A confession had been extracted in a police interrogation room, though. The prosecution’s case was based on several pieces of evidence. Among them were the bus ticket that was never used, the bus register that confirmed he hadn’t traveled on the midnight bus, and the fact that he was the last person confirmed to have been with the victims. The prosecution established his motive to commit murder and relied also on the interrogations of Abdel-Jalil’s family, who all confessed to lying. It was true that the murder weapon had still not been found, and the suspect denied all charges, but this did not prevent the court from convicting him and sentencing him to death.

 

Ruqiya didn’t get the chance to attend the trial. She died from a heart attack only a month after her daughter was murdered. One morning, she hadn’t woken as usual to perform the dawn prayers, and when Ibrahim tried to wake her he found her body stiff. Her eyes were open, and she looked like she’d greeted death kindly. Ibrahim considered his mother’s parting a relief from the torturous kidney pain she had been suffering.

Three days after his mother’s burial, Ibrahim vanished into thin air. No one knew where he went. Everyone in Kandahar assumed that he had headed to Tangier to attempt an illegal crossing into Spain.

The only Kandahar resident who attended the trial was the neighborhood muezzin, Driss. He had become the undisputed leader of Kandahar after Sufyan left for Syria. Driss had started preaching, and on the eve of the trial gave a sermon in the neighborhood mosque about how immorality tore apart families that had once been unified. He developed a unique charisma that attracted older residents of the neighborhood as well, even though he was only twenty-one years old. There was something about his thick beard, Afghani clothes, determined walk, and the fervent determination in his eyes that made him both feared and loved, especially by the girls in the neighborhood. He convinced many young girls to put on the full niqab, instead of just the veil. When he made public his intention to marry, nearly every eligible girl in the neighborhood came forward. He chose the most beautiful among them: the chicken seller’s daughter. She was a chemistry student at the technical college, and one of the first who had put on the niqab out of love and devotion to his message.

Driss also got Salwa to close her salon. She acceded to his request without putting up a fight, and begged for his forgiveness.

Driss was provided with a respectable monthly income by the merchants in the neighborhood market. He used some of the money to rent the area adjacent to the mosque, which was reserved for selling medicinal herbal cures, as well as religious books and cassettes.

Driss launched a venture called Prepared Islamic Foods, on the suggestion of his brother-in-law, who also sold chicken. He and his followers sold cheap and delicious meals composed of onion with chicken innards, as well as minced, spiced sardines. They had wheeled carts to move about the neighborhood. The venture became quite successful, and the local youth who followed Driss would work all day, and share their profits every evening.

One night, around ten thirty, Driss received a phone call from Syria. The voice was choppy and distorted, and the line cut out completely more than three times. Sufyan’s voice had changed, taking on a Levantine inflection. He spoke in short, concise sentences, as if he had received orders about what to say. Sufyan asked how his father was doing, and told Driss to send him his regards. Sufyan said that he couldn’t speak to his father directly, since he was hard of hearing. Then he asked about Ibrahim and the neighborhood. The line dropped again. Sufyan called back and resumed speaking in a terse official tone, as if reading an announcement. He said: “Salam Alaykum, I’m in Syria and I’ll be carrying out a martyrdom mission tomorrow in the name of God. I request forgiveness by all . . .”

 

The newscasts reported the massive blast that shook a popular marketplace in Syria, resulting in the death of twenty individuals, with hundreds more injured. On the very same day, someone who called himself Abdel-Qahar called Driss and succinctly informed him of Sufyan’s death.

The phone calls that Driss received had been intercepted by the Moroccan intelligence services, who eavesdropped on all communication coming from Syria. Driss was at the neighborhood mosque getting ready to deliver the afternoon call to prayer when they snatched him and brought him into custody. Three masked men brought him to a secret facility. They treated him well at first, since he cooperated and told them everything about his relationship with Sufyan. He said that Sufyan had been the leader in organizing the proselytization and dispatch of Moroccan fighters to Iraq and Syria. Driss revealed even more information when the interrogators decided to hang him upside down and apply electric shocks to his genitals. The interrogators were stunned when he confessed that Sufyan had murdered two people before he left Morocco.

After extracting these confessions, a special unit was dispatched to Sufyan’s family home. They found a long sword wrapped in newspaper hidden in a trashcan on the roof of the house.

The laboratory analysis verified that the dried blood on the sword was, in fact, that of Nezha and Said.

Driss denied any involvement in the murders, but he did confess that his friend Sufyan had been infatuated with Nezha since he was fifteen years old. He used to send her love letters, and wanted to marry her. But Nezha slipped from his grasp after her father’s passing, and she spiraled downward. Sufyan used to follow her everywhere, without her knowing, and he knew her every move. Sufyan had tried to forget about her, but couldn’t. Driss concluded: “Before Sufyan traveled to Syria, he said that an angel had come to him in a dream and ordered him to cleanse the neighborhood of its impurities.”