THE NOOSE

“To be hanged by the neck thrice until death.”
Though the words of the court decision lacked any feeling of passion and the judge’s voice was bland and devoid of emotion, the court room went quiet for a moment. The silence was broken by the peal of laughter that emitted from the convicted person. A majority of people present in the court at the time were familiar with such hysterical reactions from convicts and they knew that they often reacted like this to conceal their inner fear and dreadfulness of the punishment. This was a way to revive their courage. But this laugh today was somewhat different. It was strange and unfamiliar and reminded one of a smile that suddenly changes into a laugh at hearing a good joke. This was a true, living, healthy and loud clangour of laughter in which there was no artifice, nervousness or over-reaction. What was the truth? Was he in fact not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted? Did the court decision appear to him to have been no more than a joke? But after all he had accepted his quilt in its entirety and proclaimed it for all to hear. He had laughed perhaps at death by hanging by the neck three times. Hanging once was all right but how could one be hanged the second and the third time? He did not appear to have been the kind of fool who laughs at the decision expressing the gravity of such a severe punishment. And then while coming out of the fenced enclosure in the court in the custody of guards he was heard saying:
“O God I thank you for honouring me and selecting me for martyrdom.”
It is quite apparent that he was not repentant of his deed but took the death sentence as an honour and elevation for himself. The newspapermen selected his laughter and calmness for the next days leads. Though the guards prevented the people putting flower garlands around his neck, the voices of his relations and others emitting laudatory remarks and voices saying ‘”Bravo! Bravo!” reached him. It was his great fortune that the Master was present there in person and was heard saying:
“May God shower his blessings upon thee!”
In these words there was such beneficence and power that the sky began to shower flower petals on him from on high- so many flowers and blossoms that the journalists, photographers and the video cameras were all covered by them. As the closed prison van taking him to jail accelerated he felt that the roads were also covered with flowers. How could those who were unable to see the flowers adorning his path gauge the extent of his happiness and good fortune?
That night, God’s blessings continued to descend on the prison. Rose petals continued to fall at intervals. He slept on the stack of flowers instead of the prison floor and was able to cover his body with flowers instead of the lice ridden blanket he had had.
He was told by the guards next morning that his picture was printed in all the newspapers and that he was also shown on the television the night before. Hearing this he was overjoyed. Having finished this early morning requirements he performed his ritual ablutions and prostrated before God in thanksgiving.
“Grateful I am to you God! You elevated me to this height and granted me success in this great task allotted to me and I was able to stem this evil from its roots to allow truth to finally prevail.”
It was at this stage that Master’s face came into his thought and the words uttered by him echoed in his mind.
“May God shower His blessings upon thee!”
His heart blossomed with joy that came with admiration of the Master. Would that he gets the opportunity of implanting a kiss on his feet for he had picked up a useless pebble from the earth and made it into a precious diamond. One look from him had changed an insignificant particle of dust into the sun.
He remembered the days when he was no more than a village dolt. Though he had gone through ten or twelve years of schooling, he had known little of true knowledge and din. Yes he had known the Kalima and the text of partly forgotten ritual prayer but God had identified him for the greater task than mere ritualistic prayer. To his good fortune he had met the Master. Distressed and dejected by deprivation and hunger he was walking towards the rail track to end his life, when he had seen a throbbing mass of people in the open space near the railway line. Somebody was reciting the verses from the Qur’an on the loud speaker. They were perhaps starting a religious or a political meeting. He hoped that the train would soon arrive for him to accomplish what he had come for. ‘What better time than this to die,’ he thought. As the train approached, the Master coughed, cleared his throat and read out a few holy verses of the Qur’an and then the flowers of words began to flow from his mouth. The voice of the Master had such magnetism and indeed magic in it that the whole train right to the last bogy choo-chooed past him in a jiffy and like a statue he continued to stare at the railway line and the flying flower petals of the Master’s words. That poignant and impressive voice which had given him a new life rose higher and higher like a kite. It was, as if a firecracker ascended into the sky and embraced it before the flash. The atmosphere was lit with the flowers of the fireworks. He had heard boys in the college taking part in debates, the teachers teaching in the classrooms and the fiery evangelists delivering their spellbinding speeches in religious congregations but he was witnessing this passionate magical rendering for the first time in his life. The flow of ideas, the articulation of the tongue and the depth and tenor of the voice together made him feel that he was a kite of which the line was in some unknown hand that pulled him towards it.
Difficult words, complex verses of poetry and ambiguous terms have a magic of their own. If the tenor of the echoes of a deep voice is added to an extensive vocabulary then a voice can initiate a storm. It can but pulverise mountains. He only happened to be an ordinary literate person. He vowed that before death comes to take him away, he will seize the opportunity of paying this extraordinary man his respects and kissing his hands.
At the close of the speech a mass of people waited to shake his hand. He was in no hurry. His turn came and he held the extended hand in veneration. He touched it with his heavy eyes and continued to shower it with kisses reverentially. He patted the back of his shoulder with great kindness and compassion and invited him to come to his hospice. This was the way how that humble and sinful person was admitted to the body of the Master’s slaves. All his troubles came to an end. The dreams of his greatness, his blind and senile father had seen, had started to come true.
He remembered the early days of his training. How the boulders that filled his mind were removed one by one. How the grime from the world outside was cleared and the deviant desires residing in his heart cleansed. Soon the foliage of both his inner and outer being became verdant and his heart and his mind were lit with a new beacon of light.
The second phase of his training was assigned to strengthening and fortification of faith and belief. For this it was necessary to look comparatively at other religions and beliefs. He would say,
“To imagine light without knowing of darkness is impossible.”
He would never refute other beliefs with strength of his rhetoric. Instead he would prove their error and lack of coherency through logic and cogent reasoning and instil it in your mind. Once this phase was over, the next appeared to be simple and straight forward. It amounted to making choices between virtue and evil, truth and untruth. “The triumph of truth and negation of vice is our concern.” Having said this he continued, “You are the great pillars of this sacred organization. You are the suns and the moons of the new heavens. You are the chosen ones. You can indeed conquer the world. History bears witness to the fact that a few can establish themselves over many through strength of faith, power of belief and fortitude of unmoving resolve. You are among those fearless and virtuous champions of faith who can pulverise mountains into dust. When you stand with the standard of truth in your hands you will cleanse the oceans and the lands of falsehood. But wisdom and prudence demand that when great objectives are reached in phases the evil is destroyed never to come back.”
On another occasion he had said, “Every righteous person should start from his own household. And you know which of them are making it impure. They throw filth on your mothers, defile their good names and stain their honour. They are insolent towards your revered fathers and laugh at your beliefs. A thousand curses on the life of humiliation and dishonour. Stand up and pull out their tongues from their bases. Purify the faith of the corrupt and the depraved.
He remembered, listening to him, two of the more zealous disciple tied their burial shrouds on their heads and stood up. At this he had said with much patience instilled in his voice, “Do not loose your wisdom in your passion. Impatience is a satanic emotion. Do not kill the thief, slay his mother. If you kill the thief, she will simply go on and give birth to another. Identify the leader of the satanic gang who is the root cause of all corruption and intrigue. Cut the root. The tree and its branches will die of their own. Who will do it? Raise your hands.”
He remembered that among all the strong and sinewy hands, the Master liked his feeble hands and greatness became his destiny. Some of his companions felt jealous of his good fortune. Others paid him complements and prayed for his success. As his good fortune would have it, he whose greetings the resident of his part of the city had not responded to lest he should ask them for help in obtaining a job or a loan, was elevated to the heavens. He had been raised to such great heights that the stars began to envy him.
The last was the phase of practical training. When the inner being is saturated with commitment and is redolent with the urge for martyrdom, every difficulty becomes easy to deal with. To attain the blessings and protection of God had become an essential part of his faith and belief. He had in the final analysis accepted the mission with feelings of gratitude.
He remembered that his first attempt had failed. He had messed it all up. Against the advice given him, he had let his feelings overcome his reason and tried to pull out the tree along with its roots, its trunk and its branches. The outcome was that though some of the branches were severed, the root itself survived. In the second attempt, he was, to a great extent, successful. The tree was damaged, and destabilised right down to its roots. It was felt that it will never be green again but in the expression of bravery and daring, he committed the crime of carelessness and was recognised and identified. He was reprimanded by the Master that they will leave no stone unturned to get to him. But he took all the blame upon himself. In spite of continuing persecution and torture, which continued for many months, he remained steadfast and they failed to break him.
Though he was remorseful that he had failed to crush the real target, he had made the evil so weak that it had become impossible for it to raise its head again. For his success he had been honoured with the title of Dilawar and given the status of a martyr. But above all he had been given the joyful tidings of elevation to paradise.
He recalled that before coming to the prison the picture of the house he was to occupy in paradise was rather unfinished and indeed hazy in his mind. It was a mere blur but he continued to colour the obscure sketch that it was. He had all the time in the world to do it. Mentally he had started to reside in his proposed house like the man who has the means to construct a house and has had his design approved by the municipality. This was a house so magnificent that in the real world there appeared to be none like it. The houses and the most majestic of the palaces of the mortal world were indeed no match to it.
It was a straight forward case with no complications but some people tried to have many others involved in it. That was the reason why the case dragged on for many months. The bad news that came during this period was that the withered and the dry root had sprouted again. Soon the evil forces had once again become so strong that they attempted the cowardly act of harming the Master. But God had protected him. Many a faithful sacrificed his life for him. He wished that he was free and able to take revenge for these dastardly acts.
The announcement of the court after so many months had made him laugh because this was exactly what he had expected. His life had not been wasted and rather than facing haram death he was to achieve the eminence of martyrdom and everlasting life. His goal was now near but an obstacle stood in the way, for the Master and his other well-wishers had appealed against the court decision. To air his cause arrangements were also made for holding small and large public meetings and statements in his favour began to appear in the press. But in the end, what should have happened, happened. The appeal was rejected but he was not distressed over the rejection. He had known the fate of the appeal.
The morning after the day the news of rejection of the appeal came, a strange feeling overtook him. He felt that he was awake as well as asleep. While on the one hand he saw himself walking through the flower laden paths of paradise, on the other, he was witnessing the guards and the inmates of the prison going about inside the prison and the birds flying about in the prison yard. This was as if he had two distinct personalities. Overnight, inside him, another like him had taken birth. This person was, to look at, his splitting image but in thought he was the opposite.
He tried very hard to vanquish this person but with each new morning the first one lost weight while the other ballooned and became fatter. This continued until the letter to carry out the death sentence came and they all came for the last visit. He felt pity and envy for his crying wailing relatives- pity because they were in worse condition than him and envy because they were alive, they could cry, they could stop crying and could return home. His well wishers and his companions also came. They were also full of grief and lauded his great courage and his supreme sacrifice. But only he knew how much work he had to do to appear happy.
The last to visit him was the Master. What great fortune that he during this meeting then that the good tidings of his receiving the highest niche in paradise were given him by the Master.
When the last visit came to an end and they walked towards life and he to his death cell he felt a strange void expanding inside him. This was as if he had been alone for the first time. He had spent many months in solitary confinement but had never felt this loneliness and emptiness inside him. He felt as if something inside him had died. But what was it? He could not understand the real cause of emptiness that began to dwell inside him. Had he lived on some elusive and indefinable hope which had died that day? He thought that he had neither hoped nor wished for escaping punishment. What was it then that had died? Was it some weakness of his faith? Had his desire for a better life become hazy or had the one born inside him overpowered him? He collected all the forces at his disposal and tried to overwhelm the fattening person who had taken birth inside him. He was able to do so the next day. Now it was he and the death cell. He would have comfortable sleep during the night and would see his life’s video pressing the forward and reverse buttons as the days passed– the days of his childhood, boyhood, school and college and the days without cares all passed before him bit by bit, episode by episode.
But then in sleep and in wakefulness he began to see visions, experience miracles and witness strange dreams. A hidden hand, in silence, would open the locks and let him out, the roof of the prison would take to the wings and he, holding on to a hanging rope would climb on to a flying carpet to soar into the sky. The enemy aircraft would bombard the prison and everything would be razed to the ground. Only he would come out of the wreckage unharmed. He knew that these were no more than the evil forces dissuading him from his spiritual objectives sullying his ideals, which tried to prevent him from obtaining his reward. He controlled these thoughts but in spite of this he was not able to completely do away with his inner anxiety.
The day of the death sentence had been announced. The sun began to rise and set each day. He got a rude jolt when he realised that only two days remained- a day and a half to be exact or eighteen hours. After that he would be no more. He touched his body with his hands and stared at various parts of his corpus for an extended period of time. They were all in good shape. Though there were scars in some places, his skin had a sheen of its own and was without wrinkles. The legs maintained good form; the hands could perform the most difficult tasks with dexterity; the teeth could break and chew the most solid of things; and his digestion was exemplary. His mother had had stones in her kidneys and continued to suffer from acute pain from time to time but he was not even sure where exactly kidneys were located in the body. Eyes, nose and ears were also good. He could even today read a newspaper in the moonlight. He could hear the soft distant footsteps of the guards and his acute sense of smell could feel the aroma of food cooked at large distances. The truth was that he was still young and after all what had he seen of life yet? If he did not have to die like this he could easily have lived at least three to four times his present age. Had he lived for two hundred years, death would still have to come, he thought. Why one should be enamoured by this mortal world? If death has to come, what difference does it make if it came at the age of twenty five, fifty or seventy-five? What difference is there in seeing more or less cities or countries- people one meets, books one reads or films one watches and the food one eats. If one is going to die a day later, why should one feel sorry for ones failings?
The next morning at his request the guard brought for him the paper which carried the short news of his impending death. He felt anger welling up inside him for the newspaper people- such important news and such small space. ‘These dreadful people would have understood the import of hanging were they to experience it themselves.’ He thought.
He started to read the newspaper to while away the time. But his heart was not in it. The newspaper carried the statements of politicians saying they’ll do this or they’ll do that. The government’s claims that electricity supply will be made available to such and such a town by the following year and such and such a road will be widened and made a dual carriageway. These had no meaning for him. He went to his favourite film page but even the unsavoury news appearing here could not maintain his attention for long. An actor not working in a film directed by so and so or an actress marrying so and so had no meaning for him any more. The sports page also appeared meaningless. Who won the cricket match and who lost it? In squash, who can retain the number one position? All this had no meaning any more. In that large newspaper there was only one piece of news of importance and he did not want to read it again. The crime-news section had made him uneasy. Like always there were news of murders, kidnapping, dacoities, smuggling, sectarian killings and terrorism. He became sadder. Will all this continue to happen? Has nothing changed? Will nothing ever change? Will his sacrifice be of no avail?
He left the paper on the floor and began to pace the cell. ‘In two days this cell will be empty once again.’ He thought, ‘Another will come in due course and then a third.’ He wondered how many before him had come and gone on the journey beyond. He wondered why God does not erase evil and vice from the earth and why people like him have to hang for banishing evil from the world. He got himself tangled in the conflict between good and evil. Then he thought of his mother who was no more among them. She was a strange woman. Perhaps God had created her in His own image. If his brothers and sisters quarrelled among themselves and one beat the other she would not sit in judgement on who was guilty and who the wronged. She would provide sympathy and succour to the one who was beaten up and scold the one who did it even if the other had initiated the quarrel.
Beyond this there was the answer to the question he wanted to avoid. It had slowly and imperceptibly crept towards him but he pushed it away and tried to keep unpleasant questions out of his system. One morning he got up in a disconcerted state. The last sun of his life was rising. His head shook. After the day ends that final night will arrive during which he will be made to rise from sleep and asked to walk to the gallows. It is possible that he will be asked to express his last wish. What should be his last wish? He thought for a moment but he could not think of a reasonably proper last wish. They will then perhaps tie his hands behind him and a black cover will be put around his face and the noose placed around his neck. Then he will hear the sound of the lever being turned by the hangman. The floor beneath his feet will then slip away and as his body falls his neck will break. It will probably elongate and he will feel his breath stop. He would want to scream but no voice will come out of his lips. Perhaps the darkness before his eyes will deepen. In this darkness, he will then begin to sink. He felt a shiver run up his spine. In the cool air of the morning he began to sweat. He wanted to dwell on the journey of the spirit beyond when leaving his worldly abode behind he would soar to the heights of the heaven but he could not think beyond the gallows, beyond severing of his neck and the choking of his breath. He wanted to get up to take a walk but felt that he had no strength left in him. He wanted to face death with dignity. He got up then to meet his morning needs.
The sunlight began to spread outside. The clock continued to chime the hours as time passed. Sometimes he felt that the hours passed quickly at others time they appeared to come to a stop and moments passed painfully. He felt that every thing had changed that day: the guards’ behaviour, the taste of breakfast and lunch and the chime of the clock. Before this he never knew if it was ten o’clock or eleven. However, there was a time piece inside him that clicked away. He now wanted the platform from under his feet to slip away quickly but he started up when the clock announced the next hour.
It was on this day that a difference appeared in the jail clock and the time piece inside him. When he thought it was three o’clock the struck four. He felt that he should protest over them stealing a whole hour of his. But then he thought that he could have been wrong and then of course it really made no difference. Where thousands of hours that he could have lived had been taken away from him one more would not make a difference. May be it was all for the best for there was now one less hour of waiting.
The last sun of his life was about to go down when a huge cockroach coming out of the corner allocated as a toilet began to roam about the cell floor. Cockroaches often came out of that corner and lost their lives as he crushed them. He stood up with the intent of trampling on it but then was dissuaded from it thinking that he should not deprive it of its life as he was leaving in a little while anyway. And after all what harm can it do to him now? Who knows when and who would come into the cell after he had gone. The cell should not be left without some kind of living creature.
For a moment he thought of many of those people who had lost their lives at his hands but then he did not want to carry any feeling of remorse or regret on his conscience at this hour. The fact is that they appeared to have been more fortunate than him any way because they had died talking, buying daily articles of use from shops or just walking about when death suddenly came to take them away and they died without suffering fear, mental anguish or long tortuous wait. The injured must have suffered a bit but once their wounds heeled they must have been grateful for being alive. How good it would be if he could sleep a sleep so deep that he would not know when they come and take him away and put the noose around his neck to be hanged. But sleep had not come even the night before. And then there was no purpose in spending the last night of his life in sleep: after that there was long and eternal sleep of peace and tranquillity.
The last sun of his life went down. The air filled up with the echoing calls of the muezzins. Hidden in the call for prayer he could feel a strange sense of terror, as if the drums were announcing the sunset of life. He got up to say his prayer and at the end like always he asked for God’s forgiveness that in places he forgets the text of the prayer. His tongue would slip from one verse through to the third or the fourth. To overcome this deficiency he would read out the verses saved in his memory two or three times and would think that God was great and would forgive such minor lapses specially now that he had become one of His chosen ones. He could feel his proximity and closeness to God. He had given such great sacrifice for cleansing His world of wrongdoers and sinful innovators.
After his last meal he read the Qur’an. The jail clock continued to chime the hours but he had now stopped to count the strikes. Doing so created a kind of anxiety inside him. Reading the verses of the Qur’an aloud he felt that he had gone to sleep and was reading the Sura Yaseen sitting beside himself. He felt his voice coming from a distance and he would start at each strike of the clock thinking that they had come to take him away but then he would realise that it were the guards walking about outside. Though many days had passed since he had a bath and in the closed cell he normally felt hot, he was suddenly cold. As the time for the deliverance from his tension, fear, sleepless nights and anxiety came near his shivering increased. At that time he neither thought of his near ones nor his well-wishers. In his heart there were neither desires nor longings; and he neither wanted to give a will nor an advice to any one. His mind felt completely empty. There was only a shiver which continued to shake him and he wanted deliverance from it. He wrapped himself up in the blanket and lay down on the floor but he soon felt that some shadows entered his cell like in a dream and asked him to accompany them. He wanted to shout at them and say that the real terrorists were those who were behind it all but his teeth began to clatter as the shiver ran up his spine. But no words came out of his lips. He wanted to walk straight like a brave men his head held high but his steps lurched and he stumbled. He wanted to laugh like he had done in the court but he couldn’t do so. It was then that one of the shadows that stood around him told him that he should take with him the satisfaction that the two factions had now made up and there was now complete amity and peace among them after the agreement and on the previous night the leaders of the opposing factions were shown on the television embracing each other. He wanted to burst out into loud peal of laughter. He couldn’t do that but he laughed all the same. The difficulty now was that this laugh would not stop and so he continued to laugh.
 

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