Beheaded

June 12, 2005

By Amar Jaleel

Continuous unrest in some major cities of the country can cause immense psychological damage to many a citizen

WHEN three deafening bomb blasts jolted a thickly populated vicinity of Karachi last week, the children of the locality were busy playing a football match in an abandoned playground littered with filth and garbage dumps. They were playing with a flattened football stuffed with all kinds of rubbish. They heard the thunderous sound of the first blast, and instinctively sank to the ground. Crows, pigeons, and the sparrows in multitude took off from the trees and the rooftops, and flew hither and thither. After a few seconds the children rose to their feet, and looked at each other in wonder. Before they could exchange a word sound of the second blast ripped through the air. The boys sprawled on the field. In the momentary lull the children had hardly raised themselves on the elbows to take a view of the situation when the third and the loudest sound of the last blast shook the earth. They placed their palms on the ears, and felt the playground shaking. Then, they saw a thick cloud of smoke whirl heavenwards. Before they could realize what was going on around them a severed head soaked in blood dropped with a thud in front of them from the air. For the first time the children felt frightened. They rolled over, and huddled together. One of them whispered, “It’s a head.”

“What kind of a head?” With his eyes closed the eldest among them asked. “Is it the head of a human being, or of an animal, or a bird?”

Someone replied, “It’s a man’s head.”

“Does it have a beard?”

“Why do you ask?”

“May be it is my father’s head.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“My uncle was beheaded last year in Saudi Arabia,” the child said. “My father saw his execution.”

“No, it doesn’t have a beard.” After a pause a child said, “It’s a head of a clean-shaven person.”

Slowly and gradually curiosity replaced fear among the children. They crawled towards the severed head and took a good view of it. Covered with blood and dust the head was resting on its chopped neck like a statue. The entwined hair was glued to its forehead. What amazed the children were the two large eyes in the head that were open. It appeared the head was staring at the children.

“My grandfather died last month. His eyes were closed,” a student of Government Secondary School said. “I think he is alive. That is why his eyes are open.”

“Nonsense,” a boy in his teens said. “How can you be alive without a body?”

The boy then narrated how actors in Indian movies placed their hand on the open eyes of a dead person, and the eyes would be closed. He moved closer to the severed head, and placed his hand on its eyes, and the eyes closed. He then raised a pertinent question: “What are we to do with the head?”

Against the backdrop of the screams and the sound of the stampede coming from a considerable distance the boys hung their heads and pondered over the query. After some time an idea occurred to a tiny boy. He said, “Let us bury it.”

“May be it is the head of a Hindu,” a sturdy boy said. “How can you bury it?”

“You can’t make out from a head whether it was severed from the neck of a Muslim, a Hindu, a Christian, or a Parsi.” A lanky boy triggered a debate among the boys. After brief arguments they terminated the debate and arrived at a unanimous conclusion. Muslims or Hindus, Christians or Jews they all bathed the dead before the final rituals. The boys agreed to give a bath to the severed head, clean it from the blood and dust, and then hand it over to the police.

Two boys volunteered to carry the head to the nearby mosque for ablution. Before the boys could lift the severed head they heard a loud shout. It was a warning, “Don’t touch it.”

They turned around and saw a bunch of commandoes along with a team of crack investigators enter the playground. The boys immediately distanced themselves from the severed head.

The commandoes surrounded the severed head in an assault posture. A bomb-disposal squad nervously approached the severed head. They bent down, and examined it thoroughly with latest gadgets. One of them turned around and spoke to his seniors who were standing at a safe distance, and said, “Sir, we have defused the high intensity bomb that could have rocked the entire city of Karachi.”

They whisked away the severed head for further investigation. The next day Mr Phanay Khan, famous for grilling the dead in their graves, presented a confidential report to his bosses. The report revealed, there were two suicide bombers. In the execution of the sinister design the body of one of the bombers was shredded, and his head tossed over to a playground. The body of the second bomber was lying on the spot. His head was blown to pieces. The two terrorists carried out the attack for money that they sent to their common mother-in-law. The mother-in-law is in our custody, and is being grilled. She is a tough woman.