Authors: Day Rusk
I
Spent
a lot of time just walking around the house – aimlessly.
I don’t know what I was doing; maybe subconsciously taking stock of my life. At one time I had been comfortable here; quietly going about my business; living a simple life but alone; hoping that one day I would meet the right woman and build a different life than the one I was presently living.
I walked into my study; my sanctuary. There, on the shelves, lay my collection of books; not a conscious collection completely, but one also filled with many impulse purchases; the result of an unconditional love of books. Some I had read, while others I hadn’t. I was waiting for them to call to me; to let me know they were ready to be read; no matter how all this played out now, things were going to change, and chances are my books would end up orphans – crying out to be read but cast aside. I hoped they’d find a good home.
I sat at my desk. It was here that all the possibilities in the world were open to me. Words freed me to explore the worlds I was interested in; and while I had yet to embrace writing fiction, I always thought that one day I would. Play God, manipulating the life of all of my characters, although, I wondered, would I be manipulating them, or as I brought them to life, would they eventually be manipulating me? I figured I’d never find out. Things were going to get ugly, and with it, several futures would change.
I eventually headed back down into the basement.
“He’s pissed himself, goddamn it,” said Saif when he noticed me coming down the stairs. It was true, Farooq had peed in his pants; they’d been tied up for a long time, it was bound to happen.
“So, I see,” I answered.
“I’ve got to go,” said Saif. “Untie me.”
“If you have to go, go,” I said, taking my seat across from them.
Farooq’s head was down, as it usually was. He’d either passed out or fallen to sleep, or was just wallowing in his misery. I really didn’t care; he had come here to help torment me; if he was going to be incompetent at it, that wasn’t my problem.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Saif asked. “You want me to piss myself?”
“Seeing how I don’t plan on untying you, I’d say that’s your only course of action, unless you think you can hold it. It all ready smells bad down here, what’s the difference?”
“You’re insane,” said Saif.
I just nodded my head. He was probably right.
“So, how’d you do it?” I asked, after a couple of minutes of silence.
Saif just looked at me.
“I think we’re past the point of debating whether or not you killed your sister. You did it, right? So, how’d you do it?”
“I’m not telling you anything,” he said.
Defiant as ever.
“Then maybe I should get on with what I need to do,” I said.
Saif just looked at me.
“This is a trick,” he said. “You’re taping me or something. Want to get me to confess so you can turn it over to the police. I’m not stupid.”
“You’re here, tied to a chair in my basement, helpless. I’d say everything points to the contrary.”
We just looked at one another; still trying to size each other up.
“So,” I said, breaking the silence, “How’d you do it?”
“Why do you want to know? You’re a sick fuck,” he said.
“Indulge me.”
Saif looked at me for a bit and then down at the ground; he was obviously deep in thought. I’m sure he and Farooq had taken some time when I wasn’t around to see if they could loosen the ropes binding them, or break through the duct tape, but obviously hadn’t been able to; I didn’t think they would. For some reason I had a lot of duct tape in my house, despite the fact I rarely fixed anything, so when I decided to add that to the ropes as reinforcement, I hadn’t been stingy on its application. If it wasn’t for the seriousness of the situation all three of us were in, you could say they almost looked comical. I’m sure by now, Saif had realized he wasn’t going to escape; he was going to need me to take pity on them and set them free.
He looked up at me and stared into my eyes. I said nothing. I could see on his face he was coming to a decision.
“I have no idea why she took up with the likes of you,” he said.
I just shrugged. At this point, he really didn’t need to know what was between us; it was ours and ours alone.
“My Dad was pissed. He said he hadn’t brought any of us up to be so disrespectful. What she was doing was dishonoring the family; threatening to destroy everything.”
“Destroy everything?” I asked.
“Our reputations,” he said, “how could he hold his head high, at the Mosque when his daughter had taken up with a white guy; was living with him. Out of wedlock, even.”
“He kicked her out of the house. He drove her to my place. That’s the only reason she was living with me. That was his fault,” I said.
“It didn’t matter. Whether she was living with you or just seeing you, he knew she’d be sharing your bed. He knows you white guys can’t wait till marriage; you’re so used to the white girls giving it up all the time. You were going to corrupt her; steal her virginity.”
What an idiot. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind; why is it everyone thinks we Westerners are nymphomaniacs? They think all white women are going around having meaningless sex with anyone who shows any interest in them. White women, or women brought up in the West, were just as discriminating about who they slept with as women in any other culture; nobody was giving it away all that freely; the only difference between us and them, was here in the West we had a mature understanding of sex and its place between the sexes; we weren’t as afraid of it as they seemed to be. The sad part is if we were to get down to the heart of the situation, a guy like him, if offered the chance to go all the way, even with a woman he really didn’t care about, he’d probably be right in there doing the deed. There’s no way in the world, based on their faith, these men had better control and more will power than anyone else, when confronted with the power of sex.
“How’d you do it?” I asked again. “I want to know how it happened.”
I don’t know why, but I did. I wanted to know about Safia’s last minutes; if she said anything. I just wanted to know.
He seemed hesitant but he continued. “It was late,” he said, “almost time to close up for the night. Safia thought I was there to help her close up, I guess. She had no idea what was coming.”
He paused.
“She loved you,” I said.
He looked at me surprised. “She was your sister, she loved you,” I said. “If only you could have heard the way she spoke about you; her pride in your accomplishments at school. You were her baby brother, and that meant everything to her.”
He just looked at me, letting it all sink in. I wondered if he’d ever thought about that; how she felt about him; how, in this world, she probably thought, along with her Father, he was the only other man she could ever truly trust unconditionally.
“I knew what I had to do,” he continued, “what was expected of me. I knew...”
He was talking now as if in a trance, lost in his head. It was no longer directed to me, but Saif recollecting the events of that night, so long ago.
“...it was a test. I had to prove myself to my Father. I had to do what was right for the family...”
He paused again, lost in his thoughts.
“...she was in one of the aisles, finishing up stocking one of the shelves. I had the knife stashed in my belt buckle at my back; she couldn’t see it...as I approached her, she smiled...she was happy to see me...one of those big smiles of hers; the kind that drew you in, made your day...”
I knew what he was talking about; I missed that smile.
“...when I saw that, I hesitated...I wasn’t sure I could go through with it...I almost backed down and walked away...but I didn’t...she smiled at me, happy to see me, and I reached around with my one hand and I grabbed the hilt of that knife. Before she could wonder what I was doing...before the smile on her face could disappear...I stabbed her in the stomach...I must have done it with more force than I knew, because the blade went in, to the hilt.”
“Did she die instantaneously?” I asked. I was hoping; she went from a moment of happiness, seeing her brother, to one of pure horror; if she died quickly that meant what he had done, how he had betrayed her, hadn’t had time to register in her mind – torment her as her life ebbed out of her.
Saif looked at me; I had disrupted his thoughts; where he was in his head.
“No, she didn’t,” he said, quietly. “She reached out and grabbed my hand with the knife, with both of her hands. She had such a surprised and confused look on her face...that smile disappeared, and in her eyes, I could see her questioning me. She didn’t have to ask me, ‘Why?’ it was there in her look...I just stared into her eyes, as she slowly began sinking to her knees, her hands still on mine and my hand still on the hilt of the knife. It...”
He trailed off, once again lost in his thoughts and in his own head; he seemed troubled by what he was thinking, what he was seeing in his mind’s eye. This was the first time I’d seen anything like humanity in him; the resemblance of a human being. I waited for him to continue.
“...it was horrible, unreal. As I looked into her eyes, I could see the disappointment there; her disappointment in me. I think she could also see the fear in my eyes; the pain in them...”
He paused and looked at me, intently.
“...we were both lowering ourselves to the ground, the knife still in her gut. She’d gone from her knees and was now falling back onto her back. I still had my hand on the knife, but I was also helping her down, looking into her eyes...when she was on the floor, she looked at me...she looked at me and she said...”
He paused as if unable to finish. He looked troubled, even tormented. “She said,” he finally continued. “She said...I understand. I forgive you.’...”
He stopped; we were looking intently at one another.
I forgive you
, I couldn’t believe it. It must have dawned on Safia what was happening; she knew she was gone and why, and in accepting her fate in those short moments since the knife entered her and she ended up on the floor, instead of lashing out at her brother verbally, she had instead tried to comfort him; make what he was doing easier on him. That was Safia.
“...she forgave me,” he said, looking directly at me. “She forgave me.”
“Why didn’t you stop?” I asked. “Call for help; try and save her?”
He thought for a moment. “I couldn’t,” he finally said. “It was what I had to do; what was expected. It was what was best for the family.”
He paused and I just sat there in silence, picturing Safia saying those words to her brother.
“...I had to finish what I’d started,” said Saif, breaking me out of my own thoughts. “She was in pain. I knew I had to end it; stop the pain, so I...I...I finished it. I pulled out the knife and I began stabbing her again and again and again. If she were dead, she wouldn’t feel any pain and the suffering would be over. So I stabbed her and stabbed her and stabbed her. I don’t even know when she finally died; I wasn’t paying attention, just trying to finish my duty and get the hell out of there; I really didn’t want to be there anymore.”
“So, you just left her there alone?”
“I didn’t look back...I couldn’t look back...”
He looked up at me and in an instance, some of the defiance he had before he started the story crept back into his voice.
“...I needed to get the HELL out of there!”
He started rocking back and forth in the chair as if he’d hoped that somehow, miraculously the bonds holding him there would break away.
“I NEED TO GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” he exploded at me. “At least I had the guts to do it! Get the job done, asshole!”
She’d forgiven him; funny how that didn’t surprise me. I just couldn’t imagine how? How you could look someone in the eye who has just shoved a knife into your gut and forgive them for taking your life? I could never do that. I’d have probably went down to the ground just cursing my killer’s name – calling him or her every name in the book and probably a few choice ones they’d never heard before – inspiration in pain.
I don’t know what I was doing or why I needed answers. I could fall back on my training as a journalist; while I could be done with it and moving on, I had to ask those questions, try to make some semblance of reason out of what had happened. I also knew that in some cases, there were no answers, no matter how hard you looked.
I had finally seen some humanity in Saif; too little too late, however, as he was still the killer of the woman I loved.
What was I doing?
Did I really need the answers or was I procrastinating; putting off the final deed of cutting his throat? Actually, cutting his throat would be too good for him. No, to do it right, to help him understand the pain and agony his sister had went through, I had to stick that knife into his gut and let it rest there for a couple of minutes. He needed to feel that sharp steel blade slicing its way through skin, his stomach, whatever internal organs got in the way. He needed that pain to register in his mind, and then feel the steel of that blade as it resided there, every slight movement it made, no doubt, setting off new waves of pain. To do it properly, he had to feel that and understand that, all the while knowing that that knife was going to be pulled out of him and plunged back in, the horrifying sensation repeating itself over and over again. How many times did he have to stab Safia before she finally let go? He couldn’t say. Maybe he could count how many times it would take as the steel blade sliced its way through him again and again and again?