Hiding hands

A man was sprawling on the ground, his hands tied behind his back as curious onlookers stood in a circle around him. He had been caught for stealing grains and poultry from a farmer's house, and brought before the village elders, mostly dragged by a piece of cloth wrapped like a noose around his neck. The man looked half-dead, his body puffy from the beating he received right after his capture. His clothes were stained, upper ones soiled by dirt and blood, lower ones by incontinence that clearly showed that there was no decency in the cruelty of men.

The village guards abruptly picked up the man from the ground and placed him erect before the village council. The man reeled like a reed in the wind, his body wrecked by starvation, pain, and fatigue. The guards whacked him with a few blows to get a confession out of him. Then the elders took turn on him, striking him with sticks and rods crashing down on his back and waist. He shrieked in pain at the top of his voice, begging for mercy for as long as he stayed on his feet, then fell down and rolled on the ground, and his tormentors stomped him like a rodent at their feet.

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A woman in the crowd fainted from time to time, and her little son mournfully hugged his mother as she moaned whenever the fallen man yelled in pain. The ring of crowd expanded and shrank depending on how the guards and the councilmen manoeuvred to strike the man on the ground. The village imam stood up and shook his head, while making for the door and adjusting his cap. He stepped out of the mosque and stood on the steps, one leg folded like a brooding crane to fix the shoe around his foot.

Somebody shouted from the crowd, asking for some good strokes in the joints so that the man would feel the pain in his bones. Others cheered the beating, screaming for more until the body turned into pulp from head to toe. The imam waded his way through the crowd to take a close look at the centre of this wrath. He saw a bundle of flesh curled up like a foetus in the womb, swollen face and battered limbs soiled with earth like a rag-doll after it has been dragged in the mud. He looked around him and saw familiar faces, devout men who were standing inside the mosque only moments ago in their surrender to god.

Then he raised his hand to wave at the man who was standing over the prostrate body brandishing a piece of roughly hewn log in his hand. The man paid no attention to the imam and bore down on the listless body again and again. The feeble sound of a piercing cry filled the air, and then one could hear nothing but the thudding noise as if the stick was repeatedly hitting on a heavy sack.

The imam held his hands in prayer, talking to god under his breath. How was it fair that one must be treated with so much cruelty for a trivial offence? This man on the ground was writhing in pain, his body ravaged by a thousand wounds because he had stolen a handful of rice and two skinny fowls. Why should be it a crime to steal so little if the world was ruled by people who have stolen much more?

In all these years that he grew old, his hoary hairs, loose skin, and wretched bones have witnessed the riddles of life which he could not resolve. It is said in the holy book that the virtuous would be rewarded in the next life, and the vicious would prevail in this. The biggest riddle is the fate of man that he must live in the shifting sand of right and wrong, his life continuously hurtled to erase what is etched, forever seeking his dream in the nightmare, struggling to live against the menace of death.

This poor thing was now spread-eagled on the ground as the village guards tried to change his clothes, while children in the crowd pinched their nose with one hand and brushed the other to drive away the odour. The woman in the crowd was sobbing hard, drawing her son into her bosom so that he could not watch the humiliation of a man who was his father.

The man was being prepared for the final round. He would be taken for a walk of shame in the village before he was handed over to the police. One of the guards held his head, while another shaved it with the brisk strokes of a razor. Then a village elder poured dyes on the man as the liquids rolled down and stained his face.

Once the clown was successfully made up -- clothes torn, hairs shaved, skin ripped, face swollen, blood dripping from his many wounds, and a string of shoes hung around his neck -- the guards picked him up and stretched his body like a spring, forcing him to limp like a quarry bruised in the chase. Children jeered at him along the way and elders threw blows and spat him in the face. The woman in the crowd fainted again as her son screamed for help.

The imam looked at the sky, bright and azure in the afternoon light. Prophets, messiahs and god-fearing men have walked upon this earth. Reformers and revolutionaries have shed their blood. Poets and bards have praised virtue and denounced vice. The earth has shuffled in earthquakes, tornados, cyclones and storms, continents shifted, islands drifted, curtains lifted, but nothing has changed.

In the distant meadow, they were still dragging that man, men, women and children trailing him in the formation of a reptile slouching into the shadows. That is when an unpleasant thought crossed his mind. The man who has built this mosque had earned his fortune in the black market. The imam looked at his hands and wondered if he had been hiding his face behind them for all these years. This is god's world, the imam muttered, while the uproar of voices faded in the wind.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.