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08 April, 2010

Technological Advancement in Barbarism

This story starts out a bit like a fairytale, but I assure you its not! My host sister is married to a man whose family lives just next door to the house where she grew up, in a kasbah overlooking the fields. She was married in triple wedding so that her husband and his two brothers were all married to different women at the same time. While the three brides now live in the kasbah, taking turns doing household chores and animal husbandry, the three brothers work and live in Saudi Arabia doing fancy plasterwork for rich Saudis. The company that employs them has even worked on Saudi royal palaces. That is, according to one of the brothers, who recently came home to spend his three month vacation with his wife and daughter. While he was home, we had the opportunity to meet him at his house.
We met him as we were walking in and he invited us to sit down for some tea and cookies. We quickly recognized him as a really nice guy; generous, with an easy smile. Once we got past the usual get-to-know-you questions, he pulled out his fancy Saudi cell phone and proceeded to show us pictures and videos he had taken there. He showed us some pictures of some of the plasterwork he has done. He showed us a video of him and a few other guys making coucous in their apartment in Saudi. Then he should me a mildly religious video, in which a huge crack opens up in the middle of a multi-lane highway and swallows up a car; a phenomenon that the video claims is an act of god for whatever sin the driver committed before attempting to drive to work that day. While I didn’t buy the last part, I have to say, he had my full attention.
In the final video, a man wearing all white was kneeling outside on what seemed like a prayer mat. In fact, I assumed he was praying. A circle of men stood around him watching, which made me thing he might be an imam or a street performer. Suddenly, a man standing a few feet away on his right made a quick, grand motion, stepping toward the kneeling man and swinging his arms down. Like that, the kneeling man’s head was gone. He had been publicly executed. The executioner had used a sword, barely visible in the video. At first I thought it was a clip from a movie or the internet, but my tea-drinking acquaintance set me straight. He had taken the video, in person, in a public square in Saudi Arabia. That’s because, as you may recall, public execution by beheading is still normal in Saudi Arabia. I asked him if the stealing thing still holds true, and sure enough, he told me; depending on what you steal, you can get anything from a finger to your whole arm cut off. So I asked the next logical question (despite still being completely shocked and appalled), “Is there any theft in Saudi Arabia”? The answer, he said, was absolutely not. He said you could leave a stack of money unattended on a patio table at a coffee shop all day, come back that night, and it would still be there! A fact that I can only assume is fortified by sharing footage of the consequences everywhere you go on your blackberry. So is that enough reason to sign on to brutal retribution for crimes? Hell no! And remind me to think twice before I cozy up next to fancy cell phone during tea time.