A short story

The Bridge of the God Daabhawor

Showan Khurshid

It is usually said that human sacrifice is performed for religious reasons. But Billaru, the capital city of the Kiran Empire, located on the river Euphrates, somewhere not far south of the modern city of Baghdad, was different. Six millennia ago, the wise men here – witnessing how power struggles destroy life, civilisation, even decency, pitting son against father, brother against brother – concluded that nothing mattered more than political stability. They suspected that political rivalry was the problem. They did not know democracy, which manages political rivalry by means of rights and elections. Instead, they thought that they might be able to prevent political rivalry through human sacrifice.
The wise men did not spell out their reasoning, perhaps thinking that it would not convince the common people. They framed their justification in religious language. However, as always, people design things but things acquire lives of their own.
Let me report my vision to you.

Nebon Terrat stands on the bridge, tears into small pieces a letter written on a leaf of papyrus, throws the pieces into the river Euphrates and says in resignation: “It is over.” The executioner Tinal Tinal, about fifty years old, big and powerfully built, asks in a tone of equal resignation and sadness: “Are you ready?” Nebon Terrat, a prince, the brother of the king, thirteen years old, has been chosen to be the human sacrifice of this season, and he answers “Yes,” as if nothing concerns him.
The bridge where the young prince and the executioner are standing is narrow and short. It is called the Bridge of the God Daabhawor because his temple has been built there. The temple looks like two hands, one on each side of the bridge. These hands burst out, up through the crust of the earth at the top of the hill, tense, reflecting a violent act of catching someone or something and burying the object in the underworld of horror.
The river beneath the bridge is narrow and deeper here than elsewhere. Hills are rare in this area. Rivers and streams naturally tend to circumvent them, or eventually sweep them away. But here the river passes right through the hill, slicing it from top to bottom. The river bed is narrow, so the water builds up pressure, spurting in speeding currents, producing whirlpools here and there on either side of the bridge. Unsurprisingly, swimming is very risky here. I am told, in fact, that of every ten swimmers who dare to enter the water, three drown and another three are mentally or physically crippled.
Even the mere act of walking on the bridge is very dang-erous, and no wonder: it is only about one and a half meters wide and very high over the water. There is no handrail, so the slightest dizziness or a brisk breeze or an attack of vertigo suffices to throw pedestrians onto the rocky sides of the chasm or into the mouth of the whirlpools. In fact, all the priests of the temple are young, and not because the older ones, being sensible and aware of the risk, have retired – retirement is forbidden. Rather, it is because most of the priests have fallen into the river on the first occasion of nausea, the first stiff breeze or a panic due to vertigo.
In the middle of the bridge is a circular area, wider than the rest of the bridge, and in the centre of this circle is a circular hole. The hole is constructed such that the human sacrifice can be made to kneel at the edge of it, bowing forward, stretching his neck, and when his head is chopped off by a single lightning-fast blow, it will fall through the hole and down into the river below.
The ritual of human sacrifice does not end there. The head is supposed to be retrieved and put on display in the main square of the city for three weeks. The ceremony is thus designed to be as difficult and deadly as possible. The formal religious explanation for its necessity runs as follows: “We have a bargain with the god Daabhawor. We give him our most beloved, most beautiful, most intelligent and most innocent head. We let him taste it, but we recover it immediately. This way, he respects us and helps us maintain stability in our country. If we fail to recover the head, he gives us another chance, then a third one and so on. The sacrifices only end when we succeed in recovering a head.”
But who would dare to swim beneath that bridge where three out of every ten daring swimmers are drowned and three others crippled? The authorities could not fail to be aware of this dilemma. They were very creative in their own way. They must have assumed that people, particularly political rivals, might not be deterred by a single killing of an innocent boy in an empire of a million or so, especially when this sacrifice is a member of the royal family and thus a potential asset to the rulers. They may have suspected that potential rivals would only be delighted. They reasoned that the task of deterrence and subjugation requires the elimination of a few hundred at least, and it must be the bereaved kings who choose these further victims. Therefore, after the sacrifice, other ceremonial killings, though less grandiose ones, must begin. Being aware of this, those who suspected that they might be on the king’s death-list would come forward to seek mercy or to offer their dearest ones to be killed in their stead. Self-denouncing opponents of the king or of the system would come forward in their thousands. Many could be forgiven. But others would be offered a deal: take the risk of swimming beneath the bridge and collecting the head, and if they were among the lucky survivors, they would have a greater chance of being forgiven. And the one who succeeds in recovering a head would be granted the right to chop off the head of a member of his own caste, anyone he chooses, without being asked to justify his choice or to declare whether he hates or loves that person.
Being spared this question is no trivial matter. Indeed it is a great privilege, because loving in this city is a very big issue. Here, when you love someone, you are supposed to offer to sacrifice him or her, or else yourself – though only, of course, after seeking the authorities’ permission. The idea behind this has already been implied. It is that you shouldn’t love anybody, because if you do, you might start doing what they would like you to do, and so you might even revolt against the authorities, for example if your beloved told you to, or if you thought that you could impress them by doing so. But in fact, people can’t stop loving. Hence the people of Bilaru become very distressed about the possibility of being interrogated as to whether they love somebody or not. Of course this is very unnatural, but nevertheless, they are told that this is the most rational choice for the population of the Kiran empire. In religious courses and rituals, they are told numerous stories about the terrible things that have happened or are happening to people who do otherwise. Indeed, not all of these stories are fabricated.
But again, people can’t stop loving. Instead, they have developed a whole culture to cope with and disguise loving. One of the methods of coping with loving, when you know you won’t be strong enough to suppress your affection, is to smuggle out any loved ones. People smuggle their sons, daughters, girlfriends, brothers, even mothers and fathers out into the outlying plains and marshlands or far away to the mountains to the north and north-east.
But there are other disturbing and sometimes very absurd consequences of this situation. One sees people who, in order to disguise their affection, act as if they hated their loved ones. In public, they fabricate some excuse to blame their loved one, affect anger and begin mistreating them. Sometimes, anxiety overtakes them that their mistreatment may not look genuine enough: they beat the loved one to death without realising it.
In strange conditions, people become strange. Some try to take advantage of the system. A person who hates another very much, instead of expressing that hatred, shows affection, in the hope that their enemy will be chosen as a human sacrifice. So when two people fight, one will declare at the top of his voice: “You know what? I think it’s about time I told you the truth. I can’t go on pretending that I hate you. I love you. Enough is enough. I’m a human being, I can’t hide my affection for you any more.” And he begins crying and sobbing and then says: “Forgive me, my love, I failed you!” The other says: “No, please be honest. I don’t need your love. Until now we were a couple of decent enemies.” The first says: “But I can’t help it, I love you!” and he shouts out: “You people, hear me! I have sinned and I love this man!” The second says: “He is lying!” in a very ceremonial way which is expected on such occasions.
In the beginning, many centuries earlier, when these measures were first introduced, people had not developed all the potential coping strategies. Some tried making counter-allegations: “No, no, on the contrary, it’s me who loves him and not the other way around!” This was because they were hoping that the other would be sent to die instead. But this proved to be both futile and deadly, because the authorities would say: “Well, it seems that you both love each other greatly. And as you are both exemplary citizens, and we have no reason to suspect the integrity of either of you, we’ll put you both to death.” That is why the Kiran people, nowadays, try other ways, which offer a better chance of survival and perhaps some unexpected advantages as well. When they quarrel and one of them reports the other to the authorities, the latter will say, ceremoniously again: “Well, this is a very grave matter. But I demand the right for love confinement.”
Love confinement is another brilliant invention of the Kiran. This is not what one might expect, i.e. two lovers going on something like a honeymoon, confining themselves so that nothing distracts them from their complete mutual devotion. Rather, it is another peculiarity of the Kiran empire. The rationale of this institution goes like this. When a person loves another, they may do anything to appease or impress the beloved. This implies real danger to the system, because they may rebel. Therefore, both should be put in prison for a limited time, to ensure that the system is safe from them. The prescribed period is four months.
Why only four months? Because a longer period would be very expensive for the authorities. In the beginning of the institution of love confinement, the period was just two months. But many who were concerned with justice thought that two months was not long enough. They petitioned the king to extend the period. The matter became, in fact, a big rallying issue. The poor and the middle classes, led by lower and middle ranking priests, backed the proposal and argued that the king should tax the rich and extend the love confinement period to four months, at least. Successive kings promised and procrastinated and there was a secret prayer in every temple that the wishes of the people might be granted. It seemed that reform would require a long and bloody struggle. But the will of the people always prevails, as you know. At last the current king’s late father granted the extension. There was real celebration. He became very popular, though of course nobody said that they loved the king. His popularity spilled over to his son, the current king, as well. Now almost everyone feels that four months is very fair. When two persons are to be taken to love confinement, a priest (who usually has two or three fingers missing on each hand) comes and says: “Our generous system will give you four months of seclusion during which you have to prove which one of you is honest.”
This is the secret of the priests with missing fingers: during the Struggle for Four Months of Love Confinement, the sign by which proponents identified themselves became the flashing of four fingers. When the authorities noticed this, they began chopping off two fingers so that people would not be able to make this sign. Sometimes they chopped off three fingers, in order to remind people that “two is the number.”
In love confinement, the alleged lover must endure everything done to him by the alleged loved one, which may include all kinds of physical and psychological abuse, humiliation and torture. But the alleged lover must express great happiness and gratitude, on the theory that you can’t love someone unless you presume, deep down, that he or she is good – and a good person does good things to you. Because the citizens are expected to prove their integrity during the confinement, no one may go so far as killing the other. Nevertheless, the alleged lover endures something not much less horrible than a nightmarish death. In the end of this period, if the alleged lover has endured, he is released and the other is put to death. But if he recants, he receives a short prison sentence – a few weeks or even just a few days. The authorities reasoned, rightly it seems, that no one who can endure the most horrible enslavement, if only for a short period, will regain a self capable of posing any political threat. In fact, such people, on being released, usually go and voluntarily become the slave of someone they happened to hate or love (of course, you would not know for sure which feeling it was). And those who succumb before the period of love confinement is up become the slave of their former enemy.
There are other advantages for the alleged beloved. They acquire the bearing and demeanour of a master. Some go on to organise courses on the techniques of “Beating False Love and Enduring Love Confinement.” But even some alleged lovers, having endured beating and humiliation, offer courses: “How to Endure the Torture of the Beloved Successfully and Send Him to His Death.” These educators are held in high esteem and are indeed celebrities in Billaru.
This situation makes it very hard to find out who loves whom or who hates whom, or even what love is. As a result, when you see someone about to swim in the river, you may suspect that that person’s chosen victim will be you. Thus, if you are somehow conspicuous and have the slightest hope that you may survive, you too will enter the river. Not necessarily because you hate someone and want his head chopped off. It is only in order to be able to choose rather than be chosen.
Such mechanisms of recruitment swell the number of swimmers to many hundreds. Of course, outsiders are not told what is going on, only that it is a matter of religious devotion. Everyone around behaves as if they are very pious. And because of this, strangers to the city are immensely impressed by the great faith of these people.
So now we know: there are plenty of people waiting afloat under the bridge. Some are drowning or having their brains starved of oxygen to suffer permanent mental or physical handicap later. These people in the river, as we know, are supposed to retrieve the heads, but the authorities, being obsessed with rationalisation, assigned them yet another task: “Since you are there anyway,” they declared, “you can catch the sacrifice if he happens to jump into the water.”
Above the bridge, as we know, are Tinal Tinal and the Prince Nebon Terrat, both resigned to giving themselves passively to the process of the ritual. When the boy answered: “Yes,” Tinal told him: “Go to the edge of the circular hole to kneel there, bow forward and stretch your neck,” so that he could cut his head off as easily and painlessly as possible. Nebon Terrat did as he was told and kneeled, but he didn’t bow forward. Without looking at Tinal Tinal, as if indifferently, he said: “Before I bow forward and extend my neck, I’d like to look around and reflect a little bit. Kill me any time you want, if you feel impatient.” Nebon Terrat began looking around.
The bridge is short, so he can clearly see the faces of the people waiting on the hill, a few of them unable to conceal their excitement. People are used to seeing death in every aspect of their lives and conditioned to regard it as a necessity for stability. Dying is considered as a purifying process. However, being unable to choose the one who is to die, they take some comfort from this deprivation by watching someone else die. This is really equivalent to the way we look at boxing. We would like to punch our adversaries but we can’t, so we seek compensation by watching someone else being punched, and we always identify with the winner and reward him as if we were rewarding ourselves after a great effort at beating all our bastard enemies. The Romans’ gladiators offered much the same kind of purifying spectacle.
However, there is an important difference between the ritual on the bridge and boxing or gladiators. We reveal our excitement and pleasure at having our ‘adversaries’ beaten and humiliated. But the display of such emotions was not considered appropriate in this religious setting. So it is not easy to see the real mood on most of the spectators’ faces. Nevertheless, the excitement is seeping out in many different ways. It even infects Terrat Terrat, the king. Some of the public and priests, in order to paint over their emotions, are chanting: “Great, great is Daabhawor, great, great is Daabhawor.” Nebon Terrat looks over to where his brother Terrat Terrat is standing. The king is watching him with an expression of impatience, excitement and anticipation.
It seems that the king has relaxed his guard because he does not need to be worried about others seeing his face, since he is in the front row. Nebon Terrat starts wondering if it is true that the king loves him as he has said he does; maybe he just wants to get rid of him?
He suspects his brother. He has heard that he is not childless, as is officially claimed. Rather, he has a son who was smuggled out. This is a plausible rumour because he himself, until the last few weeks, was a sent-away son of the late king. So he thinks: “If my father was cheating on the system, why wouldn’t my brother?” His suspicion grows stronger as he reflects that in fact the king is only his half-brother. Now he is wondering: “Probably the king has brought me back to be sacrificed instead of his own son, in order to secure the succession for him.” He and his brother have never lived together, apart from the last few weeks, so how come his brother suddenly loves him, and worse, announces his love?
These thoughts and the excited face of his brother shatter his earlier resignation and peace of mind. I hear him telling the executioner: “I’m not afraid of dying, but it is senseless to die for these ridiculous beliefs, this bloody god, this stupid system and amongst these stupid faces. You may kill me now. I’d rather you stabbed me in the heart.”
What did he say? He’s insulting the god, the people and the regime! I expect this to enrage the executioner, who will chop him into pieces before he finishes him off. But this is not happening. Meanwhile I’m asking myself, why would he be blaspheming like this?
People are rarely disappointed by their religions. Instead they are disappointed by their leaders or priests. Hence my surprise at Nebbon Terrat’s blasphemy. I was not expecting the prince to get angry about the religion. I expected him to shout out at the top of his voice, cursing his brother the king because he is not sacrificing his own son, whom he presumably loves more. However, I realise now that something different is going on. Nebbon Terrat’s angry exclamation about “these ridiculous beliefs, this bloody god, this stupid system and amongst these stupid faces” is not just a reaction to the injustice which is about to befall him. Rather, these words reflect his upbringing in the mountains where, in the absence of a highly centralised political system, people have a very relaxed attitude to religions and gods, and although they live under harsh conditions, take issues of belief light-heartedly. They cannot understand that a religion should stipulate such a stupid thing as the killing of the best beloved.
Yet another expectation of mine is violated. If Nebon Terrat’s background could explain why he is different, what about Tinal Tinal? I expected the young prince’s sacrilegious expressions to throw Tinal Tinal into a fit of rage. A Billaruian in his position should surely at least have gone to the highest priest and told him what the sacrifice had said. The priests would have declared the sacrifice rebellious, which would have made him highly valuable for Daabhawor, and they would have sent for two other people to tie him down and prepare his neck for the chop. But Tinal Tinal is not really a Billaruian. He is from somewhere further to the west in the bush region which is desert now. He used to live independently and happily with his family. One day, he came back from hunting to find that some robbers had raided his home and killed his son, who, just like Nebon Terrat, was only thirteen years old. The boy had bravely confronted them and foiled the attempted robbery. They had run away, but in a hateful rage caused by their humiliation at the hands of what they regarded as a mere child, they had come back and killed him with a poisoned arrow. Tinal Tinal swore then that he would henceforth have only one purpose in life, namely to track down criminals and let them feel the death which they dispensed to other people. As such, he actually functioned, machine-like, as a one-man justice system. But later he realised that some people had taken advantage of him and used him to hunt down and kill innocent people. This happened to him, I assume, because no matter how much you try to act in good faith, you just cannot be a self-contained justice system all on your own.
Realising that he had victimised innocents in the pursuit of justice, Tinal Tinal cursed all people. He decided that only a very heavy-handed, colossal system that denies all desires and passions and puts fear in every heart can control corrupt human nature. “Remember Hobbes,” I was told in my vision. “He wanted no less than a Leviathan.”
This was Tinal Tinal’s mood when he met some people from Billaru. Although some of them were dissidents and had fled the system to the wilderness, they spoke quite positively about their religion. This raises an interesting question: Why should somebody flee a cruel political system, only to go around promoting the very belief system which underlies the political system which victimised and exiled him? But this happens even now. After all, the belief system of Billaru was presented to the people as good, and they certainly took pride in it. They put the blame for what they found horrible in the system – not the prohibition of love or the practice of human sacrifice, but rather the cheating which was prevalent – on their leaders. To blame the leaders is easier than blaming the system of belief. If you blame the belief, you also lose your people, and even if you flee you will not become a part of a new group, you will remain a foreigner for ever. This is why most people keep their old beliefs.
The dissidents of Bilaru, like all Bilaruians, chanted thousands of times over: “Dary dary Daabhawor daras,” meaning: “Great, great is the Greatest Daabhawor.” This must have brain-washed them. No wonder they felt overwhelmed by his greatness. The more they chanted, the more they felt overwhelmed. Brain-washed people can even feel very sorry for you, if they know that you’re a good person but you don’t have the same beliefs as they do. They come and try to convert you. It is like Muslims nowadays whose lives in their own countries become intolerable, mainly thanks to Islam itself, and who try as hard as they can to get away to other parts of the world. Once there, they entreat most passionately, preach, and exhort others to convert to Islam.
Tinal Tinal must have been a victim of such confusions, the target of appeals and proselytising campaigns. He converted to the Kiran religion and although nearly everyone told him not to go to Billaru, some did advise him to do so, and he told himself: “Let me go and see with my own eyes.”
Once there, he found he was a legendary figure whose fame had reached Billaru decades before. He was assigned to execute some love sacrifices. In the beginning, given his conviction that inducing fear is all-important, he was certain of the justice of the task assigned to him. So he happily chopped off heads, one after another. He did not even mind that these heads belonged to those who were the most innocent, beautiful and lovable. In some sense he did not take such attributions literally. Being a diligent worker, he was assigned more and more heads to chop off. Eventually, the great number of heads he was chopping off alarmed him. But he did not revolt. He asked for temporary leave: some time for contemplation. “Contemplation of what?” the bosses asked themselves. They suspected him of having his own notions of right and wrong.
However, they did allow him temporary leave. Later, when it was time to execute Nebon Terrat, he was recalled and told: “You are given the honour of sending the head of the most beloved, the most beautiful, the most intelligent and the most innocent to the great god Daabhawor.”
“Do you mean this literally?” Tinal Tinal asked faintly. “Of course, of course, pious believer and great hero, Tinal Tinal.” “How can a human being kill the most innocent?” Tinal Tinal asked himself. “My conscience is already burdened. Do they want to drown my conscience in crime?” However, he said nothing and accepted the task, perhaps because he could not believe that they could possibly be so evil. Or he may have been developing the mentality of professionalism or careerism, where you do what you are told without taking moral responsibility. Possibly he wanted to believe that they were using the term “most innocent” in some different, special sense. Or perhaps Tinal Tinal was losing faith in human beings and was seeing no meaning in anything. Or again, he may have been feeling that he was getting old and should not take too many risks. After all, he enjoyed good facilities and even a few slaves to boot. But there was another thought that went on tormenting him: that he might have been intimidated and cowed. This last idea really upset him. “How can I be reduced to being driven by fear, and why don’t they just relieve me from this particular task which I don’t like when there are all these jerks out there who envy me and would happily undertake the task?”
It was against this background that Nebon Terrat’s abusive mention of the god of Billaru and “this stupid system” did not upset Tinal Tinal. Instead he said: “If you’re not convinced, why don’t you just jump?”
Nebon Terrat answered, as if consulting a friend: “Don’t you see those bastards down there? If they catch me, the authorities will make me wish I was dead.”
Tinal Tinal replied: “Well my son,” – but he didn’t hear himself saying “my son” – “if you’re armed, they won’t dare come near you,” and he gave him his dagger. “Good luck”, he said. Nebon Terrat jumped and Tinal Tinal followed him, shouting: “I warn you, no one touches him, he’s my son!”