The Whip

By Adrian Levet

Based on a true story…

Another day had passed, the angry red of the Middle Eastern sunset sprawled itself over the horizon, as if it was stretching one last time before it lay its head. I found myself here, in Saudi Arabia, nine years ago, accepting a job that sounded exciting, and a promising engineering contract in the developing world. The money was flowing through the country like a spring down a mountain, the oil filling the gaps of the greedy mouths of the western world. There was a mass of wealth, but there was still a massive economic divide. I lived in a compound, where the outside contractors were housed, and was told to never venture out of it, especially at night. It was surrounded by slums; the guys who would actually do all the work getting paid peanuts, while the guys behind the designs like me would get paid huge wages. Naturally, with the poor outside and rich inside, it bred animosity. Most of the things I would notice were small, like leaving my washing inside, because if I left it out on the line, it was always getting stolen. Even my old underwear would get taken, which caused me the most grief. I always wondered what they would do with a man’s old underpants. It was another calm night, where the heat and intensity of the sun was gone, and what was left stars; quite a few despite the pollution. It was like the bare bones of the universe, and you could only see it when the sun had finished its elaborate show. I was outside, smoking a cigarette out of a pack I’d bought the day before. They were reds, and they felt strong, but seemed to soothe me after a long day at work. It wasn’t long before the cacophony of shouting next door started again, and it was peculiar timing, because my friend, John Grosen, walked up to the house just as it began. He greeted me with his usually cheery, “’Ello Mate! How are ya?” and on any other night perhaps he might have stayed that way, but this was a different night. I blew out a billow of smoke, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other. “Hi John, I’m good, buddy, how about yourself?”

The noise had shifted from a minor distraction to a major din now. I lived on the edge of the compound, otherwise I might have never heard it, and it would truly be out of sight, out of mind. John leaned on the side of the house, a few meters away.

“I can’t fucking take it, man. The yelling… it’s nonstop, and it’s going every time I walk near your house.”

“Yeah, I know, John, I have to live next to it. Sometimes I turn up the music really loud so I can’t hear the guy wading in on his wife…”

He walked up and I gave him one of my cigarettes, and he lit up and stood next to me, arms resting on the handrails lining the entrance to the house. We both stood for a short while and looked out towards where the house was, visible from the high rise where I lived.

“You know, we oughta’ go over there and teach him a lesson… It’s no way to treat a woman…”

I would have loved to, but I knew the laws here, and it would just cause trouble, but for the sake of the conversation, I agreed with him out loud, leaving my reservations in my own mind.

“Yeah, he needs to have a little taste of his own medicine…”

I remembered one night, the shouting began, and I could hear things smashing in the house, plates or the like, then…

“You know, I’ve heard him…,” I said. “He brings out the whip he uses on the cattle… he brings it in, and just starts hitting her with it… Over and over, and you can hear it, the piercing sound of the whip and the otherworldly screams of his wife… It’s bloody heinous…

He looked over to me, blowing out a puff of his cigarette.

“A Whip? Really? That sick bastard… Did you call the Police?”

I looked at him like he was a child.

“John, you really think the Police would ever do anything about it? What a joke…”

There was a good few minutes of silence, and I could tell that the shouting was really getting to John. It got louder and louder, and I saw him suck down his cigarette like a vacuum, his fists clenched in the twilight. I didn’t pay it too much mind, I just found myself wondering why Arabic was a language that sounded so angry to western people like me. It seemed to make the yelling more threatening; did they feel the same way about English? I thought about why he was yelling at her, perhaps the dinner she cooked was not good enough, or the house wasn’t clean enough. Perhaps it was nothing, and he was just a bad man. Then, that’s when it started. The crashing of plates or something that sounded like plates, and then the door smashed open. I heard the man curse, muttering to himself as he left the house. For a little while, there was silence, but then… he went back into the house, whip in hand, and John and I could hear every little sound coming from that tiny squalid house.

“That’s it. I’m going over there!” He put his empty beer can on my porch and stamped out his cigarette, reminding me of the angry drunks I would see in the club districts. He looked primed for a fight.

“Wait! John, you can’t, its way too dangerous!”

I was starting to panic. Once John had his mind set, there was no changing it, and god knows this was not a good idea. He just started storming off, the noise of the shrieks that still pierced through all the other sounds of the busy compound, and the noises of the Mosque’s prayer just after dusk.

“John! Wait!”

I put my drink down and did a brisk walk to catch up to him, but he was moving fast. When I finally caught up to him, he was at the barrier at the edge of the compound, arguing with the guard who sat at his post.

“…Can’t keep me here! I have my rights!”

“But sir, it is not safe. You should stay in the compound, there are many bad people out there, and I am responsible for your safety…”

“There is a man out there, hitting his wife with the whip he uses for his livestock! Beating her! Why don’t you do something?”

“Sir, I must ask you to calm down…”

I felt bad for the guard, as he was just trying to do his job. Suddenly, John hit the man, pulling a right hook, connecting with his face. The man went straight down. In that moment I could do nothing but feel like it was completely my fault. I talked him up and now he was at breaking point. Perhaps if I had handled it differently, the man would have been okay. John stormed out, moving between the barrier pole and the guard station next to it, and disappeared into the night. I knelt down and tried to help the guard. He was unconscious, but seemed to be still breathing, with no visible trauma. I put him in the recovery position and called for help as loud as I could, the sound of the prayers in the mosques still howling out into the night, their ghostly, lonely sounding voices merging with my shouting. I saw someone running in the distance and decided to leave the man and head after John. I hoped there was still time to stop him before he got himself into even more trouble. I moved as fast as I could around the outside of the compound. I heard more shouting as I neared the house, darting between thin alleyways and the questioning stares of the locals. As I got to the square in the village, the dull light sprayed itself out into the street, and the silhouette of John could be seen on the road, the large build of him standing over another shadow, which I assumed was the man. The silhouette depicted a very violent scene, John just pumping his fists over and over into the other shadow. I made my way to the front door, but by that point there were already about seven other villagers standing around the door. I pushed through them, and they started yelling at me. I grabbed John, and held him back. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, and fighting against my grip. The man lay beaten in the doorway, the broken plates laying beside him, with one bloodied whip loose in his clutches. I looked over and saw the woman cowering in the corner, her burka over her face, but the marks on her back were wet from the blood that had soaked through her clothing.

“John! Come back with me! This is very, very dangerous!”

“Get off me! I’m not done with this piece of garbage yet!”

He struggled against me, and eventually shook me off, pushing me into the door. I fell. It was then that I saw it. A crowd of people had moved into the house, yelling in Arabic I didn’t understand, some carrying weapons. I looked over at John, who hadn’t noticed them; his view was so narrow with rage, he just kept hitting the man over and over.

“John! Look out!”

What happened then seemed to be in slow motion, when your adrenaline kicks in and time seems different. All the villagers converged upon him, a few grabbing him, whilst the others, perhaps four or five of them, started hitting him. They blocked out my view, and I could no longer see John. I tried to scream for them to stop, but they wouldn’t. Suddenly, I was hit with something from behind, and then there was nothing, just the empty dark of unconsciousness. When I awoke, the wife of the man with the whip was sitting over me. She was dabbing my head with a watery cloth. My vision blurry, I sat up, and looked for John as soon as I remembered what had happened.

“He is gone. I am sorry. The other men took him away… ”

We sat there in silence for a time. I couldn’t quite find a reaction to the situation. I thought about the violence I had witnessed, and how it seemed contagious, spreading through the other villagers like wildfire. Eventually, my emotions caught up with the situation. The woman sat with me and tried to calm me down. I started crying and couldn’t stop. I couldn’t believe he was gone. I shuffled out into the dining area of the house, and saw the broken plates littering the floor, blood smeared over the side of the table, pooling on the floor and trailing outside. The whip the only thing that was left untouched, the shape of its multiple tails stretched out like accusing fingers.