Diary of a Country Prosecutor by Tawfik al-Hakim

Author:Tawfik al-Hakim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Saqi Books

18 OCTOBER

As soon as I returned to my office, I sent someone to fetch Shaikh Asfur. He was soon standing before me, silent and downcast. I shot a question at him: ‘Do you like the girl, Rim?’

He raised his head and gave me a look which seemed to penetrate my inmost soul. He then looked down again without answering.

‘I’m ready to call the marriage registrar and fix a wedding between you at once,’ I said.

He remained unmoved.

‘If only she were here now,’ I continued.

For all my efforts to cajole him into speech he remained stubbornly silent. Finally he began to hum in a low but clear-toned voice:

Don’t say I didn’t warn you,

But your nature overcame you.

A dog’s tail can’t be straightened

By hanging on a weight.

I lost my temper completely and shouted, ‘Shut up, you dog!’

I chased him out briskly, for it was clear that there was nothing to be hoped for from him. I decided to interrogate the barber and, having summoned him, I asked him about the strangled woman and how she was allowed to be buried without the permission of the Legal Officer. He replied immediately, ‘By your honour, sir, I don’t know if she was strangled or mangled. The doctor ordered her to be buried in the ordinary way.’

‘Without signing an examination certificate?’

‘Sir, if we had to wait till we had examined every dead body, it would be time for us to die ourselves.’

‘In short, nobody examined her and nobody looked at her.’

‘The usual practice, sir, is for the barbers in the districts to inform the medical inspector by phone. He sits in his office and asks in every case for the cause of death. We answer on the phone, “Doctor, she died as the Lord hath willed.” He says, “Bury her then, bury her, bury her”...’

There seemed little use in interrogating this barber. I know these barbers better than most people. Their only concern is to get five piastres from the relatives of the deceased and obtain for them the necessary permission to carry out the burial without ever looking a corpse in the face or going to the house of the dead. They are mere burial brokers. Even assuming that an occasional one is honest and conscientious enough to go to examine the corpse, what can an ignorant fellow like that discover? He sees a man or woman, recently dead, with no visible wounds. How can he possibly know that there is something suspicious about the manner of death? This whole system of barbers attached to the Health Department – a system unknown to any country in the world – is itself the source of evil. It is very similar to our midwifery system. I shall never forget what a doctor from the central hospital told me once. He had been called out to a case of childbirth in some provincial village and hurried off, only to find the sick woman prostrate on her back, with the arm of the baby protruding from her body. At her side was an old woman with red hair and lips – Sitt Hindiah, the midwife.

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