The Story of Abu Shama

The people who lived in the street were like the rest of humanity: some were evil but most of them were good people working selflessly to support their children. Their lives could have continued as usual but fate had another destiny in store for them. One night, just before dawn the residents woke up to screams and the sound of gunfire. They went out on their balconies. The noise was coming from Hassan the haberdasher’s apartment at the end of the street. Hassan was newly married and his bride was stunningly beautiful. The clamor died down and when morning came they found Hassan’s body lying in the street with a piece of paper pinned to his chest. “This is the penalty for anyone who disobeys Abu Shama the boss,” it said in large letters.The story soon spread. Masked gunmen had attacked Hassan to get hold of his wife and when he resisted they killed him, and their boss, Abu Shama, had raped Hassan’s wife. The people were in a state of panic and rushed to the nearby police station, where they were received by the station chief, a kindly officer in his late forties who enjoyed their trust because they were long familiar with him and found him to be brave and honest. The office assured them he would arrest Abu Shama within a day or two at the most. The next day exactly the same thing happened to Farag the barber. They came into his apartment, bound and gagged his three children, and then Abu Shama attacked Farag’s wife. As soon as Farag tried to defend her they killed him and threw him into the street with a piece of paper carrying the same message: “This is the penalty for anyone who disobeys Abu Shama the boss.”
The same thing happened again and again in the same way: the husband resisted and was killed, and the wife was raped. Abu Shama went on killing husbands and raping their wives. Every time the residents buried one of the husbands, they would rush to the police station and beg the officer to do something. When the locals pressed harder, the station chief had to confront them with the truth. “This type of crime is hard to prevent,” he said. “These criminals know how to use weapons and they are not from the area. I don’t know where they come from.” It was the last straw when the locals realized that the police could not protect them. It was such a horrific nightmare for them that some of them moved away, but most people had no choice. How could they afford new apartments when they were barely surviving anyway? They had to stay where they were.
What happened after that was really shocking. The rapes continued but none of the husbands were killed. All the husbands gave up defending their wives, or maybe they put up some token resistance to save face and then left Abu Shama to do what he wanted with them. At first the men whose wives were raped went around with their heads bowed and did not dare talk to people or even look at them. But little by little the men began to lose their sense of shame that their wives had been raped, maybe because they grew used to it or because the ordeal afflicted them all. Many men accepted the rape of their wives and saw it as part of life and went about their business. In fact, some of them thanked God that Abu Shama raped their wives rather than their unmarried daughters, which would have ruined their chances of marrying. The women who were raped whispered to each other in secret that Abu Shama had extraordinary sexual prowess such that none of them had come across before, even those who had been married more than once. The women never saw Abu Shama’s face because he never took off his mask but they all described a large black mole between his neck and his chest.
Sheikh Abdel Barr, the imam of the mosque, whose wife had been raped several times, said in his Friday sermon that a man whose wife was raped by Abu Shama qualified in Islamic law as “under coercion,” because to resist Abu Shama meant certain death. The strange thing was that Sheikh Abdel Barr, while very flexible on the question of the rapes, was extremely strict about the superficial aspects of religion. He refused to shake hands with women or talk to any woman who was not wearing hijab. Ahmed Abdel Kader, the well-known leftist intellectual who had articles published in several newspapers and sometimes appeared on television, and whose wife Abu Shama raped several times, came out with a theory he would expound to people in the coffee shop. “The sense of shame a man has when his wife sleeps with another man is based solely on the reactionary idea, inherited from decadent bourgeois culture, that he owns her body,” he would say. If anyone listening objected, Abdel Kader would end the conversation saying, “Listen, man, I’m not going to waste my time with you. Have you read Descartes or Nietzsche? Have you heard of Hegel or Spengler?” These names overawed the listeners and reduced them to silence, while the great intellectual continued. “Read those philosophers and you’ll realize that when Abu Shama rapes your wife, it is in essence just an incident of impingement, one piece of flesh going into another piece of flesh, no more and no less.”
But the attitudes of Sheikh Abdel Barr and of Abdel Kader were nothing compared to the attitude of some husbands, who, after Abu Shama had had his way with their wives, would ask him for money or favours. Abu Shama would agree, but he would deliberately tell them how sexy their wives were because he enjoyed humiliating them.The morals of the people in the street changed and most of them became selfish and hypocritical, grudging and wary of others. They hated to see others prosper and took pleasure in their misfortunes. Extremism spread among them, in two directions—some of them resorted to drugs, alcohol, and other pleasures, perhaps to mask the sense of humiliation, while others turned to extremist interpretations of religion. These religious extremists disagreed on superficial matters and exchanged scathing insults and accusations that the others were godless infidels. None of them ever considered that all of them were doing nothing while their wives were regularly raped. Two and a half years passed, thirty months, as the street lived this nightmare, until Karim married his neighbour Maha. Karim was the son of Mr. Mosailhi, whose wife Abu Shama had raped along with all the others. As soon as Karim came back from his honeymoon, he went to Friday prayers in the mosque. When Sheikh Abdel Barr spoke about “under coercion,” Karim stood up and said, “Your grace, our religion doesn’t teach us to stay silent about crimes.” The congregation turned on him but he held his ground and spoke his mind. “Your wives are raped because you have succumbed. My wife won’t be raped as long as I’m alive. You’ll see,” he said. Many people in the street made fun of him but many supported his logic and joined him. The young and old were waiting for someone to encourage them to resist.
News of Karim and his colleagues reached Abu Shama, and the next day he raided Karim’s apartment to rape his wife. A mighty battle ensued and the sound echoed right down the street. It went on a full hour and in the end the bodies of three of Karim’s colleagues were brought out. Then Karim himself appeared, dragging the body of Abu Shama along the ground. They took off his mask to reveal his ugly face and the people arrested the members of his gang. They rejoiced and shouted, “God is Great!” and the police chief came along to hug Karim and his colleagues one by one. “Through your bravery you have restored the honour of us all,” he told them. The people felt an overwhelming sense of joy and there was an implicit agreement to forget the past. None of the residents remembered what had happened to their wives or the wives of others.
Everyone was optimistic, but then a wave of thefts began: thefts of every kind, starting with the shoes of people praying in the mosque. Women had their handbags and jewellery snatched in the street and people were mugged late at night. People were disappointed and some of them started saying that Abu Shama, although a criminal, did at least protect the street from thieves. One night a thief threatened Hamdi at the milk shop with a knife, took the shop’s takings and drove off on a motorbike that was waiting for him. Hamdi cried out for help and wailed like a woman, and as soon as he saw Karim and his colleagues, he shouted at them. “God damn you,” he said. “You’ve ruined the street. We’re getting robbed in broad daylight every day. Bring back the days of Abu Shama.” Karim couldn’t take this and he shouted back, “You’re angry over a few pounds, yet you were content to watch your wife get raped!” A fight also broke out between Karim and Hamdi but wiser men intervened. But Karim now realized that what Hamdi said reflected the opinion of some people in the street—the ones who had grown accustomed to Abu Shama raping their wives and were willing to go along with it as long as they received some reward for forfeiting their honour.
Karim and his colleagues went to see the police chief and told him, “You ought to do your duty to protect people.” The policeman looked angry but he controlled himself. “Security will be restored soon,” he said.
“You’ve been saying that for ages, and you haven’t done anything.”
“I’m doing my best,” said the police chief.
“You know that all those thieves are part of the Abu Shama gang and they’re terrorizing people in revenge for his murder.
“There’s no evidence for that.”
“It doesn’t need any evidence.”
“What do you mean, Karim?” asked the policeman.
“Are you with us or against us?”
“Have you forgotten that I was the first to congratulate you on your victory?”
“You talk but never do anything.”
“Watch what you say.”
“I’ve faced death and seen my colleagues killed before my eyes, so your threats won’t frighten me.”
There was a moment of angry silence, then suddenly Karim had an idea and went right up to the officer and shouted, “Open your shirt.”
The officer looked confused and tried to stand up, but Karim, who had anticipated what he would do, grabbed his neck with his hand and squeezed it to paralyze him. With his other hand he took off the policeman’s tie and opened his shirt collar. Then, just below the officer’s neck, he saw a large black mole.