Gador and Baya

Gador and Baya

Love is a question of blind luck

Chapter 1

Doja and The Hanged Man's rope

One cold, rainy afternoon, the locals witnessed a new public execution of an outlaw. In the seventeenth century in the Tunis, Hanging was a sentence usually meted out to common thieves and criminals. Convicted murderers who were sentenced to death by hanging, were executed in Bab Souiks, a district in the earstern part of the town . Immediately after the death penalty is imposed , convicts were escorted to Bab Souika central place, where they were given a burnoose to wear before execution. A dark brown Burnoose with a hood that covered the head, so only the eyes could be seen. 

 At the execution, a crowd gathered to watch. Then people dispersed to their occupations. The hanged was left suspended on the stem for the rest of the day and the following night, and he was buried after at least twenty four hours later. Evidently, it was an ordinary scene for the town locals to see one or more persons suspended from a rope in the place for days.

On the opposite side was the festive Bab Mnara district, where people meet to stay late at night drinking and celebrating. Here you find coffe houses, taverns and dancing floors.

One cold winter night in Bab Mnara, a group of ten friends- nine men and a woman- gathered in a tavern to drink ,

and smoke a Sheesha . At one point of their prattle, they talked about the hanging ceremony that took place in Bab Souika earlier that day. Then they talked about death and the dead, wandering suffering souls, the beyond and the like. 

 Balha, a fat wealthy merchant , said that one day in his childhood, he witnessed how a man who was supposed to be dead, came back to life suddenly. Balha described how the dead man suddenly sprang and looked around with hollow, bewildered eyes and how the visitors screamed from the horrid surprise and flew away. The talking went on about death and the dead, souls and spectres.

Doja, the only woman present said : «I personnally don’t fear the dead. Why would I fear a dead person. It is only a lifeless …helpless body…dead body ! ».

Doja was a woman with ways of men : she was an outspoken, self-assured and physically strong woman. Despite the conservative customs, she worked at the souk among men, and she used to sit in taverns drink, smoke and talk at with men ! She was also known for her courage and relentlessness. People recall that, a few years ago, while shepherding sheep at the cliff of the mountain, she was attacked by a bandit. Pretending to beg the assaulter, who threatened with a knife, to let her go, she suddenly hit him a whim on the nose. The bandit, surprised, lost conscience and bleeded enormously . Doja fetched into his pockets where she found a golden hand of Fatima, that she seized and returned to town. 

It is true that she was a tough woman with the manners of the most ruthless of men. However, those who knew her well believe that in the inside, she was in fact a gentle, sensitive woman. 

Doja was thinking to steal the rope around the hanged man's neck. The execution rope has some value : it is thick and firm. she could sell it to craftsmen in the souq or to sailors. She was in constant need of money to spend on her drinking and smoking .

 She put on her Safsari – a white body covering veil that women used to wear- and strode out of the room, under the shouts of the men.

Doja hurried in the intricate alleys of the medina in that dark winter night. There was a cold wind blowing from the east, and her white Safsari was fluttering in the air. About an hour later she reached Bab Souika place. She crossed it hastily, draped in her white fluttering veil, similar to a spectre or a lost soul in that dark, cold night. She reached the place. She saw the stem holding the hanged man standing amidst the fog. she walked faster, making stunning sounds in the quiet of the cold night, caused by the contact of her Kabkab with the rocky soil, until she reached the spot of the execution. 

 The convicts were made to stand on a ladder and the noose was placed around their neck. The ladder was then removed and the noose tightened around the victim’s neck, under their own weight, especially if they struggled (which of course, they did). 

She saw the ladder used for the execution and placed it near Gador’s suspended body. She climbed four or five steps, then took out a knife from beneath her veil, and with three or four strikes cut the rope around Gador’s neck. Serenely, she watched Gador’s body fall abruptly on the soil. She jumped off the ladder. She watched Gador’s face and noticed that, although his face was a little blue, his tongue and eyes were not swollen and protruding, as she had expected. Then suddenly, it occured to her that the hanged man’s face was familiar to her… she had seen that face before. Then, in horror, she realized that the hanged man was the same man that attacked her at the mountain cliff a few years ago whose nose she hit with her head…and broke. She even noticed his broken nose. A nose that SHE had broken with a blow from her head a few years ago, at the mountain cliff!

She put the piece of rope in an interior large pocket.When she looked again at Gador’s face, it suddendlty occurred to her that Gador’s eyes blinked slighyly and that he actually gazed at her. 

Doja felt her heartbeat accelerating and a strange feeling overwhelmed her. Suddenly, while she was still contemplating the dead face in awe, Gador’s mouth suddenly opened wide, ejecting a shriek gasp. His head rose quickly and she felt a blow on her lower lip. The hanged man snatched the golden bracelet, that in fact was his own, a few years ago. Shocked and dazzled, Doja sprang up and started to ran away. In her rush, she left her Safsari veil near Gador’s body. 

Doja reached the rown exhausted and breathless, but she did not go to the tavern. After wandering a while in the cold and deserted town, she crouched under a tree to rest. A strong and fine rain began to fall. Crouched under the tree, Doja let her tired body be washed by this fresh water from the sky. She felt her face and body being washed from blood and sweat, with particular relief.

Her long black hair, wet with the rain, was scattered over her white, pale shoulders and her moist chest. To see her in the darkness of this moonless night, resting her pale and wet body against the tree, she looked like a lost soul wandering in the city. It was not until three days later that Doja was seen again in the medina, at Bab Mnara, during a night of extravagance. She seemed transformed, in the words of her friends.

 Chapter 2

 When Gador Met Baya

Gador was a bandit and a criminal. His misdeeds had almost a legendary aura around them in the city - fed and amplified, it must be said, by the popular imagination and by rumors.

Nevertheless, he was a tough and ruthless bandit and a criminal. For years he lived outside the walls of the medina, and hid in the mountains with other bandits. He lived by theft and robbery. He escaped to the many death sentences, in part because of his cunning, but also because the authorities avoided to arrest him for fear of his legendary cruelty.

That night it was dark and cold when he began to open his eyes and saw a shocked face veiled in white. He could not discern whether it was the appearance of a man or a woman. He returned to consciousness gradually. He did not understand what happened to him and felt asphyxia, when he suddenly gasped and sucked air with full lungs. He saw a white figure move away quickly. He remained for some time lost and overwhelmed. He then remembered the hanging. He touched his neck with his hand and felt the cut made by the rope. He looked at his blood-stained fingers from the blood of his neck. He thought he was still alive because the rope was not properly placed around his neck, and that his burnoose had softened the pressure of the rope around his neck.

Gador gathered some strength and stood up. He thought he had to make an effort to flee the spot where he was 

hanged. His leg was hurting him and he limped. His whole body was in pain, particularly his neck and right foot, which was injured when he fell. He saw the safsari of Doja floating on the floor. He collected it and put it in a burnoose pocket . Then he walked away jerkily in the dark through the deserted square.

He walked away from the town, staggering for about an hour, until he reached the cemetery, where he decided to rest until dawn, when he would continue his way to the mountain. He sat down and rested his back against a tree trunk. He remembered the white figure he noticed when he began to regain consciousness, and how his head accidentally hit the strange figure as he coughed. He looked at his hand holding the golden bracelet. It had always been his bracelet, offered to him by his mother.

While he was sitting there thinking in the cold, dark night, he heard a low moan. He looked toward the source of the strange noise, and found that it came from a newly dug grave. He got up and went to the tomb and realized that the voice was coming from inside the tomb, and that it was the low an weak moan of a woman, with feeble intermittent sighs.

He decided to open the tomb. He dug the knife, removing mud and stones mixed with pieces of bone and skull. Finally, he raised flat and rectangular clay plates that covered the tomb.

He looked inside the tomb and saw a young woman, wrapped in a white shroud. Her skin was damp and white. 

She stared at Gador with great terror with wide open eyes and whispered, "aaaahhh ... Oh my God..who are you? Where am I? "

Gador lifted the girl wrapped in the tomb and brought her under the tree where he was sitting. The girl was trembling with fear, exhaustion and cold.

Despite the extreme pallor of her face, Gador noticed the beauty and innocence of the girl. As she was shivering with cold, so took the white safsari out of his burnoose pocket and wrapped it around her shivering body.

After a while, Baya told her story. She told him that she was fourteen years old and lived in the medina. She had consumed a large amount of sleeping herbs, that she was given by an old woman who healed the sick with a combination of herbs and witchcraft. She explained that her parents forced her to marry a rich old man she did not love. On the evening of her wedding ceremony and out of despair, she swallowed the herbal pills in large quantities. She said that she had only wanted a long sleep and she did not want to die. She found out now that her family had buried her thinking that she was dead.

When she finished her story, she burst into tears, as if she discovered the horror of what happened to her at that moment.

Gador wiped her tears with the sleeve of his burnoose, the he smiled and said, hanging the golden bracelet with the hand of Fatima around her wrist: « This bracelet is predestined to you. I have always intended to offer this token of love to my beloved soul ». He pressed her against him. As two lost souls, they stayed there, entwined and silent. Baya rested her head on his chest, crying softly. Gador kissed her on the cheek. then he kissed her lips, which were still cold and shivering slightly.

Gador and Baya remained the rest of the night entwined, whispering to each other, in the silence of the cemetery, the darkness of the night and the cold. He, wrapped in the dark burnoose, and she in her white safsari, spent the rest of the night enlaced, caressing and kissing.

At the first light of dawn, Gador and Baya left the cemetery to the mountain. Rumors say they left the mountain shortly after and went to other places where they lived together in eternal happiness.