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Sadrah carried the body, without removing the batik shroud, from the house to the front yard, leaving a shadowy reddish trail behind. He weighed eighty kilos, Major Sadrah thought, if he’d been a boar the ajaks would have ripped him apart. They took the corpse to a stool by the well, where Ma Soma had placed a pile of towels, sulphur soap, a bowl of water, flower petals, and of course borax. It was there that the kyai finally pulled down the cloth, slowly, bracing himself for the shock. With several men as witnesses, the hidden secret was now exposed. The Istighfar prayer slid from the kyai’s mouth, begging Allah for forgiveness over and over, while the other men, following his example, mumbled as they stared at the ragged wound on the pallid neck. They saw how the blood still flowed in fizzing bubbles. The scene was nauseating—more terrifying than any night-mare—and several of the men turned away.
    Stimulated by a childish curiosity, Sadrah examined the body, hoping to find out more of what Margio had done. True enough an artery had been severed, dangling like the cable in a shattered radio. More savage than I imagined, he thought, seeing that the neck was almost cut in two, as if the butcher hadn’t quite finished his task.
    â€œHis father died a few days ago, following his little sister, who passed away a week after her birth,” Jahro said. “I think the kid’s gone mad.”
    â€œHe was crazy to have bitten a man like that,” said Sadrah.
    The air became cold and Major Sadrah could hear from a distance his ajaks howling, asking to be caged, or more probably they had caught the smell of blood on the evening breeze in their carnivorous snouts. Before darkness descended, Jahro asked some people to bring buckets of water. The pumps whirred noisily as water spouted out. After vanishing for a while, Ma Soma reappeared carrying bags of cotton-wool balls. Jahro washed the wound himself, very solemnly, believing he could stop the unremitting stream of red, as if the fearsome gash was a child’s graze. He continued to mutter prayers. Sadrah, who had been through the brutal gauntlet of guerrilla warfare and seen bodies blown to bits by mortar fire, was genuinely awestruck by Jahro’s chilly composure. He almost proposed leaving the gash as it was, to remind the kyai that the corpse would eventually rot in its grave.
    The kyai’s hands were still dancing, receiving balls of cotton and pressing them down, their color changing in an instant, before he bandaged the wound up and hid it under a muslin sheet. The wound now looked like a small cut on a living person, with the coiling muslin like a necklace. While he worked, other people stripped the body of clothes, bathed it, scrubbing it clean, and made it smell of flowers. There was a whiff of borax rising from the corpse, wafting around their heads.
    Ma Soma brought a shroud from the surau, and then the body was wrapped up where they had been working.
    â€œIt’s not befitting,” said Kyai Jahro, “to leave him naked all night long,” adding, “if the girl Maharani wants to see her father’s head, we can still undo the knot of the shroud. But if she has any idea of what he looks like, she may not want to see him. Her mother and sisters will have lost their appetite for days, they’ll have nightmares for the rest of their lives.”
    Now night had fallen, bringing with it cold and silence. Three people quickly carried the corpse into the surau, and people got ready to perform the funeral rites after the usual Maghrib prayers.
    Despite his obsession with women, Anwar Sadat was a regular visitor to the surau. Even when he was busy, which was often, he would never forget to attend for the five daily prayers. Usually he would be the one who beat the big drum, and recited the adhan or the iqama . No one would trust him with the role of imam. His pious habits arose partly from the fact that most of his