Khaberni - While some reach the age of sixty and prepare themselves for a life of peace and tranquility, others are pursued by diseases that tamper with their bodies, weakening them gradually until old age sets in. Nevertheless, "Reda", the woman who had just surpassed that age by a few months, cast aside all the attributes of her age after she had her fill of her husband and his deeds that painted his image in her mind as a source of pain and suffering. She waited for him to fall asleep and then she ended his life in a way no one had ever seen or heard of before. After committing the crime, she seemed regretful and began to cry in a way that carried both sorrow and deceit, and onto the details...
In his traditional rural attire, with his robe and head wrap, people were accustomed to seeing Uncle "Faraj", a tough man resembling the strong figures of cinema despite his age passing six decades. There, in his simple home at the edge of the well-known '5 Arga' hamlet in the village of '7 Bahr el-Baqar', his wife and companion of his years of struggle and youth resided. Unlike him, she was a woman consumed by anxiety and devastated by illnesses, and between the beginning of their married life and the present, over thirty years had passed, resulting in a son and a daughter who were their life's joy but had married and lived far from the family home.
The years of life between "Faraj" and "Reda" were slow after their children moved away; they would wake up early, the man attending to his affairs, while the lady of the house remained alone, occasionally groaning from the old age diseases that had gripped her throat since a not so distant past. Amidst all this, she hoped for kind treatment from her husband, but he saw her only to beat or curse her and curse the days they spent together, and his reactions were no less severe when it came to talking about her illnesses and treatment.
The wife grew weary of her husband’s deeds, and as a rural woman unchanged by the years, she desired nothing more than kind treatment. However, the moments of her husband's anger and his habit of abusing her seemed to have solidified a new hatred for him in her soul. That hatred became a license for the devil's presence and the tyranny of his whispers to her, making her eagerly await the moment of revenge, and plan in her mind how to repay everything she endured all at once. Just before the end of the second weekend's afternoon hours this month, it was the straw that broke the camel's back regarding the husband’s standing and the good memories she had of him, when he hit her and hurled insults at her that were not new to her ears, but it was the insult she decided would be his last to her, before he went to their bedroom for his daily nap.
Criminal suspicion
In the backyard of the simple home, amidst piles of straw and some debris, she picked up a large stone, and walked on tiptoes back to where her husband lay sleeping. With a calmness unknown to her before, she began to close the door with her shoulder as if wanting to be alone with her companion to make him taste what he made her endure and leave its darkness within her. She approached the bed with deliberation and raised her hand high with the stone, then crashed it onto his head as if executing a death sentence for all the suffering he caused her and her life with him.
The blood stained her stone and splattered over the face of her victim, but he seemed as if he had awakened to bid life goodbye due to the blow and similar ones she repeated before him as if telling him that she was determined to kill him in his sleep and in his wakefulness. When his movement faded and his breath stopped, "Reda" continued her premeditated crime; she brought some fuel that was present in the house at the time, poured it over the corpse and soaked the bed with it, then ignited the fire and left him to burn while she closed the door of the house.
A few steps she walked until she reached the corner of the neighbors’ house, where she behaved desperately, trembling and screaming at everyone; claiming that unknown strangers had killed her husband and set him on fire, prompting the locals to rush to her aid. Amidst the crowd of neighbors, the flames that had just started to blaze on the husband’s body were contained, but traces of coagulated blood amidst what remained of the ashes from the burnt bed were evident enough to affirm that there was a criminal suspicion involved.
The matter did not convince the criminal investigation authorities and their men as they listened to the wife's and others' accounts from the locals. The conversations and interrogations always ended with a suspicion, and perhaps the perennial advice in criminology to "look for the woman" was a goal for the detectives to unravel the mystery and circumstances of the crime.
The forensic pathologist and his doctor concluded the autopsy on the body there in the central morgue in the city of Husseiniya, and the body was released for burial accompanied by a burial permit received by a relative of the deceased, while the puzzle still lingered in the minds of the investigators. A bright idea to re-inspect the victim’s house emerged, perhaps there would be the solution.
In the midst of places devoid of life, and near the bedroom which was the scene of the riddle and its crime, one of the investigators was surprised by a robe of the wife still retaining a few drops of blood. When he lifted it before his eyes, the stain of the frozen blood on it expanded, leaving no room for doubt that its owner had a hand in what happened.
In front of the investigating authorities, as soon as the wife saw her robe, she abandoned her...
