It is Saturday, September 25, and I am exhausted and disheveled. Waiting and uncertain fate have bothered me. We are three people and we live in a hotel in the Darb-e-Malik that has a room for staying. With each passing day, my tiredness intensifies. Darb-e-Malik is a crowded place in Herat city. There are many affordable hotels here. Those who intend to travel to Iran or enter Afghanistan from Iran will mostly live in the Darb-e-Malik hotels until everything is prepared. I have had depression more than any time, and it seems that I am witness to a huge disaster in my life. My friends go outside to walk around while I am alone in my room. My eagerness has died for touring and I cannot company my friends. I smoke one by one and I throw and diffuse my sorrow through smoke around my room. The smoke of cigarette annoys my friends and when I fire up a cigarette, they suffer. My friends maybe more troubled than I am, but because they are older and have experienced more horrific events in life, they do not bend their eyebrows. They advise me to be patient and paint a bright green future in front of me. I have succumbed to the dark conditions so much that my ears are deaf to hearing this advice.
It is afternoon and I am lying alone on the bed in the room and my eyes are on Facebook, where I am falling into an unwanted sleep. Unwanted sleep is usually heavy and lasts late. After an hour, the sound of opening the door wakes me up and one of my comrades enters the room and addresses me: The Taliban executed four kidnappers in four corners of Herat city, you are still asleep. My ear is focused on my friend’s words and my intelligence is elsewhere. My sleep is heavy and I feel I hear this sound in my sleep. The friend who brings this shocking news is a joker, and he always bites or annoys me with his jokes. Sometimes when we saw the Taliban in the city and on the road, in order to frighten me, he wanted to tell the Taliban that I was in the era of the Republic of the Prosecutor (I worked in the Prosecutor’s Office, not to be the Prosecutor) and imprisoned many Taliban. I do not take my friend’s words seriously and I always think it is a joke. He leaves the room and goes to where the Taliban hanged four people. I have not yet woken up when my friend enters the room again and reports the execution in more detail because this time he watched the scene closely. Suddenly I jump up and squat on the floor. I can still feel the weight of sleep on my eyes. There can be no more terrifying moment than to fall into a deep sleep and wake up to the news of those who have been executed. My eyelashes are stuck together and I can hardly look at my friend’s face. I try to get the weight of sleep out of my eyes and get back to normal. I am in a state of shock and I cannot get up. I go to Facebook to read and make sure if something is published in this link, however, I do not find anything. My friend insists that I go to the Darb-e-Malik square and watch the man hanging there closely. Unable to watch the scene of human suffering, I refuse to go to the Darb-e-Malik square. On the one hand, the crowd is heavy and my psyche may be damaged as soon as I watch the scene, and on the other hand, it is my hatred of the Taliban that I do not want to see (especially at the scene of people suffering and laughing). My friend points out that I can watch from the height of the hotel because the hotel we were staying in was a few steps away from the square and everything was visible to us. The hotel had three floors: our room was located on the second floor. In order to see the executed man, I had to walk up to the roof of the hotel. Upon hearing this news and its accuracy, the terror of destruction takes root in my being. I wish it was a lie! My legs become weak and I can hardly walk. I remembered the words of Mullah Turabi, one of the commanders of the Taliban, who had warned: The punishment of the criminals will be the same as it was twenty-five years ago; That is, the perpetrator must suffer and be denigrated negatively. Slowly, leaning against the wall of house three, I walk to the roof of the hotel. My friend, who used to go to the square and watch the scene closely, now accompanies me. Without my friend, I would not have been able to watch that horrible scene, even from the roof of the hotel. The roof of the hotel is surrounded by a high wall on all fours. The hotel is located a few meters from the place where a human being was hanged. My friend provides a metal saddle and leans against the wall. Putting my foot on the ground while a horrible horror pervades my being, I look at the man who has been hanged. As soon as I watch the scene, my heart goes out to Harry and the structure of my being trembles and my body hair becomes spiky. Not because of the punishment of someone who allegedly committed a crime, but because of the human suffering and the prosperity of the field court and the circumvention of the law and the fair trial. The body of the one who is hanged is covered in blood as if immersed in an atmosphere full of blood. The lifeless is hanging on a hook and covered in torn clothes. His feet are motionless at a distance from each other in the air. Also hands. There is a paper on his chest and I cannot read more accurately. The sun is still shining and scattering a not-so-sharp ray on the ground. Crowds are dumped on the road, so there is no place for needles to be thrown. Crowd rolls like locusts. Everyone is watching the dead man hanging on a hook in the air. Everybody takes pictures and videos in the air. Some may enjoy it, some may learn a lesson, and many may curse the field court.
I slowly try to get down from the roof of the hotel to the second floor. When I get to the hotel lobby, I sit on the furniture in the corner and keep quiet. I put my finger under my teeth in amazement and close my eyes to the ground. Before long, the footsteps of those passengers who had gone to watch the scene broke the silence of the vestibule. Everyone who went to watch the scene had a lot of grief in their hearts. Some call the suffering of human beings contrary to the right to human dignity. “Those who were executed were not kidnappers and were addicted,” said one of those who went on to watch the scene. Corpses are hung in the city to instill fear in others. One of my comrades, who had gone to another square to watch another scene, said: “The body that was hanged was not fresh, it looked crumpled and withered.” Tomorrow I will go to Azizi Bank and wait in a long line. It is morning and the sun has not yet spread its carpet. Everyone is talking about the executed people and everyone has their own comment. Many people have strong suspicions that those executed were allegedly kidnappers and had been executed on suspicion of committing the crime of kidnapping. Someone said: If these four people kidnapped a father and a son, why was it not widely covered in the media and detailed information was not given about the abductees? This made everyone suspicious of the kidnapping in this case. Many said that in the Republican era if the kidnapping cases were not properly addressed, at least the nature and essence of the case would be well reflected in the media.
