Short Story Review || A Beheading (2010)
"The narrator is awoken in the middle of the night to thundering noises working their way through his home."
: 🌕 : SPOILER ALERT : 🌕 :
It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward, I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on violent crime, discussions of rape, sexual violence, extreme physical violence, & others.
“I wish I wasn’t my age. I wish I was as old as my parents. Or as young as my son.”
Sorrow fills the pages of human history. Edging on despair, the species desperately seeks to try again; their hand at cards they do not hold, plunging necks into crevices & grooves of untoward malevolence. The drudgery of repetition is a careless idolatry no writer would pen to page. Why then, are we stuck in the play without a liberator? When shall the curtains close on the scenes of terror without end?
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Mercifully, this short story is not as terrible as it may appear nor as traumatizing as the title may lead a reader to believe. Do not mistake me, the subject matter is gruesome & a cruel reminder that the vast array of life on earth pursues formidable horrors in a quotidian manner because they have the freedom to do so.
Though the rationale may seem oddly placed, here following reminders of cruelty, I find myself conflicted & so, as anyone with a brain would do, I muddle & fumble, attempting in writing to crispen the salivating mud fields in my mind.
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In essence, this is a story that follows the inner monologue of a man about to be executed. As he awakens in the night from aggressive thuds in his home, his mind reels with ways to escape. Though the narrator is not a coward, he cannot help but wish to be anyone else; someone very far away, someone who is not the person that he is. Terrified by the inescapable violence that haunts him down the hallways of his home, the narrator is led away from his family to an unknown location where he is beheaded in front of a video camera.
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There is a very particular way in which I would like to approach this review & there is a very specific reason as to why. To begin at the start; I chose to read this story with my friend after a long summer of no reading circle, at all. If you have come by my reviews before, you will remember the friend with whom I share my literary travels; the very same one who sends his thoughts my way as the weeks of the month flourish into years & by the end we may have consumed more than our fair share of stories. I chose this story because it was short, which is an irony for which I will not pretend ignorance.
While reading I found myself at odds with the pacing. In its introduction, the narrator reflects beautifully on the luck of a draw one never agrees to participate in; the one that leads to the formation of cells & the arrival into a world that goes forward without them.
I certainly cannot fault the narrator for reeling his thoughts into a tumbleweed & flowing furiously at them until they evaporate. He is about to be executed—both he & the reader are aware of this fact. Rather, we are brought together in something of an empathetic fluke chance & by the end of the story, neither of us will be around any longer.
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When a reader opens a page to dialogue that rambles they will hopefully have empathy enough to appreciate why the character acts the way that they do. I found myself curiously perplexed by the thoughts that consumed the narrator’s time. Here we link to my statement of intent when writing this review. Whereas the subject matter presented in this story indicates the realism of extremist societies, the author does not engage with the truth behind these situations.
The author’s character is void of any personality, or any connection to his life as it was before we meet him on the page. He questions the reasons why he was taken from his house but, these two possibilities are not nearly as meaningful as to be able to capture the reality of abduction & execution.
A reader will be left to fill in the blanks whereas this subject matter merits callous honesty. Where is this story taking place & why? What is the political dynamic of this country? What weather leads those who live here to feel the extremes or constancy of the two or the four? What is the predominant ideology of this community? Who is the narrator?
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One may be inclined to believe that the story does not need to include any further detail. I do not agree. What makes this situation so horrific is that it happens very casually. So many people of my generation grew up with access to the internet & with this tool came the ability to travel to the corners of the world, next door & further down; viewing local occurrences with such frequency they became benumbed to the freakishly morbid truths they held. It matters to give context because it positions what may easily be interpreted & disregarded as fiction, into the calming grass of one’s own neighbourhood.
I am not naïve to the intent of this story. A beheading is a distressing act of violence. Arguably, one’s stance toward further details here may be rooted in the obviousness of such cruelty.
Forgetting that the narrator is a person whom the reader may have otherwise met brings this story home, where it belongs. My meaning here is clear; in a world filled with prejudice, bigotry, xenophobia, blatant racism, & deranged ideologies, the reader the author had in mind may not be the one who chose the story. I am a perfect example of that. I refuse to accept the surface value account of extremist cruelty towards a man who was but a person in a home, as being enough to rid my heart with the terror of the truth.
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Shaping this story with evidence to contradict the assumptions that the reader will allow to flood their minds is important. Will the reader picture the beheading as a possibility in the United States, or will they automatically imagine the reader as living in a “Third World” country where such barbarism is to be expected?
As the narrator does himself no favours by explicitly focusing on the sexually adventurous possibilities of his wife after he dies—ignoring the fact that he has a family, that his home has been ransacked, & that his society is flawed—I came to wonder why it mattered what his wife did or what she was left to do. Her husband was going to be executed, nothing much mattered after that.
Yet it is just as easy to appreciate that of course the narrator would revel in sullenly shallow thoughts; he was set to die, & no one would expect him to solve the Collatz Conjecture moments before his head was severed from his neck.
However, it felt odd to watch a man ramble about the possible promiscuity of a woman as though this were one of life’s many issues to mull over. I return to my earlier comments about specificity & allow the reader here to do as they have done during this story; put two & two together.
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Ultimately, this story was not enough of what it promised, to be more than what it was. The narrator does not offer insight into his world, nor does the author reflect on the society that thrives in chaos—one we know well via the streets we walk, the books we read, the stories we share, & the videos posted tragically for unsuspecting audiences to see.
At its core, this story offers the target reader a nibble of the good stuff; that tangy, frostbitten meat that lingers at the back of the freezer waiting for dinner to be cooked. Although the writing is smooth & though the tale is clean, the truth is not uncomplicated nor is it free from the webby tangles of sticky human fingers.
The hole left where the Axis once directed the exercise of casually rolling one’s skull across shoulders, near blades where wings might have grown had Samael’s fate not been as it was; roil deep into the caverns of a template that is formidably cherished, banished, & burned by those whom we know & those whom we don’t.
If you would like to read this story, please visit this link — « A Beheading » by Mohsin Hamid
C. 💌