[The aim of the public execution] is not so much to re-establish a balance as to bring into play, at its extreme point, dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength … in this liturgy of punishment, there must be an emphatic affirmation of power and of its intrinsic superiority. And this superiority is not simply that of right, but that of the physical strength of the sovereign beating down upon the body of his adversary and mastering it: by breaking the law, the offender has touched the very person of the prince; and it is the prince – or at least those to whom he has delegated his force – who seizes upon the body of the condemned man and displays it marked, beaten and broken.

No one could account for Deeriye's movements for three solid days. And it took the best part of the fourth day to piece together stories stranded with gaps nobody could fill … Into what dark hole of mystery did he disappear between being seen with Khaliif and turning up, arrayed in army uniform, marching in rhythm with other soldiers – and standing at attention before the General who was awarding medals to heroes of the land, pulling out, by mistake, prayer-beads instead of a revolver to shoot the General dead? (Another version told how the prayer-beads, like a boa-constrictor, entwined themselves around the muzzle of the revolver and Deeriye could not disentangle it in time.) He was an easy target, now that he hadn't hit his. And the General's bodyguards emptied into him cartridges of machine-gun fire until his body was cut nearly in half.