All rise! yelled the court clerk.

The chatter gave way to the scuffle of a crowd getting to its feet. The judge arrived, accompanied by his three assistants.

My eyes turned away from the judge and peered through the screen, Cinema Silenzioso. Saba’s name echoed around my compound. I wondered if people could see beyond the screen in front of which the clerk had placed a table and four chairs, and into Saba’s compound. Saba was now sitting on her bed under the lime tree, her back to the court. Oil lamps flickered around her compound. She was not attending her own trial.

The judge stood to his feet and said nothing for a long time. He looked around the audience. His silent stares drew out gasps here and there. He lowered his head and broke down. His sobbing was so uncontrollable that he shook. He slumped in his chair.

The men making up the committee of elders shut their eyes. After sipping on water fetched by the clerk, the judge rose to his feet again. He drew a deep breath. His authoritative voice returned. Ladies and gentlemen, he said. It pains me to state that we have charged Saba with a grotesque sexual act against a hapless man. Her own disabled brother.

Silence. And then gasps that followed turned into shrieks when a woman in a white zuria walked to the front of the gallery and wept, throwing her arms in the air. As though she were a conductor, she had forced a familiar outpouring of collective grief. A young boy joined the raucous choir when he lamented, Why us? Why can we not live in peace?

I looked around me. Some bowed their heads and there were a few who turned side to side as if caught between belief and disbelief. I noticed doubt in the eyes of those who blinked while muttering their disgust at Saba. Grief is beautiful when it is worn by people as a pretence. I felt this even more when a florid woman, with eyes that darted about to make sure she was being watched, fainted, and took down another woman and two men. One of them was the man who had raped me.

I was like a charcoal iron, smouldering inside. Birds resting on the shrubs inside my cinema flung themselves into the air and flocked above Saba’s thatched roofs, heading towards the rugged hills.

The breeze blew and Saba’s black dress hanging from the hibiscus tree on my screen shook. Her scent dispersed everywhere. I imagined her sadness too dispersing in the wind.

Saba abused Hagos. A woman cried as she beat her chest. Saba had abused poor Hagos. Our local doctor, the midwife, went around the court with a sliced onion to revive those who had fallen. The judge was on his feet again: Quiet. Quiet.

He composed himself. His hands no longer trembled. His back was straight. Mosquitoes buzzed behind him inside Cinema Silenzioso and around Saba’s dress. The thirst for blood spilled outside when a man stood up and called for her head without a trial.