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43 news Pictures are hung. People are hanged, Ms. Novak proclaimed, as she tapped on the board, demanding that we write that down. Novak the Slovak we called her, but we all wrote it down, except for the Jefferson brothers playing hangman in the back, the ones she invited to drop by for a while after school. Detention for inattention, she said, as their necks snapped back and their eyes rolled up in their heads. People are hanged. Last week Saddam in his jumpsuit refusing to be hooded, taunted, haranguing his tormentors. And today as well, the former chief judge of the revolutionary court, and Saddam’s half-brother, former head of the secret police, his head snapping completely off, the drop charts all wrong, the grim machinations of weight, gravity, and momentum skewed, the rope swinging freely like a rat tail through the gallows trapdoor, the hangmen in their full-face balaclavas, lever brothers, cleaned out now, empty-handed, unemployed for a while. And the boys, world brothers, nine- and ten-year-olds, one in Texas, one in Pakistan, dead this week, having jumped from their bunks, having studied the video, having been attentive, their bodies so still, like a picture, hung. ...

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