Tang Yibrahim

Don Ibrahim is the calculating, cigar-smoking intermediary behind a coercive plan to prevent Mass at the threatened parish church. When the operation against the building itself proves unacceptable, he redirects his companions toward abducting its priest—a workaround that exposes both his practical ingenuity and his insistence that violence can be administered with manners.

The failed operation

At Casa Cuesta, Ibrahim sits with Celestino Peregil, Potro del Mantelete, and Niña Puñales while Peregil reproaches the group for making him look bad. Ibrahim studies the ash on his cigar and irritably runs a finger over the singed bristles of his moustache. Potro keeps his eyes lowered; his left hand is still bandaged with gauze and ointment for burns. Niña, by contrast, seems removed from the embarrassment, drinking more than half the wine and staring at an old bullfighting poster from Linares. Peregil says he regrets entrusting them with the job.

The urgency is explicit: the church must have no Mass the following Thursday. Ibrahim proposes a change of target. Since they have decided, out of conscience, not to attack a sacred place, he suggests turning their attention to the human element instead: the priest. The distinction is both practical and grimly comic. The building is spared, but the people who serve it are treated as obstacles to be managed.

The abduction proposal

Ibrahim explains that Niña has gathered information from neighbors and parishioners. The young curate is due to leave on a trip the next day, Tuesday, which would leave the parish’s incumbent priest alone. Ibrahim asks Peregil whether he understands the opportunity. Peregil recognizes the logic: without a priest, there can be no Mass.

Peregil objects that Ibrahim had earlier expressed scruples about breaking the old priest’s leg. Ibrahim answers that such injury is unnecessary. He proposes that the priest simply disappear for two or three days, without physical harm. The plan preserves a veneer of restraint while using forced absence to achieve the same immediate purpose: preventing the Thursday service. Peregil’s hopeful response suggests that he is ready to take responsibility for carrying it out.

A captor’s idea of respect

Later, when Peregil asks how the priest is behaving, Ibrahim has recovered some composure, though he remains pale. The parish has been left temporarily without its incumbent by the three mercenaries. Ibrahim answers gravely that the priest is holding up well and staying calm, as though the predicament had nothing to do with him.

Ibrahim’s seriousness is not merely tactical. He considers the priest a worthy man of the Church, even a holy one, and sees no necessary contradiction between respect and kidnapping. He has learned this dissonant etiquette in Latin America, where people could be executed while addressing one another formally. His conduct thus joins courtesy to coercion: the priest’s dignity is acknowledged, but his freedom is still taken in service of the operation.