The Fall of the Imam (19 page)
I too slept the deep sleep of a child, seeing nothing and hearing nothing except ghosts and evil spirits. Fear would creep towards me from every side, moving in on me like cold air, so I would keep still in my place in the middle of the bed, moving neither to the right nor to the left, trying not to touch my father or my mother. I feared both of them and with fear stole hatred in under the bed covers, penetrating my body so that no matter how warmly my mother embraced me I continued to avoid the slightest contact with her, and no matter how much warm affection my father showed me I continued not to love him.
My father was the leader of a religious cult, and he used to make amulets for women while they sat with him in the dark of night. It was an occupation which his father had bequeathed him so that through religion he could make the profits he had failed to make by breeding chickens and rabbits. He used to attach the words of God around the women’s necks and decorate the amulet with a blue bead hanging from a thread. Then he would return home carrying meat and vegetables from the market, but in his pockets he brought back piastres which smelt of the women’s sweat.
I would close the door on myself to study my lessons, and when the examinations drew close I would remember God, prostrating myself before Him three times with every prayer and imploring Him to help me pass, and God responded to me each time, and so year after year I moved up from class to class.
Thus I lived, passing from one success to the other, not knowing the meaning of failure even once. Writer after writer dropped into oblivion, but I survived by the side of the Imam, untouched. I continued to write without stop, never reading what I wrote, content to see my picture framed in its box every morning. I spent each day like a short span of life between one dream and the next, and spent each night moving from one level of sleep to the other as I sat with the Imam through the night, drinking toast after toast to our old friendship. Then we stole out together at a late hour to the House of Joy. During festivities and celebrations I stood beside him, listening to his speech as he stammered through it with the sun above his head like the open eye of heaven radiating the colours of the rainbow, while all around the crowds shouted out their acclamations, my mind thinking that in this wide world of ours there must be some will more powerful than that of Satan to have made me join Hizb Allah and shout in unison with their voices, ‘Long live the Imam.’
As I stood beneath the lights I looked around me, searching everywhere for this will which was higher than mine, knowing not where it came from, knowing only that it lay outside my own being, perhaps falling from the dome of the sky or rising from the depths of the earth, or from the streets and alleys and lanes, or from the tomb-like houses enveloped in smoke, or from the broken looks of those who plough the earth, or from the faces of children covered in flies with their voices twittering like birds, or from the flags flying high on the day of defeat, or from the rockets soaring up in the sky in celebration of the Feast. I stood near the Imam with my foot planted firmly on the ground, for I feared that if I made the slightest movement my place would be lost. I could see the sun like a wide-open eye watching our souls from on high, and when the face of the Imam fell to the ground the sky did not change, and the earth did not change, and the acclamations of the crowd went on unchanged, and the rockets still burst with colourful tails, and I still lay near him with my face to the ground as though I had not seen a thing throughout, not seen that the Imam remained the same, that the new Imam was the old one, for even if the body had changed the face was the same, and he still lay on the ground close to where I lay. I could see a transparent cloud float like a mist before my eyes and I could feel dust go up my nose. My head was no longer held well-balanced on my body, and my body was no longer in a straight line with my head, and my foot had been pushed aside and its place taken by another foot, and my eyes peered from under my lids, first to the left, then to the right, but there was no trace of any of the members of Hizb Allah or Hizb al-Shaitan, nor was there any trace of the body of the Imam.
There I lay alone on the ground, and the sun looked down on me with its flaming eye, and the earth under my body was cool, and the voice of my father echoed in my ears like the voice of the Imam, and I looked in his direction all the time, but he turned his face away to the other side, and failure ran through my veins and made my body cry. I closed my eyes, preparing for eternal rest, breathed in the dust with slow breaths, dying without haste. Around my neck hung the key of Paradise, but I had plenty of time to savour the joys of the Garden of Eden, and my mind occupied itself with the images of the seventy-seven nymphs, some of whom were fair and some of whom were dark, and I was at a loss how to choose from them my heart’s desire. The taste of death was in my mouth, a slowly dissolving bitterness flavoured with a sharp tang of pleasure. I drank it down sip by sip like wine, bitter at the beginning, sweet at the end. I laughed in a loud voice, letting myself go, at last overcoming my inhibitions, driving the air out of my chest and my belly, my voice ringing out in my ears for the first time more spontaneous than that of my last wife. There was no longer any stagnant air from the days of my childhood held back deep down inside me, nor any feeling of jealousy, nor any desires. I had partaken from the pleasures of this world to the point of satiety and now I had become indifferent, and on my face there remained nothing but an angelic smile.
They took him to his last wife in a tinselled box. His name was printed on the outside in big letters, and there was a large picture of him framed in gold. On his face was a virtuous smile, and the picture continued to live in her memory, for it revealed to her the inner sadness in the heart of her late husband. Deep inside her she remembered it as proof of his sensitivity, of his capacity for great sadness, despite the fact that during their life together she had heard him laugh and jest all the time, and although in every encounter, as soon as she put her arms around him he slipped through them like a fish. In his absence sadness had brought them together just like love had done before, and year after year went by but she still continued to remember him, and year after year, whenever they met she wound her arms around him, but each time, like a fish, he immediately slipped out of her embrace. She tried to hold on to him, but in vain. Her hands would come out of the sea empty, and all that remained behind was his picture in a frame and his words printed in the newspapers, words which neither he nor she nor anybody else except the Imam read. At night she would notice him lying on his back with wide-open eyes staring at his child with an expression of doubt, for the nose was neither his, nor his father’s, nor his grandfather’s. He caught hold of the little nose with a firm grip, as though he was holding in his hand the ultimate proof of her unfaithfulness to him, and the child would open his eyes so wide that they seemed to express all the fear in the world, then noticing his father’s eyes gleaming in the dark like the Devil, he would shut them as tight as he could. One night he heard his father ask, ‘Whose son is he?’, and he heard his mother answer, ‘The son of love.’ Though still a child he understood that this man was not his father. He closed his eyes, happy at this thought, and slept peacefully until morning.
He stood upright, his back straight, his head raised to the sky under the sun. On his forehead was the sign of his faith in God, and on his chest was pinned the Star of Victory, and ringing in his ears were the acclamations of the crowd repeated a hundred times, ‘God be with you.’ His head swayed as the air around him seemed to explode suddenly with a tremendous noise, his face loosened, then folded over and dropped off, falling to his feet as he stood delivering his speech, with the Chief of Security on his right and the Leader of the Opposition and the Great Writer on his left. The rockets continued to burst in the sky, but his head was no longer lifted high up under the sun and his face had fallen to the ground so that the dust started to fill his nose, but the Chief of Security looked at him as though nothing had happened.
He opened his mouth quickly to ask a question before he could forget what he wanted to say, ‘What has happened to the world?’
The Chief of Security opened his mouth and answered, ‘Nothing, your highness, everything is in order and God is with you.’
But the body of the Imam shook with anger and he shouted, ‘The hell with me, you idiot, don’t you see what’s happening?’
And the Chief of Security opened his lids wide with an effort and pulled his pupils out of his eyes, looking around with them in the dark until he caught a glimpse of her fleeing through the night, as light-footed as a deer. He pressed the muscles of his lips together and blew the alarm and the earth seemed to split open, and suddenly they were all there without exception, members of Hizb Allah or of Hizb al-Shaitan. They seemed to come from everywhere, elbowing their way through, slinging insults at one another, and behind them were their dogs barking all the time. In front was the Chief of Security running at full tilt with torches in both hands and the others followed, trying to keep up with him from behind. They did not know why they were running, but the order had been given, and when the order is given there is no room for questions or discussion, especially as discussion is an invention imported from abroad and has no part in our cultural tradition, and whosoever brings to us what does not already exist in our tradition is plotting chaos, and in our religion plotting is a more serious crime than killing. Only a heretic, an unbeliever, a traitor to the nation and the Imam, would dare to argue about such matters, and if it is a woman, then the crime is even worse, for then it enters the realm of vice and dishonour, for honour means defending our land and defending our land means protecting the chastity, the honour, of our women. Nothing is more important than ownership of women’s bodies, for men should never have any doubts about the origin of their progeny. The father of every child should be known to all, and legitimate children separated from those born of unknown fathers. Since fatherhood depends on the father’s consent, without this consent a child has no rights and all he can do is pray, fast, and repent of his sins, and if the child is a girl her sin is double that of the boy, but she only has half the rights he is permitted to enjoy.
So behind her she could hear the iron-heeled shoes, hoarse voices, and panting breaths, the dogs following in their steps. She kept on running without knowing why. The night was dark, and in the distant light she glimpsed her mother standing upright, waiting for her there at the top of the rise, calling out in her soft voice, ‘Bint Allah, come here,’ holding out her arms with an old yearning. Now they were only separated by three steps. She took the first and second steps at a run and there remained only the last one, but she halted at the top of the hill where it starts to slope down again between the river and the sea, stopping to fill her lungs with fresh air and the smells of the place where she came into the world and where she would leave it. She lifted her head up and took a deep breath, filling her lungs with air. The knife went through her back, and before she fell or forgot the alphabet she turned around and said, ‘What can be the crime of a virgin never touched by the hand of a man?’
And they said, ‘When a girl dies a virgin she goes to Paradise, but we will not send you to the other world until you are no longer a virgin.’
The Chief of Security panted as he wiped his sweat with a handkerchief of the best silk, and the column of men behind him followed suit, wiping their sweat with handkerchiefs of a lesser quality, and the dogs behind the column of men had no handkerchiefs so they wiped their sweat with their paws covered in a dark, cracked skin. The sound of chains rang in the silence like the cries of the crowd on Victory Day, or laughter on a wedding night. Her chained body crawled over the ground like a sheep being led to the butchery. Over the horizon the eye of the sky looked out, burning red, but the angels dressed in white clapped in delight. Hizb Allah beat the tambourines and Hizb al-Shaitan danced to their beat as she lay pegged to the ground, her arms wide open, her legs wide apart with one leg pulled to the extreme left and one leg pulled to the extreme right, the stones hurtling down on the Devil’s mark right in the middle of her body. She did not flinch, or move, or turn her head. She just lay there with her thin pale face looking up, her wide-open eyes a steady world of unwavering black, her pupils dark as the darkest night in the wider black, her mind clear and bright and crystal white like the moon in the river waters.
In the dark pit dug deep in the earth her eyes remained wide open, always seeing, her memory always remembering a mother’s face, eternal like the face of God, her ears always hearing the gentle voice calling out, ‘Bint Allah, come here.’ She raises her eyes to look at the sky and the face of God disappears in the clouds, and the face of Satan looks down at her, all covered in hair, the flesh of his scalp bare and red under the sun.
She hears the Chief of Security ask, ‘What is your name?’
‘My name is Bint Allah,’ she says.
‘Your name itself is a heresy. Who gave you that name?’
‘In the orphanage they called me Bint Allah, and I had a sister called Nemat Allah, but she died when she was still a child, and I had a brother who died in the war. Did you ever have a sister who died a child, or a brother who died in the war?’
‘What is the exact name of your brother?’ he said.
She answered quietly, ‘Fadl Allah.’
He nodded his head, wiped his face twice with the handkerchief, prayed God to have mercy on them, and said, ‘I know him, I have a picture of him in the file, but his name is not registered either in Hizb Allah or in Hizb al-Shaitan, and this proves he is not one of us, and whosoever is not one of us can only be a creation of the Devil.’