The Fall of the Imam
Nawal El Saadawi
Translated from the Arabic by
Sherif Hetata
TELEGRAM
To the four women I cannot forget:
To Shahbani Shiraz from Iran
Fatima Tag al-Sirr from the Sudan
Colette Itani from Lebanon
and I’tidal Mahmoud from Egypt
For what they have suffered and
for what they had endured.
To all the girls and boys who are still in their
childhood, or still in their youth
I dedicate this novel.
Nawal El Saadawi
Allah is on the Side of the Imam
The First Letters in the Alphabet of Love
The Legal Wife will Not Go to Paradise
Reviving Our Cultural Heritage
Coming to My Senses after the Ecstasy is Over
The Latest Wife Meets the Illegitimate Daughter
When I was a child, I used to see God in my dreams. He had my mother’s face, the face of someone who is very just. Or He looked like my father, and then His features looked kind. My schoolfriend Fatima Ahmed also saw God in her dreams. His face was that of her father, sometimes that of her uncle. It was a cruel face, the face of a person who was very unjust.
I discovered that the face of God appears to all children. Usually He looks like their mother, sometimes like their father. The problem with God’s face is that neither children’s eyes nor those of grown-ups can see it. God can only be seen when we sleep, and His face has the features of those who are closest to us.
I tried to write this story when I was still a young girl in school, but all my attempts were in vain. The idea was in my head, and the characters, and the impressions. Everything was so vivid! Yet I could not find the words with which to tell it. It has lived with me since then, dogging my steps. During the last ten years it has given me no respite. The characters stared at me while I was awake, and even when I slept. If I travelled inside my country, or abroad, they were always there, watching me wherever I went. They were there when I met the Iranian Shahbani Shiraz who told me the story of her ‘little girl’, raped by her jailers. There with Fatima Tag al-Sirr, the Sudanese woman, when she took me to visit the ‘Association for People with Amputated Hands’ so that I could see her boy and his companions with their hands cut off at the wrist in accordance with Shari’a. There during the three months I spent with I’tidal Mahmoud and other young Egyptian girls in a prison cell.
The story quivered inside me every time I caught the familiar face of one of those rulers looking out at me from a photograph, his head partly showing from under a godly turban or a military cap, or his eyes watching me in a dream as I slept. It lived with me every time I travelled to Lebanon and heard the bombs of Hizb Allah (Party of God) echoed by the bombs of Hizb al-Shaitan (Party of Satan) from the other camp. It went with me to Mecca, stood by my side as I read ‘Welcome to the Guests of the All Merciful’.
Nawal El Saadawi
Cairo, February 1987
It was the night of the Big Feast. They hunted me down after chasing me all night. Something hit me in the back. I was looking for my mother in the dark, running alone with my dog following in my tracks. Something struck me from behind. I turned round to face them, but they disappeared like frightened fish. They cannot look into the sun, cannot bear its light. They sleep all day and rise up at night. They do not know how to fight, have no honour, have no pride, they always hit you from behind.
Before I fell, before letters and words had time to fade, I asked them, ‘Why do you always let the criminal go free and punish the victim? I am young. My mother died a virgin and so will I.’
They said, ‘You are the child of sin and your mother was stoned to death.’
But before the letters could fade from my mind, before my mind became a blank, I said, ‘I am not the child of sin, I am Bint Allah. That’s how they called me in the orphanage. Even if I lose my memory, I cannot forget. I cannot forget my mother’s face. After I was born, she went to fight the enemy. She is a martyr.’
They said, ‘Your mother never knew what loyalty meant, neither to our land, nor to the Imam Allah. She died an infidel, and is burning in hell.’
I said, ‘Before the life blood leaves my brain and memory ends, my mother was never a traitor. Before I was born my father abandoned her and ran away.’
They said, ‘And pray who might your father be?’
And I said, ‘My father is the Imam.’
They screamed, ‘Not another word. May your tongue be cut out of your head.’
They cut out her tongue first. Later came the rest. For the Imam ruled according to the laws of God’s Shari’a. Stone adulterous women to death. Cut off the hands of those who commit a theft. Slash off the tongues of those who spread rumours about irradiated milk. Pour all bottles, all casks, all barrels of alcoholic drink, into the waters of the river.
On the eve of the Big Feast they slunk away before the spies of the Imam could see them, descended to the river and drank from its waters until their minds were blank. In the morning, suddenly awake, they got up, full of remorse, clamouring for mercy, since on the night of the Big Feast the Imam graciously pardons everyone. The doors of prisons and the concentration camps are thrown open, and out of them march the dead, the martyrs, the victims of nuclear radiation, the women stoned to death, the thieves who have one foot missing on the right and one hand missing on the left.
It was her turn to be free, but the spies of the Imam spotted her as she slipped out, trying to escape in time. They saw her running in the black of night with her dog close behind her. It was just before dawn. She had almost given them the slip when something struck her in the back. As she fell, the question echoed in her mind: Why do you let the criminal go free, and kill the victim?
Their voices faded away into the silence. Her mind was dark as night, her memory all black or white, retaining not a word, not a letter from the alphabet. Only her mother’s name remained behind.
The darkness was impenetrable, an opaque black without sun or moon. They could not tell whether it was night, or day without daylight, in a forest thick with overgrown trees hemming them in from every side. Suddenly, from somewhere, there came a faint light, like the glimmer of a torch held in the hand of some guard, or of the Chief of Security. Just enough to catch the shadow of a body fleeing. They could tell from the running movement on two legs that it was human, not animal, nor something on four legs. They could also tell it was a woman, not a man, maybe from the breasts, rounded and firm, or from something else, indefinable. She was young, very young, her bones small, her skin smooth like a child, brown as river silt, her face pointed with slanting, wide-open eyes, their pupils blacker than the blackest night. A goddess of ancient times. She ran barefoot, not stopping for a moment. Her right hand carried something like the branch of a tree. Her body was naked, shining, a silver fish splitting the universe, her ‘public shame’ hidden under the wing of night, or a dark green leaf.
There was a flash of lightning, just enough for them to glimpse her disappearing into the night with the dog at her heels. Then once more everything was black and still.
A moment later something stirred in the dark, a movement made of many eyes, the eyes of the Imam advancing, led by the Chief of Security, a line of men, their huge bodies covered in hair. Each of them carried a stone or a sharp weapon in his right hand. They ran as fast as they could, trying to catch up with her, but she was light as the wind, faster than any man. Besides, she knew all the secrets of the land over which she ran. This was where she had been born, and this was where she died. She would have escaped them had she not halted to fill her breast with the smell of her land.
I halted at the foot of the elevated strip of land between the river and the sea, on the way from my home to the front for the first time since we were defeated in the last war and my mother was killed. My feeling of surprise did not last, but when I climbed up the slope of the hill I caught my breath in wonder. The branch in my hand slipped through my fingers, and I could feel my heart pounding. I called out my sister’s name, for her time would come after me. Twenty long years; since I was born I had dreamt of this hill. I remembered every hollow, fold of the earth, pebble and stone, the feel of sea air on my body and its smell in my nose, the rise looking down on the green valley, and the three date palms and the mulberry tree. I could smell the odour of my mother’s body, like fertile soil. This was my land, my land.
She would have escaped had she not been halted by the smell of the land and the sea, bringing back her whole life in one moment. She halted, took a deep breath, and just at that moment the bullet struck her in the back and bored its way through, like an arrow, straight to her heart. She dropped to the ground, bleeding slowly. Her dog whimpered once and was silent, and the birds flew up in fright, filling the universe with their cries. The heavens echoed with the crowing of cocks, the squawking of crows, the neighing of donkeys, and after a while the dogs joined in, barking loudly. It was the end of the night, and dawn had not yet broken.