The Last of the Angels (26 page)

He closed his eyes and saw his own angels, the three angels, the old men who carried on their shoulders sacks loaded with spring. “Perhaps I ought to write about my own angels, these men coming from Eternity and making their long way to the Chuqor community—Chuqor, which they may never reach.” His heart was filled with doubt once more. “Perhaps they aren't angels. Perhaps they're weary old men who come from some other city.” He asked himself, “If God has a message, does Satan have one too?” Then he replied, “Of course not, no. Satan can't have a message. The only possible message for mankind is God's.” Actually, he was not sure about this, though, for the boundaries between reality and fantasy were always collapsing.

Burhan Abdallah was standing in the desert, gazing at his three angels, who disappeared beyond the horizon, when he saw a mirror-covered white structure that rose by itself from the sand, like a legendary castle. He had often dreamed of it during his solitary nights. He stood there for some time longer, not knowing whether to advance or retreat. He thought he heard a voice that came to him from the depths of existence, calling to him, “Advance, Burhan. Don't be afraid.” Something kept drawing him forward until he reached a door to which was attached a bronze plaque inscribed with a title he did not totally grasp: “Central Bureau for Existential Administration.” Fearful and perplexed, he stopped before the door, which was made of gold and studded with gems, but the voice directed him once more, “Rap on the door and don't be afraid.” So he knocked three times on the door and it opened. Then three angels welcomed him. He was astonished by their short, white wings, which they fluttered as they moved from place to place. One of the angels asked him, “What brings you here, Burhan?”

He stammered a bit before answering, “I've come to search for God so He can tell me the meaning of everything. Why does man exist if he's condemned to death? Why does time spoil everything? Why does God create a being that defies Him? This seems to me more like a meaningless game than anything else.”

The angel smiled, “You shouldn't be overly concerned, since you're nothing more than a hero in an invented novel written by a disgruntled author.” Then he placed a hand on Burhan Abdallah's shoulder and told him affectionately, “Perhaps we'll suggest to your author that he should tell you the meaning of your story, although it may not even have one.”

Burhan Abdallah repressed his fury. “I've come to ask God about meaning. If you refer me to an author, he may be no more certain than we are.”

The angel replied, “If you lack confidence in your story's author, perhaps you'll trust us. We'll descend to the Chuqor community to teach you what you don't know. But be on guard against a clash with reality that may be revealed to you one day.” The elderly angel led him to a door and opened it. Then they were all in the Chuqor community.

Burhan Abdallah forgot the whole story, as if it had been a dream a person forgets the next day. He awoke that morning to find three strangers emerging from a house where no one had ever lived before. They carried pickaxes on their shoulders and were heading for the Khasa Su River, seeking its channels far outside the city. These three strangers with their weird clothes aroused the curious disapproval of the residents of the Chuqor community. They seemed three beings from another world with no relationship to this one.

Children followed them, afraid to draw too close. They continued to watch from afar while the men dug small ditches among the colored pebbles of the Khasa Su River. When the children grew tired of waiting, one stepped forward and asked somewhat timorously, “Why are you digging in the river?” One of the strangers—an elderly man of perhaps seventy—raised his head and said with a smile, “We're looking for gold.” The children stood there a little while longer before returning home to tell their fathers and mothers what the old man had told them. The entire Chuqor community burst out laughing, mocking the feeblemindedness of these strangers. A man might find almost anything in the Khasa Su except gold. All the same, the affair aroused the suspicion of many, even if they did not dare express it openly. If these strangers had gone to dig for gold in the Khasa Su, they must be confident it could be found there, otherwise they would not be wasting their time chasing after a figment of the imagination. Suspicion turned to certainty when a rumor spread through the Chuqor community that these strangers were devil worshippers. Satan must then have been the one who showed them the existence of gold in the Khasa Su River. The next day, some fathers sent their sons to the Khasa Su River to search for gold too. This occurred two or three times without them finding anything. Then they grew bored and returned to their homes.

The presence of strangers who worshipped the devil in the Chuqor community actually excited such anxiety and fear in people's hearts that they continued to wonder whether this was possible. How could a creature worship the devil while God existed? Some rash youth considered attacking these strangers or even setting fire to their dwelling. The community's elders, however, forbade them from doing that because the issue concerned communal rights, which the Chuqor community considered sacred. In fact, according to Kirkuk's citizens who had witnessed Satanists, the matter was not entirely clear. People also differed about these strange men. It was said that they had migrated from Mount Sinjar. Some thought they were Muslims who followed their own special sect. Others said they were pagans to whom the message of Islam had not yet arrived. Scholars, however, said they were Zoroastrians who had come from Iran a thousand years before. They had embraced Islam but had shaped it to make it more like their previous creed. Apparently the spirit that people called the devil had coveted these simple folks from the moment they left the city of Yazdam in Fars, leading them along valleys, beside rivers, and across rugged mountains and escorting them past wild Kurdish tribesmen who lived in caves, to Mount Sinjar. Then they had placed young warriors at its access points and had planted their red flags on its peaks. This devil who had loved them and served as their guide was Ta'us Malak (the Peacock Angel). After many years, it became clear that he himself was the angel chief who had protested God's command when He ordered the angels to bow before Adam. This was the origin of the problem. Whereas Muslims say that the chief angel's rebellion angered God, who transformed him into a devil who deserves to be stoned, these people say that God discovered a lofty wisdom in this angel's rebellion and so raised his status. Ta'us Malak refused to bow down before Adam for some important reasons. First, God created him from fire and Adam from dirt. Second, it is wrong to bow before any creature except God, as God Himself has decreed.

This idea actually sparked the imagination of the Chuqor community's residents, who launched into heated debates with these strangers who had come to settle in the city of Kirkuk because there was so much truth in their view that it was difficult to refute. As usual, the city of Kirkuk split into two factions. One endorsed God's position and the other that of the chief angel. Those who supported God's position said that there is always wisdom in everything God says or does, even if this wisdom seems obscure or even imperceptible to many. Perhaps God had wanted to bestow with this strange request a special sanctity on Adam and to grant him precedence over all other creatures. Those who opposed this position and endorsed that of the chief angel acknowledged with a courage that led them to infidelity that God had contradicted Himself by asking His angels to bow down before Adam. Any angels doing that had been motivated by limited intellect, a wish to flatter God, fear of His anger, or a desire for enhanced prestige. These opponents said that the chief angel had rejected an idea that contradicted God Himself in order to defend the truth and that this position deserved greater respect than that of the other, opportunistic angels.

From the very beginning, these strangers refused to call themselves worshippers of the devil, whom they referred to as Satan (instead of al-Shaytan), because they did not dare pronounce the letter shin (sh), which would remind the devil of them. Indeed, they went on to say that the devil was a creature God did not create. Instead, he emerged from nonexistence to combat and to mislead God's children, because it made no sense that God, who is filled with love for His children, would have created an evil being like the devil, whose only mission in life is to lead human beings to the abyss. At one time the old man told Burhan Abdallah, “I know you will see the devil one day. If only for that reason, you'll learn the bitter truth, my son. As for us—we're just poor angels like all the other angels on this earth, which is heading toward annihilation.”

Burhan Abdallah, who from the beginning had sided with the chief angel's position, had determined to befriend these strangers who said things other people did not. They trusted him enough to take him with them every day to dig for gold in the Khasa Su River. Then they informed him about the Black Scripture that Shaykh Yazid had composed under the inspiration of the Malak Ta'us. Burhan's imagination was excited by texts that related the appearance of creation and the emergence of the four sacred elements: fire, earth, air, and water. Finally, they allowed him into their home, after he changed his blue shirt for a white one and stopped eating heads of lettuce, since the devil lives between lettuce leaves. One evening after returning from the Khasa Su River, the old man who was known as Shaykh Yazid said something to his sons Zayfar and Bayjih in a language that the young Burhan Abdallah did not know, and then turned toward him affectionately, saying, “No one in the Chuqor community has so far entered our house. You will be the first.” Zayfar approached the door and knocked on it. After a few moments, the door was opened by an elderly woman who wore red clothes embroidered with silver thread. In the courtyard, Burhan Abdallah saw a large pit in which flames were blazing. The area around the pit was spread with Persian carpets. He sat down near the fire, which warded off the dark and threw shadows on the walls. Shaykh Yazid removed from a wooden chest, which rested in a corner of the house's courtyard, a gold statue that resembled a rooster and placed this before the blazing fire. Then they all began to chant a prayer in a monotonous voice while shaking their heads to the right and left. Burhan Abdallah had never heard anything like this before.

Zayfar brought out a small tambourine and began to beat it gently to the rhythm of the prayer they chanted. Little by little, Burhan Abdallah also sank into a distant dream to which he was unable to cling, for it escaped from time and disappeared into the flaming tongues of fire. Suddenly he noticed small angels the size of his hand. Silver-colored, soft fuzz covered the bodies of these winged angels, which emerged from one of the cages and danced in a circle around the gold cock. Burhan Abdallah suddenly felt terrified and thought of fleeing and leaving the house, but the old man noticed the boy's fear and took his hand, as if wishing to reassure him that everything was fine.

The prayer, which was chanted to the beat of the tambourine, had scarcely ceased when the little angels stood humbly before the statue of Ta'us Malak, who resembled the rooster. Then they called out his name in a reverberating voice: “Long live the glory of the greatest sultan in the heavens and on earth!” They turned round and greeted the people sitting there, one after the other, by name. Burhan felt almost blissful when the small angels greeted him and spoke his name, “Welcome, Burhan Abdallah, to the house of truth.” Burhan Abdallah struggled to open his mouth: “They even know my name.” He turned toward Shaykh Yazid, who smiled as he sipped the tea placed before him. Seeking clarification, he asked, “Did you tell them my name?”

Shaykh Yazid shook his head no. He said, “I didn't tell them anything. They know everything. Ask them anything you want. You can count on it; they see even the Unseen.”

Burhan Abdallah did not know what he could ask them, and was silent for a moment. Then something came to him: “Who is the best soccer player in Kirkuk?”

The small angels said in a harmonious voice that sounded like a choir, “There's not a single finest player. There are two: the brothers Widad and Sidad.”

Young Burhan Abdallah, who was excited by the answer, cried out, “My God, they're right. Widad and Sidad are truly the two finest players in the city.” Then he hazarded another question: “Tomorrow Kirkuk's team plays Erbil at Sharika Field. Could I know the outcome of this important match?”

The small beings answered once more in a calm, monotonous voice, as if reading from a book set before them—an open book that contained everything that had happened in the past and that might occur in the future, “Of course you can, Burhan. Kirkuk's team will have twelve goals to a single one for Erbil.”

Burhan Abdallah trembled as if he had touched a live wire: “My God, that will be an unforgettable event.”

In fact, this match, which Burhan Abdallah attended the next day, having already learned the final score, became a game unlike any the city had witnessed when Sidad scored six goals and his brother Widad five. The twelfth goal for Kirkuk was scored by Erbil against itself. That made the crowd laugh a lot because the Erbil team had previously claimed that it would wipe the ground with the Kirkuk team, whose entire strength consisted of the brothers Widad and Sidad, whom the English had trained. This claim certainly contained some element of intimidation, since it called into question the patriotism of the two best players the city of Kirkuk had ever reared. The crowd could have accepted this taunt as merely sour grapes if the Erbil team had demonstrated enough skill to justify its challenge, boast, and false assertion. When it was defeated in this deplorable way, the spectators—who included even their governor, who had watched the match from a private box he had shared with Kirkuk's governor, who had forgotten himself more than once and begun to shout for his city's team—swept onto the field and attacked them, cursing. They would almost have killed the members of Erbil's team had not Sidad and Widad intervened, telling the attackers, “That's enough. Their defeat is the best punishment for them.”