The Last of the Angels (34 page)

“You shouldn't have lost hope, Burhan. Your angels have instructed you since you were an adolescent that they were carrying the spring of eternity in hemp sacks to Chuqor, where not even memories are limited. Sorrow? There is no sorrow worse than that of a waiting heart. What sorrow is ruder than that of the newborn's longing for his mother's womb? All forms of waiting have ended: the waits of a forlorn life, of pointless excursions, of trains in snow, of friends in coffeehouses. That is all over now, for the soldier has returned from the war. All of them are returning: living friends and deceased friends, as spring spills over the earth.”

The next day Burhan Abdallah headed for the tower in which Khidir Musa, Dervish Bahlul, and Dada Hijri had been interred. All night long while he was in his family's house he had continued to think about the three men, whom everyone had forgotten. They must at least be given a proper burial. With the pickax he had brought he began to strike at the door, which had been covered with concrete. The delicate wall, which humidity had damaged and weakened, collapsed. The lock broke, and he pushed on the door with his foot, oblivious to the pains convulsing his body. He knew that he would discover the skeletons of the three men who had been buried alive. This scene had never left him during all the years he had spent far from the city. They must have died one after the other. He thought of the last words that they had perhaps exchanged. There is nothing worse than for a man to be buried alive. That was an unalloyed evil.

The door opened partway. At the center of the room a candle was burning, throwing shadows on the walls. Burhan Abdallah pushed on the door with his hand and it opened wider. He continued to stand there, not daring to enter. The three men sat there calmly, leaning against white pillows and smoking. One of them asked, “Why are you standing there, Burhan? Come on in.”

Burhan Abdallah entered, filled to overflowing with grief and terror, stunned by the unexpected spectacle. He heard a voice tell him, “Why don't you come greet your uncle Khidir, who's been waiting for you all these years?” Burhan closed his eyes and then opened them again. They were sitting there just as he had left them. Khidir Musa was playing chess with Dervish Bahlul while Dada Hijri sat leaning over a large notebook, which he had propped on a pillow, transmitting to paper what appeared to be the last of his poems. Burhan Abdallah stood there, baffled but filled with bliss. He found nothing to say. The words had died on his lips. Then he found himself laughing boisterously, like a child playing happily.

This enormous happiness that filled his heart did not, however, last long. He awoke one morning to find that spring had died away like a fire that turns to ashes. “My God, was all that a fantasy, too?” The air had become stagnant, and the sky had turned yellow, emitting sickly yellowish rays. He no longer heard the chirping of sparrows or the rustling of the wind. Everything was still, as though death had settled over the city. He had difficulty breathing. He pulled on his clothes and went out to the street after being gripped by an anxiety that had afflicted him throughout his long years of exile. He would open his eyes to discover his corpse, over which other people were weeping. He would be unable to scream to them, “Why are you weeping? I'm still alive!” He was alive and dead at the same time, without being able to dispel this confusion. As a matter of fact, he was unable to bear happiness because he knew that happiness always conceals the threat of its annihilation, just as a glass might fall to the floor and shatter, by accident.

In the days following his return to Chuqor, he was filled with a dream-like happiness because the world had suddenly changed. Spring, which had been withheld from the city for long years, had come to earth. So here it was, glowing green. The trunks of trees that the blinding sun had scorched had regained their vigor and put forth leaves and flowered, stretching boughs out in every direction. Their twigs interlaced, forming corridors without beginning or end. Light penetrated through these, and colors washed with mist were reflected, almost forming a portrait of nature in the first days of its creation. The wolves left their dens and went into the meadows, where they began to graze on grass with the sheep. Meanwhile the shepherds sat on boulders found in the countryside and played the nay. Layla returned to her grandmother in the forest and the wolf opened the door. He fixed her some soup and then curled up on the floor beside the grandmother's bed, listening with a smile while she told Layla the story of the evil wolf that ate grandmothers, wrapped a kerchief around its head, climbed in bed, and then waited for little girls who were picking flowers in the woods. Lions, cheetahs, elephants, foxes, hyenas, jackals, monkeys, stags, gazelles, skinks, anteaters, hawks, penguins, tapirs, and rhinoceroses left their hiding places and returned to the cities from which they had been chased. They presented free, humorous shows to amuse children, who often rode on the lions' backs or clung to the talons of eagles, which lifted them high into the air. They would sit on the clouds before returning to the earth once more. What delighted them most, however, was the performance of the vipers with bells. They would hold themselves erect and make music to the beat of which even men and women danced.

During the days that Burhan Abdallah spent in Chuqor, he was haunted by the feeling that all this could not be true, but it felt so true that he wept from happiness. The earth had suddenly exploded with springs that began to flow with milk and honey. People came and ladled as much from these as they wished. Chuqor was filled with shops and stores that were open day and night but that lacked salesmen. They were filled with merchandise from all over the world. People would enter them, take what they needed, and then leave. No one thought about money, which people began to toss in trash bins, making fun of the days when a man could go hungry if he lacked some colored slips of paper stuffed into his wallet. The women and girls of the Chuqor community removed their wraps and wore jeans, deliberately cutting holes in them in areas that would excite men's interest. Then they replaced these with short garments that revealed shapely legs. In fact, they swam naked in the many lakes that had appeared in the empty countryside of al-Musalla, lying on their bellies on the grass and reading detective stories or a book of poems. The aged Burhan Abdallah would pass by them when out for a stroll and would raise his hat in greeting, even to those he did not know. “My God, how times have changed! Is this the Chuqor community?” The cocky young women would lift their heads and whisper to each other, “He's the old guy who's returned from exile.” He would smile, oblivious to everything—even his old age, which lent him a dignified air that he had never possessed before.

Although everyone—perhaps from force of habit—purchased Mercedes and Volvos, or even a Rolls-Royce or a Jaguar, they parked them in lots located near their homes, after fastening a horseshoe to the front bumper to ward off envy. They preferred to ride bicycles or to take a subway train when heading to the forests located near the city in order to enjoy their plentiful free time, which they possessed now that no one was forced to work. Unknown workers—perhaps robots made in Japan—directed everything themselves and organized it. For this reason, many people began to compose poetry, to write imaginative novels, to draw, and to dance, as though there were nothing else to live for except art.

Young men and young women immersed themselves in love, overflowing with emotions that caused their eyes to grow languid and to dissolve in delicate affection. Beyond this, no one died anymore. Death had been erased from people's history, and nobody even thought about it. That fact, which was suddenly observed by Burhan Abdallah, made him think nervously and agitatedly, “This could only happen in heaven.” He was certain, however, that he was in the Chuqor community and that everything was real. “Time has changed. That's all there is to the matter. I shouldn't be so skeptical.”

He did not grasp the secret of this transformation until Khidir Musa, Dervish Bahlul, and Dada Hijri visited him one day in the room he occupied in his family's home. They said they had come to have tea with him. His mother prepared tea with cardamom and mixed in some dried rose petals. As they drank the tea, they chewed on sugar cubes after each sip—the way old people do. Dervish Bahlul withdrew from his breast pocket a large ledger with a black binding and handed it to Burhan Abdallah. “Take this. It's my gift to you. I no longer need it. I've lost my employment, as you can see.”

Khidir Musa commented sarcastically, “There's nothing better than retirement. We've grown old, Burhan.”

Dada Hijri nodded his head and added, “It's hard for a person to endure what Dervish Bahlul has survived to this point. A person needs a heart of stone to accept what has been delegated to him.”

Burhan Abdallah was astonished by this conversation, which seemed cryptic to him. He commented, “I've scarcely understood anything you've said.”

Dada Hijri interjected, “That's because you haven't opened Dervish Bahlul's ledger and glanced at its contents.”

Burhan Abdallah examined the ledger for the first time and flipped through its pages at random, scrutinizing lines that seemed to tremble before his eyes. Then he said, “My God, this resembles the register people have called for ages the ‘Book of Destiny.'”

Dervish Bahlul replied, “That's actually what it is.”

Everything seemed weird to Burhan Abdallah. Life got mixed up with dream in his head. The dervish's presence alarmed him greatly. Then he opened his mouth rather hesitantly, “It doesn't seem to me that you're God.”

Dervish Bahlul let out a resounding laugh and then said as if whispering an important secret, “‘Thank God I am not God!'”

Burhan Abdallah felt so perplexed after the three men had left that he wanted to see them again, for no particular reason. But they were inscrutable men who appeared when no one was expecting them and disappeared when everyone was requesting them. As a matter of fact, Burhan Abdallah had entertained doubts about the reality of these old men since he demolished the door to the tower and found them sitting there. These men could not really be Khidir Musa, Dervish Bahlul, and Dada Hijri. Those men had died forty-six years earlier, when they were buried alive in the tower. “I wonder why Dervish Bahlul gave me this ledger, which he says is the veritable Book of Destiny? Death has ended. What meaning is there then to destiny? What shall I do with it?”

He turned the pages of the thick ledger, which he placed on the table before him. There he saw all of human history: men, women, and children—being born and then dying. Tribes and nations appeared like water moss sprouting and then disappeared into the heart of time. There were wars without end, treasonous conspiracies like murder mysteries, epidemics that swept over cities snatching the people away, tyrants and commanders who erected gallows in cities' old markets, executioners who chopped off heads, and cooks who threw their victims into kettles of boiling tar. Innocent young children burned to death within the walls of besieged cities, and soldiers with lances ripped open the bellies of pregnant women. There were kings who lost their heads to guillotines and prophets who were slain or burned, leaving behind ashes that were cast into the wind.

Dervish Bahlul had described everything so precisely that Burhan Abdallah could see time's realities parade before him like an endless video loop. Happy moments turned into catastrophes, and loyal relationships led to betrayals. Heroism was forgotten after the end of the celebration, and beauty withered in its bloom. Burhan Abdallah pondered the events that were described in the book before him and then was overwhelmed by a kind of tremor in his body: “The only history is the history of victims.”

He felt a deep and overwhelming affection for Dervish Bahlul, whose feet had traveled the earth since the first man appeared on earth. He would seek out his trembling victims and place a firm hand on their brows, before crossing out their names. “My God, how this man has suffered! How do you suppose he has endured all that?” He kept reading till he reached the time when spring settled over Chuqor and death ended. There were no longer any victims. Evil suddenly disappeared from the world and the demons whispering in people's hearts vanished as innocence triumphed—just as saints, prophets, and the proponents of the great ideologies had predicted. Burhan Abdallah thought, “Perhaps it's been a return to the sacred beginning. Perhaps this has been a return to paradise, from which Adam and Eve were expelled. What of it? Mankind has paid an exorbitant price already in order to make their way to their lost paradise.”

He quickly turned through the pages of the book to discover whether the spring that had settled over Chuqor would last eternally. What mattered to him now was to learn the ending of the story he was reading. He felt that way at times when reading detective stories. When he could not bear to wait to discover the criminal's identity, he would jump to the final chapter in which the story's complication is resolved. He would normally lose his desire to read the chapters he had skipped, however, because once he had learned the secret, the other details were superfluous.

Unlike other books, this book did not have a last chapter. Instead, there was a blank chapter that lasted to the end. It began with one word: “suddenly.” Then there was nothing but white paper. Burhan Abdallah felt rather exasperated. “What a cunning dervish! He's left everything open-ended. He must have kept another ledger, one that contains the story's final section.” He felt anxious as he looked time and again at the word “suddenly,” which stirred terror in his heart. Everything could end suddenly. A man might die suddenly. Suddenly the earth might slip from its orbit and plunge into the depths of existence. He did not attribute much significance to chance occurrences but knew that chance was a realistic possibility, one with which even the computer had to reckon. This time it was not a question of chance, but of a destiny recorded since eternity. It was a destiny that he was sorry to see blank, as if it were an incomplete act.