by Manai, Yamen
“My brothers, that’s what matters in people’s eyes today—money! But tell me, was the Chosen One rich? Answer me! Was the Last in Name wealthy?”
Heads moved like a pendulum.
“No. The Chosen One was not rich!”
“The Chosen One only had two changes of clothing,” he thundered, “and he slept on the ground itself! May the prayers of God be upon him. Repeat after me, my brothers: May the prayers of God be upon him.”
“May the prayers of God be upon him!” repeated the crowd, in chorus.
“When he died, my brothers, the Last Prophet had seven bronze coins and one mule. How many bronze coins did he have? How many?”
“Seven!”
The imam nodded his head.
“Seven bronze coins, my brothers, and one mule. My brothers, praise the Lord!”
“Glory to God the All-Powerful!”
“Seven bronze coins! The Last Prophet didn’t live in a palace. He didn’t have a house on the coast. He didn’t have luxury cars, and he didn’t wear gold or diamond jewelry. And in his lifetime, he did not eat lavish meals. And my brothers, who is the example for us to follow? Those greedy men who amass things and riches, building castles and houses, who care little about their home in the eyes of the Eternal? Are these the examples to follow?”
Heads moved like a pendulum. “No, these are not the examples to follow!”
“Of course not! The only example to follow in this world is the Last Prophet, may God’s praises be upon him!”
“May God’s praises be upon him!”
“Good, my brothers, but do you know why the Chosen One accorded so little importance to appearances and material things? God said it. The Chosen One said it! Do you know what he said?”
Heads moved like a pendulum. “No, we don’t know what he said!”
The imam nodded. “The Chosen One said, ‘God does not see in you your image or your fortune, but your hearts and your deeds.’ Your hearts and your deeds! What does God see in us? Repeat after me: Our hearts and our deeds!”
“Our hearts and our deeds!”
“For that, my brothers, let’s take inspiration from the first companions. These were men of pure hearts and guided actions, so much so that the Prophet told them in their lifetimes of their accession to Paradise. But do you know where the Chosen One’s companions died? Go on, tell me where they died! Tell me where they were buried!”
“We don’t know where they died!”
“After the Chosen One’s death, the companions left to spread the faith to the four corners of the world. The most illustrious of them died in Anatolia, another, equally illustrious, died in Central Asia, and another in North Africa. None of the Chosen One’s companions died at home or were buried in their gardens. Do you know why? Do you?”
The crowd shook their heads. “No, we don’t know why.”
“My brothers, none of the companions died at home because they all took the path of God to spread His message, inform those who did not yet know, convince those who were not yet convinced, and fight those who did not want to listen. The oldest of the companions, Abu Kalta, was a holy man. What was his name? What was it?”
“Abu Kalta!” echoed the room.
“Abu Kalta was a holy man. He died almost twenty-five hundred miles away from home, on the route to India. Despite his advanced age, he attended every battle and was the first to brandish the holy banner. During his final missions, he had difficulty getting on a horse, and he asked his companions to strap him to his steed because he lacked the strength to squeeze its flanks. And when his hour came, as he was on his deathbed, he uttered his last wishes. Do you know what his last wishes were? Do you know?”
“No, we don’t know.”
The preacher had tears in his eyes, and his voice fluttered.
“The old companion asked for the banner to be attached to his body, and for his body to be attached to a powerful horse that would be allowed to run through the Indian jungle, so that he could expand the kingdom of God even after his death. Praise God, my brothers!”
“God is great!”
“My brothers, do you know what reward awaits he who takes the road of God to expand His kingdom? His nightly prayer counts as seven hundred thousand ordinary prayers, though this same prayer made in a holy place is worth only one hundred thousand ordinary prayers. Can you imagine, my brothers, the reward that God holds in store for he who takes His path? Men of science say that the Almighty doubles the reward for good deeds on the day of the Last Judgment. Do you know how much that makes in total? Tell me how much that makes. Tell me!”
The preacher caught his audience unprepared, for nobody was good enough at math to simultaneously imagine so many zeros and multiply them by two. But since he had already made the calculation, he was swift to impress them.
“That makes one million four hundred thousand ordinary prayers for just one nightly prayer made on the path of God! One million four hundred thousand prayers! That is true wealth, my brothers! Glory be to God Almighty! Repeat after me: Glory be to God Almighty!”
“Glory be to God Almighty!” repeated the crowd in chorus.
The imam nodded.
“My brothers, I’m going to tell you a good one, about the Chosen One’s companion who conquered the northern tip of Africa, may he be praised. At the time, this place was a jungle. The barbarians were living here, as well as all manner of wild beasts. Lions, elephants, and panthers, like there are now in the land of the Blacks. There were even snakes of considerable size, capable of swallowing a man in a few minutes. Six missions and six failures, and the word of God had yet to spread through the region. The barbarians were ferocious and nature untamed. Then the conquest was entrusted to a seventh man, Abu Tassa. What is his name? What is it?”
“Abu Tassa!”
“Abu Tassa, my brothers, may he be praised. He was one of the last companions, a man of unshakable faith, and it was with his faith that he braved the jungle. For three days and three nights, accompanied by men with strong voices, he shouted as loud as he could: ‘Oh animals of the jungle! We have come to deliver the Word of God. Do not stand in our way!’ Believe it or not, my brothers, at the end of the third day, they saw the animals leave the jungle and head south, to take refuge in the land of the Blacks! Gorillas jumping from tree to tree, lionesses with their cubs in their mouths, giant snakes weaving every which way! Do you believe it or not? Say that you believe it! Say it!”
“Yes, we believe it!” answered the crowd in chorus.
“Glory be to God, my brothers! According to Abu Tangara, who recounted that Abu Chankara heard Abu Fantacha say, ‘I heard Abu Machmacha say that he heard the Chosen One say: If you take the path of God, God will put fear in all that see you. But if you don’t take the path of God, He will put the fear of all within you.’ What do you prefer, my brothers, being feared by all or being frightened of all? Man, animals, and even demons cannot touch a man who has taken the path of God! Glory be to God, my friends! Repeat it!”
“Glory be to God,” repeated the crowd in chorus.
“But if you take the path of God, you no longer belong to yourself. You belong to Him! You belong to Him and you already have one foot in Paradise. You are no longer of this world but of a world between the Two Worlds! You no longer belong to your house, you no longer belong to your wife, you no longer belong to your children, you no longer belong to your country . . . God calls you, and you took His path, you stand beside His angels, and it is to Him that you belong. He gave you everything, so how can you refuse Him anything? How can I avoid His call if it is to Him that I belong! To whom do I belong? Tell me! Tell me, my brothers!”
“It is to Him that I belong!” repeated the crowd.
“Yes, my brothers, it is to Him that I belong, and it is His road that I take. He who does not take the path of God, this man, my brothers, is of incomplete faith! His faith serves him no purpose, for it is the definition of an incomplete thing! Have you ever seen a car run on three wheels? Te
ll me!”
Nobody had ever seen such a miracle. Heads shook in concert.
“No. We have never seen a car run on three wheels!”
“No, my brothers. A car with three wheels, an incomplete car, will not take you to your destination. The same is true of faith. If it is incomplete, it will not lead you to Paradise. Where do we want to go, my brothers, to spend eternity? Paradise or Hell? Tell me? Paradise or Hell?”
“Paradise!” thundered the crowd.
“My brothers, Glory be to God Almighty. All those who want to complete their faith and take the path of God should come see me at the end of the prayer.”
11
At certain hours of the day, the spring turned into a full-blown crossroads. In early morning and late afternoon, the Nawis, like the other villagers in the area, came to stock up on water. Located on a hilly spot abutting the mountain, you had to cross miles of steppe and climb over several boulders to access it. The water seeped into the rock and emerged fresh and crystal clear. Nobody knew the source of these precious drops, which didn’t peter out even in dry periods, but they all knew that without this gift of nature, life wouldn’t have been possible in the region.
Baya avoided the spring at peak times. She preferred to go when there were fewer people, to spare herself the routine conversations. What was she supposed to say to a cousin or neighbor who asked after her parents?
She could tell them how they were doing, then burst into tears and collapse on the ground, or lie and feel even more alone. They were old and worn down, and if growing old in comfort was unbearable, then growing old in Nawa was a real nightmare. Her father spit up blood every morning and could barely move the rest of the time. Her mother was slowly losing her sight and spent her days sidling along the walls and groping around, trying to remain active all the same, picking up anything left on the floor and in every corner as she passed. And amid this tableau, her little brothers and sisters, barefoot, crying for food.
This desolate sight weighed on her every day, and many times she hid to weep over her plight and her powerlessness. Even Toumi and his sweet words couldn’t make her smile. On the contrary, she resented him for being unaware of her suffering, for being as poor as she was, and on top of everything, for not having any ambition. The romantic gestures that once amused her now annoyed her, and when he talked about marriage and children, she wanted to shake him, yelling, “Are you blind or just stupid? Don’t you see that’s not what I need?”
So she avoided him like she did everybody else.
That made things easier. Her decision was made and her departure imminent.
But Toumi was positioned at the spring in his new tunic, hopping with impatience. He hadn’t seen her in a month! He missed her like a prisoner misses the sky. Desperate, he had decided to camp out at the water source, and finally there she was, approaching astride her mule. His heart was beating fast, and he jostled in place like a child. Since adolescence, theirs had been a platonic love story, and modesty had only ever allowed them to hold hands.
“Baya, sweet Baya,” he cried in delight. “You’re finally here!”
When she saw him, Baya took a step back. His intrusion upset her, and her hands, holding empty water jugs, trembled in anger. She looked him up and down, then said coldly, “Toumi, what are you doing here without your jugs?”
Head in the clouds, oblivious to her anger, he passionately replied, “I didn’t come for water. I came to see you.”
His attitude exasperated her even more. She turned her back on him and climbed up the rocks to the spring. He followed her. As she collected water, she asked him, without turning around, “What do you want from me, Toumi?”
She insisted on using his name, which tortured him, as he wished she would call him otherwise.
“What do you mean ‘what do you want, Toumi’? I stop by your house constantly, and I don’t see you. I call for you, and sometimes I even dare yell out your name, but you don’t answer,” he complained. “I miss you, my love!”
His lamentations didn’t appear to move her. He couldn’t even get her to look at him.
“You’ll have to get used to it,” she said. “I’m going to the capital to work. I have a cousin there who found me a job as a live-in maid.”
Toumi felt the sky fall on him; he was stupefied by the news. The capital? To be a live-in maid? All live-in maids are like Baya, young girls from the country. They’re hired to work in well-off suburbs to make sure the homes run smoothly: cleaning, ironing, cooking, and other tasks in exchange for a roof and wages. Though most of these girls send their pay home to help their parents, their fates all differ. Some are welcomed by families that consider them as one of their own, others by families harboring perverts. Some fall in love and get married, others get pregnant and disappear. None of that filled him with confidence. His body was heavy, including his tongue. He silently watched Baya fill her jugs and mount her mule. As she rode away, without a goodbye, he snapped out of it and caught up with her.
“Baya! Wait! I don’t want you to go,” he protested.
Baya stopped her mule abruptly. “You’re not my father, Toumi! For that matter, do you know how he’s doing? You’re not my mother either, Toumi. And for that matter, do you know how she’s doing? They’re both sick and they’re both dying. They need to go to the doctor, they need medicine. How am I going to pay for that? Huh, Toumi? Answer me! How am I going to pay for that? Are you going to help me? So tell me, what’s your plan? Are you going to pick prickly pears like your buddy Douda every time you need money?”
Toumi lowered his head. She was in as much pain as he was, but determination had stifled her feelings. She released her mule’s bridle and left Toumi planted on the steppe like an alfalfa root.
12
“There’s a smell of sulfur in the air,” lamented Sidi.
The reason his neighbors’ sartorial choices and new vocabulary were causing his heart such worry was because, in a past he had hidden away, he’d seen how they were used, and he knew the extent to which such accessories could allow the devil to pass for a monk. Was that devil, who had defeated him once, in Arabia, back on his doorstep?
Whereas Qafar, the little neighbor, was capable of producing gas in abundance, thanks to wind passed by its forebears, mystery still surrounded the subterfuge employed by the patriarchs of the vast kingdom of Arabia to saturate its subsoil with a black, reeking liquid, elevated to the rank of gold: oil.
King Farhoud maintained the mystery, as did many others. After being the land of poetry and then of the Revelation, Arabia became the kingdom of whispers and secrets. Accordingly, to fool his subjects about the origin of this godsend, the king delighted in telling, with more than a hint of pride, the story of his great-grandfather, the founding king who, backed by British planes, declared independence from the Ottomans, leaving nothing of their envoys in the holy lands but their red tarboosh hats. At the time, the kingdom was still just sand dunes, home to Bedouins living in destitution. The king would visit his tribes and could be very generous toward those who prostrated themselves before him. One day, he noticed an old woman in great suffering. Being charitable, as was custom, he rewarded her with a few gold coins. She then threw herself at his feet and prayed, hitting the ground with her hands.
“May the Good Lord reveal to you all His treasures!”
A few weeks later, oil was discovered. The treasure was in fact an enormous field of rank liquid.
The find occurred in the mid-1930s, and its impact on life in the kingdom was not inconsequential. With oil, this land of austere Bedouins, who considered any intrusion into their way of life as heresy, saw the arrival of people and oddities, both of which had to be approved by fatwa. Only the ulema were allowed to sweeten the pill. His Majesty Farhoud could still remember the giant refrigerator General Eatmore had gifted to the royal family. The eminent military officer had come in person from Texas to exploit the oil fields in exchange for his friendship, a few gifts, and many promises. Like most membe
rs of the court, King Farhoud, a teenager at the time, had spent entire days opening and closing the doors of the refrigerating curiosity, hoping to surprise the jinn who was hiding inside, amusing himself by turning water into ice crystals.
The kingdom transformed as the world changed and began to worship oil as a primary energy source. And even though barrels were sold cheaply to friends, the manna they brought was enough to eradicate hunger and explore the ocean depths and attain the farthest reaches of space. But it wasn’t to be. The king and his descendants had lower-scale ambitions for this money. Palaces with toilets adorned with precious gems, Ferraris mounted on gold rims, private concerts with big stars, and slot machines from Las Vegas casinos.
But in order not to tarnish their reputation in the eyes of the believers, the excesses of the self-proclaimed guardians of faith were well-kept secrets. Better yet, they had achieved the feat of freezing time, throwing a medieval cloak over Arabia, allowing only a facade of modernity: television, chips, jars of mayonnaise, and so on. Women remained a vice to be hidden, and the sword and the whip were the rule. Sins have been the same since the dawn of time, so why on earth change the punishments? And so it was commonplace to whip troublemakers and chop off thieves’ hands and behead heretics with a saber in the town square.
That was why the recruiter for the agricultural cooperative asked Sidi several personal questions during his job interview. It was the late 1960s, and Sidi’s country, independent for a decade, was sinking into poverty following its failed experiments with socialism. As for Arabia, the kingdom was trying its hand at agriculture through a massive program that required foreign labor to be recruited left and right.
Sidi had read the job announcement in the newspaper. In the public imagination, Arabia was a land blessed by its history and its lucky star, so he decided to seize the opportunity.
The recruiter had a binder of specific instructions. The only acceptable hires were skilled male workers, visibly virile, who were deeply religious practicing Muslims. For as decreed by the famous fatwa, the Eatmores, even the beardless ones, were the only infidels authorized to work in the kingdom. And that was why the recruiter was happy to note during the interview that Sidi had a splendidly robust mustache before inquiring about his morals and competencies.