by Ryad Girod
Abdelkader covered his head with a white veil when he hoped, he too, to reduce himself to the center of things by expanding himself to their circumference. Sitting in a corner of one of the rooms of that immense Château d’Amboise where the French had contained him, so to speak, he rested across his knees the little lap-top writing desk, upon which he unrolled some paper to keep up his correspondence and the hope that someone would one day heed his call … and in spite of the comings and goings and the commotion of his entire smala, he managed to find the words and to hear the Loire flowing outside his window … Émile Ollivier, your emissary, came to see me and informed me that the French, in one single agreement, have abolished the royalty and decreed that their country will henceforth be a Republic. I rejoiced in this news as I have read in books that this form of government has as its goal the eradication of injustices, and aims to prevent the strong from doing violence upon the weak. You are generous men and you desire the best for all and your actions are dictated by the spirit of justice. It was in words like these, although at the time I wasn’t quite aware of it, that the voice of Abdelkader lived on in the mind of François Hollande and pushed him to act in Syria … or to allow himself to be pushed to act … because how else could it have come to pass? We had foolishly forgotten to consider the spirit of justice that had always made up the backbone of his thinking, Mansour and I … the spirit of justice, from the time he began as a young student at boarding school right up until he left the École Nationale d’Administration to make his rise through the Parti Socialiste and become embodied by a constantly benevolent smile. Why had we been so awful and so full of mockery?
By mistake … Gassouh! What a mistake, what a giant mistake! My God, we are so often mistaken … it takes so little, the smallest argument, as insignificant as it may be, only slightly erroneous but sufficient to divert our trajectory away from the truth … for all of the rationality of the world, the most rigorous, to not be able to bring us back to the truth. Like after that blade, Mansour, after its passage, all my tears, no matter how full of pain, will not be able to bring you back to life. Gassouh! Gassouh! cry in one voice the fools who have not considered for one instant the possibility that there has been a mistake. The heat rises, suffocating. Is that all you feel? The rage and the hatred, beneath this uncompromising sun, make the entire crowd sweat like livestock … But are they all you feel? Gassouh! Like it is the only word that is true to life among this congregation of Muslims. Only a few yards now separate you from the center of the esplanade … scarcely a few yards. That’s the sole truth of this moment. But is that the sole truth you know?
By the sun that sets and by its declining rays. By the flash of the light before the morbid darkness. By the sun that rises and the truth it reveals. By the flash of light behind the perishing darkness. One hand holding the decorative trim of his white burnoose, and the other, a black string of prayer beads. This was how Abdelkader looked during the last thirty years of his life, and this was the image that would remain of him in the minds of those who had known him and who would remember the story before the memory of this great man disappeared. It was in the company of this idea that I sat down and tried to remain, atop Mansour’s dune, thinking that there was not a more legitimate place for me to be prior to making my way to the trial. Abdelkader remained hours at a time on the cold tiling of the Umayyad Mosque as if he was sitting at the summit of a dune from which he could contemplate the vast country to which he had in a manner of speaking given birth and perhaps even read in the variations of the wind or in the declinations of the sun or in the serpentine meanderings of the sands all of the future that was traced therein … but he remained on that cold tiling in one of the corners of the great Umayyad Mosque to contemplate the millions of intersections of the interlacing that the gigantic friezes revealed to his eyes and in which he could read all of the past and all of the future that was traced therein … Having reached that state of euphoria, of effacement, of non-being, I reached that which is now, in truth, neither place nor beyond … The vertical and the horizontal annihilated one another. The colors returned to pure primordial whiteness. All ambition, all relations abolished, the original state is reestablished. The voyage has reached its end and that which is other than Him has ceased to exist. And when his heart became capable of welcoming all representation, when it became a vast pasture for galloping gazelles, a shelter for isolated souls and a monastery for penitent monks … when his heart became the Mecca of pilgrims and the tables of the Torah and a volume of the Qur’an … when his heart became vast enough to contain the love of humanity in its entirety, there was no longer room for anything but the love of God.
Ikram, for five hundred riyals, had sent us all before the morality case judge of the Governorate of Riyadh for the protection of morals and religion or, maybe, the committee for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice, which is to say to a dark chamber, entirely without prestige, where dozens of defendants were squeezed in before a simple desk from behind which Judge Abou Daoud al-Qassimi listened to the lawyers, briefly cast an eye over the dossiers or law books, raised his head, adjusted his white shemagh and pronounced his judgment … in an expeditious manner, we feared, from the other side of the desk … Mansour, Nadine, veiled from head to toe, Stan, redder than a beet, and the consul of Australia, flanked by two bodyguards … and me a bit farther away and Ikram even farther away … After having stated the alleged facts of the case, Abou Daoud, playing the part of tribunal president in this sad place that played the part of a courtroom, asked Ikram to come forward to him and make known what it was he had to make known. In a structureless Arabic, made up simply of verbs and subjects and religious clichés, Ikram found enough words to make it understood that Nadine and Mansour had engaged in an adulterous relationship … this broken Arabic would amply suffice when it came to earning the two lovers a hundred lashes of the whip and him pocketing five hundred riyals. The president then asked Nadine to introduce herself. Which she did, briefly, with a noble look and terribly sad eyes … I am Nadine Nasr, an Australian originally from Lebanon, Christian, thirty-nine years old. Married to Stan Vaughan, present here today? asked Abou Daoud. Nadine then turned her head toward Mansour, who was standing hardly six feet away from her, encountered gleaming eyes, and replied: Yes, Mister President! He then turned in Mansour’s direction and asked him to present himself. Mansour broke away from Nadine’s eyes, looked at me and then looked at the lawyer who had been appointed to him, then the spectators, and stated his identity … I am Mansour al-Jazaïri … Mansour bin Soltane bin Hassan bin Mohamed bin Abdelkader … I am of him … I am him. A muted buzz rose from the audience signaling a sort of indignation that the president pacified by holding up an open hand and asking: You are Him? or not really asking but simply exclaiming: You are Him! and keeping his open hand held out to the twenty or so people who happened to be there and who were witnessing what I then took as some kind of disastrous absolute, a suicide. The Australian consul rapidly approached the judge and secretly spoke with him, in a hushed voice, for several long minutes, in the silence of that sad hearing room. Mansour looked at me with a smile that was at once strange and benevolent. The judge stood up and explained that Nadine had fallen prey to the influence of a heretic and that consequently he declared her not answerable and signed her banishment from the kingdom … as for Mansour, he ordered him to be placed in detention pending his trial for heresy which would take place in the near future. Two guards fell upon Mansour to remove him while he continued to cling, with his eyes, to Nadine’s. In a few seconds, all had disappeared. I remained, alone, in the middle of that dim room where the melee had resumed and where the judgments came one after another in a sustained pace. I stayed on a few hours in that dark and lowly chamber, stunned, unable to leave. When I was finally able, Abou Daoud’s gaze caught my own and I understood that there was no hope.
The red Camaro had me across Riyadh in a flash and I fell into my bed just as quickly. That night, in my dreams, I saw
myself lying down in that vast desert expanse that I visited almost every day. Stretched out, alone and naked and hearing the sound of hooves approaching me … alone and naked, I looked at the blue sky and asked myself how the hooves could make such a noise on the sand … alone and naked, I turned my head toward the sound of the hooves and I saw a horse mounted by a strange costumed rider … alone and naked and dumbfounded by the sound of hooves and the garb of that strange rider in that place and in that heat. Coming within a few yards of me, the strange rider, who turned out to be François Hollande, dismounted his steed, which turned out to be an ass. The heat of the desert clouded my vision to the point that I saw my two visitors undulating … I wanted to get up and take flight but it was in vain. I remained there, frozen, as if made of stone, watching the ass advance in its disturbing undulation. Powerless, I watched it advance and stop above me. Its shadow protected me from the sun and I could feel an unexpected coolness travel across my whole body … it made me shiver. François too had advanced to stand next to me. And I didn’t stop shivering when the ass began nibbling something and I didn’t stop shivering even as I asked myself what he could possibly be grazing on in this expanse of sand … and it was without any pain that I understood that the ass was calmly eating my head while François smiled at me peacefully, amiably, full of benevolence and love. When I awoke, François Hollande’s idiotic smile haunted me all the way to Kingdom Hospital from which, in a manner of speaking, I kidnapped Maarafi from his consultations to rush over to see the qadi Abou Daoud al-Qassimi and to convince him, to beg him, to cancel this trial where Mansour wasn’t running the risk of a few lashes of the whip and expulsion from the country but well and truly his head. Despite being refused entry, I made my way into the judge’s office, into that hole, looked with wariness at the thousands of pages spread out on the table and wondered how he managed to find anything among them or to understand anything about the cases he handled and if he was going to know who it was we meant to speak to him about and for whom we were about to ask for mercy … but he knew perfectly well, he grasped it with a first look, without even leaving us the time to present ourselves, he understood that we had come for my friend and he asked us to sit down around that table where the thousands of sheets had accumulated, piled and heaped to form irregular stacks and among which, on one of them, Mansour’s name was most certainly inscribed. Looking me straight in the eye, he told me that the phrase had been uttered, that the words had been let out and that we couldn’t go backwards … Looking him straight in the eye, I asked him where those words were now, in what world they continued to resonate, in what place had they ended up … Looking me straight in the eye, Abou Daoud replied that God had heard them and that he expected just reparations … lowering my eyes, I already regretted not being able to better express my rage and my incomprehension when it came to the continuously variable weight of speech when I remembered, neither daring to mention it nor make reference to it, the word of Abdelkader and that of the Duke of Aumale, Faisal’s speech and that of François … and yet I would have liked to speak about the unspoken words of the great Arab-Muslim civilization, to speak about all those words that no one heard anymore, I would have even liked to speak about all the words that circulated without end and without the slightest weight in mall talk on advertising posters in newspapers on radio waves and on television screens and, worse still, about all those words spewing across page after page of social media, without even the life expectancy of a gnat, not even that of a mayfly, and no more distinguished than a grain of sand … yes, about all those words flitting and darting about like billions upon billions of grains of sand, without weight and without consequence, falling like common refuse onto the vast avenues of Riyadh … or, for that matter, not falling at all, carried off into a void adjacent to the void of the desert … I lowered my eyes and felt deceived for having thought that a spoken word had no more weight than a grain of sand that flew about above a dune … As I lowered my eyes, I got the impression that I was closing them in the grayish dimness of that office that looked more like a tomb … From the implausible jumble of papers, Abou Daoud’s hand, without hesitating or trembling, pulled out a single one. He held it out to me. Mansour’s name was written on it and, just below it, there were two short phrases. I am of him. I am him. Then there were Maarafi’s attempts to take control of the situation and Judge Abou Daoud al-Qassimi’s tears, there was an exchange of the words of God and an interminable wait … but it was all in vain. I took Maarafi back and returned to the dune, the site of my earlier collapse, and there I spent several long sleepless nights.
By the day that endlessly sets and by that which endlessly rises, I swear that I remained entire nights atop your dune. And even that my days had become somber nights. Those hundred hours separating your two trials spent praying to God and his Creation for your acquittal … imploring his forgiveness and begging his mercy. Without drinking and without eating and without sleeping among the winds that swept across the sands of your dune, I remained to beg for your forgiveness and your mercy … and I am here this morning, right near you, and I again beg all that you can grant me as far as forgiveness and love … and I am here this morning and my desire to leave with you is killing me. Take me with you, Mansour, I won’t be any heavier than a grain of sand … I have so little strength left, Mansour, that you’ll have no difficulty lifting me up from down here.
10.
RIYADH IS A DUSTY WHITE GRID where, once you’ve gotten underway, because of the gradual narrowing of the avenues and the streets, you always end up landing in the heart of the city. That heart, Old Deerah, is a cluster of dilapidated buildings crammed with thousands of laborers, small-timers, heavy lifters, shopkeepers, street vendors, and odd-job handymen, buildings which line what used to be the bed of a river and its tributaries, al-Batha. Frenzied circulation, night and day, provides the beat of this heart … but it beats no longer since they brought you out of your cell and you began your bowed march toward the center of the esplanade. What made up the blood of al-Batha has solidified, coagulated around a mat you’re walking toward and from which you are no longer very far. The crowd is only holding its breath so that it can better erupt with joy when your head falls. A silence that you notice over the sound of your chains and the noise of the winds trapped in Al Safat Square. Riyadh, a grid in motion, a dust trap in which I have become stuck, one that has sucked me all the way in to its heart … all the way to here. Near you.
By way of the same dusty grid, as I arrived at the Deerah courthouse, I was astonished to find Maarafi in the gradually filling waiting room. I have something important to tell you! he announced, leading me away from the court’s employees, who always managed, he added, to leave an ear lying around where it wasn’t wanted. It is possible to interpret the tests in a completely different way … Your friend may not be a fool after all! There is something we can attempt to save him. I looked at him silently for a long while without understanding, as my vision blurred and everything grew dark around Maarafi’s smiling face until it all dissolved into a disturbing blackness, a symptom of the malaise that nearly made me faint … All I could see was an intense blackness out of which little sparks shot and then disappeared, leaving behind them ephemeral traces of their trajectories … An indescribable anguish engulfed me … That’s worse … I told him, without conviction and struggling to collect my wits. Not at all! Don’t forget, Abou Daoud is a sensitive man, and we can make him believe that your friend has been the victim of a scientific error, an error of modernity, of machines programmed by unbelievers … or that the tests weren’t adapted to our way of thinking, that of our culture and our beliefs … Mansour’s lawyer had just joined us at that moment, which allowed me to avoid going any further into the discussion by leaving the two of them to go to the restroom. I shut myself in there to get stoned in the hope that it would help me get through this day that I sensed was going to be terrible. I could hear the grating sound of the scraper that the janitor was energetically using on th
e floor. The smoke built up in my stall where I sat thinking of how badly it must have reeked, that characteristic stench of burnt leaves and damp wood … As I watched the smoke seep under the door, I threw the joint into the toilet bowl and pulled the chain to flush it. On my way out, the janitor stared at me defiantly, letting me know that he had understood what was going on … Surprisingly sure of myself, I returned his stare, without knowing what sign had convinced me he wouldn’t say anything about it. And without knowing why, I smiled at him and left. I found Maarafi and the little ulama appointed to defend Mansour’s rights debating the correct strategy to adopt in hopes of avoiding the worst … but I didn’t have the brainpower or the clear-sightedness or the strength to resolve the quandaries which they seemed to be confronting. Roughly, it was a question of either passing Mansour off as being mentally ill in hopes of arousing the pity of the court, or of painting him as a victim, but one who had been in possession of all his faculties at the moment in question … and once more, their faces slipped back behind that darkness where the sparks traced their ephemeral and convergent trajectories. A bad sign, I started to tell myself before I was interrupted by Maarafi, who wanted my opinion to help settle the question … but I didn’t know what to reply. I was worried to see those trajectories converge toward a small, dark disk suspended in the middle of my field of vision. I left them once again to go splash some water on my face and recover a bit of lucidity. When I returned, Maarafi again asked my opinion, which I did not have time to give because by this point, Mansour’s lawyer seemed more set on the strategy to adopt. He brushed aside any idea of a quandary because, according to him, the accused only needed to reiterate a profession of Muslim faith and make an act of contrition before everyone present, after which he would be acquitted. However, Maarafi still continued to elaborate his own idea without me really grasping its utility. He was all twisted up in knots, feeling perhaps that he was responsible for all of this … But I didn’t have time to find out any more, either. An employee of the tribunal opened the door to the hearing room and invited us to enter.