The Theocrat: A Modern Arabic Novel (Modern Arabic Literature)

by Bensalem Himmich

  Al-Hakim found himself at a total loss in confronting this ever widening uprising and the efficiency of its publicity machine. He started blaming his own assistants and started describing his cohorts of young officials as transvestites and tarts’ offspring. He got the idea of wreaking dire punishment on some of them as a kind of object lesson to others. The first of them to get this kind of treatment was Lu’lu’, the police commander. One notable morning, al-Hakim summoned him to his presence and proceeded to lambast him in the foulest terms.

  “Lu’lu’, you pearl of disaster and foul stench,” he said, “there you were a slave in irons, and I set you free. You were clanking around in chains, but I freed you and gave you high position. Now you repay me by being utterly incapable of curbing the populace’s rowdiness or quashing the sources of these verbal assaults on holy and sacred institutions. So, just before I kill you, tell me: what are your last words—God shame you?”

  In spite of his enormous frame Lu’lu’ looked like a naughty child, quivering with fear. “My lord,” he stuttered, “I ask your protection. Give me a day or two, and I’ll bring you the rebellion’s leaders and those responsible for distributing the leaflets.”

  “You’ve already brought me many severed heads,” replied al-Hakim, “but the majority of them were obviously women and children. They have no role in such things.”

  “But, my Lord, it is precisely women and children who are the source of the entire problem!”

  “But you’ve selected half of them from families that have sworn allegiance to me and are secretly committed to my cause.”

  “When rebellion is rife, my lord, it is hard to make distinctions. It’s almost impossible to avoid implicating innocent people.”

  “No, no, you piece of black mush, you’re more stupid than a blind woodcutter; more impotent than a barren palm tree, Get out of here. You’ve got just two days to come back with something better than a donkey’s horns!”

  A day went by, then another two. Finally Lu’lu’ appeared again before al-Hakim and was forced to kiss the ground. Then he stood up and started laughing.

  “By God, my lord,” he said, “it’s a losing battle! No sooner do you grab one leader than he’s replaced by others. You can destroy tons of leaflets and placards, but they’re replaced by double that and more. This kind of struggle is unprecedented. You strike with the sword, and it’s as though you’re hitting water; you raise the level of violence, and all you get back is scoffs and sarcasm. So here’s my neck for the executioners to trim. Now with complete conviction I can simply repeat exactly what it is that placards and mouths keep saying: Death is so common that it’s laughable; so let some of us die so that tyranny can be brought to an end.”

  “Cut out his tongue first,” yelled al-Hakim, “then tear him limb from limb. Watch and take note!”

  With that he rushed off to the Muqattam Hills, followed by two guards and a young chamber-boy. He had hardly reached his favorite spot before telling the guards to convey orders to his slaves that they were to wash Lu’lu”s body and bury him with full honors in the cemetery. “Now,” he told the boy, “show me your moon.” With that the boy stripped and bowed down before his master who spat in his anus and then left him there, sitting on a rock.

  Al-Hakim started pacing up and down inside his residence. He was tormented by grim thoughts that crowded his vision with vivid tableaux filled with unending disaster and concentrated misery. Time itself seemed to have slowed down, as though enmired in an enormous slimy bog. Al-Hakim passed the time by making authoritative gestures or begging for evening to come in anticipation of nightfall. Such was his impatience that he used to go to a nearby outcrop of rock that was covered with fig trees and wild plants.

  “You people of Egypt,” he yelled, “so renowned for your tambourines and oily beans, I tell you all, by Him who entrusted me with dominion: I will never deal with you as weakly as that eunuch Lu’lu’. Today you can insult my dignity and high standing, but you’ll eventually come to appreciate my lineage at the point of a sword and my nobility in the expanse of my treasures. Your only means of escape will come when you remind yourselves that my great ancestor, heir of the Prophet, lives among the clouds where his voice is thunder and his whip lightning.”

  Al-Hakim now yelled to the young boy to go and bring his historian, Mukhtar al-Misbahi. Within the hour the historian was standing on the outcrop waiting for al-Hakim to recover his consciousness. To avoid the tedium of waiting he recorded a document that included as much as he could understand of al-Hakim’s ruminations as he sat there on the ground:

  By my right to incandescence and whirlwind

  I who am repressed have need of fires.

  By the right of the dragon that sheds its skin and crawls

  I shall leave to oblivion and rubbish heaps

  My soul’s mournful state

  And kindle fire against humor and rebellion.

  When the historian could no long follow what al-Hakim was saying, he cleared his throat, then stood in front of al-Hakim and kissed the ground.

  “Your august majesty summoned me,” he said, “so here I am answering the call. My paper is open and ready for whatever subtle, glorious words and clear, solid proofs you wish to have faithfully recorded.

  “So recite to me, my lord, whatever you wish, and I will use it to ennoble the wheel of time and polish the memory of future generations.”

  Al-Hakim now got to his feet and moved toward the historian. He made him stand where he was while he snatched the papers and tore them up, then spoke to him, “Fear God, Mukhtar,” he said in a melancholy tone. “Bow down to Him alone, not to the one you mention. Desist from elaborate rhetoric; it neither helps nor cures anything. The crisis has now become so great that both history and strategy are useless.”

  “May God protect you from all evil, my lord, and save you from every adversity.”

  “Very well, Mukhtar! Pray for me as best you can. In these recalcitrant times I only meet people who want to curse and scoff at me. Look at me, my friend! See how I have aged and how the procession has passed me by. Or do you think I’ve been in power too long? Tell me, great sage and officer of endowments, how old am I today?”

  The historian looked astonished at what he was hearing. He started counting, using his fingers. “My lord,” he replied hurriedly, “today you’re two months short of thirty-six, no less and no more. At such an age men are at the peak of their capacities.”

  “Shrewdest of documenters,” al-Hakim said, “that’s the way it looks on the surface. But my inner age is three times that or more. I’m the only one to feel the impact and suffer its scars. For the most part your papers will never be able to truly capture living realities or the severing of links and hearts. You will only fill your pages with froth and peels.”

  “You seem somewhat depressed and caustic tonight, my lord. Shall I send for your doctor and have you sit in violet oil?”

  “Neither medicine nor drugs can help me today. The only thing that can alleviate my illness and lighten my mood is fire. My sorrow is too immense to be understood, too enormous to be excused!”

  Al-Hakim kept repeating these last words over and over again. At nightfall he suddenly emerged from his trance. With a deep sigh he hurried to his observatory and looked through the glass. “My unlucky star hasn’t risen yet,” he muttered. “How crafty it is!” With that he went into his retreat-house followed by his historian. The two men sat facing each other; between them were two candles that gave off a flickering light. For a long time silence reigned as al-Hakim let thoughts and ideas rage inside him; his mind was totally preoccupied by flashes of vision. He started muttering some of these thoughts, although he seemed somewhat reluctant to reveal them to his historian. “Were I to say what possesses me and shakes my mind and being, to reveal my private conversations with my Lord and my strange passion for my sister, the sultana, to apply brilliant rhetoric and the ultimate in clarity in order to simplify my message and revelation, I would still neve
r manage to penetrate the circles of my historian’s consciousness and understanding. This historian is a phony esoteric, an opportunist who goes to enormous lengths in his servile flattery!”

  Al-Misbahi sat there, humble and withdrawn. He had to make every possible effort to keep an all-enveloping panic under control while he looked for a means of escape. With a superhuman effort he managed to unlock his tongue.

  “My lord,” he said as he mopped his master’s brow, “if my presence disturbs you or disrupts your solitude and contemplation, then should I ask your permission to leave?”

  “Leave when I have the greatest possible need of history? You want to escape? It’s as if you are not convinced by my guarantee of safety. Apart from you, who else is there who can inform time and future generations about me?”

  “There are still a few pages I need to write with your assistance, my lord. I’ve already completed the fortieth volume of my history which is entitled ‘Book of the History of Egypt, Its Qualities, Its Wonders, Its Rareties, Its Curiosities, and the Regions and Monuments Within It, Along With Biographies of Governors, Commanders, and Caliph Imams, Forebears of the Commander of the Faithful, Who Lived There and Elsewhere.’”

  “What are these few pages, Mukhtar?”

  “Something quite simple: grandees and notables whom you condemned to death. I’ve already had the privilege, my lord, of linking all these death sentences to the relevant legal arguments and sections of the Shari’a law. I have cited al-Hamadhani where he says, ‘When water is stagnant for a long period, it turns fetid: if the surface looks calm, decay is on the move.’ However, my lord, I must admit that I haven’t been able to fully understand two, or rather three, instances. The first one concerns your tutor, Abu al-Tamim Sa‘id ibn Sa‘id al-Fariqi.”

  “Do you remember the way Ibn ‘Ammar used to parade his bigotry in front of me?’ It was the same with that crafty devil, Burjuwan, with his sword and thousand pairs of silk trousers. Al-Fariqi was just like them and others too. They all conspired to dominate me and retain power for themselves. They kept annoying me, so I took revenge.”

  “But my lord,” the historian noted, “al-Fariqi had no part of either sword or bigotry. Quite the contrary, he was simply a giver of wise counsel.”

  “The kind of counsel that shackled my hands and turned abstraction into drivel. In politics, advice about how things should be is utterly useless in the context of dismal daily realities. Even so, al-Fariqi wasn’t executed because of the ideas that earned him his salary, but because he insisted on inflicting his overbearing presence on me. His too many words of advice and warning prevented me from doing my job, and he kept interfering in all kinds of affairs and markets that were none of his business.”

  “One day, my lord, I was fortunate enough to be present at one of those moments when you lost your temper with him. ‘The only lessons I learn,’ you roared at him, ‘come from my own efforts. The past is what I create through my deeds, my seals, and my monuments; there is no other. I append it to the world’s memory as a token of my survival after death.’ I have recorded that dictum of yours in my history. But let me ask you, my lord, about the other al-Fariqi, Malik ibn Sa‘id, the chief judge …”

  “If that judge—God shame him!—were to rise from his grave now, I’d slay him all over again. When I put you in charge of the salary bureau, Mukhtar, you saw for yourself how he disclosed my secret correspondence and perused all the information forwarded to me.”

  “That’s perfectly correct, my lord. However you pardoned him for that particular infraction. At your command I sent him a strongly worded letter of reprimand.”

  “And do you think he changed his ways? Oh no, he carried right on with his duplicity and deceit. He devised ruses of every kind and fondly imagined they would somehow escape the notice of my spies and informers. It is proven beyond any doubt that he had sex with women who came to him with complaints; in fact Satan tempted him to infiltrate my own harem. He even started flirting with my sister. Sitt al-Mulk. Before I had him executed, I asked him during his trial what was the difference between a man and woman. Mukhtar, have you an idea how that crafty rogue answered my question? “Men have a sexual organ,” he replied, and then continued like someone touched by the Devil in person, “and women are one great sexual organ.”

  Al-Hakim leaned over and whispered these tidbits into the historian’s ear, while the latter sat there begging God’s forgiveness. The historian continued with his questions.

  “My lord,” he asked, “as long as we’re on the topic of judges, can I ask you about your choice of fire as the means of getting rid of‘Abd al-‘ Aziz al-Nu‘man, the chief judge? Wasn’t executing him a sufficient form of revenge for the scandals he perpetrated?”

  “Mukhtar,” al-Hakim replied, “the only outrages he committed that you know about were bribery and his regular tendency to cause trouble and incite people against me. As you’re well aware, he gave secret support to Abu Rakwa and all other rebels too. He was the worst of descendants of the best of forebears. My sentence of execution was totally justified, as it was for his partner and relative. ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn Jawhar. I only gave orders for his body to be burnt because the wretch used to rob and harass orphans. I was merely executing God’s promise, I le being the best of promisers: Those who unjustly consume the property of orphans will taste fire in their bellies and will mast in hellfire.

  “May God shed light on your deeds, my lord,” said the historian. “Now there’s just one more case that worries me; I can’t understand the real causes. It involves the way your general, al-Fadl, was killed. Since he had succeeded in defeating Abu Rakwa’s army and saving you from a potentially enormous danger, he certainly didn’t fail you….”

  “Mukhtar,” al-Hakim interrupted as he paced the room nervously, “you should not be like everyone else, content merely to scratch the surface of things. God protect you, look deeper. You will discover that al-Fadl had no real role in my defeat of Abu Rakwa was the enormous amount of money that was spent from both state coffers and my own resources, money that made it possible for me to dragoon mercenaries from a variety of countries and races. Look still deeper and do some research. You’ll discover that J only managed to capture the rebel by giving in exchange gifts and supplies to his protector, the king of Nubia. In total I spent more than a million gold dinars. If I hadn’t resorted to such stratagems, they being the only ones I still had at my discretion, I could not have offered any opposition to Abu Rakwa’s army. But for that, Mukhtar, my superficial historian, I would not be here now giving you this explanation.”

  “You are right, Commander of the Faithful! Please excuse my inadequate research and faulty understanding,”

  “My other reason for killing al-Fadl was that he murdered Abu Rakwa without my permission and thus deprived me of the opportunity to give him an affectionate welcome. All he left me was a head with nothing to say. Ah, Mukhtar! How much I’d looked forward to talking to Abu Rakwa and debating with him! I relished the possibility of exposing the confused ideas and visions inside his head. If only I’d been able to do what al-Fadl made impossible, if Abu Rakwa had debated with me about his reasons for rebelling against me! If he’d won me over, I’d have made him my heir apparent.”

  “Would that have been legal, my lord?”

  “The law always sides with whatever is most correct and beneficial. Didn’t I decide not to make my legitimate son, al-Hasan, heir and instead selected my cousin, ‘Abd al-Rahim ibn Ilyas? That broke the chain of dynastic succession to the imamate and favored the upright over the twisted and the capable over the weak.”

  “Yes, indeed you did, my lord. That’s another issue I can’t understand!”

  “If I’d met Abu Rakwa and found he was better than the others, I’d have shared the caliphate with him and made him my heir after my disappearance.”

  Mukhtar was astonished, not knowing what to do or say. “Shall I write down what you’ve been saying about Abu Rakwa?” he asked.

  �
��Do whatever you like. Actually leave out what I’ve just said. Even if you pass it on, you may not find anyone who’ll believe you. But do write this down in your history: Only the most worthy and virtuous deserve the imamate.”

  “What about the chapter in my history on Abu Rakwa, my lord? Shall I include the verses attributed to him that I actually asked your poet, Muhammad ibn ‘Asim, to write, the ones in which he asks you for forgiveness and pardon?”

  “Recite me a few lines so I can decide.”

  “It’s a long poem, but I’ll select a short extract.”

  I fled, but to no avail. No fugitive on earthcan withstand the one with God on his side.

  By God, flight’s only cause was fear of that death I now savor.

  My entire body led me to you as a dead person shakes in death’s millstone.

  All are agreed that you are my killer but that is indeed a false notion about you.

  It is a matter of revenge and is over; now are you bound to use it as you must.

  “Fear God, Mukhtar!” was al-Hakim’s reaction. “Spare these poor dead folk the fancies and lies of poets!”

  “But, my lord,” the historian replied, “this poetic text will gradually be turned into a genuine document to be repeated by historians for all time. I think it’s important and precious. It needs to be reproduced like all documents that may have started as poetry but later became history.”

  “If you like,” said al-Hakim, “leave it for the course of history to determine. It’s a mere drop in the ocean. But then who is to tell us we’re not all living a bad dream or a total lie?”

  With that al-Hakim rushed out of his residence, headed to his observatory, and pointed his telescope into the heavens. He came back inside, sat down again in the dark, and started repeating a phrase, as though to another. My unlucky star has shown me its tail.” Once he had tired of repeating this phrase, he fell into a troubling silence that al-Misbahi dared not interrupt. The historian was on the point of grabbing the opportunity afforded by al-Hakim’s ever increasing somnolence to escape to his own house. At the sound of the first snore he stood up and started to sneak away like a thief in the night. However the roar that al-Hakim let out, along with expressions of disapproval, made him return to his place in short order.