I put my arms around her and held her tight. Her body was small and slender like a bird, and in my heart was a great yearning for a mother. I buried my head between her breasts and wept. Then, drying my eyes I said, ‘I do not want him to kill you with one of his ugly bullets.’
In her eyes was a strange glitter when she said, ‘I know he will kill me, but it will be with love, not with a bullet.’
I knew nothing about love. My heart was full of a deep yearning for two arms that would hold me in a tight embrace without causing me any pain. Every time I caught the look on Nemat Allah’s face, my eyes shone with a tender light. In the drawer next to my bed were a pile of letters which I had written to someone imaginary, but deep in my heart was a fear of love and a greater fear of God. In the children’s home I prayed regularly and God appeared to me in my dreams as a man. He caressed my bosom with a gentle hand and my belly became swollen with the Jesus Christ that was yet to be born. And now in the morning when I prayed, God’s voice resounded in my ears full of anger. He cursed me in a loud voice and threatened to inflict cruel punishment on me. I fell on my knees and bowed my head low to the ground, entreating Him to have mercy on me. I prayed five times a day, and each time I prostrated myself before Him. He would not cease to vent His wrath on me for a single moment, and at night I curled myself under the bed covers and watched Him as He approached. Now His words were no longer angry but gentle and soft-spoken, and His face was as gentle as the moon on a summer’s night. He rocked me in His arms, filling my heart with a love that was pure. My belly rose with a sacred pregnancy and I watched it grow slowly like a ball filling up gradually with air. I called out to Him when He turned His back on me and He swung round and started to come closer to me once more. But this time His face was completely different, a new face, sombre, almost black with wrath, with eyes burning like glowing embers. I opened my mouth to scream. My body seemed pegged to the ground and I could not move. Suddenly I awakened, my body bathed in sweat, and with my pen wrote the first halting words of a letter addressed to no one. I saw God in my sleep and He had two faces. One smooth and gentle as a mother’s face, and the other like the face of Satan.
The First Letters in the Alphabet of Love
We were not permitted to look out of the windows. The balconies of the military hospital overlooked the windows of the nursing school and so the military men could look down on the girls from above. The hospital buildings were huge and obstructed the light of the sun, but at the end of the day when I stood near the window a long slender ray of sunlight would reach me over one of the corners. I could feel the harsh grip of fingers over my back pulling me away from it. They were the fingers of the Head Nurse. She was a short middle-aged woman wearing a white veil and a long uniform reaching down to the ground, like a sister in a monastery. She had a rounded white face and plump hands. Over her bodice she wore three stars which hung from a chain around her neck, as well as the Order of Charity, a golden disc in the form of a brooch pinned over her left breast. Under the fine silk of her uniform, her big breasts jogged up and down. As she advanced with short quick steps over the floor they preceded her, her buttocks like two mounds of flesh bringing up the rear. The right buttock rose up when the left came down and the left buttock rose up when the right came down, as though each hemisphere was not in its place. When she was standing she kept her arms close to her body, but when she walked one arm would swing out while the other remained stuck to her side. During the day her pointed metal-tipped heels struck the tiled floor with a clinking resonance, but at night she tiptoed on soundless bare feet. She made the rounds of the dormitory like a lost soul floating in the night without a body, and when she passed through the doors the flutter of her tunic was like a whisper of air. Her face was all fat without muscle, but it remained completely rigid and never exhibited even the finest of tremors, like a plate of milk boiled with starch. But her eyes were two balls of grey lead that moved restlessly everywhere. Overhanging each of them was a semicircular brow drawn with a fine pencil. Looked at from the side, her nose pointed scornfully upwards into the air. She appeared or disappeared in the dormitories and corridors like a spirit from another world or a being never known to exist before.
When I slept at night I kept my ears strained to catch the slightest whisper in the air. I could detect the soft trailing of her tunic or the invisible pressure of her bare foot on the floor. The knob of the door would move round of its own accord as though turned by the hand of a spirit or a devil. I could see her as she slipped into the dormitory like a white shadow, moving from bed to bed, inspecting the dreams of the girls while they slept, her eyes shifting from bed to bed like a pair of flashlights to make sure there was only one head in each. She counted the heads on her fingers like a herdsman counting his sheep. If a head was missing from a bed or if there were two heads on one bed, the alarm would be given as though we were at war.
I was in my bed, and close to me Nemat Allah lay in hers. Her eyes were wide open, with a faraway staring look which never left her. Her face kept getting thinner and paler and her eyes bigger and blacker all the time. If I whispered in her ear at night she did not answer. If my lips touched her face not a muscle of her features moved. I put my arms around her frail body and fell asleep. But in the middle of the night I suddenly opened my eyes and looked at her bed. It was empty and the place at my side where she sometimes slept was empty too.
I knew my way. The long passage was dark, and I walked on the edge of the wall without faltering. When I reached the end I found a closed door and behind it I heard someone moaning. I pushed the door open with my fist, and for a moment could see nothing but the tiles of the floor shining dimly. But as my eyes grew used to the dark I saw her lying there in the corner of the room. She was curled up like a baby in its womb, and from under her body trickled a fine thread of blood. It was dark red in colour, but her fingers were as white as the moon, as though there was no more blood in them. Between her fingers I could see something written in black letters on a sheet of crumpled paper held between fingers turned to stone. No one could open her fingers.
‘What was written on the paper?’ asked the Head Nurse, standing in front of a line of men dressed in official uniforms with hats on their heads.
‘I do not know,’ said I.
The line of men looked at me and said, ‘How can that be when she was with you day and night?’
‘She was with me day and night, but she lived in another world,’ said I.
‘Which world is that?’ they queried.
‘I do not know, for I have not been there yet,’ said I.
Night falls, faces melt into the dark, and the air ceases to whisper in my ears. I see her standing in the night. I open her stone-like fingers clasped around the crumpled piece of paper, hold it under the white moon and read the letter written on a surface white and pure.
The Legal Wife will Not Go to Paradise
The acclamations of the crowd resound in my ears. Above my head is the throne of the heavens, and at my feet where I stand lies the throne of earth. I am surrounded on all sides by my men. They keep a close guard and protect me from my enemies, who are numerous and are waiting for their chance to replace me on the throne. My friends are few. They think their turn will come when I die. On my right stands my Chief of Security, who is more interested in my downfall than anyone else. On my left stands my Great Writer, with his right eye fastened on the leader of Hizb al-Shaitan and his left eye fastened on my legal wife, where she stands on the balcony reserved for the harem, surrounded by model wives and mothers of martyrs. The acclamations of the people echo in her ears, mingled with the noise of rockets shooting to the sky in celebration of the Big Feast and the sharp noise of bullets fired from a gun. She watches my face as it falls off my body, but she remains standing in the same place with her right eye fastened on the throne and her left eye gazing at my lifelong friend.
Ever since I was a child I have envied and hated him. He always managed to get higher grades than I
did in the examinations. Besides, despite all the girls who admired him, he found nobody else to go after than the girl of my dreams. He used to send her love letters and poems dedicated to her, whereas I could hardly write my name. I bestowed the title of Great Writer on him, allowed him a full page in the daily morning paper on which to publish his articles, together with a picture in which he smiles out at the girls, yet despite all that he does not stay within his limits. Ever since he was a child the desires of his heart have never cooled down. There he stands by my side following the noise of all these explosions, watching my head as it falls from on high to the ground, seeing chaos let loose as though it is the end of the world, and yet he remains unmoved, like a sphinx carved out of stone. Suddenly the faces of the friends and enemies I know disappear as though swallowed up by a void and are replaced by the faces of men I have never seen before. They move up closer and surround me where I lie hiding my face in the ground. One of them turns my head around and looks into my face. I hear him say, ‘Whose face is it then?’ To which he replies, ‘God only knows.’
It must be that my face looked more awesome and dignified than that of the Imam, the face of a man much greater than that of an ordinary man. For its skin was stone-white, almost bloodless, and the bones were hard as rock, rigid, unmoving. A shiver went through the men who were gathered around me, and they kneeled on the ground as though in adoration. One of them came closer to me. Noticing that my face was getting darker and darker and that it was gradually changing to the colour of the earth on which I lay, he turned on his heels and ran away as fast as he could, crying out, ‘It’s the Devil!’, and the others followed close behind him. All of them shouted in one voice, ‘It’s the Devil!’, and as they ran one of them stepped on my hand, and another stepped on my medal where it lay on the ground close to my right foot. I buried my face in the ground so that no one should see me, and suddenly I felt a gentle hand touch my head. When I peered out cautiously from between my lids I began to see faces which I had seen somewhere before. But when they lifted my head up from the ground and looked at my face none of them seemed to recognize me. At that moment I heard a voice whose smooth tones sounded familiar to me. It resembled the voice of my legal wife or of the Chief of Security and it said, ‘No, it’s not him.’ Then another voice which could have been that of my Great Writer or of the Leader of the Official Opposition cried out suddenly, ‘God has saved him! God is on his side!’ And immediately on every side voices started to acclaim me. ‘Long live the Imam.’ The guns of victory fired a salvo and the drums beat out a loud refrain.
I saw my legal wife descend from the balcony, walking with a slow serene step and the great calm of a lion. But as soon as she disappeared out of my sight she started to run on her pointed high heels towards the bedroom. The curtains had been drawn over the windows, and my body lay on the bed surrounded by my legitimate and illegitimate sons and daughters. The Minister of Health was sprinkling disinfectant over my body to prevent it from rotting. In the adjoining room the men I depended on in Hizb Allah were busy dividing up whatever I had left behind me between themselves. When my legal wife entered the room her eyes immediately fell on the face of my illegitimate daughter, who was standing beside me. On her right stood her mother Gawaher, and on her left stood my first wife. The atmosphere before she arrived had been calm and pleasant. I lay in bed holding on to my illegitimate daughter’s smooth hand, kissing it every now and then. But my legal wife leapt on us like a tiger and suddenly all the faces that were gathered around me disappeared, and I was left alone with the face of my legal wife standing beside me. She removed all the marriage and kingly rings from my fingers, emptied my pockets of small change, divested me of my official dress and buried me in a pit dug in the palace gardens.
But the people continued to clamour out my name unceasingly as I lay in the burial pit, and I stood high up on the elevated platform delivering my speech on the occasion of the Big Feast. No one except my legal wife and my Chief of Security realized that I was in two places at the same time. The rockets continued to shoot up into the sky in celebration of the Big Feast, and the acclamations of the crowds continued to resound.
It occurred to no one that I was not the Imam. I myself could not believe that I was the Imam and the Leader of these people. I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to the enjoyable feeling of being the Leader without being the Leader. Thus I could move about freely without needing to wear a bullet-proof vest and without being haunted by the fear of assassination; for I knew that I had already been assassinated before, and it was better for me to be a dead Imam rather than not to be the Imam at all. Now my new name would be the Imam Martyr, and this new name would bestow a new greatness on me. I had become above death and could sit on my throne without fearing my enemies or my friends. As a martyr I had developed the ability to rise up in the air, to fly from the first world to the second or even the third world. I no longer feared either the Great or Small Powers, and I could sit opposite the greatest of leaders with my right leg crossed over my left leg. In the morning I drank my coffee in the Lands of the North and at midday I had lunch in the Lands of the South. Then in the evening, after the day was over, I could spend a quiet night under the ground in the House of Joy with Gawaher. Sitting by my side was my lifelong friend, and we drank toast after toast to love and friendship. I had bestowed a title on him and he had a full page in which to write, with his picture at the top framed in a box. Every Thursday we stayed up all night talking about the memories of our youth.
‘Do you remember the girl we fucked together?’
I slapped his thigh with the palm of my hand and roared with laughter. He slapped me on my thigh in turn and his laughter rang out as heartily as mine. But a moment later he eyed me hesitantly and his laughter subsided, as though he suddenly realized that he had ventured to slap the thigh of the Imam. His hand remained suspended in the air, but I slapped his thigh a second time and burst out laughing just as loudly, remembering all the while how he used to sit beside me in school dressed in his expensive woollen trousers and hit me on the buttocks from behind, right where I held my hand over the hole in my trousers trying to hide it. So I laughed in great hilarity for the third time and slapped him on his thigh again where it lay inside the leg of his trousers, thin and tense like the thigh of a tiger. Then I said, ‘Do you remember the name of that girl?’
He laughed noisily and in the midst of his laughter I heard him say, ‘Of course, her name was Gawaher. Her body was as white as milk and her skin was so fine that the flesh underneath it showed through. Her eyes were big and black, like the eyes of the maidens waiting for us in Paradise.’
At these words my mind took a sudden leap out of this world into the hereafter. I saw Paradise like a vast expanse of green. I lay on the sweet soft grass near the river and all around me naked maidens floated in its waters, their bodies shining in the sun. My eyes travelled slowly between their beautiful faces until I was sure that my legal wife was not among them.
My voice rang out again and again in peals of laughter, and this time I slapped him on the thigh with a resounding whack. ‘How many maidens is each believer allowed?’ I asked.
‘Either seventy or seventy-seven, I don’t remember exactly,’ he said. ‘God alone knows the exact number.’
‘But how many maidens are allowed if it’s the Leader of the Faithful, the One and Only Imam?’ I asked.
The Great Writer laughed even more loudly than before and let his imagination run wild, volunteering a figure which was a pure guess. But the Imam possessed an imagination even more fertile than that of the Great Writer, and his mind got carried away.
‘What about our legal wives?’
His lifelong friend pondered over the matter for a long moment before he said, ‘Our legal wives will never go to Paradise.’
‘But what if one of them happens to slip in somehow,’ asked the Imam insistently, ‘then what?’
‘God will replace her with a young maiden,’ affirmed the Great Writer
. ‘In Paradise there is no place for legal wives. For if it were not so, what difference would there be between our life on earth and life in Paradise?’
Statutory Treachery
When I learnt that my sister had died in the war I recalled that I had not seen my mother’s face since the night I was born. In the orphanage we had an old grandmother whom we called Siti al-Haja. We gathered around her in the evenings and listened to her tales about djinns and about sirens who had the bodies of women and the tails of fish and swam along the shores of the sea at night. When a siren set her hands on a man she used sorcery to change him into another creature, into a catfish or a young calf or a sheep or any other animal of a lower order. If he had been changed into a sheep he would go round bleating in a low voice, looking for another woman against whose leg he would rub himself. This woman had to possess the secrets of sorcery, so that she could unravel the incantations of the woman at whose hands he had been changed into a sheep. Thus she could return him to his original state as a man. But once he had become a man again he would strut over the land full of his manliness, forgetting the woman who had created him, driven by his conceit to seek another woman who in her turn would reduce him from the state of a human being to that of a monkey or a cat with no tail.
The Fall of the Imam Page 6