by Ghalib Islam
At that time, they said Grenadier Lhereux would assume the helm. Doddering, close to eighty, he carried his teeth in a velveteen box and was rumoured not to be able to perform the day’s activities without first bathing several hours in a revitalizing concoction of aromatic herbs, whose exact formula only he knew and whose ingredients were imported from more than a dozen separate countries. But whoever spoke to him concluded at once his mind retained the lucidity of that day in the trenches of Vimy Ridge, where he had risen to the rank of major in an hour’s exploits at age seventeen, and that he still possessed the heroic candour reserved for men of a bygone generation.
Lhereux himself would not speak of power so easily, and those plotting the coup understood this, though it was said he would have been content to remain a grey eminence, a hidden organ, invisible functionary of the unnameable country for the rest of his days irrespective of who played leader.
The time has come, Xamid Sultan patted him on the back outside the legislative house under a threatening phlegmatic sky one Friday afternoon, will you do us the honour.
Lhereux provided the response of his life after having lived in the unnameable country for more than fifty years when he said, I am here to observe, Xamid, and one day I will return to Montpellier where my mother still keeps her house and a quaint plum and cherry orchard.
Soon, it became so impossible to demarcate between what was real in La Maga and what was intended to be cinematic action that no one was certain when American soldiers appeared in every corner. They crawled from beneath the sewer gratings and stepped out of the bathroom doors of common citizens, who hadn’t noticed them come in without knocking, Sorry, needed to shit pretty bad, ma’am. If asked, they claimed they had arrived only to assist the elderly to cross the street and to prevent women from being assaulted by the rebels, but so far as we are aware, the elderly of La Maga tended to retain an ambulatory spirit until the end of their days and died suddenly in bed without sickness and more out of the conviction their time had come, while no woman had asked any soldier to hold her hand since the rebels were not known to have. Besides, we were more accustomed to uncle big bad’s lupine megaphone bursts—We know you are in there, assholeterrorizers; out of that tenement flat or we will blow you out—the scuttling of soldiers distribution of wires and deposition of charges, the huff-and-puff of Major Collin Salt through the conical instrument, which transformed his orders into growling sand, which offered you the mercy of imprisonment and torture or delivered death with a countdown of two more one more minute terrorists the walls fell down on top of you in the middle of breath memory and then you were flattened like so many daddy-long-legs.
The nameless rebels were shyer than the Americans and appeared and disappeared like catless grins, hitting and running still clad in ballet slippers. It was true they died in greater number, but since the night of the phosphorescent green water-resistant fire, it had become nearly impossible to distinguish between the residents of the city and the rebels. Mother’s constant reading aloud of the events to her unborn son took a turn of invention as she realized the war was giving no sign of retreat; my father’s days were numbered, and that if I was not born soon I might never be introduced to my aunt Reshma before she left for the Berlin art academy to which she had been accepted. Furthermore, her own body and mind had suffered so much in the recent past she was worried she might not be able to tolerate another year of pregnancy. Thus, events that were too large were shrunk by concave mirrors of speech, while slight victories, such as a minor increase in the availability of grain in the stores, would be magnified exponentially in order to encourage; the war continued and in fact escalated but I swam contented after years of ardour and worry.
My mother coaxed me finally to be born. Having wombed me nine and one-third multiples longer than the giantess Gargamelle, and utterly exhausted by the ordeal, Shukriah wondered if my entry into the world would in any way resemble an ordinary birth or whether I would in fact emerge like Athena from her head or cast within an eggshell, in which case she would have to incubate me further like a swan-maiden. She bellytickled, she teased, she sang loving verses, and still I remained stuck in place, possibly out of nervousness like an actor prior to the first night of performance after many a long rehearsal.
One day, two hours before dawn, La Maga awoke to simultaneous bovine cries emerging from every minaret in the city. What unholy rascals like myself would laugh about many years later found interpretation in observant five-times-a-day-kneelers as the greatest insult; cows on every minaret, can you believe, trained cows who had walked up perilous steps on their own, seemingly, to call the faithful. Like the wooden bomb replete with ribbons of a million obscene messages, Nasiruddin Khan appeared out of the safety of his miniature cola empire to deliver yet another hot message, this one so incendiary one of the ceiling fans overheated and disconnected, falling with a crash and nearly lopping off several heads in the audience. Nearly overcome by the omen of misfortune, the crowd struggled for a moment with the choice of dispersing, but let me say it for why suppress the news when the news.
Nasiruddin Khan silenced the people with a hand: La Maga is not alone in this struggle, all over the world it is becoming impossible to avoid the fact that we are no longer living with airstrikes but a full-fledged invasion, the people are united and they are with you. He began to read a letter from Joe Slovo: our brothers and sisters in South Africa have extended their solidarity, he read aloud that tender document, which pacified the isolated residents of a faraway country and reminded them that there existed a world beyond their mirror-walls and that others too were struggling. Remember, however: on this occasion, the unknotters were ready; if the film cameras were not all but destroyed and the mirrors were cracking, at least the saboteurs, paid informants, spies, and plainclothes provocateurs were gaining strength, and some sources claimed at least a third of the audience that day consisted of hidden organs, eyes and ears, which saw and heard everything.
Following the death of Dulcinea, the President began to dress in garments made of camel hair and to favour eating locusts and raw honey, withdrawing his campaign to discover the perpetrator of his horse’s poisoning after appeasing himself with the senseless execution of eighty random men and women hand-picked by the Department and eventually withdrawing into a babble that was less than glossolalia, inscrutable and incapable of effecting any change in the world. He became lost to all, for the first time even to Grenadier Lhereux, who had on every other occasion succeeded in tethering Anwar to the basic realities of governance and washing up every day, and the Privy Council realized it had discovered the miracle it had been searching for and suggested immediately creating for the head of state the docile, sheared-samson position of prime minister without any formal powers, and to choose a new president from the cadre of groomed politicos and military men.
Lhereux instantly regretted refusing the role of the unnameable country’s leader when he realized that change was inevitable and considered his retirement and even contacted his mother to ask whether she would not allow him to bring a friend to stay in their Montpellier cottage for a short visit.
The centenarian wrote back insisting that her boy abandon his romantic forays in the dark lands where he had chosen to waste his life and that he shouldn’t bother coming home if he did not arrive as he had left it: with his head bowed and as a God-fearing Catholic.
The great grenadier tried not to argue sense and to make the best of the situation. He stood in the balcony of the Presidential Palace where Anwar used to give speeches to scintillated crowds and took a whiff of the sulphurous air. The taste of ash collected on his palate and he realized that all throughout the unnameable country, the same fire burned, just as it had twenty years ago when the British were forced to leave and tried then to rule from afar. He cursed this country and its senseless multitude; he had lived here fifty years and still had not found happiness or understood what its people wanted.
SATAN AND THE MAROONS
FABLE OF YE
SHUA
Questions push. Curiosity bids us backward in time. The tale of now is the story of every now before now meaning present time. How many strangers have arrived on our shores. Years ago, Yeshua himself came to our country, rumours tell us. My grandfather heard that story first not long after he met my grandmother in the cubicles of the office of the British Intelligence Service in the Heart of Arabia. My grandmother heard it too right after they met.
Did my grandparents go to the movies when they became sweethearts. Recall at that time there was a fire and fanfare show in town: the nameless rebels vs. The Mirror. Shoot to shards broken glass and alleyway scuffles erupted daily while the beginning of it all, including and especially the start of the cinema, its origin, which occurred exactly at the same time as a CIA coup placing Anwar in power, disappeared into a cinematic wonderland, the once upon a time of a movie designed for export.
By the time my grandfather and grandmother fell in love, everyone had forgotten why sharpshooters with SLRs and Technicolor film cameras shot scene after scene on sliders, on tracks, or through moving cars as dynamic microphones hung wire thin from rooftops or swung on peeled umbrella veins shading chickens for sale. Exotic lizards and belly dancers vibrated in front of thirty-five millimetres in the equatorial heat.
Zachariah Ben Jaloun goes to market one morning, and there he spots Gita. From far away he calls her name, and though she carries a bag in one hand and the other handles indiscernible fruit, she turns in the movie breeze blows hair and shines. She turns to her name called song: crap, there’s that man, she puts hand up to cheek to check her makeup. She waves. Let’s give them music to arm them against trepidation, reintroductions, as they share more than a handshake, less than a hug.
Then there are scenes of everyday life: they walk through the old souks where they hear the drumming of Quinceyenglish, and where children play in Server, or inverted slang, and run with birdwhistles that sound like chickadees when filled to the quarter and doves when filled halfway. Everywhere, cranes make shadows, and fluorescent lights hide in wait for when it gets dark.
They’re shooting a historical docudrama, Mamun Ben Jaloun informs, pointing at a replica naval vessel from the turn of the twentieth century resting on the back of a flatbed truck. They walk along the overpass recently renamed after Governor Anwar, and share oranges on a knoll.
While they sit in aimless conversation, taste oranges, the dips and rises of the other’s voice, an eyeless man comes searching for a morsel and coins. He sits beside them hastily, let me rest for a moment, he says, though not to the pair. Just behind him, as if they had been following him for a long time, two men find the knoll, and mercilessly, the first plants tripod legs and the second fixes a quick camera on top to catch the moment.
The blind man sits next to Gita and Zachariah, quivers for a moment, cataract eyes unaware. Are they gone he asks, and neither Gita nor Zachariah knows what to say because The Mirror is here. The two film workers place index to lips shush. Yes, says Gita, they’re gone, she says, as the camera’s jib arms swivel and the lens inches closer to their conversation.
Would you like a plum, Gita offers, and the beggar, who is a beggar judging by appearance, says please. Who are you, asks Zachariah Ben Jaloun, biting succour for cinematic effect. He looks at the ragged guest whose tattered clothes resist sunlight, whose shadows fall darker, thicker. In post-production, they must have delighted in the natural difference between him and the other characters.
Who am I, Yeshua’s companion nods gravely as yes, who are you, Gita echoes.
Recall if you have heard the story elsewhere: this mendicant is not Yeshua, and that the fable is related by a companion of Yeshua.
Plum after plum, Gita urged him go on. She offered bread and milk from her bag’s grocery stores. Tell us, she cajoled.
Who am I.
Yes, who are you.
What is the Fable of Yeshua. And what do they say of the Fable of Yeshua. When Yeshua came to the unnameable country did he not sow discord in the souks, casting lots, those against and those who believed his story. Why did he and the Amharic Jews come to decide the earth would swallow them and allow them tunnel-passage back to Jerusalem. Why were they driven from the Holy Land. In plain truth, enemies and friends, when Yeshua and the Amharic Jews came to the unnameable country, drenched in brine from clothes to the marrow, stinking pesticide, blinded, hungry, shivering cold, they were mute, couldn’t say a word about what had happened, who they were. That is to say, Yeshua and the six others had arrived at the shores of the unnameable country without a boat or any other visible craft, and for twenty-four hours could not explain their past.
Grenadier Lhereux, second in command to Anwar, head of state, whom the nameless rebels called Governor because our nation is a province among other unnameable countries according to their socialist claptrap, was a singularly calm man of rational persuasion, and an amateur linguist. After being the first official to take charge of the situation, Anwar found himself concluding that no human language contained so many pharyngeal stops and strange syntactical breaks, and that the strangers were glossolating in either rubbish or angelic tongue.
Yeshua regained his speech before the others and claimed that the seven had travelled from the unnameable country to Israel to make aliyah. After being told they would have to wait for security clearance, then after being sprayed by Israeli Secret Service in the face with the pungent insecticide dicholorottengas, they were shouted at in a language that was claimed to be Hebrew, which they did not understand and which proved they were not Jews and possibly spies. They were shackled together by the feet and left eyerotting in a small jail cell with other refugees, common criminals, and by the smells and sounds of it, several chickens and a goat. Most important, none of this may be true. By the grace of the she-goat’s owner, they were allowed to suckle from its udder and kept alive for the week before being taken on a boat to the Red Sea.
Surely, then, Yeshua said, we were going to die. Shit sticks, they told us frightening things about picking worms off of clams as mist and cold pawed, fought our faces. Our breaths rattled. We were blind, but more out of the fear we felt at our sudden condition, for death is the greater blindness, we began to babble, all together and in a spontaneous coordinated way, which has not stopped for the others and into which I descend now and again. When they dropped us, entangled, into the water, we were carried away from them by swift current, and the sound of the motor disappeared after some minutes, which means they did not pursue us. By the grace of God we floatedon the water, south for several days, wet, hungry, exhausted, sightless, embattled by waves much of that time, through the Red Sea, Yeshua supposed, through the Gulf of Eden, before finally arriving at the shores of your unnameable country, which we thought was New Jerusalem.
But the story had its faults. Grenadier Lhereux could discover no Egyptian, Yemeni, or Israeli naval records to verify the storm on that date; the weather, in fact, had been quite clear. They said they arrived very early in the morning, and this too was incredulous. It was a youth named Abdullah who claimed he woke up to urinate in the outhouse near his fisherman’s hut, his eyes pasty, still sleepy, and was astounded in early daylight by who were these men-looking flotsam. Lhereux wrote down the boy’s testimony. A fisherman, Mahmud, meanwhile, claimed the strangers had in fact arrived later in the day, at around one-thirty in the afternoon, and that he himself had brought them into his hut where the Governor met them for the first time several days later, by which time a hundred other refugees had floated onto the shore. Other individuals also claimed they were the first to find the six blind, shackled men.
The Fable of Yeshua is apocryphal. Was it true they were discovered with no boat in sight, and were wet, shivering, and had no luggage, no water or food, no provisions at all. Had they huddled together for warmth for hours before being brought inside a fisherman Mahmud’s shack. There, the newly blind began accustoming themselves to their blindness, to distinguishing between children and adults, females and
males, the old and young, intuitively by smell and touch. They were incapable of communicating, as I have mentioned, for the first twenty-four hours, and were visited in the afternoon by the Governor, not for humanitarian purposes but out of the same perverse curiosity that afflicted half the city of La Maga. He had the strangers interned in a nearby hospital, treated until at least one of them had regained his speech.
The Governor, witnessing first-hand the poverty of the society of fishermen, the beach huts that had stood ramshackle tenuous against the gusts of the sea for as long as anyone could remember, did nothing to uplift their condition. Nor did he take up the matter of the strange visitors with anyone from the nascent Israeli government. Our unnameable country was being forced by the other Arab states to shoulder the weight of the Palestinian refugees, and in the fishermen’s huts he saw a solution. He declared that Grenadier Lhereux should arrange for the provision of plastic and wood and other building supplies so that more such huts may be built on La Maga’s shores, and that the arriving refugees might fish and live there until their fates could be determined.
The shipless refugees lived in a crowded hut with fishermen in the area and changes came naturally with time. Yoni stirred the heart of Abdullah, the youth who always claimed to have found the sea-drenched travellers first, who fell in love with her because he realized she saw more than the sighted, and the two were married one Saturday. The others, too, grew accustomed to their harsh lives and new circumstances. One of them climbed high school rungs to university and became a teacher. Another learned carpentry. The population of the beachside village grew from two thousand to twenty-six times that amount within a year due to Palestinian immigrants, and help was limited and the fish did not always visit nets, nor was there ample arable soil to grow what one liked. Six of the seven visitors did not wish to return to Israel, but Yeshua grew old and with age his mind began to long even more for the true Jerusalem.