The Testimony

by James Smythe

  Leonard and I used to be Jews. We’re Ex-jews, he would say whenever anybody asked, Capital E, lower-case j, as if that hammered home his point: I’ve got my own emphasis for these things. He liked having things in his life and then renouncing them, that was another of his things. (I’ve realized recently, thinking about it, how many things he used to have.) We stopped being Jews in the late Nineties, not long after we first started seeing each other. He had just left his first wife, an awful woman called Estelle, and we found each other in a bar one night. We spent hours talking about everything and anything, and that pattern stuck. On our fourth date we got onto religion, and discovered that we felt the same way – disheartened, mostly – and that was that. We woke up the next day and decided to not bother any more. We already both used to celebrate Christmas more than we did Hanukkah, so it didn’t affect us there, and all the other stuff, it just felt natural to ignore it. We did that until the end of the next decade, when Leonard got his cancer, and then I started to think about it, to wonder. He never did, of course; cancer was a fight, and it could be beaten by hard work and perspiration, as far as Leonard was concerned, but I didn’t feel that way. It was diagnosed in the late stages, and the doctor told us that if he operated the next day, Leonard might be lucky. Might be lucky, he said. That’s a chance of a chance, outside odds at best, I figured. I had to drive home to fetch Leonard his pyjamas and a book, and on the way I passed the synagogue on Willet, so I stopped the car and waited until the next service started. I remembered every part of it – it was so ingrained, even after over a decade of not thinking about it even once – as if it were deeper than memory, like it was a part of my DNA, even – and I prayed for Leonard to get better. I prayed for an extra edge over the Might be lucky. And he was lucky. They cut the cancer out, they did radiotherapy, he was sick for a while, weak as the old man that he never wanted to be, and then he started to get better. I don’t know what saved him, whether it was the luck, the doctors, the prayer, but something did. I carried on going to synagogue, once a month, maybe less, and Leonard stayed healthy. That felt like a fair deal, and I never told Leonard. Every relationship has its secrets.

  After he threw the tangerine he kept on shouting at the TV. It doesn’t mean anything, he kept saying. It means sweet f-a! It’s a voice, could have come from anywhere. The priests were sure that it was God making contact. In the book of Revelation, it says that our God will return to us, speak to us again. This is simply Him making good on His promise. Sanctimonious pricks! Leonard kept shouting. They’re acting like this is definitive proof!

  I didn’t say it, of course, but I wanted to ask him how he was so positive that it wasn’t.

  Hameed Yusuf Ahmed, imam, Leeds

  Here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter where you were when you heard it. It doesn’t. What does matter is how you dealt with it afterwards, how you reacted, if you panicked; or if you got on with your life, your responsibilities. I wasn’t asleep during the static before, because I was leading prayers already. How did we react? We got on with it. God is present every day; that’s why we pray to Him, because He is there. If He wasn’t there, we wouldn’t pray, you see? It’s easy. When the static came, I was in the mosque, half past four, just as it was nearly light – and I mean that, it was that red sky outside, that sort of colour where the sky looks like blood in water – and we were praying. We carried on after it, because if it was God speaking to us – that was what the televisions said, what they all wanted us to believe – if it was, He would make it clear. We had jobs, duties; you cannot be distracted by a noise, just a noise and nothing more. Now, The Broadcast, that was different. Again, we were at prayer. This could be a trend, I thought when we heard the static for the second time, before the voice came through, this could be a trend. I carried on leading the prayer, because that was what we did. When we heard the voice, that was the first time in over twenty years that I broke prayer. It was only because there were others praying who panicked before I did, standing up, leaving. That level of disruption, none of us could ignore it. Please, be calm, I said – the first words I ever broke outside the prayer, can you fathom that? To instil a sense of calm? – but that didn’t help. I mean, the people might have trusted me to guide them when they were in control, but I think that was the hard part about The Broadcast for some: the lack of that control. To have something so rigid – a life, a belief – and to see, to feel it slipping away as soon as you hear something that you cannot explain … I finished the prayer, but so many left while I spoke I couldn’t even count, so I kept my eyes shut; I didn’t need them to know what I was doing, what I was saying.

  I was in the offices afterwards. We called them offices, but they were just a room at the back of the mosque where I kept my papers, some books, had meetings with some of the community. If they needed guidance, that’s where they would see me. The room itself was awful, a little white-walled box with peeling paint, because it didn’t warrant upkeep. I called it the library, because it sounded better, and because there were shelves with books upon them, and all the books offered more than the rest of the room, the rest of the mosque – than the entirety of my knowledge: His teachings written forever, indelible, because words never die, never lose their meaning. Everything I taught, everything I am, it comes from those books, from those teachings. When I die, all that I am and all that I think dies with me; the teachings live on. You ask yourself what should be the most important of those, then: me, or those books. I was to stay in the library all day, because that was when the Muslim people of Leeds needed their council the most; it suited me, because I opened my books and read them. There was no television in the library so I didn’t know what was going on outside – how much they were making it about God, or about the Christian God – but I did know that I had a full diary of appointments, and none of them arrived for the meeting, so I continually sat and read my books. There was always more to learn. I led a prayer a couple of hours afterwards, and then I got myself ready to go home, locked the office. When I got outside I saw him for the first time, young boy, only eighteen, nineteen, maybe even younger. He had that fur around his face, not like anything you could call a beard or a moustache, but he was growing it. Perseverance in the face of adversity; always made me happy. Assalamu alaikum, I said. Can I help? He said, I don’t know; maybe, I don’t know. You want to have a talk? I asked. He nodded, so I unlocked everything again – this is what we do – and we went back to the library.

  He sat in the chair I usually sit in, which was strange, to begin with; but he wasn’t to know. I didn’t recognize him, which wasn’t such a surprise, because he was younger, and it was getting harder and harder to persuade young people to actually come and be a part of their community. Actually, no, persuade is the wrong word, because it’s not like that. Not enough families were actually involving their young. There shouldn’t have had to be persuading. He sat in the chair I usually used – I am hesitant to call it my chair, because it wasn’t mine, but that’s how I thought of it, because it fitted me, because I sat in it every single day – and rubbed his hands together. Who’s your father? I asked him. My father? Why do you want to know? It’s important, I said; maybe I know him, because I can’t place your face. That’s right, he said, I’m not from here. I’m staying here for the week, he said, with a friend. (I forget what it was like, having religion when I was his age. Did I have it? I’m sure I must have, because it was everything to my father. He was an imam in Algeria, if you can believe that, and he came to England when I was only a few weeks old. That changed him, because in Algeria it was just his life; here, it was an uphill struggle, he used to say. God wants you to prove your love, and there is no better place, he said. He fought for this, and then he died. He – I have to be careful about how I say this, because it’s so easily taken the wrong way – he seemed to get a second wind for the fight after September 11th, even though he was so old, his breath failing him. Some days he could barely speak through his breathing, and he still attended every prayer, still
staunchly defended our rights. He was in his element. He hated what was done, hated everything about it – I have never seen him so angry as I did in those days after it happened – but he wanted to challenge misconceptions. Is that wrong? He wanted to show that not everybody is capable of what those people did. I was already on my path, but his belief – which was stronger than any love he had, for better or for worse – was inspiring. I read to him from the Qur’an as he died, and I will never have any regrets for that.) Listen, he said, this is not my mosque, right? I’ve come to you because I can’t go there. Why can’t you talk to your friends and family, your own imam? I asked him, and he shook his head. He won’t understand, none of them will. Won’t understand what? I hadn’t sat down the whole time, waiting for my own chair; I sat opposite, because it felt important. This was my fault, he said. This voice, the static. He was crying, shaking; I put my hand out to him, took his hand in mine. Don’t be a fool, I said, we don’t even know what it is. I committed zina, he said, right at the time of the first static. You had intercourse? I said, and he nodded. That’s who I came to see, he said, still crying, a girl. And you think that you made this happen? I would have smiled if zina wasn’t important, if this wasn’t something that seemed to matter so much to him. (And I was pleased that it did mean so much, even if it took something as strange as The Broadcast to make it so.)

  You haven’t seen what they’re saying? he asked. On the news and everything, they’re all saying it’s God, actually God. They don’t know, I said, but he shook his head. No, no, you don’t understand, they sound like they do know. It’s God, and He’s here because we sinned too much, and I was the last sin, the last straw. And I said, God inspires those who love Him to sound convinced, because it’s what they believe. But if it is God, a sin like zina won’t be reason for you to be punished. He dried his eyes. But that’s what we’ve always been told, he said, my father told me. People tell others a lot of things for their benefits, I said. But this? We’ll wait and see how this works out, okay?

  Peter Johns, biologist, Auckland

  Those mentals you see living on the streets, with their thinking that they had a direct line to God, or saying that they were hearing voices? Suddenly, we were all in that same damn boat.

  UNRAVELLING

  Dafni Haza, political speechwriter, Tel Aviv

  Lev called again as soon as it finished, when we were left reeling in the office, attempting to work out what on earth the noise was, the voice was. Somebody told us that it was worldwide, because it was on the news, and I told one of the assistants – who had been working for the government for longer than I had, and knew his way around the ropes a little bit more – to get somebody in the Prime Minister’s office on the telephone, to tell us what was happening. Lev’s call, I ignored. I cancelled it. He could wait. (He left a message, crying, telling me to call, saying that he was worried, but I didn’t think he was worried about The Broadcast, more about what I might have been getting up to.) We had a constant stream of information leaving the office, all coming from the government itself, and we vetted it for language. That was most of our job. But it completely stopped, no messages, no nothing, which meant that one of the other assistants had the press on the telephone, begging him for information. We have to tell the people something, the woman from the news station was shouting – we could all hear her voice carried through the telephone line, echoing out of the handset – so you have to tell me something. I could see the assistant getting upset, so I went over to him, stood next to him to let him know I would take the call. You have to tell the people, or there will be problems, the woman on the other end of the phone shouted, and the assistant, as I reached for the handset, said, We’ll tell you as soon as we know anything ourselves, okay? That was the news story for the next half an hour, how the government, sat there in Tel Aviv, were ignorant, or unwilling to help, or unwilling to provide answers. It wasn’t the assistant’s fault; this wasn’t exactly a situation we were knowledgeable about.

  Audrey Clave, linguistics postgraduate student, Marseilles

  We got so drunk by the end of it all, even though I was saying we should work. I don’t think I have ever been that drunk in all my life, honestly. People kept coming in from the concourse outside, other grad students, members of the faculty, random strangers, all saying that we should go outside. We’re having a party, they kept saying, and I kept saying, I have to work on this, because it’s important, blah blah blah – they didn’t listen.

  Jacques Pasceau, linguistics expert, Marseilles

  I told Audrey that she was being boring. She said, Jacques, this is important, and I said, So is making the most of today! Enjoy it!

  Audrey Clave, linguistics postgraduate student, Marseilles

  I was trying to get on with the work at hand, trying to make sure we had everything covered. I – Look, I believe in God. I believed in God then, so much, because I was sure that it was Him speaking to us. So I wanted to work out what the static was, because if it was important, a message, another language, maybe, that would be crucial. So we kept working, but Jacques kept filling up my glass, and I thought, what harm would a little wine do? We started saying the stuff, the phonetics, out loud, seeing if they resembled anything, and then we recorded us saying the noises, sped it up, slowed it down, tried to see if the software matched anything to any languages, that sort of thing, but nothing was happening. People kept coming in, as I say, and asking us to party, and then other people were coming in and asking us to go and pray with them, but we stayed inside, doing the work (apart from Jacques, who was drinking really heavily). Then somebody ran in, told us to come outside, and we said, No, no, we’re busy, and they said, There’s somebody on the roof. So we all went outside and looked, and there was, and we saw him – it was a man, but we didn’t know him, probably a student in another department – as he fell. It was awful. I asked a girl there why he did it, and she said, I don’t know, he just kept saying, Sorry, sorry, apologizing for something, and then he jumped. They call it jumping; it’s not jumping, not when you just step off like that.

  We all took that badly, but Patrice dealt with it the worst. He was already looking a bit ill before it happened, and then he just started crying. Oh my God, he kept saying, so we got David to watch him, check he was alright (David was huge, built like Andre the Giant or something, so we knew Patrice would be alright if he went off on one), and we tried to get back on with the work. I was so drunk by then it was pointless, and we pretty much went back and passed out, I think.

  Meredith Lieberstein, retiree, New York City

  The first suicide that I saw about was on the news, mentioned not because it was noteworthy, but because it happened just out of shot in Times Square. The reporter was conducting interviews in the crowd – and most of the mob at that point was religious, most of them there because it was a way of congregating, as people tended to do at times of stress, I suppose – and it was like New Year’s Eve, only without that horrible cheap glitter-ball; then somebody off-camera screamed, and the camera flipped just in time to catch the body hit the pavement. The reporter kept saying, Oh, oh, oh, shocked, so Leonard muted it. As if we need to hear that, he said.

  Ten minutes later, he read on the internet that it might not have been a one-off case, and then, over the next hour, hundreds of reports started coming in that other people had followed suit. It wasn’t coincidental; it was a fact of circumstance. People had found proof for something that they either wanted or didn’t want, and they acted on it in a way that they thought was appropriate. Apparently a lot of inmates killed themselves, thinking that they had no chance for retribution. That was strange, because they should have waited, to see if there were going to be any more messages; stranger still, though, were the people who killed themselves because they were happy that God spoke to them. Leonard found somebody’s blog where they had left a post saying, essentially, I’m going to be with Our Father! Because, if there’s a God, there must be a Heaven, and if there’s a Heaven, it must
be a better place.

  Only, that wasn’t like anything that we knew, of course. We didn’t know anything. We knew that we all heard the words My Children in our heads, and whilst some of us might have chosen to believe that it was God speaking to us, we didn’t have any proof. And with the ones trying to avoid, I don’t know, The Rapture, maybe, it must have just been a catalyst. Guilt can make you do funny things; with those people, it set them unravelling.

  Elijah Said, prisoner on Death Row, Chicago

  The Broadcast invaded my dreams. In my dream-state I was a child, back with my mother, my father, but knowing then what I know now: how she would die, the man that he would become, the purpose he would feel in his heart, watched over by a loving God that he did not yet know existed. My father played with me in the street, throwing a baseball that looked like the moon; he promised me the world. I told him to not lie to me; and then I heard the voice. It creaked in as part of my father’s speech, at first: My Children, he said to me, and I was ready to protest, to say that I was their only child, unless – are there more secrets? Then I realized that I was awake, that I was on my cot, as always. I got out of bed, dressed myself, ignored the rest of the prisoners. What was their time? Mine was limited. Let us out, some of them shouted, we’re innocent. None of us were innocent, not on this corridor. You did not get to the corridor by being innocent.

  What d’you reckon? Finkler stuck his hands through the bars of my cell, reaching across from his, flapping his hand like a flag alerting me to his presence. I mean, holy crow, he said, how in the hell did we all hear that? You think it was God? He seemed almost completely unaware of who I was, how little I related to him. He would snort through my prayers, when he bothered to hear them, and yet here he was, hand of friendship extended. Sounded like God, he said. I did not reply. I would ignore him, and he would retreat. He carried on talking: If it was God, do you think He’ll forgive us? I’ve never contemplated that part, you know? That we’re here, and we were going to die, sure, but I always assumed there was nothing after, nothing at all, just blackness, you know? I’m sure that I heard him smirk at that, a private joke, however unintentional. I was a rarity on the corridor, a prisoner that they couldn’t pigeonhole. I had education, which so many here did not; the crime I was here for wasn’t thoughtless, or without reason and logic. I was the spearhead of a sacrifice, which many did not try to understand, or did not care to. They saw me as just another man of colour, a brute, a thug: they offered me drugs, or expected that I had access to them; they assumed that I was willing to fight them, which I was, but not on their whims. Finkler persisted. I mean, sheesh, God! Wonder if He spoke to everybody or just us guys? Maybe He’s been on our side all along; maybe He knows I’m innocent. Finkler had killed six women over a twenty-year period: they caught him burying the seventh alive. His guilt was without question.