The Fall of the Imam (15 page)

A man whispered in his neighbour’s ear, ‘Do you think that faith can enter the heart of a dog?’ And his neighbour answered, ‘Why not?’ Another man commented, ‘Verily, if a dog knows what it means to be faithful to his master, why should he not be led to believe in God, especially dogs like these which are of the very best breed imported from abroad? God has given them the ability to know who is guilty of crime, and who is innocent, and it is known that they feed on whale liver and that they smile when their picture is taken.’ The second man who had spoken joined in again, saying, ‘You know their countries are not like our countries and their dogs are not like our dogs. They are the Great Powers, God protect us from their evil, and they send death to us in tins of food, and rockets to raze our cities to the ground, and planes which travel to the moon.’

The first man to speak was intently following what was being said, and opening his eyes in astonishment, he exclaimed, ‘To the moon!’ He looked up at the moon and there it was, hanging in the sky without columns or anything else to hold it up. He felt reassured. Yes, God was much greater than the Great Powers. He reigns high above all men and all things in this world. ‘You say they have men who have gone to the moon?’ ‘Yes, I swear by God that this is indeed true. They have even sent a woman too!’ The first man looked even more astounded than he had before and broke in again, repeating, ‘A woman?’ The man who had been talking nodded his head with the air of someone who knows all about it and said, ‘I swear by God that it is true, and that they have truly sent a woman.’ But the first man remained sceptical. ‘A woman,’ he said scornfully. ‘Tell us what she looked like. Did she have two breasts like our women here, like your wife and my wife? And did she travel alone without her man, without a male companion?’ And the second man said that she went alone, completely alone, without any male companion and she didn’t even wear a veil since there are no men on the moon. ‘Yes, there are definitely no men on the moon, and even if there are men they are different to men on the earth and are not attracted to the charms of women.’ The astonishment of the first man now knew no bounds. He asked, ‘But if they are not attracted by the charms of women, what is it that attracts them then?’ ‘God only knows,’ said the other man. ‘God alone knows what it is that can attract them.’

And now they were in the middle of the night and the Virgin had not made her appearance yet. Why had she not appeared? they wondered. Had she changed her mind and decided to show herself in some other land? In the past she had always chosen to appear in this land, and if she did not choose their land what other land could she possibly choose? Maybe it was because they did not believe that Christ was her son that she had decided to move somewhere else. And yet she had made an appearance yesterday at the church, so all this did not make any sense. Besides, it was known that she made no difference between those who believed in Muhammad and those who believed in Christ, that she was opposed to sectarian strife. In the newspapers they had described how she came down from the sky, and had even published pictures of her dropping down onto the dome of the church from on high. ‘Don’t you read the newspapers?’ said the first man, with a note of impatience. ‘No, I don’t know how to read,’ said the second man, pulling at his sleeve. ‘But isn’t the Virgin Mary a spirit without body or flesh?’ ‘She is the purest and most chaste in this world and the next,’ said the first man solemnly. ‘But do newspapers publish the pictures of spirits without flesh?’ asked the second man, dropping his voice to a whisper which could hardly be heard. The first man threw him a keen glance and said, ‘Why not, brother? They are the newspapers of the Imam and nothing is impossible for them.’

A child suffering from paralysis who had been brought by her mother and was sitting there looking up at the sky suddenly cried out and stood up raising her hands to heaven, and immediately all the people gathered around rose to their feet glorifying the name of Almighty God and the Virgin Mary. The two men who had been talking, squatting on the ground, stood up and started to cry out with the others. After that there was a silence. The first man whispered in the ear of the second man, ‘Is it the Virgin Mary?’ The second man shouted out, ‘Of course, don’t you see her up there?’ So he looked upwards to the dome of the church in the same direction as the others were looking and started to tremble all over because he could see nothing. For a moment he thought he was blind, but then he made a great effort to chase away all doubts, and staring into the dark night, he started to shout with the others, ‘There she is, there she is!’ as he pointed with his outstretched hand to the sky.

The Imam nodded his head in great satisfaction and said, ‘This is an excellent project and will change the expanses of desert sand into a real Garden of Eden.’ He gave me the title of expert, presented me with a private beach that looked out at the sea, and after that all I had to do was to sign my name on the contract. But before I signed, they asked me, ‘What is your name?’ And I said, ‘Joseph.’ They said that the origin of Joseph was Youssef and that I would have to change my name. So I said, ‘No harm in that, God and the Lord Jesus Christ will recompense me for sacrificing my name.’ But then they asked me whether I believed in Jesus Christ and not in the Prophet Muhammad, to which I replied that what mattered most were the interests of the project and that I was prepared to give up Jesus Christ if this was necessary.

After that they enquired about my mother and wanted to know her name, so I had to tell them that I was a test-tube baby and did not know my mother’s name. After a moment’s silence they asked me what test-tubes were, and I explained that test-tubes were a new kind of womb which produced babies completely innocent of any kind of sin since they did not require sex, or marriage, or intercourse between a man and a woman to be born. All that was required was artificial insemination of the egg.

This caused a good deal of consternation, and they cried out in a loud voice, ‘God protect us from the Devil and his machinations, for this is verily the worst kind of adultery and fornication and can only lead to children.’

‘But’, said I, ‘what wrong did I commit that you should condemn me like this? I was an embryo in a test-tube womb and knew nothing about adultery or sin or fornication.’

‘The only salvation for you’, they said, ‘is to purify yourself from sin and declare your faith in the one and only Allah and in His Prophet Muhammad.’

‘But how do I purify myself from sin?’ I asked.

‘It is very simple,’ they said, ‘all you have to do is to cut off the foreskin that covers your male organ.’

But at that I broke down and, almost on the verge of tears, cried out, ‘I can bear anything except to have a part of my body taken away from me.’ But they insisted that this was the only way I could be purified of my sins, enjoy God’s blessings, and ensure the success of the project. So at last I gave in, saying to myself: I can undergo purification and lose my foreskin, for all this means nothing if the gold starts to roll in.

The barber came, carrying his small bag with him. He purified me by cutting off my foreskin with a razor, and the only anaesthetic used in the operation was a bottle of gin which I swallowed down quickly before he had time to begin. When it was over I found that scores of children had gathered round for the same thing and that I was the only grown-up to be circumcised among them. So I lowered my face to the ground in shame and arranged to have my conversion to the faith of Allah published in all the newspapers the next day, so that from then on I was known as the Expert Believer and my picture appeared regularly on the front page set in a frame with some declaration or other of mine, as though what I said was considered as setting the line in matters related to the faith. I had answers to every question and solutions to every problem, and as time passed I discovered that the whole matter was very simple since all we needed in the final analysis was a return to religion and an unlimited belief in God and His Prophet Muhammad. They would ask me, ‘And now, Expert Believer, what do you think of the dangers of nuclear radiation, and what can we do to protect ourselves from them?’

‘Pray five times each day and fast during the month of Ramadan,’ I would say. Then they would ask how they could face the rise in the cost of living and the problem of hunger which was increasing rapidly, and I would say, ‘By cutting off the hand of those who steal, and obliging women to wear a veil.’ A short while after that the Imam bestowed upon me the title of philosopher, and God multiplied my gains to the extent that at the end of my contract I packed my bags full of gold and smuggled them through customs without paying duties and escaped in a plane with my old sweetheart Katie.

From the rose-coloured windows of the harem tinted like the setting sun, I looked out over the expanse of land between the river and the sea, now so vast that it extended as far as I could see, an ocean of undulating green. Across the river was the mosque lying in the low land behind the hill, and next to it the home for orphaned children. Further back I could glimpse the Floating Theatre, and some distance away the House of Joy buried in a pit behind an area of waste land used as a refuse dump, and between the two the military hospital with big glass windows shining in the light. Behind the windows stood the army doctors laughing and whistling to the girls in the Nurses’ Home, lifting their military caps off their heads and waving them in the air. In their hands they carried children’s guns with which they shot down the birds standing on the branches of the trees. They kept pulling crackers out of their pockets, blowing on them with their breath to warm them up and then throwing them on the ground to explode suddenly with loud noises which mingled with the acclamations of the crowd celebrating the Big Feast and the sound of rockets shooting to the sky.

The Imam could be heard delivering his speech, and I stood listening with the others in the balcony reserved for the harem, surrounded by baskets of roses and dancing groups of children dressed like white angels, while the women of the charitable societies stood on either side of me dressed like black crows, clapping their hands in applause every time the Imam stammered and stuttered through a few words. Behind me were the model mothers, widows of the martyred men of the war. The Imam stood high up on the elevated platform with his arms lifted to God. The acclamations of the crowd resounded like shots fired from a gun, and suddenly his rubber face fell down and landed between his feet, so he hid it in the ground. And when I saw what happened I buried my face in my hands and prayed to God and His Prophet that the earth might swallow me up and make me disappear off its surface. Then I prayed to the Lord Christ and His mother the Virgin Mary that I be transformed into a spirit which could fly up in the air without being seen by the eyes of human beings. If I could only go back to my mother and take refuge once again in her womb!

I imagined her waiting for me at the door with her arms held out to me as I ran up the stairs of the old house. She hugs me tightly and whispers in my ear, ‘Why have you been so late in coming, my dear? Where were you all this time?’ she asks.

‘With a stranger over the sea.’

‘But why, my child, why give your life to a stranger who is not from here?’

‘He had a throne with many servants and women slaves, and I was tired of washing plates and of smiling into faces that never smiled at me. I was tired of being the daughter of a man who refused to recognize me.’

And my mother says, ‘But washing plates is much simpler than washing the body of a man after he is deceased, and to be recognized by one’s mother is worth much more than a father’s seal.’

I leave her standing there and run down the old pathway. At the end, next to the church is a small house, and as I knock at the door I can feel my heart beat against my ribs until the door opens to reveal a face I know so well that I can never mistake it for another face. It is the face of Lord Jesus and He too knows me so well that as soon as He opens the door He recognizes me, takes me into His arms and says, ‘Why have you been so long in coming, my dear? Where have you been?’

And I say, ‘I was with my husband, the Imam, overseas.’

‘Do you betray me with that husband of yours, Katie?’ he says.

‘I have never betrayed you, Joseph,’ I say, ‘for when I am with him I love you more every day. When I hold him in my arms I close my eyes and imagine that you are so near to me.’

He says, ‘You have always been my only love, and after you left me I have only loved men or women without breasts who give birth to books instead of children. When I closed my eyes to go to sleep I prayed that love would come to me, but instead what used to come was a coma-like state which brings forgetfulness and loss of memory, but keeps the eyes wide open, a heavy sleep like death which keeps the mind awake, remembering, so that I am unable to forget you, or the Lord Messiah, or my name, or my body when it was whole without a wound.’

I ask, ‘What wound?’ But he holds me in his arms, silent as a tomb.

And when I look into the round mirror hanging above the bed I see the Imam holding me tight in his arms, and instead of one man there are now a hundred men all holding me in their embrace, so I hold him in my arms as though I am giving myself to all the men in the world, and my hand creeps down under his trousers to touch his wound where it hurts him after they made him pure, and it smells like dry old wood, and I say to him, ‘At one time you smelt green, like the newborn branch of a tree.’

‘That was in the days when you used to love me,’ he says, ‘but then you left me to go and look for gold, and so I followed you and did the same as you did.’