The Fall of the Imam (3 page)

There I lay, fast asleep. My face, peering out of an opening in the white wrappings, was a pale patch in the night, and my chest rose and fell with the deep breathing of a child. One of my hands crept out of its sleeve, palm upwards to the sky as though soliciting the mercy of the powers on high.

She took off her black woollen shawl and wrapped it carefully around me. My hand touched her finger and quickly curled around it, holding tight, refusing to let go. She abandoned it to my tiny grasp, left it to stay there for a moment as long as the endless night, as long as a mother’s sigh when she leaves her child behind. Then she started to withdraw it very slowly, as though she was draining the life blood from my heart little by little. The moment her flesh parted from my flesh, I shivered and woke up. I saw her standing upright, looking down at me, her face in the sky, and her eyes like stars. Then she turned round and walked away. I saw her from the back, straight as a spear, walking with a long stride, neither fast nor slow, her arms swinging free as the air. The distance between us kept growing, but her body seemed no smaller. It moved further and further away without changing, until all at once she was gone.

I heard the sound of bullets being fired from a gun, one after another in quick succession. I saw him fall, and as he fell I watched the face before me change slowly into another face, into a face I had never seen before. A strange face, neither human nor animal; a face that belonged not to a man, or to a father, or to an Imam. It was one of those terrible faces remembered from my childhood nightmares, or from the tales told to me by an old grandmother who suckled me with breast milk and stories about devils and djinns. Like all the other children in the home, I had never seen my real grandmother. We knew nothing about our fathers, or our mothers, or our grandmothers. We were called the children of God, and I was called Bint Allah, the Daughter of God. I had never seen God face to face, yet I thought He was my father, and that my mother was His wife.

In my sleep I often used to dream of my mother. In my dream, she stands in an open space, waiting for God. The night is dark and everyone has gone to bed, but there she is standing alone, in the same place where I always find her. I am lying on the ground and can see her face high up above me, cut out against the sky. Her eyes shine with light and her voice reaches me like a whisper carried by the wind. I hear her call out softly, ‘Bint Allah, come here.’ I get out of bed and walk on my bare feet towards the voice. It reaches me from a distance, sounding muffled as though separated from me by a door. I open the door and look out. There is no one. I walk down a long corridor and still there is no one. At the end is another door, but nearby I discover an open window, which looks out on to a courtyard. I jump up to the window-sill in one leap, slip out and walk along the edge of a wall. I hold out my arms in front of me. My body keeps its balance well and I do not falter, moving as easily and as swiftly as a feather. My feet scarcely touch the ground, for I am like a spirit without a body. At the end of the wall I jump off into the courtyard, landing on all fours like a cat, crouching silently without moving, straining my ears to catch any sound in the dark. Little by little I begin to hear something like whispers coming from behind a closed door. The door is made of wood and is painted bright green, like a field of young wheat. Light filters through a crack in the wood.

‘Who stands there in the dark?’

‘It’s me.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Bint Allah.’

‘Come here, Bint Allah.’

I enter a small room. It is almost dark inside. Behind the door stands a woman, the wife of the guard. She is dressed in a black robe which is wide around her body, and she wears a white kerchief knotted over her head. She stretches out her hands to me. They are brown as earth, and her eyes shine like stars in the night. Her chest heaves up and down with a sobbing breath. Her skin is smooth and her breasts are full of milk. I can see her hold the dark erect nipple between her fingers and squeeze the pain out of it, drop by drop, like tiny pearls of milk or sap oozing from dry bark. The small crib beside her is empty, and on the other side sleeps her husband, snoring loudly. His face is webbed in wrinkles and his dark beard is rolled up over his chin under a thin worn blanket. He opens his eyes suddenly and stares at me as I nestle in her arms. I can see his bloodshot eyes fix themselves for a long moment on my face before he shouts out in a loud voice, ‘This is not my child. Whose child is she?’

The woman answers, ‘She is Bint Allah.’

He lifts his hand high up in the air and brings it down on her face with all his might. ‘You adulterous whore! You daughter of an adulterous bitch!’ he screams.

I open my eyes in the dark. In the beds I see rows of children lifting their heads to look around. Near my bed lies a girl of my age whose name is Nemat Allah. I call her sister. She has black silky hair, and it lies on her pillow above the bed cover. Her eyes are wide open and she gasps with silent sobs. Then the gasping stops and I can hear her whisper softly, ‘Bint Allah, come here.’

I get out of bed and lie down beside her. She winds her arms around me, and her body starts to shake again. ‘I am afraid,’ she says.

Afraid of what?’

‘I am afraid of God.’

‘Why?’

‘I do not know. Are you not afraid of God?’

‘I am Bint Allah, the Daughter of God, so why should I be afraid of Him? Why should I be afraid of my father?’ She holds me tight, and I can hear her heart beat. Her bosom is round and smooth like a mother’s and we sleep in each other’s arms until dawn.

Before sunrise she wakes me up. ‘Bint Allah, go back to your bed.’ Orders in the home are strict. A bell rings when it is time to sleep, and no one is allowed to leave their bed. If two children are caught together the punishment is severe. At the back of the courtyard is a punishment cell, and terrible stories are told about what happens there. In front of the door stands a big tall man. His bald head shines in the light, his broad face is covered in hair, and he has narrow, deep-set eyes. In his right hand he holds a long stick, and in his left hand he fingers a rosary of yellow beads.

At night my sister wraps her arms around me. She weeps silently for a long time, then, stifling her sobs and wiping her tears with the back of her hand, she begins to speak. She tells me how God visited her mother in a dream and how after that she became pregnant with child like the Virgin Mary. When her belly grew big she put on a wide flowing robe in order to hide what had happened. One night, when everyone was fast asleep, she gave birth to her child; but the eyes of the Imam, always wide awake, saw everything. They took her away, tied her with a rope of hemp, put her in an open space and started to stone her to death, one stone after the other, without haste, until she died.

I hold Nemat Allah tight in my arms. After a little while I say, ‘But if God was the cause, why did they stone your mother to death?’ She does not know what to answer and is silent. I keep wondering about all this, but am overcome by sleep, and so my questions remain unanswered. No sooner have I fallen asleep than I start to dream.

In the dream I see God in the form of a man. He stands in front of a door with his right hand hidden behind his back. His face is covered with hair, but his head has no hair at all and it shines in the light. I keep my eyes tightly closed and my body shivers under the bed covers. The man moves his hand out from behind his back, raises it up in the air in front of my eyes and opens his fingers, showing me that he carries no stick. His voice is gentle when he speaks. ‘Bint Allah, come here.’ I can feel his hand touch me. It is big and caressing, and the palm has the feel of a mother’s bosom. I lay my head on his chest and shut my eyes, as he caresses my face. Slowly his hand moves down to my breasts, then to my belly. My body is traversed with a strange spasm, like a deep shaking from within. I can hear his voice whisper in my ears, ‘Don’t be afraid, Bint Allah. I am God and you will give birth to your son the Christ.’

I wake up suddenly, shaking with fright. It is still dark. My body is bathed in sweat, smells of God, of holiness. My hand moves down, feeling its way over my swollen belly. Something moves inside me and under my hand I can feel a pulse beating in unison with my heart. The night is black, and dawn has not yet started to break through. Slowly a faint light starts to creep through the shutters, and above my head the high ceiling is turning grey. I can see the lampshade hanging down from it at the end of a long wire. The wire is black with flies, and the flies are fast asleep. The children have not awakened yet, and their heads are jutting out from under the bed covers like black insects. Near me Nemat Allah is asleep, and her long tresses hide her face with a mask of black silk. I close my eyes, trying to fall asleep again, but the holy smell of God lingers in my nose, and His voice echoes in my ears like a soft whispering.

He hides His hand behind His back, but I no longer fear him. I know that He does not carry a stick, and that His hand is as gentle and caressing as the hand of my mother. He moves up closer to me, advancing with a slow step. I see His face appearing under the light, but it is no longer the same face as it was before. Now the eyes are red and burn with a fierce light. He stretches out his long arm towards me, and I can feel the iron grasp of his thick fingers around my neck. I try to wrench myself free and run, but my body seems tied to the ground. I open my mouth to call out to my mother but there is no sound, as though my voice is paralysed. Suddenly there is a tremendous noise. It reverberates in my eardrum, and shakes the heavens above. I am seized with fright wondering what it can be. Rockets shooting to the sky in celebration of the Big Feast? Voices raised in a great hallelujah? Or ... people screaming?

It was a noise like the sound of shots fired from a gun in quick succession. The body of the Imam collapsed before my eyes, but his face remained suspended in the sky, all lit up like the sun. Then a sound of thunder echoed in the air and suddenly there was no light, only nuclear radiation. The face of the Imam slowly bowed towards the earth, becoming darker and darker until it could no longer be distinguished from the ground on which it came to rest. Everything happened within the space of seconds, yet time slowed down from the moment he stood on the platform with his face lit up like that of God in heaven, until he collapsed with a face as livid as the Devil. I had never met the Devil in person, and could only remember what he looked like in my dreams or in the stories told by the old grandmother in the orphanage. We used to gather around her in a circle and listen to her tales about devils and djinns until a bell rang ordering us to bed. Those were the days in the children’s home when I knew neither my mother nor my father. But in my sleep I used to see God come and go. He had two faces, one smooth and gentle like the bosom of my mother, and the other covered in hair and rather fierce-looking. He always appeared in the form of a man whom the children called Baba.

Baba was the first man I ever saw in my life. All of a sudden we would find him standing in front of us, and the next moment, just as suddenly, he would disappear. I never saw him coming in or going out through the door. He would be there, standing with his legs straddled in the middle of the courtyard like someone who has risen through a hole in the earth or fallen from the sky. He had a big beard, and his face was covered with hair. It had a fixed expression as though its muscles never moved. Yet his head was bald and the skin over it shone every time the sunlight fell where he stood. His white shirt remained wide open at the neck, allowing the black bristly hair covering his chest to protrude. He had a broad chest with big rib-bones, and his breast muscles were always powerfully tensed, leaving no place for soft flesh under the skin. Over each breast was a nipple, all black and rough and shrivelled like some old ugly fruit showing under the thin tissue of his shirt. Around his waist he wore a broad belt fastened so tightly that it pushed his belly up against the muscles of his back. His small buttocks looked hard under the stretched leather of his trousers, and his bow legs stood out prominently below the knees; but his thighs were narrow like those of a tiger, rising upwards to meet under the belly over a small lemon-like swelling hanging down in between.

His right hand always held a stick, while his left hand was closed most of the time around the arm of some small girl he was dragging off to the punishment cell. After shutting the door on her, he would return to the courtyard, sit on a cane chair, and call out to the children. We gathered around him, sitting in a circle on wooden benches, and the lesson on religious catechism would begin. He recited in a slow, throaty voice, holding the stick in one hand and the Holy Book of God in the other. Say I Seek Refuge in the Lord of the Breaking Day. From the Mischief of Things Created. From the Mischief of Darkness When it Envelops. From the Mischief of Those Blowing into the Embers of Occult Magic. After a while my eyes closed and I went to sleep. I dreamed of those who blow into the embers of Occult Magic. They were black eagles hovering in the sky over my head.

I awoke to his voice as he roared, ‘What is the punishment for theft?’

And the children answered in one breath, ‘Cutting off the hand.’

‘What is the punishment for adultery?’

They shouted back in chorus, ‘Stoning until death.’

Then everything was silent. We could hear each other breathing. Nemat Allah was beside me on the bench. I could see her staring at me with eyes big enough to contain all the fear in the world. She whispered, ‘What is adultery?’