The Fall of the Imam (7 page)

The Imam had the ability to be in two places at the same time, but no one except the Bodyguard knew his secret. The Imam would whisper something in his ear. Very often it was an order to replace him in some meeting or celebration, or in one of the sessions of the Advisory Council, or during the Friday prayer at the mosque, or in an official visit to some overseas country.

Thus on many occasions he preceded important personalities of State and Ministers, walking at a short distance in front of them, yet no one had the slightest suspicion that he was not the Imam. In fact the Bodyguard himself had ended up by believing that he was really the Imam. Even if at moments a fleeting doubt happened to cross his mind, it was soon dispelled by the acclamations of the crowd. He would step ahead at the exact place required, wearing the rubber face of the Imam, his face lifted to the sky with pride, as though he was absorbed in the issues of the time. On certain days he could be seen receiving ambassadors, or experts, or visitors from foreign countries, with a serene calm. At the inauguration of a new orphanage he cut the coloured ribbon with a pair of silver scissors presented to him on a platter. At meetings of the Advisory Council he remained just as silent as the Imam, listening to the reports made by the ministers. Every now and then he would nod his head in understanding, or his eyes would stray upwards as though he was lost in deep thought. No one noticed that he was not thinking of anything, that his mind had abandoned his body on the seat of the Imam and had fled to the ground floor. There he took off his rubber face, rubbed his nose flattened by the pressure of the other nose he always wore, and slipped out of the back door of the palace with the servants, hiding himself under his real face to avoid discovery. Once outside he jumped into a bus before it stopped, then jumped out of it before the ticket collector came up to where he stood, and walked leisurely down the narrow lanes, kicking at the pebbles with his pointed shoes until he reached the house where he was going.

His mother received him with a warm embrace, winding her arms tightly around him. He could recognize the smell of freshly baked bread and dung that clung closely to her clothes.

‘How could you forget your mother for so long, for twenty years or more?’

‘Have twenty years passed since I was here last time? Was I not here yesterday, mother?’

‘He who covers his body with the days is always naked. He who keeps his distance from the crown is always king,’ she said. He sat on her knee and she rocked him up and down, telling him about all the things which had happened since he was last here. ‘This winter all my chickens died of diarrhoea, and your aunt, may God have mercy on her, was taken ill with cholera and expired after a few days. Your uncle went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and never returned. Your female cousin was bitten by a mad dog and immediately after that your father visited me in a dream and said that he was waiting for me up there in Paradise. My son, have you forgotten what you promised me? Where is my ticket to Mecca?’

He buried his head in her bosom. ‘No, mother, it’s not that I have forgotten, but you know how it is with all these problems of being Imam and which seem to be without solution. Allah alone is all powerful and no one but He can do anything. You know, mother, this question of foreign debts and all. Then the struggle between the Great Powers which nobody can stop, and the preparations for a space war. Besides, I’ve had trouble with Hizb al-Shaitan, in fact with almost all its members. They are sons and daughters of fornication, may God punish them with hell-fire. And this pain I feel here in my chest just under your hand.’ Her fingers were hard and cracked with toil but they touched him gently over his wound. It was a deep wound which went right through from his back to his heart. She filled it up with ashes from the mud oven and with coarse grains of coffee, to help it heal quickly, and he went to sleep in her arms, her voice sounding like a distant sob as she sang her sad song.

Her deep strong voice reached him from afar as he stood on the platform wearing the face of the Imam just a moment before his fall. Its tones were wafted to his ears, like a voice in a faraway dream, or like a dream within a dream. Many were the times when in his sleep he had dreamt that he was dreaming. He would awaken in the middle of his dream, then fall asleep again only to dream once more that he was dreaming. In this dream he put on his rubber face and descended the stairs of the palace like someone walking in his sleep. Outside a car was waiting for him. He got into it and it drove him through the streets while he waved to his people. In the meetings of the Advisory Council the ministers would see him as he sat there listening attentively without hearing, shaking his head in understanding without understanding. He scratched his head from time to time as though thinking deeply, lost to what was going on around him.

But he was not thinking, for thinking was not required of those who occupied the post he occupied.

The sound of guns being fired echoed in the air with a deafening noise. Suddenly everything was enveloped in darkness. The blood froze in his veins, for ever since he was a child he had feared the darkness. The acclamations of the crowd and the sound of drums beat the salute to victory. At such moments no one sees the bullet when it is fired from the gun, and no one but he falls to the ground. He alone is the one who dies. His body drops down between his feet, and after a short while it is gone. Nobody sees it go, it just goes, and power is shifted from one to the other as fast as the rubber face is shifted from one face to the other. As for the people, they do not feel that anything has happened, that a change has occurred, for the Imam remains where he is, standing high up on the elevated platform, his head raised to the heavens. The rockets celebrating the Big Feast continue to be fired, and the acclamations continue to resound, filling the air with one great shout: ‘God is with you.’

At a distance my childhood looks as though it was a happy childhood. Time consumes pain and there remains only the joy. Tears of sadness wash the eyes and make them see better than before. I still see my sister’s face, and her eyes shine into my eyes in the dark of night. She takes me in her arms and her bosom is soft and smooth like a mother’s. As for my brother, I carry him around with me wherever I go like the odour of my body. I can smell him in my sweat, in the perfume of my flowers. His body is my body, his flesh is my flesh, his sweat is my sweat. He and I are one, inseparable.

In the nursing school I see myself wearing a white dress, my hair rolled up inside a white cap. I move from one bed to the other like an angel, light as a feather, my feet hardly touching the ground. I am a spirit without body, without substance, a tall and slender shadow passing by. My voice is a whisper, my breathing deep, like a child. My breasts under the bodice of my white tunic are small and defiant and round. I have a small white bed in a big dormitory, and by my side is a wooden drawer with my name, Bint Allah, painted on it. Next to me is my sister Nemat Allah. Her face is thin, her features wan, but when she sees me a light shines in her eyes.

The nursing school was a huge old building with walls which had blackened over time. It was the only school of its kind; only orphans were allowed to apply. Adjoining the nursing school was the military hospital. It had shining, varnished windows and big terraces closed in with glass which overlooked the river. Across the river was another huge construction with a history as old as the history of slavery in our land. Its walls, too, had blackened with time, and year after year so many layers of dust had covered them that they had become the same colour as the earth and looked as though they had risen from its bowels. The windows were high and covered with long bars of iron, like a prison. The eyes of children could be seen as they looked out, shining like stars in a world of night. They were known as the children of God, but the term used in official documents to describe them was illegitimate children.

Behind the children’s home was an open space, where the ground was flat and pale yellow, but at its furthest confines it sloped upwards into a low flat hill covered by cactuses and thorn trees which people were in the habit of calling wild plants because they thought that such plants could only have grown against the will of God. In the shelter of the hill was still another enormous building, its age as old as that of Satan on earth. Its black walls rose so high up in the sky that they pierced through the clouds, defying heaven. Its windows were tall, and covered with long iron bars exactly like the windows of the children’s home. From behind these iron bars one could see the faces of women looking out, their hair gathered in the folds of a handkerchief knotted around their heads, or left to float loosely in the air. Their hair was always long and tangled, matted from lying in bed, and through it crept swarms of lice moving on thread-like legs; yet it shone under the sun with the bright colours of the rainbow. This place was commonly known as the House of Joy, but in the files of the Chief of Security it was referred to as the Prostitutes’ House.

From her window in the nursing school, I could not see the river or the low flat hill behind it. The huge military hospital filled the universe, blocking everything out completely except a small patch of sky which looked down at me from over the top of its walls, and a slender ray of light from the sun which reached me before it set at the end of each day.

I was not allowed to look out of the windows, for the terraces of the military hospital faced the windows of the dormitories where we slept. The army doctors leaned over the balustrades to take a look at the girls below. They smiled or nodded their heads or whistled. On their chests they displayed rows of coloured ribbons, and on their shoulders were shining pieces of metal shaped like stars. Their heads were always covered by a military cap.

At night after the final bell had rung, my sister would lean her head over the edge of the bed and tell me a story about love. Out came the photograph from under her bodice of a man in military uniform. We examined it together in the dim light. He wore his military cap squarely on the head, and on his chest shone a rounded metal disc. The jutting peak of his cap cast a grey shadow over the upper part of his face. It hid the look in his eyes and the shape of his nose. Under his nose was a square moustache carefully trimmed, which reminded me of Hitler. She would kiss the picture, push it quickly back into her bodice close to her heart, and then start to tell me her story all over again.

He had been hit by a bullet in his chest and she stood beside him as he lay in his bed. He called her ‘my tender angel’ and her fingers were gentle over his wound. She spent the nights at his side, and whenever he opened his eyes she was there, standing or sitting close to his bed. If she left him to get some sleep, a single ring of the bell would bring her back to his side. If the bell did not ring she crept back into his room on tiptoe and waited for his eyes to open. Whenever the blankets slipped slightly to one side she set them right. If he was thirsty she gave him something to drink, and if he wished, she read to him before he slept, verses from the Holy Book of God, or items from the newspapers about the war, for those were the only things which interested him. When he spoke to her it was always about the war. He had killed three men, but the fourth had managed to lodge a bullet in his chest and get away under cover of night. On Victory Day the Imam decorated him with a medal for his courage in battle. But for him all this was just a normal thing, for he had been trained to kill even as a child. He had a gun with which he killed the birds in spring as they stood on the branches looking down at him. He steadied the gun against his shoulder, took careful aim at the middle of the head before he pulled the trigger and the bird would drop with a single shot and die on the ground without a quiver.

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.