The Theocrat: A Modern Arabic Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) (23 page)

“Go forth into the world and flourish among the weak and hungry. It is among such folk that sorrow grows in heart and body, and anger along with them. They are family and support, your primary cause in this world and the next.

“Dear children of mine, I am not the last martyr. Take my place, and make my life a part of your own. Turn your lives into a weapon with which to confront the enemies of love and knowledge. Never submit or throw down your arms, Keep yourselves forever alert and ready for action. Resist, and victory will be yours; resist and resist again with all your might. Should you lose the battle and should chance betray you, you are still the source of inspiration and wonder. You will be the leaders for campaigns yet to come. For your offspring and those of the poor, certain victory is guaranteed. Peace be upon them and you!”

1. Between Humor and Revenge: Cairo Burns

[Al-Hakim] summoned commanders and sergeants. He ordered them to proceed to old Cairo [Fustat] and set it on fire. Anyone they captured was to be killed. … The fighting between slaves and populace lasted for three whole days. Each day al-Hakim used to ride out to the Muqattam Hills, climb the mountain, and look down. From there he could watch the fire and listen to the noise. When he asked about it, he would be told that the slaves were burning and sacking old Cairo. A pained expression would show on his face. “God curse them!” he would say. “Who told them to do that?”

IbnTaghribirdi,

Bright Stars Concerning the Rulers of Egypt and Cairo

In the final months of al-Hakim’s life, his mental breakdowns kept recurring. That forced him to stay within the confines of his own private domain of solitude and depression. “It’s not a throne I’m sitting on,” he kept saying to himself, “but rather a volcano, one that keeps spewing hatred, resentment, and anger.”

During this same period the people’s own volcano was itself spewing out manifestos and pamphlets of wide variety, all of which ridiculed al-Hakim and cast aspersions on his origins, lineage, and deeds. He used to spend long nights either in the Muqattam Hills or perched in the minaret
of his mosque, perusing them over ant] over again. The ones with the biggest impact on his frayed nerves were those that had been widely copied and distributed, petitions that had already been forwarded either to him or to his father, a!-’Aziz, before him. He focused on two of them in particular, confronting their scandalous contents with feverish eyes and stricken heart. The first was a placard that had once been placed right in front of al-’Aziz when he mounted the pulpit in a mosque:

To tyranny and oppression we are inured,

but not to heresy and stupidity.

If you are so gifted with knowledge of the unseen,

pray tell us who wrote this placard.

The second was the famous decree that the ‘Abbasid caliph, al-Qadir, had issued, signed by a number of judges and religious leaders, including some well-known Shi’ites. It cast aspersions on the lineage and doctrine of the Fatimid caliphs. Its key section has this to say:

They trace their descent back to Daysan ibn Sa‘id al-Khuram. They are all colleagues of heretics and sperm of devils. Their doctrine is one whereby they seek access to God, believing themselves to be following God’s injunction to the
ulama’
, namely to serve as a conduit to people at large. They all believe the current ruler in Egypt, Mansur ibn Nizar (known by the name al-Hakim—may God subject him to perdition, disgrace, and exemplary punishment!), to be the son of Mu‘add ibn Isma’il ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Sa‘id—may God grant him no aid!—who. when he came to Tunis was called ‘Ubaydallah and took the title al-Mahdi. He and his vile forebears—God’s curse on him and them!—are pseudo-kharijis; they have no claims to descent from the line of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib. The claim is totally false. They do not even realize that the true descendants of ‘Ali
have always maintained that those Kharijis are all imposters. While the Fatimid pretenders were still in Tunis; this information was already so widely acknowledged in Mecca and Medina that no one could have been taken in by their lies. The current ruler of Egypt and his forebears are infidels, fornicators, liars, and heretics. They believe in the dualist doctrine of the Zoroastrians; they have abrogated legal penalties and legitimized prostitution; they have shed blood and cursed prophets; they have insulted forebears and claimed divine attributes. Written in Rabi‘ al-Akhir 402. This text is signed by a number of people.”
²⁰

These texts, with their widely variant length and level of vitriol, had a dire effect on al-Hakim’s entire mental state; they triggered a sordid retrospective beset by the foulest of memories and a sense of sheer panic. A savage whirlwind took control and dragged him inexorably down to self-destruction. While he was in such a frame of mind, his memory would take him back to a period a quarter of a century earlier when Egyptian humor at his expense had reached some sort of zenith. During a tour of Fustat, people had rigged up a female mummy in his path and covered it with a shawl and veil; in her outstretched hand they put a sealed letter which looked just like a petition requesting redress for some wrongdoing done to her. When al-Hakim took the letter and read it, he almost fell off his donkey, so foul was the abuse directed at him—disgusting language of a kind he had never heard in his life before. He was furious and ordered the woman to be tortured, then burned alive. They told him that she was actually a statue made out of strips of paper. That made him even angrier, but he decided to bide his time before taking revenge on the people of old Cairo for the way they had insulted and poked fun at him.

Had that long awaited opportunity finally come today, I wonder? By now, Egyptians were using houses and rooftops to send each other thousands of letters every day. They filled walls and gateways with slogans
and placards, all of them trying to outdo each other in vituperative eloquence as they reviled al-Hakim’s name.

The people in old Cairo dubbed their campaign against al-Hakim’s tyranny “resistance by sarcasm”; their revolt was called the “papers revolt.” These two tags were widely used; young and old adopted them as a means of expressing their desire for freedom and confrontation.

Al-Hakim found himself at a total loss in confronting this ever widening uprising and the efficiency of its publicity machine. He started blaming his own assistants and started describing his cohorts of young officials as transvestites and tarts’ offspring. He got the idea of wreaking dire punishment on some of them as a kind of object lesson to others. The first of them to get this kind of treatment was Lu’lu’, the police commander. One notable morning, al-Hakim summoned him to his presence and proceeded to lambast him in the foulest terms.

“Lu’lu’, you pearl of disaster and foul stench,” he said, “there you were a slave in irons, and I set you free. You were clanking around in chains, but I freed you and gave you high position. Now you repay me by being utterly incapable of curbing the populace’s rowdiness or quashing the sources of these verbal assaults on holy and sacred institutions. So, just before I kill you, tell me: what are your last words—God shame you?”

In spite of his enormous frame Lu’lu’ looked like a naughty child, quivering with fear. “My lord,” he stuttered, “I ask your protection. Give me a day or two, and I’ll bring you the rebellion’s leaders and those responsible for distributing the leaflets.”

“You’ve already brought me many severed heads,” replied al-Hakim, “but the majority of them were obviously women and children. They have no role in such things.”

“But, my Lord, it is precisely women and children who are the source of the entire problem!”

“But you’ve selected half of them from families that have sworn allegiance to me and are secretly committed to my cause.”

“When rebellion is rife, my lord, it is hard to make distinctions. It’s almost impossible to avoid implicating innocent people.”

“No, no, you piece of black mush, you’re more stupid than a blind woodcutter; more impotent than a barren palm tree, Get out of here. You’ve got just two days to come back with something better than a donkey’s horns!”

A day went by, then another two. Finally Lu’lu’ appeared again before al-Hakim and was forced to kiss the ground. Then he stood up and started laughing.

“By God, my lord,” he said, “it’s a losing battle! No sooner do you grab one leader than he’s replaced by others. You can destroy tons of leaflets and placards, but they’re replaced by double that and more. This kind of struggle is unprecedented. You strike with the sword, and it’s as though you’re hitting water; you raise the level of violence, and all you get back is scoffs and sarcasm. So here’s my neck for the executioners to trim. Now with complete conviction I can simply repeat exactly what it is that placards and mouths keep saying: Death is so common that it’s laughable; so let some of us die so that tyranny can be brought to an end.”

“Cut out his tongue first,” yelled al-Hakim, “then tear him limb from limb. Watch and take note!”

With that he rushed off to the Muqattam Hills, followed by two guards and a young chamber-boy. He had hardly reached his favorite spot before telling the guards to convey orders to his slaves that they were to wash Lu’lu”s body and bury him with full honors in the cemetery. “Now,” he told the boy, “show me your moon.” With that the boy stripped and bowed down before his master who spat in his anus and then left him there, sitting on a rock.

Al-Hakim started pacing up and down inside his residence. He was tormented by grim thoughts that crowded his vision with vivid tableaux filled with unending disaster and concentrated misery. Time itself seemed to have slowed down, as though enmired in an enormous slimy bog. Al-Hakim passed the time by making authoritative gestures or begging for evening to come in anticipation of nightfall. Such was his impatience that he used to go to a nearby outcrop of rock that was covered with fig trees and wild plants.

“You people of Egypt,” he yelled, “so renowned for your tambourines and oily beans, I tell you all, by Him who entrusted me with dominion: I will never deal with you as weakly as that eunuch Lu’lu’. Today you can insult my dignity and high standing, but you’ll eventually come to appreciate my lineage at the point of a sword and my nobility in the expanse of my treasures. Your only means of escape will come when you remind yourselves that my great ancestor, heir of the Prophet, lives among the clouds where his voice is thunder and his whip lightning.”

Al-Hakim now yelled to the young boy to go and bring his historian, Mukhtar al-Misbahi. Within the hour the historian was standing on the outcrop waiting for al-Hakim to recover his consciousness. To avoid the tedium of waiting he recorded a document that included as much as he could understand of al-Hakim’s ruminations as he sat there on the ground:

By my right to incandescence and whirlwind

I who am repressed have need of fires.

By the right of the dragon that sheds its skin and crawls

I shall leave to oblivion and rubbish heaps

My soul’s mournful state

And kindle fire against humor and rebellion.

When the historian could no long follow what al-Hakim was saying, he cleared his throat, then stood in front of al-Hakim and kissed the ground.

“Your august majesty summoned me,” he said, “so here I am answering the call. My paper is open and ready for whatever subtle, glorious words and clear, solid proofs you wish to have faithfully recorded.

“So recite to me, my lord, whatever you wish, and I will use it to ennoble the wheel of time and polish the memory of future generations.”

Al-Hakim now got to his feet and moved toward the historian. He made him stand where he was while he snatched the papers and tore them up, then spoke to him, “Fear God, Mukhtar,” he said in a melancholy tone. “Bow down to Him alone, not to the one you mention. Desist from
elaborate rhetoric; it neither helps nor cures anything. The crisis has now become so great that both history and strategy are useless.”

“May God protect you from all evil, my lord, and save you from every adversity.”

“Very well, Mukhtar! Pray for me as best you can. In these recalcitrant times I only meet people who want to curse and scoff at me. Look at me, my friend! See how I have aged and how the procession has passed me by. Or do you think I’ve been in power too long? Tell me, great sage and officer of endowments, how old am I today?”

The historian looked astonished at what he was hearing. He started counting, using his fingers. “My lord,” he replied hurriedly, “today you’re two months short of thirty-six, no less and no more. At such an age men are at the peak of their capacities.”

“Shrewdest of documenters,” al-Hakim said, “that’s the way it looks on the surface. But my inner age is three times that or more. I’m the only one to feel the impact and suffer its scars. For the most part your papers will never be able to truly capture living realities or the severing of links and hearts. You will only fill your pages with froth and peels.”

“You seem somewhat depressed and caustic tonight, my lord. Shall I send for your doctor and have you sit in violet oil?”

“Neither medicine nor drugs can help me today. The only thing that can alleviate my illness and lighten my mood is fire. My sorrow is too immense to be understood, too enormous to be excused!”

Al-Hakim kept repeating these last words over and over again. At nightfall he suddenly emerged from his trance. With a deep sigh he hurried to his observatory and looked through the glass. “My unlucky star hasn’t risen yet,” he muttered. “How crafty it is!” With that he went into his retreat-house followed by his historian. The two men sat facing each other; between them were two candles that gave off a flickering light. For a long time silence reigned as al-Hakim let thoughts and ideas rage inside him; his mind was totally preoccupied by flashes of vision. He started muttering some of these thoughts, although he seemed somewhat reluctant to reveal them to his historian. “Were I to say what possesses me and shakes my
mind and being, to reveal my private conversations with my Lord and my strange passion for my sister, the sultana, to apply brilliant rhetoric and the ultimate in clarity in order to simplify my message and revelation, I would still never manage to penetrate the circles of my historian’s consciousness and understanding. This historian is a phony esoteric, an opportunist who goes to enormous lengths in his servile flattery!”