by Nihad Sirees
Her husband resisted getting a divorce because he claimed to still love her so much that he would even be willing to divorce the secretary if she would come back to him. Lama refused and told him that she was in love with me and that we were planning to get married just as soon as the divorce went through. The fire of jealousy was ignited inside him and he became more and more stubborn. One day he phoned to tell me he wanted to meet. We had coffee in a hotel coffee shop and I tried to persuade him to end the matter amicably, that this was in everyone’s best interests, but in return he threatened me by saying that he could orchestrate a terrible situation for me with the regime if I did not stay away from his wife. He was hinting at his second wife’s uncle’s influence but I scoffed and said, “Fuck you, and fuck the Party.” He warned me that I would pay dearly for what I had just said and took off. When I told Lama what had happened she laughed for a long time and I laughed too. To this day, whenever we’re together, we still laugh whenever the Party is mentioned.
Actually the security services summoned me more than once for questioning about the insult I had directed toward the Party. I confessed to uttering that word but said that I hated having to use it and that I only said it because the businessman had provoked me. The businessman had filed an ambiguous report, citing the insult without clarifying whether I had directed it at the Leader personally or just the Party in general. The security services became very interested in this dust-up: Had I meant just the Party or both the Leader and the Party together? There’s a difference, of course. Insulting the Leader can land a person in prison for twenty years whereas insulting the Party is no major crime. I insisted that I had meant the Party alone because the secretary’s uncle is an influential delegate. The second time I reported to see them at nine a.m., and I waited for hours on end until an interrogator came to deal with me. As soon as one investigator finished up they would transfer me to another. Every one of them would add his signature to the file because they all had to investigate the matter individually from start to finish. They would ask me, “How can an intellectual and a writer use such a word?” The funny thing about the whole situation was that the word got repeated so many times at headquarters they started calling me “Mr. Fuck” and every investigator who looked into the subject became “Inspector Fuck.” One time an investigator asked me how to spell the word, whether it was written with a “c” or with a “k.”
I apologize to the reader for repeating this word but “Fuck-Gate” really wore me out, the obvious hilarity notwithstanding. I would go see Lama as soon as I left the mukhabarat building. My poor dear would be waiting for me by the window, on tenterhooks, exposing herself to the blazing sunlight. As soon as she saw me coming she would hurry to open the door and hold me for fifteen minutes, trembling. When I finally managed to peel myself away from her, I would take her to bed and undress her. Once we were spent Lama would calmly take me to the bathroom, giggling, and I would let her wash my body because she loved doing that so much. In the end we would head back to bed soaking wet so I could tell her all about what had happened to me there and we would have a good laugh about it.
We used to take revenge on our situation through laughter but laughter is accursed chattering that only exposes us and gets us into uncomfortable situations. One time we were at a wake for a friend of ours, a writer, who had passed away after a long battle with illness. Lama and I went because we felt, justifiably so, how horrible it was to lose this friend whom Lama had visited at his house every day in order to help care for him. Like a nurse she would wipe his body down with cologne, change his clothes and bedsheets and feed him by hand. When the illness got really bad we were forced to move him to the public hospital, where Lama insisted on staying with him, sleeping on chairs in the waiting room; she would wake up and find herself covered in tears. When he died I had to stay with her to calm her down. She was not strong enough to keep herself from crying. This woman would often cry at the mere sight of a miserable cat but her mood turned around 180 degrees at the wake the writers’ union held on the occasion of the arbaeen of our friend the writer.
The Leader’s father was killed at the age of eighty-two when his private plane was returning to the homeland after a vacation in Monte Carlo and crashed. It was a horrible accident that shook the entire nation and brought unhappiness upon its citizens; music and comedy were banned from the media and every meeting had to begin with a standing moment of silence in order to honor the soul of “the old man.” At the wake, the Lieutenant Colonel came up to the front and asked everyone to stand for a moment of silence (everybody assumed he was asking us to stand in order to honor the soul of our beloved friend and writer so we all got up before he could even finish his sentence) and intoned, “to honor the soul of the Leader’s father.”
We had just stood up when we realized we were standing out of respect for the soul of the Leader’s father and not the soul of our friend. I got upset and glowered. As the minute turned into several minutes and the matter did not seem to concern the Leader, I could tell, even with my eyes shut, that Lama was beginning to vibrate. I assumed she was crying but when I looked over I saw she was trying to keep herself from laughing. She was red in the face and shaking and had covered her mouth with her hand. The virus of laughter spread to me too and I started to suck hard on the inner walls of my mouth until I suppressed it. Luckily the moment of silence only lasted 180 seconds. Once we were asked to be seated Lama kneeled down between the rows of chairs to avoid blurting out that wave of laughter that had washed over her. Thankfully the situation ended well.
The speakers started taking their turns up at the dais, praising the departed, his humanity, his good manners and his spirit. But they added something else as well, claiming that the departed had been a devoted Party member. They must have mentioned the Party a dozen times and every time she heard the Party mentioned Lama would cover her mouth and drop her head and shake, and I would immediately follow her lead and do the same. Remembering that word, she would think about how the mention of it had brought me in to be questioned at the security branch. We had to leave before the wake was over because when Lama gets giggly nobody can stop her from laughing. In fact, as soon as we walked out the door she burst out laughing as the people watched us in bewilderment.
I hope the reader now understands why the military security agent said what I have been told hundreds of times over the past five years: You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Some people use the word treasonous to describe me, just as that Comrade did more than two hours ago, when I dared to stand up for the young man as they beat him senseless. They may tell me I’m a traitor but I’m not ashamed for refusing to stage a contest for short stories and poetry about the Leader on my television show or for telling Lama’s ex-husband “Fuck the Party.”
CHAPTER FOUR
AFTER HAVING WALKED under the blazing sun all the way from the neighborhood where my mother lives, I felt a refreshing coolness as soon as I set foot inside Lama’s building. Public transportation was not running, even in neighborhoods far away from the flow of the enormous human stream that is the march. They had cut back services, as always, assuming that everyone is either at the march or at home watching it on TV. Buses sat parked with their doors shut; drivers had been hauled off to the celebrations. There must have been hundreds of them, parked in several rows on the streets, waiting until the march was finished so they could take all the rural folk back to their villages and towns whence they had been brought early this morning.
As I cooled off I felt slightly invigorated, though I failed to recover the peace of mind I had lost this morning as Lama’s neighbors’ television sets blared at unusually high levels to satisfy the Comrades and the goons, turned up so loud that the women and children could not help but watch the marching masses even when they were hunkered down in their own homes. As I climbed the steps, and the whole way over there in fact, I could hear the shouting and the roar of the masses—a perpetual state of agitation I could not quite comprehend. Through their
doors I could hear the building’s residents commenting enthusiastically about what they saw.
Lama opened the door for me and I walked straight into hell. The flat was sweltering. She was wearing nothing but a bikini, reviving herself with water from time to time. She was moist with sweat and her skin glistened. She seemed edgy, on the verge of breaking down into tears; to keep her from doing so I embraced her reassuringly, holding her close. She told me she had started getting nervous after trying to call me several times. She hadn’t imagined that I would dare to go outside on such a terrible day. She could have stayed like that for an hour, as we held each other behind the door; it calmed her down … but I pulled away, took her by the hand and helped her onto the couch, sitting down beside her in front of the TV. I was fascinated to know what it was that could send the masses into such hysterics. She nearly choked me with her arms, burying her face in my chest while I watched the screen.
The masses had been transformed from a patchwork of multiple currents, each one led by someone chanting through a handheld megaphone as the group repeated the same chant, into a single torrent spanning several miles. The camera could not capture the full extent of the stream. The square was packed with people and pictures of the Leader. The agglomeration swelled as those human waves surged like the sea, forming an endless undulating chain. Many people had climbed up trees and streetlights and traffic lights, filling the balconies and the rooftops as the roar reached a crescendo alongside the military march and the voices of the commentators and the shouting of the masses. As I noticed everyone’s attention being drawn to the balconies in the hotel overlooking the square, something happened, and the people began madly shouting and hollering. I peered closer and saw a ghost resembling the Leader appear every once in a while in one of the windows overlooking the square … slowing down a bit, just enough so the masses could recognize him, and then disappearing. Whenever his ghost appeared the people would holler and scream. As they hollered, the camera would carefully zoom in on the people’s faces in one particular area before panning to another. When the ghost of the Leader appeared they would thrust their hands up toward him and shout at the top of their lungs—mouths open as wide as possible, neck veins bulging, nerves on edge, faces damp with sweat as they turned red (and oh, what sweat it was, as if the masses had just emerged from the ocean). All of a sudden, a bodyguard came out onto the balcony holding a statue of the Leader high above his head, displaying it in all directions as the masses hollered relentlessly, their shouts reaching farther and farther, like the call of a bird as it flies away. This statue presentation lasted for five minutes until he disappeared and the wave of shouting died down bit by bit until it was nearly extinguished. But the Leader had no intention of letting the masses calm down. Just then his ghost appeared from behind the window and the shouting started back up all over again.
With her arms wrapped around me Lama whispered that I was neglecting her.
“Sweetie.”
“Yes, Lama?”
“What’s so important about that circus? I’ve never known you to be so interested.”
I stroked her hair so she would let me keep watching for a few more minutes. Pretending to be asleep, she whispered, “Turn it off … please.”
“Just a minute, my love. I’m right here. Just one minute.”
“I’m bored.”
“One more minute.”
“Your clothes are completely soaked with sweat.”
“I’ll take them off in a little while.”
“Do you want me to do it for you?”
Without waiting for a response she started undoing my buttons, drowsily, pressing her nose in close to my body to smell it, as if she were on drugs. I let her do whatever she wanted even as the Leader continued toying with the masses. I wanted to bear witness to this strangest of relationships between the Leader and the masses.
The Leader had become accustomed to playing with the masses, to toying with them. Ordinarily he would be late showing up to a mass convergence or a celebration organized in his honor. Every time the crowd would anticipate his appearance at any moment, except on occasions when he was busy and would send someone else in his stead, turning all the preparations into a waste. Or just the opposite: he might appear at times when he was unexpected. He had made an art out of stunning the people, and he would laugh out loud whenever he saw those signs of awe on people’s faces. One time he sent his youngest son to inaugurate a charity market. The presence of the son is enough to warrant the same kind of pomp and ceremony that calls for masses who will chant the Leader’s name and a brass band and reception by state functionaries. On the day the charity market was inaugurated, the governor had a gift for the little boy, a decorated horse that he could ride and that would bring him joy. The procession arrived, the people chanted and the band started to play a military march as fireworks were set off overhead … and just then the red Mercedes that the son typically rode in stopped and the Leader himself stepped out instead. What a surprise it was, tying everyone’s tongues, but the shock only lasted a few seconds until the Leader was received as he must be, and the absence of the son was forgotten. The Governor presented the Leader with the horse that had been decorated in a manner that would please children, and he accepted it, laughing to his aides.
Meanwhile, on another occasion, to dedicate a water purification facility, the son unexpectedly stepped off the train that the father was supposed to be on. In such moments the Leader toyed with the enormous torrent of the masses in new and previously unheard-of ways. He behaved like a child. What else should one call passing by a window like that, stopping for a moment before disappearing and then dispatching one’s assistants out onto the balcony to show the masses a statue and then pictures of oneself in different outfits?
I made Lama’s task easier by lifting myself up off the couch as she removed my last piece of clothing. At that moment one of the Leader’s assistants came out carrying a model draped in the Leader’s military uniform, adorned with all the medals and badges he had earned, and then proceeded to turn the model in every direction as the state of excitement reached an even higher, unprecedentedly high level. Hands were raised as though they wanted to reach out and touch the uniform. The television producer cut to a shot of scores of young women jumping up and down, screaming and weeping. That scene reminded me of audiences at rock concerts in the West, where teenage girls are struck with comparable hysteria. They do the exact same thing here. Women were reaching out their hands and screaming as tears streamed down their cheeks … some of them held their heads as they screamed.
I stroked Lama’s hair as her mouth wandered around my chest. She now sat on the couch so she could rest her knees as she devoured my body. It was her habit to moan as she caressed me, not the way a woman moans from ecstasy but as though she were complaining, complaining about something with muted moans that emanated from a tortured soul. In that moment I could feel her moaning through her touch but I could not actually hear her because of the loud television. She whispered in my ear and then sucked it in her mouth, “Turn off the television … please.”
“Just a minute, I want to see where this madness ends up.”
“Screw them,” she said, kneading my chest. When I let out a brief laugh she brought her mouth down below, preceded by her hand. She was trying every means to persuade me to switch off the television. But how could I? At that moment they were lowering another one of the Leader’s uniforms with ropes so that the masses could touch it. Hands were outstretched and people started leaping up just to graze its edge. The shouting grew louder and a segment of the masses torqued in a terrifying manner. At one particular moment the uniform was quickly whisked away and as it vanished the Leader himself appeared. Madness reigned over all existence.
A theatrical move that not even Aristotle himself imagined in his Politics, where he elaborated on the deification of the king in the East.
The Greeks became familiar with the nature of rule in the East when Alexander the Great con
quered the lands of Persia in the fourth century BC. After the celebrated conqueror returned to Athens he wanted to emulate the Shahs of Persia by imposing their custom of deifying themselves, specifically in the form of the relationship between ruler and ruled. Whereas that relationship in Athens had been between the ruler and the citizen, in the East it was an expression of the relationship between the god-king and the slave. People in the lands of Persia would prostrate themselves before their kings, and it was this in particular that Alexander the Great wanted to implement in his own country, but he met with the opposition of the Macedonians. The important thing is that the Macedonians refused to deify their kings and to lie down before them, while the people of the East agreed to do so without any discussion. Whether in Persia or Egypt or China, kings were deities and human beings were slaves. This refusal among the Macedonians was the opposite of a state of total acceptance among the inhabitants of the East. As a result tyranny became bound up in the Western mind as the Eastern condition, and for that reason Aristotle went on at great length about Eastern tyranny, describing it and philosophizing about it.
Human beings in the East are happy slaves, to the point that Hegel believed: “In the East only one individual is free: the despot.” It follows that whosoever is not a despot must be a slave. Aristotle advised his student Alexander to adhere to two styles in governing the lands extending from the East to the West: think of human beings in Macedonia as citizens and consider Asians slaves. Therefore, the people of Persia were made to lie prostrate before Alexander the Great while those outside of Asia were exempted from doing so. He minted money using the word shah to describe himself in Persia, even more specifically, “The Lion Slayer.” Matters degenerated still further after that as kingship—as it was called—became firmly implanted in the Hellenistic world and the shah grew unfettered, becoming the lawgiver and a leader more powerful than the army and the highest judicial authority; omniscient, he behaved however he wished, giving whatever orders he desired and so forth. At some point the West became afflicted with tyranny. Its origin: the East.
