Dervish Bahlul had described everything so precisely that Burhan Abdallah could see time’s realities parade before him like an endless video loop. Happy moments turned into catastrophes, and loyal relationships led to betrayals. Heroism was forgotten after the end of the celebration, and beauty withered in its bloom. Burhan Abdallah pondered the events that were described in the book before him and then was overwhelmed by a kind of tremor in his body: “The only history is the history of victims.”
He felt a deep and overwhelming affection for Dervish Bahlul, whose feet had traveled the earth since the first man appeared on earth. He would seek out his trembling victims and place a firm hand on their brows, before crossing out their names. “My God, how this man has suffered! How do you suppose he has endured all that?” He kept reading till he reached the time when spring settled over Chuqor and death ended. There were no longer any victims. Evil suddenly disappeared from the world and the demons whispering in people’s hearts vanished as innocence triumphed—just as saints, prophets, and the proponents of the great ideologies had predicted. Burhan Abdallah thought, “Perhaps it’s been a return to the sacred beginning. Perhaps this has been a return to paradise, from which Adam and Eve were expelled. What of it? Mankind has paid an exorbitant price already in order to make their way to their lost paradise.”
He quickly turned through the pages of the book to discover whether the spring that had settled over Chuqor would last eternally. What mattered to him now was to learn the ending of the story he was reading. He felt that way at times when reading detective stories. When he could not bear to wait to discover the criminal’s identity, he would jump to the final chapter in which the story’s complication is resolved. He would normally lose his desire to read the chapters he had skipped, however, because once he had learned the secret, the other details were superfluous.
Unlike other books, this book did not have a last chapter. Instead, there was a blank chapter that lasted to the end. It began with one word: “suddenly.” Then there was nothing but white paper. Burhan Abdallah felt rather exasperated. “What a cunning dervish! He’s left everything open-ended. He must have kept another ledger, one that contains the story’s final section.” He felt anxious as he looked time and again at the word “suddenly,” which stirred terror in his heart. Everything could end suddenly. A man might die suddenly. Suddenly the earth might slip from its orbit and plunge into the depths of existence. He did not attribute much significance to chance occurrences but knew that chance was a realistic possibility, one with which even the computer had to reckon. This time it was not a question of chance, but of a destiny recorded since eternity. It was a destiny that he was sorry to see blank, as if it were an incomplete act.
Suddenly he watched the final chapter fill with the events it had been missing. He stood there appalled. He could scarcely believe his eyes. Chuqor had turned into ruins where owls hooted, into remnants of a past glory that time had so effectively erased that it might never have existed. Lions, wolves, hyenas, and jackals prowled around the caves where the last survivors had retreated and tore apart the corpses that had been thrown into alleyways once people even lost the desire to bury their dead.
He heard a resounding voice blow through a horn to announce the end of the false spring. Burhan Abdallah himself was in danger, but the pain affecting his heart made him forget even the peril threatening him. From behind the boulders where he sought shelter, he saw little green creatures coming from everywhere. They were attacking the dead city and torching even its stones. These creatures wore military uniforms with stars adorning the shoulders. He thought, “Perhaps spring has not totally abandoned all the city.” They were, however, bombarding the city with atomic and chemical weapons. With tears in his eyes, he asked himself, “Why are they doing that? Everything’s over. What can they want?”
He noticed that a man, who was almost naked and resembled a wild creature with his unkempt hair, was creeping toward him between the rubble on hands and knees. Burhan was startled, but the man reassured him, “They pass here every day, burning everything they find.”
Burhan Abdallah felt he had to ask the man, “But who are they?”
In a voice like a howl, the man replied, “What did you say? It’s clear you’re a stranger to this city.”
Burhan Abdallah said, “I’ve spent forty-six years in exile. That’s all there is to it.”
As he crept away, the man said, “They are Gog and Magog. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. You should never have returned to this accursed city.”
Burhan Abdallah continued to lurk behind the boulders, not daring even to lift his head. A pack of wolves had crossed the Chuqor community behind him, and beneath a leaning light post he watched the two stone lions from the garden rip apart a donkey that seemed to have lost its owner. “That was a false spring—the one I saw,” he realized. “Perhaps I didn’t see anything at all. Perhaps that was all a fantasy I created during my long nights in exile.” Like a feverish invalid, he began repeating, “I should never have returned. I should never have listened to my three angels. I was deceived the moment I clung to a hope derived from fantasy. I’ve spent my whole life waiting for a false spring. Yes, there was a spring, but it was dead on arrival, perhaps because the three angels were late, perhaps the time that spring spent sealed inside their hemp sacks ruined it. Oh, these men for whom I’ve spent my whole life waiting.” The earth shook under his feet with a terrifying and resounding concussion, which was followed by a storm of red dust that drilled into his face. In the distance, he saw an appalling mass of fire that rose toward the clouds. They must have dropped a new atomic bomb somewhere.
He raised his head toward the heavens and almost went crazy. He began to repeat without interruption, “That can’t be. It seems impossible.” He saw the sun rise from the west, but this appeared to be a different sun, a sick one that reminded a person that everything is ephemeral.
To stay clear of the hyenas and wolves that were ravaging corpses with their fangs, he dragged his exhausted body to shelter amid the ruins, which were crawling with vipers, fire ants, and reptiles. What frightened him most, however, was the possibility of being discovered by Gog and Magog’s soldiers, who were slaying all the human beings they found or stringing them up and leaving them bound beside the road. Burhan Abdallah did not know where to go. There was no longer anyone in Chuqor. Many people must have hidden in holes, caves, and cellars. He would have to return home. “I’ll hide there and wait.” He laughed at the idea of sitting there and waiting. What could he wait for this time? In the past, the distant past, he had always waited for the arrival of his three angels. It was certainly true that they had been delayed for a long time, but he had definitely not lost hope that they would arrive. What could he wait for now? In a voice that was almost a scream, Burhan exclaimed, “No one! No one at all!”
While the raging wind—sweeping with it empty containers that had been tossed in the deserted streets—howled, raved, and ripped apart palm stalks and thorny plants that had been torn up by their roots, Burhan cast a final look—into space, which was stained a dark yellow—at the sickly sun rising from the west. That was more than he could bear. “I didn’t believe I would see this day too.” Conditions resembled those of Judgment Day, which everyone assumed would eventually come, but he did not wish to acknowledge this. He was not so much afraid of death as terrified by the thought that he would witness the death of a world he loved so much it made him ill.
“Everything can’t end like this in a single blast. In that case, everything will have lost its meaning.”
He dragged himself to the tower where Khidir Musa and his two companions had lived. Perhaps they could calm his spirit. They might disclose to him the secret behind this horrific ending, which had taken him by surprise. Perhaps God has been toying with mankind. He remembered that Einstein once said, “God does not play dice.” What does He play then? Someone must play dice: all these galaxies, the innumerable suns, stars, moons, cosmic expanses, the
se existential explosions, these endless endings and these beginnings without a beginning, these braggart human beings, who are born and then die, these leaders who believe in glory, heroes who fasten medals to their breasts, children who are stillborn or who die as infants, the male lovers and passionate women, the troubled generations and the happy ones, these cities and villages, the Arabs and the Jews, the primates that leap from tree to tree, these clouds, thunder and lightning—perhaps they all possess some meaning. Perhaps they have none. Perhaps the meaning they possess is to have no meaning. Burhan Abdallah was breathing with difficulty and stood at the brink of what appeared to be death, that unique stupor. So—like a fish a hand had pulled from the water—he opened his mouth and whispered to himself, “Definitely not. I never play dice.”
Time had shaken the tower and left it a deserted, historic ruin. The walls were breaking apart, the stairs were demolished, and many of the stones had slipped loose and lay piled in corners. Dog shit and empty Coca-Cola cans, the remains of old newspapers and magazines that no one remembered, books of prayers and magic in manuscripts that would turn to dust the moment a person touched them, rats gnawing stone and iron, spider webs, black or small yellow scorpions standing in front of their holes…. The effects of time, moisture, and termites, which had tunneled through it vertically and horizontally, had eroded the door of the room in the tower. For this reason, he had barely shoved the door with his foot when it fell into the room, creating a cloud of dust that filled the space and a clamor that caused swarms of owls and bats to panic and soar through the gap of the door that had opened before them, as some of the bats bumped into him.
He opened his eyes to find himself confronted by three skeletons, tossed in a corner of the room. He stood there frozen. He could scarcely focus on anything. He felt like saying something but his mouth remained closed. Then he found himself stuttering for the first time in his life: “No, no, no, no, tha, tha, that’s not possible. Th, th, this isn’t true.” He felt a violent desire to laugh, remembering a friend who always stuttered whenever he talked about a girl he loved. Burhan’s thoughts stuttered too: “Bbbbbuttttt he didn’t, didn’t, didn’t see corpsesssss, llllike me.” Burhan Abdallah felt feverish. He left the tower, descending to the street, having forgotten his stuttering.
He continued to slip between the deserted alleys, which seemed covered in ashes, and glimpsed women, men, and children who were hiding behind boulders or inside the ruins of their former homes—like ghosts that were frightened even of themselves. Artillery fire could be heard resounding in the distance as the wind howled like a procession of women garbed in black, and the sun went dark, even though it was still midday. Then creation was lit up by a brilliant light. He raised his head and saw three prodigious stars. These fiery agglomerations thundered in the sky, approaching each other, as though a supernatural force were attracting them, and then collided with a massive reverberation. The earth shook beneath him, and he was hurled into emptiness before falling again to the ground, where he lay, stretched out on his back, unable to rise. The sky started to rain down drops of flaming fire, as people began to flee from one place to another, bowing their heads as they screamed in unison, almost weeping:
“Oh, when?
“Will the Absent One appear?
“Oh, when?”
He thought, “O my God, they’re still waiting for their Absent Mahdi who will restore order to the universe.” He stared at the heavens again. He saw moons rise only to be flung roaring into existential gloom. Stars exploded, suns were extinguished, formidable galaxies collided, and days and nights passed in succession. He smiled like a child when he witnessed these fiery, existential games. Then he muttered, “Someone is playing somewhere.”
He knew that there would be some time of Reckoning in the final act of this drama, followed by a definitive and terrifying ending in which gloom settled over the steppes of hoarfrost and ice. He knew that the terrestrial sphere would begin its long death agony some day in the distant, mysterious future, but what concerned him was not its timing but its meaning. It did not matter whether the end came now or in a billion years. “If this planet is doomed to die and go out at the end of the journey, then what meaning remains for glory, love, suffering, and passion? For warriors making their way through the deserts and across the ice? For interrogators whipping their victims and leaders delivering orations? What meaning is left for the work of geniuses, adventurous explorers, and the fatigue of inventors?” He would sit and weep at times. “We can’t lose everything in a throw of the dice.” He would always console himself, however: “Millions of years separate me from the end. There’s a lot of time for life. If there’s no other meaning in this world, then life itself is the meaning, even if it is doomed to die and even if life is hopeless.” But here Judgment Day had arrived prematurely, perhaps because someone had miscalculated a move or perhaps because people like him had been waiting for springtime to descend upon the earth, even if it was a false spring, a spring that ended like any other one.
He moved between the ruins or hid behind the charred trunks of trees, fearful that the soldiers of Gog and Magog would seize him and cut out his tongue or take him away with them. He had contracted a fever, and dreams and images passed through his head, roaring as if they were a river sweeping everything away with it: Khidir Musa herding a flock of sheep behind him along the Kudamm in Berlin and crossing with them to Knightsbridge in London; Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri haggling with a prostitute who leaned her wrist on a windowsill overlooking the street in Pigalle, in Paris; Hameed Nylon placing a rifle on his shoulder and traversing the dark forests of Bolivia; combatant Ansar landing on Mount Uhud from a zeppelin and rescuing the besieged Prophet; Mirage, Sukhoi, MiG, Skyhawk, and Tupolev fighter jets soaring overhead and bombing the Sasanian Persians’ elephants at the Battle of al-Qadisiya while pursued by processions of nomadic Arabs coming from the Empty Quarter of the Arabian peninsula; wolves tearing to bits mothers left in the wasteland in Abadan; traitors placing their parents in flaming tar skiffs and throwing them into the Tigris.
Burhan Abdallah leaned against a tree. “No, I’ll never give in.” Then he took a nap, as he had so often done during his lengthy exile. He was resting on a sofa, gazing at the screen of the decrepit television that allowed him to forget what was being presented before him because he was so involved in seeing personal images he saw on the screen of his imagination. Occasionally the dividing lines between the two screens dissolved and the images merged. Then the following day he would tell his friends about events that had not actually occurred.
He awoke to the ruckus of drums being played to a military beat. Trumpets were being blown, and there was a heavy tramp of footsteps. He raised his head cautiously to find a soccer fleld, which was crowded with crosses, placed one next to the other. The little green soldiers were dancing with delight as if celebrants at an ancient Bacchanalia. Along the length of the playing fleld, little green women stood applauding the soldiers and handing out bonbons to the troops. Removing his hat, which he grasped with his hand, Burhan Abdallah proceeded to crawl closer to the pagan playing fleld. He adjusted his spectacles and stared for a time at the bodies nailed to the crosses. His body was wracked by fevers and terror. He felt nauseous. They were all there on their crosses: Khidir Musa, whose skeleton he had seen in the tower; Hameed Nylon, who had returned from the woods; Dalli Ihsan, who had been killed and who had changed into a ball of fire; Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, whom they had brought in his gold wheelchair; his own father, Abdallah, who had continued wearing an oil worker’s uniform to the end; Abbas Bahlawan, who still had his revolver at his waist; the thief Mahmud al-Arabi, who had not relinquished his keys; Dada Hijri, who had perhaps been drafting a poem that no one would know. They were gazing at him and smiling, as if they wished to tell him, “Farewell.”
His body shook once more when he saw something that made him burst into tears. They were there as well. He bowed his head: “That can’t be true.” He removed his
glasses and wiped them with the bottom of his shirt. Then he replaced them. “How is that possible?” His three old angels were dancing in front of the green troops of Gog and Magog. They had turned into devils with erect horns and with tails that dragged behind them. This was a shock he had never expected. He was furious with himself and repeated, “What an ass I’ve been! I’ve spent my whole life following angels that are nothing but persuasive devils.” He was grief-stricken. The moment the truth was revealed, however, he felt a new force that he had never possessed at any time in his life: freedom.
He dragged himself once more to the ruins where the other human beings had taken refuge. Even his fear had left him, but he was choked with emotions he had never known before. Amid the debris of his room, which had been hit by bolts of lightning, Burhan Abdallah discovered the book that Dervish Bahlul had given him. He dusted it off. Everything in it had been erased. Nothing was left but blank pages devoid of words. He said, “It’s just a white notebook like any other.” He thought he would take it with him to use as a diary but declared, “There are lots of notebooks. What would I do with it?” En route, he tossed it in a blazing oven, “What was once a ledger for death will go up in flames.” He thought about another ledger for life but corrected himself, observing, “What need does life have for ledgers? It is itself the greatest ledger.” He ended up in an alley filled with people. They were frightened, but one of them recognized him, perhaps on account of his gray hat and prescription glasses, and cried out, “The Absent One has returned!” They crowded around, asking him, “Were you really absent and have you returned?” Burhan said, “Yes, I’ve returned after forty-six years in exile.” He had scarcely uttered these words when he saw that other people were gathering around and touching him. Then, in a fury of temporary insanity, they exploded with a chant in unison:
The Last of the Angels Page 31
