The Fall of the Imam

by Nawal El Saadawi

  When Love was Blind

  I lived in the ecstasy of love with closed eyes, unable to see him. I felt my heart grow within me, big like the disc of the sun. My body was a mollusc opening its lips with desire, the sea air playing with my senses, his voice echoing like a soft whisper in my ears. It came to me from a distance, like the gentle voice of a mother calling to me. The stars were like diamonds in the night. But I still walked in line with the other nurses, bearing my title of Perfect Servant. When victory was celebrated I still shouted in unison with them, ‘Glory to God, to our country, and to our one and only Imam.’ Carried away by love and a burning enthusiasm I forgot that my sisters had been sacrificed on the altar of love and that my brother had gone to the front never to return. I said to myself, love is life, not death, and to defend my country is a part of love.

  At the warfront I advanced in the front lines carrying my gun on my shoulder, aiming carefully at the enemy, ready to die at any moment. But at night my companions and I ran as fast as we could, and once we started to run we never stopped. I ran on and on and then jumped into a trench to hide. Then I started to run again until I reached a trench to hide. Then I started to run again until I reached a trench once more. Then, rising out of the depths of the earth, I continued to run on and on. In the dark I glimpsed the face of the enemy. There could be no mistake at all. I held my gun against my shoulder, took careful aim at a spot midway between his eyes, and pulled the trigger. His face fell off his body and landed on the ground, and after that I could hear them chasing me, for their shoes made a clinking sound. I thought they were the enemy so I continued to run. But there, where the hill slopes down between the river and the sea, I came to a halt. Here was a place where I felt I could be safe. I knew the ground, knew the odour of the trees, and the water flowing down. I walked slowly, and as I took deep breaths of the air I could hear their footsteps treading on the ground. I said to myself, they are my friends, they are the soldiers of my country led by the Chief of Security, and he brings with him the decoration of merit bestowed upon me for bravery by the Imam. When they struck me in the back with something, I turned around to face them, overcome with surprise. ‘Why do you aim your bullets at me? Did I not kill our country’s enemy?’

  They said, ‘You killed our country’s friend.’

  ‘But until yesterday he was an enemy,’ I said.

  ‘That was yesterday. Today it’s not the same,’ they said.

  Together in the Trench

  Her eyes were big and black, big and black enough to capture all the wonder in the world. They looked around her in the night, watched a single star in the infinite sky hurtling down at the speed of light with a sound like thunder. It dropped to the surface of the earth and exploded like a huge ball of fire, spreading out into a sea of flames before her eyes. Now she could not tell day from night, for the fire had gone out and there were only clouds of black smoke with the sharp smell of dust creeping up her nose. Under the palm of her right hand was her gun, and with her left hand she clasped his fingers tight. She heard his voice say quietly, ‘You fired your gun at him and he has fallen to the ground. Look.’

  She lifted her head over the top of the trench and looked around but could see nothing. The clouds of smoke were as dense as night, and there was not a single light anywhere. She could not even see his face. She said, ‘I cannot see,’ and he said, ‘Neither can I.’ So she stared into the darkness for some time until she glimpsed him in the trench standing by her side. He still held his finger on the trigger of his gun, and he still held its muzzle pointing to the sky.

  He said, ‘One of them has fallen, but there are others still alive.’ In the darkness she saw his arm stretch out to her with a piece of folded paper in his hand. ‘If I die, take this letter to my mother.’

  She whispered, ‘Who is your mother?’

  And he said, ‘My mother lives close to the orphanage in the House of Joy.’

  She realized at once that it was Fadl Allah speaking to her, that he was still alive, that he walked on the earth, his back straight as a spear, his head raised proudly to the sky. His skin was brown like river silt, his features pale and fine, and his eyes looked straight into other eyes, their gaze unwavering, not slipping to one side or dropping to the ground. They shone in wonder, like a child seeing the world for the first time, and yet their steadiness was that of a man not to be taken by surprise.

  She said, ‘I am Bint Allah. Can you see me in the dark?’ And now it dawned on him that all the time he had known that it was her, her face, her eyes, the way she walked, the fragrance of her hair.

  He said, ‘And Nemat Allah?’

  ‘Nemat Allah died of love.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Love for me is life. I do not want to die.’

  She took him in her arms and held him tight. ‘What have you written in your letter?’

  ‘I have written to say that you should not be sad for me, my mother. I have not seen you since I was born, and I have not been to visit you in the House of Joy. But you should not be sad, my mother. Dying for my country means that I have lived for you. So forgive me for this absence which will last for ever.’

  She closed her eyes and said, ‘I see you as though it was only yesterday when you left. I see you as you are, as you always have been. You have never been absent, you have always been with me.’

  He closed his eyes and rested his head on her breast just as he used to do when still a child, then, suddenly awakening, opened his eyes and looked at her, seeing her as she was now, a woman. They were still in the trench and time had stopped moving. He put his arms around her, and the trench became too narrow for the two of them, too narrow for his arms stretching out to enfold her, too narrow for the vast universe, as vast as the burning disc of the sun up in the heavens. And she too wound her arms around him and the trench was now too narrow for her, for her to hold the universe in her embrace. And when the light revealed them in the trench holding each other, they did not unwind their arms or move apart, but held each other in a long embrace, their bodies slowly merging into one, and the whole world stood still to watch a scene of love, to see two beings changing into one, never to part again, never afraid of the light, never afraid of death, for each of them had known what dying was. Now he and she were gone, lost in one another, dissolved. Now no force in the world could make them part again, neither the noise of guns and rockets all around nor the loud abuse of enemies or the whispers of their friends, nor the orders of the Imam or the Devil or the Chief of Security himself.

  I opened my eyes and found myself standing in the trench alone with the letter folded in my hand. Where was Fadl Allah? I wondered. Where had he disappeared to? Had he died in the war? Had he died in prison? In the distance I could hear their panting breath draw nearer, their feet treading on the ground with the sound of their iron-heeled shoes. So I started to run in the dark of night, trying to save my life. They kept coming after me, their dogs yapping and barking behind them, and I kept on running, now knowing why I was running like this all the time. I had got as far as the spot where the hill begins to rise. It was just before the break of day and I was on the verge of giving them the slip when one of them took aim at me and got me in the back. My body continued to run a few steps, then fell to the ground, but before the letters of the alphabet had disappeared from my mind I said, ‘He was my brother and he was with me in the children’s home.’

  ‘Your sins are without end and shall be counted against you, in this world and in the world to come,’ I heard them say. ‘You are a child of sin and so is he, and his name is not written either on the lists of Hizb Allah or on those of Hizb al-Shaitan.’

  I was running, and the night was black as ever. I could hear them tread with their iron feet as they chased after me. I touched my belly with my hand, feeling for it in the night as I ran. It was round and smooth and loving, warm under my palm. His voice reached me, calling from a distance, sounding like the voice of my mother: ‘Bint Allah, come here.’ He moved
nearer to me, until our bodies almost touched. I wound my arms around him and we locked in a tight embrace.

  A shiver like a strange fever went right through me, deep inside. A voice whispered softly in the night, ‘Fear not, I am God and you shall give birth to Christ.’ It was dark and I was still running with the letter held tightly in my hand. I hid it in my bosom when I heard them panting close behind. I delivered his letter to her. I will risk my life to save it. It is more precious to me than the most precious thing I have. I will risk being stoned to death, like the Virgin Mary who risked her life to give birth to her son, like my mother who died to bring me to the world. When I reached the place where the hill starts to rise upwards, midway between the river and the sea, the smell of the earth came back to me. Suddenly I felt safe, and just at the moment when I could have escaped I stopped to thank God for saving me.

  As I knelt in prayer they hit me in the back. They always struck me from behind, and when I turned around to face them they quickly disappeared. They never looked me in the face. Before I fell to the ground, wounded in the back, I said to myself, ‘My belly was full of the fruit of love when I kneeled on the ground to pray,’ but I heard the Chief of Security say, ‘Love does not exist, only the fruit of sin.’

  Collective Fear

  On the night of the Big Feast, while the drums were beating and the pipes were blowing in celebration of victory, they came upon her body where it lay on the way leading from her house to the front, just where the hill starts to climb midway between the river and the sea. She was lying on her back, and her eyes, wide open and black, looked up at the sky steadfastly. Her face was still and the world was still, as though everything had stopped to look at her there where she lay. Not a hair moved on her head in the night breeze, not a tremor touched the down on the edge of her nose or over her neck. Under the moon her skin, which was as brown as silt, had turned pure white, like that of a maiden in Paradise or a mermaid rising from the sea. Nothing covered her naked body, neither robe nor blouse nor slip. Her nakedness was stark, complete, so revealing of every detail that in death it seemed to speak of sin. For what woman, living or dead, would go stark naked like that? If she took off her veil, she would still keep her robe, and if she took off her robe she would still keep her blouse, and if she took off everything she would still wear a slip.

  But there she lay on her back, as naked as a newborn babe, with her face looking up at the heavens and her brow, like her breast, pure and gentle and serene. But her nipple was hard and erect, definitely black, and between her legs was a deep wound, a gash in the flesh which she did with her hand. At least that was what they said. And since she was hiding her wound, it could only mean she had wounded herself. In other words, she had killed herself. And since it is God alone who gives us life, it is God alone who has the right to kill, to take it back. Therefore to kill oneself is to rebel against the will of God. To kill oneself is a crime. But that was not all. Had she not been found completely naked? Her crime was therefore a double crime, that of killing oneself and that of being naked, for nakedness was a crime, no doubt. Thus she had committed two crimes, to which they added a third, the crime of being an orphan without father or mother. And now that she was dead nothing was left of her except a name composed of three names kept inside a blue folder in the Security Department with an empty line for her father and an empty line for her grandfather and a line in which was written the third name inherited from her mother. Opposite each of her three names were registered the three crimes she had committed: killing, being an orphan, and dying naked.

  It was the night of the Big Feast. A whole year had circled round the earth, making the Feast of the Sacrifice coincide with the Day of Great Victory and giving the people a double occasion to celebrate. So they gathered under the street lamps and sat cross-legged on the ground pushed up against one another. Their features were grey, their faces thin, the bones of their heads almost bare of flesh, their sharp noses prominent. From their mouths they blew out smoke and words, and below the bushy whiskers on their upper lips moved in and out with a coughing sound. Then, gulping down smoke and coughs and words, they closed their mouths and were silent for some time. But tiring of the silence after a while, they sneezed once or twice, peered at the sky cautiously to make sure that all was well, and started to tell stories about kings and gods, and devils and djinns.

  One of them said, ‘Fellows, remember the good old days when we used to worship the sun and the God of Floods?’

  Another commented, ‘Yes, verily, Allah is witness that the God of Floods gave us no peace until we satisfied Him with a virgin girl. He did not like women who were married or widows or women whose husbands had divorced them.’

  Still another said, ‘What cunning he has, fellows.’

  A fourth one commented, ‘All Gods were like that. The soldiers used to go searching from one peasant’s house to the other looking for a virgin girl to take away. The girls would hide on top of the mud oven or under the dry fodder or in the buffalo shed. But the God would remain full of wrath until he had been satisfied with the blood of a virgin.’

  Then someone else added, ‘Not even King Shahrayar at his mightiest was like that.’

  A man who had been silent till then said, ‘Why speak only of King Shahrayar? All kings are like that.’

  Upon which they gulped down their words, their smoke and their saliva with the air, and throwing cautious looks at the door of the Security Department, lapsed into a deep silence, with their bodies reclining and their weight carried on their elbows, digging a small pit in the ground as the days went by. A column of ants crawled slowly towards the pit, misled by their queen leader, for the colour of the elbows made them look as though they were part of the ground on which they rested. But alerted at the last moment that something was wrong and that the elbow could shift its position and squash their bodies, the queen changed her direction and circled round the pointed tip of the elbow where it rested in the hole, and at once the line of ants deviated to one side to make a perfect semicircle before resuming its slow march in a straight line.

  The dark pupils of the men fastened themselves intently on the slow columns of ants swarming over the ground like an army. They struck one palm against the other in great amazement as though they were witnessing something extraordinary, and sucked at their lips noisily to emphasize the astonishment that had seized hold of them. An army of ants led by a queen, by a female! This was certainly the reason for which God had condemned the ants to crawl over their bellies for all time. They kissed their palms, then the back of their hands, in gratitude to Allah for not having made them ants, though they were never able to advance in a straight line even under threat of a big stick held high in the hand of a guard, and even though their leader was a man and not a woman. They sneezed and coughed, arranged small packs of tobacco neatly under the funnel of their smoking pipes, and shifted the weight of their bodies carefully from one elbow to the other. The sound of rockets being fired, the acclamations of the crowds, and the lilt of patriotic songs kept echoing in their ears, reminding them that they were supposed to be celebrating both the Feast of the Sacrifice and Victory Day together.

  But the year circled round the earth once more, and this time they found themselves celebrating the birthday of the Imam on the same day. Thus they had the signal privilege of witnessing three glorious events all being celebrated at the same time, and when they realized all the glory and joy that was theirs, since they were celebrating the Big Feast of the Sacrifice, the Day of Great Victory, and the Birthday of their One and Only Imam together, the night seemed to cast its heavy blanket over their eyes. Their lids became heavy with sleep, their hearts became as heavy as stone, and the embers of their smoking pipes went out. They remembered those among them who had died in the war, or who had been lost and had neither died nor returned from where they went. They remembered those among them who had had a left hand and a right foot cut off, the men and women who had been stoned to death, or put in jail and concentrati
on camps. They remembered the mutilated of the war, the martyrs and the handicapped. They remembered those who had died of radiation as they drank their morning milk, and those who were alive but were going to a certain death by order of the great Mawlanah.

  They inhaled the last whiff from their pipes as the last shred of tobacco was burnt, and the last ember went out. They swallowed their last words with the bitter taste in their mouths, letting them go down their gullets on an empty stomach, preparing to go to bed without food. And just before dropping into a coma-like sleep, they discovered that their bodies had not been reclining on their elbows, neither right nor left, nor had they been held upright by the legs on which they stood, nor been supported by the seats on which they sat; and that in fact they had been neither reclining nor standing nor sitting as they had thought, but crawling on their bellies, zigzagging from one side to the other, unlike ants which tend to move in a straight line, pushing a way through for themselves, making pits with their elbows in each other’s bellies as they fought their way with hands and feet. They discovered that each of them kept straining his neck to see what was happening at the beginning of the column, so that his head almost mounted on the head of whoever was in front of him, yet no one could get a glimpse of anything at all because the column, extending to where the sky and earth met, kept twisting like the spiral of a spring. The black pupils in their eyes were going round and round in a strange panic, and noises seemed to mingle in their ears, so that they could no longer distinguish between the acclamations of the crowd and the crackling noise of rockets, or between the screams of people and their hallelujahs.