The Fall of the Imam

by Nawal El Saadawi

  ‘There is no way of getting into Paradise without a pass,’ he said.

  I stood there, waiting for a long time under the hot sun, until my bare head felt like an oven and it was almost time for the plane to leave, when I noticed that near the door there was a willow tree. I asked Radwan to give me one of its leaves so that I could go quickly back to the Prophet and get a pass on it, but he said, ‘I cannot let anything out of Paradise except with the permission of His High Majesty.’

  ‘If He sees me He will know me at once,’ I said, ‘for in the world we were together all the time. I had many supporters in Hizb Allah and innumerable friends inside the country and abroad, and many of them were kings and presidents and great leaders, and when I died they all walked at my funeral. It was really an awe-inspiring thing to see. Did you not see the picture in Newsweek?’

  ‘Never heard of Newsweek.’

  I said, ‘Then you certainly know neither the great men of the world, nor the Great Powers.’

  The Mother’s Vigil

  The noises echoed like a deep silence as I stood with my bare head under the scorching sun. In my chest I felt a sharp pain, like a wound or a hole penetrating through to my heart. The door of the other world was still closed, while the first, second, third, and fourth worlds continued very much as usual without me, and the man standing on the platform receiving the acclamations of the crowd was not me but someone else. The rockets of the Feast were still soaring up into the sky and the door-keeper of Paradise was still examining my passport, his eyes peering at my photograph from under his dark glasses as he asked me one question after another. I explained to him that I was carrying a recommendation from the Prophet and that I wanted to see Allah. He asked me whether I had an appointment and I said no, but if He saw me He would receive me at once. He enquired whether the object of meeting God was something official or private.

  ‘Official,’ I said.

  ‘What is the official question which brings you here?’ At this I lapsed into silence, not knowing what to answer. ‘Official things are not considered a secret,’ he muttered after some time, looking askance at me from under his dark glasses, reminding me of the Chief of Security when he used to interfere in things which did not concern him.

  He left me standing at the door for a long time and, taking off the telephone receiver, plunged into a long whispering conversation with some woman at the other end of the line, every now and then bursting into loud laughter but careful always to address her using masculine pronouns. I kept my silence, not wanting to spoil his mood. When he had finished he noticed that I continued to stand there. He said, ‘You’re still here?’

  ‘I implore you, let me meet Him,’ I said.

  ‘Why do you insist on meeting Him?’ he repeated again.

  ‘I want to ask Him to postpone my death for a year,’ I said.

  ‘A whole year!’ he exclaimed. ‘Really, you exaggerate, say a month or a couple of months at most.’

  ‘Master Radwan,’ I said, ‘one month is not enough to rearm the army, pay back our debts, and restore the morale of our people after the defeat. I do not want a year because I’m still interested in the pleasures of life or the frills of the world. I want it in order to serve God and the cause of the nation.’

  Just then the telephone rang and he started a conversation with another woman, but his tone this time was sharp and peremptory and he ended it quickly, so I realized she was his legal wife. Before the telephone had time to ring again I said, ‘I am still awaiting your instructions, Master Radwan.’

  By this time he had become absorbed in the papers on his desk. He lifted his eyes from them and looked at me from under his dark glasses for a long moment, then said, ‘Drop in tomorrow.’

  But my previous experience with security guards now came to my rescue. I took something out of my pocket, and handing it over to him said, ‘Take this double gift to your Master and ask Him to meet me today, for I have no time, and my plane is waiting for me.’

  He pocketed the gift, looked at his watch and said, ‘You only have a few minutes to catch your plane, and so it’s better for you if you leave immediately, but I will send you a notification by post if you leave me your address.’ I gave a look of doubt in his direction but then retreated, remembering that he was our Master Radwan and could not possibly be lying. Since he had promised, he would certainly do what he had said. So I left him my address and went off to the airport, but deep within me was the certitude that he was never going to send me anything.

  At this point I reached the limits of despair and I slackened my pace, seized with the feeling that I no longer cared if I missed my plane. I sat down, overcome by exhaustion, and no sooner had I laid my head on the ground than I fell asleep. As a result I neither heard the sound of the plane when it landed nor did I hear it when it took off. I woke up with the firm conviction that I should expect nothing since Radwan would certainly not send me the letter despite his promises, and even if I saw him coming towards me with a letter in his hand I should not expect it to be for me. In fact, even if it turned out to be for me I should consider it a mere accident in which something had gone wrong in God’s calculations, so that if Radwan did come to me with the letter, rather than holding out my hand to take it I should tell him to continue on his way, since the letter was certainly not meant for me but for someone else. I could no longer see God addressing a letter to me since I knew I did not deserve it, and at this thought I smiled with a calm contentment, indifferent now to everything, even to the idea of meeting God. I said to myself: God, all I really want is a rightful compensation, neither more nor less, since I was the one who had the courage to proclaim a firm intention to apply the laws of Shari’a and to do everything in my power to ensure that Your precepts were executed in their entirety, including enforcement of the maximum punishment for adultery and theft, and throwing all alcoholic drinks into the waters of the river. Not one of those who try to ingratiate themselves with You, who whisper soft words in Your ear and throw meaningful glances in Your direction, has been bold enough to take the stand I took, not one of them has stood up for You as I did, or has applied Your Shari’a the way I did.

  I put my face between my hands and tears started from my eyes at these thoughts, so that I did not hear the voice which spoke in loud imperious tones from behind me and which said, ‘Stand up and raise your arms above your head.’ I refrained from turning round, for I realized that no one would speak to me in such commanding tones unless his rank was higher than mine. I stood up at once, raising my hands above my head, expecting the blow to come from behind at any moment, but instead the voice ordered me to turn around. I found it difficult to believe that anyone seeing his enemy from the back would give him the chance to turn around and face him, since assassination from the back is certainly easier than if it is done from the front. This order to turn around could only signify contempt, and if contempt for an ordinary man is the worst insult, then how should it be met if the object of contempt is the Imam in person? I stood my ground, refusing to turn around and face the voice. It was better to end up an assassinated Imam rather than to become an Imam of diminished stature, so I kept my feet planted firmly on the ground with my arms lifted high in the air above my head, then I threw myself headlong to the ground with a valiant smile on my face like a warrior caring little about life or its worldly desires, ready to meet death at any moment.

  The rustle of tree leaves and the croaking of frogs were like joyful music in my ears, and the night breeze was cool and refreshing, carrying with it the smell of the sea. There I lay, steadfast as a rock, unbending, refusing to move, or to run, or to pant. I had plenty of time, for there was no longer anything important or unimportant in my life, anything I was afraid of missing. I no longer felt pain or despair, no longer cared, no longer thought of Hizb Allah or Hizb al-Shaitan, no longer saw images go through my head except that of myself as a child nursing at my mother’s breast with the warm milk running gently down my mouth. Suddenly I choked, then ga
sped, opening my mouth wide and closing it several times like a fish out of water, beating the air with my arms and legs. My face was turning blue as I choked more and more, as though at any moment I would suffocate and die, leaving the world without an Imam, without a representative of God on earth to deal with the affairs of our world. But my mother gave me a hard slap on the back, expelling the milk from my air passages, making the blood flow back to my face and awareness flow back to my mind so that I noticed her face in front of me, and suddenly my memory returned and I remembered not seeing her at all in twenty years.

  I rose to my feet, pressed my hand over the wound to stop it from bleeding, and walked along the old pathway which I knew so well and could never mistake. I knocked on the old dark wooden door of her house, and it opened with the creaking noise of a water wheel. I could hear the sole of her foot tread over the floor as she moved up behind the door, and her voice, which I could never mistake for another voice, came to my ears from afar, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me,’ I said, and I could hear her heart beat. Her breathing was hard, and her rough hand shook as she opened the door. Her tears were a white mist over the eyes, her lids were without lashes, her back was old and bowed. Twenty years had gone. Then, she had had lashes which were dense and black and long, and a back as straight as a spear.

  She put her arms around me, and her tears wet the expensive wool of my official suit. ‘Twenty years, my son, twenty years since I last saw you,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve had so much to do, mother, so many problems to deal with, and all of them so difficult to solve that God alone, praise be to Him, can find a solution.’

  ‘Your face looks so pale’, she said, ‘that it is as though you haven’t had a decent meal in twenty years.’

  She went to the kitchen, moving with the brisk pace and the straight back of bygone days, her feet flying over the stone floor as though her body had grown light once more. She came back through the kitchen door, her eyes brimming over with happiness, looking at me through dark thick lashes as she carried a tray of pastry and honey and fresh morning milk in her hands. She came up to me where I sat on the old divan near the window, just as I used to sit as a child, watching the stars and seeing God up in the clouds looking down on me with a face like my father. I could hear the beat of her heart, see the shine in her eyes, feel the trembling of her hands under the tray, shaking the plates. She had only three steps to go and her heart went round and round with happiness, and the world was a merry-go-round on which she rode, and now there was only one step to go, and I could see her trying to make the step, trying to move her leg, but it would not move. She stood in front of me, not more than an arm’s length away, and I saw her drop to the floor. I stretched out my hand to hold her up but it would not move. I held out my arms to try and embrace her, but the distance between us seemed to have grown as though we were moving all the time in opposite directions.

  The Latest Wife Meets the Illegitimate Daughter

  I was not in a hurry to see him sent off in the box. True, he was dead, but his being there gave me the chance to have some kind of dialogue with him. When he was alive there was never any dialogue between us, although he wrote article after article about communication through dialogue. He would be silent all the time or talking all the time, with nothing between. He heard only himself and saw only himself, and always as a picture, either in the newspaper framed in a box or on a tomb of marble. The pen was held always in his right hand and his head was held always with his left hand, as though his brain had to be protected carefully, and yet the writing would not come either with or without pain, like a monthly indisposition which refuses to flow as it should. In the summer he sat drinking wine and swallowing peppered beans, and in winter he stretched himself out in the sun, emitting one yawn after the other until he had rid himself of the fumes around his mind and recovered consciousness. He sat at his desk on the top storey of the biggest building in town, shuffling through the papers in front of him and examining the photographs taken of the Imam and him at top-level meetings, or in special sessions of the Advisory Council and Parliament, or during celebrations and festivities, or at contests for choosing beauty queens or model female martyrs, or at seasonal fashion shows, or during the distribution of prizes to the members of Hizb Allah or Hizb al-Shaitan on Literature and Arts Day. Or he stood in the first row at public meetings, under the admiring glances showered on him from the balcony of the harem by the respected wives of state personalities, widows of martyrs, model mothers, and women presidents of charitable societies, all gathered for the occasion around the wife of the Imam. Her smooth-skinned hand, blazing with diamonds in the sunlight, proffered itself to him, held the Prize of Finest Literature and a Certificate of Good Morals and Manners by the tips of her fingers, while the small plump hands around her applauded delicately, fluttering like a volley of pigeons, and the square bodies dressed in mourning black balanced themselves on the tops of high-heeled shoes, and the hearts beating under the ribs seemed to repeat, God, the nation, the Imam.

  The telephone on his desk never stopped ringing. When it rang he gave me his back, lifted the receiver, and whispered into the wires for hour after hour. After he hung up he said, ‘It is not permitted for a legal wife to surprise her husband in his office like the Chief of Security does.’

  I laughed loudly and said, ‘It was not my intention to surprise you, but it is not permitted that a legal wife refrain from passing by her legal husband while on her way to meet her lover.’

  He turned round in the swivel chair to face me with his whole body, and when he lifted up his eyes to look at me I could see them shining with lust. He desired me more, the more I desired someone else, and I could feel his eyes fastened on me, but I looked the other way. At night he tried in vain to possess me, so he took hold of his pen and tried to write, but failed to write anything, and in the morning when he opened the newspaper he found the same article published for the hundredth or the thousandth time. His face framed in the box was his old face, as old as Adam, peace be on him. Failure invaded him through every pore like sweat going in the wrong direction, and I could see him struggling against it like a fly in a plate of honey. He wiped his face with a handkerchief and gave me a smile as though overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness. Then he said, ‘I am attainted by writing, like a man attainted by disease, and writing kills just like love.’

  But I replied, ‘Writing does not kill. Nothing kills but the lack of a real consciousness, and it is not love that kills but its absence.’

  I could see him look at me with eyes full of jealousy. Deep inside he hoped his consciousness would return to him so that he could write, and deep inside he wished that he could love like I did, so that life would return to him after it had left him behind. The smile on his face remained fixed, and I realized that he had hidden his sadness in the heart until death. I used to hear him laughing loudly all the time and thought him incapable of sadness, and I left him alone in his room to write; but he did not write, and in the morning I saw his article filling a whole page of the newspaper with his picture framed in a box at the top, and I looked at it thinking it was his new face, but I realized it was the old one and that there had been no change.

  I lifted my head and saw her face, pale and thin, with black eyes like two stars shining in the night. ‘Who are you?’ I said.

  ‘I am his daughter,’ she said.

  ‘But I am his legal wife, and he had no daughter,’ I said.

  ‘He ran away from my mother and refused to recognize me as his child.’

  ‘You are his illegitimate daughter, then,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and when she had said it my eyes retreated before her eyes so far that they hit against my body, shaking it deeply, so that my brain was shaken with it and my heart and consciousness came back, making me realize that he was a body in a box and that she was a young virgin, and that she and I were the same in many ways, for she stood on two legs, not on four, and so did I; and she had two arms an
d two hands and each hand had five fingers and she held her hand out to me and bared her breast before me without fear. So I held my hand out to her and our hands met over his body, lying in the box, and when they met my heart shivered, and she held my hand in her hand with a firm grasp, and I held her hand in my hand, and it was the small hand of a child the size of my palm, and it was warm, as warm as my body and as warm as my heart. Then our four arms moved towards each other, following our hands in an embrace, and the embrace was close so that our bodies followed our arms and body touched body, leaving no space.

  I said, ‘Where have you been and when were you born and are you still alive?’

  She remained silent, answering nothing, just looking at me with eyes big enough to contain all the sadness of the world. Then, walking slowly over to the window, she looked out over the universe, opening her arms as though calling out to God or to a mother or a father. Her look fastened itself on the picture set in a frame carved on the box, then swung upwards to the sky over the arches of victory, the domes of churches, and the minarets of mosques, and down again to the earth, the streets, the houses, the shops with people drinking glasses of canned juice, children wearing their new clothes for the Feast and flying coloured balloons which rose up in the air to the sky, floating under the sun accompanied by the cries of the children, moving with the cool breeze of the river until it met with the cool breeze of the sea. And the voices of the children ran through her body like peals of laughter and she stretched out her arms to embrace their voices, to embrace the sun as though she was its mother.

  I stood watching her as she looked out of the window. I heard her breathe in gasps, like someone stifling her sobs or choking with laughter, and her panting went on as though she had been running for a long time and could not stop. I could hear her heart beating, and she held her hand over the wound cutting deep into her flesh below the left breast. Her face was white, almost bloodless, her eyes dry without a tear, her pupils black, shining like seeing holes in the sky at night. I heard her say in a whispering voice like the rustle of leaves, ‘I did not cry out when I felt the knife go through my back. I turned around, trying to see where it came from. After a while I stood up again, pressing my hand over the wound to stop the bleeding, then walked, holding my shoulders upright, looking at the sun above me. I went through the streets, between row upon row of closed windows and closed doors, and stopped in front of the only door which was open. Written on the outside were the words “House of Joy”. I said to myself: This is the door which leads to God. I asked about my mother, for I had not seen her since the day I was born, and they told me that God had taken her away. So I thought, if I find God, then I will find my mother, and I started to walk in my sleep with my arms stretched out in front of me, looking for her in the dark of night. I had never seen God face to face except in dreams, and in the orphanage they used to call me Bint Allah, and when I looked over the high wall I could see the dome of the church and the light of the minaret high up at the top of the mosque. The guardian of the mosque told me that God had neither sons nor daughters, and the guardian of the dome told me that God was the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and that no one had ever heard of Bint Allah.