Bensalem Himmich - The Theocrat

Throughout this period there remained just one black mark on Mas‘ud’s record, namely itinerant peddlers. How was he supposed to keep track of them and impose his unique punishment for any fraudulent practices when they acted just like Bedouin, touring the markets and operating on a ‘take the money and run’ policy? How could he have any impact on their control when they had organized themselves to the extent of employing young men on the make who would act as informants and sentinels? Even suppose that he did go after them, how could he arrest them all when they scattered to the four winds and took refuge in the maze of alleyways and culs-de-sac? Faced with this dilemma, Mas‘ud thought long and hard. The solution he adopted involved making use of shop owners who were aggravated enough to be glad to take revenge on these roving peddlers. The way it worked was that Mas‘ud allowed these merchants to chase the peddlers every time they set up stalls to ply their trade, and then block their escape routes till Mas‘ud and his guards could get there and arrest them.

One day at about noon a huge din could be heard in the Ruwasin market; a fierce row had broken out between these two factions. Mas‘ud soon arrived with his entourage to see what had happened and assess the consequences. There had been a serious fight involving clubs, truncheons, and slingshots, but neither side had come out on top. The brawl continued, and, when some of the combatants started unsheathing swords, Mas‘ud ordered his guards to put an end to the brawl and to the shop owners’ advantage, to confiscate the peddlers’ goods, and force them to run away. No sooner had the order been executed than the peddlers were seen running for their lives in total panic. A group of them found themselves being chased by the hulking frame of Mas‘ud, emitting hideous grunts as he ran. After a considerable time and great expenditure of energy, he only managed to grab hold of one peddler who had run out of breath and was very scrawny in any case. Mas‘ud seized this poor wretch by the feet, dragged him to the closest dark alley, and started to strip off his clothes and tackle his backside. He had hardly started the operation before he sprang back in amazement.

“Good God,” he exclaimed, “are you a woman?”

The woman proceeded to pull up her trousers and adjust her clothing. “Yes, I’m a woman,” she replied in a tone of outraged defiance. “During the day I sell cheeses and sweetmeats. I’m a woman, and I use my feminity to earn a living at night. What’s the matter with you, man-fucker?! Here’s my ass, so bring all your mighty power to bear on it if you can. Alternatively here’s my cunt. Fuck that, and you’ll end up with syphilis. Even with your disgusting body I can see you standing there in front of me quivering all over, when I’m just a grain of mustard seed, a mere feather tossed by the wind. So go back and tell your master al-Hakim all about me, how impudent and defiant I was. Either that, or I’ll tell him how impotent you are.”

Mas‘ud stood up with a heavy heart and turned away to leave. The woman chased after him with a whole stream of taunts. The only way he found to stop her was to give her a sudden and vicious blow to the head which knocked her to the ground unconscious. With that Mas‘ud made his way back to his quarters in the palace, morose and distracted.

The next day, al-Hakim returned from the Muqattam Hills to hear what had happened in the Ruwasin market, except the details about Mas‘ud’s treatment of the woman. Al-Hakim summoned the registrar and ordered him to give the peddlers back their goods and to threaten them with death if they returned to the markets rather than sticking to alleyways and city outskirts. He ordered Mas‘ud to be fetched.

‘“Abdallah,” he told his slave in joyful greeting, “I’ve now perused the inspectors’ reports regarding your good work in the markets, and I’m very pleased. Today I’m promoting you and expanding your purview to certain other cities and fortresses in my dominions. Your next assignment will be Alexandria. You’ll find lots of swindlers, racketeers, and forgers there. Take a week’s vacation to prepare yourself. Now go back to your bed, and may God give you strength!”

By this time Mas‘ud had come to feel a strange sense of guilt and remorse as his sensory memory recalled the varieties of backside and anus he had penetrated and the different ways in which his victims had expressed their pain, their pleas, and their screams of agony. All this haunted him in his dreams, as it played itself in front of his closed eyes like a never-ending strip the particular cases of people with narrow anal passages and hemorroids. In recent weeks he had taken to pushing these images out of his mind by trying to stay awake, drinking excessive amounts of coffee, and taking amphetamines. As a direct result he was feeling totally exhausted. The only thing that prevented his condition from becoming very obvious was that every day he swallowed huge amounts of fortifying drugs that al-Hakim bi-Amr Illah’s assistants provided for him. Al-Hakim had decided to send him to Alexandria to carry out exactly the same task on other folk who were duping and swindling customers, and yet he could not even stand the thought; and at the same time he had no other choice apart from the very worst of eventualities and certain death.

On that fateful day when Mas‘ud received al-Hakim’s command, a state of total exhaustion came over his entire body, accompanied by a general debility and chronic insomnia. He lay there dozing occasionally but otherwise awake, progressing from one dreadful nightmare to another that was even worse. Droves of merchants and professionals would appear, each one devising new ways of reviling and poking fun at him; what scared him most was the thought of butchers either castrating or sodomizing him. The only way Mas‘ud found of ridding himself of these appalling visions was to rush around and mouth insane threats that were magnified yet further by shouts and roars. These would resonate so much that even al-Hakim got to hear them. When he asked what they told him that the slave Mas‘ud could see things that they could not; he was fighting legions of demons and other invisible creatures. He seemed to be like one possessed by the very devil. Al-Hakim commanded that he should be fed more almonds and harisa. If he did not recover his normal demeanor, he was to be beaten with sticks in the hope of dispelling his misery and recalcitrance.

But neither force feeding nor beating did anything to improve Mas‘ud’s condition, even a little. He actually began to lose weight. In a single week his body became even skinnier, and his bones started to jut out. People started talking about the way the slave was wasting away, while others were more scabrous in their descriptions of the way he was gradually disappearing from his grain to his sexual organ.

Mas‘ud was completely worn down and mentally deranged, but even so he was forcibly dragged to the markets in order to carry out the duties expected of him. It soon became completely obvious to the guards, the people due for punishment, and the entire merchant population that Mas‘ud had totally lost his potency. Aphrodisiacs no longer worked, nor did words of encouragement. Such was his condition that inevitably he became an object of general ridicule and malice.

Once Mas‘ud’s condition and the loss of his primary asset became obvious, he was confined to a cell close to the palace stables. There he was allowed to sleep in peace with nothing to wrack his nerves. Occasionally he would wake up, eat the scraps of food he was offered, and guffaw in bitter despair.

Running away or of even thinking about it was out of the question! For this slave, it wasn’t the idea of other people’s stares and swords that stirred the fires of hell. For him, hell had sunk its claws deep inside his very self. In fact, he had never experienced wars, revolutions, or natural disasters; if he had, the impact of his demise might have been easier to bear. As it was, the people around him were indolent and kept up a monotonous routine that did not give him the opportunity to reflect or to raise painful questions and suspicions. No indeed, this particular brand of hell forced him to recall terrifying incidents. Every day these memories would cause him yet more grief, and his attempts to shut them out would only make things worse. He would choke, then beg to be released from this world, with all its backsides and anuses that continued to plague him with their bloody wounds. For his accursed body all he craved was total annihilation. So it came to the point when Mas‘ud used to extend his neck and beg people to use their swords and lances to cut of his head and put an end to his misery. He was so insistent in this request that he began to imagine that his head had actually been severed. That made him more apathetic, and he stopped eating. He kept threatening guards with the foul stench of his corpse if they did not agree to put him in a coffin and bury him properly.