Bensalem Himmich - A Muslim Suicide

Juanita, who was by no means a religious person, did not go so far as to live and breathe her life as a complete lie, but she was well aware that life-her own life, at least-was a continuing complaint addressed to a stubborn and comprehensive weakness that she felt. For that reason, she would regularly indulge, according to her own relatives, in a bad habit, one that required of her that she convert all her ideas into utterly hyperbolic and opaque idealizations. She never spoke about the way things actually are, but rather the way it would be nice if they were. She followed this practice all the time as a way of making the world more tolerable for herself and people more acceptable company. However, and more's the pity, there were very few people indeed who appreciated the way she was performing these mental maneuvers and bearing her own existential burden.

Living among Muslims and Jews, Juanita the Christian was like a fish in the sea. Even so, she had nothing to say about the way her fellow Christians were waging war against the cities of Spain or about the various battles and disasters. It was as though she were standing outside the realms of history. If an echo of those events or a breath of wind reached her ears, she would merely arch her eyebrows in amazement or denial, then take refuge within her own internal domain like a suckling animal nestling in its mother's lap.

Juanita could babble on and on; in fact, she was a chatterer par excellence!

If you watched her talking, you would be convinced that, when it came to rolling up sentences and tossing them at people, she was a totally exceptional phenomenon. For her, talking preempted all her other daily needs. If she was interrupted or lost her train of thought, she looked as though she were perched on the edge of a precipice or confronting a potentially crushing danger. Whenever she was forced to be brief, she seemed to be having trouble breathing. In the context of her all-powerful tongue, my own utterances-and you can compare my own situation to that of others-consisted simply of periods, commas, and prepositions, recollection of which is directly connected to things she forgot, times when either she was asking me for a reference of some kind or else arguments were being summarized and collected. Topics discussed ranged from her dog (and what a dog it was!) to dress, jewelry, and powders, moving on to evidence of the existence of jinn, the evil eye, and other trifles, all of them issues that the primary speaker managed to raise to the status of the rarest pearls. When it came to her blatant opposition to male chauvinism, her tongue turned into an industrial torch. One might try to blow on it as hard as possible, throttle it with a sack, or spray it with a hose, but none of them was of the slightest use.

She told me once about a fierce argument she had had with one of her former lovers. "You blame me for talking too much," she had protested, "but you men have had a monopoly on talking for hundreds of years. You have exploited it to oppress and muzzle the rights of my wretched sex. So, if I expatiate now and choose to be more aggressive, that's not just for my own sake. I'm acting as spokesperson for all those compliant, silent women throughout history. I'm taking revenge for all of them."

She went on to tell me that her foe had stammered a reply. "I think you're exaggerating," he said. "But, even if you're right, am I to be punished now for the crimes committed by my ancestors in past generations?"

"Yes," she replied, "it's a terrible account that you have to settle; indeed a colossal debt you all owe. Men of the current generation like you must inevitably participate in the process of settling it."

With that the man lost his temper and declared that from now on he would dispense with her beauty. He preferred to leave her rather than to have to swallow sentence after sentence of her nonstop flow of verbiage. He justified his decision by saying that he had to take pity on his ears and hold firm to the vision he had of the complete, ideal woman.

When female company is involved, one has to keep a close watch on elements of similarity, even when there are obvious differences involved that do not actually cause any change in the basic resemblance. Juanita reminds me of a Muslim woman whose name I have forgotten, someone who was for ever bewailing the way she would eventually be joining herself to God on high-whether dying in bed or through suicide. She decided that the principal reason lay in the sheer paucity of lovers around her, all of which resulted in her tongue's shrinking away to nothing and a forced resort to a life of spinsterdom and isolation. In my now missing manuscript I recorded a passage to the effect that I continued my relationship with her specifically because I was the only person to realize that, where she was concerned, talking was her preferred way of diverting attention from a bitter sense of void that never left her. For her, words were like stones to be hurled at whatever stood in her way. When all the mirrors that enveloped her faded away except for my own, she chose to exempt me from the series of tasks that I could not undertake on my own. It was just a few months later that I received news of her death-may God have mercy on her! Eyewitnesses report that she surrendered her spirit with her mouth open, poised and ready to respond to any and all unexpected and emergency situations…

But back to Juanita. Perhaps I should not be surprised that her own demise closely resembled that of the Muslim woman I have just mentioned. We had been apart for a while, but then I heard that her health was rapidly declining. When I went to pay her a visit, she told me about a dire misfortune that had affected her so badly that she would not even name it for me. When I made inquiries, I discovered that what was involved was the death of her beloved dog, a very rare breed. In fact he was more of a puppy. There were pictures of him on the walls of his own special room, which gave ample evidence of the paeans of praise the dog had earned from cognoscenti of canine beauty.

So did I sympathize? To a certain extent, yes, but only by maintaining an untoward level of silence.

One day, while I was ferreting around in the drawers of my desk, I was amazed to come across some drawings I had made of the dead dog. I had preserved his memory in four different poses: the first-and funniest-showed him peeing or shitting under the tender supervision of his mistress; the other three were more varied and showed my beloved holding on to his leash and hurrying along behind him. While she was still mourning the loss of the dog, she obviously drew great consolation from my gift of these drawings, duly accompanied by a note with some sweet, ringing words.

Those drawings are now hanging here and there in the lady's house, along with many others.

On the day that the period of mourning she had designated came to an end, Juanita surprised me by immediately going out and buying two more dogs of the very same breed, and two others as well, all for a high price. She asked me to cover the total costs involved, including accessories and pedigrees. Showing a generosity worthy of Hatim,* I agreed, but only as a way of saying farewell to her and her dog-filled world, one in which for sure no angels ever trod.

The final hours I spent with this spoiled companion convinced me that I was like some kind of wormy excrescence in a universe where even talking about the money I had spent on the dogs was useless in the face of the hold they had on her. Once the four dogs sensed that I was their enemy and that their mistress no longer welcomed me the same way, they started scaring me off by lunging aggressively toward me and barking in chorus or individually. It felt as though they were forcing me to gather up my possessions and hasten my departure. And that is exactly what happened one night when I went on my way, treading lightly and erasing my traces and even the name "The True One" that Juanita had become accustomed to calling me. But, while I may have decided to stay away, I still could not forget her. Once I had withdrawn, I felt sure that a whole host of successors was waiting in the wings.