Bensalem Himmich - A Muslim Suicide

Once I reached the zawiya, I made my way to the cell of the Meknesi shaykh. I found him stretched out on his bed, so I sat down beside him and offered my greetings. I started telling him about the things I had witnessed at the asylum today, but he was far away and not paying any attention. Sometimes he kept his eyes closed, while at others he kept mumbling things I could not understand. I gave him a shake as though I were waking a sleeping man and made him aware I was there by asking him what was distracting him.

"What's distracting me, you ask?" he replied, staring vacantly at me. "This memorable day, dear man. Its light has made me aware of the sheer futility and uselessness of my life. That woman-may the One who created her and made her so beautiful be praised! If God has indeed willed her to be yours, then you are a really lucky man, really lucky!"

"And here I thought you despised this world," I said.

"No, it's not that. That's not enough to make people sad. How can you despise something you don't even possess? I've watched as the world has expended enormous efforts in shunning me. As a result I've adopted a policy of despising it as a way of laying the blame where it truly belongs and taking my own revenge. Tell me, by God, have those people who are to enter paradise been promised only ugly, deformed women? Or crude matting, patched garments, and bread dipped in lard and water? Or is it that they've been promised something much better and lovelier than that? When we visited that beautiful woman's riyad, I saw images of precisely those things. Today I'm not leaving my cell here. To the extent possible I'm going to fast and pray-my only prayer being that God may speed my journey to paradise and eternal life…"

"Are you going to leave me," I asked jokingly, "before you tell me the second reason?"

"Which second reason, Ibn Dara?" he asked with a frown.

"You only gave me one reason for leaving Meknes for Sabta," I said. "You promised you'd tell me the other one."

"Here I am talking to you about my desire to leave this world," he responded angrily, "and you're asking me about something I've completely forgotten. Are you making fun of me?"

"No, heaven forbid," I said. "And what about the lady's wonderful gift, `Abd al-Kamil?"

"Clothes made of expensive materials whose names I don't even know. If I put them on, people would laugh at me or say I'd stolen them. Here they are, under my coverlet. When I die, put them inside my shroud. Then, when I wake up in paradise, I can put them on and strut about like a peacock. Yes indeed, a peacock. During my lifetime I've suffered enough deprivation and mockery and spent far too long pretending to be scared and poor. It's as though for some reason or other I needed to apologize for being alive and walking around in the midst of other people."

"Paradise is guaranteed to you," I said, trying to keep a chuckle suppressed, "that's for sure."

He clearly found my comment peculiar. "But paradise is reserved for people who are pious and poor," he said. "I'm both, so if I'm not among the very first to get in, then who's it intended for?"

I made a gesture to indicate that I thought he was probably right. Kissing his head, I made my way out, promising to come and see him again soon.

BACK IN MY ROOM I did some routine chores and recorded all the things I had seen and heard during my investigations that day. I read some pages from the anthology of Arabic love-poetry and ate a good deal of my beloved's food, resolving as I did so to visit her the next day.

My sleep was full indeed, being embellished by a dream that I could vividly recall when I woke up. At the very top of the oak tree that I had been unable to climb in my quest to talk to the lunatics' overlord, my beloved, the mistress of my very being, sat cross-legged. She was inviting me to come up and pick whatever I wished. I duly responded to her invitation, whereupon we embraced and clung to each other enough to cause the branches we were on to snap. Thus linked together we fell to the ground, which had prepared for us piles of soft grasses and straw. We rolled around together in the most delightful way, relishing the union of marital intercourse and indulging in its pleasure till dawn and the arrival of daylight.

This woman is lifting me up, entrancing me, and giving me new life!

Reluctant to interrupt such a vision, I nevertheless got out of bed, washed myself, and performed the prayer. I put on my best clothes and perfumed myself. After breakfasting on some of my beloved's food, I went out and headed for her dwelling, full of longing and passion. I soon reached the quarter in question. But no sooner did I arrive at the door of her house than I saw a huge black man standing there and watching as I anxiously paced to and fro. He told me to move on, and I had no alternative but to do what he said, not least because a lot of nosy men and women were now watching my movements with considerable curiosity.

I went into the center of the city, mingled with the city folk, and then sat down on a bench opposite a square teeming with people. I started practicing my secret hobby, desiring to make light of my doubts and feelings of nausea. Had I been in the desert, I would have stared fixedly at the flights of birds passing over my head or at the herds of cattle so I too could have felt myself turned into a bird or animal. But in an urban setting my strategy involves looking at people as they pass by and weaving a story around each of them, male or female, even though it may never have applied to them in particular nor would it. For example (one among many possibilities), this particular man looks like a criminal, a brutal murderer, or a vicious enforcer, while that one seems like someone condemned to death although the sentence has been commuted, or else someone with one foot already in the grave; still another one has a face beneath which is another countenance with a thousand and one secrets to it, a passionate lover perhaps who allows his imagination to fabricate an entire web of desire and longing and fashions his dreams on cords of wind and leaves of sand. Anyone who can do what I do, steering the ship of the imagination in better directions, will never be a professional historian, but rather a narrator of promises, a ploughman for the marginal and secluded.

As I made my way back up the hill, I decided the best plan was to proceed to the oak tree. As I approached it, evening was lowering its initial curtain, but I was not looking either to left or right or paying attention to things animal, vegetable, or mineral. When I reached it, I rolled up my sleeves and took some deep breaths. Flexing my limbs, I pronounced the phrase "God is Almighty" and invoked His aid before beginning to climb the tree. This time I managed to climb higher than I had on the previous occasion and took that as a good sign. Very slowly and cautiously I climbed higher and higher, one branch at a time, not daring to look down in case I felt dizzy. I kept looking upward toward the spot that was my goal, and eventually, after a good deal of effort and resolve, I managed to sit crosslegged at the very top of the tree, albeit with less splendor and confidence than my beloved had shown in my yesterday's dream. Even so it was definitely more splendid by far than the way the petty rulers of Spain were sitting cross-legged on their tottering thrones. As I sat there, I came to regard my success, somewhat tardy though it might be, as a promising sign and symbol of good luck, something that might please both the hermit in the forest and the overlord of the lunatics.

For a few moments I just sat there, recovering my breath after all the exertion and enjoying the wonderful vista spread out before me, valleys, forests, and hills, all of them inhabited by a variety of God's creatures, whether visible to the eye or not, capable of speech or not. How many wondrous things there are in God's world: birds descending from the skies all around me and returning to their nests. Some of them hovered right above my head; I could hear their cries and the beating of their wings, as though they were perplexed by my being there and urging me to go back to my own nest. And how could I not respond to their urging when night was beginning to cast its dark cloak over the land, accompanied by the usual drop in humidity and temperature.