Bensalem Himmich - A Muslim Suicide

The two guards brought me to a cell apart from the others, opened the ironbarred door, and then locked it behind me before leaving. I found Bilal lying there in a pile without moving. When I said his name, he staggered to his feet, staring at me with teary, bloodshot eyes. He had bruises and welts all over his body. As I embraced him, I made it clear that I fully intended to get him out of this prison. He grabbed my hands and started kissing them, while I kept on trying to get him to sit down and get some rest. I sat down next to him. He made some gestures to ask how his mistress was and how things were going in the house, and I reassured him on that score. I asked him to stretch out on the mat and try to get some sleep, which he did. For my part, I allowed myself the time to contemplate and pray, to which I added some extra prayers and requests to God for aid. I then embarked on a period of mystical reflection that went on with variations until the latter part of the night. After that I must have fallen into a deep sleep, because the first thing I knew I was being awakened by the jailer, who informed me that his master was on his way. With that I stood up and adjusted my clothing as best I could. But suddenly there was the deputy governor coming into the cell, accompanied by another man who looked like a jurist of some kind.

"I hope you slept well, esteemed shaykh," he said in a gruff voice. "You're forcing us to stop you right in your tracks. This man is Sharif al-Hihi, the primary religious authority and mufti for this particular region. He is empowered to examine your beliefs and test the degree of your faith."

By now the shaykh had sat down on my rug. "To put it another way," he went on, giving me a sneaky look, "I am really seeking your guidance so that your followers may emulate your example. That way the country can avoid schism, something that is worse than murder itself."

There was a general air of lethargic propriety about this so-called jurist, not to mention the obvious fact that he was up to his neck in craven service to the authorities. I told myself audibly that I was still in the company of divine presence and needed to focus entirely on mention of God Himself so as to rid my responses of all irrelevancies and impure ideas. God is the companion of those who recall his name. "There is no god but God-Ha-Mim; only one is the Necessary Existent-Alif-lam-mim*; only the eternal is an existent-Kaf-ha-ya-'ayn-sad.`

The deputy governor started showing signs of restlessness and squatted on the floor in the expectation that his companion would make some kind of gesture. However the jurist put on a big show of being calm and intelligent.

"I've not come here to listen to your rituals, Abd al-Haqq," he told me. "You're accused of things that, if I confirm them now, will earn you just punishment."

"Who has given you the authority to examine me? Under what regulation are you deputized to do this?"

"God and the authorities here, not to mention the general injunction to command what is right and put an end to what is abhorrent."

"The authorities here have strayed from the correct path. They have fallen out with one another so that in our poor tortured land of Spain they have totally failed. Their only concern and means of exerting power now consist of harassing and terrifying the servants of God through insults and tyranny. The very fact that you submit to their will is an act of rebellion against God our Creator, thereby rendering yourself unqualified to make judgments concerning His holy law."

This provoked a new set of shouts of support, albeit weak and intermittent, from the prisoners, echoing throughout their cells. Once again the deputy governor lost his temper. The look he gave his companion seemed to represent permission to start hitting me. From time to time, Bilal lying in his corner would utter sighs and groans of protest; he may have been intending to make it clear that he was well aware of how tense this situation was and that he was fully prepared to respond to whatever bad things might happen to me.

"I'm being patient with you, Ibn Sab'in," the jurist replied in a tone full of menace and phony sorrow, "because I want you to repent. I'm prepared to wait till you recant your grievous sin. That sin lies in the following outrageous statement: `When Muhammad son of Amina declared that there would be no prophet after him, he was issuing a broad-scaled interdiction.' Do you now wish to crave God's refuge from such drivel?"

"Listen, you so-called designee," I replied. "You seem eager to cite my words from a series of falsifiers and calumniators. What I actually said does not talk in terms of `interdiction,' but rather of `surmise'."

"Here's another example of your heretical statements, or is it also an example of false attribution: `Peace be upon both denier and believer, scholar and pseudoscholar, errant and misled'?"

"Here you are again," I replied, giving him a pitiful, derisory smile, "examining me on a matter that would need a great deal of time to explain to you. In any case it's much too complex for a mind like yours to comprehend. It is true that I said precisely that at the conclusion of my `Essay on the Poor,' but what you have done is to remove it completely from its context and rip it away from its lofty humanistic frame of reference. Is there, I wonder, any use in pointing you in the right direction by citing a verse from the Sura of the Cattle [6]: `Your Lord has ascribed mercy unto Himself'; and from the Sura of the Cow [2]: `God singles out whomever he wishes for His mercy, and God is the possessor of enormous bounty.' So seek for yourself a share of God's wide mercy. Peace be upon you, even though you obviously number among those deviant would-be scholars who are in the most grievous error."

That disconcerted the jurist and made him furious. "Calm down!" he shouted. "Let me make it clear that you're not going to get out of this prison until you repent of your calumnies and false claims. Your followers continue to spread your words of incitement, all of them aimed at breaching customs and annulling religious injunctions on matters such as usury, theft, polygamy, and wife-beating whenever the woman is recalcitrant and refuses her husband's demands. And there's lots more…"

"You keep on citing my statements in distorted and falsified forms. Do you really expect me to tell you what I really said when both time and place are completely inappropriate? I won't engage in such a thing unless it is in front of a whole group of people and with witnesses present, by which I mean people of integrity-and that doesn't include you. I've nothing more to say to either you or your superior."

I was surprised and astonished when the deputy governor kicked me viciously in my side. I sprang to my feet, ignoring the pain. "So, you uncouth boor," I yelled at him, "now it's kicking, is it?" I aimed a good punch at his face, and he lost his balance and fell to the ground in a faint. The jurist ran away, begging for mercy, and the prison guard came rushing over to help the deputy governor. However, Bilal pounced on him, threw him to the ground as well, and grabbed his keys. He locked the door and buttressed it with as much furniture and trappings as he could find inside the cell. I sat down on the rug to recover my breath and watched as my servant directed threatening remarks at the two men spread-eagled on the floor. He had his foot firmly implanted on the prison guard's chest. Opening the deputy governor's mouth and pulling his tongue out, he spat into it several times; he also yelled loudly into their ears. He kept pacing nervously around the cell, counting with his fingers and banging his forehead as he assessed the situation. For my part, I tried to guess what was going on inside his head and came to the conclusion-but then God knows best-that he was listening to two conflicting voices: one of them kept urging him to take action, saying something like, "Listen, you! This deputy governor is one of those petty tyrants who would cut out your tongue without a second thought and do you harm. So kill him and have revenge"; the second voice kept telling him not to give in to such ideas in case they involved his master in things that would not turn out well.