Free The Fall of the Imam by Nawal El Saadawi Page A

else to go after than the girl of my dreams. He used to send her love letters and poems dedicated to her, whereas I could hardly write my name. I bestowed the title of Great Writer on him, allowed him a full page in the daily morning paper on which to publish his articles, together with a picture in which he smiles out at the girls, yet despite all that he does not stay within his limits. Ever since he was a child the desires of his heart have never cooled down. There he stands by my side following the noise of all these explosions, watching my head as it falls from on high to the ground, seeing chaos let loose as though it is the end of the world, and yet he remains unmoved, like a sphinx carved out of stone. Suddenly the faces of the friends and enemies I know disappear as though swallowed up by a void and are replaced by the faces of men I have never seen before. They move up closer and surround me where I lie hiding my face in the ground. One of them turns my head around and looks into my face. I hear him say, ‘Whose face is it then?’ To which he replies, ‘God only knows.’
    It must be that my face looked more awesome and dignified than that of the Imam, the face of a man much greater than that of an ordinary man. For its skin was stone-white, almost bloodless, and the bones were hard as rock, rigid, unmoving. A shiver went through the men who were gathered around me, and they kneeled on the ground as though in adoration. One of them came closer to me. Noticing that my face was getting darker and darker and that it was gradually changing to the colour of the earth on which I lay, he turned on his heels and ran away as fast as he could, crying out, ‘It’s the Devil!’, and the others followed close behind him. All of them shouted in one voice, ‘It’s the Devil!’, and as they ran one of them stepped on my hand, and another stepped on my medal where it lay on the ground close to my right foot. I buried my face in the ground so that no one should see me, and suddenly I felt a gentle hand touch my head. When I peered out cautiously from between my lids I began to see faces which I had seen somewhere before. But when they lifted my head up from the ground and looked at my face none of them seemed to recognize me. At that moment I heard a voice whose smooth tones sounded familiar to me. It resembled the voice of my legal wife or of the Chief of Security and it said, ‘No, it’s not him.’ Then another voice which could have been that of my Great Writer or of the Leader of the Official Opposition cried out suddenly, ‘God has saved him! God is on his side!’ And immediately on every side voices started to acclaim me. ‘Long live the Imam.’ The guns of victory fired a salvo and the drums beat out a loud refrain.
    I saw my legal wife descend from the balcony, walking with a slow serene step and the great calm of a lion. But as soon as she disappeared out of my sight she started to run on her pointed high heels towards the bedroom. The curtains had been drawn over the windows, and my body lay on the bed surrounded by my legitimate and illegitimate sons and daughters. The Minister of Health was sprinkling disinfectant over my body to prevent it from rotting. In the adjoining room the men I depended on in Hizb Allah were busy dividing up whatever I had left behind me between themselves. When my legal wife entered the room her eyes immediately fell on the face of my illegitimate daughter, who was standing beside me. On her right stood her mother Gawaher, and on her left stood my first wife. The atmosphere before she arrived had been calm and pleasant. I lay in bed holding on to my illegitimate daughter’s smooth hand, kissing it every now and then. But my legal wife leapt on us like a tiger and suddenly all the faces that were gathered around me disappeared, and I was left alone with the face of my legal wife standing beside me. She removed all the marriage and kingly rings from my fingers, emptied my pockets of