Free The Theocrat: A Modern Arabic Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) by Bensalem Himmich Page B

these times love and knowledge have disintegrated, each one of them bearing its own ignorance or complaining about its she-camel, operating in its own unique fashion. And your lot is to wander in the desert wastes and turn your back on mankind, or else to devote yourself to a life of madness as you try to govern them.’”
    At this point al-Hakim regained his normal consciousness, but stayed totally silent, almost as though he were in a swoon. When he started talking again, it was in short bursts. The exhausted young secretary found it utterly impossible to record them all and only managed to write down some snippets, such as:
    “The desert, the desert!
    “Tremulous hope and bitter words!
    “I realize I’m making my way through a life where there is neither sweetness nor horizon.
    “I know orphan exposure, whether on its own or with others. I know that it proceeds either alone or in mixed company, as it heads toward its pit or its own deviation before fragmenting.
    “In the abode where there is neither movement nor strife, cogitation is good, planning effective. Then death arrives, fast-paced and on time, right on time….
    “In vain do we grow old; we only learn about life when it is all over and we are close to the end.
    “Death repeats itself, but without any originality! So what? I ask myself. The wombs of women bring forth humans, and the earth swallows them up. So what, I tell myself, if this process of bringing forth and swallowing up involves behavior that is prescient, pain that is reduced, andharm that inflicts less damage? But what matters is the blindness, the space that shudders, the felicitous opportunity in a crisis. Instead of national refreshment, open space, and a change of air, there was smoke, crowd, and constricted space.
    “Before the earth swallows me up, I told myself, here I am relishing the ultimate happiness, progressing toward the highest degree of certainty, moving ever forward till my head is held high and my talents are fully applied.
    “I waited for her body to arrive, confident that my bride would come to me:
    “a radiant gift of destiny to crystallize me,
    “breasts that sigh
    “chemistry of felicity and beauty.
    “But not long after she came to me as my bride the whole thing turned into a disaster; her body became a mistake, chaff for the wind.
    ‘“Patience, patience!’ I told myself. So I waited till the clouds scattered, the sky was clear once more, and life came. But instead, calamity fell on me from an unexpected direction. Dangerous notions arrived, and misfortunes too. Survival there was, but it was endowed with multiple opportunities for downfall. I was unable to control this slippery slope; without lamp or axe, I had to engage in a fierce struggle to keep my head from exploding and my very face from collapse.
    “I awoke one day and told the women who used to share my bed, ‘By my life, it would be a wonderful idea to put you all in closed coffins and throw you into the Nile.’ With that, I left them and went out into the early dawn atmosphere, there to resume my interest in smelling the scent of roses and listening to the beat of birds’ wings.
    “The biggest issue of all: changing this world. The very love of change, that headlong rush to sever the ties that bind self, oppression, and want to each other; the very love of change, to abolish the contradiction between life and the things that overwhelm and destroy it. However, my dear devotees, why am I destined forever to drink wine and collect varieties of grass in order to foster this headlong spirit within me?
    “My ruses and medicaments will all come to naught; my drugs will lose their efficacy one-after the other. I shall spend the rest of my life making countless attempts to understand what has happened, to comprehend those things that were not foreseen, to assess this sense of depression with an analytical eye, this suppressed feeling deep down that dogs human beings whether alone or in company, like a